Student: You say there's great joy in achieving the transcendental platform. Why? Why necessarily joy and not sorrow?
Prabhupāda: Because you are seeking after joy. Because you are originally transcendental, spirit soul. You're hankering after . . . your business is to come to that platform of joyfulness. But you are somehow or other put into this material platform. You are not having fulfilled your joy. Just like you belong to this land, and if you are put into the ocean, Atlantic Ocean, however expert swimmer you may be, you cannot be happy. You have (to) come back to the land; then you can be happy.
Similarly, we are all spiritual souls, spiritual sparks. Just like the sunshine. Sunshine means there are molecular parts of shining principles. Similarly, we are also molecular parts and parcel of God, who is ānandamayo 'bhyāsāt (Vedānta-sūtra 1.1.12), in the Vedānta-sūtra. He is full of joy. So we, as part and parcel also, we are full of joy. So unless we come in contact with the Supreme, our joyfulness will never be fulfilled. Therefore we have to come to the spiritual platform if we want to have that full spiritual or full joyfulness