Chapter Fourteen
The last chapter gave us the distinction between Purusha and prakriti. This chapter will tell us in more detail about the nature of prakriti – the basis of the world of mind and matter. Here the Gita explains human experience in terms of the three qualities of prakriti, known as gunas: sattva, rajas, and tamas. When the soul attains illumination it goes beyond the confines of prakriti into the spiritual realm of Purusha. But until then, the soul must learn to deal with these three all-powerful forces.
No single English word can be given to translate the words sattva, rajas, and tamas. The quality of sattva combines goodness, purity, light, harmony, balance. In terms of evolution, sattva is on the highest level. Rajas is energy – or, on the human level, passion – which can be both good and bad. In personality rajas may express itself in anger, hatred, or greed; but it also provides motivation, the will to act. Rajas is ambitious, which is not altogether a bad thing for the evolution of the soul. It is definitely superior to the third guna, tamas, which combines inertia, sloth, darkness, ignorance, insensitivity. This is the lowest state in terms of evolution; for tamas means a dead stability, where nothing much happens for good or ill. Worse, tamas can mean not just stability but a sliding backwards in the struggle of evolution, where to stand still may mean to be left behind (14:18).
In any given personality or phenomenon all the three gunas are likely to be present. It is the mix of the three that colors our experience. Sattva may be dominant, with an admixture of rajas or tamas. Or perhaps rajas dominates, with a little sattva and a good measure of tamas. Finally, the personality may be basically tamasic, with a few rays of the light of sattva and a little of the heat of rajas. In any case, no mix of the three gunas is stable, for it is the very nature of prakriti to be in constant flux. The gunas are constantly shifting, always changing in intensity.
It is essential that the gunas, even the purity and goodness of sattva, be transcended if the soul is to attain its final release. For the three gunas are forces that operate within the world of prakriti: in fact, their three strands make up the whole fabric of the phenomenal world. Liberation lies beyond the conditioning of prakriti, in the realm of Purusha. When Arjuna asks Krishna to describe the person who has gone beyond prakriti’s net, Krishna replies that such a person is detached from the constant shifting and interaction of the gunas. Identified with the Self, he or she realizes that the gunas and their play are external – even the emotions and thoughts that seem so personal, so interior, are really only the play of prakriti. Thoughts and emotions, and ahamkara itself, stop at the gate of the inner Self. The Self abides in the inner chamber of the heart, always at peace, whatever forces of prakriti may storm outside. The illumined man or woman maintains a joyful evenness of mind in happiness and sorrow.
At the end of the chapter, again reminding him of the power of devotion (bhakti), Krishna says that Arjuna can transcend the gunas through steadfast love. If he has devotion and has gone beyond the three gunas, then he will be fit to know Brahman. –D.M.
14: Forces of Evolution
KRISHNA
1 Let me tell you more about the wisdom that transcends all knowledge, through which the saints and sages attained perfection. 2 Those who rely on this wisdom will be united with me. For them there is neither rebirth nor fear of death.
3 My womb is prakriti; in that I place the seed. Thus all created things are born. 4 Everything born, Arjuna, comes from the womb of prakriti, and I am the seed-giving father.
5 It is the three gunas born of prakriti – sattva, rajas, and tamas – that bind the immortal Self to the body. 6 Sattva – pure, luminous, and free from sorrow – binds us with attachment to happiness and wisdom. 7 Rajas is passion, arising from selfish desire and attachment. These bind the Self with compulsive action. 8 Tamas, born of ignorance, deludes all creatures through heedlessness, indolence, and sleep.
9 Sattva binds us to happiness; rajas binds us to action. Tamas, distorting our understanding, binds us to delusion.
10 Sattva predominates when rajas and tamas are transformed. Rajas prevails when sattva is weak and tamas overcome. Tamas prevails when rajas and sattva are dormant.
11 When sattva predominates, the light of wisdom shines through every gate of the body. 12 When rajas predominates, a person runs about pursuing selfish and greedy ends, driven by restlessness and desire. 13 When tamas is dominant a person lives in darkness – slothful, confused, and easily infatuated.
14 Those dying in the state of sattva attain the pure worlds of the wise. 15 Those dying in rajas are reborn among people driven by work. But those who die in tamas are conceived in the wombs of the ignorant.
16 The fruit of good deeds is pure and sattvic. The fruit of rajas is suffering. The fruit of tamas is ignorance and insensitivity.
17 From sattva comes understanding; from rajas, greed. But the outcome of tamas is confusion, infatuation, and ignorance.
18 Those who live in sattva go upwards; those in rajas remain where they are. But those immersed in tamas sink downwards.
19 The wise see clearly that all action is the work of the gunas. Knowing that which is above the gunas, they enter into union with me.
20 Going beyond the three gunas which form the body, they leave behind the cycle of birth and death, decrepitude and sorrow, and attain to immortality.
ARJUNA
21 What are the characteristics of those who have gone beyond the gunas, O Lord? How do they act? How have they passed beyond the gunas’ hold?
KRISHNA
22 They are unmoved by the harmony of sattva, the activity of rajas, or the delusion of tamas. They feel no aversion when these forces are active, nor do they crave for them when these forces subside.
23 They remain impartial, undisturbed by the actions of the gunas. Knowing that it is the gunas which act, they abide within themselves and do not vacillate.
24 Established within themselves, they are equal in pleasure and pain, praise and blame, kindness and unkindness. Clay, a rock, and gold are the same to them. 25 Alike in honor and dishonor, alike to friend and foe, they have given up every selfish pursuit. Such are those who have gone beyond the gunas.
26 By serving me with steadfast love, a man or woman goes beyond the gunas. Such a one is fit for union with Brahman. 27 For I am the support of Brahman, the eternal, the unchanging, the deathless, the everlasting dharma, the source of all joy.