‘I had better warn those amongst you who are longing to be serious: you are due for a disappointment today. How can we be serious today, when everything is so bright and cheerful? Look around you! Everything in nature is vibrant with happiness and joy. Today, we must vibrate in unison with the whole of nature.

Try to feel simple and natural like children
Are you wondering where I see evidence of happiness and joy? Everywhere. I can feel it all around us, and this is life; life is cheerful. I can feel a profusion of these seeds of joy streaming out in all directions from within me. Can you not feel them? Try to swallow at least one or two of them! You will object, ‘But that is not very philosophical! Not at all scientific!’ Well, people have funny ideas about what is scientific or philosophical.

Now my dear brothers and sisters, try to feel this joy, try to feel simple and natural like children; that will help you never to become cold and proud. Joyfulness is a marvellous attitude, because it keeps the brain, and even the body, supple and flexible, and the face expressive.

Without joy we become unattractive, lose our flexibility and make ourselves unhappy
As soon as someone loses this flexibility, this expressiveness, this youthfulness, they become disagreeable and unattractive, because in spite of everything, human beings need warmth, kindness and a smile. How is it possible to love someone who never smiles or laughs?

The extraordinary thing is how these people manage to put up with themselves! How do they do it? I have never understood. The damage done by this attitude is very great: in the first place one becomes unattractive, secondly, one loses one’s flexibility, and thirdly, one makes oneself unhappy.

Put pride aside and be like children
Adults who want to be what they think of as ‘serious’ have, in fact, chosen the surest way to destroy themselves. And then they adore children! Yes, because they see that children have escaped this mentality; they feel free; they laugh and play and tumble about, and if they fall, they pick themselves up over and over again.

Whereas if an adult falls down just once, that is often the end of them; they cannot pick themselves up again. Deep down, adults would love to be like children, but their pride or the fear of forfeiting their prestige forbids it. And so they can only get steadily older – older both inwardly and outwardly. To be sure, if you were like children, you would perhaps lose in prestige, but you would certainly gain a great deal in love; and to be loved is far better than to be coldly respected.’

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

To be continued…

From a lecture given at Sevres, on April 18, 1970
Complete Works Volume 18, Jnana Yoga Vol 2
Chapter 8, Love