Because man has forgotten that the true purpose of his being is to cultivate happiness within him and in those around him, there is confusion and chaos, and his actions but add to that chaos.
What is it for which everyone in the world is craving and long? To find happiness. True happiness is neither selfish, nor negative. It is intelligence, the accumulation of all experience; it is Truth, which is eternal.
No cloud can hide it nor can any sorrow lessen it. It is such happiness that everyone desires. It is such happiness that I have always desired. I have seen people weighed down with labour, performing great works, accumulating knowledge, struggling to be spiritual, and yet they had forgotten the one thing - happiness - which alone gives life to the mind and nourishment to the heart. There can be no health except in happiness. He who has not found it will never find Truth, will never bring life to its fulfillment, will never have tranquility in this world of travail.
If you desire to establish that happiness within yourself, you must make it your goal and then your life will be as the flame which soars heavenwards.
People in search of happiness resort to many things - they will worship at temples and churches, they will gather from books the knowledge of others, they will perform religious rites in the hope of establishing in their minds peace and tranquility. The desire for happiness is ever gnawing at their hearts.
In the great continent of America they are making the physical predominant in the search for happiness. They say that without physical comfort, without a body that is strong and healthy there cannot be a right development of the emotions. But in trying to establish perfect physical conditions, they are losing sight of other essential things. In India, they go to the opposite extreme and in the search for happiness they neglect altogether the physical.
Look where you will, every human being is seeking happiness. He begins his search in the mere pleasures which come from physical excitement. Then, discovering that this excitement does not satisfy his craving for the lasting happiness, he experiments with other experiences, mental and emotional.
Life is a process of accumulating and discarding, of gathering and setting aside. What you gather you reject, and the more you reject the nearer you are to liberation. By setting aside what you have gained, you acquire the knowledge which will give you strength to shape your purpose, which will give you power ultimately to reach the Kingdom of Happiness which each one of you seeks.
As there is sap in the tree which brings forth foliage for the glory of its being, so in each man there is the spark of divinity which through sorrow, through ecstasy, through struggle, through all the processes of life, grows to perfection, to that state of eternal happiness which is the goal for all, which is the truest spirituality - the greatest gift that anyone can give to another.
You will find this undying, unalterable happiness when you are liberated from the tyrannies of the self, its desires and longings. This is not a goal imposed upon you by another; it is the longing of every human soul, of every individual who is striving, who is in sorrow, who is seeking.
It is the spark of this desire which grows into a flame and becomes part of the Eternal Flame, and when you are able to lose yourself in that Flame, you are in the Kingdom of Happiness.
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