PLEASURE is SUFFERING by Atman Nityananda

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