The Secret of the Two Desires
In the previous chapter, we said that the desire to give creates matter, and the desire to receive gives it shape. Humans are no exception to the rule: we receive our life energy from the desire to give, and we are formed by the desire to receive. However, since we learned that we could change our surroundings to suit our desires, we have been focusing entirely on the desire to receive. We have become ignorant of the fact that we receive energy and life not from the desire to receive, but from the desire to give.
Human beings are a special species: since we realized that we could change our surroundings to our benefit, we have been developing increasingly sophisticated ways to do so. We have learned that we can use our intelligence, instead of our physical strength, to enhance our pleasure.
Yet, to enhance it effectively, we need to know what parts of nature we can change, when we can change them, and how. For example, agriculture is a change of nature because instead of picking wild oats, for instance, we can domesticate them, grow them in a field, produce many more of them, and collect them more easily. But to avoid doing harm to the environment, farmers must take into consideration numerous pieces of information, to make certain that they do not jeopardize its overall balance.
And to be able to maintain that balance, we must be aware of all the elements involved in the making of the environment, and first and foremost, of the desire to give and the desire to receive, and how they interact. Otherwise, it is as if we were trying to build a house without knowing how to make a strong and stable foundation, or planning the number of rooms without knowing how many people will be living in it.
The interplay between the two desires eludes us because it is the very basis of our make up, and therefore resides at a level deeper even than our consciousness. But once we understand how these desires interact with each other to create life, we can put this information into practice and discover how to benefit from doing so.
At the same time, if we build our lives taking both desires into account, our common sense will often be challenged. We will find ourselves considering actions and attitudes that seem to make no sense to our desire to receive, which wants only to receive. For example, what good would it do for me to give something to someone that I don’t know, don’t care for, and who would never return my favor? It makes no sense to my desire to receive.
If you suggested that by doing so I would come to know the other half of reality—the desire to give—and that I would understand how the force that creates life works, I would probably suggest that you needed to see a therapist, rather than recognize that what you are telling me has value.
When you think about it, it is very easy to sympathize with Nimrod, the ruler of ancient Babel. In all likelihood, he wished for nothing more than to protect his subjects from Abraham, the anarchist. Abraham preached unity as a cure for the growing alienation and separation plaguing the residents of Babel. He proposed that the only reason that the kinship between people was dissipating was that they were unaware of the existence of the other desire that creates life—the desire to give. If they knew it, he tried to tell them, they could relate to one another in a more balanced way, and reap the harvest of experiencing the whole of reality, with both its desires.
But because no one else was fortunate enough to make this discovery in Babel besides Abraham, he appeared more like an eccentric than a redeemer. Nimrod thought that Abraham's arguments were not only senseless, but threatened the order of life in his domain. And the fact that he was the son of a renowned and respected idol maker made Nimrod even more concerned. People were merrily worshiping their idols, and Nimrod did not want to interrupt their way of life. He couldn’t see that their days as a happy community were numbered.
Hence, Nimrod took to the path of denial, and the vast majority of his subjects followed him—to their eventual ruin.