CHAPTER ONE

HAPPINESS AND MISERY

1. "How to avoid misery?" The Master answers: "Has misery a shape? Misery is only an unwanted thought. The mind is not strong enough to resist it. It can be strengthened by worship of God."

Talk 241

Note: Bhagavan at the very outset drives to the heart of the human problems, which are the consequences of man's delinquencies, thoughtlessness, desires, sins, etc., namely, misery. He tries to open men's eyes by asking, "Has misery a shape?" Surely misery is not a solid, heavy object which can descend on our heads and crush us. It is a purely mental phenomenon, a mere thought, which can be driven away with a little effort by a strong mind. But unfortunately the minds of men are generally weakened by lack of control, strong attachment, selfishness, and ignorance, so that they stand always at the mercy of every calamity that comes their way. Bhagavan suggests some methods of strengthening the mind. The worship of God is probably one of the easiest.
The contemplation of the highest, purest, and most sublime ideal elevates the mind, and for the time being shuts out all other thoughts, including those that cause misery. By degrees the mind acquires purity and balance, and so, permanent peace, which no calamity can shake.

* The figure marked at the end of each quotation represents the number of the section in the Talks from which it has been taken.

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2.   "I have no peace of mind. Something prevents it — probably my destiny." Bhagavan answers: "What is destiny? There is no destiny. Surrender and all will be well. Throw all the responsibility on God. Do not bear the burden yourself. What can destiny do to you then?"
Talk 244

Note: The questioner is a lady — a Maharani — in great mental distress. Bhagavan is touched. He gives the solace that everything is borne by God, and on Him all one's burden should be laid through surrender. This appears to play a tune different from the previous answer, where the worship of God has been recommended. Here the tune is "surrender", which amounts practically to the same thing as worship through contemplation. Contemplation or meditation is also surrender; for relinquishing all thoughts but that of the meditation is relinquishing the whole world. In fact cessation of thinking is the greatest of all surrender. Although meditation can be sustained for only a limited time every day, it becomes very powerful if repeated daily for years.

By "there is no destiny" Bhagavan does not mean that there is no prarabdha: we are all agreed that there is, but his meaning is that once we surrender genuinely and truly, prarabdha will pass us by unnoticed: it will work itself out while our mind is immersed in its thought of God. After all destiny is as insentient as the body and thus has no power over the mind unless the mind has fallen an abject prey to its own thoughts and emotions, like that of the common man.

3.   "Siva made over all His possessions to Vishnu and went roaming about in forests, wildernesses and graveyards, living on begged food. He found non-possession to be higher in the scale of happiness than possessions. The higher happiness is freedom from anxiety — anxiety over
how to protect the possessions and how to utilise them, etc."
Talk 225

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Note: This is not to be taken as advice to us to imitate
Siva, namely, to smear ourselves with ashes, live in cremation or burial grounds and on begged food, in order to gain happiness; for then, cemeteries would be more full of the living than the dead, and there would be more beggars than begged-ofs. We have only to draw the moral that possessions are not conducive to peace of mind, as it has been illustrated in the last text by the case of the Maharani, who had come in search of peace.

Moreover, we must not take this story literally. Lord
Siva is Parameswara, the Lord of Kailas, the Supreme Yogi who Himself confers Bliss and jnana on His devotees. Where is the necessity for Him to give up anything to gain jnana and happiness, He the born Jnani ^[?]? With or without possessions He is Supreme Bliss itself. This surrender of His possessions to Vishnu is a play, a piece of acting to teach us a lesson in renunciation, which alone leads to eternal happiness, just the reverse of accumulated wealth.

Furthermore, merely giving up possessions does not confer happiness, if the mind continues to run amok and creates difficulties for itself far worse than do possessions. The mental attitude towards riches and the world has to change.

4.   "If happiness is due to one's possessions, then it should increase and decrease proportionately to their increase and decrease, and becomes nil if one has nothing to possess. But is this true? Does experience bear this out? "In deep sleep one is devoid of possessions, including one's own body; yet one then is supremely happy.
Everyone desires sound sleep. The conclusion is that happiness is inherent in one's own self and is not due to
external causes. One must realise his Self in order to open for oneself the store of unalloyed happiness."
Talk 3

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Note: This is plain common sense. The happiness of sleep is patent to all. We call it rest, which is another word for comfort, for peace, notwithstanding the fact that we are then completely denuded of all possessions, including our body. This bliss of sleep is the most precious heritage of life: man, animal or plant, which have no property or wealth of any kind. It is a bliss which does not come from any external circumstance or condition, but from within oneself — one's own being. This truth is open to every thoughtful person to verify for himself, and does not require much strain to arrive at.

