Joy and sorrow are the light and shade of life; without light and shade no picture is clear.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Joy and sorrow are each part of the other. If it were not for joy, sorrow would not exist; and if it were not for sorrow, joy would not be experienced.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume )
There is going forward and there is going backwards, there is success and there is failure, there is light and there is darkness, there is joy and there is sadness, there is birth and there is death. All things that we can know, feel and perceive have their opposites. It is the opposite quality which brings about balance. The world would not exist if there were not water and earth. Every thing and every being needs these two qualities in order to exist, to act, and to fulfill the purpose of life; for each quality is incomplete without the other. … by a deep insight into nature we discover that the creation is the same as the Creator, that the source is the same as the goal, and that the two only mean one.
There are two ends to a line but the line is one, and this oneness is manifest in all things, though we seldom give any thought to this subject. This amazing manifestation, this world of variety, keeps us so puzzled, so confused, and so absorbed in it that we hardly give ourselves any time to see this wonderful phenomenon: how the One and Only Being shows Itself even in the world of variety.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Joy produces light and at the same time joy is the result of light. Nothing stands in front of joy except the false concept of self. One can therefore escape both joy and sorrow by escaping concept.
Pictures are caused by variations in light and darkness, also in color. In true love there are no such variations. Mind is created in order that the soul might see life on the surface, and it is mind which has capacity for all lights and shades and colors. Therefore joy and sorrow are essentially conditions of mind. Pure-essence of mind does not know sorrow, which is caused by thought of self. Neither does it know joy although its condition is not different from what we call joy.
The reason that one experiences joy as joy is because it is differentiated from the condition when one feels sorrow and pain and difficulty. The realized soul no longer feels sorrow and pain and difficulty; consequently when one enters the higher states of consciousness one is no longer intoxicated by them, but understands them to be more natural than the ordinary state of life.