The Realisation of the Absolute :4-3-10.

Chapter 4: The Nature of Reality : 3.10.

3. Brahman as Bliss or Happiness-10.

Moreover, the love of the Self is the basis of all other loves. One loves another, because one loves the Self the most. The ultimate purpose of all loves is to rest in the satisfaction of one’s own Self. Perception and contact act as agencies in lifting up the veil of subjective desire covering the external objects. Hence, the motive behind conceptual and perceptual contacts is not so much to obtain anything from the object as such, as to make it an instrument in lifting up the veil in the mind, a purely selfish process which the individual subject tries to get effected thereby. Conception or perception is, in a way, an effort to exhaust a desire, though, because of the glaring error therein, it may give rise to another desire.

Contact is, therefore, not a method of acquiring happiness, but a means of getting freed from the pain of desiring, and thus making the Self experience itself indirectly. But even this temporary experience of happiness due to contact should not be mistaken for even a jot of true Self-Bliss, for in contact the desires are not destroyed, and this happiness experienced through contact is only a reflection of Self-Bliss through the material quality of sattva.Contact is only a stimulus to sattva-guna, which alone can reflect happiness. Sense-contact is a crude method of fulfilling desire born of deluded perception, and it can never bring to the experiencer the real bliss which he is hankering after.


None really loves anything for its own sake, for nothing in the universe has a true objective value that is valid for all times. All values proceed from the Self, and subsist in the Self. The Self alone is the ultimate and infinite value in all things. Careful analysis will reveal that all contacts have their meaning in Self-satisfaction. Self-satisfaction in its individual signification is only an apparent pleasure and is a delusion caused by the functions of the modes of thought. Even mental satisfaction brought about through the avenues of the senses is not the end aimed at through the mind and the senses.

No one is permanently satisfied through an objective process. The self of man hungers for eternal satisfaction but it gets a cup of poison which it finds in darkness and then drinks, being deprived of the proper vision with which to behold the true nature of things. No one would consciously drink poison even when one is hungry. It is not the intention of the Self to be satisfied with deceitful mirages, but it suffers on account of lack of knowledge. It is easily misled by the tantalising appearances of life.

In fact the self loves only the highest Essential Existence, which it wants to realise as one with itself, but it cannot discover this Existence amidst the clamour of the senses, the caprices of the mind, and the colour and the noise of objects of the world. The love of the Self is unsurpassed. Even suicide that is committed only goes to prove the supreme love that is evinced in regard to the Self, for it is due to disgust for some conditions of life, and not on account of hatred for the Self, that such an act is perpetrated.

Suicide is the effect of some tormenting type of objective contact, a corroding attachment to a certain phenomenon, an unfulfilled objective, or an unattained relative end. Even disgust for one’s life is only a dissatisfaction with a particular state of life, an unpleasant experience in life, and not with life itself. None feels from his heart that he should absolutely cease to exist. Everyone wishes to enjoy an eternal life of perennial bliss. A painful life is detested and a pleasant one is coveted. The love of the immortal bliss to be experienced as identical with the Self is unconditioned. It can have no match.

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued  ...