5.   "What is happiness? Is it inherent in the Self or in the object, or in the contact between the subject and the object?"
Bhagavan: "When there is contact with a desirable object or memory thereof, and when there is freedom from undesirable contacts, or memory thereof, we say there is happiness. Such happiness is relative and is better called pleasure. But we want absolute and permanent happiness. This does not reside in objects but in the
Absolute. It is peace free from pain and pleasure — it is a neutral state."
Talk 28

Note: Peace, which characterises true happiness, is neither pain nor pleasure; for both are active states, resulting from the contact of the subject with the object, as well as from the memory of it, which requires the going out of the subject from himself in pursuit of the object, whereas peace is inherent in the being of the subject himself, as we have proved it in the illustration of sleep. This peace has no relation whatever to the object, the not-being. To BE is peace, is bliss.

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Happiness is thus always present as our very self. We have only to be — not to think or do — in order to be in eternal bliss. For thinking is always connected with a sense-object — the body, or other bodies, — and never with the Self. Pleasure, being the result of this contact, must perforce be transient, whereas bliss is of the being or Self, the changeless, fixed subject, who is the thinker of all thoughts, the doer of all actions, and the same at all times and in all circumstances.

6.   "There is a state beyond our efforts and effortlessness.
Until it is realised, effort is necessary. (This is the state of samadhi, which is blissful). After tasting such bliss even once, one will repeatedly try to regain it. Having once experienced the bliss of peace, no one would like to be out of it, or engage himself otherwise. It is as difficult for the Jnani ^[?] to engage in thought as it is for an ajnani to be free from thought. Any kind of activity does not affect a jnani; his mind remains ever in eternal peace."
Talk 141

Note: "Effort and effortlessness" are action and inaction, beyond which stands the state of being, to realise which, efforts of meditation, that is, sadhana is necessary. Once the bliss of this state is tasted it can neither be forgotten nor abandoned.
In other words, once we transcend the activities of the mind — thinking, feeling, etc. — we will always thereafter endeavour to transcend them in order to taste again the blissful being, till we attain permanency in the latter. Then thinking will be as difficult to perform as it is in the beginning difficult to suppress, with the result that we will remain ever in peace, irrespective of what we do and do not do. This is the sahaja samadhi state of the Jnani ^[?], which is undiluted bliss. Even his action is considered to be inaction because it is effortless.

7.   "The universe exists on account of the `I'-thought. If that ends there is an end of misery also. The person who is in
sleep is also now awake. There is happiness in sleep but misery in wakefulness. In sleep there was no `I'-thought, but it is now while awake. The state of happiness in sleep is effortless. We should therefore aim to bring about that state even now. That requires effort."
Talk 222

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Note: Bhagavan persists in hammering in us the truth that happiness comes only from the Self. Whenever there is the thought of oneself — of `I' — there is also a thought-world — you, they, he, and a million other things, — and whenever there is a world there is suffering. This may be taken as an inflexible law. The world is therefore a state of misery, One who is in utter misery drugs or drinks himself to sleep, so that he may forget himself and his misery for some time in the blessedness of sleep where there prevails freedom from thought and, thus, from misery. After sleeping off his suffering, the drugged person wakes up to resume it again.

Therefore in order to be perennially free from suffering we
have to perpetuate our sleep, even in the waking state, in the very world itself. This is the aim of all yogic practices and is called samadhi, which means sleep in the waking state, or sushupti in jagrat, to which all efforts have to be directed.

8.   The pet squirrel is waiting for an opportunity to run out of its cage. The Master remarks: "All want to rush out. There is no limit to going out. Happiness lies within and not without."
Talk 229

Note: The Master loves to indulge in analogies drawn from everyday life, and this one is apt and beautiful. The squirrel is the jiva, which escapes from its "home" — the Self or Heart — to enjoy the pain and pleasure of the world of diversity, although it means homelessness, of being a stranger abroad.

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"All want to rush out" applies to the vast majority of
people who prefer to be deluded by the world's shadow- show than remain at "home" in its peace and stillness.

The pet squirrel is a baby-squirrel, which the Ashram has kept in a cage to protect it from the marauding cats. Baby squirrels who accidentally fall from their nests on the trees and remain helpless and in the lurch, would be taken up by
Bhagavan who would look after them, till they were fully grown up and could look after themselves, when he released them.

