The suffering associated with sinful acts has a dual origin: the acts themselves, but also those committed in previous lives.

The origin of sinful acts is most often ignorance of the facts relating to God as He truly is, to existential and absolute truth, to our true spiritual identity, and to true spiritual knowledge superior to material knowledge. But ignoring the fact that an act is sinful does not prevent one from committing it, its undesirable consequences, which give rise to other sinful acts.

Furthermore, we distinguish two kinds of sins: those that have, so to speak, “reached maturity,” and those that have not yet.

By “reached maturity,” we mean those whose consequences we are currently suffering. The others are those, many of which are accumulated within us and have not yet produced their fruits of suffering.

A person who commits a crime may not be immediately caught and condemned, but sooner or later he will be. Similarly, we will have to suffer for some of our sins in the future, just as we suffer for others that have “reached maturity” today.

Thus, sins and sufferings follow one another, plunging the conditioned soul into pain life after life. In this present life, it suffers the consequences of the actions committed in its previous life, and through its present actions, prepares itself for new suffering in the future.

“Mature” or “completed” sins can result in chronic illness, run-ins with the law, low birth, inadequate education, or poor physical appearance. Our past actions burden us today, and our present actions prepare us for future suffering. But this chain can be broken at once for one who adopts God-consciousness and serves Him with love and devotion. This means that the loving and devoted service offered to the Lord is capable of reducing our sins and all defilements to nothing.

But three miseries also continually cause us suffering. These are those caused by the body and mind, those caused by other living entities, those caused by material nature (hurricanes, drought, heat, earthquakes, floods, etc.), and those caused by birth, illness, old age, and finally, death.

Suffering is useful and necessary because, through the pain experienced, it allows us to understand what malicious thoughts, words, and actions generate, and thus to make the firm resolve never again to do harm in any form whatsoever to anyone, humans, animals, and plants.

Suffering is useful and necessary because it allows us to reduce the mass of culpable acts accumulated during all our previous lives and to erase the sins inherent in these malicious, even criminal, acts.