The Meaning of Happiness

INTRODUCTION

During the last fifty years the mental life of Western civilization has been invaded by two forces which are having a profound though gradual influence on our attitude to life. One of these forces has emerged from the West itself, while the other has come from far distant lands. At first sight no one saw that these two influences had anything in common, but with the growth of experience it is becoming clear not only that they are, in spirit, closely bound together, but also that their effects reach far beyond the places where they are professionally studied.

The first, a product of the West, is the form of scientific psychology associated with the names of Freud and Jung, which bases its research and practice on the idea of the unconscious mind and whose object is the purely practical one of healing the mentally sick. The second force is a product of the Orient, and is the wisdom of ancient India and China which has been revealed to us in its fullness only in comparatively recent years by the labors of scholars in Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, and Japanese. At first it was thought that the wisdom they revealed was of little more than academic interest, and had the misérable vanité des savants had its way the treasures of Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist thought would have remained as much a preserve for the merely erudite as Roman law and Egyptian hieroglyphics. It was soon recognized, however, that this treasure of spiritual literature was not only beautiful to read and consider; it was also seen to be of practical use. The ideas and precepts contained in it were not only as true for our own time and place as for the ancient East; they were also, if not entirely new to us, suggestive of new approaches and new ways of adjustment to problems very close to our hearts, and seemed to offer ways of amplifying the wisdom of the West.

An inquiry into the relations between Oriental religion and the psychology of the unconscious might be of interest to those who specialize in these things, but the object of this book is much wider. For neither was originally evolved for the express benefit of specialists; their purpose was and is to assist mankind as a whole, and because there are many close likenesses in their method of inquiry they have come to similar conclusions—or perhaps it would be better to say “working hypotheses.” This form of psychology has taught that man’s conscious self and its various faculties of reason and emotion are the outward appearance of a hidden, mental universe in which the true origin of his thoughts and deeds is to be found. In other words, it would say that man’s true self goes a long way beyond his conscious “ego” or “I” which is the unknowing instrument of the unconscious, or of “nature-in-man.” When the ego is unaware of this condition it arrogates to itself powers and capabilities which set it in conflict with the unconscious, and from this conflict arise the greater part of our psychological troubles. But when we become conscious of the limitations of the ego and understand its relation to the unconscious, then there is some chance of true mental health. This is strikingly similar to many Oriental teachings if we can substitute for the term “unconscious” or “nature-in-man” such Oriental terms as “Tao,” “Brahman,” and the like, which mean the (to us) unknown self of both man and life, or nature.

It will therefore be necessary to explore these similarities to some extent, but it is even more important to consider what the invasion of our civilization by these two forces can mean for ordinary men and women whose interest in such subjects is purely practical. For the number of people who have such an interest in either or both of these things is much greater than is generally realized. Moreover many religious cults of the present day are considerably influenced by Oriental ideas, especially the many forms of theosophy, occultism, and mysticism patronized by so many people whom the ordinary churches fail to satisfy. Therefore we have to ask just what contribution these two forces have to make to the happiness of the average human being who wishes to benefit from them without becoming a psychological or Oriental specialist.

Many people have tried to answer this question from the standpoint of psychology alone or Oriental philosophy alone. But few attempts have been made to explore the possibilities from the standpoint of both. Why should this be done? Because there are certain elements in Oriental philosophy which are utterly unsuited to Western life and these elements are not easily seen unless brought to the attention by a critical method which only this psychology of the unconscious can provide. Furthermore, psychology has much to gain from the ancient East. In the West psychology is a new science; in the East it is very ancient, and in fact it is not correct to speak of Oriental philosophy at all, for in no sense is it philosophy as we understand it. Essentially it is neither speculative nor academic; it is experimental and practical, and is much closer to psychology than philosophy.

