Coming Face to Face With, and Overcoming the Failures, Limitations and Sins of One's Past Life in the Spiritual Quest

When an individual takes up the spiritual quest, he tends to accept certain principles of action which, by definition, contradict the values, principles and life-actions of his past experience. In many cases this causes a considerable amount of doubt and conce
as he tries to overlay his present value-set onto the past, and judge the past based on his present understanding. Of course, in every person's past there are numerous actions which can be called up before the mind's eye which do not meet this test. As long as we remain immersed in the ego-consciousness, we can become despondent, fearful and deen depressed by the results of this review. There are times during the spiritual growth that the force of the higher consciousness opens up embedded memories, particularly when it is the time for hidden movements encapsulated in the subconscious, in the vey cells, to be raised up and addressed. In some cases, these past memories, embodying instincts, habits, training, and wilful acts try to recreate themselves in the present, overwhelming the individual with these recrudescences, making the seeker feel unworthy or unfit for the spiritual quest.

It is clear that in the long span of the evolution of consciousness from that of Matter, through the development of Life, and the expression of Mind, each individual soul has undergone innumerable lifetimes of experience, been immersed in lives that were necessary for the formative experience and aligned with the time and the circumstance when it occurred. It is also true that as the individual takes a new birth he has to redevelop and undergo countless experiences in childhood and in his youth that are very much influenced by the atmosphere within which he is being raised, the society and its values and the education and training he receives. For much of this time he is not separated as the conscous witness of the nature and thus, more or less 'becomes' what he experiences. Once the spiritual force awakens in him, he begins to consciously choose his path forward and his values, life-focus and actions take on this new direction. The past experience then becomes, not a hindrance to his development, but a basis for the development of knowledge and wisdom to guide the choices for the future.

In this light, there are examples of individuals whose past, if evaluated on the basis of their later spiritual realisations, would be found sorely wanting. Most people do not have active memories, in their current lifetime, that can equal those that individuals such as Milarepa, who, driven by a desire for revenge, called down a devastating, destructive and letahl hailstorm on the village where he had grown up and in particular on his aunt and uncle who had stolen his patrimony and driven his mother and sister into desperate straits. Yet Milarepa used the impetus of his remorse, once he awakened to the magnitude of his actions, to achieve liberation in one lifetime. The Christian tradition tells of an individual, Saul of Tarsus, who was persecuting Christians. He had an experience on the road to Damascus (where he was going to carry out further persections), that transformed him into a devotee and believe
who went on to change his life entirely into that of a devout Christian. Similarly we have the contemporary story of Dannion Brinkley, who was declared clinically dead after being struck by lightning, but who returned with an entirely new understanding and focus. His past was that of a hired mercenary killer. His future was one of bringing light and developing Compassion in Action, a program to train people in providing hospice care.

Sri Aurobindo describes the path that takes the seeker through all the struggles in his poem A God's Labour, "I have been digging deep and long, Mid a horror of filth and mire, A bed for the golden river's song, A home for the deathless fire."

In Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, he recounts "But when God’s messenger comes to help the world, And lead the soul of earth to higher things, He too must carry the yoke he came to unloose; He too must bear the pang that he would heal: Exempt and unafflicted by earth’s fate, How shall he cure the ills he never felt? He covers the world’s agony with his calm;
But though to the outward eye no sign appears And peace is given to our torn human hearts,
The struggle is there and paid the unseen price; The fire, the strife, the wrestle are within.
He carries the suffering world in his own breast; Its sins weigh on his thoughts, its grief is his: Earth’s ancient load lies heavy on his soul; Night and its powers beleaguer his tardy steps, The Titan adversary’s clutch he bears; His march is a battle and a pilgrimage."

The Mother observes: "And finally, lest you get discouraged by your own faults, the Dhammapada gives you this solacing image: the purest lily can spring out of a heap of rubbish by the wayside. That is to say, there is nothing so rotten that it cannot give birth to the purest realisation."

"Whatever may be the past, whatever may be the faults committed, whatever the ignorance in which one might have lived, one carries deep within oneself the supreme purity which can translate itself into a wonderful realisation."

"The whole point is to think of that, to concentrate on that and not to be conce
ed with all the difficulties and obstacles and hindrances."

"Concentrate exclusively on what you want to be, forget as entirely as possible what you do not want to be."

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 4, Ordeals and Difficulties, pp.89-90