By Abdu Rafiu
Everyone knows when he is happy; each person feels it to his finger tips. We also know when we feign happiness but keep a straight face, perhaps out of courtesy before our peers and acquaintances. The warmth and glow of happiness and the concomitant aura can’t but envelope the happy man. It streams out and impacts upon bystanders. A happy man can sometimes want to fly and hit the high Heavens. The question would then be to ask, what is this force that impels and sets in motion what radiates out to give rise to inner warmth and glow? The feeling can only go to show that happiness has a consistency even if it is immeasurable in its tangibility. As I did say in the contemplation of last week, “Happiness can be felt, but cannot be touched or quantified. It is a tangibility of a consistency with its radiations manifesting in powerful waves. These waves of the experiencing give rise to warmth of the soul; and also impinge on the physical body thereby making the physical body to glow. It is a tangibility of a consistency other than material, but spiritual content experienced in the core of man.”
No one can be in doubt that material nourishment by way of good food, balanced diet and appropriate ointment rubbed on the body can bring about body glow. This is universally regarded as emblematic of good living. Where spiritual nourishment is deficient or lacking, however, the man, despite a glowing outward appearance, shortens his life. This is because the balance that inheres in the magnetic union of soul and body brought about by their exchange of radiations is disrupted.
It is of necessity to have knowledge of who we are, what the purpose of our sojourn here on earth is and what mechanisms, automatic, consistent and incorruptible in their eternal workings govern our lives. How much validity is there in the postulations by Plato and Aristotle when they hammered on “the cultivation of the highest virtues within oneself” as the gateway to happiness. For certainty and convincing evaluation, victorious conviction that is, of the validity of the pronouncements of renowned philosophers and thinkers of the ages, it will be essential to reach for the rays beamed In the Light of Truth to get to the heart of the matter. As I did reflect last week wondering why since there is such all-pervasive sorrow in nearly all lands, in spite of all efforts, within national frontiers and international organisations, it has still not been possible to find the true causes and answers to the absence of happiness. What is the truth of the matter? In other words, we must first understand the nature of truth itself for the rays of light it beams to be grasped.
In arguments, in conflicts, in ordinary conversations, and in wars, revolutions and political violence, we ask for the truth of the matter in issue. The conviction here is that all we need to know is the truth and the problem would go away and relief would ensue. The sensing is that the truth is all — it is above arguments, conflicts, wars, revolutions and political storms and all those things that drive fear into man or engender unhappiness. It is the gauge against which all else is measured and determined. Its attributes must, therefore, be changelessness, consistency, simplicity, wholesomeness and perfection. It must be eternal, universal and accessible to all irrespective of their colour or race, social standing, financial stability and educational background since the poor and the ignorant are also perplexed about absence of happiness; they too ask for the truth of the matter. Since it is men who engage in wars, in conflicts, and revolutions and cause unhappiness, disillusionment, hopelessness, economic distress, that truth must be outside of them for everybody to confidently subject himself to the scrutiny of truth. Since human beings suffer from all manner of inadequacies and weaknesses, they cannot be expected to carry all the truth.
The truth must also be living. If it were dead, it would have been discarded. Since it is that truth we all wait for to settle all matters, hang all subjects, minor as well as big, that truth must then have knowledge, immeasurable knowledge, inexhaustible, compelling — and for all times. It needs no argument to confidently assert that such knowledge cannot be found among human beings. It is to be expected that it cannot be found among animals since men are “higher animals.” It means that truth should come from a higher source. Since it is in truth alone that such knowledge can be found, and that truth is outside of human beings, it follows that all else has failed, and we logically have no choice but to turn to truth to help us out – to reveal the causes of travails and tribulations in the world, which are assailing our world unceasingly, and solution to them. What does that truth have to say about sorrow, happiness and joy, for example? What in the light of that truth is true joy?
If we accept it, that this truth contains all knowledge and has answers to all problems, we will then need to know how to recognise that truth for the purpose of application — to bring relief and succor to all troubled lands and peoples and individual souls.
