What is Intellectual Pleasure?
Above is a passage from the book Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekananda. One has to read these lines very carefully. The way I read the above passage is that we operate in all our daily tasks or respond to the external and internal environments in three modes - Animal, Man & God.
When we taste ice cream, the pleasure that we get through our senses is ‘Animal mode’.
‘Man mode’ is when we enjoy the ambiance and company with whom we taste the ice cream. The same ice cream would taste different with a different company and in different settings. It is through our interpretation of the situation we enhance the enjoyment of ice cream differently. We create through our intellect, additional objects around the ice cream and associate it with pleasure.
In ‘God Mode’, ice cream, the environment, the pleasure and the ‘experiencer’ are all seen as objects. We could see in the mind-scape clearly the objects that are created by the ice cream, objects that are created by the environment, additional objects such as pride and ‘feeling elated’ that are created by our own mind and pleasure objects that are created out of associating with other objects. Swami Vivekananda refers this way of viewing as contemplative, witness like study of objects.
In ‘God Mode’, cognition shifts to meta-cognition. It is thinking about thinking. Knowing about knowing. Objective about objects.
Often we do actions unknowingly seeking intellectual pleasures. When we express our views through arts, speech, photos, writings, poems,scoldings, most of the time we get unknowingly stuck and seek intellectual pleasures out of the actions. This intellectual pleasure seeking prevents us from seeing the truth or in delivering the goodness we originally intended. Somewhere in the middle of our actions we tend to focus on the word play rather than the message, we tend to focus on how good i am taking the photo than how good the subject is being portrayed the best.
This can be achieved only when we keep our intention so clear with the right understanding of the end user / end product.
This can be practiced by observing actions that are bit uncomfortable, uninteresting and mundane to us such as running or observing the breath. When we start focus on boring task and develop the ability see more parameters than ‘it is so boring’ we move to a meditative state or contemplative state of seeing things.
The main deterrent for the contemplative study of action lies in the right understanding of ‘I” and “action by I’. By understanding ‘I’ or ‘I am’ is just a thought solves the problem more easily.
It is an understanding that ‘EXPERIENCER’ is created out of ‘EXPERIENCE” and both are nothing but thoughts. Both are objects in the mind-scape that belongs to nobody, just like pebbles in the beach. We could use the ‘I’ object only if the task demands.
MANOLAYA & MANOLAYA NASA
Above picture shows an exercise we all would have done in our childhood days. It is an exercise to develop our cognitive ability. In my opinion, this is the ONLY activity we have been doing all through our life. In simple terms this exercise is identifying boundary conditions and placing the matching patterns in the slots. One other way of saying is understanding the rules of the game and playing within the rules. Another way of saying is identifying the patterns outside and assigning or slotting with the emotions inside. We try to fit ourselves in the football ground knowing fully the rules of the game. We fit ourselves in the road between the vehicles in the traffic. We fit ourselves within others minds as an image, albeit we would like that image to be in high pedestal.
Intellectual pleasure is a pattern that is placed in the wrong slot. Pleasure is not the issue, placing them in wrong slot is the problem. “Do your duty, Dont expect fruit”. Pleasure is an indicator for the progress of the duty. Pleasure seeking itself should not be the duty.
Teasing and being teased is an intellectual pleasure. The reason why we dont enjoy street side musician, food or dance is that we want to be teased by intellectually, socially superior than us. Also we want the teasing to be a willing process. We go to a concert willingly to be teased. In the process of enjoying the music, we also admire our ability to understand the complexity of the music. When we say ‘sabash’ we try to come to a level or more than the musician. A lady / actress allows herself to be photographed by professionals paparazzi not by street side guys. It is this sort teasing games that we engage with ourselves. This sort of games are good and healthy as long as we are aware that we are engaged in a game and ready to leave it. Often we forget that we are playing a game. Teaser becomes teased by the game itself.
We try to control others but deep down we ALL want to be used by others. Can we be useful and purpose full in life without allowing ourselves to be used? Can you give yourself unbridled, unrestrained, and uncontrolled? What is that prevent you from giving? Giving ourselves to this moment willingly!!!
Giving ourselves to this moment translates to our readiness to learn / enjoy new. New things, new environment and new ‘self’. By giving ourselves to this moment, we are ready to experience new self that is created out of the new experience. Giving also translates to manolaya-nasa. What was created has to be destroyed. It is the natural state for a mirror to keep reflecting without holding or retaining any image. If it retains an image a mirror is no longer a mirror. Same holds for our mind. When we indulge and hold the intellectual pleasures we tend to create a knot in the mind-scape. These knots eventually discolor the way we perceive and results in our body-scape as diseases. Understanding these intellectual pleasures helps the knots to get released as right kind of self expression and creative actions.
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