Formula for Family Happiness

April. 25, 2002

• The American dream is said to be everlasting domestic joy. So far, it has been a contradiction of experience.
• Sri Aurobindo says if there is something to be known somewhere in the universe, there will be a faculty in the human organism that can know it.
• As this JOY is in the cosmic consciousness, we only have to discover the faculty in us that can reach it.
• Family happiness is a sensational product of socially harmonious emotion.
• My idea is to define Family Happiness and Eternal Romance to perfectly reasonable comprehension and explain how it can be captured in fiction or in film.
• Domestic happiness is not different from happiness in any human relationship. What we know as happiness is the vital sensation of harmonious feeling. Harmony is the principle and happiness is the sensation.
• Absence of the motive to dominate the other is the eternal source of everlasting happiness.
• Domination is an egoistic attitude which is being increasingly frowned upon in public as well as private behaviour in all levels of organisations.
• Now that the principle has social sanction, it may not be very difficult to plead its cause.
• In exceptionally successful marriages over the decades this principle will be invariably present, confirming the truth of my claim.
• The question is how marriages invariably fail to sustain the vibration of happiness.
• First, this is not a consciously understood code of life. Secondly, only in marriage the partners seek to dominate the other by right.
• Suppose someone examines the entire scope of this theory and wants to create a fiction or film based on that, he can have over a score of valuable inspirations around which it can be woven.
• It is worth considering a fact that any story or film that is a hit has only one such valuable idea.
• The rule is life at a higher level has all the aspects of its living valuable and in each anecdote there will be a few hundred such valuable points when life becomes a marvel.
• In human life ONE such valuable point render one's life out of the ordinary and hence a story or film based on it becomes an outstanding success.
• Stories have parallel subplots to reinforce the theme.
• If there is a couple - where one tries to dominate the other partner and spoils the marriage, they can well be contrasted with another couple who struggle NOT to dominate each other and who make their marriage a happy one. The measure of happiness will be equal to the measure of struggle as if it is transformation.
• In the themes of happiness and Romance it is possible to present at least a couple of hundred events, each expressing one such valuable point that makes the film live.
• Out of the two hundred points about 20 or 30 will make the film rich to saturation. Out of them a few can be presented through a contrast.
• Romance is the sensation of adventure in an ever-fresh atmosphere.
• Romances we know meet with a social obstacle or anachronism to overcome. The obstacle is given by life to give intensity to the sensation of Romance
• Nowadays the social obstacles recede and the psychological obstacles of the man or the woman come to the fore.
• In the combination of family happiness, which is a social emotion, with Romance that is the evolutionary sensation that seeks everlasting intensity, we have a very fertile field of action even though our evolution is social.
• Many, many couples would have had a brief taste of these emotions in isolation or even in combination. It may be possible to contact them and seek a confirmatory explanation.
• It is a truth in literature that there is greater life in what issues out of imagination than a historically true event, as one is in the subtle plane and the other is in the gross physical plane.
• The writer, if he is inspired by either truism has a task before him. The first is a plain truth, but not widely understood or not fully by those who see its value. As everyone will agree about the value of truth speaking, to drive home its extraordinary value in life cannot be achieved by a plain statement or a direct revelation.
• Great truths reveal only in great occasions. Those great occasions are the smallest moments where value judgments tilt towards Truth.
• If the story or film becomes very successful, it may not be for the titles of this article but the unseen Spiritual Power of choosing the Truth again and again.
• Behind this choice too there lurks a great spiritual truth.
• Life is external and is covered by the senses.
• The centre of senses is the Mind.
• The subtle knot of Mind that links it with the soul lies in the emotions.
• The power of emotions is the choice of direction.
• That choice of Truth takes the outside life to the inner life which is far more powerful than the outer life.
• Truth-seeking is a value and as all values is valuable only when it there forever, not occasionally.
• The story must reveal the power of Truth-seeking as a permanent value.
• One who is naturally true will have no struggle in the Choice. Only the one who tries to be true struggles each time. Happiness lies in this value and in this struggle.
• A contrast with people who habitually choose to quarrel, struggle unsuccessfully, struggle successfully only on occasions will bring out the Force of this Truth.
• The hundred other occasions in the environment that are in equilibrium with the measure of one's truth will render the story live.
• Domestic happiness is a social problem that is solved in the psychological plane. That has no higher force -- even the force of social evolution, but it will find great favour with readers because of its psychological utility.
• Romance is evolutionary, not merely of social evolution. Romance is seeking for the unattainable. That will release the Force of Brahman.
• The central principle of creation presently issues as contradictions. The greatest of contradictions is that between Man and Woman. When the contradiction becomes complements by evolution it is natural the greatest results issue out of the greatest contradictions. Hence the attraction of Man for the woman.
• A fulfillment has many levels whatever the work is,

