On Happiness - On Personality

Although beings are not identical, although dissimilarity is an irrefutable law, among all these dissimilar beings, there is still a tendency and a manifestation that is common to all. We observe one and the same goal in the daily and continuous efforts of each and every one.

Whether great or small, privileged or not, we all seek our well being. This is to say that all our actions all our thoughts all our efforts our joys and pains have but one purpose - to provide us with what, according to each one or us, is likely to bring about our well-being.

Since everyone works with such persistence for their well being, it would seem that they should drive far away everything that is harmful  to them and as a consequence to gradually attain the purpose towards which they all tend. For every effort is said to bring fruit.

Unfortunately, in spite of this persistent and continuous work, not only do we miss the desired result but also we rather bring harm upon ourselves most of the time. We see few happy people around us that their sheer rarity makes us say that happiness is not of this world.

It could be objected that although not everybody is happy, at least quite a large number attain their purpose, particularly among those who seek it in material goods.   

Without going into too many details, my answer to this objection is that their happiness is real only in appearance, and is held as such by those who also seek material goods but do not obtain them. This fact makes them consider those who did manage to attain them as ‘happy’.

Great and true happiness encloses within it calm and absolute quietude, and the lack of desiring to possess things. It radiates continuously with profound joy and love, and its fundamental character is the impersonal.

Have you seen any persons who present this image among all those who are considered to be happy? Do we not see, in spite of their success and the crowning of their efforts, that they are constantly tortured by restlessness and yeaning for something new, for a change? And are these so-called happy people at the mercy of the first adverse wind that blows? Life all around us is full of such examples, and at every instant we see people who have reached the heights of power and of human glory fail in one stroke in the direst misfortune and the lowest disgrace.

It is therefore unreasonable to suppose that happiness is something which is at me mercy of some happening or other. But what causes this and why is it that this immense and continuous effort of both individuals and the collective almost always brings about the contrary results to those pursued?

Is this then the lot of humanity? Is all humankind subject to a fatal law that makes it constantly strive and work in search of happiness only to find suffering, blighted hopes, discouragement and illusions of happiness, which are even more baleful than actual failures? Are we then predestined to be unhappy?

This is a question to which all the disillusioned and discouraged would answer with a categorical ‘Yes’. Still, one who is calm and independent, one who is guided by logic in the path through life, will answer with a categorical ‘No’. Man is not born to suffer. On the contrary, happiness does exist; it is great and is accessible to all.

And we who in our lives wish to have only Reason as our guide, let us try to see why happiness eludes almost everyone, and in what way it can be realized.

A while back, I told you that we all seek our well-being. In other words, that we all strive to satisfy the needs that we feel within us so as to have nothing more to yearn for. We all agree on this point. Where we go wrong is that we do not go to the core of the matter as to what the needs are. We do not apply ourselves to finding out whether the needs are the true ones, that they are ones that reasonably flow from our being that we are and that they come from its constituent principles.

From the Sages of old we inherited a great and profound saying. It is the famous ‘Know Thyself’. This is a great and sublime truth. If it were to profoundly and conscientiously studied, it could well change our lives. Yet most of the time we content ourselves to admiring it and repeating it unconsciously without ever understanding it, just as we admire and invoke the grandeur and beauty of Nature, though the object of our admiration always remains an indecipherable enigma to us.

What puts us off most of all is that we consider this saying as something beyond common sense, something that even long and laborious efforts would not be enough to understand. Or again, if we do apply it, it is always for the purpose of verifying effects; we hardly ever touch on the problem of seeking the why and the wherefore of these very effects. And this is our reaction to all the troublesome problems that stir within us. We seek their solution as far away from us as possible, in regions where it cannot be found, and we are not willing to perceive that it is here, before us, and that we need only rely on the most elementary Reasoning in order to grasp it.

Well then, let us get down to reasoning. We have all, at a certain moment in our lives, found ourselves obliged to make a decision. It is the moment when we undertake to pave our way through life, when we draw the general lines of the course that we propose to follow.

Our choice, one way or another, is certainly not made because we are simply obliged to live and so have to go through with it. We start on a certain path rather than on another in the hope and the intense desire that we shall find it strewn with the most beautiful flowers, and filled with the most intoxicating perfumes.

Since this is our aim, what then are the thoughts that are necessary at this decisive moment? Let us point out these thoughts as succinctly as possible.

1) We wish to be happy.

2) In order to he happy, we must first know what we need so as to bring about this happiness.

3) In order to know what we need it is absolutely indispensable for as to know what we are.

This is the reasoning process that all rational persons who are honest with themselves are obliged to follow, and from which they cannot stray. Otherwise all their life will be compromised in fruitless and groundless efforts.

However, before we undertake anything, we are obliged to stop at the third part in this process of reasoning, which is ‘In order to know what we need if is absolutely indispensable for us to know what we are’.

In fact, what are we?