9.   "Soul, mind, ego are mere words. These are not real entities. Consciousness is the only truth. Its nature is
Bliss. Bliss alone is — enjoyer and enjoyment both merge in it. Pleasure consists in turning and keeping the mind within; pain in sending it outward. There is only pleasure. Absence of pleasure is called pain. One's nature is pleasure-bliss."
Talk 244

Note: Consciousness, Self, Being are one and the same reality.
As we have already seen, the Self is blissful: we, in our nature, are bliss, but when we "rush out", to use the metaphor of the last note, when we extrovert and take the body for ourselves, giving it a special name, we become other than ourselves — the body and its name — then we are not bliss.
We take upon ourselves the suffering which the body of Mr.
So-and-so is heir to. In other words we imagine ourselves the not-Self and likewise imagine in ourselves the suffering and pain of the not-Self. Extroversion is the cause of this false imagination. Instead of looking inwardly at the pure and blissful seer of the world, we look outwardly at the misery and disease-laden world and at the perishable body of the seer, which we mistake for the seer himself.

"Soul, mind, ego are mere words: consciousness is the
only truth." This is a timely reminder that we should not
lose ourselves in sounds that convey no sense at all. Bhaga- van is supremely practical. Nobody knows what soul or ego is, although we repeat the words mechanically, but every- body knows what awareness is, what consciousness and unconsciousness mean, for we daily see before our eyes peo- ple in an unconscious state — in sleep, swoon, or under anaesthesia. Therefore the Master uses the word conscious- ness for the Self and for all its synonyms — soul, spirit, mind, knowledge, intelligence, and even ego, which is a misnomer for the Self.

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10.    "Your nature is happiness. You say that this is not
apparent. See what obstructs you from your true being.
It is pointed out to you that the obstruction is the wrong identity. Eliminate the error. The patient himself must take the medicine to cure his illness. If, as you say, the patient is too weak to help himself, then he must remain quiet, giving a free hand to the doctor. That is effortlessness."
Talk 295

Note: The first half of this text has already been dealt
with. With reference to the patient and the medicine, the questioner had pleaded having "placed himself unconditionally in the hands of the doctor". It stands to reason that the Guru cannot see the Self on behalf of the disciple, for he is always seeing it on his own behalf. It is the disciple's mental outlook that has to change and himself to take the medicine prescribed by the Guru in order to remove the false identification. It will not do to plead weakness and go scot-free from the obligation of doing sadhana, for anyone can do the same and exempt oneself from making efforts.
Bhagavan suggests that if the disciple is "too weak" to make the effort [himself], then he must completely surrender to the Guru. This alternative seems to please most of these
"weak" seekers, because it releases them from the necessity of straining themselves. The question now is whether this weak disciple is strong enough to surrender. If he is unable to make a little effort to concentrate his mind, whence will he have the strength to make the far greater effort of surrender, which necessitates constant remembrance? If the questioner has abandoned himself so "unconditionally", as he thinks he has, he would not come to beg for Grace, but would himself be the one to confer Grace, namely, a Guru.
In the next dialogue we shall hear Bhagavan's own view on this point. I am giving the whole dialogue as it is in the original to clarify the above points.

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Beginners must, however, take heart from the fact that whatever effort they make in this line, it is never wasted: everyone has to pass through all the stages on this path to become adhikari ^[?], as every man has to pass through infancy, childhood and adolescence to mature into adulthood.

11.    Q. May I have Guru's Grace?

A. Grace is always there.
Q. But I do not feel it.
A. Surrender will make one understand Grace.

Q. I have surrendered heart and soul. I am the best judge of my heart; still I do not feel the Grace.
A. If you have surrendered the question would not have arisen.
Talk 317

Note: That the questioner is serious as well as
determined, no one can deny. He has also "surrendered heart and soul", of which he is "the best judge". Then why is Grace keeping him in the lurch? Is Grace partial, or the Self heartless? We have either to suspect the wisdom and goodness of the Self, or the completeness of the surrender. And as the former is unthinkable, the fault must lie with the latter.

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Bhagavan's concluding answer that if the surrender has taken place the request for Grace "would not have arisen", exposes the illusion under which most people who lay claim to surrender, labour, notwithstanding the addition of "heart and soul" into the bargain. Self-analysis, the most scrupulous and honest examination of one's motives and the secrets of one's heart and mind, is a very essential part of our sadhana, auxiliary to the vichara and dhyana. It eliminates all the delusions of the seekers. Persons are even known who imagine that if they use a persuasive language with the Guru they can get from him whatever they want. Self-examination eradicates this foolishness, and sobers them to a sane outlook about the role of the Guru in relation to the disciple.

