In this chapter, we explore questions regarding the ultimate Source of happiness. That Source may be the human body. It may be God, the Divine, or another universal power. I will talk about finding and experiencing that Source, and focusing on it. I will also talk about how beliefs about that Source get in the way of your experience of it.
In this book, I focus on what you can experience. I try not to speculate on what you cannot experience. In other words, I try not to talk about what you cannot verify through personal experience.
The question of the Source of happiness is a mystery, and we obsess about mysteries. Knowing the nature of that Source may not help you find happiness. However, nagging questions about it can get in the way of the search for and openness to happiness. Therefore, in this chapter we will talk about it.
The Buddha said that he could point the way to unconditional happiness, but the path is experiential. You have to walk that path yourself, and discover the experience for yourself. The direct route to happiness is through experience, not through knowing the nature of happiness and not through belief. This chapter can perhaps help you avoid too much focus on matters of belief and speculation, so you can devote your energy to finding the experience of happiness.
We will not revolve or resolve the question of the Source of happiness. However, perhaps in this chapter you can discover a way to think about it. Perhaps I can help you put aside questions, so you can focus on finding the experience of that Source.
Possible Sources of Happiness
There are at least three possible sources of happiness. Happiness can be a natural ability of the body and mind that has nothing to do with anything else. Happiness can be the experience of the Divine. Alternatively, happiness can be the experience of some other power or energy of the universe. Because of the limits of human awareness, we know little about whether happiness is natural or has some other source.
Happiness as a Natural Ability
The Source of happiness may be the human body. We may all have a natural power to make ourselves happy by triggering various reactions in the body and/or brain. These reactions could trigger the release of chemicals that cause us to experience happiness.
Happiness might also be a natural ability to redirect attention to a place in the mind where everything is perfect and happy. Perhaps by shifting attention, we shut off that part of the brain and mind that is in charge of making us worry.
Happiness may have nothing to do with what is happening outside the body, but may be a natural human ability. We have the power to go to sleep, which is a mysterious power. Why should we not have the power to make ourselves happy?
A Divine Source of Happiness
Happiness may be the body’s experience of a Divine Source. It may be an unconscious experience. When we allow a deep experience of the Divine to come into conscious awareness, we may experience it as happiness.
Some practices examined in this book assume the presence of the Divine, or God. For a long time, spiritual and religious thinking has associated real happiness with our experience of the Divine. At the end of this chapter, we’ll look more closely at happiness as an experience of the Divine.
An Experience of the Energy or Power of the Universe
Happiness may be the body’s experience of universal power or energy. Buddhist philosophy says that happiness comes from being in harmony with the universal truth, or laws of the universe, referred to as the dharma. Similarly, in Taoist philosophy, happiness comes from being in harmony with the Tao. Perhaps when we are in harmony with that energy or power, we experience it as happiness.
The Path to Happiness Is Through Experience
Our bodies have many experiences, but much that we experience may be unconscious. For example, some part of our bodies may experience skin cells growing, but this is not usually part of conscious awareness. Similarly, our bodies and minds may experience energies that lie beyond the human dimension of awareness. However, we are usually not conscious of these energies.
You have the power to experience the Source of happiness. To do so, you have to focus on the experience directly. Because of the limits on conscious human awareness, you may never consciously know the Source. The Source may be something that you cannot think about. If you try to understand or think about the experience of the Source, you may lose that experience.
Try Not to Name It — and Lose It
We commonly have fleeting experiences that we cannot identify. An experience may be vaguely familiar. It may be an unfamiliar feeling that is strange and enticing. These experiences can be fragile. If you try to figure them out, or name them, you can lose them.
When I have these experiences, they immediately capture my attention. However, when I try to focus on them and identify them, they disappear. Therefore, I try to stay with these experiences and avoid thinking about them too much.
Such feelings may be coming up from the unconscious. Perhaps your awareness has drifted into the unconscious. It seems that attention can go there, and when it does, you may not have the same mode of thought that you have in conscious awareness.
If you try to identify something within the unconscious while your attention is there, you may immediately pull yourself out of the unconscious, into conscious awareness, and lose the experience you seek to identify.
It seems the experience of unconditional happiness has its immediate source in the unconscious (its final Source may be something else). If you can have an experience of unconditional happiness, you need to stay with it, and not try to figure it out. Once your mind kicks into gear and captures your attention, your ability to hold onto the experience of happiness vanishes.
We Are Aware of What We Recognize
It can be difficult to turn your attention to the experience of unconditional happiness if you have not learned where to find it or how it feels. You may be experiencing the Source now, but if you have not learned to recognize it, the experience can merge with all other unknown experiences. The larger experience is the background “noise” against which what is familiar to you stands out.
