The Three Root Desires : 13.

The Upanishads are great psychologists. In their wonderful psychological analysis they have said that, finally, we have only three desires, though we seem to have a bundle. Every other desire can be boiled down to these three desires. In Sanskrit they are called eshanas: putraishana, vittaishana, lokaishana. The desire for physical possession and security, the desire for perpetuation of oneself in time, and the desire for name and fame—these are the three desires. All other desires are included in these.

You look very small physically. As you are just one person among many other people, what is your importance? In a large sea of humanity, you are one drop. You will feel very miserable about it, and you do not want to feel that way. "I am a big man." You cannot become big physically, you know it very well, so you impose upon yourself a bigness by social association—by what is called authority over other people, by becoming a king or a minister or a president. When you are invested with this kind of position or authority over a large area of land and people, it looks as if your personality has grown so big that you are not one person among many others; you are one big person, under whom every other person is subsumed.

The king thinks that the entire population is inside him and he can do anything with them. Physically it is not so, but psychologically he feels it is so. The entire country is inside him, as it were; he holds it in his grip. The largeness that he required has been achieved by this expansion of the gaunatman, or the secondary self.

Swami Krishnananda

To be continued  ....