12.    "Every person seeks happiness but mistakes pain-associated
pleasure for happiness. Such happiness is transient. His mistaken activities give him short-lived pleasure. Pain and pleasure alternate in the world. What is it that is not followed by pain? Man seeks it and engages in it. To discriminate between pain-producing and pleasure- producing matters and to confine oneself to the happiness- producing pursuit only is vairagya (dispassion)."
Talk 302

Note: Is the end of this text a good definition of Vairagya ^[?]?

Not usually in its course, but certainly in its results,
Renunciation is happiness. There exists no such thing as happiness in the world, because the world is the not-Self, the Self, as we have already proved it, alone being undiluted happiness. It is a contradiction to seek a virtue or quality in its opposite, say, love in hatred, peace in fear, light in dingy darkness, etc. To expect happiness in an area which is hostile to happiness, namely, the world, is a vain expectation. Yet the activities of all men are based on this false expectation, although they imagine themselves in possession of its
fulfilment. This auto-intoxication is like the intoxication of the opium-eater, who drugs himself to an artificial bliss. Yet the Self incessantly asserts itself, and every now and then, through hard knocks, matures a person to the realisation of his deplorable state. This is the vairagi, the budding mukta, who aims at curing himself of the habit of opium-eating.

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13.    "The desire for happiness is a proof of the ever-existent
happiness of the Self. Otherwise how can desire for it arise? If headache were natural to human beings, no one would try to get rid of it. One desires only that which is natural to him. Happiness, being natural, it is not acquired. Primal bliss is obscured by the not-Self, which is non-bliss, or misery. Loss of unhappiness amounts to gaining of happiness. When misery is eliminated the bliss which is ever-present is said to be gained. Happiness mixed with misery is only misery."
Talk 619

Note: Much of this text has already been discussed. The
first line is very suggestive. That every living being desires its own wellbeing is axiomatic; for it is an innate instinct — inherent in life itself, which ultimately leads to the rediscovery of oneself as eternally blissful.

If happiness is our very Self, as the text declares, how, one may ask, do we then happen to be in this world so devoid of it as to need taking so much pains to gain it? The answer is that we are at no time devoid of it: it is now and has always been present, as our very being. But, Bhagavan avers, this "primal bliss" has been obscured by the apparently enjoyable world which the senses have created. The external objects, the not-Self, being very attractive, have monopolised our attention and have lured us away from the perception of it.
Yet enjoyment mixed with misery is nothing but misery.
Eliminate the creation of the senses and the unmixed
blessedness will stand revealed. There is no need to strive for happiness as such, but strive to do away with the artificial delights of the world, which are misery in essence, to be in perpetual bliss. This is the main point of the text. "Loss of unhappiness amounts to gaining of happiness."

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The statement that "one desires only that which is natural to him" does not mean that because one desires a thing, that thing is proved to be one's nature, for that would put a different complexion on the teaching. What it means is that if bliss is not our very existence why should we desire it so ardently? It also means that even the common desires we possess aim at happiness for the Self.

14.    "Why should there be suffering now?"

Bhagavan: "If there were no suffering, how could the desire to be happy arise? If that desire did not arise, how would the quest of the Self be successful? What is happiness? Is it a healthy and handsome body, or timely meals and the like? Even an Emperor has endless troubles, though he may be healthy. All suffering is due to the false notion `I-am-the-body'. Getting rid of it is jnanam."
Talk 633

Note: There you are: pampering the body with all
possible amenities — health, the best of food and care, wealthy leisure, good looks, and physical graces, etc. — does not confer happiness: if anything it multiplies the difficulties for a number of obvious reasons. Moral health alone, irrespective of material amenities, leads to tranquillity; for it entails a good deal of dispassion for the body. Hence the more we reduce our attention to and clinging love for the body, the nearer we draw to the bliss of the Self. This is a standing refutation of the belief that the body is our Self and an eye-opener to those who on the one hand desire peace of
mind and on the other worship their body more than they do the image of God.

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Is suffering an unmitigated evil? Bhagavan answers in the negative. It is on the contrary a blessing, in that it brings us to our senses and compels us to think profoundly and start a quest for liberation from suffering.

The three points which this text proves beyond doubt therefore are: (1) the body is not the man, (2) man is sorrow- less by nature, and (3) sorrow, being an infliction, can be eradicated only by self-knowledge.