Microsoft Word - Taimni - The Science of Yoga.doc

The whole Universe appears to be a swirling flux of phenomena like water running
under a bridge. People and objects around us which appeared so real become mere
phantoms in the panorama which is passing before us. We seem to be standing in a
void and the horror of loneliness unspeakable engulfs us.
What do we do when this realization comes to us accidentally or as a result of
deep and continuous pondering over the real nature of phenomenal life? We generally
get alarmed, terrified and try to shut it out again by plunging more violently into the
activities and interests of the worldly life, even though we theoretically continue to
believe in the unreality of the things around us. But. if we do not try to smother this
horrible vision, and facing it squarely, take to the self-discipline prescribed in Yoga,
then sooner or later, beneath this fast flowing stream of phenomena, we begin, first to
sense, and later to discern something which is abiding, which transcends change and
gives us an eternal foothold. We begin to realize that the phenomena change but not
That in which the phenomena take place. First only dimly but later in its fullness this
realization of the Eternal grows within us. But we have to pass through the valley of
fear before this realization comes. We must see the whole solid world of men and
things disintegrate and disappear into a flux of mere phenomena before we can see the
Real hidden beneath the unreal.
It is only when we have passed through this kind of experience that we see with
sadness the illusion and the pathos in the life of the world, in the pursuit of little
pleasures and ambitions, in the ephemeral love and happiness to which people desper-
ately cling, in the short-lived glory of the man in power, in the effort to hold tena-
ciously to things which must be given up sooner or later. Viewed in this light even the
most exquisite pleasures and splendid achievements of life pale into insignificance,
nay assume the form of misery. It is the usual practice to ask a man under sentence of
death to name any simple pleasure which he would like to indulge in before he is exe-
cuted, a drink, a dish which he likes. But those who see such a man satisfying his
whim for the last time are conscious of a peculiar pathos in this desire to clutch at
pleasure before death snuffs out the life of the individual. To the man in whom Viveka
has been developed the pathetic pursuit of pleasures, ambitions and the like appears in
a similar light. We are all under sentence of death in a way, only we are not conscious
of this fact and do not know when that sentence will be carried out. If we did, all our
so-called pleasures will cease to be pleasures.