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The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Book 4 - Illumination
9. There is identity of relation between memory and effect producing cause, even when separated by species, time and place. A paraphrase of the sutra might serve to elucidate, and might be expressed as follows: No matter what the race may have been, no matter in what continent, past or present, a life may have been passed, and no matter how distant that life may be or how many millenia of years may have elapsed, the memory remains with the ego or soul. In due time, under proper adjustment, every cause then initiated must inevitably work out into effects and those effects will appear, working out in some one life. Nothing can prevent it, nothing can stop it. Charles Johnston expresses it in his commentary in the following words: "In like manner, the same over-ruling selective power, which is a ray of the Higher Self, gathers together from different births and times and places those mind-images which are conformable, and may be grouped in the frame of a single life or a single event. Through this grouping, visible bodily conditions or outward circumstances are brought about, and by these the soul is taught and trained. Just as the dynamic mind-images of desire ripen out in bodily conditions and circumstances, so the far more dynamic powers of aspiration, [395] wherein the soul reaches toward the Eternal, have their fruition in a finer world, building the vesture of the spiritual man."
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