The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita : 15.6 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday, 28 Dec 2023 07:20. 

Chapter 15: The Way and the Goal-6.

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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 cognises 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.

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Next

Chapter 16: The Supreme Person

To be continued

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