Atma Bodha - Post 34

Dear All,

In this post, we are going to contemplate on the 3rd part in Existence, Consciousness, Bliss, in the post which we are dealing.

We Are Pure Bliss

In the final analysis, what we all want is happiness. What is happiness? And more importantly, how can we be truly happy? The search after happiness forms the field of enquiry in a remarkable section of the Taittiriya Upanishad.

What exactly is studied about happiness?

The answer is:

Whether happiness is born of sense contacts between subject and object (as is usually understood) or whether happiness is the very nature of the Self.

The Upanishad starts by looking at sense enjoyments as the source of happiness. If we want to study happiness scientifically, it would be helpful to actually measure happiness and for this we need a unit of happiness.

The Upanishad proceeds to construct a model of maximum human happiness. Imagine a young man, physically strong, bursting with vitality and energy. He is highly educated and morally upright.

Now imagine the happiness of this person — young, vital, energetic, noble, very highly educated and extremely wealthy. This is the unit of human happiness: ‘ekah manusha ananda’.

Is it possible to get even greater happiness? Yes, but not in this human existence. For this earthly existence, these material objects of enjoyment and the very human frame itself, all have their limitations. Beyond this familiar plane of existence there are superior worlds, finer objects of enjoyment and powerful bodies designed for greater enjoyment. Such is the manushya-gandharva-lokawhere happiness is one hundred times the maximum happiness possible in a human body!

Even this is by no means the end. The Upanishad speaks of an ascending ladder of lokas, or worlds, of truly cosmic proportions. As one ascends to these higher heavens, happiness is multiplied by a hundred times at each level. In the highest heavens, happiness is millions and billions of times greater than the maximum of human happiness! 

How does one reach these lokas? By the merit earned through the religious rituals prescribed in the Vedas. Of course, one has to wait till death to travel to these higher lokas.

Then comes the real point of this analysis. The Upanishad says that all happiness is only a reflection of the happiness of the Self, atmananda. The bliss of the Self is reflected in the serene mind and experienced as happiness.

Man, in his ignorance, feels that happiness is due to the enjoyment of a variety of sense objects and spends all his life trying to get happiness out of sense enjoyment. If one can actually make the mind calm enough, it will be filled with happiness—without need of external objects.

What a great discovery— finding the joy within! How can we make the mind calm? By renunciation of desire, says the Upanishad. One who has the deepest conviction of the Vedantic truth—that one’s own Self is of the very nature of bliss—and does not hanker after sense pleasures, will get a hundred times the maximum human happiness in this very life, right now! 

You are Sat Chit Ananda

So we see how the ultimate reality expounded in the Upanishads that Brahman is Pure Existence–Consciousness–Bliss, Sat Chit Ananda. Existence, Consciousness, and Bliss are not qualities or properties of Brahman. 

It is not that Brahman exists, but that It is existence itself. Not that Brahman is a conscious entity, rather It is consciousness itself. And not that Brahman is happy, It is bliss itself. It is the source of all happiness. 

Realizing this truth with rigorous sadhana, with the grace of Guru and God  is  freedom—ultimate and permanent. ‘Freedom, physical freedom, mental freedom and spiritual freedom are the watch words of the Upanishads.’

Love.