You Can Know 

the Highest Happiness

Ellen Grace O’Brian

5

www.CSEcenter.org

One who is established in contentment 

realizes the highest happiness.

 

—Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra

S

piritual seekers are sometimes wary of the 

advice to “go beyond joy and sorrow” in order 

to be free. Without completely understanding 

what it means to go beyond being unduly affected by joy 

or sorrow, pleasure or pain, they fear that spiritual 

freedom will mean a boring existence, a life in the world 

that is without enjoyment or is just plain dull. If we 

imagine that spiritual realization requires giving up real 

joy in living, this naturally sets up a conflict about 

pursuing it with any zeal. Some people are conflicted in 

this way. They are pulled by the innate urge to awaken 

spiritually but resist this urge because they mistakenly 

believe that spiritual realization will mean the end to their 

happiness or at least giving up things they enjoy. They 

imagine an overly austere life imposed upon them by the 

rigors of enlightened living. This would only be trading 

one form of bondage for another, neither of which can 

bring happiness. Spiritual realization doesn’t prevent 

happiness or create it, but it does reveal it. The happiness 

that is revealed through spiritual realization is called the 

highest happiness because it is unconditional. It does not 

depend on circumstances and is always available to us 

because it is innate to the soul.

The advice to go beyond joy and sorrow is sound. It 

is an invitation to realize that we can be freely engaged 

in the world without being adversely affected by it; we 

can remain unmoved by the changing conditions either 

around us or within us. Discernment can show us that 

everything in nature is mutable or subject to change. If we