“Every action, either physical or mental, every movement occurring either on the plane of gross matter or on the plane of the mind, causes an emission of energy. To use the established expression, it produces a “seed”.
This seed, in the same way as all material seeds, tends – given favourable circumstances – to produce a being of the same species as that of the parent who has transmitted the seed. The seed of an oak tends to produce an oak, the seed of an animal, dog or bird, tends to produce a dog or a bird.
Likewise, the innumerable energy-seeds launched into the universe by Desire, Aversion, Love, Hatred, and the actions caused by these feelings, by attachment to individual existence with the material activity which it excites in order to preserve that individual existence to perpetuate it, to increase its power and enlarge its sphere of action, all these seeds tend to reproduce the counterparts of their parents either psychic or material.
The aspirations which we entertain without realizing them, those also which we restrain, our thoughts of whatever kind they may be, unceasingly give out seeds.
Furthermore, the hidden activity, always at work in spite of ourselves in the subconscious part of our being, is one of the most powerful sources from which are thrown out these seeds.”
Extract taken from the ‘Secret Oral Teaching in Tibetan Buddhist Sects’.