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FAITH KNOWLEDGE AND CONDUCT
21-PLEASURE AND PAIN
Pleasure is of three kinds, and pain of two. The three kinds of pleasure are: (1) the physical, (2) the mental and (3) the spiritual. The two kinds of pain are: (1) the physical and (2) the mental. There is no such thing as spiritual pain.
Physical and mental pleasures are both of the sensory type; they depend on the functioning of the senses or on the recollections of the functioning of the senses. The same is the case with pain. It is either actual or imagined, that is, the product of memory or imagination in a train of thought. Beyond the senses neither pleasure nor pain is able to extend.
Spiritual pleasure is the feeling or emotion of freedom which is experienced when some burden is removed from the soul. As an emotion it is independent of the senses. The school-boy who feels joy on the receipt of the intimation of his success in an examination, experiences this emotion. It arises because of the lifting of the weight of anxiety and burden which was imposed on the will. If mental pictures arise in connection with it, its type will be immediately changed into the mental one. Pain and its variants are always physical or mental; it is the burden itself that has to be borne, or its mental picture, the sight or contemplation of blighted
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