Page:The Science of Religion (1925).djvu/63

Rh consciousness which is not callousness but a superior stage of indifference to both pain and pleasure. Every human being is seeking to attain Bliss by fulfilling desire, but he mistakenly stops at pleasure, and so his desires never end, and he is swept away into the whirlpool of pain.

Pleasure is a dangerous will-o’-the-wisp. And yet it is this pleasurable association that becomes our motive for future actions. But alas! this has proved to be as deceptive as the mirage in a desert. Since pleasure, as was said before, consists of an excitation-consciousness plus a contrast-consciousness that the pain is now no more, we prepare ourselves, when we aim at it instead of at Bliss, for running headlong into that cycle of empirical existence which brings pleasure and pain in never-ending succession. We fall into horrible distress because of the change in our angle of vision from Bliss to pleasure, which latter crops up in place of the former. Thus