Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita : 15.6 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday, January 12, 2022. 7:00. PM.

Chapter-15 : The Way and the Goal - 6.

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Pure equilibrium, harmony, luminosity, are the characteristics of sattva; distraction, activity, dissipation, division are the characteristics of rajas; inertia, stability, fixity, lethargy, sleepiness, are the characteristics of tamas. The individual is a component of all these qualities, sattva, rajas and tamas. We are not free from them at any time. Sometimes the one preponderates; and at other times the other. We pass through various moods in our lives, sometimes dejected and melancholy are we, sometimes we are spirited and active and run about, and sometimes we are sublime and sober and enlightened in our outlook. But we do not maintain this attitude throughout the day and night, inasmuch as, like the spokes of a wheel that moves, which go up and down with the motion of the wheel, the properties of prakriti do not maintain a single position always. They move with the evolutionary process of the cosmos and, with this evolutionary process, we are also dragged as contents of this vast universe. Hence it is that we are not in any particular mood at all times.

In the progression of the soul in its aspiration and travel to the Supreme Being, it has to transcend the lower for the sake of the higher. It may appear, for all practical purposes, that we have to rise from tamas to rajas, and from rajas to sattva, though this is not a mathematical movement or a travel along a beaten track. There is a commingling of qualities, and we are not always, entirely, in one state alone. We are not hundred percent tamasika, hundred percent rajasika or hundred percent sattvika ; all these things are present in us always. Yet, there is a tentative need to apply ourselves for the purpose of a routine of practice, which takes the shape of self-transcendence from tamas to rajas, and from rajas to sattva.

Those who are tamasika preponderatingly are lethargic, stupid, idiotic, incapable of thinking properly, and sleepy, gluttonous, etc. Those who are rajasika are restless, passionate, full of desires, run about here and there, never finding peace in themselves, and not having a moment of rest. Those who are sattvika are the people of knowledge, sedate in behaviour, calm and judicious in judgement, and these are the aspirants who are religious and spiritual.

People who pass away from this world at the time of the preponderance of one quality or other have a corresponding experience after death. Those who die when the quality of sattva preponderates go to the higher regions, the realm of angels, paradise, Svarga-loka, as we call it. Those who are rajasika, if they die in that condition, come back to the mortal world of restless activity. Tamas drags one down to the nether regions, to the lower realms of suffering and unconsciousness.

These gunas are rotating and revolving perpetually like a wheel, and they never rest in themselves in a state of harmony at any time. The whole universe is constituted of these gunas, the substance of prakriti; inside and outside only these are present. These are the building bricks of the cosmos. And one who is able to visualise, unattached, the presence of these characters of prakriti, who recognises the fact that the whole world is a drama played by these properties, who remains as a witness of this entire play enacted in the arena of experience by the gunas—such a person who stands above them, unaffected, who has transcended the gunas, who has gone above the operations of prakriti, is the one that is fit to enter into the bosom of Brahman, the Absolute.

End.

NEXT- Chapter -16. The Supreme Person

To be continued ......

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