Imagine standing in the middle of a dense wood at one a.m. Your senses are taking in what you see, feel, hear, and smell. However, unless you are in the woods at night often, you may not consciously recognize what you are experiencing. Unless you have learned to identify what is out there in the dark, your mind will not be able to build an accurate picture of your surroundings.
To bring something into conscious awareness, the mind needs to have some previous knowledge of it. For example, if you are familiar with the sound of a chipmunk rustling in the dry leaves, you may bring that image to mind when you hear that sound in the dark. Otherwise, it is one of the many unknown noises that is part of the background sound of the woods at night.
Noises that you recognize will stand out against the background noises. For example, even in the woods at night, most of us will recognize the sound of crickets or the cry of a coyote. We will recognize them because we have been previously exposed to these sounds.
All of us probably experience the Source of happiness to some degree. Perhaps some of us have learned to recognize it for what it is. For others, it may just blend into the background “noise” of the universe.
Finding It and Allowing It to Fill Your Awareness
Once you can start to identify the Source of happiness, you need to allow it to grow within you. At first, your sense of it may be subtle. However, if you stay with it over time it can grow to fill your awareness.
Some believe that faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains, that the entirety of God can inhabit a fingertip, and the universe can exist in a dewdrop. According to scientists, 13.8 billion years ago, just before the Big Bang, all the physical matter of the universe existed in a single point.
Similarly, the endless experience of unconditional happiness can grow from your smallest inkling of its existence. You simply need to find it and let it grow within you. You need to find and nurture the experience. It is not your knowledge or conception of it that is important. You need to focus on the experience.
Another way of putting this is, the path to happiness is not itself happiness. It is helpful to know the path and understand the path, but to bring happiness into your life you have to walk the path.
Thinking Gets in the Way
It seems that humans want more than experiences. We want to understand experiences, talk about them, and remember them. We try to “humanize” an experience, to hold it safe in conscious awareness. However, as we will see, it is difficult to turn an experience into a thought that reflects its true nature. For the experience of unconditional happiness, it may be impossible to do so.
Despite the difficulty of turning experiences into thoughts and words, humans feel the need to objectify and share them. Even if the Source of true happiness is beyond conscious understanding, we still want to know that Source. We may try to create a belief about it. Unfortunately, humanizing and thinking about the Source can cause loss of the experience of it.
The Difficulty of Thinking About Experience
Words and images comprise much of conscious thought. It is difficult to think of something without converting it into words and images. Experiences such as happiness are elusive. You can be aware of an experience without identifying it and without connecting it with a thought. However, it can be difficult to think of an experience without wanting to attach it to a distinct thought.
Thoughts are the province of the mind. The mind is like a toolbox full of sounds and words that we know, and the images with which we are familiar. From these, we make thoughts. The tools we have are perhaps right for our day-to-day use. Using them, we can describe and think about most of what we find in the world. However, they may not be useful for describing what we feel or experience. They may be inadequate for understanding the Source of happiness.
To understand and think of an experience, and to be able to hold it in conscious awareness, we have to make it into a thought. We do this using the tools we have, regardless of whether they are up to the task. What we end with is a “humanized” conception of the experience we try to describe.
Humanizing experience masks the Source of happiness. Unconditional happiness can have its source inside the body, or it can have a Divine Source. We may not know the real Source because when we make it into a conscious feeling of happiness, that Source disappears. Turning the experience into something understandable can destroy the essence of the experience.
As our bodies take in raw experience, such as the Source of happiness, we try to humanize that experience. We try to bring it into awareness using our inadequate toolbox of words, ideas, and images, and from these tools make a facsimile of what we experience. We can grasp only what we have learned to see. If something is incomprehensible, then we may turn it into something we can understand. However, what we turn it into may be much different from what it is.
Frithjof Schuon shows the difficulty of understanding experience, especially Divine experience, when he describes how hard it is for God to communicate with humans:
It is as though the poverty-stricken coagulation which is the language of mortal man were broken into fragments under the formidable pressure of the Heavenly Word, or as if God, in order to express a thousand truths, had but a dozen words at his command and so was compelled to make use of allusions heavy with meaning, of ellipses, abridgements and symbolical syntheses. [58]
Limits on the Ability to Talk About the Source of Happiness
Some experiences may be beyond human power to describe. We have them, but cannot easily talk about them. Though it is difficult to put them into words, there may be a shared basis of understanding among those who have had the same experiences. For example, if two people come from the same culture, there is a shared basis of understanding that enables them to talk about issues that are important in that culture.
Some experiences are personal, and there is no shared experience that enables communication. The following dialogue shows how difficult it is to talk about something when there is no shared experience.
A turtle was sitting on a rock, at the edge of a little pond, talking to his friend, the fish.
Turtle: I just went for a walk.
Fish: You mean, you just went for a swim.
Turtle: No, I went for a walk.
