Search for Meaning - Part 2 (of 7) - What, then, is Happiness?

Part 2 - What, then, is Happiness?

If scientists, materialists or scoffers were more self-honest, they’d simply have to admit that these questions are outside the scope of their inquiry or their personal interest. Just about any “man on the street” can supply the most obvious answer to the purpose of life: we want to enjoy life and to perpetuate that enjoyment. It’s happiness we seek, silly! Most men and women, looking at life’s wonders, mystery, complexity, order, and beauty, see that the cosmos is veritably bursting with intelligence. The observant and aware human experience is sufficient to tip the odds strongly in favor of creation being both a product of, and directed toward increased awareness of, Consciousness, Intention, and Purpose! Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientists who ever lived, was in awe of the universe and saw beauty and intelligence where other more pedestrian observers see how to make better bombs or grow food more profitably.

Most weekend-Darwinists would fall into the trap of admitting that mere existence isn’t enough, at least not for them personally! “Sure, I wouldn’t want to be in a coma or paralyzed for life. I’d want to enjoy life!” In any case, they can’t help but allow a higher purpose to enter which I will call simply, happiness. Right there they’ve forfeited the match by admitting to something, “happiness,” that cannot be defined and that constitutes a non-material reality -- in fact, a reality which is a product solely of consciousness and feeling! Bingo, ‘ol boy! I think I’ve just won!

And if you’d be tempted to say that happiness is the result of material satisfactions (home, hearth, money, pleasure, success, etc.) I would counter with the well established fact that the human experience discloses ample examples of people under the most harrowing conditions of pain, suffering or lack experiencing happiness (in the form of joy, contentment, and focus) like the full moon appearing in the sky, untouched in its beauty by earth bound devastation. The potential for human consciousness to transcend seemingly impossible physical conditions can never be circumscribed. Score one for metaphysics, I say!

You might still object by saying that desiring happiness (in any form) doesn’t make life necessarily meaningful, just purposeful? Hmmmm, hair splitting, are we? Even a scientist would say you have to limit your inquiries to what you know and can test. The meaning of life isn’t likely to found in a rock or in outer space. The very inquiry suggests consciousness & intelligence and, besides, intelligent or not, it is we who are asking the question, not the rocks or the whales. So we must be the measure of the response and the inquiry into whether and what is happiness and whether our pursuit of it is meaningful!

In any case, to admit happiness into the discussion is certainly a crack in the materialistic egg of strict Darwinism. You might object that seeking happiness doesn’t answer the question for the lower life forms and their respective stages of evolution. Hmmm, I would say, really? Are not earthworms and plants “happy” if they get sustenance and favorable conditions for living? Well, ok, we can’t say for sure they are “happy,” but as their simple needs are more fulfilled they are at least, well, “more fulfilled!” It’s at least as good as your survival of the fittest theory, I’d say. It supplies at least a motive, as it were, for their compelling interest to survive. Survival for its own sake has no logical explanation by itself without the squishy appearance of consciousness and feeling. A kind of primordial, “What’s in it for me?”

I will admit that we have yet to grapple with what is happiness. For one question that remains is not so much why we want to be happy (that is intuitively and innately self-evident even if beyond logic and reason), but what parameters foster this happiness. A murderer might imagine (presumably does) that killing his enemy will make him happier in ridding his life of some terrible pestilence. But remorse and regret may set in, afterwards, or the hangman’s noose, descend. Either way the happiness achieved by the murderer may be fleeting, at best. But, let’s explore the nature of happiness in another section.

Positing that happiness is the goal and purpose of life isn’t all that much of a threat to anyone, now that we’ve dismissed the Darwinists from the room, that is. It’s the atheists and the agnostics who are now left standing, quietly muttering to each other and suspicious of what’s to come next.

Our AA friends (agnostics and atheists) are suspicious because once you introduce meaning or happiness into life, then a higher octave than material fulfillments of the law of cause and effect is admitted into the conversation. The causes of achieving meaning are as insubstantial and lacking materiality as meaning and happiness itself. A metaphysical truth can only be dismissed when one lives comfortably, if narrowly, under the umbrella of materialistic, present life realities.

Right now, however, these baddies think that the meaning of life is to “get mine” and the only cause and effect they care about is how to cause mine to be got. Now I admit that some of ‘em are actually really nice people who love whales, pets, lovers and mothers. They just don’t cotton to that God thing. We’ll call this a sub-group of AA’ers, humanists.

