Gita 06.44 – Past-life’s spiritual practice manifests as inexplicable irresistible attraction to transcendence

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Krishna is speaking here, he is speaking about how the yogi who had given up, had not been able to complete spiritual life and the spiritual pursuit in one life, continues on in the next life either by first going to heaven and being born in a cultured or wealthy family or being directly born in a very spiritually inclined family, because of purva abhyasa, because of one's past practice, that person certainly, riyate means to become attracted, helplessly attracted, spiritually inquisitive person, yogasya is inquisitive about yoga, shabd brahmati vartate, shabd brahma refers to the Vedic scriptures, especially their karmakal dissection, ati vartate goes beyond the range of the Vedic scriptures, it's a very interesting verse in terms of its various aspects, so let's go over it line by line, purva abhyasenatenaiva, the purva abhyasa refers to what has been done, the practices that has been done in one's previous life, so in general, the practice that we do with respect to material things related with the body, that practice doesn't go on with us from one life to the next life, a person may have become a PhD in say English in one lifetime, but most likely that person will have to start with learning A, B, C, E, F, G in the next life, so however with respect to spiritual growth or spiritual education, Krishna says purva abhyasenatenaiva, so the purva abhyas, the past practice does stay and it still stays relevant, tenaiva, that person, purva abhyasenatenaiva, what happens to that person, riyate yavasopisaha, riyate is attracted, helplessly attracted to spirituality, to the search for higher meaning and to the path that, the path of yoga that will lead to the fulfilment of the search for higher meaning, so it's important to understand that Krishna doesn't say that for the past life, one will remember necessarily any facts or figures in the Bhagavatam in the 8th canto, in the second, third, fourth chapters talk about the story of Gajendra and there it is described how Gajendra was living the life of a imperial glory as the king of the elephants, formidable, powerful, aristocratic and yet when the elephant was faced with the danger, a life-threatening danger of being caught in the jaws of the crocodile, then when Gajendra realised that he couldn't help himself and neither could his co-elephants help him, so he called out the Lord and he chanted a prayer which he had learned in his previous life, so again what it means is that actually the spiritual inclination that was there and the spiritual wisdom that underlies such inclination, all that manifested in the time of crisis and then he was able to speak such profound words, so similarly when we practice Krishna consciousness, what stays with us is this practice of spiritual, is this attraction towards spiritual life, so we may study many books and we may memorise many verses, we may sing many tunes and even master many tunes, now we may or may not remember those verses or those tunes in our next life but wherever we go, actually we will remember that attraction towards Krishna, we may not even know who Krishna is but we feel attracted, how wonderful is this person, I want to know what is that thread that connects the soul from the previous life of this life, it's much more a thread actually, it's like a, just as we talk about the ropes of the moods, the moods we consider as ropes which pull the soul towards the worldly objects, sense objects and there also, there also Krishna uses the word while talking to the moods, so everything is done by the mood, so karyateya avasya, avasya is helpless, so it is said over there that, it's in third chapter of the Gita that 3.55 is that, not even for one moment can a soul be inactive because the soul is pulled to act helplessly by the three moods, the same word avasya is used there as is used here, there avasya refers to the three moods which act as like ropes, invisible ropes between us and the specific sense objects towards which we are attracted according to the mood that we have cultivated, so an alcoholic is avasya, helplessly attracted towards a bottle of alcohol because that alcoholic has indulged in it and that attraction is there, so similarly in a much more fortunate sense, the practice that we have done of bhakti that pulls our consciousness towards Krishna and that's why, even that's why for the yogi, which is the yogic path, there is a helpless attraction of the consciousness towards Krishna or some manifestation of Krishna as the supersoul or the brahman and that's actually that purva-abhyasindhane riyatey avasyopisaha, so one is pulled helplessly and actually it's a person can get a lot of taste and can hear a lot of this also, riyatey avasyopisaha, jijnasurabhyogasya, jijnasurapiyogasya, shabda brahmati vartte,.