— A child is interesting to any one.

— A child of the family is more so.

— To the mother the child is more fulfilling.

— When the child speaks the first word or learns anything for the first time, the fulfillment is greatest.

— The Kural says a mother's fulfillment about the child is greater than when it was born when news reaches her ears that he has earned the reputation of being a GOOD Soul.

— It is needless to argue the point that there are grades of fulfillment.

Contradictions are greater fulfillment than complements when we approach them with the transforming attitude of converting them into complements.

In this scale, family happiness is low and Romance is at the acme.

Of all the phenomena of life, woman presents to man the greatest contradiction and therefore the greatest of fulfillments.

Let us examine the phenomenon of contradictions.

— In a game the opponents are contradictions.

— A weak opponent is not interesting nor a very strong opponent as you can learn nothing from either. Interest is from learning.

— The opponent of our level with varying levels of skills required for the game is satisfactorily challenging. It is neither a walkover nor a crushing defeat.

— This complementarities arise from the nature of contradiction and are enriched by

the level of skills.

the nature of skills.

the nature of personal relationships.

the nature of all aspects of Nature.

it depends upon every aspect such as strategy, intensity, atmosphere, etc. etc.

— Man and woman are such contraries that can transform into such a complement which is seen in the voice, language, smell, appearance, work, desire to cooperate or confront, looks, sense of touch, cultural variation that is deviation, temperamental incompatibility, etc.

— A sweet voice is charming. This is obvious. A gruff voice can be a complement to a soft one and can become full at their meeting point, which may be listening of the ear or comprehension of the mind or even below.

— The million points of human nature may meet with only a dozen points of compatibility only for a dozen months. Marriages become dull and flat when this opportunity of psychological coexistence is exhausted.

• Knowledge of how a Romance develops and matures is a knowledge that exceeds or excels the realm of psychology. It is in the realm of life and extends to Nature and its laws. Especially when the romance dies after a while one may know the loss but may not observe that it is the process of the birth of Romance in the reversal.
• Romance is the aspiration of the unattainable.
• One brings himself to aspire for it by the process of evolution which is the remembering of the godhead one has forgotten.
• Its birth, survival, growth, development, evolution as well as its death follow the same rules of creation - its Self-conception. They are the rules of social evolution raised to the plane of psychological life.
• As most people have had some taste of it, it will touch them as their own original romance once touched them. To know such people is possible.
• Internet makes it eminently possible.
• As said earlier, the true stories will not be so inspiring as the one created in imagination.
• The base of Family Happiness and the ideal of Romance blend together in the imagination of a writer or a director of a film.
• Observing the adventure of life in all walks of life before coming to this area of adventure of the unattainable helps shape the thought as well as inspiration.
• The range is from harmony to adventure in the plane of psychological life.
• Balzac's ‘Lady of the Valley' powerfully brings out one intense aspect of this romantic existence.
• In this case Self-oblivion is the significant characteristic that emerges in the boy. Obliviousness is the hallmark of being in love. In this case of Felix it is physical self-oblivion. Rarely we meet with cases of mental self-oblivion, though there is one more step beyond, the Spirit. Spiritual self-oblivion of the mind is known to be samadhi -- in yogic language, trance.
• What is trance becomes waking sensation when it seeks the fulfillment in the female principle of Ishwari, or Shakti. Trance is there because of the absence of the opposite principle.
• There is no one who has not known the vibration of Romance in one way or another, but most would not have noticed it when it occurred. Therefore any appeal to what everyone has once felt will release a global, if not universal, vibration.
• Whatever it is, when the vibration of Romance is released in one's life, it will be naïve for him to expect it to be socially acceptable, as romance arises breaking barriers social and psychological.
• Romance that is the vibration of Spiritually awake life is attainable for however brief a period to anyone who tries to comprehend it and is eager to accept it emotionally.
• Once this definition or description of Romance is intelligible or comprehensible, what one requires in abundance is patience, abundant patience of observation in the subtle affairs of life.
• Patience is the psychological version of spiritual equality. Therefore, it is capable of yielding the vision of spiritual seeing.
• A starting point is a glimpse of this somewhere in life first around us.
• The complement the opponent team is can be seen only on the playground. It is best seen not in everyday play but in a tournament.
• A woman thus enters a man's life through marriage. Marriage is social institution. Woman is man's evolutionary complement. To see that is only partially possible in marriage. Obviously we cannot fully realise the complementary nature of another player, either when we play on his side or while we are all practicing, as all these are limited contexts.
• To establish Family happiness, live its several aspects in fullness is to lay the foundation of Romance.
• This may be entirely at variance with the experience of those who knew Romance. That is the Romance, but it dies away.
• To discover Romance on the foundation of marital bliss firmly established is to rise to heights of evolutionary explosion which when it subsides will do so on its foundation with the possibility of a further adventure of Romance.
• My proposal is not without precedent or parallel in life.
• One major argument is the greater comforts of today. If comforts can be increased in the physical plane, an argument to establish happiness and increase its Romantic context in the psychological life can find its rationale.