But the need for a rapprochement between the two has for some time been recognized by the foremost living practitioner of this particular type of psychology—C. G. Jung of Zurich.¹

My experience in my practice [he writes] has been such as to reveal to me a quite new and unexpected approach to eastern wisdom. But it must be well understood that I did not have as a starting point a more or less adequate knowledge of Chinese philosophy. On the contrary, when I began my life-work in the practice of psychiatry and psychotherapy, I was completely ignorant of Chinese philosophy, and it is only later that my professional experiences have shown me that in my technique I had been unconsciously led along that secret way which for centuries has been the preoccupation of the best minds of the East.

Because of this admission many of his contemporaries have charged Jung with mysticism and departure from strict scientific method. Such charges, however, are based on a very understandable ignorance of the true character of Oriental psychology and of those aspects of it with which Jung has been concerned. These aspects have little or no connection with metaphysical speculation and religious doctrine as such; nor have they a connection with certain sensational forms of occultism so attractive to those who lack discrimination.

Our problem is therefore this: What do Eastern and Western psychology taken together have to say about the elusive and pressing subject of human happiness? For this subject is especially the province of psychology as distinct from what we usually understand as religion, or even philosophy. Often the purpose of religion is supernatural experience and philosophy is primarily interested in Truth, and their concern with happiness, in its profoundest sense, is indirect. This indeed is yet another reason why Oriental wisdom and the psychology of the unconscious have to be taken together. It is the only profitable way of considering the collective possibilities of psychology from the East and from the West. As we have seen, Oriental wisdom is psychology rather than philosophy and theology, and the schools of Freud and Jung are the only practical forms of Western psychology which have any relation to it. Unlike the older schools of psychology their object is not simply to observe, tabulate, and comment on the mental behavior of man. On the contrary, their method is empirical and its aim is to heal and give happiness of the deepest and most abiding kind. This too may be said of Oriental psychology, for the experience or state of mind at which it aims is a conscious harmony with life and nature both in external circumstances and in oneself.

The discovery of this kind of happiness is perhaps the chief desire of man, though it is not always expressed quite in that way, for to many the word “happiness” has unfortunate associations. But I use it here because it is the only ordinary, everyday word we have to denote an oddly elusive and mysterious type of experience, the kind of experience that runs away from you the moment you begin to look for it. That highly intensified form of happiness which is spiritual experience behaves in just the same way; it is like trying to catch soap with wet fingers. Oriental psychology is particularly well experienced in this elusive art—need one call to mind the popular Chinese proverb, “Softly, softly, catchee monkey”?—and it seems necessary that in considering a problem which occupies so many of our thoughts we should call upon the psychology of East and West alike.

The elusiveness of all kinds of happiness is common knowledge, for have we not the saying, “Those who search for happiness never find it”? This is especially true of that complete kind of happiness which does not depend on external events, which belongs to the very nature of the individual and remains unaffected by suffering. It persists through both joy and sorrow, being a spiritual undertone which results from the positive and wholehearted acceptance of life in all its aspects. This acceptance, known under many names in the psychology of religion, comes to pass when the individual, the ego, surrenders the conceit of personal freedom and power, realizing that it depends absolutely on that inner, unknown universe which is nature in the human soul. It only exists as an ego to fulfill the purpose of that universe—a purpose which, in one sense, it cannot help serving, but which, in another sense, it does not appreciate when laboring under the conceit of personal freedom and self-sufficiency. When, however, that conceit is abandoned an altogether new and more powerful freedom is known—the freedom of union or harmony between man and life.² But “freedom,” “union,” “harmony,” “life”—these are vague terms, and the things they signify seem to be as elusive as the terms are vague. To them also applies the old truism that those who search for them do not find them. Such ideas are the commonplaces of popular philosophy and psychology, but in this instance the commonplace is but the familiar entrance to a largely unknown and labyrinthine territory of the spirit. Less than a hair’s breadth divides the self-evident from the subtle, and the danger is that in ignoring something that lies right at our feet we may trip over it through overmuch concentration upon remote parts of the horizon or the heavens.

