Part Two
The Nature of Bliss I
How long has the aim for bliss been present in the universe?


The Gita states “Every soul is unborn and beginingless.” This is another way of saying that the soul is eternal. And since every soul is part of God, and God is eternal, so are we also, eternal. Time only came into existence after we did, and thus, it cannot be used as a point of reference by to measure our beginnings. The Gita states, 'Every soul is eternal, unborn, and immortal.'

Kripalu Maharaj states that bliss can be characterized in much the same way that we might characterize the soul. Bliss, per definition, is always of infinite nature. It cannot be limited, because it means to be eternally free from distress. Despite the thousands of generations of human life on Earth, most of us have not come to this understanding. This is because the typical pleasures that occupy our minds are finite in nature. There is no greater happiness than bliss because of its infinite nature. One who has attained bliss will never again know sorrow.

So even though most people ostensibly yearn for material accomplishment, a sort of happiness that they can perceive with one or more of the five senses, their greater aim is for bliss, an eternal happiness. Even the atheist who says they merely seek happiness, is in search of the same end. And as we describe in the following pages, that end is not a material one, because materialism is by its very nature, an ideology of finitude.