Joy Is Your Very Nature, Make It Sustainable

What is joy about? Joy is definitively not about anything, because joy is not something that you do; joy is something that you become. If you do not disturb the basic process of life within you, joy is a natural outcome. Joy is not an achievement, joy is your original state.

In yoga, we are looking at a human being as a strata of five bodies. In the original termino-logy, we say Annamaya, Manomaya, Pranamaya, Vignanamaya and Anandamaya Koshas — physical, mental, energy, etheric and joy or bliss bodies. Bliss body is not the appropriate word. The deepest core of you is not joy. But it is the non-physical. As that which is non-physical can neither be defined nor described, we are referring to it from the context of our experience. When we are in touch with this non-physical dimension our experience is blissful and thus the term bliss body.

Most do not know joy because their physical, mental and energy bodies are not in alignment. The core of you is joy, over that there are four layers. If they are properly aligned, an overwhelming expression of joyfulness will naturally happen. People may achieve this state in different ways, but it doesn't last. Now we are looking at the technology of keeping these three bodies constantly aligned so that joyfulness is not an accidental happening; joyfulness becomes a normal condition, a natural way of living for you. A sustainable state.

In yoga, Brahmanand means that Creation is joy. What you see as the physical, mental, or physical energies is just the surface; the deeper core, the source of creation, is joyfulness. If the Creator is joyful, sitting somewhere in heaven — what is the point? The Creator or what you refer to as the source of creation is not sitting somewhere else. If you look at your own body, from the moment of birth to now, how much it has grown, and this growth did not happen because of any external stretching, this happened from within; the source of creation is constantly in function.

The source of Creation is within you right now. That is joyfulness. Once this fundamental force of Creation finds expression in your life and you allow it to move out, joyful is the only way you can be. If you are not entangled with the modi-fications of your mind, joyfulness is a natural way. Misery is experienced not through externalities but through losing control of your mind. Outside situations can cause physical pain; suffering and misery are always created in the mind. When you were a child, you were joyful by nature. You did not need much to be joyful. Somebody had to make you miserable, that was your condition. But today, somebody has to make you joyful. People are hoping that someday, somebody will come and make them joyful.

If you depend on the outside to bring joy to you, only by accident you will be joyful, not by intent. Outside situations never happen 100 per cent the way you want it. Not one person in this world is exactly the way you want them to be; not your husband, not your wife, not your parents, not your children, not your friends, no one. So when this is the reality, at least this one person — you — must be the way you want to be.

If you are the way you want yourself to be, the natural choice is joy. What we are talking about as Inner Engineering or inner sciences is not seeing joy as something that you have to attain, but seeing joy as the very basis of your life. If you get in tune with your own basic existence, joyful is the only way you will be.