You see: all of these people, nice or not, are wedded to the idea that the only realities worthy of note are the ones that they are interested in. Such realities are likely to be things they can see, hear, taste, touch, or smell. The idea of a broader, intangible reality is, for them, dismissible on the grounds of “Frankly, I’m not interested.” Even the billions of galaxies or the bad things that live under their fingernails are generally of little interest to this group of people. Maybe they love puppies or buy organic produce, but these they can touch.

Is there a way to bridge the happiness motivation into something less subjective? Can “God” enter the picture through the backdoor of happiness? Let’s wait and see….stay tuned for Part 3 – Consciousness, God & Intuition

Search For Meaning - Part 1 (of 7)

This is the first of seven articles on the search for meaning, for happiness and God. This series reflects the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda, and also specifically, the lifelong efforts of Swami Kriyananda (a direct disciple of Yogananda) to see the cup of modern consciousness as half full, instead of half empty. This is a message of "Hope for a Better World," to use the title of one of Kriyananda's books.

Part 1 - To What End, Creation? Survival?

Introduction: Before I begin, I’d like to start with some acknowledgements and references. My spiritual teacher, Swami Kriyananda (SK), wrote nearly 150 books in his long and productive life (1926-2013). One of his first books was originally published under the title “Crises in Modern Thought.” Later revised and expanded, it was renamed, “Out of the Labyrinth.” In this book, SK grapples with the 20th century issue of meaninglessness -- a cultural and philosophical malaise which brought much suffering, both physical and mental, to millions (and a lot of meaningless art--see also his book, “Art as Hidden Message”). For those interested in going into this subject far more deeply and lucidly than I can here, I recommend this book highly (and its sequel, “Hope for a Better World”). Both can be purchased online, or from the publisher (www.CrystalClarity.com), or from my favorite bookshop, www.EastWestBookShop.com (or an Ananda center near you!). The culmination of these two books comes in a re-write of Yogananda’s thesis, or personal mission statement: a ghost-written book he called “The Science of Religion” but which Swami Kriyananda re-wrote with the title: “God is for Everyone.”

In his own life story, originally titled “The Path” in 1979, but also revised and expanded thirty years later (2009) with the title, “The New Path,” SK describes the turning point in his life (at age 21) when walking out under the stars on the beach, desperate to understand the meaning of life. Using the only tool at his disposal and with which he felt secure--his reason--he concluded that as he is conscious and asking himself these questions about the purpose of life, so too God, if He exists, must be a larger version of himself: or, to sum it up: Consciousness Itself. As he, SK, exists, God must exist. As he is conscious, God must be Consciousness itself. Until his dying breath, SK would repeat this story to audiences time and again. He often would choke up in the telling, so deeply moving and life changing was his realization.

Matter or Consciousness? Or, does it matter? As SK would put it time and time again throughout his life in lectures and writings: either nothing is conscious, or everything is conscious. Extending that, I would add that either life is meaningless or life is meaningful. Skeptics, scoffers and materialistic scientists maintain that consciousness arises from the electrical and chemical activities of the brain in its fevered attempts to survive and prosper. Thus, for them, consciousness is merely a useful function and has no intrinsic meaning in itself. It is as useful to us as, they might aver, the trunk of an elephant is to the elephant. This is what, I believe, SK meant by the phrase “nothing is conscious.” Put another way, the materialistic view is that consciousness is a mere functional byproduct and not the very essence or the source of matter. They might say, if they had a sense of humor (and often they do not), “It doesn’t matter.”

I once read an article in National Geographic that explained, quite unselfconsciously that human love and romance were “merely” responses stemming from these core “Darwinian” impulses! The article went to great lengths to explain the chemical processes involved. It was sad, or perhaps silly, actually, but this form of explanation is the accepted dogma of science and of culture today. In many so-called intellectual circles, it is an accepted dogma that all human activity has its origins in the impulse to survive and propagate! (Speak for yourself, I say!)

