12  Samskaras TC  "12  Samskaras" \l 1

We are today the product, the sum total of every action and every thought of the past. Nothing is ever destroyed, it is there eternally. All your actions and every thought that you have ever thought is there within your memory box, and that is what we call samskaras. We are nothing but a bundle of samskaras which has found its expression in mental and physical form.

Samskaras are a conglomeration of the actions we have done over the ages; they are the various impressions that have been gathered in what we call the mind. The mind is patterned, and it is these very patternings that form the veils that conceal the real “I.” The process is to find one’s real Self and to find the true Self we have to get rid of the samskaras.

The extent of the mind is as vast as the entire universe. Every experience gained since the primal atom, from the time of the big bang explosion when you were propelled forth as that minuscule atom, and all the experiences gained from that state right through mineral, plant, animal and then man—every experience exists in the mind. All those experiences remain in the mind, and those experiences are not destructible.

We are nothing but a bundle of past actions and thoughts that have been heavily impressed upon our psyche.

If a person now has a horrifying vision or experience in meditation, it doesn’t matter. The beautiful experience is just as valid as the ugly experience. What is brought to the fore is just the impression.

Samskaras need not only be bad, they can also be good; it depends on how and where they were formulated and expressed. If they were formulated by a greater amount of tamas, which is inertia or darkness, then more negativity would be apparent. If the samskaras which constitute the individual mind are dominated by sattva, or the forces of light, then naturally life would be more pleasurable. These two gunas, tamas and sattva, have to be activated by interaction between tamas, sattva and rajas.

All samskaras created in the individual minds of man are interconnected. A good person spreads, without any effort, goodness all around himself. It is the nature of the flower to be beautiful, but that is not the only thing it does. It enhances the beauty of the garden. That is why every person is responsible for the other.

Samskaras cannot be destroyed. Those samskaras (thought forms or forces) which we clean away from ourselves will go to where they are most attracted. That is why, if you keep on thinking negative thoughts, then more negative thoughts will be attracted to you. If you think more positive thoughts, then more positive thoughts will be forthcoming. From where do they come? You draw those which have been discarded by other individual minds; you actually become a magnet of attraction. That is how negativity increases, for everything is forever existent, nothing is ever destroyed, not even a single thought, not even a single samskara.

During meditation, when people have experiences, what does it mean? It is simply that by diving deeper into our subtler levels of our minds, we are bringing to the fore, or to the conscious mind, experiences which already exist.

Behind the act, it is the motive or motivation that causes samskaras. One could be totally devoted to what one is doing and yet be nonattached to the action, for the action is performed for the sake of action and not for the sake of the reaction. The cause is activated, but that cause becomes a causeless cause, so that it could not have an effect.

Matter can not be destroyed. Thought, which formulates the samskaras, is also composed of matter.

Everyone, consciously or unconsciously desires peace. Yet the underlying factor blocking this peace, the obstacle in the way of happiness, is samskaras.

The more you try to get rid of samskaras, the more samskaras you form. Every thought man thinks, good or bad, forms an impression and the impression is a samskara.

You can have good samskaras and you can have bad samskaras. Being of a relative nature they would be within the confines of the law of opposites. We cannot escape or get rid of samskaras, but we can rise above them. Samskaras are like a burden that a man carries on his back. By lessening the burden, he is not destroying the contents of the burden, but he is leaving it on the wayside.

In order to rise above the law of opposites, there is a certain process: the process of refinement. Samskaras cannot be destroyed, but they can be brought to a far subtler, purer level, and this comes through action. All action performed is first governed by thought. If thoughts can be formulated in a manner of goodness then the actions become good also.

Thoughts are very persistent things. They go on and on. The more you fight them and the more you push them away, the more they come and take you deeper into the whirlpool of samskaras.

If it is not possible to discipline the mind then it is very possible to discipline the body. The body is disciplined by proper action. As we discipline the body, the mind too becomes disciplined. The effect of this disciplining is the refining of samskaras, and the mind is led to a far subtler level. And when the mind is led to a more subtle level, then the actions of man become purer.

As man’s mind, body, and thinking processes become more refined, he starts to explore the deeper levels of his mind. As the mind goes down to its deeper levels and meets with its subtler self, more light penetrates. As more light penetrates, the grosser samskaras that constitute us become lighter, the burden becomes lighter. As the burden becomes lighter, as the grosser self of man assumes a more subtle quality, then every action he performs does not leave that deep impression, or that deep scar which constitutes samskaras.

As we infuse the inner being, the kingdom of heaven which is within, into our daily lives, then the impressions of the past lose their power.

This life is produced because of the momentum set forth in previous lives. We are today the sum totality of what we have been, and everything that happens to us is created by us. When a person learns to accept this fact: “I am what I am because I made myself what I am,” then he becomes a responsible person. And any person that becomes a responsible person can view all happenings of life objectively and then he stops blaming everyone else.

Without destroying our previous samskaras we superimpose upon ourselves a way of living that could lead to the refinement of samskaras. The samskaras are refined and the three gunas within us are brought to a tranquillity without destruction. When that tranquillity is achieved, then those very samskaras disappear from our lives and they become one with their original elements.

