As far as possible, you must always try to simplify your life. Simplicity of life is the true secret of happiness. Unhampered experience of the joy which lies within comes out of simplicity. Therefore, your life should never be complicated with too many things. Due to too many things, due to too many desires, modern man unfortunately has missed this joy. You have seen the bright posters printed by Pan-American Air Lines, TWA, etc. The “paradise” which they feature, for a holiday, is not in metropolitan, highly urbanized America, but in the South Sea Islands. Why? Not because they have drive-in theatres, barbecue hamburger stands or race tracks—none of these things are there. Such places rarely offer the ordinary conveniences, yet one readily admits the idea that there is a “paradise” there, because one knows of the natural simplicity of those places. The Hawaiian native always sings and dances. He is comparatively carefree and filled with the happiness of simplicity and contentment. We envy him and even try to imitate him, at least for the time being, by leaving all distractions and going away to his place. In simplicity, man has the key to happiness.

Unwillingly it is that modern man allows his life to become so complicated. He knows that simplicity is the secret of happiness. “But I can’t help it!”: saying thus, he weeps. He tries to forget even the wonderful paradise. He takes tranquillizers. He goes into a saloon or a bar. He does something—anything—to make him forget the total inadequacy of his present condition.

Have the capacity to derive joy out of whatever situation you may find yourself in. Assert: “The situation has not the power to alter my experience. My experience is alterable only to the degree to which I allow it to be altered. If I say ‘No’, then I can have the same peace and happiness within no matter how the situation changes, It can change every hour, yet I can be changeless”. So much blessedness will come if you have simplicity and contentment. You will find, first of all, that you are free from debts. This nightmare of instalments, of credit plans, that comes month after month, year after year, will be gone. Some people do not have any freedom. They just slave away for those various companies to which they owe instalments. Right to the end of their lives they go on paying instalments on the house, on the car, on the radio, on the TV, on the refrigerator, on the washing machine, and on heaven knows how many gadgets that have all been invented!

A simple and a contented life depends more upon God-made things than upon man-made objects. There are hundreds of things that can fill you with happiness if only you have the eyes to see. When you get up in the morning, you can step out of your room and look at the dawn and be happy. When the sun rises, still more happiness. When you hear the birds warbling, even more happiness. When you feel the cool breeze blowing—well! there is no end to happiness. Know the technique for deriving happiness from these simple things—from the dawn, the sunrise, the birds, the laughter of children, the beautiful blue sky, the white clouds slowly sailing like majestic ships, little dancing flowers. They can inspire you if only you know how to derive joy. If you discover this secret, there will be no end to your happiness.

Also, learn to experience joy from the happiness of others. Instead of becoming envious, become filled with joy whenever you see others happy. Feel happy by beholding the happiness of others. Train yourself to derive happiness out of bringing happiness into the lives of others. Learn the technique of getting joy by making others joyful. Your happiness will multiply a thousandfold. At the present moment, it is circumscribed by the experiences undergone by yourself alone. But if you begin to get joy from all others, then you will be happy perpetually. Everyone’s happiness will become a part of your happiness and will go to multiply it and add to it.

Try to derive joy out of the beauty of all things, not just from those things which you possess. In this way you will develop an impersonal capacity for happiness. Without touching a cent in your pocket, you will realize an illimitable treasure of happiness which lies strewn all around you and everywhere about you. When we realize the many things that God has given for which we have reason to be happy, the whole day will not be long enough for us to be thanking Him. Untold treasure He has given. Just consider your own body, your own self. You have two sound eyes. Supposing someone says, “All right. Give me one of your eyes and I will give you twenty thousand dollars”. Which person in a sane condition of mind would comply with such a request? Supposing you were offered one hundred thousand dollars for your tongue—would you give it? So, that means that you have things that are worth millions and millions of dollars! And yet there is mopping and fretting for a few things which we do not have, not realizing the untold worth of the precious things which we already have. There are some people who are unfortunately deprived of these things. Compared to them, how fortunate you are! If you simply reflect on how much God has given you, your whole vision of life will become changed. Know these little secrets. They are little, but they are very important. They can mean the whole difference between darkness and light.

Learn to accept the experiences that come through life. There is no use fretting and fuming and making yourself miserable over them. You perhaps may just add more misery to the misery which these experiences bring. Have calm and wise resignation. There is one Supreme Intelligence that is guiding the lives of men here and these experiences that come from that Source, learn to accept like human beings. Endure the little troubles that come through life. If there is a little sorrow, endure it and learn to take away its sting. Thus you may enrich your life out of those very experiences which you find painful and unpleasant.

