Is sex pleasure due to hormones or mental imagination?

Answer Podcast

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thank you is sex pleasure the result of hormones or is it simply a product of the mind’s imagination answer it is both the soul is the source of consciousness and the soul is the locus of all experiences the soul is covered by the subtle body and then by the gross body the soul’s consciousness is rooted through the subtle body to the gross body to the outer world, so when the soul engages in sense gratification at that time the senses come in contact with the sense objects now when is there experience of pleasure when there is say for example when infant drinks milk from mother’s breast there is nothing sexual about that because the sexual glands there is no sexual glands have not been developed in the body at that time, so there is no hormonal secretion and there are no thoughts of that kind which can occur in the infant, so that means for the sexual pleasure to be experienced the puberty has to be attained so the biological condition that is there is important without that without that sexual pleasure cannot be experienced, but then we also have Prahlad Maharaj stating that he says that what is the nature of this pleasure so he says that pleasure is it is born from the mind and actually it is also means it is rubbing of flesh like scratching of an itch so again he is giving a mental and a physical component to it, so let’s try to understand what he is saying over here so now as I said if the biological gland if the hormones are not secreted there is no sexual experience over there but even when there is a biological capacity the hormones are there say a person is unconscious and the person is unconscious and say the person comes in contact with a sense object now generally when a person is unconscious there will be no activation of the mind, there is no stimulation of the imagination and that’s why there is no agitation there is no secretion of hormones and there is no sense of excitement that is there and there is no feeling of pleasure over there so there also has to be the exercise, there has to be the stimulation of the mind imagination, the mind has to imagine and then one experiences pleasure, now either way the point of analyzing this whether we analyze sexual pleasure in terms of hormones or in terms of the mind’s imagination, when Prahlad Maharaj says when it is manasijam when he says that it is it is the pleasure that is a product of the mind, now when we say it is the mind’s imagination it does not mean that the pleasure is imaginary it means that the pleasure is produced by imagination there are two different things the pleasure is not imaginary, the pleasure is produced by imagination imaginary means that which does not exist only so now actually when the senses come in contact with sense objects there is a pleasure over there or for that matter when we eat some food at that time when we taste some gulab jamun, there is pleasure over there Prahlad Maharaj also in an earlier verse states that he says there is pleasure, it is like honey but then he says it is a very small quantity of honey just a drop a very small drop but still that drop is there no doubt about it so there is pleasure over there in fact in the Kaushitaki Upanishad various levels of pleasure are compared and then Brahman happiness is said to be thousands of times more than sensual happiness, that means sensual happiness is also there, sensual happiness is zero and thousands of times zero will also be zero so it’s not zero, there is some happiness definitely in this world sensual happiness is not imagined, it is real but it is a product of imagination means to feel that pleasure, one has to exercise one’s imagination and that’s why to stimulate people’s imagination there is so much paraphernalia in this world there are movies, there are erotic paintings and there are erotic paintings even pornographic movies and all this is for what purpose? to excite the mind to agitate the mind to stimulate it to excite the imagination so the stimulation of the imagination leads to the generation of the hormones and the generation of the hormones leads to to the experience of pleasure so the point is that actually the pleasure is very very tiny as Brahman says it is insignificant as he says but because there is so much propaganda he says we all hear about it in this world people talk about it and we hear about it and we think oh there must be so much pleasure over here and then we get excited by it and then because the real experience of that pleasure is so insignificant we can’t believe it how can this, everybody is glamorizing this pleasure so much and the actual experience is so little, how is this possible so then we think I must be doing something wrong and we try to imagine how can I get this pleasure better and then people try to read books on how to have better sex or go to some sexologist and lie on their coaches and try to find out how I can improve my sex life so all this is trying to stimulate the imagination so the whole purpose of scripture is either way so we can analyze from the point of view of modern science and biology and say that the pleasure is simply because of hormonal excitement and the hormones are not going to last for long, the hormones are going to get exhausted and that’s why this pleasure is going to go away soon so we can say that’s why even scientists say that social scientists say that romance has a bench life of 9 months because when say a boy and a girl meet each other the sense of newness that is there and people feel a sense of thrill sometimes they say when I touch you I feel as if electricity is going through my body and people make songs about this so all that is what, it’s a secretion of hormones and that hormonal excitement at the most it lasts for 9 months and afterwards all the novelty goes away and then yes the relationship may continue and people can have a happy marriage but that requires sacrifice, that requires commitment one has to go beyond just depending on hormonal excitement for that, one has to develop selflessness in the relationship so the point is either way if you look at the hormones then the hormones are not going to last for long and anyway we are not our hormones so we shouldn’t sensationalize the pleasure that comes from sensations so from the hormonal analysis we will understand these are just biological signals there is no need for me to get excited because I am not merely a product of biology and if you think of it in terms of what Pralabh Maharaj is saying then also we can think that this pleasure I actually it is just when I imagine something I get some little pleasure but the imagination is far far greater than the actualization the imagination is huge and the actualization is an anticlimax therefore I will not get excited about this and that is Pralabh Maharaj’s conclusion tolerate it, don’t indulge in it and the other example he uses that of scratching an itch so here also the point is when we scratch an itch the relief that we experience is real in the sense that we experience the relief but it is not real in the sense that actually that relief aggravates the aggravates the pain and in that sense it is actually not a relief it is going to cause greater pain therefore the solution is tolerate so either way whether we want to analyze the sexual pleasure from a hormonal perspective or from a mental imagination perspective the point we need to focus on is that it is not all that it is made out to be it is actually a very small pleasure and we shouldn’t get excited about it rather we should focus on Krishna says in 6.28 that when we come in contact with Brahma Parambrahma is Krishna, when we come in contact with Krishna then we experience the ultimate happiness so that is the happiness that can eternally excite, satisfy and keep us ecstatic and that is what we should aspire for Thank you Hare Krishna