The very saying, “Those who search for happiness never find it,” raises a host of complications for it will be asked, “If happiness is not found by searching, how is it found?” to which might be added, “If happiness is found by not-searching, or by searching for something else, is not this merely an indirect way of searching for happiness, as it were by a trick or deceit? Surely the important thing is not the means employed, direct or indirect, but the motive for employing them.” There is still another preliminary question that might be asked on this point: “Would it not be true to say that one who does not search for happiness, either directly or indirectly, already has it? Therefore does not the saying that those who search for it do not find it amount to this: those who have it do not search for it; those who do not have it search for it, and thus cannot find it?” In other words, happiness is something which you either have or haven’t, and if you haven’t there is nothing you can do about it except wait for the Grace of God which is something quite outside your control.

Whatever the precise answers to these questions it is generally agreed that happiness cannot be had by any form of direct striving. Like your shadow, the more you chase it, the more it runs away. It is not surprising therefore that in both ancient religions and modern psychology man is advised to relax his self-assertive efforts and acquire a certain passivity of soul, encouraging thereby a state of receptivity or acceptance, which Christianity would describe as easing up the tumult of self-will in order that it may give place to the will of God. It is as if man were to empty his soul in order that the gifts of the spirit might pour in, on the principle that nature abhors a vacuum. But whether it is called the giving up of self, submitting to the will of God, accepting life, releasing the tension of striving for happiness or letting oneself go with the stream of life, the essential principle is one of relaxation.

“Relaxation” is a word often heard nowadays—advertisers; teachers of dancing, music, swimming, physical culture, riding, drama, and business efficiency; doctors; psychologists; and preachers all use it in their varying subjects, its popularity being increased by the nervous tension of modern life. It may be used to mean anything from reading a mystery story or the secret of a ballerina’s art to the way of life of a sage whose soul is in perfect harmony with the universe. For, like “happiness,” it is a word of many meanings and is used quite as casually, and this is not the only similarity between the two. Relaxation is something just as elusive as happiness; it is something which no amount of self-assertive striving can obtain, for as it is in a certain sense the absence of effort, any effort to achieve it is self-defeating.

These two words have many other equivalents, some of them much more high-sounding, and in writing and conversation men have exalted them to the skies and dragged them in the mud. There need, however, be no apology for using them, for they belong to common, everyday speech and even if countless associations make their meaning confused, confusion is worse confounded by introducing a new, exotic jargon when familiar and accepted words already exist. Even if they call too strongly to mind trite little mottoes on greeting cards or advertisements for someone’s cigarettes or patent medicine, such associations can be overshadowed by the knowledge that these same things, under perhaps different names, have been the chief preoccupation of the greatest minds on earth. Other words have had a like fortune, notably the word “love,” which men have made to mean everything from brute lust to God Himself. Such words may drop loosely from our tongues as if the things which they signify were as common as hats and houses; in a few senses they are, but in others they are things which, however common in our dreams, are little known and seldom found in reality. Often they seem quite close to us, as if we should come upon them round the next bend of the road, but this is their special peculiarity. In this they are like a carrot dangled before a donkey’s nose from a stick attached to his collar: if he chases it, it runs ahead of him; if he stands still, it remains where it is, so near and yet so far.

The fact that happiness is associated with relaxation does not mean that it is impossible to be happy in the midst of strenuous effort, for to be truly effective great effort must, as it were, revolve upon a steady, unmoving center. The problem before us is how to find such a center of relaxed balance and poise in man’s individual life—a center whose happiness is unshaken by the whirl that goes on around it, which creates happiness because of itself and not because of external events, and this in spite of the fact that it may experience those events in all their aspects and extremes from the highest bliss to the deepest agony.

