Felicity and Joy
by Karmayogi
April 6, 1990
True happiness lies in the psychic, or inner divine. Going to that centre and living the outer human life from there will fill us with felicity. One can make an experiment for that purpose. I shall start with an analogy.
A work exists at several levels of skills, talents, capacities, endowments, accomplishment, from the low crude completion of utility to highly professional execution of a graceful act. At two ends, if these extremes exist, we find ourselves at some middle level. Placed as you are at your middle level, if you acquire the endowment of any higher level, LIFE can take you sooner or later to that level. Mother can take you to that high level at once.
A collector's work can be done by a rank promoted officer with care and responsibility; a secretary of the department at an advanced stage to complete his term as collector may come down for a short period as a collector and his execution of the collector's chores will be that of a mature, seasoned, experienced administrator with grace, speed and dexterity. When a writer of a text book comes down from his professional pedestal and teaches at a primary level, the teaching will be full of pith and substance, profound, enthralling. But neither the collector nor the professor can do at his post of duty more than what the post permits. The post has its own limitations by its level. Experienced persons can raise the quality of their performance very high, not the content. The collector cannot exercise higher powers than his post permits. The professor cannot teach in PUC what he can teach at the level of M.A. As the collector's post has limited powers, the PUC class, even at its best, has limited scope of receptivity.
While you are at a lower job, if you can acquire the dexterity of a higher level job, life quickly move you to the level to which your skill belongs.
Let us come down to life and grade it by levels of joy and felicity. These are low situations that yield a little joy; others yield a higher quantum of joy, while at the top there are situations whose yield of joy is the highest. Routine works yield no joy, interesting works yield some joy, while cherished, long-awaited occasions burst forth with joy. If you learn to do your works of every day with a greater joy, Mother will take you permanently to levels of life where that intensity of joy is permanent.
VIP visitors come to VIP houses and receive a rousing reception. VIP visitors in ordinary houses receive a still better reception. Ordinary visitors receive an ordinary reception. By learning to treat ordinary visitors as VIP visitors, you will move in life to be a VIP who will be receiving VIP visitors.
By learning to treat ordinary events as events of great felicity, you will move to a life position where all events begin to yield high felicity, making all life one of eternal joy.
To look at ourselves, our daily actions, our inmost feelings, especially our motivations from this point of view, we can at once know what we should do. If we bring a willingness to make that change or changes, life can turn from one of dull neutrality to one of intense joy.
Take the most ordinary negative event like a wordy quarrel at home. It is easy to see how by being good-mannered this can be avoided. As a next step take an ordinary positive event like serving meals. By an effort of expansive goodness bordering on generosity of selfless emotion, it is easy to see how this flat moment can be made into an occasion of rich interchange, intense human sentiments. Supposing we succeed here, it will soon be evident that with rich inner fullness, we lack the outer skill of polite manners and find it difficult to express the inner good in an outer act of goodness. The importance of that psychological skill will be self-evident. Pursuing the argument further, we can easily discover the values of talents for being genuinely pleasant to another. Capacity to be happy, capacity to express that happiness, capacity to make others happy are values rarely found. The lack of them will be sorely evident when we examine ourselves keenly. Creating a fund of natural inner goodness, acquiring social skills that express it, possessing the talent to handle the ripe goodness of heart and sentiment so as to let it distribute itself across the family, and being endowed with a capacity for inner generosity that is infectiously sweet are things one can acquire with patience and practice in humble circumstances too.
These are, in fact, endowments of the highest consciousness, sublime in content. They are found only in exalted characters, at the top of the world. One who acquires painstakingly these traits in the humblest of circumstances will, by virtue of them, be elevated in his outer social position to that of the exalted characters. By itself, these exalted characteristics are welcome and laudable. If they can also elevate one's position, that is desirable too.
In principle, MAN in any position, however humble it is, can acquire the consciousness, character, behaviour of the very highest, even of Transcendence. That entitles him to rise to that status in time. In Mother, that instantaneously shifts him to the higher status.