We are unhappy, not because we have no money, not because somebody is dead in our family, not because something has gone wrong. We are unhappy because we are searching for happiness in diversity. We are unhappy because we are searching for happiness when it is not there. Now try to think, try to think quietly, try to think of one thing quietly within your mind. In your everyday life you are searching for happiness, and where are you searching for happiness? You search for happiness from external objects. You expect happiness from your children, from your friends, from your family, but do you get it? No. Maybe you get it for some time, or maybe you get not happiness, but unhappiness. Why is it like this?
Do you think that all the things of this world are real? No, we have made a fundamental error. We have not tried to understand who experiences happiness and who experiences unhappiness. You experience happiness, you experience unhappiness, not from the object but from the mind. If your mind is sick, then no object can give you happiness. If you are abnormal mentally, if you are sick mentally, nothing in this world can give you happiness. Therefore, the fundamental philosophy of happiness is a healthy mind.
This is the basic concept of yoga. If you have a healthy body, then you can experience happiness from food and from everything. If you have healthy, normal emotions and a balanced mind, you can experience happiness and love from everybody. If your emotions are imbalanced, if you are emotionally down and broken, then your beautiful children, your good wife, your good husband, your good business, nothing can give you happiness. Please understand.
The same thing can be said about the mind. The mind is full of tensions. This body is full of tensions. With a tense body, with a tense mind, with tense emotions, you are trying to experience happiness, and you don’t get it, or even if you do get it, it is only for a short time. You experience happiness for a short time, then happiness finishes, dies. With a tense body and tense emotions you pray, but nothing happens. When your body, mind and emotions are tense, your love is confused. Therefore, you try to escape. You try to escape from these tensions, but then the problem is how to make the mind healthy. Where is the way and which is the way?
No religion in the world has shown the way to a healthy mind, healthy body and healthy emotions. For thousands of years only one philosophy has helped mankind and that philosophy is yoga. What is yoga? What does yoga do to us, and if I practise yoga what do I get? The answer is self-evident: a healthy body without tension, a peaceful mind without tension, and pure emotion without tension. Therefore, I am talking to you about yoga.
26 April 1984, Heraklio, Greece, published in History of Satyananda Yoga in Greece, Volume One with Swami Satyananda Saraswati