To recognise the truth, we may begin to observe certain phenomena around us, which human beings can do nothing about, collectively, severally or individually. That man is unable to do anything about them means they are outside of him and his control. As science has discovered for example, matter cannot be destroyed. Its disintegration only returns to its beginning, back to radiations from which it precipitated and after cooling, condensed and by which it is held. What is called matter is condensed radiations. It means that the end must go back to the beginning. Thus, there is the Law of the Cycle, the Law of Returns that stipulates that what a person sends out is what returns to him. What he sows is what he reaps. There is that Law which ensures that what are similar pull together, whether man or animal, reptiles or birds. Does this not hold the key to conflicts in nations, in societies and homes all over the world when men, believing themselves wiser than the Creator, disarrange the order emplaced by the Law? Does the problem not lie in the forcible configuration of dissimilar entities? There is the Law of Gravitation which works from above downwards, ensuring that what is heavy sinks and what is light rises until it finds its level and floats.
These are automatic self-acting, indeed self-enforcing mechanisms which have, over millennia, been recognised but ignored and scorned for the same length of time. In their consistency, regularity, immutability and incorruptibility, they have become recognisable as Laws. All laws express the will of the law maker whose primary aim is to ensure order and harmony as well as development. It follows that similarly Natural Laws variously called the Laws of Creation, Spiritual Laws or Divine Laws, and to lawyers, Laws of Natural Justice, must express the Will of the Maker of Creation, the Creator of the Universe. Any wonder, therefore, that they are so perfect, immutable and uniform in all Creation, and just, nourishing as well as furthering development.
In a new but higher knowledge mediated to mankind on earth today, we are able to avail ourselves the truth of all matter, of life and existence. The Truth that these Laws are the underlying principles of all happenings. We also talk about the spirit of the Law which means the Will of the Law Maker expressed by the Law. The Maker of Divine Laws, the Laws of Nature or of Creation cannot but be the Almighty Creator. The Laws express His Will. The Laws are thus His Will made manifest, His Spirit in activity, the Spirit that moved over waters — the Holy Spirit, the Holy Will of God.
The recognition of the Laws helps our recognition of Truth — that which is, that which can say I am; the only changeless Reality. Thus the Holy Spirit is Truth embodied through whom Creation issued and Who maintains it, the Law and Life Himself in Activity, the Holy Will anchored in the Laws. In Him and in these Laws alone lie order, harmony, abundance, peace, joy and happiness. Any deviation from them must bring the opposite — disorder, disharmony, emptiness, famine, joylessness, storms, conflicts and wars. Thus as the Lord Jesus Christ said: “…if you offend the Holy Spirit, there will never be forgiveness.” That is, if one breaks the Laws, the consequences are irrevocable, they must return to him, the law breaker. The Holy Spirit is therefore Justice. There is no activity in life that is without principles which must be observed if success and joy are to be ensured. The principles are derived from the Laws.
What then is happiness? What then is the origin of happiness and its opposite number, sorrow? Of the concept of the two, like many others, as I pointed out last week, there is as yet no consensus. From the foregoing, that is not to say they defy an answer under the Rays of Truth — In the Light of Truth. Indeed, the craving for and acquisition of political power may be all that make some happy, some other people derive their joy from drinking and smoking. Others still get their kicks from gambling, rowing, fishing, watching a game of football, playing squash, unwinding in the forest, in the woods; some by the sea side or spending vacation visiting the zoo. Still some men are happy making other people sad. Stinkingly rich people have been known to be very sad people which suggests that contrary to widespread opinion, money on its own cannot create joy, happiness and fulfillment. At best, it brings pleasure. Nor does the craving for fame, for public acknowledgement which is the preoccupation of many fetch one anything beyond applause in the public square and town halls.
We may invite ourselves into contemplating what happens to one when he unjustly gives an innocent boy knocks on the head. There is heaviness that settles on the soul of the assailant. There is a pang on his conscience resulting from a dross deposit. That heaviness is tangibility on the spirit. On the contrary, if one does good to a fellowman, there is a feeling of upliftment. One feels light. This means that the way to happiness is in doing good — doing good according to Law. It certainly cannot be goodness that gives pleasure, but not benefit. In India, the story was once told of a multi-billionaire, who, bored with the emptiness in his life, left home and family to become a Buddhist monk in search of inner deepening and happiness which all his wealth and fame could not fetch. Happiness, as it can be gleaned from the foregoing therefore, as well as the unfolding of virtues, talents and abilities, lies in the activities of the spiritual core of man. It lies in the pulsating radiations of the spirit freed from the weight of dross and which gains in radiance through heeding the Laws of Creation which bear the Will of the Creator of all, the Almighty God.
The Guardian
