Where Does True Happiness Lie?

Questioner: Why is money given so much importance nowadays?

Dadashri: When a person doesn’t have any kind of insight, the belief sets in that money will give him happiness. That [belief] becomes strengthened; he ends up believing that all sensual pleasures can be acquired through money, and other things can be acquired too. However, that is not his fault. He had charged such karma in the past, thus the effects of that keep coming.

All this happiness is just perceived happiness. If a person is considered to be happy if he has money, then there are many rich people. They too commit suicide. If there is happiness in having a good husband, then there are many good husbands, yet their wives have limitless misery. If one has children that are good, then they have happiness. However, there is no substance in that either.

Where does happiness lie? Is it in these stores? There are these general stores; we see all kinds of things in them. Don’t all those things give happiness? If you enter such a store with two hundred or so dollars, then you will become very pleased. You will buy this, you will buy that and when you have to carry it home, there will be conflict. [The wife will] Tell the husband, “How am I going to carry it?” The husband will reply, “Then why did you buy it?” There is conflict there, too. “You buy things unnecessarily and then complain.” The husband will say that. Can there be any happiness in that? The store owner isn’t happy. Why does he sit there the entire day? If you want to ask something, then ask now. I will explain it to you. I will give you the happiness that you want.

Do you want to know all this and do you want to do something so that you will have permanent peace within? After attaining peace within, your expenses will stop, they will decline, so what will you do? The store owners will have less demand. Why do the store owners get business? It is because of the lack of peace. ‘If I buy this, then I will be happy; if I buy this, then I will be happy’; it is because of this that the store owners make sales. With our mahatmas, the store owners

don’t make as many sales. This is because they go home peacefully. Why would they go to the store? The others [those without Self-realization] keep wandering around [in the stores].