Fish: Impossible, you were swimming.
Turtle: I swear, I went for a walk.
In this story, the fish has no conception of walking, and without some shared experience, the turtle cannot explain it to him. Similarly, the experience of unconditional happiness is difficult to communicate. We need shared experience of it, and such happiness is rare, so there is not much experience to share.
Putting a Face on the Source
Whatever the difficulties in thinking about and communicating experiences, humans still want to understand them and share them with one another. We want to think about and talk about the Source of happiness, the Divine, and all that may exist beyond the limits of our conscious awareness. People want answers. For many, even a bad answer is better than no answer.
For example, when it comes to the Divine, people often want a picture of a deity, and they want to know its powers. A person can easily hold in the mind an image of a deity or a description of its abilities. This way, the deity becomes approachable and familiar.
We want to put a face on the Divine. Many Christians, for example, imagine God in human terms. When Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, he included many representations of God. He painted God as an old man. Perhaps it is just me, but when I look at this image, I get the sense of a powerful king or patriarch who is clearly of this world. I do not get the sense of a Divine Being.
Try Not to Worry About Defining It
Our ability to think about the Source of happiness is limited. We may never be able to describe that Source in words. My attitude is not to worry about picturing and describing it. Knowing its exact nature has no effect on happiness.
My advice is to focus on opening yourself as much as possible to the experience of happiness, whatever it is. Thinking about its nature keeps your focus in your mind. If your attention is on wondering just exactly what it may be, you cannot open yourself to the experience of it.
Beliefs and Happiness
In our need to think about what we experience, we have created many beliefs. Some people have had experiences they call Divine. We have many beliefs about these experiences, and the deities that inspired them. According to Webster’s, a belief is “a feeling of being sure that someone or something exists or that something is true,” even if the belief is not supported by facts.
An unsupported belief is not necessarily false; and a belief you cannot disprove is not necessarily true. Also, if a belief has no proof, this does not mean you should not live your life according to that belief. However, beliefs about an experience are different from the experience. Beliefs about the Source of happiness are not the same as that Source. Focusing on those beliefs rather than the experience can prevent you from experiencing that Source.
Beliefs Need Attention
The difficulty with unverifiable beliefs is they require attention to keep them alive. People obsess about their beliefs, perhaps because there is always someone around who wants to challenge them. For example, the existence of a stop sign in front of you needs no belief. A sign is there, you stop, and then you forget about it. On the other hand, for most of us, the existence of God requires belief.
If you focus on your belief about an experience, you are not focusing on the experience. Our experience of the Source of happiness may be in the unconscious. The same is true of our experience of the Divine. Beliefs, on the other hand, belong in the conscious mind. If you are focusing on belief about an experience, your attention is stuck in your mind and you cannot have the experience.
Fitting the Experience of Happiness into Our Beliefs
If you focus on your beliefs about happiness, you may be trying to fit the experience of it into your beliefs. In other words, in the search for happiness, a person might try to see it as something that fits within and supports a specific belief. Here, beliefs can get in the way of finding happiness.
Unconditional happiness is so rare in this world that we do not have a vocabulary for it. We do not have a shared experience or ability to think about it. To bring it into your life, you may have to make room for something that is beyond your conscious experience, and beyond the experience of nearly everyone else.
If unconditional happiness is beyond most people’s conscious awareness, any beliefs you have about happiness may not accurately reflect the happiness you seek. If you aim towards the particular kind of happiness in which you believe, then you may miss the real thing.
Beliefs Should Not Affect the Experience
You experience happiness in your own unique way. The beliefs that you hold should have no effect on that experience. You may be a devout believer, or you may be a committed nonbeliever. Whatever beliefs you have are fine. Your experience of happiness should remain the same. Your belief should not cause you to block or deny your experience of happiness. You should try to allow your experience to coexist with the beliefs that you hold.
Your beliefs exist in your conscious mind while your experience may be direct. You may have ideas about how and when you can let yourself be happy. When beliefs get in the way of happiness, just let those beliefs go. Your beliefs may be correct, but they are still beliefs. Belief is no substitute for a true experience.
I have my beliefs about the Source of happiness. When I go into meditation, however, I let them go. I leave myself open to the experience I may have and not an experience for which I seek. I am not inclined to spend much time speculating about what is beyond my conscious awareness.
The spiritual teacher, J. Krishnamurti, said that all beliefs are cages for the mind, and belief can never lead to happiness.[59] I would not go this far. I think that belief can perhaps soften the edges of existence, and take away some of the fear and anxiety that prevent you from being happy. However, I agree that beliefs can limit what you experience, and what you think you can do.
Some believe that they must suffer emotionally for all kinds of reasons. For example, someone who has hurt another in the past may believe that he or she must atone for what happened. That person may believe that feeling happy is undeserved, and wrong. Belief such as this can destroy happiness.