Be friendly to all. Towards your superiors, have an attitude of complaisance. Do not be full of fear and timidity and nervousness in their presence. That can also rob you of your joy. Be serene. With your own equals, be friendly. Feel oneness with all. Towards those who are inferior to you in status, in health, in strength, in beauty, have an attitude of kindness, love and compassion. To those who are troublesome, wicked, unpleasant and nasty, be indifferent. Do not work yourself up into a state of irritation or annoyance or unfriendliness or hatred. Just ignore the wicked. These four attitudes will provide you with a means of not being put out—complaisance towards superiors; friendliness and brotherhood towards your equals; kindness and compassion towards those who are inferior to you; and a perfect indifference to all those who are inimical to you, who are troublesome, nasty, evil or wicked. All these four categories of people you are bound to encounter in life.

Above all, do not give way to anger. Anger, more than any other single factor in this world, destroys happiness. It can totally wreck the entire happiness of a home. If one member of the household has a temper and gives vent to his anger, he can destroy the happiness of all members of the home—even the neighbours may be affected!

Maintain a rational restraint over the senses. The urge toward carnal enjoyment is a natural part of the human being, but it pertains only to the mental-physical part of your nature. We have to recognize this as such. However, it is the prerogative of every individual being endowed with high intelligence to hold a rein over the senses. That way the senses cannot destroy happiness. If they are allowed to hold a sway over you, then you cannot have any happiness. This is the Law of the Universe.

Base your life upon virtue, truth and purity. If purity is always your guiding rule, guilt complexes and neuroses will go and psychiatrists will be unnecessary for you. Happiness fills those who base their lives upon virtue. Virtue is a direct emanation from the Divine, just as happiness is a quality of the Divine. Although it may be difficult in the beginning, yet, how many headaches would you save yourself if you would base your life upon virtue and truth! If you tell a lie, to support it, you have to tell a chain of lies. Sticking to truth takes away from you all anxiety and a thousand pin-pricks. A life of truth and purity is a life devoid of many of the factors that contribute to the misery and unhappiness of the modern world.

Even more important, keep close to that great Inner Source of all happiness, all joy, all bliss! Call It by whatever name you choose—I do not want to give It a name. Make That the centre of your being. That is the Eternal Thing that supports your life. That is your alpha and omega, your all-in-all, your supporting substratum and your destination and goal. Keep close to It by developing love. Love the Supreme! Always remember the Supreme! Great ones who have become absorbed forever in the Supreme Blessed State of happiness and bliss have told us one great secret which provides us with an unfailing method of attaining happiness. That secret is the Divine Name. They said, “Practise the Divine Name. The Name of the Supreme and the Supreme are not two; they are one. If you have the Divine Name within you, you have the Supreme within you”. This is a great spiritual truth. This is a great fact If you remember this fact and try to make the Divine Name your own, if you always repeat the Divine Name, always invoke the Divine Name, always fill yourself with the current of the Divine Name, then happiness and blessedness will be present with you always.

Happiness, in the truest sense of the term, is that changeless experience right within you. It is that awareness which, being present, enables you to derive sweetness out of all other things; and which, being absent, deprives you of all the sweetness in anything. That is the most important fact.

It works like the figure “1” in mathematics. If “1” is there, you may add to it any number of zeroes; each zero progressively increases the value of the number enormously; the zeroes then gain great significance. But if “1” is not there, all the zeroes are just ciphers without any value of their own whatsoever. Similarly, all things gain the capacity of giving happiness only in the presence of the ONE BEING. Make Him the centre of your life. Make Him the most important and paramount thing in your life. Then you will never be taken away from your happiness even for a single second. No one will be able to take you away from It, for you are yourself in that Happiness. When a fish is taken out of a little bowl and released into the ocean, it swims about anywhere and always remains in the vast ocean. So, from the tiny bowl of deluded life where we have paid this undue attention to external objects, let us lift ourselves out and enter into that vast Truth. In God lies happiness, and within me He is, and He and I are one.

Within lies the perennial Fount of Eternal Happiness. May you live your life in this Truth. Then I will assure you that your life will become a stream of happiness. May your life thus flow forth not as a vale of tears but as a perennial stream of infinite happiness. This is my prayer: may God give you the strength and the inspiration to blossom out into that simplicity and contentment, that shining and radiant virtue, that serene state of detachment, that friendliness with all beings, out of which this great gift that is waiting to be bestowed upon you will become your own. May your life become radiant with joy.