PLEASURE is SUFFERING
by Atman Nityananda
Someone
may ask: can I experience pleasure without experiencing suffering?
The
answer is definitely No! It is impossible to avoid the psychological suffering
while you want to experience pleasure. Possibly you can reduce the suffering somehow
but you cannot avoid it.
You
may ask why not?
Simply
because the suffering that usually takes the form of anger, depression, hatred,
anxiety, fear, disappointment, envy, greed, impatience, attachment, addition,
aversion, disgust, etc. is
a product of desire. All forms of suffering (some of them mentioned above) are
modifications of the of desire- energy. The desire
itself is transformed as anger, hatred, disappointment etc. under certain
circumstances. Thus while the desire- energy remains in us suffering it is
inevitable.
Then
you may ask: If we eliminate desire can we enjoy objects?
IMPORTANT
NOTE: I give to the words and
pleasure and enjoyment a distinct meaning of what is given to them by the
majority.
Enjoyment is the natural
pleasant sensation that we experience while our mind comes into contact through senses
with an external object.
Pleasure is a hedonistic
sensation which is produced by the lust-energy (which is only a modification of
sexual energy) and is crystallized in our vital body and manas.
To
enjoy the sense objects such as food the desire or lust it is not necessary. Unlike
to experience pleasure the desire or lust-energy is indispensable. And
that happens because pleasure, lust and desire are the same energy. The
desire-energy which like a strong vital-impulse drives us toward an object transforms
itself as pleasure at the time we are experiencing the object.
Thus
the pleasure we experience when we are in contact with an object has nothing to
do with the object. It's just a projection
of lust-energy on the object. This
lust-energy is only modified and crystallized sexual energy in our energy field
and Manas (external part of the mind in Sanskrit).
The lust-energy operates in us continuously and modifies itself in the twinkling
of an eye as the impulse of desire, as pleasure and passion, like, dislike,
attraction, repulsion or aversion and as all egoic defects such as anger, fear,
impatience, depression, frustration, discontent, uneasiness, envy, greed, etc.
This happen in the same way the water can take the form of water, ice,
snow, steam, humidity, clouds, mist etc.
Let’s
take the food and sexuality as examples because these two are the objects that
lust or desire-energy is expressed mostly
The enjoyment of the food and the experience of pleasure through food are
two completely different things.
When we experience a food-object we can have:
Only enjoyment
Enjoyment and pleasure
Neither enjoyment neither pleasure
We
can enjoy our food (have pleasant sensations) although it has certain limits
and this enjoyment it is related to the qualities of the food and the nature and
the conditioning of the mind. We cannot enjoy the same food when for example we
are sick.
We can also enjoy the object and at the same time to experience pleasure (this
is the common experience of the majority) which is a sensation created by the
lust-energy which is crystallized in ourselves and which is
activated every so according its strength and the conditioning
of the mind. In the experience of pleasure are involved the
identification, the projection, the imagination, the memory of previous
experiences, the mental-sensory-vital conditioning or patterns stored in the
subconscious.
The same happens with sexuality. We
can only enjoy the sexual energy or we can have both at the same time, the enjoyment
of sexual energy and the experience of pleasure.
Attention! In the case of sexuality we can say that the enjoyment is identical with the
pleasure. The sexual energy is the only one which produces a real pleasure
experience.
But I want to distinguish with emphasis the
natural sexual pleasure from the distorted pleasure which is a product of the
lust-energy. In this distorted experience of pleasure created by the lust are
involved the mental and vital processes of identification, projection, imagination,
memory etc.
The sexual dreams shows us that the distorted sexual pleasure is a product
of the lust-energy and not an experience created by the actual contact of the
physical bodies. When this sexual-lust energy is not satisfied during the waking
state then produces sexual dreams in order to produce an experience of imagined pleasure using the
capacities of the mind. Due to the fact that the astral body is connected with the physical
body this imagined sexual pleasure produces a physical orgasmic experience (wet
dreams). He who has eliminated the lust has not any more sexual or wet dreams.
This unnatural
pleasure created by the lust-energy is the cause of our bondage and suffering. This
lust-energy is the original cause of attachments, addictions, passions, mental
confusion, mental dullness lack of discernment, mental and emotional diseases, and the mother of all egoic
defects such as anger, hatred, fear, impatience, depression, jealousy, avarice,
greed, etc.
Conclusion:
Psychological
pleasure and pain are two sides of the same coin, always they go together and
can not have one without the other.
Peace, Love, harmony
