place immediately. Yet the possibility is kept inside and our name is registered, as it
were, to be taken up one day or the other. It may be after many lives—not necessarily
the next life itself.
This kind of registering of a future possibility takes place with every kind of
perception, so we can imagine how many times this registration is being done. And
every registration is a permanent record which will not be wiped out in the akashic
records. Then what happens? When the forces which have caused the birth of this
particular body lose their momentum and become exhausted, they lose control over
this vehicle called the body and separate from it. This is called death.
These forces, which are able to hold the limbs of the physical body together as an
organism, lose their hold over it on account of the fact that they have nothing to do
with that instrument afterwards—just as a carpenter when he finishes his work
throws the tools down because his work is finished. Likewise, this carpenter inside
has used this body as a tool for executing a particular purpose. When that purpose is
fulfilled, the tool has no purpose to serve and it is cast away. That is what we call
decease, or the death of the body. But, these forces which have brought about the
birth of this body have many purposes to fulfil. Though a particular set of purposes
has already been fulfilled through this particular instrument of this body, what about
the other sets? They have also to be fulfilled.
There is a pressure exerted by these unfulfilled forces to materialise themselves into
form once again. This formation of a material body freshly, once again, on account of
the pressure exerted by these potencies inside, is rebirth. Therefore birth, death and
rebirth are all caused by forces which are behind, or at the back of, this conscious
level of our life which we mistakenly take to be the entire life. The controllers of our
deeds and of our experiences here lie behind us, and we seem to be running about
like puppets, like marionettes pulled by strings of forces which are invisible to the
eyes and inconceivable to the mind. What sort of birth a person will take at a
particular time, no individual can know, because every individual is only a showpiece
that is projected by these forces at a particular time, keeping aside every other
possibility of such formations out of the view of this particular individual.
These forces will not allow us to know what other things are being kept for us. We are
completely kept in the dark about our future. Another reason why we are kept in the
dark about the future is the power with which these forces manifest themselves in a
particular body. Suppose some person is pushing us from behind with tremendous
force; we will be moving forwards with such velocity that we will have no time to
think this way or that way, because of the force that is behind us. Likewise, the force
with which these latent potencies manifest themselves is such that we are allowed to
work only with blinkers, and we cannot know what is either ahead of us or what is
past. The logic behind this action of the forces of karma, which brings about various
types of birth and compels an individual to pass through various experiences, is
cosmical and not individual. This is made out by Patanjali in a very few expressions.
Karma is a cosmic force; it is not an individual force. It is a necessity of nature as a
whole which obliges each individual to act in a particular way, to conform to a
particular principle, and to undergo certain sets of experiences.
Before we study the other sutras in connection with this subject, we may once again
remember the four aspects acting as the causative factors of karma: hetu, phala,