— Coming nearer the theme, longevity has risen from 30 years to over 75 years.

— Trying to be young has become an aspiration. Exercise, diet, health food, etc. have become important.

— Attempts at so many other levels are in the offing.

— Whether Family Happiness is desirable or not may not be raised as a valid question. One may wonder whether it is possible. As spirituality has gained a greater listening today, we can appeal to that nascent experience. Spirituality goes with established mental peace that appears as serenity on the face. It may be wondered whether what a lone man has achieved in seclusion can be accomplished in a family. That it is attainable somewhere breaks new ground.

— One may not be so skeptical with happiness as with Romance.

— Romance holds a charm for people of all ages and it arises at infinite levels of human life, if only the spirit of adventure surfaces. As with so many aspects of life Romance today lies in the zone of unorganized life of man. It lends itself to be organised in the sense one can consciously aspire for it knowing it more and more not in the SENSE that adventure and the spirit of Romance lend themselves to be organised.

— Attempts at Artificial Intelligence are having their fling in computerising common sense, a task more formidable from an organisation point of view than any hitherto undertaken. We are only attempting to describe the process of Romance emerging.

Fear and Love

• Timid girls are treated brusquely by their husbands. It is not a husband's treatment of a wife. A husband with some complex treated his newly married timid wife like an Arab. She started working on her fear and slightly got out of it. He showed at once signs of being an American husband. The wife was happy in a great measure, but this has nothing to do with family happiness. It is the response of complex towards courage emerging out of fear. Fear when fully transformed becomes courage. The source of courage is Love. The change now is only from side of the girl. Suppose both the boy and the girl make an effort to emerge out of fear into courage and not merely adjust as husband and wife, the change will be psychological instead of narrow social change in behaviour.
• The desirable change in social behaviour ushers in the happiness of a family. The changes in psychological attitudes lay the sure foundation for the adventure of Romance.
• Fear undergoes changes as follows.

Fear that possesses - Fear that is frightening - Fear that neither possesses nor frightens - Less of fear - absence of fear - fearlessness - courage - physical, vital, mental, spiritual courage - Love.

• As the changes occur in one person it evokes some response from the other. When the effort is initiated by both and with understanding, changes of higher orders issue.
• Fear that moves towards fearlessness prepares itself for the adventure of Love that is Romance.
• Fear is vital organised in the reverse.
• Love is a universal vibration that defies organisation.
• Romance is the one seeking the other because of a knowledge that the goal is unattainable.
• Unattainability makes for attraction.
• Exciting attraction is enchanting.