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My husband came home the other day and got on the computer.  As he was checking his email, browsing ESPN or on Youtube learning how to make something or fix something,  he called out “Monica, were you online searching for shoes again?”.  I replied “Noooooo. Why? Why would you ask that?”  Without him even responding, I realized that most likely after my last internet search for a certain pair of shoes, ads for shoes were popping up on our browser. 

The present was providing evidence of the past.  In the same way that web browsing cookies provide evidence of our past activities (sometimes through targeted ads based on our most recent web search),  in the teachings of Yoga samskaras or imprints of our thoughts, words, and deeds left inside of us, carry a somewhat similar effect.*  

So that if we find ourselves frequently inclined to be giving, generous, charitable, these inclinations in the present provide evidence of the past.  They speak to a disposition created and cultivated over time or even lifetimes.  A capacity, albeit a site within ourselves that we have visited over and over again.  If on the other hand we frequently find ourselves reluctant to give, resisting our innate ability to be generous, even here the present is providing evidence of the past.

Sometimes through samskaras we get a glimpse of ourselves, of as we are and as we were,  by which we experience an incredible sense of relief in a feeling of positive continuity ("Phew, that still comes naturally!"). Other times, that glimpse of ourselves (like the ad for shoes popping up on the computer screen showing us an hour ago or few days ago that yes even then we were still searching for shoes!) leaves us questioning if that ad, imprint of our past, is something we want to continue encountering in the future?  Is that an aspect of ourselves we want to continue subscribing to going forward?

Or would we rather that when a friend or partner gets on our computer, they call out, "Hey! Were you online searching for Patti Smith's latest book?" And we reply, "Yes! Yes, I was!"

Further Reading:

Samskara-saksat-karanat-purva-jati-jnanam. 

Yoga Sutras III:18

By bringing unconscious drives into conscious light one knows the existence of previous lives.

Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda :

"I find my earliest memories covering the anachronistic features of a previous incarnation. These glimpses of the past, by some dimensionless link, also afforded me a glimpse of the future...Many Yogis are known to have retained their self-consciousness without interruption by the dramatic transition to and from "life' and "death".  If man be solely a body, its loss indeed ends his identity. But if prophets down the millenniums spake with truth, man is essentially a soul, incorporeal and omnipresent" 

*See previous post "Add to Cart"