YEARNING AND EXPERIENCE

Just two days back, Economic Times had an article on a recent Neurological Study made in US. According to the findings of this study, our craving or yearning for a pleasant experience emanates from one channel of the brain. This craving can be unlimited in its intensity. Actual experience emanates from another channel of the brain and unlike the craving the actual experience has limited capacity. That is the reason very often we find that there is a wide chasm between our desire to have and our ability to experience and this results in unfulfilled desires. Sigmund Freud and the School of Psycho-analysis trace almost all our psychological problems to unfulfilled and suppressed desires. A few thousands years back, Krishna attributed every ill in this world to desires and explained how unfulfilled desires lead to frustration, anger and lack of discrimination. If the ability to have a pleasant experience is limited, the only way to bring the yearnings and experience together is to make the desires or cravings come down to the level of ability to experience. Spiritual leaders of almost all the religions had talked about and continue to talk shunning desires - a strange link between Metaphysics and the Physical sciences.

If our desires and yearnings become less intense, do we cease to be creative? Will the world be deprived of visionaries? Would we become complacent and laid back attitude become our leitmotif? The answer is an emphatic no. If we are conscious of the fact that yearnings and experience belong to two different channels of the brain with different degrees of intensity, it would become easier to sublimate and not suppress our desires. Suppression, like the Recycle bin, store the desires in a remote corner of the memory with disastrous conseaquences. Sublimation finds expression elsewhere.

All of sudden, the crude Tamil proverb ‘Kazhuthai Kamam katthiye theerum’ ( the libido of the ass finds expression in its brailing ) seems to be meaningful indeed.