WANTING IS PLEASURE, DUTY IS HAPPINESS

Freud, Jung, Einstein, Frankl and other modern thinkers asked: “What is the meaning of life? Its ultimate reason for being”?

Freud declared that it is pleasure, whose maximum expression is in the libido. Others, however, have already comprehended that the meaning of life is in the value achieved by obeying one’s duty, fulfilling it.

Willing or pleasure is of the ego and depends on external circumstances, whereas duty is of the Self and is created by the inner essence. Man is the object of events, but he is the subject or author of his own essence. Wanting happens to man, but duty is work that man must accomplish. Wanting is pleasure; duty is happiness. The man is an object of pleasure, but he is the subject of his joy.

There is almost always a conflict between will and duty because man has not yet harmonized his ego with his Self. Nor is this harmonization possible because “the ego is the worst enemy of the Self”, as the ancient wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita says. The ego will never make a peace treaty with the Self. Fortunately, however, “the Self is the ego’s best friend” and can make a peace treaty with it, harmonizing the ego with the Self, the will with the duty. And it is precisely in this harmonization of the ego’s will with the duty of the Self, true happiness is established, which is the meaning of life, the raison d'être of existence, the existential fulfilment of man.

It so happens that this harmonization of the ego with the Self is only possible in the case where the Self, when plenty, overflows beneficially to the ego, making harmonious the coexistence of want with duty, and this is perfect happiness. The ego only knows pleasure and nothing of joy, but the ego integrated into the Self will comprehend what satisfaction is.

In the beginning, this integration of the ego in the Self is a “broad path and narrow gate”. It is suffering and renunciation; in the end, it is a “soft yoke and light burden”, which is the supreme happiness.

The integral man begins his evolutionary itinerary with suffering but ends it with glory; his heaven of sadness culminates in a paradise of joy.

As long as the ego conflicts with the Self, man is unhappy and tries to alleviate his unhappiness with all kinds of pleasures and palliatives. When the tormented conscience is silent for some time, drugged by charm, the man thinks himself deceptively happy because he enjoys on his periphery. Still, soon, his inner being cries out again for true happiness, for no peripheral pleasure can replace the central joy, reaching the point of feeling existentially frustrated because it has not reached its existential plenitude. The magnetic needle of his consciousness continues invariably to point north of the truth of his human nature, however much tries to turn the compass of his egoity to another direction.

Ultimately, man's true nature cannot be falsified, for his soul is Christlike by its very nature.