CHAPTER FIVE
How Our Consciousness Determines
What We Want for Happiness
by Stephen Knapp
In understanding how to be truly happy in this material world, we should take a look at how our thoughts and needs change as we grow from childhood to adult, and how our thinking and consciousness will determine what will make us happy. These will provide a clue to the usual pattern of concerns and forms of happiness for which we look as we grow or go through the various stages of life.
The numerous concerns that affect the individual and how he or she views what is needed for happiness are divided into stages that in Sanskrit are called annamaya, pranamaya, manomaya, vijnanamaya, and anandamaya. I will analyze these one at a time. First there is annamaya, wherein, since anna means food, the individual is food conscious. In other words, when one is a baby and first growing up, one's main concern and source of happiness is in getting enough food. In this level of consciousness, when one has food in the stomach or can eat sumptuously, he is no longer anxious but is happy. So, when one is in annamaya, his goal is to get nice food. Everyone is affected by this form of happiness to some degree. However, for one who remains on this level, his biggest source of happiness is eating.
The next level of concern and stage of life one goes through is described as pranamaya, the consciousness of being alive or continuing one's existence. In this level of consciousness, if a living being can live without being attacked or killed he thinks he is happy. Therefore, when affected by pranamaya, a living being will work hard in order to defend or protect himself from enemies or attackers, or other problems. For as long as he is successful in this way, he feels happy.
We can see these two levels of consciousness all around us. For example, as we look at a newborn baby, it cries whenever it is in pain or hungry. If it is fed nicely and given a place where it feels comfortable, it will rest in peace. So its first longings for happiness is to be fed and to feel safe and secure. So, this is how it is absorbed in annamaya and pranamaya.
Animals are much the same. Animals that live in the forest have little knowledge of anything but their hunger and thirst. Their instinct is based on the need to survive, which is to find food and avoid enemies. They have little perception of anything else. This is why those who are grossly materialistic are sometimes compared to animals. The reason is explained that such people think that economic development is the most important aspect of life because what they want more than anything is plenty of food and protection, at any cost, even at the expense of killing other living beings to eat them, just like many animals do. Or they may surround themselves with firearms, guns, fences, or other means to keep intruders and enemies away. And they may take great pride in their guns or weapons. This annamaya and pranamaya is their level of happiness.
The next stage is called manomaya. Mano means mind, so this is the platform of trying to make the mind content with various forms of pleasure, usually taken in through the five senses. When the mind is occupied with some sensual stimuli, thrills, or entertainment, the individual feels happy. This may also include the use of drugs or intoxicants to stimulate or even deaden the mind. For some people the mind is too active. They want to calm it or simply forget about everything that bothers them. They want to get away from their problems by visiting the river of forgetfulness through intoxication. Often this form of happiness on the manomaya platform, whether by thrills and chills, or the use of drugs, is especially fleeting because such happiness usually exists only between two problems. While one forgets his problems, there may be some happiness. However, it is often not long before another concern enters the picture. You know, like, "OK, the fun is over. Now back to reality." That kind of thing.
As you look around, you can see that most humans exist within these three levels of consciousness, annamaya, pranamaya,and manomaya. If they have not progressed much more than this, then these are the types of happiness for which they will be searching. And after attaining them, they think this is all they need. So they will be fairly satisfied with eating, sleeping, mating and defending. For example, it is said that if you want to tame a lion, make sure it is well fed. If it is too hungry, it won't be thinking about learning or carrying out any new instructions. It will only be looking at the trainer as an item on the menu. In many ways, it is the same way with people. If they are undernourished for happiness, so to speak, they will be looking at things around them wondering if or how it might be something that can provide them with pleasure. This may include food, drugs, big houses, pretty girls or handsome men, and so on. They are simply looking and thinking of how they can get pleasure or happiness from things that they desire. On the other hand, if they are well fed, have a place for protection, and something to keep them busy and occupied from thinking too much about the wrong things, like say disease and death, they will be happy. And that's where many people are at. Well, not all people. Some need a little more than that, which brings us to the next level.
