How To Transcend
The whole effort of yoga is: how to transcend.
Yam is meaningful because when a person becomes aware of death, only then, a life of self-discipline is possible. If you are only aware of sex. Life, and you have been avoiding death, escaping from it, closing your eyes to it, keeping it always at the back, throwing it into the unconscious, then you will not create a life of self-discipline. For what? Then your life will be a life of indulgence — eat, drink, be merry. Nothing is wrong in it, but, in itself, this is not the whole picture. This is just a part, and when you take the part as the whole, you miss — you miss tremendously.
Animals are there without any awareness of death: that’s why no possibility for Patanjali to teach animals. No possibility because no animal will be ready for self-discipline. The animal will ask, “For what?” There is life only, there is no death, because the animal is not aware that he is going to die. If you become aware that you are going to die, then immediately you start rethinking about life.
Then you would like the death to be absorbed in life.
When death is absorbed in life yam is born: a life of discipline. Then you live but you always live with the remembrance of death. You move but you always know that you are moving towards death. You enjoy but you always know that this is not going to last forever. Death becomes your shadow, part of your being, part of your perspective. You have absorbed death… now self-discipline will be possible.
