Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

Author(s): Prabhavnanda Swami, Christopher Isherwood
Publisher: Ramkrishna Math Madras

Page 84

YOGA AND ITS PRACTICE
and acts regulate the speed of his progress. He builds or removes his own obstacles to enlightenment. His present state is continually being conditioned by the karmas of his past and continually productive of future karmas. Death does not interrupt this process. Neither does rebirth. The individual is merely reborn with a body, a mind, a character and social surroundings which express, as it were, the sum total of his karmic balance at that particular moment in time.
The doctrine of reincarnation is exceedingly unpalatable to many people because it makes each one of us directly responsible for his present condition. We all dislike having to face this responsibility, and some of us prefer to blame God, or our parents, or the existing political system for making us what we are. If we deny reincarnation and claim that this birth is our first, we are, in fact, disclaiming responsibility for our condition, since it then logically follows that this condition must have been ordained by God, or brought about by the influences of heredity and environment. Hence--if we have been born physically or economically underprivileged-we are provided with a permanent grievance, which permits us to spend a lifetime sulking and cursing our fate, and with a permanent excuse for all our own weaknesses and failures.
This doctrine of reincarnation, which at first seems so grim and heartless, actually implies a profoundly optimistic belief in the justice and order of the universe. If it is we—and not God, or our parents, or our fellow men—who have made our present predicament, then it is we who can change it. We have no excuse for self-pity and no reason for despair. We are not helplessly doomed. We are under no mysterious prenatal curse. The "fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars...." All we need is courage and a determination not to give up the struggle.
Sometimes the workings of the Law of Karma are quite apparent to us—in retrospect, at least. We can see, looking back over our lives, how a certain tendency in our character
be