The next stage, at least for humans, is vijnanamaya, the level of establishing one's philosophical values and self-identity. If a person can figure out what he wants to do, and where he fits into life, and then arrange one's values so that they suit him, he may feel justified in whatever his situation or actions may be. They may or may not make sense to others. Yet, in his philosophical rambling he justifies it to himself.
In this stage, in order to help himself make sense of things, a person may simply adopt the teachings of those who are considered creditable and to provide himself with a path to follow. This may be recognized by one's acceptance of a certain religion, or using a type of psychotherapy or analysis, or following a particular political leader, or even adapting the same looks and views of a popular artist or musician, or so on. Thus, one picks or figures out an identity and a purpose in life, a reason for doing something. And this is the type of happiness for which one searches in the vijnanamaya stage.
When a person has this sorted out, then he or she feels happy. Of course, if someone challenges his assorted values, philosophy or religion, then he may feel he has to defend himself. If his ego is too big, and his identity with a certain sect or outlook is quite rigid, and this is being challenged, trouble begins. It is because if he or his set of values are defeated, he may feel that he loses his sense of identity and purpose. Then what will he do? So he gets defensive to keep from feeling this confusion. This again hinges on the pranamaya level of consciousness wherein one feels happy if he can defend himself and be victorious for his own sense of purpose and well being. This happens all the time. Have you ever been around two people who fanatically hold their own values but challenge those of others, or who criticize anyone who is different? It is not always pretty. That's why it is sometimes said that you should not talk about religion or politics with others if you want to avoid controversy. On the other hand, another person may simply rearrange his values in order to adjust to the new information and outlooks that make more sense. Vijnanamaya is also the level in which exists the process of "becoming," or reaching the point of who you think you are and what your values will be. So this platform offers a level of happiness that can also change with time or with new forms of understanding.
So, most people exist primarily on these four platforms, which may all interchange due to varying levels of priority from time to time. This means that for the majority of people, as long as they can acquire nice food by economic development, have their life protected by nice house or clothes or defense mechanisms, have various forms of entertainment and recreation, or be surrounded by family and friends, and establish their own philosophical values which may include religious or political preferences, then they may feel that life is good and will be quite content. Therefore, as you can see, this is what most people pursue in their attempts to find happiness. They think this is the main purpose of life. And because of the search, or I should say the hope, to attain this kind of happiness, a person will undergo so many difficulties. They may base their career on the design that once they can make enough money, all of these previously mentioned items will have a chance of falling into place. If they do, then everything is great. Yet, often what happens is that a person may get one or two things sorted out, and still remain waiting for everything else to appear in his life. They think, "If I only had this." Or, "If things were only like that, then everything would be fine." Thus, the hope for complete happiness continues, as it should, but it needs to be focused in the right direction.
The point is that while a person exists on the level of consciousness in which he is absorbed in annamaya, pranamaya, manomaya, and vijnanamaya, he or she may be happy with the basest of things in life, but their ideal state of full contentment and happiness remains out of reach. And they may not even know why. It is just like grabbing for the ring while riding the merry-go-round. Each time you go around you reach for that ring. If you don't get it the first time, you want to try for it the next time. Or like the donkey and the carrot. You get the donkey to move by holding a carrot on a stick in front of him. The donkey keeps trying to reach the carrot, but just can't quite seem to reach it. If he could only go a little further he'd get it, but never does. Likewise, our anticipation for complete fulfillment keeps us moving forward in hopes that we will reach a level of real happiness. The problem is that it does not really exist in these levels of consciousness. The happiness that can be found in these stages of development are all temporary and subject to change. And change they do. Therefore, this is the reason why life can be like a juggling act to keep everything together in order to be happy and have a chance at complete fulfillment. In other words, there's no real substance here. You may need food, house and home, wife or husband, family, entertainment, and philosophical adjustments on the material platform to maintain the body and mind. And you certainly may have that and be proud of it. But this has little to do with the soul, your real Self. Only on that stage, and acting with those things in life that relate to your real Self, can there be any tangible forms of happiness that are not so fleeting, like food, money, position, status, family, sex, or whatever else it takes that you think you need. That is not real happiness. In fact, too much of any one of those can get you into trouble. Therefore, happiness is within. Yet, you have to know how to reach that inner state.
