Happiness and Misery

To be happy, we have to place our faith in enduring and permanent things. But while all conceived objects are evasive and deceptive, the subject, which conceives and perceives, is alone ever lasting and permanent. That is the only thing that can confer happiness; that is the thing to be sought. When we seek to know this subject, another entity, not real but relatively real, ‘poses’ itself before us as the subject and tries to deceive us. This is where discrimination is very much needed. The obscuring one is the ego; it lures and enchants. Escape from its grip and strive to go behind it and beyond it, to the real subject, which sees all this.

Realization of this eternal truth rescues us from all our false notions and from bondage to the wheel of happiness and misery. It gives us bliss far above the duality of joy and grief. We need, of course, a guide who can correct our steps and prod us on and hold before us the goal. Well! Where can we find a more loving guide, a more knowing guide than Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba Himself? His grace is all-pervading. His helping hand is ever available, His advice is so simple and illuminating.

Through His grace, we can easily reach the goal. On the phenomenal plane we seek pleasure and avoid pain; on the nominal plane we know the absence of both, which is bliss. When we know the joy that evades us and when we feel that alone can satisfy us, Baba is ready and even eager to help us, for the very purpose of the Avatar is to save us.

~Swami Abhedananda
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, July 1962