future. There is no such thing as that. Who has made this compartment of past,
present and future? There are no such compartments. They are only notions of the
mind in respect of certain kinds of experience. There is a pattern, which the mind
then compartmentalises due to the notion of the objects which are in space and time.
Space, time and motion, we may say, are the causes of this idea in the mind of past,
present and future. It is really not true that time has such compartments; it is a
continuous duration. Yet the past is kept outside the sight of the mind, and the future
is also unknown because of the intense attachment of the mind to a particular group
of karmas which are called the ‘present’.
The force of the karma is the cause of this generalisation of the mind—namely, the
experiences of the past, the present and the future. It is not enough if we tackle the
present merely, as the problems are not created by present factors only. The past has
left an impression which is causing trouble even in the present, and as a potency, it
will produce further trouble in the future. For karma, there is no past, present and
future; it is only for us that it exists. For this universal law of karma, there is no such
thing as time limitation. It can work at any time, in any way, when circumstances are
favourable.
Hence, the checking of the forces of karma implies the checking of its very roots,
whether they are past, present or future. Also, we should not be complacent under
the notion that what we are thinking today is the total thought of our mind and that
we have to deal only with these thoughts. What we are thinking today is very little,
because we cannot remember what we thought yesterday and what we experienced a
few years before. Also, we have no idea of what is stored for us in the future. This is a
very great difficulty before the mind that it mistakes only the present circumstances
for the total reality.
In one place in the Bhagavadgita it has been mentioned that this kind of knowledge is
the worst kind of knowledge, where the limited present alone is regarded as the total
reality, and the past and the future are ignored totally so that anything that is
outside—not inside—the location of the present circumstances is regarded as unreal.
Yat tu kṛtsnavad ekasmin kārye saktam ahaitukam; atattvārthavad alpaṁ ca tad tāmasam
udāhṛtam (B.G. XVIII.22): Tamasic knowledge, the lowest kind of knowledge, is that
which concentrates itself on a particular object only and hangs upon it as if it is the
total reality, ignoring every other thing, every other cause or factor which is
responsible even for the existence of this object.
Thus, the power of karma is universal; it is not only in one place. It is in the past, it is
in the present and it is in the future. This way in which karma works in a universal
manner can be checked only by application of a universal method. An individual
puny creature cannot tackle this karma. We have to raise ourselves to the status of
that capacity to deal with this universal feature which is called the karmic force.
Rather, we have to become universal persons before we can face this universal
problem. It is not a question to be solved by one individual. And when we are able to
face it, we are not any more individuals—we are something more than that. Therefore
it is that the yoga system again and again emphasises the need for the individual to
raise itself to the status of that particular level of experience with which yoga deals.
When we are merely small individuals, we cannot deal with a cosmic problem. We
deal only with problems which are commensurate with our present level, and then
we go step by step. These are the stages of yoga—the eight limbs of yama, niyama,