What is happiness?
Herbert Vollmann
A considerable number of writings and books are aimed at showing people the way to happiness. In many, happiness is represented as only a very ordinary social and material advantage.
Above all, people strive to achieve a position which, apart from satisfying the craving for prominence, brings with it earthly wealth. The road to happiness leads in this case only as far as the earthly senses and feelings are able to perceive it.
Social mobility is understandable and commendable; so is a striving to establish a sound material foundation for one’s earthly existence. But this goal is by no means one with happiness, that real and true happiness which has its beginning only in understanding and experiencing spiritual events, and yet at the same time permits life on earth to be fully and wholly enjoyed, indeed which alone makes it possible to savour earthly pleasures in pure joy to the full.
In Creation, development always takes place from above downwards. Hence “earthly happiness” too is only a result of the supra-earthly percep- tion of happiness that can be experi- enced consciously already on earth.
But it cannot be attained by intellectual training or by auto-suggestion. True, each one is the architect of his fortune, yet it is wrong to believe that the power to influence lies in man himself, that he is able of his own power to cure himself of illnesses as well as to forge his own happiness.
The idea of auto-suggestion is in opposition to God, who alone is the Power from whose radiation Creation came into being, and with it also man and his continuous existence. We are in every respect dependent on the spiritual power streaming into Creation from God; we must submit to it, otherwise it will turn against one and bring about one’s downfall.
This spiritual power is the material that we need to build our happiness.
Abd-ru-shin gives in his work, “In the Light of Truth”, two prayers which are a strong aid to evoking and growth of that longing needed to connect with the helping and furthering rays from the Power of God.
How light it must become around a human spirit, how liberated it will feel when it surrenders completely to the words given as morning prayer:
“Thine am I, Lord! To Thee alone in gratitude I dedicate my life; O graciously accept this my volition and grant me the help of Thy Power this day! Amen.”
For him who absorbs these words and perceives them vividly, the day’s work will be blessed from morning till late at night. They will resound in him constantly like a gentle exhorta- tion or a quiet, serene happiness. There is a sacred power surging and weaving in these words, and whoever absorbs the words with his spirit also absorbs the power.
As in the morning and during the day, so also in the evening the same power is available for connection with man, if he longs for it. He is given help for this by the evening prayer:
“O Lord, Who art enthroned above all the Worlds, I beseech Thee: let me rest in Thy Grace this night! Amen.”
Sleep will have an invigorating, refreshing and calming effect on a human being who takes over the experience of this prayer with him into another world, a dream world, which is not a dream world but only appears as such because it cannot be perceived with the earthly senses. Every human spirit can cross its threshold when the brain is put to rest through sleep, and thus remains disconnected.
The evening prayer is to help towards this. During sleep the human spirit can come in contact much more intimately and effectively with various currents, and even receive spiritual warnings, or also sudden solutions to certain questions and problems. Only the brain, the intellect, sleeps; the spirit is awake, and blissfully yields to strengthening influences, provided no excessive intellectual activity makes itself noticeably felt across and beyond the threshold of sleep. But the possibility of preventing this is given by deeply perceiving the evening prayer.
Such prayers lead man to the refreshing Spring of Living Water, which need only be tapped in order to drink from it, and then to regain health in soul and body. The awakening human spirit, even the poorest and weakest, can receive strength from these prayers to work its way upwards, spiritually and in an earthly sense, to an unprecedented height, where it will find that for which all true seekers have yearned for a long time: “supreme happiness” – which is equivalent to fulfilment of the vow:
“Thine am I, Lord! To Thee alone in gratitude I dedicate my life! Amen.”