By trying to destroy samskaras, you are adding more samskaras. What we try to do is refine them. And by reaching this ultimate point of refinement, a great tranquillity is produced, and the samskaras are shed. They are shed off and become one with their original elements which are indestructible. That is what keeps the universe going on and on. This is why the universe is eternal. All these samskaras, all these tamasic, rajasic, or sattvic values of life have no beginning, and therefore will have no end. When we refine them fully they discard themselves from us, and only the pure light remains.

Man has become weak by his own doing, by his own karma, by his own mind, by his own though patterns and by the impressions that he has created upon his existence. And yet in reality this weakness is just a reflection, a superimposition of the mind, of thought. Relatively speaking, there are weaknesses, but from absolute values there are no weaknesses at all.

Where does ugliness come from? It does not come from the object. Ugliness comes from your impressions or samskaras that are already in your subconscious mind. That is what we have to get rid of. Through meditation, you can burn the seeds of karma so that they won’t grow.

Learning lessons does not mean acquiring. That which we call learning means cleaning up . . . and this is how we attain a state of purity. All the dirt has to be wiped away—the dirt of samskaras, which is the combinations and permutations of the various impressions.

The superconscious mind is at the finest level of relativity and represents the quality of “light.” Our conditioning is dependent entirely on how much of the light from the superconscious mind can filter through. The clearer the passage for that light, the more genuine the experience, because in the power of that light conditionings disappear or are overcome, and the purity of the experience is felt. So to really gain true experience, one has to clarify the mind.

If the mind becomes more clear then experience could be more valid and true. And that is what we want: We want the true experience of ourselves.

If we have stability within ourselves we can take our anger for its own sake, and regard that anger to be an experience in itself without projecting it on that poor fellow in front of us. This knowingness comes about on its own if we allow that inner light to filter through us. Then the anger loses its sting and it leaves no samskara whatsoever. It does not leave a lasting impression that you will have to work out in some other form.

The skeletons that are hanging around in the closet of the mind are released in nightmares. It is an experience that you work out in the sleeping state that would have been much more difficult had the experience occurred in the waking state.

Dream experiences are even more valid than the experiences of the waking state because in the waking state we go through certain prejudices. We condition our experiences by our thought processes. But in the dream state, because we do not have the power to order our thoughts, they come up by their own need to express themselves, and find release.

The only person that does not dream is the man who has achieved perfect balance between the conscious, subconscious, and the superconscious. For him, oneness and total equilibrium exists. Such a man never dreams. He has no samskaras to express or to release.

We are forever creating God. We are forever dragging down that pure energy, that pure experience that experiences itself. We are dragging that pure energy through the various dirty layers of our minds and we try to interpret that purity through our dirt (samskaras). That is why some philosophers say that man creates God according to his own conceptions.

How can the person who is tied down in the bondage of gunas and samskaras ever comprehend one who exists in total freedom of freewill (the self-realized person)?

Thought is normally translated through words or through symbols. The thought, not being conscious, or the thought, not being brought about by effort, necessarily must be traded off by a samskara which means an impression. The impression is not the actual experience.

A dream is a composite story drawing forth elements from various experiences of this life or of many other lives. Many experiences are brought together and thrown into a pot and the soup that comes out is the dream.

When the dream seems very vivid, it means that certain experiences of the day or for the week have left a deep impression upon your mind. That impression, in turn, has stirred up a samskara which is hidden deeper down.

You are evolving even in your sleep. Without willing anything samskaras are being released and with the release they are being dislodged. It is easier to release a samskara in the dream state than it is in the waking state.

Every dream which you have is totally necessary for your evolution because the inner mind, the deeper layers of the mind, know what has to be released and there is no interference from the conscious mind.

Have more nightmares . . . release those fears! A bad dream is more helpful than a good dream. The bad dream is stirring your innards and throwing off that samskara.

An impression that is very deep does not only remain in the subconscious but it is translated through the conscious mind into daily living.

In deep sleep, man is nearest to Divinity because the conscious mind has been stilled.

The conscious mind could act as a stimulus to bring about certain dreams, and this mechanism releases various impressions in the mind and lightens the burden of the mind. If this did not happen a person could be driven to insanity . . . so this is a release valve which is very necessary.

What keeps the individual apart from the universal are those fine currents of samskaras.

Samskaric elements which are of very fine matter, disintegrate even beyond subatomic particles and merge away in the areas where they are most needed. So, these fine currents now remain for the ultimate mergence between the individual and the universal, between man and God. here a different process takes place. The entire tree exists in the seed, and the seed exists in the tree. These fine currents at their level do not have much as a counterpart to disintegrate to. So these fine currents revert back to the seed state and the individual is finally freed, and you become one with God. That is unity consciousness. That is the unification between man and God.

We are trying to get rid of preconceived ideas, indoctrination, and blind beliefs that we know nothing about, and we try to aim at the real experiential value of life where the purest of the purest, the spiritual self is experienced in its total innocence.

The individual soul comes from the unpatterned, and because it combines with all the various elements in the universe it becomes patterned. For the soul to find total peace it has to be unpatterned.

Because of past associations and past experiences our reasoning becomes warped.

When we use methods to try to unpattern ourselves, what happens is that in trying to unpattern the mind by the mind, we are repatterning it into a different mold. We are really trying to get away from patterning. The aim is to bypass the patterning of the soul and go deep within, to the basis of pure innocence. That is the purpose of life.