Though a person is learned, it may not be possible for him to attain to the spiritual ideal immediately on account of ignorance, as a person who may daily walk over a treasure hidden beneath the earth may not know that he is daily walking over it. In fact, Jivas go to Brahman daily in the state of deep sleep, but do not know it, being covered by ignorance, and return to external consciousness of the world outside them.
Past impressions harass the mind.
However, by intense concentration on his beloved object, he was able to feel and realise the unity of himself with the object of his meditation and it is then that the Guru came and gave him the proper initiation into the mysteries of true meditation, admonishing him that the form he was thinking in his mind was only an adjunct outside truth, and that the truth was the Consciousness witnessing the form. The present obstacles are in the form of attachment to sense-objects and dullness of the mind, perverted argumentation and an obsessed wrong notion confirming the reality of the world and its objects. These obstacles are to be gradually eliminated by the practice of such virtues as tranquillity of mind, sense-restraint, etc., and by hearing, reflection and meditation on the great truths of existence, as also by employment, of proper means to suit, then and there, the different circumstances which one may have to encounter on the path. By such gradual elimination of desires, the obstacles decrease by degrees and then the Truth shines by itself. The future obstacles are the part of Prarabdha-Karma which manages to bring about future experience and even rebirth, such as in the case of Sage Vamadeva, whose Prarabdha was just enough to make him enter the womb of a mother, and the moment he entered it he had knowledge and realisation.