Our Experience with Happiness
The author exhorts us to aspire for what Bhagavan Baba has come to give: divine bliss. The article points out the futile search for permanent happiness in the transient worldly objects and associated, fleeting pleasures.
Individuals, occasionally, say that they are already happy and, hence, do not need Baba’s teachings. Happiness is indeed experienced by almost everyone for varying lengths of time. Baba says that were it not for internal happiness contained within our self, also called atmic bliss, spilling into our worldly matters, life would be quite intolerable and unbearable.
Baba, further, points out the transitory nature of happy circumstances, which quickly could change into sorrowful circumstances. He declares: “No object that is accessible to the senses can give man undiluted, permanent bliss. The charm of an individual person is not exempt from this rule. The ever-beautiful Lord alone can award the ever-available bliss, the eternal truth of God. The eternal source of joy is also God.”
There is a simile that Baba uses in this context. When a dog bites and chews on a piece of dry bone, it finds it enjoyable. Actually, the sharp edges of the bone cut the tender inner surface of the dog’s mouth, causing some bleeding. What the dog is tasting and enjoying is its own blood, and not the dry bone.
The dog, mistakenly, believes that the bone is the source of the blood, and will continue to chew dry bones wherever they are found. The dog is unable to penetrate through the misconception that dry old bones have a wonderful taste. But man, according to Baba, can pierce illusion and know the truth. He warns that we should not make the same mistake as the dog.
Baba says that we mistakenly believe that happiness arises from possessions. If this was true, then happiness would rise and fall in consonance with material objects. A part of us believes this so strongly that we constantly strive to add to our possessions. At the same time, we recognize that people who have acquired the most are not the happiest, and those who have little, can nevertheless be happy.
Baba explains the puzzle in this way. When our desire is satisfied by gaining what is desired, the mind becomes peaceful for the time being, and the bliss of the ever-blissful Self is reflected in the object or circumstance which is being experienced. Before long, however, new desires arise, agitating the mind and clouding the atmic bliss.
This is a dichotomy because how could the eternally present and real bliss of the Self be hidden by an agitation of the mind? The answer is simple: we commonly experience that something insubstantial can distort or totally hide the truth—transient clouds can hide the blazing sun; a lie can convince people of untruth, etc., etc.
As long as we continue to feel happiness by incessantly securing new things and new experiences, we survive and live from day to day without too much bother. But if we are able to appreciate the extraordinary shallowness of this way of living, we will surely reconsider its implications. Indeed, this mistaken view of life ensures rebirth, and prolongs our present anxiety and misery.
People become attached to that which gives rise to pleasant sensations. Attachment in turn brings fear and anxiety, and deprivation brings misery. Such people indeed would be wise to step away from the vicious circle of attachment, pleasure, and misery. There is a way to break out and be free, blissful, and peaceful. Bhagavan Baba shows us the way through His divine teachings.
Baba has said: “All our pleasures and pains arise from the contact of the senses with pleasure-giving or pain–producing objects, thus causing us to desire one and hate the other. But if we feel neither attraction nor repulsion for sense objects, and allow them to come as a matter of course, they cannot produce pleasant or painful sensations.”
Consider the wisdom of the illumined sage, Ashtavakra, King Janaka’s Guru, when he says, “He who realizes that it is care for objects—and nothing else—that breeds misery in this world becomes free from it and is happy, peaceful, and desireless. It is desire that binds us to the world and makes us think that it is real, and this subjects us to the rounds of birth and rebirths. The moment we are free of desire, the reality of the world vanishes, ending the cycle of reincarnation. It is not sense objects themselves that cause misery; it is one’s identification with them and attachment to them. When one is free from this identification and attachment, one need not shun the world.”
The Divine Baba, in his love for us—his children—tells us that he has come to awaken us to our inner joy, to our blissful immortal reality that is independent of everything. He declares, “I have come to give you the key to the treasure of bliss, to tell you how to tap into that spring, for you have forgotten the way of blessedness. Very few of you desire to get from me the thing that I have come to give you, namely liberation it-self. I am the embodiment of bliss. Come, take [this atmic] bliss from me, dwell in it and be peaceful.”
The avatar [incarnation of God] is without illusion and speaks the eternal verities. Spiritual truth is that which always was and always will be, unchanged and unchangeable. Baba has come to show us where true happiness lies. He tells us that we should be cautious in seeking happiness in the promised treasures of the material world, and we should listen attentively when he tells us that happiness—divine bliss—is found in our divine inner nature, and not in the outward things of the world.
Source: My Baba and I
