How To Overcome The Pleasure-Motive

Unless the pleasure-motive is overcome, no matter what else we do, we can never perfectly control the mind. This statement may give a rude jolt to many who struggle with their minds. But it is a statement of fact, and the implication of this need to be grasped.

It is easy to say bluntly that unless the pleasure-motive is renounced one cannot have a strong will to control the mind. But the pleasure-urge, being elemental in us, is so deeply ingrained in our flesh the greatest difficult. We must not, however, and wicked in seeking pleasure. The pleasure-motive immoral pleasures which create greater bondage and retard our higher self-development, is. Except for a microscopic minority-who, in response to a higher call, have renounced worldly pursuits and about whom we are not speaking here- except for them, life itself will hardly be possible without some satisfaction of the pleasure-urge. What to live for, if not for pleasure? Will be the honest question of the majority of mankind. This urge is a living force in man, and a force by which he lives. Yet it is true that the pleasure-motive eats away our will to control the mind. What then is the solution of this inner problem?

To be sure, ascetic denial is not the answer for the vast majority. Neither is the answer indulgence. The answer is in gradually educating out pleasure-urge, and in understanding the dimensions of our own being and how to harness the pleasure-urge for the purpose of self-fulfillment. This will need some elaboration.

Incidentally it us as well to make it cleat that we are now discussing a general problem that faces beginners who are worldly in their dispositions. For those who are advanced aspirants a some of the points we are going to discuss will not hold good. They will know what these points are: for example the enjoyment of legitimate sense-pleasure is per-missible for the ordinary person who has yet to make a start in spiritual life, but not for the person who has take several steps in it.