considerable change and when we face the fulfilment of our own desire we may hardly
believe that we ourselves desired what has now come to us.
The existence of the four kinds of afflictions mentioned above which are inher-
ent in human life produces such conditions that nobody who has developed Viveka or
spiritual discrimination can possibly consider the so-called happiness of ordinary life
as real happiness. It is true that to the man of the world immersed in its illusory pur-
suits of pleasure or power life may appear to consist of a mixture of pleasures and
pains, joys and sorrows but to the wise man whose spiritual faculties have become
awakened all life must appear full of misery and its illusory happiness merely a sugar-
coated pill containing only pain and suffering hidden inside. This is a statement which
may appear to give a distorted view of life but let the student ponder deeply over these
facts—these hard facts of life—and it is probable that he will also come to the same
conclusion. Anyway, unless the aspirant for the Yogic life realizes the truth enshrined
in this Sutra he is not really fully qualified to attempt the long and difficult climb
which leads to the mountain-top of Self-realization,
- The misery which is not yet come can and is to be avoided.
The next question which naturally arises is whether it is possible to avoid this
misery which has been shown to be inherent in human life in the last Sutra. A large
number of thoughtful people who have pondered deeply over this problem will perhaps
concede that life is essentially an unalloyed misery but they will say that one has to
take life as it is and to make the best of it since there is no way of getting out of it ex-
cept through the gateway of death. They may not believe like the ordinary orthodox
religious man that all the sorrows and sufferings will somehow be compensated in the
life after death but they do not see what can be done in the matter except to accept
thankfully the little pleasures and to bear the pains with stoic indifference.
Now, it is in this respect that the philosophy of Yoga differs fundamentally from
most of the orthodox religions of the world which offer nothing better than an uncer-