Chapter 4Sorrow and Suffering · Joy and Sorrow

Joy is a vital feeling, like its opposite, sorrow.

* There is no real reason why delight should necessarily be fol-lowed by sorrow — except that it is the habit of the vital. But that habit can be overcome.

* It is dangerous to have a heart insisting on its own vital emotions. Not to be the slave of vital joy or sorrow is a condition one has to pass through in order to arrive at true Anandam. If people are right [that a heart indifferent to joy and sorrow is not desirable] then there can never be any equality and we have even to say that equality is a bad thing. If so, then the whole of the Gita is a mass of nonsense.

* There are vital joys that are innocent and need not be seriously put down — such as joy in art, poetry, literature. They have to be not put down, but put aside only when they interfere with sadhana.