The Creation of Pleasure and Pain : 2.

But, as analysis deepens and the mind matures in its educative processes, we begin to discover that the root of the difficulties and troubles we pass through in life is not outside but elsewhere, though it is not known where it is. This is a great advance that is made in mental evolution. We may not know where the trouble is, but at least we know that it is not in the world of objects. There is a condition of discrimination which is posterior to the condition of the erroneous opinion we hold that the things of the world are the sources of our sorrow.


We know very well that no object, no person can be a source of sorrow for us wholly, because if the causative factor of pain is to be inherent in any particular object or person, that object or person should be the causative factor of sorrow for everyone in the world. But this is not seen as such. A particular source of anxiety and suffering to us may be a source of great joy and satisfaction to somebody else. The tiger is a source of terror to us, but the tiger's cub runs over the back of its mother without any fear, jumps on her lap and kisses her, while we are afraid even to look at her. So the object as such cannot be regarded as a causative factor in any manner whatsoever.



The object has also to be judged from the point of view of a specific relationship that it has with us. This is a higher stage of discovery. That the objects are entirely the sources of pain is the first crass perception of the untutored mind: All error is outside, all mistakes are of other people, and everything that is ugly is what is not mine. But a higher inquiry lands us in the superior understanding that beauty and ugliness, virtue and vice, good and bad, and all such judgments depend not necessarily on the structure of the objects themselves but more so on the relation that these objects have with ourselves

Swami Krishnananda

To be continued   ....