It is because of ignorance that the living being accepts the material body as his real identity, and, thus, pursues whatever means possible to try to please himself through bodily and mental happiness. He accepts nonpermanent objects and activities as the means by which happiness can be found. Furthermore, the body itself often becomes a source of trouble. Just by having one, a person is subject to the pains and problems that the body may cause. Because of the material body, a person must also accept the pains and pleasures that are created by others, or by nature. For example, on some days the weather may be beautiful, yet the winter can bring terrible cold, blowing snow, and conditions that make life difficult. Those around you can also be friends and give some happiness, while others may create all kinds of problems for you, like the gossips that spread nasty rumors about you, or insects that want to bite, dogs that bark all night keeping you from sleeping, and so on. This is life? You better believe it, as long as you have this body. Of course, this physical apparatus is an amazing machine. After all, it is a part of you that allows you to express yourself in this world. But it is also different from your spiritual identity. Due to not perceiving or understanding this point is the reason why the common man desires to find happiness through the process of satisfying the mind and senses.
In illusion one thinks he or she can be happy by making various plans and arrangements for the body and mind, and its many attachments, such as house and family. Since these are all temporary, they can only give a limited amount of pleasure. And the attempt to make such orchestrations often merely entangles one deeper in responsibilities and complexities, and thus takes a person farther away from the happiness that one actually seeks. Therefore, it could be asked, do you own your possessions and means of happiness, or do they own you? Are you the one working so hard to maintain what you have? Do your desires and objects of pleasure force you to strain yourself with undesirable work? Of course, everyone has to maintain themselves in order to live. However, are you really doing what you want, or would you have more freedom if you simplified your life?
This is why a person may make so many arrangements and feel that they are quite content and satisfied, only to look at himself years later and realize he feels empty and unfulfilled, or even trapped by his situation. What first looked so sweet later turns to be only sour grapes. The reason is that the person still has not been able to truly understand his spiritual identity, or continues to try and squeeze pleasure out of something that has little if anything to do with his real identity, his spiritual Self.
It is the nature of material life to be insecure. Like a man may find a woman he can love, but there is the threat that she may get tired of the situation and leave. Or another man may steal her away. Or she may make so many demands that she may not be worth the trouble anyway. Or even if the love is secure, how long can it last? Death may come and force separation. This is the continual risk that everyone takes in this material realm, and in seeking happiness through the endeavor of trying to satisfy the mind and senses. The truth is, the mind and senses can never be fully appeased. Such fulfillment does not exist in them because it is their job to tell you continually what they need and want. If one is not in control of his senses, the senses alone force one to spend so much money on new things in seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, hearing, and desiring. It is like being addicted to drugs; you spend so much until you have nothing left. Then you jeopardize your job and future. For the sake of temporary enjoyment, a person may risk everything. In such a case, he chases after the illusion of sensual happiness like a mirage in the desert. Because of this, a person seeking happiness becomes increasingly implicated in unhappiness, like someone seeking honey from a beehive and being stung by the bees.
So the more you identify with the body, the more you will be motivated to seek out newer and newer experiences, even if it is just more and more ice cream or chocolate, in order to have some satisfaction. It is like pouring gasoline on a fire. The more you feed it, the more it will consume. The more it wants. Now imagine if you have a family wherein all of your dependents want you to do the same for them. You will be so busy with everyone else's needs and desires that you will hardly have any time for yourself. Now that's what I call fun.
