by Sri Bmal Mohanty
VOL No. 8
 February 2001

CHAPTER NINE – WHY WE SEEK HAPPINESS ? ..

"Based on lectures by Sri Bimal Mohanty"

continued...

    This higher mind chetana does not get lost. The memory can only get lost if the adhara or the holder of that memory gets lost. It means if my memory is confined to my bodily existence – acquired through the experience of sense organs of the body only, then whenever I lose a body, this memory will also evaporate. It may be likened to the volatile memory of the computer which is erased as soon as the power to the computer is switched off.

On the other hand if this memory is part of my atmabodha or atmachetana or self consciousness, then it can never get lost. Because as far as bodies go I have acquired and lost many of them. But as far as my self is concerned , my jivatma is concerned, I have only one eternal jivatma which has never been lost. I shall lose it only when I finally merge with the Paramatma. Therefore my memory related to my self is still within me.

And that memory is that, I have – each of us have- a personal experience of a much higher level of consciousness of Sat (truth and Ananda (Bliss) which we are trying to reacquire all the time.

So the crux of the matter is that each of us, once upon a time had the experience of a higher level of mental consciousness, whose characteristic of course is pure bliss and happiness.

Our philosophy is convinced about this and finds no argument to contradict it. Sri Aurobindo also refers to this in his writing. Consider this what he wrote in The Synthesis of Yoga.

Indian tradition asserts that this (by ‘this’ he refers to the higher level of mental consciousness) which is to be manifested is not a new term in human experience, but has been developed before and has even governed humanity in certain periods of its development. In any case, in order to be known it must at one time partly developed. And if since then Nature has sunk back from her achievement, the reason must always be found in some unrealised harmony, some insufficiency of the intellectual and material basis to which she has now returned, some over specialisation of the higher etc etc.

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