I want again to impress upon you that taking interest in the
excellence of the Kingdom of Happiness is of the utmost importance. One
can see by your words, by the way you talk, whether you are living in
that Kingdom or not. I have watched you and myself to see whether we
live continuously in that Kingdom. By our attitude, and by the conduct
of our life, and by the desires that surge up, we can judge and discover
how far away we are from that abode of reality, or how far within it we
live.
If you are striving to live in that Kingdom, you conquer with
ease your special troubles, you forget your special burdens, your
special peculiarities, and you adopt the sorrows and sufferings of the
world. When you live in that Kingdom you cannot separate yourself from
your daily actions; in your thought, in your work, in everything that
you do, you are living in that Kingdom, hence you translate that Kingdom
into your own actions.
You can see how different are those people who have caught even a
fleeting glimpse of that Kingdom; how happy, how really balanced,
neither too emotional nor too intellectual. You can see by their
attitude, by their whole atmosphere that they know what it means to live
in that Kingdom.
It would be a thousand pities if we lived there only
at rare moments, only when we are meditating, only when we are alone.
You can only live in that Kingdom if your whole being throbs with
happiness. You must express this happiness in all your feelings, in all
the things that you do daily; not just live in that Kingdom for a few
brief moments like a little insect, and then vanish for the rest of the
day, to be born again on the morrow. This is what most of you are doing
-a word will betray the whole of your mind, the whole trend of your
outlook. I feel it is so important that you be really serious and
joyous, instead of struggling in vain and making vast useless efforts.
You must not have the idea that some privileged people alone are in that
Kingdom and the rest are not; as long as there is anyone who is
struggling, who has nobility of thought and emotion, be assured that he
is living in that Kingdom.
We must transform this center at Eerde, and the world at large, into a
veritable Kingdom of Happiness, and you must help because you are
living in it, because you are creating it, and you must give your
capacities, your sufferings, your happiness and pleasures and joys; you
must give the material with which we can build -every one of you must
help, not one individual alone. That is why you must be great, that is
why you must live and breathe only in that Kingdom of Happiness. Every
barrier, all pettiness in our outlook, must be destroyed. You do not
know how thrilling it is and how pleasurable and how exciting -it is
much more so than any cinema performance, than any game in the world.
Imagine for a moment that we are all gods; then we could all sit
around a table with Him. Think what we could do; think what it would
mean, if we were like the Buddha and His disciples. He was a
super-genius, the greatest of humans, and His disciples were also
geniuses, they were the great men of their day. And you can imagine the
delicious air, the atmosphere which those men, those gods, must have
created. Then go to the other extreme, and think of all the
personifications of Evil in the world -think of the time they would
have! They would be attempting to annihilate and confuse the work of the
gods. Whereas it is those like us who are between the two extremes, who
form the major portion of the world. When you have a precious vase or
jewel, you must find a safe in which you can guard it. And when He
comes, as He does come; when He is with us, as He is with us; we must be
the great men, and each one of us must struggle to reach the height of
perfection. And then if we are gathered together, you can imagine the
intense delight of that association; for we shall be companions with
nobility, with great artists, great creators, with the divinity that is
well-balanced in perfect physical bodies. There is nothing more
wonderful in the world than living with great men, with great ideas,
with men who are the principles themselves and not merely the outward
shell of some inner reality.
It is the person who has not tasted happiness, who has not suffered,
who has not had many experiences that cannot be companion with great men
nor even with great sinners. Such an individual can never help, neither
can he give nor enjoy that happiness which is lasting. Such an
individual can never know the difference between the beautiful, the
refined, and the coarse, the vulgar, and where judgment has no value.
For he is neither a creator nor a destroyer; he is merely carried along
by the whims and fancies of the world of mediocrity.
Because you desire not to belong to this world of mediocrity, you
must bear in mind that all that you think and feel matters vitally. For
this reason you must develop a fine physical body, with refined emotions
and a cultured mind. Because if you have not a perfect body, mind, and
emotions, you will disfigure the beauty and disturb the harmony of the
whole company of great men; you might be wise in your words, but your
outward expression, your personality, betrays your inner development
which is not perfect.
