Every liv­ing being strives towards hap­pi­ness. West­ern philo­soph­ers think of hap­pi­ness hori­zont­ally. Schopen­hauer, the great pess­im­ist, for instance, describes three kinds of hap­pi­ness: the self-hap­pi­ness that springs from exist­ence and iden­tity, the hap­pi­ness that springs from own­ing prop­erty, and the hap­pi­ness that springs from the opin­ion of oth­ers – let us call it recog­ni­tion.

The ordin­ary man draws his hap­pi­ness from the bod­ily-sen­su­al sphere, while the intel­li­gent man draws his from his know­ledge, or from the spir­itu­al attain­ments that come with the growth of the soul, or even from his mys­tic­al powers. Along this path one can approach the highest degree of hap­pi­ness that can be exper­i­enced in the mater­i­al sphere, and can even reach a state of per­man­ent joy.

To exper­i­ence hap­pi­ness first-hand one needs a rela­tion­ship, for hap­pi­ness mani­fests itself between those who share an emo­tion­al bond, in both the worldly and the tran­scend­ent sense. Against the hori­zont­al West­ern concept of hap­pi­ness, the East also recog­nises ver­tic­al levels of hap­pi­ness: earthly, heav­enly and tran­scend­ent. Wherever fate may cast the soul, into whatever corner of the uni­verse it may fall, it will go on seek­ing hap­pi­ness.

The secret teach­ings of India describe the ver­tic­al scale of hap­pi­ness. King Jana­ka and the sage Yajnavalkya become absorbed in a long exchange of ideas. Hav­ing examined the vari­ous phases of human con­scious­ness, Yajnavalkya arrives at the level of Abso­lute Exist­ence, that is, God. He main­tains that all the other beings sub­sist on a frac­tion of God's bliss…

– Health, wealth, domin­ion over oth­ers and rev­el­ling in every earthly good – this is man's supreme joy. A hun­dred times the joy of man is one meas­ure of the joy of the fore­fath­ers who have reached heav­en. A hun­dred times the joy of the fore­fath­ers who have reached heav­en is one meas­ure of the joy of the world of the fairy folk. A hun­dred times the joy of the world of the fairy folk is one meas­ure of the joy of those dei­fied by their deeds, who won their divine sta­tion by vir­tue of their deeds. A hun­dred times the joy of those dei­fied by their deeds is one meas­ure of the joy of the gods by birth and of the sin­less and dis­cip­lined know­ers of the Veda. A hun­dred times the joy of the gods by birth is one meas­ure of the joy of the world of the Fath­er of Beings, and of the sin­less and dis­cip­lined know­ers of the Veda. A hun­dred times the joy of the world of the Fath­er of Beings is one meas­ure of the joy of the world of the Golden Embryo and of the sin­less and dis­cip­lined know­ers of the Veda. This is the supreme bliss, this is the world of the liv­ing God, Your Majesty! – said Yajnavalkya. (Bri­hadaran­yaka Upan­ishad 4.3.33.)

The joy of the ordin­ary man lies in rel­ish­ing earthly goods. A hun­dred meas­ures of earthly hap­pi­ness add up to the heav­enly joy of the fore­fath­ers. A high­er level is the joy of the world of the heav­enly musi­cians, and high­er still the world of the gods respons­ible for the work­ings of the forces of nature, who can best be likened to angels or her­oes. Through his pious deeds, earthly man may rise to become such a heav­enly being. Here enters the cat­egory of the sin­less and dis­cip­lined know­ers of the Veda – that is, through his spir­itu­al prac­tice the qual­i­fied man lives in a pure state of exist­ence, exper­i­en­cing a high degree of hap­pi­ness on the high­er planes of exist­ence.

The highest sphere of the man­i­fold mater­i­al uni­verse is the world of the Fath­er of Beings, the home of those await­ing sal­va­tion. The Golden Embryo is Vish­nu, lord of the world bey­ond all mater­i­al bounds, who at the same time per­vades the uni­verse imman­ently, from with­in. This is the true mys­tic­al exper­i­ence of God – the world in God and God in the world. The tran­scend­ent sphere of Vish­nu is the home of the supreme, ulti­mate bliss, and so the remark made at the out­set now becomes clear: all the other beings sub­sist on a frac­tion of his bliss…