The sixth post in the series “Creating Your Happiness” by Paramhansa Yogananda. This was written during the depression, and is particularly apt today.
Some people say that happiness is found only in mental contentment, whereas, there are other people who hold that is consists in having lots of money, an over-abundance of furniture, yachts, estates, cars, and liveried servants. Both these views are one-sided and incomplete.
The ascetic, sitting in a cave, may have some mental contentment, but he has to depend upon food products grown by a farmer or produced by a factory. He has to wear clothing made by a weaver. No ascetic in the world could find complete happiness only in the mind, without the use of at least a few material things.
On the other hand, it is untrue that all happiness is dependent upon constantly buying things, often on the installment plan, or upon owning palaces, cars, and all the other countless objects that one’s fancy may dictate. In fact, when happiness is sought only through the acquisition of an infinite number of material things, it can never be found, for happiness consists principally in the attitude of the mind, and is conditioned only partially by outside factors.
There have been cases of martyrs who have sacrificed their lives rather than lose the inner comforts of their minds. Such ascetics have found happiness in states of the mind without the addition of any material things. On the other hand, it is very rare to find people happy who seek happiness only by acquiring more and more material objects.
The man whose entire happiness is dependent upon the creation and fulfillment of new desires can never be happy, for his happiness is always dependent upon something that he expects to have sometime in the future. He courts happiness without ever winning it, just as a dog will chase continually after the ever-receding sausage, dangling far-off in front of his eyes, from the end of a long stick tied on his back.
Lessons of the Depression
This depression is raising a hue and cry from those who think, now that stocks have gone down, that they were happier when their stocks were high, but in reality we known that when their stocks were very high, they were unhappy because they wanted them to keep on going up and up, higher and higher, without limit. Man can never satisfy his desires if he forgets that happiness is mostly in the mind, and only partially in the acquisition of the world’s necessities.
The present condition of affairs is teaching people the real law of happiness. They see that on one hand, the world-wide desire to become happy by constantly possessing more and more only causes over-production and its consequent times of depression, and that on the other hand, mental contentment for the mass of people is impossible if they do not have food and work.
How many of those offsprings of the stock market, (millionaires prematurely born), would be glad and contented now if they could only have back the little legitimately-owned first capital which they invested, now that their all, their original capital and also their paper profits, are lost, because they were filled with the greedy desire to “get rich quick?”
How many laborers, who were never satisfied before the depression with their work or their wages, would be only too glad now to get any kind of work on any salary? So, do not let the depression affect you, but learn the lesson that it teaches, which is, that happiness consists in making the mightiest efforts to reduce your desires and needs, and in cultivating the ability to meet those needs at will, and in always trying to smile, both outwardly and inwardly, in spite of every predicament.
Practical measures
Be silent and calm every night for at least ten minutes (longer if possible) before you retire, and again in the morning before rising. This will produce an undaunted, unbreakable inner habit of happiness which will make you able to meet all the trying situations of the every-day battle of life. With that unchangeable happiness within, go about seeking to fulfill the demands of your daily needs.
Seek happiness more and more in your mind, and less and less in the desire to acquire things. Be so happy in your mind that nothing that comes can possibly make you unhappy. Now you can get along without things you have been accustomed to. Be happy because you know that you have acquired the power not to be negative, and because you know, too, that you can acquire at will whatever you need, and that you will never again become so material-minded that you will forget your inner happiness, even though you should become a millionaire.
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