Happiness Summary

Read more about Happiness from the works of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

Why is Happiness Important?

As Support on the Path

Nothing can be more useful than to pass on to people the contagion of a true and deep happiness.

Try to be happy―immediately you will be closer to the Light. </ref> When you are full of peace, contentment and happiness, then there is no room for wrong feelings and desires; your heart is pure.

As an Inner Barometer

The moment they aspiration and surrender are not total, you are no longer happy. You feel uneasy, very miserable, dejected, a bit unhappy. This is the barometer! You may immediately tell yourself that an insincerity has crept in somewhere.

Peace, happiness, strength, lightness in the whole physical system. These are the more obvious and normal results which grow as the consciousness grows. One feels peaceful and happy, full of trust, full of a deep and true benevolence, and very close to the divine presence. But happiness and love do not accompany all good experiences. Divine Grace is not and cannot be a guidance which brings us solely and always nothing but happiness, success and good fortune. Its main concern is with the growth of our being and consciousness, the growth towards a higher self, towards the Divine; the rest is secondary, sometimes a means, sometimes a result, not a primary purpose.

How to Cultivate Happiness?

To be always happy, with an unclouded, unfluctuating happiness—of all things this is the most difficult to accomplish.

What is Necessary to Cultivate Happiness?

For a happy and effective life, the essentials are sincerity, humility, perseverance and an insatiable thirst for progress. Above all, one must be convinced of a limitless possibility of progress.

Awakening of Inner Nature

It is only if our nature develops beyond itself, if it becomes a nature of self-knowledge, mutual understanding, unity, a nature of true being and true life that the result can be a perfection of ourselves and our existence, a life of true happiness, a harmonious and beautiful life.

Mastering Desires

Give up all personal seeking for comfort, satisfaction, enjoyment or happiness.

Self-mastery is the greatest conquest, it is the basis of all enduring happiness. If you want to lead a happy life, you must be the master of your lower nature and control your desires and vital impulses; otherwise there is no end to the miseries and the troubles.

Our true happiness lies in the true growth of our whole being, in a victory throughout the total range of our existence, in mastery of the inner as well as and more than the outer, the hidden as well as the overt nature.

Surrender to the Divine

One can obtain true happiness and keep it constantly only by discovering one's psychic being and uniting with it. In order that this ease and peace and happiness may become strong and stable and felt in all the being and in the body, one has to bring out the full force of the psychic into the physical.

Let us seek our happiness only in the Divine. It is only the Divine's Grace that can give peace, happiness, power, light, knowledge, beatitude and love in their essence and their truth.

Useful Practices

Generosity

The happiness you give makes you more happy than the happiness you receive. Indeed the very act of genuine self-giving is its own immediate reward—it brings with it such happiness, such confidence, such security as nothing else can give.

Gratitude

To feel deeply, intensely and constantly a total gratitude towards the Divine is the best way to be happy and peaceful.

Goodness

Always be good and you will always be happy. But one should not do good in the hope of getting a reward, but for the pleasure of doing good. Then one is always happy, whatever happens.

It is so good to be simple, simply good-willed, to do the best one can, and in the best way possible; not to build anything very considerable but only to aspire for progress, for light, a peace full of goodwill, and let That which knows in the world decide for you what you will become, and what you will have to do. One no longer has any cares, and one is perfectly happy!

In conclusion being happy is the surest way of progress but seeking personal happiness is not the aim of life. The supreme happiness is to be true servitors of the Divine. For it is to the Divine Work that one must exclusively belong because it alone can, give us true happiness.

Read more about Happiness from the works of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.