The Music of the Soul

Divine Life Society Publication: The Path Beyond Sorrow by Sri Swami Chidananda

It is peace of mind which is the condition prerequisite for the experience of true happiness. Is that not more important than the removal of a little restlessness and craving, a little agitation caused by desire? Which is the more important? You may say: “If desires come, we have to satisfy them. That is the way to remove them and that is the way to get pleasures”. So saying, you remove the ‘fly’ of desire rather than protect the ‘grandmother’ of true peace of mind by which alone you can find happiness. Real happiness comes out of peace. When the mind is tranquil and serene, peace, bliss wells up from within you. You do not have to manufacture happiness, for it does not lie outside of you. Happiness is not in changeful, perishable objects which are merely material. True happiness is right here where you are sitting. You are yourself happiness. Happiness is your essential nature. That aspect of your being which completely transcends your sense nature and your mental desire-nature—that third aspect of your true being, your real nature, is, in one word, bliss—pure bliss. If you want me to define what you are, I say you are pure, unalloyed, absolute bliss. That is the stuff of the soul. The soul is bliss; it is ecstasy, peerless joy. Even as this table is made of wood, even as your very clothes are made of wool or cotton, even as the very stuff of candy is sugar—the very stuff and fabric of your true nature, the true “I” deep within you, in the very centre of your consciousness, that is bliss. You are your Self, the Atma. You are Spirit, a never-ending, perennial fountain of spontaneous, self-existent joy and happiness. You are not this body and mind and intellect.

The East views the individual being in a totally different light from the West. The West says, “Man is an animal endowed with a superior faculty called intelligence”. The East says, “Man is a glorious, ever-perfect spiritual entity, full of light, full of bliss, and possessing an inferior faculty called intelligence or mind which is his servant, which is his instrument”. Mind is but the medium that God has given you so that the joy, the beauty and perfection of your Self may be expressed, unfolded, made manifest upon this earth-plane, but you have made a travesty of your life. The normal human being lives a life of prostitution, by which I mean, he totally forgets and neglects his glorious spiritual nature and prostitutes all his energies in satisfying the animal within him. The pattern of his whole life is just a constant effort to satisfy the sensual urges of the animal within him. Nice things to collect, nice things to wear, nice things to see, nice things to enjoy—pleasure, pleasure, pleasure—and happiness is destroyed, as it were, in a constant round of pleasures. There is so much noise through the tumult of the senses that the music of the soul, though it is always there, just gets killed completely.

The great joy of my message to you is: nothing can destroy this happiness, because it is imperishable. In your true nature you are indestructible, you are imperishable. So, the joy that you are is also imperishable, indestructible; nothing can touch it. No sorrow can penetrate that exalted realm where you dwell as pure bliss, right within the very centre of your being, the innermost core of your consciousness where dwells the true “I”.

Excerpts from: The Music of the Soul - The Path Beyond Sorrow by Sri Swami Chidananda