The Feast of Life - 1

The Problem of Happiness

The enjoyment of life covers many things, the enjoyment of ourselves, of home life, of trees, flowers, clouds, wending rivers and falling cataracts and the myriad things in nature, the enjoyment of poetry, art, contemplation, friendship, conversation and reading, which are all some form or other of the communion spirits. These are obvious things like the enjoyment of food, a gay party or family reunion, an outing on a beautiful spring day and less obvious things like the enjoyment of poetry, art and contemplation.  I found it impossible to call all these two classes of enjoyment material and spiritual, first because I do not believe in this distinction and secondly because I am puzzled whenever I proceed to make this distinction.  How can I say, when I see a gay picnic party of men and women, old people and children, what part of their pleasures is material and what part spiritual.

Is it so easy to draw a distinction between the enjoyment of the surrounding landscape and the enjoyment of sandwich? Is it to regard the enjoyment of music which we call art, as decidedly a higher type of pleasure than the smoking of a pipe, which we call material ?  This classification between material and spiritual pleasure is therefore confusing, unintelligible and untrue for me.

The question that faces every man born into this world is not what should be his purpose, but just what to do with life, a life which is given his sixty / seventy years. The answer that he should order his life so that he can find the greatest happiness in it is more a practical question, similar to that of how a man should spend his week-end, than a metaphysical proposition as to what is the mystic purpose of his life in the scheme of the universe.

Had there been a purpose or design in life, it should not have been so puzzling and vague and difficult to find out.

The question can be divided into two; either that of divine purpose which God has set for humanity, or that of a human purpose, a purpose that mankind should set for itself. As far as the first is concerned, I do not propose to enter into the question because everything that we think God has in mind necessarily proceeds from our own mind.  It is what we imagine to be in God’s mind, and it is really difficult for human intelligence to guess at a divine intelligence.

For what should be the purpose of life, everyman projects his own perception and scale of virtues / values and therefore they quarrel among themselves.  I am content to be less philosophical and more practical. I agree with Walt Whitman, he says, “I am sufficient as I am”. Theological minds are not human happiness, but human “salvation”, a tragic word.  Theological minds are so much occupied with salvation and so little with happiness, that all they can tell us about the future that these will be a vague heaven for singing hymns in white robes.  Mohammad at least painted a picture of future happiness with rich wine and juicy fruits and black-haired, beg-eyed, passionate maidens.  Unless heaven is made much more vivid and convincing, there is no reason why one should strive to go there, at the cost of neglecting earthly existence. “An egg today is better than a hen tomorrow. 

Human Happiness is Sensuous

All human happiness is biological happiness.  All human happiness is actually sensuous happiness.  Spiritualist says that true happiness is only happiness in spirit.  Now, spirit is a condition of the perfect functioning of the endocrine glands. And hence for me happiness is largely the function of endocrine glands means a matter of digestion.  A matter of movement of bowels. There are only two things one should keep in mind for ultimate wisdom, read the bible and keep ones bowels open.  If ones bowel move one is happy and if they don’t move, one is unhappy.

In today’s world, happiness is often negative, the complete absence of sorrow or ailment but happiness can also be positive and then we call it a joy.  For me the timely happy moments are, when I get up in the morning after a night of perfect sleep and sip the morning tea, sniff the morning air and there is an expansiveness in the lungs, I feel to inhale deeply and there is a fine sensation of movement around the skin and muscles of the chest making me fit for the work for the day.

I cannot distinguish between the joys of mind and the joys of flesh.  Can anyone love a woman spiritually without loving her physically?  Can any man can analyze and separate the charms of the woman he loves – things like laughter, smiles, a way of tossing her head, her attitude ? And all girls feel happier when they are well dressed.

Being made of this mortal flesh, the partition separating our flesh from our spirit is extremely thin, and the world of spirit, with its finest emotions and greatest appreciations of spiritual beauty, cannot be reached except with out senses.  There is the sense of touch, of hearing and vision.

How many of us are able to distinguish between the odours of moon and midnight, or the winter and summer, or a windy spell and a still one ?  If man is so generally less happy in the cities than in this country, it is because all these variations and nuances of sight and smell and sound are less clearly masked and lost in the general monotony of grey walls and cement pavements.

For only a philosophy that recognizes reality can lead us into true happiness and only that kind of philosophy is sound and healthy.

Misunderstandings of Materialism

In real human life, the mental and physical pleasures are inextricably tied up together.  Mental pleasures are real only when they are felt through the body.

The love of mankind which requires reason is no true love.  This love should be perfectly natural, as natural for the man as for the birds to flap their wings.  It should be a direct feeling springing naturally from the soul.  No one who loves the trees truly can be cruel to animals or to this fellow-men.

No one can attain knowledge without the sense of vision and touch and smell than a camera can take pictures without a lens and sensitive plate.  The difference between a clever man and a dull fellow is that the former has a set of finer lens and perceiving apparatus by which he gets a sharper image of things and retains its longer.  And to proceed from the knowledge of books to the knowledge of life, mere thinking is not enough, one has to feel ones way about to sense things as they are and get the right impression of human life and human nature.  In the matter of feeling about life and gaining experience, all our senses cooperate, and its through this cooperation of the senses, and of the heart with the head, one can have intellectual warmth.