If, therefore, as both Oriental and Western psychology suggest, the most profound happiness is to be found in a conscious union or harmony between the individual and the unknown Self, the unconscious, inner universe, it is clear that the problem has a number of peculiar difficulties. These arise for two principal reasons: first, that twentieth-century, civilized man is so centered in his own limited self-consciousness that he is quite unaware of its origin, of the directing forces that lie beneath it; and second, that the real problem is not to bring about a state of affairs which does not as yet exist, but to realize something which is already happening—“as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.” For although civilized man appears to live only from his self-conscious center, although he appears divorced from nature, from a spiritual point of view this is a mere conceit. In other words, at this very moment we have that union and harmony in spite of ourselves; we create spiritual problems simply through not being aware of it, and that lack of understanding causes and in turn is caused by the delusion of self-sufficiency. As Christianity would say, the Grace of God is always being freely offered; the problem is to get man to accept it and give up the conceit that he can save himself by the power of his ego, which is like trying to pick himself up by his own belt. This appears to be a vicious circle, the more so for people who cannot believe in the Christian God, having been deprived of their belief by science and rationality, which are essentially powers of self-consciousness. Both Oriental and Western psychology, however, state the problem in a rather different way. They say that if the ego can be made to look into itself, it will see that its own true nature is deeper than itself, that it derives its faculties and its consciousness from a source beyond individual personality. In other words, the ego is not really a self at all; it is simply a function of that inner universe. In much the same way, speech is a function of the human being, and it is possible that one given only the sense of hearing might think that the voice is the man. But in order to fulfill its function the ego must be self-conscious—a faculty at once valuable and dangerous, for if the ego is deceived by that faculty it falls into the vicious circle of trying to find happiness by its own power.

Vicious circles create ever-increasing complications when we attempt to unravel them in their own terms. Therefore in these days people are blinded to the spiritual problem by seeking its answer in the very complex, and even the psychology of the unconscious has not fully delivered itself from the thralldom of complications. But the breaking of the circle is simple if only we can adapt our minds to real simplicity, as distinct from triteness; for this the ego must yield its pride and be humble enough to see something lowly, something which the psychology of Asia has been teaching men to see for thousands of years.

In an altogether odd and apparently mysterious way the whole question of happiness in this sense is far from straightforward. It is unusually complicated because in fact it is unusually simple; its solution lies so close to us and is so self-evident that we have the greatest difficulty in seeing it, and we must complicate it in order to bring it into focus and be able to discuss it at all. This may seem a terrible paradox, but it is said that a paradox is only a truth standing on its head to attract attention. For there are certain truths which have to be stood on their heads before they can be noticed at all; in the ordinary way they are so simple that we fail to perceive them. Our own faces are an example of this. Nothing could be more obvious and self-evident than a man’s own face; but oddly enough he cannot see it at all unless he introduces the complication of a mirror, which shows it to him reversed. The image he sees is his face and yet is not his face, and this is a form of paradox. And here is the reason for all our vagueness and uncertainty concerning the things of the spirit, for if our eyes cannot see themselves, how much less can that something which looks through the eyes see itself.

Therefore we have to find some way of overcoming the difficulty, some way of understanding the most obvious thing in the world, a thing which is ordinarily overlooked because our thoughts and feelings are moving in much more complicated channels. To see it they have to be brought down to a level of humility, not fearful and kowtowing, but having the most direct and childlike openness of mind—“for He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek.” It is not surprising, therefore, that these deepest truths of the spirit are often missed by people of the most brilliant and penetrating intellect. This is not to say, however, that they will be any more readily understood by mere lack of intellect. Such insight comes neither with brilliance nor dullness of the mind, for the one is deluded with its own proud glittering and the other just fails to register. To understand such tremendous simplicity one has just to open the eyes of the mind and see; there is no secret about it, for it stands before us in open daylight, as large as life. In the words of the Chinese sage Tao-wu, “If you want to see, see directly into it; but when you try to think about it, it is altogether missed.”

Therefore when it is said that those who search for happiness never find it perhaps the truth is that there is no need to search for it. Like our own eyes, it may be going along with us all the time; only when we turn round to try to see it we make fools of ourselves. Thus a Chinese poem says:³

It is so clear that it takes long to see.

You must know that the fire which you are seeking

Is the fire in your own lantern.

And that your rice has been cooked from the very beginning.