A man’s—a human being’s—every thought, word, and action is liable to and actually creates sanskaras. Good thoughts, words, and deeds create good sanskaras, while bad thoughts, words, and deeds create bad ones. Either way, sanskaras are indeed created. Only Realized Ones are void and free of them. These sanskaras can never be wiped off unless one is lucky enough to incur the grace of a Guru and attain Realization. Even great yogis with their years of tap-jap-vrat and with their tremendous powers from the siddhi-state of the planes, even those who have reached the sixth plane, are unable to rid themselves of these sanskaras. What they can do with all their might and power, is to stop the production of new and fresh sanskaras during periods of concentration and samadhi. But what of the huge store of past sanskaras accumulated over the years and ages? These still exist and persist undestroyed. Despite all his great powers a great yogi can’t destroy these old sanskaras except by the grace of a realized Guru who wipes them off and burns them up, giving him Realization.
Now when even these great yogis with all their tremendous powers can’t manage to destroy their sanskaras, what to say of you who are just ordinary human beings? Every moment you accumulate more sanskaras; with your every thought, word, and action you create a fresh stock of new sanskaras, adding to your existing store of good and bad sanskaras from the past, all mixed together. Good sanskaras created through good thoughts, words, and deeds mix with bad sanskaras produced by bad thoughts, words, and deeds and there results an intermingling of good and bad, like black and white hairs on one’s head. None of these sanskaras gets destroyed completely, but the stockpile is ever increased by new addition.
For this reason it is said somewhere in the Persian: “If you ask for advice, in short I would tell you this: do nothing in this world; and if at all you must act, do it without caring for the result. Let it be done of its own accord which is to say, do not pervert anything which is going on a straight course.”
And why should you refrain from action thus? Because, as just explained every action of yours creates sanskaras—good and bad according to the thoughts, words, and deeds in question; and these sanskaras constitute the great check and hindrance on the path of progress towards the goal of Truth. For the destruction of these sanskaras there have been developed so many varied, difficult, and different processes of yoga sadhana—methods of meditation, concentration, and so forth—which check and stop the formation of new sanskaras only. In other words, these yogas too are helpless in every way it comes to rooting out and wiping off your old sanskaras from the past.
– “Meher Baba’s Tiffin lectures”, p307
28-November-1926; Lonavala