Q: What is the nature of Bliss?
Let us contemplate the ‘Nature of Bliss’ today. Bliss or happiness is a commodity with a large market today. Everybody in the world wants to sell you bliss or happiness. All advertisements, all marketing, all tv commercials are only trying to sell you the concept of happiness. Buy this and you will be happy. Buy this car and you will be happy. Buy that land and you will be happy. Buy this mobile phone and you will be happy.
So, happiness seems to be the commodity that is the most in-demand in the world. Everybody does something or the other for the sake of happiness. People live for happiness; people try for happiness and people work for happiness. Happiness is the real motivation for people to live. What is this happiness? Why do people seek happiness?
When you are happy somehow your boundaries melt. You seem to be boundless. You seem to be unlimited. So, you want to go back to that experience, again and again. But Upanishads tell that your true nature is happiness, your true nature is bliss, Ananda. Ananda comes from the word called ‘Anantha’ meaning infinite. Your nature is bliss only. Your nature is Ananda only. Then, why are you seeking happiness? Because you are missing it somewhere.
Your true nature is Brahman, called Sat Chit Ananda, Sachidananda. Sat means Truth. Chit means Consciousness. Ananda means Bliss. That’s your true nature. Now, because you have forgotten your true nature, we are missing that bliss and we are missing happiness. In reality, you are Shiva, Pure Consciousness, Sachidananda.
But you have become Jiva. A Jiva constantly seeks happiness. Constantly searching for the Bliss. While your true nature is Shiva, Sat Chit Ananda, the nature of Shiva is Sattvam, which is sattva guna. Ghoram; Ghora means fearful, rajo guna. And jadam, which is tamo guna. Sattva guna, rajo guna and tamo guna, together is Jiva.
When I get something, the mind which is full of rajo guna, constantly, craves for an object. When it craves for the object, the happiness disappears. When you get the object, the mind becomes, temporarily silent. In that temporary silence, the mind merges with the Self, Atma, whose nature is Sat Chit Ananda, bliss. That bliss is experienced by the mind, momentarily, because the mind has become silent. Only in silence, you can experience bliss. Not otherwise.
But when it comes out of the bliss, silence, the mind starts thinking that ‘I got happiness, because of the object’. It wrongly associates happiness with the objects of the world. In reality, happiness is coming from the Atma, Brahman or the Self. It is nowhere else. So, it is the mind which misleads you. An outwardly directed mind is missing the bliss of the Self. That experience, you have every day.
When we go to deep sleep, the mind is silent. There are no thoughts in the mind. Then, when you wake up and you say, “I had a very nice sleep, very wonderful sleep, I had a blissful sleep”. So, you experience bliss in deep sleep. That bliss didn’t come from anywhere else. It came from your own Self; it is your own nature. So, the bliss is your own nature.
Then, what is the meaning of bliss? Bliss or Ananda means infinity, Anantha. Infinite is your nature and that is real bliss. Any association with the body, mind and intellect makes you feel limited. You miss the bliss. So, if I reach the Atma then how do I experience bliss? There is no concept of experiencing bliss because you are bliss itself. You are infinite itself. You are Anandam itself.
To get that glimpse of Ananda, people keep doing a lot of work just to seek happiness. But in reality, to get that bliss, all that you have to do is to realize your Self. Be silent. That is the real key to bliss. Don’t confuse bliss with the elation of the mind. If the mind is silent then what is remaining is bliss. The mind recollects that silence period as happiness. It is only memory recollection.
So, what is the meaning of bliss? Bliss is to be free from any objects of the world. To be free from any identification with the body, mind and intellect is bliss. Who is the experiencer there? There is nobody as an experienced person there. The Self is the bliss. You are of the nature of bliss, the ultimate bliss.
Somebody says, “I did a meditation. I was very blissful”. That means, there is an experiencer. Which means that the mind has not yet become silent. You have to still go further and become bliss itself.
Pranams
Prabhuji
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Self Knowledge Talks_T34_Nature of Bliss_English_25Oct2016