Genuine Happiness

                       The truly happy person is the person who remains happy in spite of all the disharmony and distracting influences in the external world. The genuinely happy person remains happy in spite of an external cause or reason. This state of Sat-Chit-Anand or the state of eternal bliss can never be tarnished by even the most of the negative disharmonies present in the external world. This real and the only genuine source of happiness is achieved only by the truly and spiritually advanced souls.

                      When we depend on the external means to remain happy, our happiness is only temporary because the external means are unreal and temporary like a leaf withering in a tree whereas happiness contacted from the fourth spiritual landing upwards is a permanent and everlasting source of happiness. The richest man on planet earth who is not Enlightened is a beggar whereas this scribe who has found his everlasting source of happiness but still till date is penniless is the Emperor not only of planet earth but of the entire manifested Universe. Perceiving things in this manner is realistic because the ultimate goal of human beings is not to amass wealth but to reach the deepest state of our Self. Wealth and sex clings humans to the bondage of life and death till that very moment when we finally decide  for a great spiritual overhaul by aspiring to be God realized and thereby being liberated from the cycle of birth and death forever. To become Enlightened is not the important thing, but to live a life without a single desire and therefore to live a life without a single problem is the most superhuman achievement to accomplish.

                                   Let us now evaluate two main demanding attractions that ordinary human beings have in today’s world. If one says one has a mansion, a dozen butlers at his beck and call, scores of fast cars, a wife more stunningly beautiful than Marilyn Monroe and more than a billion dollars into his bank account,  he is still not happy because he is depending on external means to remain happy. The reason for his happiness is very temporary and the cause unreal. He may be a billionaire today but may turn into a pauper overnight. This kind of happiness is not permanent and ebbs away like the waves and tides on the Atlantic. To realize and experience true and everlasting happiness one should turn his attention from outside to within. Even though this scribe has suffered from almost two decades of Paranoid Schizophrenia, why does he consider himself one of the happiest human beings on planet earth? The answer-he has contacted the everlasting source of happiness through a very committed meditative growth process. The happiest people on planet earth are not the richest but the very few who are spiritually advanced, who has contacted the field of everlasting happiness and yet may not have all the riches in the world at the same time. It may totally shatter the concept of the state of happiness an ordinary mortal has but this is the truth. John F Kennedy met Monroe, Richard Gere had his own story with Cindy Crawford, the richest man from Mexico is the wealthiest and he is still not happy and has an infinity of problems to take into account and handled. These people have met very attractive women and one among them happens to be the wealthiest and why is it that they are still not satisfied and has a psychologically dormant desire to know meaning behind their existence on planet earth? Why has not any means of external source of happiness gotten any human beings satisfied till date? It is because our real nature is not human or materialistic nature but God, Soul or the non-material nature. It is by withdrawing our attention from the external world and by searching within through meditative practice that we reach the source of everlasting happiness thereby reaching the Kingdom of Heaven to abide in God forever. The happiest people on planet earth are not the ones who are the wealthiest and who have very attractive women but the ones who have made their spiritual efforts so worthwhile by keeping in touch with the everlasting source of happiness.

                     John F Kennedy had a fling with a string of women. Richard Gere too had close associations with numerous women and what has his daily practice of forty minutes of meditation the great Dalai Lama taught him fetched than getting frustrated and hooking up with multiple women in his life. This scribe presumes his not so committed daily meditation schedule and his years of spiritual communion with the Dalai Lama taught him nothing more than to get sensually carried away by the charms of an actress and kissing her in front of an live audience.

                       I want to relate a similar incident that is the ongoing practice in Buddhist monasteries in Nepal. Many Buddhist leaders in monasteries exchange sexual favours for dirt cheap lessons on Buddhist scriptures. Dirt cheap here implies the scriptures created    by Buddhist priests and ordinary religious men and not the original teachings of Buddha. If the not so spiritually advanced Buddhist priests and religious men of Buddhism were to hear the great Buddha preach his sermon today they would retort something like “What the heck in the world is he talking about?”

                         We have seen that sensual gratification does not keep a person happy and satisfied. The same goes for luxury and wealth. According to Ramakrishna Paramhansa the most two dangerous vices in the world are money and women. Any person would be willing to go to any extent to have these two luxuries into their lives, even rape someone for sex and murder someone for money. I mean, where are we humans headed? To the church of satan which preaches anybody has a free will to do anything and so should end up doing as he or she pleases?

                          Many of us may not know that the fourth state of consciousness or the beginning of the state of happiness is such a state which gets your senses so completely dissolved that even the most attractive lady or the most masculine stud on planet earth will not cause even a ripple in your senses. From this point on the chief attraction is  to beauty, which is God, and not towards sexuality.

                               An example of the state of Sat-Chit-Anand or the state of everlasting bliss or happiness would be the days when  Sri Sathya Sai Baba was on the verge of passing on to the state of mahasamadhi. Sathya Sai Baba had multiple organ failures and was collapsing and had close students of his thronging his hospital bed. One moment Sathya Sai Baba got rejuvenated back into normal health and one of his students asked him if he was aching somewhere and if he could massage him. Sai rebuked him saying he was an idiot to think that his mortal body which was nothing but an instrument in the material world and which was in excruciating pain could stand in the way and obscure his state of Sat-Chit-Anand, because he was the state of Sat-Chit-Anand. What Sai was trying to imply was that no external influences can tarnish and obscure the person who is in a state of Sat-Chit-Anand  or the state of Eternal bliss or happiness.

                         The state of everlasting bliss or happiness can get ordinary mortals treasures and promises unimagined of. Such is the field of genuine happiness. No unreal or temporary human suffering can obscure the field of everlasting happiness. Such is what the field of God, Soul, Self or the non-material field all about. We can adequate our need for proof from the exemplary lives of all spiritually advanced people. This happiness or soul nature does not depend on external means to be happy and we become happy all by ourselves without a cause or reason. This kind of happiness is of a permanent nature. Nothing needs to be done to achieve such a state but just a heightened level of awareness needs to be diverted from the outer realms to the inner realm.

                           It is in striving to reach perfection, the state of Sat-Chit-Anand, the ultimate goal of all ordinary mortals. The one and only ultimate objective in human life is to reach the field of everlasting happiness and get over with human suffering once and for all. Many of us may not be aware that we will continue to take countless lives on planet earth and continue to suffer until we don’t get into the spiritual growth process and reach the ultimate state of  happiness thereby being liberated from the cycle of birth and death forever.
                                             (This article is the copyright of Ashwas Thapa)