Help on the Quest for Self-realization-Reminders-61

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Help on the Quest for Self-realization-Reminders-61

 

Happiness

 

By Arthur Osborne in "Be Still, It Is The Wind That Sings"

 

There is a difference between happiness and pleasure. When the

hedonists spoke of happiness they really meant pleasure, that is a

feeling of temporary and superficial happiness caused by some

circumstance or event. The inevitable concomitant of this is

suffering, for if anything causes pleasure its absence or opposite

causes suffering; moreover, the vicissitudes of life are such that

the two alternate so that whoever is subject to the one is to the

other also. Therefore there is no security in pleasure but a

constant, if submerged, anxiety. To be thus subject to pleasure and

pain, joy and misery, is not real happiness; it is not security but

bondage, not serenity but turmoil. There can be no finality in it,

since it is dependent on outer conditions and as evanescent as they

are.

 

True happiness is something very different from this. After saying

that it is what every man seeks, Bhagavan goes on to say that it is

man's real nature. In other words, happiness does not need to be

caused by anything but is the natural state of man when nothing

intervenes to over-cloud it. To some extent we all know this, for if

a man is in sound health and the weather is fine and he has no

griefs or worries, he experiences a natural sense of well-being and

happiness. However, this is only a dim shadow of true happiness. It

is due to the absence of outer impediments and is shattered when

they arise, whereas true happiness is Self-awareness and cannot be

broken by any storms in the outer world. It is the experience that

is over-clouded by man's ignorant assumption of the reality of

things and events and is re-discovered by his turning inwards to the

Self. This explains the paradox why saints are always in a state of

happiness although they may suffer persecution or martyrdom. All

that they undergo belongs to a shadow-world and does not affect the

reality of their constant experience. It is of this experience

behind the stream of events that Bhagavan said: "You can acquire, or

rather you yourself are, the highest happiness." It is similar to

Christ's saying that the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.

 

But if it is to this ultimate, imperishable happiness that Bhagavan

refers, why does he say that all men seek happiness? Not all are so

sensible. Few understand what true happiness is or where or how it

is to be found, and yet, in one way or another, all seek happiness.

Most superficial is the hedonist who seeks it in outer events and

thus makes himself the slave of circumstances. More wise is the

person who seeks happiness in worship, in the service of others and

in harmonious living, for although he may not understand the nature

of happiness in the fullest sense, he has nevertheless turned

towards it by turning away from the egoism that over-clouds it. And

most excellently guided is he who turns inwards, as taught by

Bhagavan, in quest of the Self which is perfect imperishable

happiness. What is implied in Bhagavan's saying that all men seek

happiness is that all men are impelled towards a search for the Self

although few may realise this or seek intelligently and with

deliberate intent. In seeking happiness they are in fact seeking

their true nature, although they do not know where to look.

 

This explains also another puzzling saying of Bhagavan's in the same

sentence that every one has the greatest love for himself.

Superficially, this looks like the saying of a cynic, not a sage.

Men who have given their lives for others, surely they have not had

the greatest love for themselves? The person who mistakes pleasure

for happiness mistakes the body for the Self and has the greatest

concern for his physical and material welfare, his pleasures and

prosperity. He loves what he mistakes for his Self just as he seeks

what he mistakes for happiness. But in a deeper sense love for the

Self which is God, the Self manifested in all beings, the

indescribable, unutterable Self, draws a man back from darkness to

Light, from pleasure and pain to Happiness, from wandering to

abidance. The love of God or Self for a man is the magnet that makes

him seek. And whoever seeks shall find, because it is his own

nature, his own true Self, his own eternal happiness that he seeks,

although he may not know it.