We had previously explored three of the eight emotional or psychological factors that cause the formation of Granthis or Knots of the Heart system. Today we will be looking at the fourth factor, namely lust.

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The human mind, as per yogic traditions, has three modes of being— the instinctive, the intellectual and the intuitive. Every thought, emotion and action comes from a cognitive base dominated by one of these three, but in which the other two modes are also present to varying degrees.

Lust is the instinctive version of intellectual affection as love is the intuitive mode of instinctive lust. From desire eternal springs the hope of acquiring or accomplishing that which is desired. Then comes the joy of the hunt or the search, followed by the accomplishment or acquisition and its joy. And finally, the joy of being able to free oneself from that which is accomplished or acquired. The first of these four joys, based in the Root Identity, is known in common parlance as lust.

When the immense bio-psychological force that is lust is tempered by other forces of the mind, such as reason, consequence and justice etc, this same lust force can then be diverted and refined in order to achieve great works in any chosen field of human endeavour.

On the other hand, the less lust is tempered by these intellectual and intuitive forces and the more it is allowed free and unrestrained reign over the decision-making processes of the mind, there is produced immense danger for both oneself as well as those closest to you.

In order to free the lust-driven mind, first there must be a purposeful control called 'Hatha' in Yogic terminology, which, applied correctly, will lead to psychosomatic control over the hormonal system. The stimulation that started with lust will then get transformed into the stimulus type that will engender psychological distance from the object of instinctive lust, immediately transforming lust into intellectualised affection. Such affection will have an increased amount of appreciation due to the natural appreciative quality of the intellect.

This is why men who have affection for women and appreciate them support women's rights, whereas men driven by lust towards women see them as objects to be acquired and are by nature against women's rights.  

Yet, the knot of lust is not broken apart in the heart until this affection is, in turn, transformed to its pure essence, love. In order to achieve this highest transformation, one that changes our whole perspective on life and our role in it, we must stop viewing people and places as ‘belonging’ to us in any way. What I mean by this is that we must gain further psychological distance from the object, person, place, thought or emotion that is in our mind.

In the stage of lust transforming to affection, there was the first psycho-physical distancing from the object of desire, leading to appreciation and affection. In the next stage, we must gain the second distancing, the purely psychological step of cutting off all imagined associations brought forward into the living present from memory that lies in the past.   

By doing so, we do not colour our affection and appreciation for the object with memory. Staying free in its ever-changing nature, we are liberated from the psychological bonds that tie us to the object, bonds that we have manufactured ourselves through memories of past associations with the object or others like it.

The experience of the freedom from these self-constructed bonds, allow us to grow our sense of appreciation for the object to such an extent that we cannot call it appreciation anymore, only love.

And with the breaking of the bond of lust and its transformation into love, not just for an object but for all objects of perception and cognition, we gather sufficient power and purified self-identity to break the further knots of the heart, of which more in the coming sections.

AryaMarga Yoga is a yogic research institute based out of Himachal Pradesh. Their work primarily focuses on the integration of certain parametric systems of contemporary psychology with the ancient yogic systems of mental process-control.