How a yogi experiences the same in happiness and sadness

Find out how a yogi experiences the same in happiness and sadness: “I am always in myself, the same in happiness and sadness.”

This excerpt is from the third awakening, of the Shiva Sutras: The Supreme Awakening, verse number 33, as revealed by Swami Lakshmanjoo.

For such a yogī:

33. sukhaduḥkhayorbahirmananam //

He experiences his joy and his sadness just like an object,
with “this-consciousness” separate from his being.

Such a yogī experiences the state of pleasure (sukha) and pain (duḥkha) with “this-consciousness,” not “I-consciousness.” For example, he does not experience joy thinking “I am joyous” and sadness thinking “I am sad.” Rather, he experiences “this is sadness” and “this is joy,” just as an ordinary person experiences external objects in his daily life. He experiences “this- consciousness” not “I-consciousness,” thinking “this is a pot” or “this is a bottle.” So, this yogī experiences his joy and sadness just like an object, separate from his being.

For this yogī, these two states of pleasure and pain, though touched by the known, are without the touch of the knower. He experiences his pleasure and pain just like other objects such as stoves or pots. He experiences pleasure and pain with “this- consciousness.” He does not experience pleasure and pain like ignorant people do, by putting their I-consciousness in that experience, saying, “I am happy,” “I am sad,” or “I am never happy,” “I am never sad.” On the contrary, this yogī experiences, “I am always in myself, the same in happiness and sadness.”

As explained in sūtra 30 of this Third Awakening, “For him, this universe is the embodiment of his collective energies,” so, for such a yogī, this universe is the expansion of his own energy. This explanation reveals to us that he experiences this whole universe with I-consciousness and he experiences his individuality with this-consciousness. Because he is never individual being, he is always universal being, he experiences his nature as universal being and not as individual being. If he were to experience his nature as individual being, then he would become sad and happy.

The present sūtra is not concerned only with pleasure and pain. Here, “pleasure and pain” is a metaphor for everything that exists in this world. This yogī experiences whatever exists in this world in the individual mode as this-consciousness and when he remains in the universal mode he experiences everything with I-consciousness. “I am everything.” Because this yogī has destroyed the attachment of his state of I-ness with puryaṣṭaka,³⁰ found in the waking state, dreaming state, and the state of deep sleep, how can he be touched by the two states of pleasure and pain?

In the commentary of Śrī Pratyabhijñā, it is also said,

Those yogis who have crossed the boundary of individuality, who have achieved the real state of universal being and are established in the state of universality, although in their daily lives they experience pleasure and pain, these experiences do not affect them at all. There is no apprehension that pain and pleasure will rise in them because the cause of the rise of pain and pleasure is individuality and they have destroyed individuality. They are apart from that and so, in the experience of pleasure and pain, they experience the real state of supreme beatitude, supreme bliss (ānanda), which is actually more than bliss. (Pratyabhijñā)

This is explained in Spanda in this verse:

Reality exists in that universal state where there is no pain, no pleasure, no object, no subject and not even the negation of these. (Spanda Kārikā 1.5)

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30. Here, the word puryaṣṭaka does not only refer to the eightfold subtle body, consisting of mind, intellect, ego, and the five tanmātras (subtle elements) which exists in the dreaming state (svapna). Here, the word puryaṣṭaka is meant to include the body (deha) existing in the state of wakefulness (jagrat) and the void state (śūnya) existing in the state of deep sleep (suṣupti).

Source: Shiva Sutras: The Supreme Awakening
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