All beings have a past that has a bearing on the present and the present determines the future. The seventh chapter of the Bhagavata Purana deals with how the vasanas as well as the tendencies produced by karma influence the course of each one’s life, pointed out Sri Ramanujam in a discourse. Each new life is thus not projected on a clean slate. The case of the prime devotees Jaya and Vijaya, serving the Lord in Vaikunta as gate keepers, shows that an act of misconduct on their part shaped their immediate future in unexpected ways. It is also clear that in this instance, the events take place in an extraordinary manner out of the Lord’s Sankalpa.
Once when the sages Sanatkumaras desire to enter Vaikunta, the gate keepers prevent them. The sages react straight away and curse them to be born as asuras. Immediately, the gate keepers repent their action. They prostrate before the sages and wish to continue to serve the Lord with devotion. For their part, the sages too feel they had been hasty in cursing the gate keepers who were only doing their duty. Both show humility and this brings God to their presence. The Lord assures Jaya and Vijaya that the asura tendencies will be with them only temporarily and that after three successive births they would be reinstated in their jobs.
Conversely, association with the wise and realised souls inspires humility and bhakti in people who thus progress in the spiritual path, as is seen in the case of sage Narada. He is originally a Gandharva singer, but owing to his attitude towards some sages he is cursed to be born as a human being. He wins the blessings of sages takes to asceticism and then attains the status of a deva rishi in a later birth.