You must also have perfect cleanliness, perfect health; and you can
see the importance of this, you can see why you must have clean and
healthy bodies, why you must take care of them, as you take care of a
most precious jewel. It is the same with your emotions and your
thoughts. Ugly thoughts and ugly feelings, though you may not expose
them outwardly to your friends or your neighbors, yet they will betray
themselves in your looks, in your sayings, in your attitude, in your
outlook on life. I interest myself very often in looking at people's
faces, their gestures, their general deportment; and I can usually
distinguish the type to which each one belongs. I know these superficial
things may be deceptive, that one cannot always judge truly, but they
generally betray the inner character. You must therefore perfect the
body, the emotions, and the mind, before you can attain and live
eternally in that Kingdom of Happiness.
You must not conform without reason, without understanding, and fit
yourself into moulds. Can you imagine the sea, that mass of animation
and turmoil, ever fitting into a form? It will break all forms, nothing
can hold it, nothing can bind it. We all want to fit into forms because
it is so much easier, so much more comfortable, means so much less
struggle. To those who are not enslaved by forms, who are living in this
Happiness, in this Kingdom that has no boundaries, to them the thing of
value, the thing of beauty, is this boundless, limitless expanse. You
must realize that if you would really live in the presence of great men,
you must develop an outlook which cannot be bound, which cannot be
limited. You will realize in what great ecstasy you can live -in what
balanced ecstasy- if you constantly imagine that you are always living
in that Kingdom and that you are with great men. How many of you are
capable of being with a great man, with a great genius, with Him who is
the embodiment of this Kingdom of Happiness? Very, very few indeed. And
you can see the anguish, the pain it must cause to such a person that
there should be only two or three companions, instead of the entire
world with Him, working with Him, delighting with Him.
I want also to talk about affection, because I do not think you
realize what force, what vitality, true affection, well-balanced
affection, gives. I am using the word balanced because you generally
find that those who possess tremendous feelings of affection are without
strength, without control, without poise. These feelings are like
water, which, if poured out too freely, inundates and overflows, and has
no lasting effect. That is why you must have balance. If you have
well-balanced affection -not sentimentality, not mere gush but that
eternal thing which we call love, then you begin to lose the separate
self. Each one of you must have felt that affection which bubbles, which
expands, which is ever growing; and it becomes wider and wider, so that
you feel this love not only for a special few, but for the whole
neighborhood. Such an affection makes you forget, annihilate, that self
which is the root of all sorrow. That is why a person who has not that
immense love becomes personal, talks, interferes, gossips, does all
those small things which a great man, a real god, would not dream of
doing. The moment you forget yourself, the self which is in each one of
you, and identify that with the Great Self of the world, then you are
living in that Kingdom, then you want to bring the whole world to live
with you.
At present it may be said about each one of you that you are making a
feverish attempt, rather than that you have accomplished a deed. You
are still struggling and struggling, but you have not attained. You do
not risk, you do not dare, and you do not plunge into the ocean; but you
are like the child at the sea, who hesitatingly puts a foot into the
water and draws it back immediately at the first chilling touch of the
cold sea. If you slip, never mind -you will rise up again; if you swim,
you will get there. But you must not hesitate all day long as to whether
you should attempt to reach the further shore; you must take the plunge
because your Voice urges you. And if you do not hear that Voice, you
should be metaphorically sore all the day; you should have not a single
moment of peace, of tranquillity, of happiness, if that Voice does not
urge you onwards. You should go towards the source of things; and when
once you reach that source, you become the god, the superman, the
master.
The Buddha, the Christ, and other great Teachers of the world, went
to the source of life. They became the Master Artists. Once knowing the
nature and the supreme greatness of the Source, They became Themselves
that Source, the Path, and the Embodiment of Wisdom and Love. This
should be our purpose. You cannot all be the Buddha or the Christ, but
you can all have the same dreams, the longings, the desires, the
aspirations. When once you have realized the glory of Their Kingdom,
then you can work out for yourself along what particular line of
creation you will express your vision of that eternal glory. Then you
will be the greatest of writers, or the greatest of artists, or the
greatest of scientists; then you will have the tongue of the learned.
There lies the thrill of spirituality, the only ambition in the world
that it is worthwhile possessing. You must be independent -not only
emotionally and intellectually- but also of all physical entanglements.
This is the only way to attain the greatest happiness -by gaining
complete liberty in thought, in emotions, and in all things physical.
This is the only way to live in the Kingdom of Happiness.
