The senses want a man to sacrifice truth for pleasure;
morality comes forward and commands him to sacrifice pleasure for truth and
duty. The senses want him to live for the enjoyments of life; morality commands
him to only take as much enjoyments in the shape of food and drink as is
necessary to keep his body and soul together; for fools alone live to eat,
whereas the wise only eat to live. The senses want him to believe that all
pleasures lie centered in them; morality comes forward and says: ‘No, the
senses are the homes of misery, pain and anguish; the abode of pleasure is
beyond the senses. So spurn the senses, go beyond them, and you will find bliss
perennial. March onward and never stop until you crush the senses under your feet.’
When perseverance, strength and courage at last win the day,
and when the senses are fully subdued, then begins to rise on the horizon of
his mental plane the gladdening suns of Truth and Bliss, which are eternally and
indissolubly connected with each other, and shed their benign, congenial, balmy
and life-giving rays so as to plunge the victor into the ocean of break-less
beatitude.
When the senses are thus fully subdued they in turn become
the slaves of man and, instead of being foes, become his most helping friends.
Like his mind his whole body becomes pure and consequently only wants to
associate itself with pure and holy things. The downward course of the senses
is stopped and they all flow towards the attainment of Truth and Bliss. The
eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue and the entire body want to associate
themselves with such people as have attained the Truth. Mind and body act in
harmony at that time and there is an end of all quarrel between them once for
all.
Swami Ramakrishnananda, For Thinkers on Education, 108-9