The Secret of Being Happy : 8.

There is something very interesting behind us, something impossible of abolition and destruction. However much we may deny, there is something behind every kind of denial. Even if we think we are dead, there is a thought of being dead which cannot die. So there is a deathless, unabolishable, conscious meaning behind the transitory values of earthly quantities. When everything goes, something will remain. That is our friend. When all friends desert us, one friend will not leave us. Who is that friend? If the whole world goes, naturally human beings also go, and we cannot have human friends. Then who is that friend that is left? It is that thing which remains as the conscious contemplator of all these sources of everything.

It is impossible to imagine what this is because we have no time to think all this. We are busy with quantities, calculations, counting, measurements. These take all our lives. Where is time for us to think of this fundamental vital value which is keeping us alive in this world? This is the hope that is in our hearts. Even if we are in the worst of predicaments, we have a hope, “Tomorrow I shall be better.” But who gives us this hope? Not the things, because they are untrustworthy. Not one thing in the world can be trusted for long, and yet we have a hope, “I shall succeed.” Who told us that we will succeed? Something tells us from within. 

That something within us, which we are unable to see and yet are accepting unwittingly, is our real friend. This friend of ours is inseparable from us. It is our bosom friend, our alter ego. This friend alone will help us when we are in agony. When we are thrown to the winds and nobody wants us, this friend will come and help us, and nobody else. We have no father, no mother who will help us always, no friends, no relations, no riches. We cannot trust even the health of our own body, such is the untrustworthy nature of things. And yet we struggle and stress and work hard for something, we know not what.

Swami Krishnananda

To be continued   ....