But these pseudo-philosopher-scientists are not being logical or true to their own rigorous methods of reasoning and experimentation. If you want to remain logical and objective you must by sheer logic alone agree that Darwinian compulsions, while factual, do not limit other influences or possibilities. These impulses could just as logically be but aspects of a bundle of influences and elements related to the interplay of matter and consciousness. Just as we have “lower” animals so too we, humans, may possess lower impulses as well as higher ones. The two might, at times, be in conflict, but, at other times, in cooperation. Darwinism need not be the final statement on the meaning and function of life. It is not exclusive. It simply points out a demonstrable (and useful)  fact of sentient life.

Is there not more to human life and its motivating impulses and myriad activities and interests (and, demonstrably to animal life, at least the more highly developed species)? Is the possibility of higher consciousness, of preexistent intelligence really such a threat to science? Why don’t they just admit it’s outside the purview of their interests or present ability to measure or predict (with the possibility of being forever outside their control!). Just look at human emotions, even in a single day, going from angry to forgiving.

A cup half full. Is it not at least just as possible that the material universe is a manifestation of consciousness as it might be that consciousness is the product of electrical and chemical processes? That it seems to us that the brain and nervous system are prerequisites for mental processes, does not logically preclude the possibility that behind the development and evolution of such sophisticated organisms lies a hidden but guiding intelligence, like the oak tree hidden in the seed. Sensitive awareness and sophisticated analysis of high functioning or unusual (but demonstrable) mental processes discloses conditions and instances where cognition and consciousness exist independent of the body and its organs.

There’s no point disputing the existence and value of the impulse to survive or to procreate, but primal impulses cannot answer the question, “Why?” Or, “What for?” Whatever may the compelling impulse to survive and procreate, organisms, both human and otherwise, don’t necessarily spend an enormous amount of time or energy dwelling on these impulses. It’s not unlike defining the human body as a composting mechanism: a rather narrow and pedestrian point of view, and of limited utility. Why, in any case, does the instinct for either arise to begin with? What’s so great about surviving and propagating? As I like to put it, “We don’t get out alive” in this world!

Given the depth and profundities of our very inquiries, and those of humankind down through the ages, moreover, it is at least slightly more likely that consciousness is the bedrock source of matter, not the other way around! On what basis and for what Darwinian purpose would we, and untold numbers like us, be having this conversation? Why has this conversation been repeated in every generation since the dawn of human history?

Part 2 - What is Happiness? stay tuned........

Swami Hrimananda!

That Night When Christ was Born!

What a wonderful story the birth of Jesus is! Did you know, however, that the custom of erecting a nativity scene in honor of Jesus' birth did not begin for a thousand years and was started by St. Francis near Assisi, Italy?

Now, two thousand years later, how relevant is it to assert or deny the virgin birth? Or, the appearance of the heavenly hosts? Or, the presentation of the Three Wise Men from the East?

Joseph Campbell, the famous "mythologist," has helped modern Americans reconnect with the reality that a story can be meaningful and true with or without being a fact. The Bible stories, the Hindu Ramayana and Mahabharata, creation myths and on on show us that "truth is greater and more true than mere facts."

The power of the nativity lies in its hidden message. Like art, including music, it affirms a reality that our intellect is too dull (or distracted) to comprehend (or notice) but which our heart and soul knows, embraces and celebrates.

Orthodox Christians, viewing the nativity story from the point of view of theology and belief, limit their understanding to a literal interpretation of what they believe are the facts of Jesus' birth. I don't have a problem with that but it doesn't address the real issue: the power of this story to uplift generations for centuries in the embrace of its power, love, and light.

Really, after all: millions go to Christmas Eve Services and many don't normally go to church or have an orthodox religious life at all. Is their attendance merely a well worn habit? For some, yes. But for all? No, I don't think so. Millions, some not even Christians, surely feel a special grace or blessing of kinship with all during the Christmas season. There is a famous story from World War I when the close-by but opposing armies in the trenches came out to celebrate with one another one dark and cold Christmas Eve. Stories of spontaneous generosity are so omnipresent during Christmas that it makes no special point to remember any of them!

It is true that babies always attract a fair amount of ooohing and aaahing but Gee Whiz, two thousand years ago? We wax wistful and brotherly (sisterly) at the sight or thought of this child -- his birth, his life, his death, and resurrection. We know this child has for us a message that is true. It is a message of hope, of reassurance, of safety, of security, of love without condition and without end.

