insulted. There is a necessity felt, even in the worst of individuals, to be regarded as
worthwhile. This is the psychological urge, together with the physical urge. Both
these put together is the instinct for life—the psychophysical urge, we may call it.
That is the self-preservation instinct.
The self-preservation instinct is not an inactive, dormant or sleeping instinct. It is a
very cautious instinct. The self-preservation instinct knows that it cannot succeed for
all times. One day or the other, with all our effort, we have to perish. We may go on
eating, drinking, clothing ourselves and living in a house for any number of years to
the extent possible, but a limit is there for this effort. We will perish. The instinct for
life tells us that life has to end one day. There is a fear: “I am going to be annihilated
one day.” We all know that we are going to die, notwithstanding that we struggle
hard to prevent it by food, drink, etc.
This instinct works in a different manner altogether, in a strange way, which is called
the self-reproduction instinct. The self-reproductive instinct is nothing but another
action of the self-preservation instinct. We want to perpetuate our individuality for
all times; otherwise, there will be an end of it. How long will we exist in this body? A
few years? It may be even a hundred years, let us assume. After a hundred years,
what happens? No food and drink will perpetuate this body; it will drop. The instinct
for the love of individual life is shrewd enough to know that it cannot always succeed
with all its shrewdness, so it manufactures a device by which it can perpetuate its
individuality for a future generation also. The vehemence with which the self-
preservation urge manifests itself in life channelises itself in a different way as an
equal vehemence for self-reproduction—so that when this body goes, its child is there
to continue its drama of life. The soul transfers its emotions to the child that is born,
and atma vai putranama asi, as the scripture says—we feel ourselves in the child.
That is why we love the child so much. We see ourselves there. The temporal urge for
phenomenal, individual existence, which is the self-preservative instinct,
manufactures a device for continuing its activity in this world by the urge of self-
reproduction.
Hence, the instincts of self-preservation and self-reproduction are really one instinct
only, like two sides of the same coin. They are not two different things. As Patanjali
puts it, it is the abhinivesa which works so strongly and spontaneously that even the
wisest of people cannot escape this. This wisdom of the world is nothing before this
instinct, because it has a wisdom superior to the wisdom of the world. Why is this
instinct so powerful? It is because the whole of nature is backing it; the entire set-up
of the forces of nature is in collaboration with this instinct. The purpose or the
intention of nature is that one propagates the species into which one is born.
Therefore, this instinct has the support of every part of nature. We can find this
instinct present everywhere—in human beings, in subhuman beings, in plants, and
everywhere. It cannot be absent anywhere, and it is doubtful whether it is absent
even in inorganic matter; even there, it is present in some form or other. What is
chemical action but this urge that is working, in a subtler form? Even the
gravitational pull can be explained physically as the working of a single force which
diversifies itself in various ways for the fulfilment of a single purpose in nature. On
account of the collaboration received by this instinct from various sources, from the
whole of nature itself, it becomes insurmountable, vehement, very forceful, turbulent
and impetuous. This is the condition of things, which is put plainly in this sutra:
svarasavahī viduṣaḥ api tatha ārūḍhaḥ abhiniveśaḥ (II.9).