In today’s scientific development and understanding, no-one will or need to accept any statement on face-value. Citing chapter and verse won’t justify the meaning in the least. This would need a clear exposition which should be scientifically valid and logically acceptable.

According to Vethathiri Maharishi let us first seek to define sin in a manner that could be understood by laymen and also by intellectuals, scientists and others. Any action that results in pain to self or others, at present or in future, through body or mind – is called sinful action. Whatever may be the action that disturbs the rhythm of Nature, the development of knowledge or the peace and happiness of self or others is called “Sin”.

We have come to this world with two purposes. 

The first is to release ourselves from earlier imprints and karma that have caused us to take a life as a being and the burden of which stagnates and obstructs us from proceeding upward.

The second purpose is to develop and increase our Consciousness in order to reach totality and become one with that. If you are making more mistakes by creating more suffering and misery to yourself or others through your deeds, then your time is being expanded. In effect, you stand stagnated and the purpose of life is diverted.

In other words, whatever action takes you towards the Absolute, towards God – that is virtue. And whatever action keeps you tied down – That is sin. Imprints in four places. Now to the next question: “how are sins getting imprinted in our personality?” 

All our thoughts and actions are getting imprinted in four places:

(i) In the limbs and senses as contraction and expansion of the cells of the physical body 

(ii) as imprints of thought-force in the brain-cells

(iii)in the seed-cells which continue as hereditary imprints

(iv) within each particle of the life-force.

Here let us think example of vethathiri maharishi,  'learning to drive a car. During the initial stages, you would struggle to coordinate your hands and feet and the car wobbled under your steering. But after a month or two, you could drive with smooth precision. How did this happen? By repeatedly learning to operate the clutch, brake, accelerator and steering, the various maneuvers got imprinted through contraction and expansion of the muscles of your fingers and feet. The same with typewriting or reciting a poem from memory or working out a mathematical problem. Imprints in the limbs and senses by contraction and expansion of the cells make the task easier and quicker for implementation'.

Whatever you think, whatever you understand, whatever you fancy and whatever you experience by thought-force-all these are imprinted in the brain-cells and keep reflecting and coming to the force, given the same or similar environment or circumstances. They involve you in the same actions and it is thus that history repeats itself for every individual. These imprints in the body-cells and the brain-cells constitute the collective character or personality of a person. The imprints in the seed-cells go onward to the progeny, generation after generation, as hereditary qualities.