The hidden message is, at least in part, said plainly in Sanskrit, from India, from the Chandogya Upanishad: Tat Twam Asi. This "grand pronouncement" of the eternal teaching (Sanaatan Dharma) means, simply, "Thou art That." 

We recognize ourselves in that child for we, too, are eternal and "Before Abraham, I AM." (John 8:15) Further, Psalm 82:6 reminds us that "I have said, ye are gods, and all of you are children of the most high."

None of this denies the divinity of Jesus, the Christ (the annointed). The Star of Bethlehem, "His star," presages and symbolizes that this one is a true "son of God" and "one with the Father." So, too, the meaning of the virgin birth. But the difference between Jesus' spiritual realization and our own is matter of degree not kind. We have yet to awaken fully to our sonship in God. And that awakening was the purpose of his birth, and the incarnation of every such son of God whether it be Buddha, Krishna, or any number of world teachers, avatars, who come fully awakened in God. They come for but one purpose: to bring prodigal souls, souls thirsty and hungry for truth and God-realization, back to their home in God consciousness.

This is the hidden message of the nativity. It follows, though more by deduction, than intuition, that the birth of the hidden Christ within us requires action on our part. We must imitate His birth in the meaning of the symbols of his birth: the manger which was but a stable represents humility. Humility is the first condition of our spiritual awakening. Humility does not mean self-deprecation but realization of the wonder of creation, the smallness of our ego, and our need for and desire to love God, that Being of Love who is Infinite and the essence of all Life. To have this realization is the perspective of Infinity and it must needs be a form of humility for the ego.

The quietness of the animals in the stable means that our animal appetites must lie down and render service to this inner Christ. We have need of food, for example, but only in the context of nourishment not food greed, and to keep the body fit as a temple of our God!

The shepherds who watch over the flocks are our thoughts which herd (direct) our actions. These shepherds must come and worship this Christ and in so doing become protectors of our thoughts and actions directed toward selflessness, toward nobility, and toward devotion.

The Three Wise Men who come to worship the Christ child reveal to us that to our aid will come, if we seek and let them, wise teachers, both living and now gone, whose teachings can assist us to develop wisdom, devotion, and self-control.

King Herod, or King Ego, stands ready to massacre this child, and indeed, this child as it is born in others around us. We must flee to Egypt until he dies. Egypt here means we must seek the company of other truth seekers and avoid the soul-killing company of worldly people and circumstances. Until the ego has died (at least sufficiently to no longer challenge Christ the (inner) King), we must remain in the protection of the like-minded. Indeed, spiritually speaking, only highly advanced souls can afford to live apart from society or, in any case, without the ongoing support of other spiritually mind people.

As any newborn child, this inner Christ will need protection and nurturing until he can be "about my Father's business!" We must have daily prayer and meditation, and develop right attitudes of servicefulness, devotion, and right living: compassionate and kindly.

This is the good news of Jesus' birth. What it does mean to be good news because we are "saved?" The appearance of divinity in human form and in one who has achieved oneness with the Father through many incarnations is good news because it means we can do it too. It's also good news because (the bad news is) we can't do it by ourselves alone. It is the ego that awakens to the possibility of soul freedom but it is already trapped. A true savior, or guru-preceptor, has the spiritual power to "lift up the serpent in the wilderness" and thus to lift the serpent of delusion up in the wilderness of spiritual purification, prayer, meditation and self-offering, and, to transform the base metal of ego consciousness into the gold (brass) of the soul.

The good news of the birth of such a one is therefore two-fold: one, "we can do it, too," and two, " And, He is here to help us." Some are more attracted and in tune with other such avatars, like Buddha, Krishna, and in our times Paramhansa Yogananda, or others like Paramhansa Ramakrishna, and even great saints who, while not entirely free, serve to help others spiritually. The realization of others is not our concern. We must walk the path to freedom according to our heart's direction: to Jesus, or to others. Thousands were disciples of St. Francis but he was, in turn, a disciple of Jesus and one of the greatest (and the first to receive the stigmata, the wounds of Christ on his own body).

Let us both celebrate and get to work on achieving soul freedom. "The time for knowing God has come" Paramhansa Yogananda declared. Meditation, including Kriya Yoga, is for everyone and is the greatest single aid to soul freedom through self-effort.

A blessed and bliss-ed Christmas and New Year to all,

Swami Hrimananda aka Hriman