Bliss

Bliss is a state of profound satisfaction, happiness and joy, a constant state of mind, undisturbed by gain or loss.

Ecstasy and Euphoria redirect here.

• (Devachan is) the “land of gods” literally; a condition, a state of mental bliss. Philosophically a mental condition analogous to, but far more vivid and real than, the most vivid dream. It is the state after death of most mortals.
  • H.P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy (1889)

• Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth, a trusted friend is the best relative, Nibbana is the greatest bliss.
  • Gautama Buddha, Dhammapada, (verse 202), translator: Narada Maha Thera

• Follow your bliss.
  • Joseph Campbell, Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers (1988), Episode 1, Chapter 15.

• [Nirvana has been called] the harbour of refuge, the cool cave, the island amidst the floods, the place of bliss, emancipation, liberation, safety, the supreme, the transcendental, the uncreated, the tranquil, the home of ease, the calm, the end of suffering, the medicine for all evil, the unshaken, the ambrosia, the immaterial, the imperishable, the abiding, the further shore, the unending, the bliss of effort, the supreme joy, the ineffable, the detachment, the holy city, and many others.
  • Thomas Rhys Davids, Early Buddhism. Quoted from Swarup, Ram (2000). On Hinduism: Reviews and reflections. Chapter 3

• What we sow here, we reap there! Can it be supposed that the soul will enjoy a reward or endure a retribution for deeds of which it has no recollection? Is the thing possible? Will it enjoy the bliss of heaven, praising Christ forever as its great Saviour, without any remembrance of the sins and sufferings from which He redeemed and saved it? The idea is absurd.
  • Randolph Sinks Foster, p. 305, as reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

• Ignorance is Bliss
  • Thomas Gray Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.

• The fact of his being reborn at all, shows the preponderance of good over evil in his old personality. And while the Karma (of evil) steps aside for the time being to follow him in his future earth-reincarnation, he brings along with him but the Karma of his good deeds, words, and thoughts into this Deva-Chan. Bad is a relative term for us... and the Law of Retribution is the only law that never errs. Hence all those who have not slipped down into the mire of unredeemable sin and bestiality—go to the Deva Chan. They will have to pay for their sins, voluntary and involuntary, later on. Meanwhile, they are rewarded; receive the effects of the causes produced by them. Of course it is a state, one, so to say, of intense selfishness, during which an Ego reaps the reward of his unselfishness on earth. He is completely engrossed in the bliss of all his personal earthly affections, preferences and thoughts, and gathers in the fruit of his meritorious actions. No pain, no grief nor even the shadow of a sorrow comes to darken the bright horizon of his unalloyed happiness: for, it is a state of perpetual "Maya."
  • Koot Hoomi, in The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, , (1923) p.100-101

• Our religious friends argue much about heaven and hell and are terribly afraid of the latter indeed it would sometimes almost seem as though they were afraid of the former as well, from the manner in which they exert themselves to avoid going there. In the future no questions or disputes about these conditions will be possible, because man will see for himself that there is no hell, though he will also see very clearly that those who live an evil life are by that fact storing up for themselves very undesirable results and a very unpleasant time in the astral life. The glories of the heaven world will also be open to his sight, and he will realize that man needs only a development of faculty in order to place him at once, here and now, in the midst of all the bliss that that wondrous life can give.
  • Charles Webster Leadbeater, Some Glimpses of Occultism: Ancient and Modern (1903)

• Our message is the same age-old message of life. We have taught in the world for half a century: “life is bliss, free from problems, it’s not necessary to suffer” ... Veda is Total Knowledge, and Veda is the nature of the Self, and bliss is the nature of the Self. And even in the outside world everyone wants to move in the direction of greater joy. Wherever there is greater joy, there is the direction of everyone’s activity, because the innermost of everyone is really the lighted lamp of Total Knowledge, total organising power of knowledge, it’s all bliss, it’s not necessary for the people to suffer.
  • Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Main Message - from Victory Day, October 21, 2007 Maharishi Channel [1]

• The principle of TM is simple, being is bliss in its nature, infinite happiness, mind is always moving in the direction of greater happiness. It is the experience of everyone: wherever the mind goes, it goes in the direction of greater happiness.... And because the nature of inner being is bliss, infinite happiness, therefore the mind during TM takes that inward course in a most spontaneous manner.... In this meditation we do not concentrate or control the mind. We let the mind follow its natural instinct toward greater happiness, and it goes within and it gains bliss consciousness in the being.
  • Maharishi Mahesh Yogi - Lake Louise, Canada (1968) - MaharishiUniversity [http

• Ecstasies enjoyed by religious mystics are usually called religious experiences no matter what the nature of the ecstasy or the trigger inducing it.
  • L. A. Michael in L. A. Michael (1 December 2007). The Principles of Existence & Beyond. Lulu.com. p. 118. ISBN 978-1-84799-199-7. .

