PLEASURE IS NOT THE GOAL

Pleasure is not the goal of man, but knowledge  Pleasure and happiness come to an end. It is a mistake to suppose that pleasure is the goal. The cause of all the miseries we have in the world is that men foolishly think pleasure to be the ideal to strive for. After a time man finds that it is not happiness, but knowledge, towards which he is going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers, and that he learns as much from evil as from good.

Pleasure is a by-product, not a goal. Many people make the great mistake of aiming directly at pleasure; they forget that pleasure comes only from the fulfillment of a duty or obedience to a law – for man is made to obey the laws of his own nature as inescapably as he must obey the law of gravity. A boy has pleasure eating ice-cream because he is fulfilling one of the ‘oughts’ of human nature: eating. If he eats more ice-cream than the law of his body sanction, he will no longer get the pleasure he seeks, but the pain of a stomachache. To seek pleasure, regardless of the law, is to miss it.

Good and evil have an equal share in molding character, and in some instances, misery is a greater teacher than happiness. In studying the great characters the world has produced, I dare say, in the vast majority of cases, it would be found that it was misery that taught more than happiness, it was poverty that taught more than wealth, it was blowing that brought out their inner fire more than praise.

Sense-happiness is not the goal of humanity. Wisdom is the goal of all life. We find that man enjoys his intellect more than an animal enjoys its senses, and we see that man enjoys his spiritual nature even more than this rational nature. So the highest wisdom must be this spiritual knowledge. With this knowledge will come bliss. All these things of this world are but the shadows, the manifestations in the third or fourth degree of the real Knowledge and Bliss.

Only the fools rush after sense-enjoyments. It is easy to live in the senses. It is easier to run in the old groove, eating and drinking; but what these modern philosophers want to tell you is to take these comfortable ideas and put the stamp of religion on them. Such a doctrine is dangerous. Death lies in the senses.

We say Newton discovered gravitation. Was it sitting anywhere in a corner waiting for him? It was in his own mind; the time came and he found it out. All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in your own mind. The external world is simply the suggestion, the occasion, which sets you to study your own mind, but the object of your study is always your own mind.

Not every type of pleasure will lead to happiness (or be sufficient for happiness) in the same way that not every type of medicine will lead to good health. Life on the plane of the Spirit is the only life, life on any other plane is mere death; the whole of this life can be only described as a gymnasium. We must go beyond it to enjoy real life.