Page 48 - Bliss Planet Venice Beach Edition - Health Wellness Lifestyle Magazine - Vegan - Happiness - Beat Depression & Improve Relationships

cut himself off in imagination,
otherwise he would cease to
exist, but we have yet to decide
whether this elusive thing called
happiness would result from

acceptance of the fact of man’s
union with the rest of life. But if
this is true we have to discover
how such an acceptance may be
made, whether it is possible for
man to turn in his flight into
isolation and overcome the
panic which makes him try to

swim against the current
instead of with it. In the
psychological realm this
swimming against the current is
called repression, the reaction of
proud, conscious reason to the
fears and desires of nature in

man. This raises the further
question of whether acceptance
of nature involves just a return
to the amorality of the beast,
being simply a matter of
throwing up all responsibility,
following one’s whims, and drifting possibilities of nature than the
about on the tide of life like a fallen animal can express by instinct, for
leaf. To return to our analogy: life is while the animal is nature’s whistle,

the current into which man is man is its organ.
thrown, and though he struggles
against it, it carries him along Even so, man does not like to be put
despite all his efforts, with the result down to the place of an instrument,
that his efforts achieve nothing but however grand that instrument may
his own unhappiness. Should he be, for an instrument is an
then just turn about and drift? But instrument, and an organ does what

nature gave him the faculties of it is made to do as subserviently and
reason and conscious individuality, blindly as a whistle. But this is not
and if he is to drift he might as well the only consideration. It may be
have been without them. It is more that man has a wrong idea of what
likely that he has them to give his self is. In the words of the Hindu
expression to immeasurably greater sage Patanjali, “Ignorance is the

Bliss Planet 48