• But such a sacred and home-felt delight,
  Such sober certainty of waking bliss,
  I never heard till now.
  • John Milton, Comus (1637), line 262.

• The sum of earthly bliss.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book VIII, line 522.

• Some place the bliss in action, some in ease,
  Those call it pleasure, and contentment these.
  • Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle IV, line 21.

• ... can an information-processing system that runs on gradients of lifelong bliss really sustain critical insight? In principle, at least, yes. The functional analogues of depressive realism can be sustained without the nasty textures of low mood. One snappy formulation sometimes used to define "information" is "a difference that makes a difference". On this basis, what's important in the context of the information-theoretic paradigm is not our absolute position on the pleasure-pain axis, but our differential sensitivity to emotionally-tagged variations in fitness-relevant stimuli.
  • David Pearce, Can Biotechnology Abolish Suffering? (2017), "Life in the Far North"
• Condition, circumstance, is not the thing;
  Bliss is the same in subject or in king.
  • Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle IV, line 57.

• It is known from the treatment of mentally sick priests that an involuntary ejaculation often occurs at the height of religious ecstasy. Normal orgastic gratification is replaced by a general condition of physical excitation, which excludes the genitals and, as if by accident, brings about a partial release against one’s will.
  • Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, (1933), p. 148.

• The deep longing for redemption and release - consciously from ‘sins’, unconsciously from sexual tensions - is warded off. States of religious ecstasy are nothing other than conditions of sexual excitation of the vegetative nervous system, which can never be released. Religious excitation cannot be comprehended and therefore cannot be mastered, without first understanding the contradiction by which it is ruled. It is not only anti- sexual, but to a large extent sexual as well. It is not only moralistic; it is altogether unnatural. From a sex-economic point of view, it is unhygienic.
  • Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, (1933), p. 149.

• A shoemaker who loses himself in mystical ecstasy and begins to think of himself as a saviour of the people, sent by God, will inevitably cut the soles the wrong way and mess up his stitches. As time goes on, he will be faced with starvation. It is precisely by this process, on the other hand, that the politician becomes strong and rich.
  • Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, (1933), p. 380.

• The spider's most attenuated thread
  Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie
  On earthly bliss; it breaks at every breeze.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night 1, line 178.

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 72-73.

• To bliss unknown my lofty soul aspires,
  My lot unequal to my vast desires.
  • John Arbuthnot, Gnothi Seaton, line 3.

• Thin partitions do divide
  The bounds where good and ill reside;
  That nought is perfect here below;
  But bliss still bordering upon woe.
  • Weekly Magazine, Edinburgh, Volume XXII, p. 50 (1770).

• The hues of bliss more brightly glow,
  Chastis'd by sabler tints of woe.
  • Thomas Gray, Ode on the Pleasure arising from Vicissitude, line 45.

• Alas! by some degree of woe
  We every bliss must gain;
  The heart can ne'er a transport know,
  That never feels a pain.
  • George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton, Song.

• And my heart rocked its babe of bliss,
  And soothed its child of air,
  With something 'twixt a song and kiss,
  To keep it nestling there.
  • Gerald Massey, On a Wedding Day, Stanza 3.

• Bliss in possession will not last;
  Remember'd joys are never past;
  At once the fountain, stream, and sea,
  They were,—they are,—they yet shall be.
  • James Montgomery, The Little Cloud.

• The way to bliss lies not on beds of down,
  And he that had no cross deserves no crown.
  • Francis Quarles, Esther.

• Nirvana is a state of pure bliss and knowledge. ... It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents — their Karma. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further ... when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier.
  • Erwin Schrödinger, writings of July 1918, quoted in A Life of Erwin Schrödinger (1994) by Walter Moore ISBN 0521437679

• I know I am—that simplest bliss
  The millions of my brothers miss.
  I know the fortune to be born,
  Even to the meanest wretch they scorn.
  • Bayard Taylor, Prince Deukalion, Act IV.

• Yesterday a conversation about divinity and faith suggested to me a great, a stupendous idea to the realization of which I feel capable of dedicating my whole life. This is the idea—the founding of a new religion corresponding to the development of mankind: the religion of Christ, but purged of all dogma and mystery, a practical religion, not promising future bliss but realizing bliss on earth.
  • Leo Tolstoy, Journal Entry, 1855, cited in Selected Essays (New York: 1964), p. v

• We thinke no greater blisse than such
  To be as be we would,
  When blessed none but such as be
  The same as be they should.
  • William Warner, Albion's England, Book X, Chapter LIX, Stanza 68.

• Consequences
• Death
• God
• Heaven
• Hell
• Inner peace
• Karma
• Kingdom of God
• Love
• Nirvana
• Purgatory
• Reincarnation
• Serenity
• Suffering