Past is not running after us. It is dead. But our attachment, our emotional baggage, holds on
to it and adds extra weight in the canvas of our Consciousness. It prevents us from moving towards ‘Nothingness’.
As human beings, we are obsessed with the past. Something that moved your heart, either made it happier,
or made it sad. It remains in our emotional memory and it becomes a DNA of our future. It becomes part and parcel
and influences our tendencies, our samskars (impressions). So our Masters have been advocating simply to forget the past.
Learn your lessons from the past. Do not have attachment at an emotional level with the past.
Naturally, the question would arise, “When we offer our prayer at night time, before we go to bed, regretting the
wrongs committed and resolving not to repeat the same once again, are we not making the mistake
of re-visiting the past?” Then the whole philosophy can be questioned that way, that Babuji Maharaj says,
“Atleast go back in twenty-four hours and see what your mistakes were.” But then, it is contradictory that,
“Oh, I am visiting my past.” No, it is not like that. He explains that true regret is promising yourself that,
“I will not repeat this ever again.” Such a resolve, though arising from the past, it frees us. It gives us freedom.
Such a freedom, showers upon our heart, that we remain joyful. When we make such a resolve, the future also
pulls us towards betterment. It promises a better future. So, without getting into an emotional tug-of-war, with our past.
We have to release it and free ourselves. Past is not running after us. It is dead. But our attachment,
our emotional baggage, holds on to it and adds extra weight, in the canvas of our Consciousness.
It prevents us from moving towards Nothingness. Nothingness also means, according to my feeling, absence of ego,
absence of desires and absence of past baggage. Absence of desire means you have no seeds of something to be fulfilled,
in the future. So our prayers, our resolves at bedtime, they are very crucial to our spiritual progress, once we make peace with
our past, especially. We remain bogged down by our regrets, remorse, guilts, more so, with today’s generation,
than the generation of my age, and even lesser than my father’s generation, my grandfather’s generation.
Today’s youth, in such a short time has collected so much of baggage, which perhaps the last two centuries
have not collected, or last three or four lives may not have collected. That would be a more appropriate to say,
instead of centuries, three or four past lives. They may not have added so much of baggage, as our youth has managed
to collect such an emotional baggage in less than twenty years of their life span. Getting rid of that is not going
to be very easy. But if they are sincere, authentic about it that, “Yes, I want to improve my life,
going further” – but it should not be a resolution with a tepid confidence. It should be a firm resolution,
“Henceforth, no more.” Then higher help can come. Once we dilly-dally ourselves with such resolutions,
help cannot come. In order to invoke the help from Masters, we ourselves have to first become
very confident and promise ourselves that, “No more of the past, whatever it be”.