proportions. We cannot know that it is made up of these components because of the
emphasis we lay on the product alone and not the cause of it.
Likewise, this product called experience, irrespective of the fact that it is made up of
aspects of the subject and the object, looks like a new thing altogether—and we run
after it. This is caused by avidya. Tasya hetuḥ avidyā (II.24) is another sutra. That we
regard an experience of whatever kind as a new thing altogether, and we want it to be
repeated again and again—notwithstanding that it is not a new thing altogether
because it is brought about partly by the qualities of the subject and partly by the
characters of the object—this is called avidya. Ignorance of what is actually
happening is called avidya. This is to be rooted out by yoga.
All this long, long dissertation is an introduction to what yoga is to do, what is
supposed to be done, and how one has to prepare oneself for higher practices. The
techniques of practice are described by these methods of philosophical dissertation.
The ignorance, which is at the background of this impossibility to perceive the
character of the experience at any time, is the object which yoga is to remove. It has
to be dispelled. This understanding that experience is a process of self-exhaustion of
karmas is itself a step in the practice of yoga. It is called viveka, and a percentage of
this viveka is necessary before actual practice is taken up.
In this contact called experience, there is a forgetfulness of two things: one forgets
oneself, and one forgets what the object is. We can neither know ourselves, nor can
we know the nature of the thing which we have contacted at the time of the
experience itself. The consciousness gets absorbed in the experience by forgetfulness
of both these aspects. Why the object has been the cause for this experience, we
cannot know; and why we are experiencing this condition is also something not
known. How is it that this object alone is pleasurable, and not something else? This
cannot be known. This impossibility to know is avidya, because if we start knowing,
then the pleasure will decrease. The more is the knowledge of the nature of an object,
the less is its capacity to produce pleasure, and so an ignorance about it is necessary
so that pleasure may be enjoyed. This is very strange.
So is the case with one’s own self. The less we know about ourselves, the more is the
desire generated in us towards objects of sense, and the greater is the pleasure we
experience by such contact. The more one knows about one’s own self, the less is this
tendency to go towards objects, and the less is the intensity of the pleasure or the
pain that is brought about by experience.
To conclude, the experience, therefore, is an educative process. It is for the
refinement of personality, for the progression of the individual towards its goal which
is universality of experience, far removed from this contactual experience of the mind
with the object. The purpose of experience, as it was pointed out, is liberation. And
so, yoga tells us that we must take advantage of every experience as a lesson that is
provided to us by nature, from which we learn something new in regard to the true
nature of things, and we should not be so foolhardy as to ask for a repetition of that
experience—just as a person who learns a lesson would like to have further lessons of
a new character of a higher degree, rather than ask for a repetition of the same lesson
again and again. The asking for the repetition of the same lesson means that we have
not understood that lesson; otherwise, if we had grasped it, we would not ask for a
repetition of it. We are asking for a repetition of the same experience, especially if it