Later in the evening of October 4th (1922), after dinner, the Master expounded on the function of the Sadguru, explaining more about yoga, sanskaras and mukti – liberation:
No yogi can gain eternal freedom or emancipation, even though he might have reached the highest yogic state of samadhi through his practices, because sanskaras (bindings) are still there and all ties have not yet been snapped.
Sanskaras mean the impressions in the mind left behind while doing any good or bad action. Even a thought creates sanskaras. Talking, listening, thinking, seeing, eating, sleeping, in fact, even subtle motions, produce many more sanskaras which have to be experienced with mechanical precision unless removed or nullified by a Sadguru’s grace.
Our present life, with all its experiences of pain and pleasure, virtue and vice, is the result of our past sanskaras. The very breath we breathe, the blinking of our eyelids, the finger we lift are all due to past impressions. It is the mere unfoldment of our past subtle impressions reflected in our present life. And our present life goes on creating more sanskaras. A good word or action has its beneficial result compressed in an impression – imagine it in the form of a circle – and a bad word or action likewise stores up a bad result in a similar subtle form. Thus good deeds of this life assure a happy future life, and bad actions in the present life result in a miserable future birth.
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 (liberation) 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 Perfect Master. But for the Master, 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 contacting some kind of sanskaric impressions again in a different form.
Sanskaras keep one separate from God. 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.
Lord Meher, Bhau Kalchuri, Original Publication, Vol. 2, pp. 414 – 416.