HAPPINESS WITH & WITHOUT MENTALITY

The philosopher Baruch or Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677), for whom "God" and "Nature" were two words for the same thing, had a great deal to say about happiness. In his usual way, before he set about proving his thesis, he defined his terms.

To begin with, most of us might agree that a happy life is one filled with joy and love. Spinoza defines "joy" like this:

"Joy is man's passage from a less to a greater perfection."

That definition should be considered in the context of Spinoza's belief that the only "perfection" is God/Nature. Therefore, "joy" manifests when one draws closer to God/Nature. Spinoza builds on his definition:

"Love is joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause."

In this light, when we "fall in love" with something or someone (external causes), something in the beloved promises for us the possibility of experiencing greater "perfection" in our lives, that perfection being Godliness/Naturalness. Note that Spinoza doesn't include carnal attraction in his definition for love. Having a handle on "love," now we can make sense of Spinoza's concept of happiness:

"All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attracted by love. Love for an object eternal and infinite feeds the mind with joy alone, a joy that is free from all sorrow."

And the only "object eternal and infinite," as Spinoza keeps saying, is God/Nature.

Probably most people recoil from such an intellectual approach to defining happiness. I think of the matter as I do with fossils.

I mean, it's definitely a fine thing to find a child's pleasure in simply looking at a fossil's elegantly coiling shell, its color, texture, and experiencing how it feels in the hand. However, match that satisfaction with how we feel upon realizing that the shell we're looking at is what's left of a living creature that moved along the muddy floor of a warm, shallow sea about 100,000,000 years ago, back when North America, Europe and Asia all formed a single continent, and dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial life form. Think how long a year is, and then try to visualize that fossil having survived 100,000,000 of them...

This second state of appreciation is gained only through one's mentality. However, it shouldn't be overlooked that to Spinoza, everything -- including carnal attraction -- is part of God/Nature, so that's also included in his concept of perfection, just that it's not mentioned in his formal definition.

So, consider the difference between the satisfaction of merely registering a shell's physical qualities, and the profound insights that mentality can bestow regarding that's shell's history and the associated implications. That difference points to the difference between happiness based on animal senses, and Spinoza's mental-based happiness arising from drawing ever closer to God/Nature, and harmonizing ourselves with that perfection.

Now, what good does it do to think like this, and why are these words written here? It's because the above thought patterns support what's been said in this Newsletter again and again over the years.

Spinoza's "passage from a less to a greater perfection" is what I've more clumsily referred to as the process of Nature conveying to us paradigms with which we can harmonize our behaviors, to become "happier" and progress toward a higher spiritual level.