My oldest memory of happiness begins with her walking towards me. She was blushing and almost bursting with joy. In the red dress she seemed to flow, as if she was gently drifting toward me. 

That moment felt as if time was passing slowly. Her presence, the feeling of her being there. The way she looked at me and the way her face would light up when she saw me. The first time she texted me. Our first phone call. Our first meeting. Everything felt like a beautiful story written to experience the joy of life. Every interaction with her was pure ‘happiness’.

It started when I saw her for the very first time on our college’s ‘traditional day’. I felt an intense desire to know her. We were strangers, yet somehow I managed to get her phone number through a common friend. After weeks of constant fight between my mind and heart, I decided to text her. 

She ‘saw’ the message, but didn’t reply. However, I felt a deep satisfaction. The satisfaction that she at least saw the message, even if she didn’t reply.

The next time, when I got the opportunity to meet her in person, the first thing I said was ‘sorry’. She smiled, looked into my eyes and said, ‘It’s ok. I understand. From my perspective, you were a stranger to me. So, it wasn’t right to reply to someone you know nothing about’. 

I paused for a moment, processing what just happened. My mind ‘froze’ at that point. My body grew numb. I could clearly hear the voice within my head: isn’t she angry that I texted? Why is she smiling? She should have said I was wrong. 

Seeing me getting nervous, she gently pressed my shoulder with her left hand to bring me back into the present. Then she brought her other hand forward. I held her hand and while holding it, she said with a soft smile: let’s be friends.

After that, every moment with her felt as if everything was meant to be. No matter what she did, it brought my heart and soul into harmony. But, this didn’t last long because it was nothing but the ‘initiation of a illusion’.  

After some months, whenever she texted me, I wasn’t feeling the same as before. I wanted her to text me more often and almost without delay. Earlier, her single text would keep me happy all day, but now, just because she wasn’t replying the way I wanted her to, it made me unhappy. Whenever we met, I wasn’t happy because she wasn’t staying for long. Earlier, her mere presence was enough to bring that happiness and now spending ample time wasn’t even enough. 

Everything was the same. Me, her, the situations, but I wasn’t happy anymore.

There was something in me that wasn’t letting me be so.

So, what changed? The ‘expectations’.

I had no expectations or conditions before. My mind didn’t have any specifics earlier, but later, it started putting conditions onto me. The conditions were: if she replies, I want her to reply instantly. If she meets, I want her to meet me more. If she smiles, I want that smile to be only for me. Here, what changed was not the situation, but the ‘mind’. 

In The Untethered Soul, author and journalist Michael Singer explains this very phenomenon through the concept of the inner voice.

Singer writes: ‘In case you haven’t noticed, you have a mental dialogue going on inside your head that never stops. ‘It has something to say about everything you look at: ‘I like it. I don’t like it. This is good. That’s bad,’ adds Singer. 

This voice that speaks this dialogue quietly begins creating conditions and the moment conditions appear, happiness ceases to exist. 

Adi Suyash, a self-realised mystic of the Kashmir Shaiva order of Tantriks, has spoken beautifully on the mind: ‘The mind doesn’t let us stay in wonder for even two moments. Suyash adds, ‘It starts looking for logic, it doesn’t let us stay in the present. It starts humming like a mosquito and doesn’t let us stay peaceful’.

Hold on and allow me to explain through examples. 

When someone becomes fascinated with a particular person, the mind creates an image of how that person should behave, respond, and make he/she feel. Even if that person genuinely cares for him/her, but expresses it in a slightly different way than the mind expects – he/she feels unhappy. Only if that person behaves in that specific way he/she feels the dopamine rush. 

Suppose you get a job. You automatically compare it with the job role you imagined in your mind. Maybe the salary is good, the environment is good, the opportunity is meaningful – but it is not exactly the position you had imagined. The mind immediately says: this is not what I wanted.

But if you observe carefully, the difference is mostly inside the mind’s expectation. How does it really matter if the title or role is slightly different? After all, whatever you have got is sufficient to fulfil your needs and wants. And this applies to everything. A connection. A possession. An opportunity. Even an experience. 

Like this, the mind creates an illusion saying: look, if you get that – and in that specific manner – only then will you experience the joy called happiness.

But when you observe the mind carefully, as Singer suggests in The Untethered Soul, you realise something profound: ‘You are not the voice of the mind. You are the one who hears it’. 

The moment you see that the mind is the one creating conditions, you are no longer under an illusion. 

Singer explains the mechanism very clearly: ‘If you want to be happy, you have to let go of the part of you that wants to control everything’.

When you drop those conditions and train your mind to treat everything equally – the state which is referred to as vairagya (detachment). The mind naturally settles into the state of blissfulness, where you are simply in bliss.

Now there are no specifics.

You can feel exactly the same whether you get your desired job role or not. Whether you get the exact person you want or not. 

In reality, happiness doesn’t exist. What we call happiness is simply bliss felt in isolated moments.

When we feel happy, or when we experience intense love for a person or something, there comes a moment—however brief—when we feel complete. In that moment, we touch a deeper state called bliss (Anand), as if we are experiencing just a drop of something far more vast within us. 

Just like the sun does not need external factors to shine, you do not need anything external to feel the bliss. The thoughts are merely the clouds blocking the sunlight – creating an illusion the light has vanished.

But the truth is, bliss is your very core. It is who you are.

Sat–Chit–Ananda.