A SANSKARA

 
Did you ever sit down and suddenly realize that there was absolutely no base for your insistence on doing something in a particular manner?

Many years ago, while living in San Francisco and shortly after having read Baba's Discourses on sanskaras, I was walking down from Nob Hill to my office on Bush Street. As I walked, I suddenly realized that I was taking the same way that I took every day. And I wondered for the first time if there was any reason to take that particular route. I even speculated that it might be interesting to try a different combination of streets.

But to my amazement, as I did this, I found that I was invaded by a vague, uneasy resistance to the idea. I didn't want to change. I even thought it might be harder, or that, inexplicably, I might get lost. Crazy, after having lived in or near the heart of the city for decades. And yet this was my reaction.

Does this give you a beginning appreciation of what a habit pattern is, a sanskara, as Baba prefers to term it? Or sometimes he calls it a knot of psychic energy deposited in the mental body of the human being.