Lower desires are not the opposite of higher desires; lower desires are the early form of higher desires. According to the laws of nature, first there is a lower desire. As you evolve, you begin developing higher desires. What is lower desire? This is a very difficult question because the definition of lower desire is according to your religion and your society.
If I want to drink, is it lower desire or higher desire? If I want to have sexual intercourse, is it lower desire or higher desire? It is lower desire because that is how tradition has defined it. In fact, there is no absolute and ultimate definition of lower desire and there is no absolute definition of higher desire either because society, law and religion merely fix something as standard for the time. What you consider to be higher desire the Soviet Union will consider lower desire and you will be sent to a mental hospital. In the same way, Hindus, Muslims and Communists have their own standards. Therefore, one has to go with the quality of one’s nature.
The quality of nature is called dharma. Dharma is not religion. According to your evolution, there is a desire which is natural to you. A child desires toys; when he grows up he desires a wife and children. According to your evolution, the nature of your desire has changed, but you cannot say that the desire of a child was bad or unnecessary. Therefore, before deciding what higher and lower desire is, you must first realize what your dharma is.
What is the quality of your nature? Are you a sensualist? Are you hyper-sensual, or are you a pacifist? Are you a greedy man or are you a contented person? According to your evolution, you have certain desires. According to dharma, you should fulfil them; you should not hate them. You must respect yourself. That is very important for everybody, because many people read books, and then they begin to hate themselves - I get angry, that’s my nature. However, in the books it is said it is bad. Everybody says it is bad, but I know it is not. I will try to overcome this, if necessary, as I evolve.
During meditation, during mantra and at other times, many thoughts, lower thoughts as you call them, come into the mind. Let them come. Do not stop them, because you cannot stop them, they will come to you in some form or the other. When a thought arises in the mind you must accept it. If you don’t accept it, it will be suppressed, it will come again. It will keep on coming up for quite some time. Finally, it will not come, it will be repressed. Then it will start coming in the form of personality errors and sickness, because lower desires and higher desires are a kind of force, like electricity.
I am always telling people that anything that is coming from the mind is a force. Emotion is energy, passion is energy, lower desire is energy, higher desire is energy. It is like electricity manifesting in the form of light. It can express itself in the form of heat, in the form of ultraviolet or other rays. Therefore, you should never suffocate your lower desires but you should be careful in enacting them because society will not accept it. Society has its own rules, regulations, considerations and taboos, so you must make a compromise and make friends with your worldly desires also.
I have seen and experienced two types of feelings that we generate in relation to these two types of desires. When higher desires come into the mind we are so happy and when lower desires come into the mind we feel so miserable. These are the two types of reactions we have towards our own personality. My point of view is that we should not hate lower desires at all. In the course of time, they will transform into noble desires because the lower desire is a force which can be channelled towards a constructive project.
It is very difficult for people to make a compromise. I know that even after hearing this, if lower thoughts come into the mind tonight you will be miserable, because you have been told a million times about your thoughts. Statistics show that most of the people who go to mental hospitals are religious people, because religion helps suppression. People with a religious frame of mind have, according to modern psychologists, greater intensity of repression. Religious people have a schizophrenic philosophy: this is lower and this is higher. Then they create a tension between the two, they want to have higher thoughts, yet here come the lower thoughts, so this split personality grows more and more. In the West you find these cases every day. There are so many mental cases because there are such uncompromising definitions. Therefore, if you want to have a normal frame of mind, please drop the line of difference.