Well without claiming to be a great philosopher, sage or renowned thinker, any reasoning being will find the following answer to this question. We are beings in whom two constituent principles immediately fall to our observation. One of these is our material being, our Body, which is perceptible to our senses and allows us to have the notion of external things. The other is a principle that we cannot easily define, determine its nature, or subject to a material analysis, but we feel its existence within us by the continuous effects that it produces. We call this principle the Spirit.

If we ponder this more, we note that these two principles are diametrically opposite as regards their energy and action. The first is a passive agent, which does nothing on its own and which is continuously subject to the second. The latter has the initiative in everything and is an active and generating principle. The spirit can dominate the body and direct it, since we note that by acts of Will (a spiritual quality), we manage to develop our senses, to strengthen our body, and direct it towards the path that we desire. It would be impossible to develop the spirit by any bodily exercise, for the body serves to carry out everything that the spirit conceives.

We also observe a third principle - our Soul. However, this is an intermediate principle that issued from the action of the Spirit on Matter. If I have not mentioned it before it is because the soul always sides with the predominant principle in us. If our spirit is in at its full power and splendour, then our soul is noble and elevated. If our body is in command, our soul manifests all its passions and vices.

I do not propose to expand further on the difference and hierarchy of our two constituent principles. I have simply cited the differences and roles that are likely to fall to me perception of anyone, whatever their instruction or degree of evolution.

It us therefore quite evident that there are two principles within us. They are inseparable, it is true, but they are quite unequal in the proportion of their roles.

In accordance with what was said above, we can compare these principles and their corresponding roles to those of the Craftsman and his Tools. A craftsman cannot do without a tool, but a tool without a craftsman has no purpose, no meaning, no reason of being. Without a tool, the craftsman could still conceive his handicrafts, whereas a tool could neither conceive nor carry out anything on its own.

At this point in our reflections we are obliged to conclude that since we find two principles within us, one of which is the generating agent of everything and the other the passive performer, it is of the utmost necessity to give our attention to the first principle, for it is the one that permits us to live, to act, and to create. Still, we should not overlook the other and must satisfy the needs of our body, though in a measure that will permit it to accomplish its determined and limited role in a normal manner.

This was our point of departure and the grounds that is the basis or our life’s course. We cannot distance ourselves from these conclusion nor can we avoid the consequences if we claim to be reasonable and logical beings.

Now is this the reasoning that we follow? Unfortunately it is quite sad to say that it is not.

Look around you. You will see almost everyone sets their creative principle at the service of their passive principle. You will see them concentrate on the Tool and let the Craftsman waste away and die for lack of nourishment and light. What is more, since 'lack of conscience' has reached its peak, you will hear the supremacy of the spirit proclaimed loudly in the name of reason, but you will see the idolatry of the body practised with frenzy. What is even more unnerving than all this, is for us to deny the existence of happiness and in our disappointment and delusions, to go as far as to deny the existence of everything. As a result, we desperately cling to clandestine and ephemeral pleasures that always leave us with a taste of ashes and render our hopelessness even greater, though they increase our weaknesses and end up unsettling us and making us lose our footing.

Needless to say that this state of things has not happened overnight or even in our own particular age. It has come as a result of weaknesses and habits contracted long ago. Our fault lies in blindly following what we have inherited. Our fault lies in that we allow our reason to be totally subject to the law of conformity, in that we imitate everything around us in the present and everything that resembles it from the past.

When reason and observation are lacking, everything combines to making us fall into the abyss and become the authors of our own unhappiness. Education, conventions, prejudice, traditions and apparently reasonable ideas whose qualities are that they trouble the 'clear waters' and hinder others from seeing clearly down to the bottom.

This is the reason why happiness eludes us and will go on doing so as along as we do not wish to act differently. We do not realize this but worse still, we follow a course that leads us to a completely different end.

Once we are persuaded of this fact, we should proceed to three things:

1) To stop short in the midst of the current that tries to carry us away.

2) To retrace our steps.

3) To follow the normal path that must logically lead us to the goal that we wish to attain.

To stop short in the midst of the current is not too difficult and we see that the simplest reasoning can provide us with the means to do so. But I admit that to retrace our steps and go against the current is not an easy task. Yet if we consider that we all had the means to avoid the useless course that we have followed, we shall also acknowledge that it is only fair that we will have pay for the return fare.

Here I must have recourse to the Teachings of our Venerable Order and remind you of the teaching concerning the recovery of our personality.

After profound meditation, we shall see that the Order does not teach us about personality so that we may do things that others have not managed to do, or say some things that are original. Personality is taught because its recovery entails going against the current, breaking or crushing everything that hinders it, and acquiring the strength to proceed against this immense torrent called 'Lack of Conscience'.

To recover our personality means to be able to aspire to and attain everything. I am firmly convinced of this. Believe me, if I insist on this point I do so not only as a representative of our Order, but also as a weak man, similar to all other men, one who has long meditated on his weaknesses and blighted hopes, and has found out that their cause always goes back to a lack of personality.

It is from this evidence that the need for struggle ensues, as also the feeling of infinite gratitude to those who have given us their conception, thus allowing us to see our efforts crowned with success.