The soul is always happy – what does this mean?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, if you say the soul is always happy, what does it mean? See, happiness is a feature of the soul. Sat Chit Ananda.
That is the constitution of the soul. But that does not mean that we will always be happy. What we can see is, we are always happiness seeking.
We always seek happiness. Wherever we are, whatever we do, we are seeking happiness. Now, all of us may have different conceptions of happiness.
Somebody may think watching a cricket match is happiness. So, they may go to great extremes to get a ticket and go to a live cricket match and watch the cricket match. Others may think, okay, I just want to sit in front of a TV and watch movies all day.
That is my conception of happiness. So, whatever we are, wherever we are, we are all seeking happiness. Now, where does this longing for happiness come from? That actually comes from our spiritual essence.
So, from our spiritual essence. So, the soul is always happy in the sense that by its own nature, in its own self-existence, it is happy. When it is self-aware, it will be happy.
I give the example of a person, of a child who is watching a horror movie. The child is safe in his or her own home. But while watching the horror movie, the child is fearful.
He may be terrified. So, like that the soul, its natural self-aware condition is happy. But when the soul’s consciousness is caught in material things, then depending on what it is experiencing, the soul may sometimes experience happiness and sometimes not experience happiness.
That’s why we cannot just say that because the soul is, so rather than saying the soul is always happy, the more precise statement is that happiness is a unique feature of the soul. And the more we become spiritually aware, the more happiness will become our natural state. But it’s not that right now we are happy.
Right now, depending on where our consciousness is projected, then we may experience happiness, distress, boredom, excitement, different emotions we may experience.