One key point to understand is that this world offers no permanent relationship with anything or anyone, not with our loved ones or even our own body, which must be given up one day.1 Time very quickly takes away the life of one with uncontrolled senses because such a person may be so busy, yet makes no genuine spiritual advancement, and thus no preparation for the next life.2 Therefore, no one should simply waste away in householder life without making some advancement toward spiritual realization before being dragged away at the time of death.3 Otherwise, such a person remains attached to material life and longs to maintain his relationships and his desires for material happiness and pleasure while being carried away by death. Thus, not knowing where he is going, he dies in great pain and grief, wishing he could continue living, while his life appears like a flash in time.4 After so many years, or even lifetimes, of being forced through these kinds of difficulties, a person will begin to ask why he or she is not yet happy. Why is he not fulfilled and content? Is there something more to life than this? If a person begins to ask these kinds of questions, then at last he can reach the next level of consciousness.
Finally, beyond the previously mentioned levels of awareness, we reach anandamaya. This is most often reached by evolving through the vijnanamaya stage of developing one's philosophical or religious values and understanding. In anandamaya a person reaches the intellectual platform that allows one to genuinely understand his or her spiritual identity, that he is not the body but the spiritual living being within it. Then one begins to take the spiritual path and to add transcendental aspects to one's life. In this way, a person departs from the more materialistic ways of happiness and starts to incorporate those things and activities that will directly connect one with their inner Self and give one spiritual bliss. Before one reaches this level, they are considered to be on the material platform of life. Happiness on the material strata is most fleeting and illusory. There is little substance to it. It always comes and goes. Even if you find something that gives you some level of enjoyment and lasts for many years, in the end it will fade away if it is on the material level. This is simply the nature of the material energy. And you wonder why you may sometimes feel empty or unfulfilled?
Once one actually reaches the anandamaya stage and embraces genuine spiritual practices into his life, he begins to purify the consciousness, and anxiety and unhappiness leave. The reason why is because he becomes free from the previously mentioned levels of consciousness, namely the annamaya, pranamaya, manomaya, and vijnanamaya stages. The type of happiness that was once so important, as found in these stages of life, now becomes increasingly less significant. Now, on this level, the only sadness one may feel is the sorrow that comes from seeing the distress of others, which is a form of compassion. Such compassion is natural and spontaneous for one who is on the path of spiritual progress. It is also necessary for one who wants to continue their spiritual development. Then one can truly feel the pain of others and begin working to help all living beings on a spiritual level.
It is in this stage that one can begin to realize that happiness cannot be achieved merely by working hard for sensual or mental thrills. Everyone knows that the chief aim of life is to try to rid themselves of miseries and sources of anxiety. Nonetheless, this is impossible by surrounding ourselves with pleasures and comforts for which we must work hard to attain, or for which we need to engage in questionable activities. Such objects later become only sources of confinement to the material platform of life. It coerces us into continuing our enslavement in the service of the temporary mind and senses.5 Thus, we are forced to continue within the cycles of duality, consisting of varying degrees of happiness and distress, birth and death, or favors and curses from those around us. These are in themselves natural by-products of our contact with this material existence.6 In other words, regardless of one's position in this world, a person will automatically experience happiness or unhappiness.7 It cannot be avoided. Even if one has the luxury of being financially independent, he may be merely working off whatever good he has coming to him in this life. Yet he cannot completely control what he needs to be happy, for in this world happiness and distress follow each other like the seasons. Why? Because it is based on the material energy, which itself is constantly changing from nice and pleasant to annoying or even miserable. In this way, as you identify with your surroundings, your disposition changes, regardless of what kind of material facility you may have, such as lots of money, big house, plenty of food and drink, and whatever else you can imagine. Then it all becomes monotonous after enough time goes by. Why? Because it does not touch the real you, the spiritual Self, which is merely waiting dormantly for you to attend to your real needs, which are spiritual.
