| Everyone seeks happiness, but the quest for it
is, ironically, the cause of much unhappiness. Desiring
happiness as an end in itself, say mental health
experts, can keep it out of our reach. The only
way to achieve real happiness, some teach, is by
making others happy.
In the January/February issue of Psychology Today,
psychologist Steven Reiss suggests that we can
achieve happiness by clarifying our values and
then living accordingly. We doom ourselves to
misery, he says, when we confuse happiness with
fleeting pleasures. After surviving a life-threatening
illness, Reiss began to take a new look at the
meaning of life. Based on a survey of more than
6,000 people, he offers insights about what it
really takes to be happy:
Harvard social psychologist William McDougall
wrote that people can be happy while in pain and
unhappy while experiencing pleasure. To understand
this, two kinds of happiness must be distinguished:
feel-good and value-based. Feel-good happines
is sensation-based pleasure. ...Since it is ruled
by the law of diminishing returns, the kicks get
harder to come by. This type of happiness rarely
lasts longer than a few hours at a time.
Value-based happiness is a sense that our lives
have meaning and fulfil some larger purpose. It
represents a spiritual source of satisfaction,
stemming from our deeper purpose and values....Since
this form of happiness is not ruled by the law
of diminishing returns, there is no limit to how
meaningful our lives can be....
How can we repeatedly satisfy our most important
basic desires and find value-based happiness?
Most people turn to relationships, careers, family,
leisure and spirituality to satisfy their most
important desires....
Value-based happiness is the great equalizer
in life. You can find value-based happiness if
you are rich or poor, smart or mentally challenged,
athletic or clumsy, popular or socially awkward.
Wealthy people are not necessarily happy, and
poor people are not necessarily unhappy. Values,
not pleasure, are what bring true happiness, and
everybody has the potential to live in accordance
with their values.
In the same issue of Psychology Today, well-known
therapist Albert Ellis insists that we manufacture
much of our own misery and, more important, that
we have the power, through rational thinking,
to improve our outlook and feelings.
Happiness is not the same as satisfaction of
desire. While we stake our happiness on getting
what we desire, we remain the sport of circumstances.
Most of us are not aware that it is only in their
own nature that true happiness may be found. There
is within each one a place of peace—a place
unaffected by the turbulence and trials of life—but
instead of turning within, we are forever searching
for happiness outside of us. That which we truly
are, that which forever stands, that which forever
knows, partakes eternally of Bliss—the essence
of happiness. A true philosophy and a new interpretation
of our existence has to be looked for.
In this age, the state nearest to happiness is
attained by those wholly devoted to right action.
Duty, selflessness, is the "royal talisman,"
the final panacea. "If you can do no more
than duty," we have been assured, "it
will bring you to the goal."
It is recognized today that human rights inhere
in every human being everywhere and are an international
responsibility. Yet too many people in too many
countries are still being denied these rights.
Koichiro Matsuura, Director General of UNESCO,
writes editorially in Unesco Sources January-February
2001):
The persistent violation of basic human rights
anywhere on this earth effectively means that
they are being denied to us all: because human
rights are universal. They cannot be divided.
Wherever injustice degrades an individual, or
group, of our human family, it necessarily affects
us all.
States have committed themselves legally to respect,
defend and promote human rights. But human rights
depend on each and all. Concerned individuals,
non-governmental organizations, institutions and
civil society at large, need to help make human
rights a living reality. Every one of us is a
sentinel.
Today we consider extreme poverty, gender discrimination,
social and cultural oppression to be offences
comparable to the violation of freedom of thought
and expression. We also regard the denial of education,
of a decent standard of living, of individual
integrity and social dignity, of individuals'
right to develop their creative potential fully
as unacceptable outrages that must be addressed.
The achievement of these rights necessarily brings
to the fore the need to respect further rights.
All rights are, in the deepest sense, interlinked.
Poverty breeds the despair on which hatred and
violence thrive. An adequate livelihood goes far
to encourage tolerance—hence respect for
the rights of others. Education is an eloquent
case in point. Education in itself recognized
as a human right must asolutely be made available
to all, with no restriction based on gender, class,
ethnic group, or creed. Moreover, it is through
education that each and every one of us may from
childhood on acquire wider awareness of universal
human rights and abiding respect and tolerance
for others.
Human rights are only effective if people know
about them; many still don't. Education can change
that. In this United Nations Decade of Human Rights
Education, attempts are being made to promote
a genuine culture of human rights through a variety
of educational programmes.
The human rights struggle, based as it is on
the inherent dignity of man, irrespective of race,
colour, sex, language, religion, political or
other opinion, national or social origin, birth
or other status, comes within the wider purview
of the Theosophical Movement. Mankind is of one
species and forms one indivisible whole. If the
concept of human rights is not to remain a mere
abstraction, it needs to be demonstrated on logical,
philosophical, metaphysical, and even scientific
grounds that all human beings have spiritually
and physically the same origin that mankind is
essentially of one and the same essence and that
essence is one. Nothing, therefore, can affect
one nation or one man without affecting all other
nations and all other men.
Just how old the universe is, still remains a
matter of debate among astronomers and many conflicting
theories have been advanced. Now, using a new
chronometer, an international research team estimates
the universe to be at least 12.5 billion years
old (Science News, February 10). Timothy Beers
of Michigan State University in East Lansing explains
that the universe must be older than its oldest
stars, which formed one to two billion years after
the Big Bang. It is believed that the more precisely
astronomers can determine the age of these stars,
the more closely they can arrive at the age of
the universe. Various methods are being tried
to date these most ancient stars formed from nonradioactive
elements.
