Nirodbaran

Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo

Second Series

1. Spirituality

Seeking for Happiness

I wrote some time back that behind any difficult endeavour of an individual there is the seeking for Ananda which acts as a motive-force. I got a rebuff from you: “Not that I know of.” My little brain still can't argue with your mighty one about this matter.

That is an easily made psychological proposition which can exist only by ignoring facts. If you say that it is the Ananda behind the veil which makes one act, as a moving power, not as a “motive”, – that may be so, but this is a metaphysical, not a psychological generalisation. When a communist faces torture in a Nazi Concentration camp, he is not doing it for the sake of Ananda or happiness, but for something else which makes him indifferent to Ananda or happiness or else compels him to face the loss of things and their very reverse, however painful it may be.

I have always seriously thought that all men are after happiness which is a deformation of Ananda.

A mistake; many men are not after happiness and do not believe it is the true aim of life. It is the physical vital that seeks after happiness, the bigger vital is ready to sacrifice it in order to satisfy its passions, search for power, ambition, fame or any other  motive. If you say it is because of the happiness power, fame etc. gives, that again is not universally true. Power may give anything else, but it does not usually give happiness, it is something in its very nature arduous and full of difficulty to get, to keep or to use – I speak of course of power in the ordinary sense. A man may know he can never have fame in this life but works in the hope of posthumous fame or in the chase of it. He may know that the satisfaction of his passion will bring him everything rather than happiness – suffering, torture, destruction – yet he will follow his impulse. So also the mind as well as the bigger vital is not bound by the pursuit of happiness. It can seek Truth rather or the victory of a cause. To reduce all to a single hedonistic strain seems to me to be very poor psychology. Neither Nature nor the vast Spirit in things are so limited and one-tracked as that.

I read a wise man's statement that all human beings are ever wanting happiness untainted with sorrows.

All? It is far too sweeping a generalisation. If he had said that is one very strong strain in human nature it could be accepted. But mark that it is in human physical consciousness only. The human vital tends rather to reject a happiness untainted by sorrow and to find it a monotonous boring condition. Even if it accepts it, after a time it kicks over the traces and goes to some new painful or risky adventure.

Is not man's real nature happiness? Is not happiness inborn in the true self?

The true Self is quite a different proposition. But what it has is not happiness but something more.

It is said that even the wicked and the criminal sin because they are trying to find the self's happiness in every sin they commit: this striving is instinctive in man but they don't know it....

Who is this they? I fear it is a very summary and misleading criminal psychology. To say that a Paris crook or apache steals, swindles, murders for the happiness of stealing, swindling, murdering is a little startling. He does it for quite other reasons. He does it as his metier just as you do your doctor's work. Do you really do your doctor's work because of the happiness you find in it?

People will not seek a sorrowless untainted everlasting happiness, even if shown the way – because they will consider it beyond their powers to attain.

It is also with many because they prefer the joy mixed with sorrow, ¹ and consider your everlasting happiness an everlasting bore.

09.02.1936

¹ man's laughter and tears

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