A sthitaprajna remains unperturbed in pleasure and pain — he does not say he is insensitive to them. He means to say that a wise man goes beyond happiness and sorrow, he transcends them — not by killing his sensitivity but by attaining to a higher state of consciousness, to superconsciousness.
OSHO
This statement of Krishna's is very profound and meaningful. He says sthitaprajna is one who remains unperturbed and steady in the midst of both happiness and misery. And your question is equally relevant: that if someone does not feel happy in happiness and miserable in misery will it not destroy his sensitivity?
There are two ways of remaining unperturbed in the midst of happiness and suffering.
One way is to kill your sensitivity. Then you will cease to be happy in happiness and miserable in misery. If your tongue is burned you will cease to taste both the sweet and sour. If your eyes are blinded you will know neither light nor darkness. A deaf person is insensitive to every kind of sound — pleasant and unpleasant. Insensitivity is the simplest way of achieving evenness of mind in both pleasure and pain.
And it is not surprising that by and large Krishna's followers have chosen the way of insensitivity. Most of those who are known as sannyasins, renunciates or recluses, do nothing but systematically destroy their sensitivity so they become dead to the experience of pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. But this is a travesty of what Krishna really means.
Krishna's meaning is very different. He says a sthitaprajna remains unperturbed in pleasure and pain — he does not say he is insensitive to them. He means to say that a wise man goes beyond happiness and sorrow, he transcends them — not by killing his sensitivity but by attaining to a higher state of consciousness, to superconsciousness.
An unconscious person, one under the influence of drugs, is insensitive to pain and pleasure but he cannot be said to have transcended them. He has rather fallen below the normal state of consciousness. In that way every dead person is insensitive. Transcendence is entirely different.
And I interpret this aphorism of Krishna's very differently. In my view, Krishna's way of transcending happiness and sorrow is different and unique. If someone experiences happiness fully, if he is utterly sensitive to pleasure, if he lives it so totally that no. thing remains to be lived, he will soon transcend it. Then he will be unperturbed and steady in every situation of pleasure and happiness.
Similarly if someone experiences pain and misery totally, if he goes into it with all his being, without trying to escape it in the least, he too will go beyond pain; he will never again be disturbed by suffering. Krishna does not ask you to kill your sensitivity; on the contrary, he wants you to heighten your sensitivity to its utmost, so it becomes total. Krishna stands for sensitivity, and total sensitivity at that.
OSHO
