Michael N. Nagler

If we could trace where a desire arises from--and the Upanishads do repeatedly--we would find that in most cases something--a thought, an external event--has stirred up some wisp of the vague sense of incompleteness we harbor beneath the floor of surface consciousness as long as we are not identified with our Self. We immediately misinterpret this stirring as a desire for something outside of us. This is maya: misinterpreting the longing for union within as a call for something outside the Self.

The Upanishads go a step further. When we have the sensation "I want such-and-such," what we really mean is that we want the relative tranquility that follows when a desire subsides. As the great sage of Ramana Maharshi, who was very close to the Upanishads in spirit, once declared, "There is no happiness in any object of the world." The Self is pure happiness, which we mistake as coming from the outside; so the closer we come to the Self within, the more we are aware of--the more we feel already--what we are looking for outside us. This is what the Upanishads mean by joy. "Renunciation" refers simply to dropping the outside reflection for the reality which is within.