Sense pleasure is a product of imagination, but it is not imaginary. When we try to grow spiritually, we understand that we need to turn away from sensual pleasures: and the philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita is often understood to be saying that sense pleasure is an illusion – yes, but what does that statement that it is an illusion mean? Does it mean that it does not exist at all? Actually the Bhagavad-gita uses the word that things which taste like nectar in the beginning will taste like poison in the end. So there is nectar in the beginning, there is pleasure: so it is not imaginary, but the quantity that we imagine it to be is a product of imagination – pleasure which is tiny, we imagine it to be huge and that imagination is what entraps us.

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18.38 That happiness which is derived from contact of the senses with their objects and which appears like nectar at first but poison at the end is said to be of the nature of passion.