The Secret Doctrine (II, 68-70) gives figures
from an ancient Brahmanical calendar—figures
that are not fanciful, but founded upon actual
astronomical calculations. According to the esoteric
doctrine, the age of our solar system alone is
1,955,884,687 years (this was in 1887). As for
the whole Universal System, or "Brahma's
age," it requires 15 figures to express its
duration! "As we are now only in the Kali-yug
of the twenty-eighth age of the seventh manvantara
of 308,448,000 years, we have yet sufficient time
before us to wait before we reach even half of
the time allotted to the world." (Isis Unveiled,
I, 32)
The theory that the remains of ancient cities
exist under those of the present is not a new
one. Marine archaeologists have recently found
evidence that three Egyptian legendary cities
once actually existed. Herakleion, Canopus and
Menouthis were described by such chroniclers as
Herodotus and Strabo; but, in the absence of any
physical evidence, archaeologists and historians
have wondered for centuries whether these cities
did exist. Popular Science reports that a scientific
team led by French marine archaeologist Franck
Goddio has answered that question, discovering
remnants of the cities beneath the sea near Alexandria,
Egypt.
More than 2,600 years old, the locations date
to when Egypt extended farther into the Mediterranean.
The reuins were found four miles off the coast
in 30-foot-deep waters after an electronic survey
of the Bay of Aboukir.
The discovery gives archaeologists the first physical
evidence that the three sites existed. Historians
believe the cities were built in the 6th or 7th
century B.C. Buildings, temples, monuments, and
colossal statuary remains, evidence that the cities
were once thriving urban centres....Temples to
the Egyptian gods Isis, Osiris, and Serapis made
all three sites a destination for worshippers....
How the three cities met their end is still a
bit of a mystery. An earthquake seems the most
likely cause, according to Amos Nur, a Stanford
University geophysicist who mapped the area.
Mr. Judge explains in his article "Cities
Under Cities," originally published in The
Path for November 1892 (reprinted in The Heart
Doctrine), the phenomenon of modern cities standing
over ancient ones that lie buried intact many
feet below the present level:
If we can imagine the first coming of a population
to a place never before inhabited, the old theory
asks us to believe that certain classes of elementals—called
devas generically by the Hindus—are gathered
over the place and present pictures of houses,
of occupations of busy life on every hand, and,
as it were, beckon to the men to stay and build.
These "fairies," as the Irish call them,
at last prevail, and habitations are erected until
a city springs up. During its occupation the pictures
in the astral light are increased and deepened
until the day of desertion arrives, when the genii,
demons, elementals or fairies have the store of
naturally impressed pictures in the ether to add
to their own. These remain during the abandonment
of the place, and when man comes that way again
the process is repeated. The pictures of buildings
and human activity act telepathically upon the
new brains, and the first settlers think they
have been independent thinkers in selecting a
place to remain. So they build again and again.
Nature's processes of distributing earth and accumulating
it hide from view the traces of old habitations,
giving the spot a virgin appearance to the new
coming people. And thus are not only cities built
in advantageous positions, but also in places
less convenient.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why do some people, otherwise cool-headed, give
vent to anger while driving a car? While some
researchers say that "road rage," as
it is called, is like any other form of anger,
others believe that there is more to it—that
"something about driving can unleash a monster
in all of us."
Gerry Byrne writes in New Scientist on this problem:
What is it about the car that provokes such negative
passions in normally meek people?...At Trinity
College Dublin, transport psychologist Ray Fuller
puts this down to what he calls deindividuation,
the process that prevents us relating to the other
driver as a person...."Face-to-face contact
is vital for so much social interaction, and it
tends to be taken for granted," says Steve
Stradling of Napier University in Edinburgh....
Having got angry, why do a significant minority
take their anger further? Sometimes it can go
as far as getting out of the car to remonstrate,
or even fight, with the other driver.
One view, more prevalent in some cultures than
others, is that venting anger serves as a form
of catharsis: keeping it in is harmful, while
letting it out makes you feel better. Research
by psychologist Brad Bushman at Iowa State University
in Ames suggests that people who are emotionally
distressed vent their anger to improve their mood....
Bushman has since shown that venting frustration
can make people feel good in the short term—but
at a price. It makes them stay angry much longer,
which is hardly a good idea if you're driving....When
people are angry they are not given to efficient
thought processing, says Marcus Raichle, a neuroscientist
at Washington University in St. Louis, and this
could have a bearing on the road rage phenomenon....
These displays of anger might have other serious
consequences. Connell, the AA psychologist, says
it is well established that angry drivers are
more likely to end up in an accident.
Anger beget more anger. We often suffer much
more from anger than from the very thing at which
we are angry. Psychological studies reveal that
anger is often more destructive when it is allowed
to erupt than when it is suppressed; and outbursts
of anger rarely relieve whatever caused it and
usually aggravate the situation, disabling the
person from reasoning. We use many common phrases
that show our recognition of this fact: "He
was so infuriated that he lost his mind";
or, "He was so angry he could not speak";
and so on. Mr. Judge wrote:
There is no such thing as having what is called
"righteous anger" and escaping the inevitable
consequences. Whether your "rights"
have been unjustly and flagrantly invaded or not
does not matter. The anger is a force that will
work itself out in its appointed way. Therefore
anger must be strictly avoided, and it cannot
be a avoided unless charity and love—absolute
toleration—are cultivated. (U.L.T. Pamphlet
No. 18)
|
