This bondage of actions is the tie that is deep-rooted and cannot be easily uprooted and gotten rid of.
Good actions bind a man with a golden chain, and bad actions with an iron-spiked one. But the chain is there in either case, and the man is never set free. Yoga and other practices are good and merit an aspirant a good life in the next birth, but a man is never free from bondage or given mukti as a result of them.
Therefore, to achieve emancipation, one must be without virtues or sins — without any kind of sanskaras. One’s slate should be quite clean without credit or debit in one’s account, and this is impossible without the grace of the Guru. But for the Sadguru, it is the work of a fraction of a second! The vast, nearly infinite number of impressions in a person’s mind are like straws in a haystack which are impossible for the person to wipe out on his own. Even the process of cleaning them away through yogic practices, without the help of a Perfect Master, means contracting some kind of sanskaric impressions again in a different form.
[To realize God, the sanskaras have to be removed.] Only a matchstick is needed to set the haystack on fire. It is a moment’s work, but only a Sadguru has that match! He uses it for his circle members and thereby, in even less than a second, brings them to his own divine level [of Realization]. Even those persons who have no direct connection with a Sadguru from past lives can derive the greatest possible benefit merely through his physical contact and company.
–www.lordmeher.org, p333
October, 1922; Manzil-e-Meem