IT IS DESIRE, IT IS WRATH — Desire is the inner SATAN in the individual’s bosom. We have seen earlier that desire is nothing other than our own spiritual “ignorance,” expressing itself in our intellectual personality. This statement in the stanza is not to be understood as enumerating two different things. “Desire” itself, under certain circumstances, gains expression as “anger.” A constant agitation of the mind, expressing as an uncontrollable impatience to gain something, is called “desire.” Desire is generally for something other than ourselves. In the clash of existence, beings and circumstances may come between ourselves and the “object of our desire,” and in such cases, our “desire” — impulses, striking at the obstacle, gain the ugly look of “wrath.”
Thus, whenever emotions for acquisition and possession of an object flow incessantly towards that object, the bundle of thoughts so flowing is called “desire;” while the same emotions, when they get obstructed from reaching their desired objects, and get refracted at an intermediate obstacle, are called “anger.” This “desire-anger-emotion” is the very SATAN in us that compels us to compromise with our own intellectually known Higher values of existence, and tempts us to perpetrate sins. Greater the desire, greater the power in the pull towards the sinful and the low. Once desire has come to manifest itself in our intellect, it enshrouds the wisdom in us.
Desire and anger, and their numberless children of sin and sorrow, must ever come to breed upon the marshy lands of our deluded intellect. To come under their sway is “ignorance.” To come to rule over them is “Wisdom.
“THE LORD NOW ILLUSTRATES HOW DESIRE IS OUR FOE AND HOW IT VEILS OUR DISCRIMINATION:
