Happiness and Peace
eko vaśī sarva-bhῡtāntar-ātmā
ekam bījam bahudhā yaḥ karoti,
tam ātmastham ye’nupaśyanti dhīrās teṣaṁ sukhaṁ śasvataṁ netareṣaṁ. (12)
“The One, Controller, the
inner Self of all things, single, undivided, indivisible, appears as this
manifold universe, as you may appear manifold in dream. To the wise, beholding
Him abiding in the soul, to them belongs real happiness, and not to anyone
else.” Permanent happiness belongs only to those who have realized Him in their
own being, and not to those who run after objects.
Happiness and peace are the
subjects of mantras twelve and thirteen. To whom does happiness belong? And who
is it that can have real peace? Happiness and peace belong to those, says the
Upanishad, who are able to recognize the Atman in His purity as the single
Source of the multitudinous variety, as the Substance of all the forms that
fill the universe. Yama is describing the unfolding of the world with its
evolutionary and involutionary activities and its universal Centre which
ramifies into the nama-rupa prapancha, the name-and-form world.
Happiness is not for those who pursue this. All pleasures are created or
brought about by the union of senses with objects.
We have heard of the term
‘sensation’, but people rarely understand what it means. Unfortunately for us,
it is a stimulus evoked by the repulsion taking place when senses come into
contact with objects. These experiences, falsely taken for union, can even be
brought about by the mind contacting objects directly, without the help of the
senses. The eyes get stirred into activity in perception, and so is the case
with the other senses. This excitation is like the morbid irritation which the
body experiences during illness. But when you get used to a particular
sensation it becomes normal to you, like getting accustomed to alcoholic
drinks. A person used to alcohol will not feel anything if he takes a small
quantity; this is the effect of habit. Habits become values, significances and
realities, so much so that we become subjected to them. Instead of our
controlling them, they begin to control us.
These habits and experiences,
to which we are accustomed, constitute the world of forms which are regarded as
realities and appear as concrete objects, like the thoughts of dream seem
solid. Desires, feelings etc., concretize themselves into solidity, and we get
real experiences from non-existing objects. So to have a real experience,
objects are not necessary.
On the other hand, we may not
experience objects, as in sleep, and death. What is necessary is sensation,
impacts on our nerves—and not objects—though they may act as agents. But if we
can create those sensations by an inner technique, we can have the experience
also without them.
This may be seen by an
example. When a mother whose son lives abroad receives news that he is dead,
she will get a shock, though he may be alive. In this way, false messages may
depress us, or elevate us; and at the same time, real news may not cause a
sensation when they are not known. For instance, if the boy is really dead but
the mother does not come to know it, she will be well. So whether or not there
is a corresponding fact, sensations can create experiences.
When we touch a live wire, it
repels us. We get an electric shock. This happens because we came into contact
with a force having a different voltage. Likewise, our body will burn when it
touches fire, because it cannot rotate with the fire’s force. If it could, it
would not burn.
We have living magnetism in
us, and when two forces of different intensity or vibration come into contact
with each other, there is repulsion, and we call it a sensation. Because we
have five senses, the same object can create a fivefold sensation, and from
this point of view we are in a world of things. The one form of Reality appears
to be manifold.
What we want is an experience,
whether or not objects exist, and the absence of it is the cause of our
unhappiness. But until you become the object, or the object becomes you, there
will be no oneness. One thing cannot become another thing; otherwise, there
would be only one thing. So possession or enjoyment is an imagination; not a
reality. The whole world is drowned in sensory happiness, but because of the
fundamental defect—the impossibility of one possessing or enjoying the
other—happiness does not belong to the objects, nor to the senses which are
only means of conveyance of stimuli. Happiness belongs to that one Thing. Until
It becomes a content of one’s experience, there cannot be real joy. All
sense-pleasures are sustained only by the joy emanating from that one Thing. So
the senses must withdraw from all contact.
