pleasure becomes a cause for working further to repeat the contact for the purpose of
the experience it once had.
The sutra, sukha anuśayī rāgaḥ (II.7), refers to the immediate consequence of self-
assertion. What is this immediate consequence? It is the conviction that arises in
oneself that there is a purpose in self-affirmation. What can be the purpose, other
than the enjoyment of pleasure? But, in this effort at coming in contact with things
for the purpose of satisfying one’s wishes, there is a hidden aspect, which is the
reason why we always keep ourselves in a state of anxiety. It is not all pleasure that
we see in this world. There is the other side also, which is pain, and that pain is the
result of the working of another aspect of experience, which goes simultaneously
with, or hand in hand with, the desire for contact with objects. The objects are finite;
therefore, a desire for an object is a finite movement of the mind exclusively in the
direction of certain given things, by which it sets aside other factors of life which it
does not regard as conducive or helpful in its present activity. Thus, it has always a
feeling of anxiety that these factors that have been set aside may not intrude.
There are also objects in the world other than the one towards which the mind is
moving. What will happen to them? Because of the interrelated structure of all
things, it is impossible to avoid the intrusion of other factors into our experience. We
cannot have summer always, or winter always, or rain always, or a particular kind of
season always, because the planets move according to their own way, and so seasons
change, naturally. Experiences also must change. Everything in this world is subtly
connected with everything else. Therefore, if we interfere with any particular thing,
we will be interfering with everything else also—knowingly or unknowingly. But, due
to the ignorance of this peculiar way in which nature works, the mind takes into
consideration only that particular object or group of objects which is visible to its
mental eye, as if it is looking at things with blinkers, and completely loses
consciousness of other factors with which the very existence of this object or group of
objects is concerned or related. Thus, reactions are set up.
The reactions that are produced by our actions, called the karmas that bind us, are
the unconscious repercussions which are consequent upon our interference with
things in the world. Though we are contacting objects not with an intention of
interfering, but with a so-called pious motive of getting what we want through them,
we are thoroughly mistaken, because every contact is an interference with nature.
Nature is an indivisible whole and it cannot brook interference of any kind, and it has
no partiality of any kind in respect of its content. It does not love one to the exclusion
of others. But this individual sense does not know this truth. It thinks that a part of
nature is its property—it belongs to it, and it tries to possess it wrongly and make it a
part of its own being, not knowing that nature will not allow this and that its law will
operate.
Sukha-dukha come together; pleasure and pain are simultaneous. Every endeavour
at pleasure is an invocation of a pain that is to follow one day or the other. Today we
laugh, and tomorrow we cry. We cannot go on laughing throughout the day,
throughout our life, because there is a negative side for everything in this world.
Everything has two aspects: the aspect of visibility, as it is presented to the limited
vision of the mind and the senses, and the aspect of invisibility, which is the other
side of things, of which the mind is not aware and the senses cannot perceive, but
nevertheless it is there.