There's no verse in any scripture that says the world is the form of happiness. No, all the scriptures say God is the form of happiness. In fact, the scriptures say there's not even a drop of true happiness in this world. Not even a drop, because the world is just made of maya. Maya is an inert, lifeless energy. How can there be happiness in that? There's happiness in God.
Someone might say not a drop of true happiness. Nope, not even a drop. Then what do we experience? We all think we get some amount of happiness in this world. What are we actually experiencing? What we experience in this world is the reaction of our mind when we get the association of something we're attached to. That's it. So it's our own kalpit sukh, our own imagined happiness. It seems real to us, but actually we created the attachment. We had a desire for happiness, and we saw something in this world. So the original desire was for happiness, not for the world.
In other words, the original happiness was for God. But we saw the world, so we created a secondary desire, “If I get that thing, I'll find happiness. If that person loves me, I'll find happiness.” That desire, we created.
Then we start developing attachment in those things. Wherever we have a hope of finding happiness or a faith of finding happiness, we get attached to that thing by thinking about it repeatedly. This person will make me happy. Again and again we think that, “This thing will make me happy.” We think it over and over again, and our attachment grows.
To whatever extent our attachment has grown, when we get that thing or that person, we get that amount of happiness. Less attachment, less happiness. More attachment, more happiness. And when you lose that person or that thing, an equal amount of unhappiness. If you had that much attachment, when you lose that thing, you get that much unhappiness. If you had that much attachment, you get that much unhappiness. So in fact, our scriptures say there's no happiness or unhappiness in this world. It's all just a creation of our mind.
So those Saints who have said, “The world is fake.” They were not talking about the outer world. They're talking about this inner world. Our inner world of raag and dwesh. Our world of attachments, of perceived happiness and unhappiness of our own mind.
It's not the happiness or unhappiness of our soul. It's just our mind, our confused mind. Which was correct in seeking happiness, but confused thinking that it would find it in the world. So it developed false hopes. And the world is very alluring. It always offers a new promise, “Well, this person let you down. But this person won't let me down.” We always move on to the next.
“Oh, I thought I was going to get happiness from this thing. It didn't work out.”
“Oh, I'll get happiness from that thing.”
So the world keeps us hopeful, but never fulfills that hope. Happiness is always just out of our reach.