The Gita says: ye hi
samsparsaja bhoga duhkhayonaya eva te—all pleasures that are contact-born
are sources of pain. As it is false, the world will leave us one day, and so
only to whatever degree that diversity gives place to Unity, there will be true
happiness.
nityo’nityānāṁ
cetanaś cetanānām eko bahῡnām yo vidadhāti kāmān,
tam ātmastham yenupaśyanti dhīrāḥ; teṣāṁ śāntiḥ śasvatī, netareṣāṁ. (13)
“The One eternal among the
transient, the Conscious amid the conscious, the One amid many, who grants
their desires; to them who perceive Him in the soul, is eternal peace.” Peace
cannot be had as long as you do not know the way. Silence or peace is not
absence of outward noise or tumult; even if all people keep silent, there
cannot be real peace, for there will be a burning within. Peace is another name
for happiness. It is not a dead substance; it is vitality. It is not sleep. It
is attended by consciousness; then only has it meaning. If you are a wealthy
man but not aware of it, the fact has no meaning for you. It is awareness that
gives meaning to life. Maya is nothing but the net spread out by the
senses who deceive us. Under such circumstances, there cannot be peace.
Peace is the nature of the
Atman, as bliss is. The more you manifest Him in your life, the more you become
blissful, powerful: your face glows with radiance. Not only have you peace
within, but you can also radiate it outward, like the sun. “The One eternal
among the transient, the Conscious amid the conscious, the One amid many, who
grants their desires; to them who perceive Him in the soul, is eternal peace.”
He is eternal among the so-called permanent things of the world, which are the
temporarily permanent; not the eternally permanent. A building is permanent,
but not eternal. While the objects of the world can be called permanent, they
are not eternal; but within them is a permanent substance, the Atman.
Intelligence is immanent in
the human beings, in animals, in the vegetable kingdom. In the subtler realms,
like svarga etc., we are in a spiritual world, not in an intellectual
one, like ours. We are closer to reality there, and the senses become more and
more ethereal and less and less useful, so that when we reach the highest, brahma-loka,
we do not need the senses at all, and one mixes with the other, one mirrors the
other, and so the world of senses is transcended by purified intelligence.
Even heavenly satisfactions of
the world are only forms of that one supreme Satisfaction. The ocean can be
diverted through various channels, and it can run through them with greater or
lesser intensity, but the content of water is the same, irrespective of its
force in the various outlets. So is the Atman in the same intensity in all
beings. If a mirror is clean, it will reflect well. If it is painted with tar
or any other colour, it will reflect accordingly. Higher forms of life reveal
greater and greater manifestations of the Atman, until we come to the human
level and even higher ones. When the creeper moves towards the light of the
sun, it is seeking the Atman in its own blind manner. When the trees strike
their roots deep inside the earth, it is for His sake. When birds fly hither
and thither in search of food, when animals graze in the field, they are
seeking the Atman. When we, human beings, work hard, it is not for any other
reason but for that Atman which we have not yet found. We have been creeping
like plants, grazing like animals; and we have not found Him—by these means He
is not to be found. These variegated forms are His great drama; but we are
involved in it, and so we don’t enjoy it. Enjoyment is for the spectator, not
for the dramatis personae. Such is the degeneration into which consciousness
has distended.
The one Experience of the
Atman appears to have taken the manifold forms of this world. Suppose our
different limbs became self-conscious, what would our condition be? They would
fight among themselves. War taking place in one’s own body is insanity. The
wars in the world are only a kind of insanity, a tension between forms which
are of a single Being.
‘My dear ones, children of
immortality, never can you find peace in this world which is torn asunder’,
says Yama. ‘Peace is to those who recognise the one Atman as present in their
own self, as the supreme Enjoyer, and not as the object of enjoyment.’ ‘Know
the Knower, see the Seer, understand the Understander’, say the Upanishads. Who
is to understand the Understander? There is a strange way of knowing the
Knower.
It is called atmasakshatkara
or Self-realisation. To them who have attained belongs real peace.
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