To have an experience of the Source, you do not have to believe anything. The experience exists independently of whatever beliefs you have. If you are a believer, do not try to fit your happiness into what you believe. If you are a nonbeliever, do not let your lack of belief deny the experience.
My simple message is, do not let your beliefs prevent you from being happy. To let real happiness into your life, you have to feel that you are free to have your experience. Try to allow your beliefs or lack of beliefs to coexist with your experience of the Source of happiness.
Jesus and the Buddha Never Tried to Explain It
The founders of two great religions, Christianity and Buddhism, walked among us long ago. If anyone could explain the nature of the Divine, the nature of heaven, or the Source of happiness, it was Jesus and the Buddha. However, they never did so.
You would think that if anyone could tell us all about the Divine it would be Jesus. However, instead of providing particulars, he taught mainly in parables. He may have been more specific in private when speaking with his disciples, but in public, he told stories to try to get his message across.
When his disciples asked why he spoke to the people in parables, he said the people would not understand the truth. He explained, “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.” He added, “The knowledge of the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven has been given to you, but not to them.” [60]
The Buddha refused to talk about anything beyond what one could experience in this lifetime. Buddhism came into a culture with many gods, and the belief in a soul that traveled from lifetime to lifetime carrying with it a debt of karma. What did the Buddha have to say about God and the soul? He said little, which disappointed some of his followers.
Buddha taught for 45 years after his enlightenment. In his teaching he stressed the practical methods of obtaining what he found, which was nirvana (nirvana is the greatest happiness that humans can feel). He taught how to experience firsthand the truth of existence. Speculating about or describing in detail what his followers could experience on their own would have detracted from the goals of their practice.
When asked directly a series of basic metaphysical questions, the Buddha said that he would not explain his thinking because the information was not useful. They asked him whether the cosmos was eternal, whether it was finite or infinite, whether the soul and the body were the same or separate, and whether a Buddha existed after death. He said that he would not explain any of these matters.
He explained that such questions did not relate to the goal, and were not fundamental to the holy life. He said that knowledge of these matters did not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, calming, direct knowledge, self-awakening, or unbinding. He said that what he did explain, and what was useful, were the Four Noble Truths, which was his first teaching and the core of his teaching for the rest of his life.[61]
Unconditional Happiness as the Experience of the Divine
In this last section, I want to talk about unconditional happiness as an experience of the Divine. I am doing so because this is something that many believe. I will refer to it as a belief since it seems impossible to know the truth of this, due to the limits of human perception.
We may transform our experience of the Divine into what we recognize as happiness. As discussed in Chapter 2, happiness is an experience that everyone wants. Many believe that union with the Divine is also what everyone wants. Perhaps we experience the Divine in our bodies as happiness, and the desire for happiness and the desire for union are the same. Since experiences of the Divine are generally not part of our everyday world, perhaps we interpret feelings associated with the Divine as happiness, which is the best feeling we know how to experience.
St. Thomas Aquinas said that, in life, we experience only imperfect happiness. Perfect happiness, he believed, comes from seeing God or the Divine Essence. “Final and perfect happiness can consist in nothing else than the vision of the Divine Essence.” Aquinas implies that a person’s "final end," which is perhaps the final purpose in life, is the happiness of knowing God. He concludes, “God alone constitutes man's happiness.” [62]
The philosopher Boethius agreed with Aquinas when he said, “God is happiness itself." [63] What these two philosophers imply is that the closer you are to God or the Divine, the happier you become.
The Bhagavad Gita, one of the most important Hindu scriptures, has a message that is consistent with Aquinas and Boethius. It says that the Divine leads to happiness.[64]
Someone who has explored the question of the human experience of the Divine is Bernadette Roberts, who comes out of the Contemplative Christian tradition of St. John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart.[65] The practice of Contemplatives is to seek divine union with God while still in this life.
Roberts says this about the human experience of the Divine: “All we can know and experience of the divine…is limited to our human dimension of knowing and experiencing.” Our “experiences of the divine are virtually experiences of ourselves — the unconscious self as it touches upon the divine.” Though human consciousness has an “experience of the divine, the divine is beyond the knowing, experiencing dimension of [human] consciousness.” She describes the experience of the Divine as the “deepest joy and sense of true life.” [66]
In other words, any experience of the Divine that we may have is unconscious. When we are aware of the Divine, it is not the experience of the Divine itself but is instead the experience of our reaction to the Divine. The experience of the Source that arises from the unconscious may be feelings such as happiness, joy, bliss, and equanimity. However, it is still our human experience.
According to Roberts, we cannot know the Divine directly; we can only experience our reaction to it. Similarly, it may be that we cannot know the Source of happiness; we can only experience our reaction to it.
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
~ Wordsworth