This post concludes Hazrat Inayat Khan’s brief lecture on the role of desire in our journey toward the goal. The first instalment is here.

This whole creation is the result of desire. The purpose of creation, therefore, must be the fulfillment of this desire. Thus your first step towards accomplishment or attainment, whether it be spiritual or worldly, will also be to proceed with purpose towards the goal you desire.

You may think, ‘But if I keep on with the pursuit of my material desires, perhaps I may never reach the spiritual goal and will never get beyond my desires.’ The answer to this is that if you let the desire go unfulfilled and you lack the patience needed to accomplish the desire, your progress will be arrested. This failure will keep you back from spiritual progress. When once you have accomplished one desire, you will have that something which is needed for the accomplishment of something greater. Every desire you accomplish is one step further towards that final goal which every soul ultimately has to reach.

Thus the way to go is this, even for attaining spiritual perfection. Those who renounce their desires for God, for spiritual perfection, bury their own desires in their heart. It is more than renouncing; it is killing them and burying them; but they are there all the same. The are entombed in the heart, and there they will produce all sorts of germs and worms, and they will decay. There will only be pain and nothing else and so spiritual accomplishment cannot be attained in this way. 

The steps you take towards the goal by accomplishing your desires, your patience in doing this, your perseverance with it, these are what teach you. One may compare it with playing with dolls. The child who plays with a doll is learning to be a mother; learning how to be kind to children, putting them to bed, waking them up and dressing them. When once a little girl has learned this she will later be a good mother; this means she will accomplish her desire.

The man who has become rich or powerful, material though this may be, has attained something all the same; something has been accomplished; the mind gets strength and confidence. Then he can take the next step, which is the spiritual step.

A person has prepared himself for renunciation when he has risen above the object he demands. He is only entitled to say that he does not want the sweet when he has so much of it that he cannot eat any more. If he is still longing, well, he may say ‘No’, but it will be only a formality; perhaps it would not be good etiquette to say ‘Yes’, but he longs for it just the same!

So it is that you have to rise above everything that you renounce. You have not really renounced until you have done that. You go on seeking as long as you have a desire for a thing.