Text of the meditation
Happiness is that inward state of perfect satisfaction which is joy and peace. The satisfaction that results from gratified desire is brief and illusory, and is always followed by an increased demand for gratification. Desire is as insatiable as the ocean, and clamours louder and louder as its demands are attended to.
It claims ever-increasing service from its deluded devotees, until at last they are struck down with physical or mental anguish, and are hurled into the purifying fires of suffering. Desire is the region of hell, and all torments are centred there. The giving up of desire is the realisation of heaven, and all delights await the pilgrim there. "I sent my soul through the invisible, some letter of that after life to spell, and by and by my soul returned to me, and whispered, 'I myself am heaven and hell.'" Heaven and hell are inward states.
James Allen (1864–1912), Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year (1913) – public-domain text, gently modernised.
The original 1913 text is in the public domain.
