A devotee’s question: What is the cause of good and bad moods?
Swami Nikhilanand Ji’s answer: This actually has to do with our past lifetimes. Our true identity is that we are Divine souls. We are eternal, and we have lived uncountable past lifetimes. In each and every lifetime that we’ve lived, we have had the very same mind that we have today. The mind is different from the brain. The brain is simply the physical organ through which the mind functions. The mind is actually much, much more subtle than the brain. Thus, when the soul leaves the physical body upon the death of that body, that subtle mind goes with the soul. So the soul and mind travel together in every life.
In our life, every single thought that we have makes a very subtle impression on our mind. That impression is called a sanskar (subtle mental impression). All of those sanskars are stored in the mind, and they each have their own quality according to the type of thought that we had and the intensity of that thought. It creates that type of sanskar. Those sanskars are stored in our subconscious and unconscious mind, and then they actually come in future lifetimes and reflect back into our conscious mind. It is, in fact, a part of our destiny.
So you can say that, in addition to the physical things that happen to us in our life, the good and bad luck we experience, which is considered to be our physical destiny, we also have an internal destiny, which governs when a particular sanskar will come and affect our conscious mind, at what time, for how long, and with what intensity.
So when we’re experiencing some kind of unexplained bad mood, we just feel depressed for no reason, or we feel apathetic or negative about life, and we don’t know why. Yesterday we were feeling fine, and today we’re having such a negative mood. This is the result of a sanskar. We’re undergoing what we would call a bad sanskar, which is the result of that kind of thinking in previous lives.
You can also have a good sanskar, which comes and affects your mind and makes you feel more energetic, more spiritual, and more excited about life.
Both good sanskars and bad sanskars come for a limited period of time, and they tend to cycle. You have some good ones, then bad sanskars come, then good ones come. Of course, the proportion of the two depends on what type of thoughts and actions we’ve had in our past lives.
Jai Shree Radhe!
