Do We Actually Need Emotions?
- Daniel McKenzie
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
We treat emotions with a kind of cultural reverence. “To feel is to be human,” we’re told, as though the depth of our identity were measured by the turbulence inside us. We praise passion as if our desires define us. We defend poor decisions by saying, “I’m just a very emotional person,” as though reactivity were a personality trait rather than a liability. None of these instincts are questioned. They’re simply inherited, absorbed, and repeated.
But Vedanta—and many contemplative traditions—quietly say something far more unsettling: you are not your emotions, and never have been. They are not sacred inner truths. They are not your identity. They are not your essence. They are not even “you” in any meaningful sense.
When you look closely, emotions are simply vrittis—mental modifications intensified by physiology. They are objects appearing in awareness, witnessed and known. And they are generated by prakriti, the machinery of nature, not the Self. Anger swells and recedes. Grief rises and fades. Desire appears and dissolves. If you can observe a feeling, if you can watch it move through your system, it cannot be who you are. The seer is steady. The emotion is not.
And yet, to deny the reality of emotion in human life is equally misguided. The question is not whether emotions are “good” or “bad,” helpful or harmful. The real question—the one almost no one asks—is: Do we actually need emotions? And if so, for what?
To answer that, we have to view emotions through three distinct lenses.
I. The Human Level (Vyavaharika):
Emotions Are Essential to Functioning, Bonding, and Meaning
On the ordinary human plane, emotions are not optional. They are the connective tissue of relational life. Without emotions, social connection collapses. Art, friendship, parenting, intimacy, devotion, and morality become impossible. You wouldn’t raise a child out of cold rationality. You wouldn’t comfort a suffering friend unless you felt some echo of their pain within yourself. You wouldn’t remain loyal, creative, cooperative, or inspired unless something in you cared.
A species without emotions might survive biologically, but not humanly.
Our shared emotional vocabulary is what makes us a civilization rather than a swarm of intelligent animals.
So at this level, yes—emotions are indispensable. They give life its texture, its warmth, its meaning.
But this is only the first perspective.
II. The Psychological/Spiritual Level (Sattvic Clarity)
Emotions Are Neutral Energies Distorted by Ignorance
Here is where contemplation deepens: Emotions themselves are not the problem. Identification with them is. Every emotion has at least two expressions:
The difference is dramatic.
Take anger.
Under rajas, it’s destructive and impulsive.
Under sattva, it becomes righteous clarity—the capacity to set a boundary without hatred.
Take sadness.
Under tamas, it’s depression—a collapse of meaning.
Under sattva, it becomes tenderness, humility, the impulse to care.
Take joy.
Under rajas, it becomes addiction—grasping, chasing, clinging.
Under sattva, it becomes gratitude and devotion.
This is the subtle truth: Emotions are not inherently positive or negative. They reveal the quality of the mind through which they pass.
At this level, emotions become tools of growth when filtered through clarity, and tools of bondage when filtered through confusion. They are neither moral nor immoral. They simply amplify whatever is already present.
This is why the common slogans begin to unravel:
“To feel is to be human.” True, but feelings aren’t who you are.
“I am what I’m passionate about.” False—you are not your desires.
“I’m a very emotional person.” Perhaps, but is that helping you or harming you?
“Follow your heart.” Sometimes wise, sometimes disastrous.
This middle lens shows us that emotions are not fixed entities. They are dynamic forces shaped by your clarity—or your lack of it.
III. The Absolute Level (Paramarthika):
Emotions Are Modifications of Ignorance — But Only From the Standpoint of Pure Consciousness
Here is the highest and most uncomfortable truth, the one that only makes sense when all else is exhausted:
From the standpoint of the Self:
They are not part of pure consciousness.
They are not part of your real nature.
They arise only in duality, only in limitation, only as reflections.
Pure consciousness has no wave, no reaction, no preference, no lack—therefore no emotional movement of any kind.
But here is the crucial nuance:
The Self does not choose.
Choice belongs to the mind.
Preference belongs to the jiva.
Emotion belongs to prakriti.
So the question “Should emotions exist?” is meaningless at the absolute level. The Self does not prefer. It only shines.
So What Happens If a Whole Society Becomes Enlightened?
This is where the insights synthesize.
If individuals are enlightened:
Emotions still arise, but they are transparent and fleeting—ripples in a still lake. They do not bind, distort, or leave any residue.
If an entire species becomes enlightened:
Humanity would not become robotic.
Humanity would become sattvic.
What remains:
compassion, tenderness, humor, gratitude, creativity, aesthetic delight.
What disappears:
rage, tribal fear, envy, insecurity, vengefulness, hate.
Society would not lack emotion.
It would lack suffering.
If ignorance itself disappears:
Then no—emotions would not exist, because individuality would not exist.
No experiencer, no experience, no object.
The universe would be pure Being.
But at that level, the question dissolves with the questioner.
The Final Resolution
Emotions are not the problem.
Identification is.
Ownership is.
The “I” inside the feeling is.
At the human level, emotions are essential.
At the psychological level, emotions are neutral energies.
At the absolute level, emotions are illusions of the mind.
The enlightened are not emotionless.
They are simply not possessed by emotion.
They are free to feel —
and free not to feel —
without being defined by either.
This is the true possibility for human life:
to participate fully in emotional experience
without becoming the experiencer.
To allow emotion to color the mind
without coloring the Self.
To let everything arise in consciousness
while nothing sticks.
When this is understood, freedom appears.
Everything else is weather.
