Those memories are what I call samskaras. Samskara - Engrams or deeply engraved memories. Any samskara that is operating in your conscious or unconscious layer is nothing but a hindrance to the fulfillment of your life. There is no such thing as good or bad samskara. No samskara is good. An inner space filled with samskaras is hell. An inner space without samskaras is heaven. Do not try to classify samskaras as good or bad. A samskara by itself, by its very nature, is negative. By its very nature samskara is depressive. Anything done out of samskaras will reduce everything to boring emptiness. Anything that happens with a deep understanding, just out of your pure inner space, always adds value to you. Anything done out of samskaras adds more and more bondage to you.

From our young age we collect so many different samskaras in so many ways. We accumulate them and also reproduce them. samskaras do reproduce themselves even without any further action from our part. samskaras get strengthened in different ways. There are some samskaras that get strengthened only by action, when you repeat the action. There are some samskaras that get strengthened just by receiving information with regard to them, when you receive input from the world about them. There are some other samskaras that need neither action nor information, just remembrance is enough, and they get strengthened! We collect these different levels of samskaras, engraved memories, and store them in our system and expand them. Karma Finally when driven by the desire you execute the action and it becomes karma.

The power of desire drives you into finally buying the necklace. That is the action – the karma. Anything half done leaves a samskara (engraved memory) in your being. Anything not lived fully leaves an imprint or samskara in your being, which time and again pulls you, attracts you to travel the same path and fulfill it. The cause of addiction is also related to samskaras. In my own experience of having worked with millions of people personally, at least a few thousand cases of addiction have been healed by meditation. The basic truth about addiction is that you have lived your life vaguely, not fully or with the whole being. Unfulfilled desires create a samskara in you pulling you back to fulfill the desire by reexperiencing the same desire again and again.

Any emotion lived intensely simply liberates you of that emotion - be it anger, fear, desire to eat or attachment to any object or person. You are liberated fully of anything when you live it fully. If a person keeps going back to a problem time and again, it only means that he or she has not lived out the problem fully. When we live, half our mind is somewhere else. Patanjali* says beautifully, The more the quantity, the less the quality. The moment the quality of enjoyment of any Any emotion lived intensely simply object inc-liberates you of reases, its that emotion - be it quantity anger, fear, desire decreases in to eat or direct pro- attachment to any portion, of its own accord. object or person.

Therefore, it is the quality that needs to be increased. Life is not a brief candle. It is a bright shining torch. Make it burn as brightly as possible in your life. Three types of karma There are three types of karma -agamya, prarabdha* and sanchita.