Science of Spirituality
Causes of happiness and unhappiness
According to the Path of Knowledge (Dnyanayog):
Nescience (avidya): The word ‘avidya’ is derived from ‘a’ meaning ‘absence’ and ‘vidya’ meaning ‘knowledge’. It is thus the absence of knowledge. The three qualities of the soul are Absolute Truth (Sat), which is permanent, Absolute Consciousness or Knowledge (Chit), and Bliss (Anand). This implies that spiritual knowledge is without a beginning or an end. It is eternal and Blissful. Nescience is the absence of Knowledge, Absolute Truth, Absolute Consciousness, and Bliss. Happiness and unhappiness occur due to nescience.
Composition of the subtle body
Embodied Soul = Soul + Nescience (The soul and nescience together constitute the embodied soul.)
Soul - The main component of the subtle body is the soul, which is a fraction of Brahman with the qualities of Absolute Truth, Absolute Consciousness, and Bliss. The soul is Blissful in nature. The covering of the Great Illusion surrounding it is called nescience.
Nescience has nineteen components in all - the five subtle sense organs, the five subtle motor organs, the five cosmic energies, the mind, the subconscious mind, the intellect, and the ego.
Just as one’s attention is attracted to a flickering light bulb, instead of a steady glowing bulb, the attention of the embodied soul is drawn to nescience, due to the ongoing functions of the subtle body, instead of the soul that is stable. Thus, the embodied soul is drawn away from spiritual knowledge to nescience. Consequently, though the Blissful Brahman is all-pervading, one experiences happiness or unhappiness due to their focus on nescience.
Examples of how happiness or unhappiness is caused when the attention of the embodied soul is drawn to the physical and the subtle body are given below.
A. The physical body: One feels unhappy when one is physically ill or uncomfortable. When walking in the hot sun in summer, if one gets a chance to walk in the shade, one feels happy.
B. The subtle body: It is made up of the soul and nescience, which are the mind, subconscious mind, intellect, and ego. Ego is the feeling that one is separate from the Lord. These four components of nesceince are also sometimes referred to as the four-fold antahkaran (antahkaran chatushtay).
Happiness and unhappiness experienced due to the intellect and impressions on the subconscious mind from previous births is explained with examples below:
1. The subconscious mind
A. The desire and instinct centre: Since for several births, one is habituated to object pleasure, no matter how much one studies Spirituality, due to the attitude and firm belief that object pleasure means happiness, it becomes very difficult to divert the mind from objects. One is used to keeping the mind steady in objects, so if one attempts to divert one’s mind from objects temporarily even for a moment, one is aggrieved. This happens because the mind feels at rest with object pleasure and an effort is being made to keep the mind away from it. In this context, Samartha Ramdas Swami has said, “The embodied soul becomes restless in the absence of objects.” The non-fulfilment of desires, wishes, ambitions, and expectations is unhappiness. When one acquires happiness due to the fulfilment of some desire, a faulty impression that ‘fulfilment of desire is happiness’ gets reinforced in the desire and instinct centre and the individual tends to drift away from Bliss.
B. The like and dislike centre: When a favourable event occurs, one feels happy and when something that is disliked occurs, one feels unhappy.
C. The temperamental characteristic centre: Unhappiness is experienced due to defects and happiness due to qualities in personality.
D. The talent centre: When achieving expertise in art, sports, etc., one experiences happiness, if not, it results in unhappiness.
E. The give-and-take account centre: This contains the accumulated account and the list of destined actions. One has to experience the happiness and unhappiness that is accounted for in this centre.
2. The intellect:
When one’s curiosity is satisfied, there is happiness. If not, there is unhappiness. One who does not even realize his ignorance, he experiences happiness even in that ignorance and one who realizes his ignorance, feels unhappy.
3. Ego:
Basically, all unhappiness stems from considering oneself distinct from The Blissful Lord.
Expectation and attainment of happiness:
When attainment is less than the expectation, there is unhappiness. However, when it is equivalent to or more than the expectation, there is happiness.
A. Just as the same electric current yields both hot and cold water, so also is the happiness or unhappiness that individuals experience due to one’s composition from one common source, i.e., God.
B. Just as the image of an object gets distorted as per the use of concave and convex lenses, so also Brahman (the God principle) is experienced as the Great Illusion (Maya), and not in Its own form, due to one’s desires and instincts, likes and dislikes, temperamental characteristics, sins and merits, the proportion of the three components, and the five cosmic elements. Consequently, there is happiness or unhappiness.
C. When a student, who has fared excellently in an examination, goes out to celebrate his success wearing a new but ill-fitting shirt, instead of feeling happy about his success, his mind keeps getting diverted to the ill-fitting shirt. Similarly, the embodied soul, instead of experiencing inner Bliss, gets fixated on happiness and unhappiness due to the covering of nescience.
D. A person in bondage is unable to eat even if food is placed in front of him. Thus, he remains hungry, just as a person in bondage is unable to quench his thirst even if there is a river flowing right next to him and remains thirsty. Similarly, due to the bondage of nescience, an individual is deprived of the Bliss that is within him. This point will become clearer from the following example.
Once a person built a palace of mirrors and kept a beautiful rose in the centre. The mirrors enhanced the beauty of the rose. Then he set a pigeon free in the palace. Seeing the numerous reflections of the rose, the pigeon started swooping onto them and began pecking at each mirror. Finally, exhausted with the fluttering about, it collapsed and landed straight on the rose. Now that it had got what it wanted, it was satisfied. Man’s state too, is the same. Although “happiness is within”, one keeps searching for it in the enchanting mirage of external objects. Only when one surrenders to God, does he find the Bliss that was always within him.
[Reference taken from Vol. 1B – Spirituality,
by His Holiness Dr. Jayant Athavale and Dr. Mrs. Kunda Athavale.]