Barriers................

3.  Good or bad deeds are not the direct cause of the transformation.  They only act as breakers of the obstacles to natural evolution; just as a farmer breaks down the obstacles in a water course, so that water flows thought by its own nature.


     Here, Patanjali explains the Hindu theory of evolution of species by means of an illustration from agriculture. The farmer who irrigates one of his fields from a reservoir does not have to fetch the water.  The water is there already.  All the farmer has to do is to open a sluice gate or break down a dam, and the water flows into the field by the natural force of gravity.........."All progress and power are already in every man," says Vivekananda.  "Perfection is in every man's nature, only it is barred in and prevented from taking its proper course.  If anyone can take the bar off, in rushes nature."...............In the animal the man was suppressed, but, as soon as the door was opened, out rushed man.  So, in man there is the potential god, kept in by the locks and bars of ignorance.  When knowledge breaks these bars, the god becomes manifest.


-How to Know God:  The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali
Chapter IV. Liberation: Verse 3