Yoga for Health, Happiness and World Peace-13. - Swami Chidanananda

17/07/2018
13.

The enjoyment part of the sense perception process is not coincidental, it was put there. Otherwise, unless looking at something or hearing something or touching something or tasting something gave some little pleasure, you would not do it. Supposing a person gets conjunctivitis and opening the eyes becomes painful, the person closes the eyes. He does not want to open them because the very act of opening the eyes becomes painful.

So, if the function of the senses were not accompanied by a little pleasure of the senses, man would not do it. The creator’s very objective in giving these would be thwarted. So he wants you to use these senses in order to perceive the world around you and to appreciate God’s beauty and to gain knowledge. Therefore, willy-nilly, He had to make the exercise of sense perceptions a little pleasurable. But man out of his perversions, failing to understand the reason for the presence of pleasurable sensations and sense processes, has missed the entire point of the senses.

Instead of making good use of the senses as avenues and windows of perception and avenues of gaining knowledge, he has emphasised, (indeed over-emphasised) and stressed upon the enjoyment part of it and made the senses the avenue of unbridled enjoyment and therefore the cause of disease, ill health, suffering and pain. Therefore, Yoga says "This is not the right approach. Self-control is the hallmark of the human individual. It is beyond and higher than animals. They too have seasons for indulging in certain senses. Man also must show his superiority by himself being the self-master".

To be continued ..