The main goal of materialistic life is to eat, sleep, have sex, attain economic success, and add as much luxury as one can fit into one's existence. These are all based on the temporary material body, and are thus inconsequential to the spiritual being that exists within. The body is like a container in which we live, like being surrounded by a bag through which we see, hear, taste, smell, and feel. But it is not our real Self. As we begin to understand this, we can perceive the fact that the happiness and distress which is based on one's bodily contact with the material energy are mistaken ideas.8 They exist in the lower levels of consciousness, such as annamaya, pranamaya, manomaya, and even vijnanamaya. Yet, on the anandamaya platform, one can begin to see how everything that is happening within the world of time is merely a dream.9 First, it is all subject to the nebulous interpretations of the mind and senses, plus, it is all temporary with a beginning and end. And we have all been told by the great sages and deliverers of the world, such as Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, and many others, not to be attached to the temporary, and to find real happiness only in that which does not change. However, even a child of eight may know this, but hardly a man of eighty can put it into practice. This is the difference between those of the annamaya, pranamaya, manomaya, and vijnanamaya levels of consciousness, and those who have reached the anandamaya stage.
The mental platform is most flickering, and the attractions for happiness on that level change with every moment that goes by. In other words, the mind wants one thing at one minute, then something else the next. So, those who exist on the lower levels of consciousness have many kinds of demands for what they want in order to be happy. Yet we can see that it often changes from hour to hour, and from person to person, and it never stays the same for long. Therefore, we must again state that happiness and distress which are based on one's bodily and mental conceptions, and one's contact with the material energy, are mistaken ideas.
Maybe no one has ever come right out and told you this before, or maybe you had this thought, but never quite expressed it this way. Yet, joy and sorrow are only due to one's perception of what goes on around him. That depends on how the pleasant or disagreeable sensations are interpreted by the mind, and whatever our mental disposition happens to be at the moment. Because of this, different people will have varying opinions about the same situation or experience. This is also the basis of how we think we are happy or not. It is, for the most part, an interpretation of the ever-changing conditions that go on in the material world that are a natural occurrence. Someone may love winter and its deep white snows, and someone else may hate it. It is all a matter of personal interpretation as situations are sifted through the mind. Therefore, we can again reiterate that happiness and distress in the material world of duality are simply mental judgements and concoctions.
In this way, we can understand how genuine happiness cannot be attained merely by so much plan-making. We may make a plan to build a house for our happiness, but if that house burns down for some reason, that same house becomes a source of our distress. This is the nature of material happiness. Thus, by increasing our plans to enjoy our mind and senses through various activities does not guarantee happiness. It often leads to the path of anticipation for happiness in the hope that we are taking care of just one last problem. However, we often find that we are continually working hard simply to deflect or resolve the problems that constantly present themselves. As I've said before, that is not happiness.10
On the anandamaya stage, the world is filled with genuine happiness, because only on the anandamaya platform can one begin to connect with the real Self, and rise above the mental dictations of what is agreeable and disagreeable as interpreted through the temporary mind and senses. Even when getting a glimpse of the anandamaya stage, one's perception of the world and the Self begins to change, what to speak of when one fully enters it. On this platform, one can rise above and never feel the problems that exist in the world of duality. Therefore, we can also see that the world is full of happiness. Yet, we need to reach that genuine level of spiritual substance wherein real happiness exists. That is why when we feel unfulfilled with our lives, it is a natural sign telling us that we need to add some real substance in order to be connected to our higher Self, and to feel the fulfillment and contentment for which we are always looking. That is a secret that you will learn, how to put that substance in your life.
Ultimately, life is an adventure to improve yourself in every way, up to the point of realizing your true spiritual Self. Thus, life is like a classroom with lessons that allow you to advance and learn more about yourself and spiritual Truth. The lessons can be a smooth flow of progress or a difficult transition due to your reluctance to let go and be malleable to what the universe, fate, destiny, or God want you to do and learn. Just like school, if you fail the grade, you simply keep going through the same class until you finally pass the test. Yet that is the great thing about spiritual progress: You simply keep going until you make the grade, in how many ever years or lifetimes it takes. No one really fails, some just take it slower or need more time than others.
[Available on: http://www.stephen-knapp.com]
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