Q: To keep the mind in the Self one must have no desires for anything other than the Self. This is a very difficult state to attain. The desire to seek pleasures in the outside world
always seems to be stronger than the desire to seek pleasure in the Self. Why is this so?
Annamalai Swami: All happiness ultimately comes from the Self. It does not come from the mind, the body or from external objects. If you have a great desire for a mango, when you finally
eat one there is great feeling of pleasure. When a desire is fulfilled, the mind sinks a little way into the Self and enjoys some of the bliss that is always present there. Then it rises
again. It remembers the happiness and tries to repeat the experience by eating more mangoes or gratifying other desires.
Most people are completely unaware that pleasure and happiness come from the Self, not from the mind or the body. Because most people have only experienced the peace of the Self when a
great...
desire has been fulfilled, the come to the conclusion that the pursuit of desires is the only way to get an experience of happiness and peace.
If you try to follow this standard route to happiness you will end up with a lot of frustration and a lot of suffering. You may occasionally experience a few brief moments of
pleasure, but for the rest of the time you will experience the pain of frustrated desires, of desires that don’t seem to produce any pleasure when they are fulfilled.
If you try to repeat pleasures again and again the novelty soon wears off. A mango, which you have been looking forward to for days, may give you a few seconds of happiness when you
eat it, but eating five or six more will not prolong your pleasure. Prolonged indulgence is more likely to produce pain than pleasure.
Most people in the world spend their whole lives self-indulgently pursuing goals, which they think will produce happiness for them. Most of these people never stop to do mental
accounts properly. If they did they would realize that each ten seconds of happiness is followed by hours or days when there is no happiness at all. Some people do realize this, but
instead of giving up this way of life, they indulge in it even more. They think that with a little more effort and a little more sensory, mental or emotional indulgence they can
expand the short periods of happiness and contract the longer intervening periods when happiness is not experienced.
- Living by the Words of Bhagavan, p. 295
This approach never works. If there are many strong desires in the mind, the mind cannot sink completely into the Self and experience the full peace and bliss that is there. …
The desire-filled mind only experiences the bliss of the Self in a very diluted form. If you want the full bliss of the Self, and if you want to experience it permanently, you will
have to give up all our desires and attachments. There is no other way.
Simple
YOGA
Life
