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Every experience produces a unique brain scan. Brain scans tell us nothing. The scan of sorrow after the death of a child is different than the scan after the death of a pet. Seeing red produces a different scan than seeing blue even though they are both light. The brain is not the perciever, the brain is a transmitter. Consciousness is the perciever.
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Originally Posted by Carabas
It is interesting that as far as emotions go nothing is black and white. How we feel is dependent on how we think, and if you can conceive of sorrow and joy being the same then they probably can be the same. I can also see that they may be different shades of the same pigment, or some such metaphor. Or the same feeling but then we attach a story to them that interprets them differently.
I had often thought of it differently though, as I always saw it, sorrow and joy each had positive aspects and negative aspects. The good thing about sorrow is it is deep, it has depth. I feel sad songs deeper. The bad thing about sorrow is that it is depressing. The good thing about joy is that it is happy, the bad thing about joy is that it is kind of shallow or superficial. But of course maybe they are like an X,Y axis and they are the same grid of bliss. To me, bliss is the depth of sorrow and the happiness of joy. This is just my little thoughts on the matter... I am not saying this is how it is inherently true or not. A lot depends on how we interpret the feeling, the story we tell ourself about it. A lot of suffering can be eliminated just by merely being mindful of the story and commentary we attach to our feelings. Be aware of that tendency of the mind....
Likewise Fear is an anticipation with a negative correlation. Excitement is anticipation with a positive correlation. Both increase heart beat and wake you up from a lucid dream. Both extremes can be beneficial or detrimental. (fear is helpful for avoiding bad situations)
Although, I think one should strive for the elimination of fear. And the elimination of sorrow. For one's own wellbeing. Unless one is a poet. Negative emotions are very useful tools for a poet. :)
Perhaps the thing to strive for is the elimination of the correlation, not the sensation itself. It is only the correlation of an increased heart rate with fear that makes one afraid rather than excited.
There appear to be two sentiments of agreement for the OP question, the first is that joy and sorrow depend on each other in order to exist. Joy is the sensation of ascension from a lower emotional base and suffering is the sensation of descent from a higher emotional base. However, there is a second definition of joy and sorrow's mutual inclusion, and that is that a sensation is a sensation and only our label of it, based upon our observation of our situation, makes it a negative or positive sensation. When one is fucking, especially a female, the sensation is both painful and pleasurable. If you do body-high based drugs, especially the psychedelic kind, you can receive a throbbing pleasure/pain excitement/anxiety that feels like being fucked on the receiving end by God or the Universe. And you cannot truly disseminate whether this sensation is positive or negative, it's whatever you choose it to be.
Many teachers of meditation I've met with have expressed the same sentiment during powerful life changes that eventually led them to a mindful lifestyle. I've personally only been able confirm their sentiments with psychedelic drugs and occasional other brief windows toward this truth, but I've seen enough to believe that emotions are not a spectrum, and Xei's sentiment that they are not the same because red is not blue does not hold any value. The only spectrum is in vibration, or pulse as Dthoughts said, and signals such as serotonin and dopamine or lack thereof. Everything else is merely a label. Red and blue are the same in that they exist on the same spectrum, it is only our choice to partition part of that spectrum and correlate it with a word, just as it is our choice to partition part of our emotional spectrum and correlate it with a word, whether that word has a positive or negative connotation.
Yes, I think they are the same thing, just like hot and cold are really just degrees of heat.
Very true
joy is a feeling from the past but sorrow is what I feel for all the joy that I have felt before.
I think the questions broad based..perhaps a personal preference. I've known many who laugh off catastrophic situations. However my last kidney stone..there was no joy around anywhere.
Try having the experience of feeling the most loved companion you will ever know dying in your arms. And then ask yourself again, if that is the same thing as feeling joy.