Sanskaras pose the greatest of hindrances to progress on the path. A huge heap of sanskaras stands behind every soul, and a fresh stock of new sanskaras is being added at every moment. Even great yogis who have advanced to the degree where they can stop the creation of new and fresh sanskaras during samadhi find themselves unable to clear away the vast store of sanskaras from the past. It is by reason of this need to clear away these past sanskaras that even Sadgurus take much time in fulfilling their duty of imparting realization to those of their circle, since the complete wiping off of these past sanskaras cannot be quickly accomplished.
To explain further. Shri gave a beautiful simile:
If you are to be awakened from a pleasant dream in which you are enjoying a ride in a motor car, you need to meet with something like a tiger or demon, hose sudden appearance frightens you and jolts you into wakefulness. And when you have woken up, you find that neither this experience of the ride in the motor car nor the sudden appearance of the tiger was real. In short, to achieve this realization of wakefulness the “tiger” must come, which is to say, your sanskaras need to be reversed so that they can be destroyed.
Or then again (to use another analogy), sanskaras can be likened to an enormous ball of twine or threads (guch) which are knotted and intermingled with each other in such fashion as to make it exceedingly difficult and at times actually impossible for you to untangle them. If you exert force, you run the risk of snapping the twine. But in the state of perfection the twine must be preserved intact, unbroken and absolutely free from knots along its length: that is (to interpret the analogy), if the Perfect One is to become conscious and brought down to the world. If the unraveling of the knotted and intermingled threads is brought about through the abrupt and haphazard breaking of threat at various places here and there, or worse, through the entire destruction of the ball of thread by burning, the consequence is that the realized Person is rendered unconscious of the world. This process makes such a one a Majzub, as the original string of chaitanya has been destroyed.
“Meher Baba’s Tiffin lectures”, p383
22-February-1927