Pleasure in Objects?

Pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness are all false imaginations of the mind. Mind is a false illusory product. Conceptions of the mind also must, therefore, be false. They are all like a mirage in the desert. Sense-Pleasure is only a mental deception. What is beautiful for you is ugly for another. Beauty and ugliness are relative terms. Beauty is only a mental concept. It is only a mental projection. Real beauty is in the Self only.

Pleasure and beauty reside in the mind and not in the objects. Mango is not sweet; the idea of mango is sweet. It is all thought wave. It is all mental deception, mental conception, mental creation. Remove the thought wave; beauty vanishes. The husband stretches his own idea of beauty in his ugly wife and finds his wife very beautiful through passion. Shakespeare has rightly expressed this in his “Mid-summer Night's Dream”: “Cupid is painted blind. It finds Helen's beauty in the brow of Egypt.”

Pleasure arising from external objects is evanescent, transitory and fleeting. It is mere nerve-titillation and mental deception. Embodied soul joins with mind and thought-wave and enjoys the sense-objects. The thing that gives you pleasure gives you pain also. "The delights that are contact-born, are verily wombs of pain." The body is an abode of misery and disease. Wealth brings a lot of trouble in acquiring and keeping safe. Sorrow springs from every connection. Alas! People prefer this path of misery to that of spiritual enjoyment.

No true, lasting satisfaction comes from the enjoyment of worldly objects. Yet, people rush headlong towards objects even when they know that the objects are unreal and the world is full of miseries. That is Maya. When the mind rests on Soul, then only eternal satisfaction will come; because, Soul is complete, you get everything there. It is self-contained. All desires are gratified by realization of Soul.

Some say that children are very happy. It is wrong. They only become exuberant. They get serious reaction also. They have no balanced mind. They weep for hours together for nothing at all. It is only a man of balanced mind that can really be happy.

Pleasure Arise Not From Sense-Objects

Really, there is no pleasure in objects. Soul gives a push to the mind and sets it in motion. A thought-wave arises in the mind on account of the force of a subtle desire. The mind is agitated and runs towards the particular object. The agitation will not subside till the mind gets the desired object. It will constantly think of the object. It will scheme and plan various methods to achieve the desired object. It will be ever restless. It will be ever assuming the shape of the object.

As soon as the object is obtained and enjoyed, the particular thought-wave that was causing agitation in the mind gets dissolved. When thoughts are dissolved, you get peace and bliss from the Soul within only and not from the object outside. Ignorant persons attribute their pleasures to external objects. That is a serious blunder, indeed.

There is no happiness at all in any of the objects of the world. It is sheer ignorance to think that we derive any pleasure from the sense-objects or from the mind. Whenever we feel our desires are satisfied, we observe that the mind moves towards the heart, towards Soul. In pleasure also, there is exercise of the mind. It expands. It turns inward and moves to its original home, the place of its origin, Soul and enjoys Bliss of the Self.

Reference

Mind – Its Mysteries and Control by Sri Swami Sivananda