The Source of Happiness Is Within You

It does not matter what is the nature of your activity, essentially you are in pursuit of happiness. But, this happiness has been so elusive.

“If my boss is yelling at me how do I be blissful? If my wife is not co-operating with me how do I be blissful? If my bank balance has become zero, how do I become blissful?” Yes, these are all life situations, now the question I would like to ask you is: for whatever reason, if outside situations have gone out of control and turned unpleasant for you, is it not all the more important that at least you keep your insides pleasant and wonderful? It does not matter how carefully you walk through this life, invariably you will step into some unpleasantness in the world. It is unavoidable. One way or the other we will step into it. So whenever we face unpleasant situations, is there any intelligence in this that you should turn your insides also unpleasant? Especially when the outside is unpleasant it is extremely important that you keep your insides pleasant.

How is this possible? If you look at your own life’s experience, whenever happiness happened to you, it does not matter what was the stimulus – maybe you watched the sun rise and you became very joyful, maybe you heard some music and you became very joyful, maybe you achieved some success and you were joyful – it does not matter what was the stimulus, but whenever happiness or joy happened to you it always bubbled up from within you. It never rained upon you from somewhere else.

So the very source of happiness is within you. Right now, the stimulus is outside. Now the choice is just this ¬ whether you want to keep the stimulus outside or you want to keep it inside. The source of happiness is within you but the switch for it is in somebody else’s hands. They can turn it on or turn it off. Anybody can make you happy, anybody can make you unhappy; any situation can hijack your happiness at any moment. If your very way of being is deeply enslaved to the external situation, this is the worst form of slavery. Somebody or something is deciding what should happen within you. This is the worst form of slavery.

Unless this slavery is abolished you will not see a better world. It does not matter how much technology, how much comfort, how much convenience is there, you will not see a better world unless you make better human beings. So one has to do a little bit of Inner Engineering to make this into a beautiful being.

Ranked amongst the fifty most influential people in India, Sadhguruis a yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author Sadhguru has been conferred the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India in 2017, the highest annual civilian award, accorded for exceptional and distinguished service.