As explained in Bhagvad Gita and the various Upnishads, human nature is a combination of three types of Gunas. These are the "Sattwa Guna, the Rajas Guna and the Tamas Guna."
Sattwa(S) is purity, fineness, goodness, compassion, gratitude etc.
Rajas(R) is restlessness, activity, passion and their derivatives like lust, greed, pride
Tamas(T) is darkness, obstruction, implying laziness, procrastination,(delaying action)
confusion etc.
These gunas coexist and cohere. Human mind is also a synthesis of these three gunas. In
general behaviour of a person or at a given point of time, any one of the Guna may be
predominant compared to the other two.
The following comparative picture of Gunas is given in Srimad Bhagawatam:
—> When Sattwa, which is pure and tranquil and which has the power to illumine,
overcomes the other two gunas, then a man becomes endowed with happiness, virtue and
knowledge.
—> When Rajas, which leads, man to action, which rouses attachment, and causes the
vision of multiplicity, overcomes Tamas and Sattwa, then a man becomes active, finds
wealth and fame, and suffers misery.
—> When Tamas, which is characterized by inertia, and which casts a veil of ignorance over
one's mind and makes one lose the power of discrimination, overcomes Rajas and Sattwa,
then man becomes stricken with grief and delusion; he lives in a dream of hope; he becomes
cruel; he falls asleep spiritually.
We can understand these Gunas and their relationship by realizing that personality of
human beings evolve along the following three trends or moods: The emotional people are
sensitive, daydreaming, and sentimental and soft- hearted, the group to which most artists
belong, be it in the field of music, painting, poetry or architect. They are creative emotional
innocent and free from all defilements. They have pure desire and their artistic creations
have quality of divine joy. They tend to enjoy the natural harmony and rhythm. Normally we
link these qualities with heart and moon. these are the powers of the right hemisphere of
brain. They represent the feminine aspects of a personality. These qualities are called Tamo
Guna and are controlled by the left side of the Sympathetic Nervous system.
However, these temperaments when pushed to extreme bring imbalance in the personality
and such people can sink in lethargy and depression. They can develop into self-destructive
tendencies – and we say that they have become Tamasic. Such persons then struggle in their
world of emotions, the past and the psychological conditionings (super ego) that he/she has
world of emotions, the past and the psychological conditionings (super ego) that he/she has
wrongly developed. They become very sensitive to feelings, questing for love, bemoaning
their bad luck. They become victim to their inner tortures and are dominated by others.
Thus they represent darkness.
The Active or Dynamic people are builders of civilization and committed to the common
cause. They represent the masculine aspect and the Sun. They have search for action and
projection into the future. These qualities are called Rajo Guna and are controlled by the
right side of the Sympathetic nervous system. So long they act with fairness, firmness,
constancy and moderation without overloading themselves with stress, they are in balance.
But when they start going to extremes by neglecting others and becoming ego (self) centric –
they run, rush, become impatient, are afraid of failure, turn pale, get stomach ache; they
become Rajasic. Such people call upon jealousy or envy to carry out their actions
successfully. Vanity, pride and arrogance stifle their success. They do not have patience to
await victory till the end of the day. Their attention is shattered into thousand pieces as it is
constantly exposed to the modern materialism. They dominate others and try to be the
masters.
There are very few people with Moderate tendencies. They are able to control their actions
and emotions, much better. They possess ability to watch with detachment, the ups and
downs of life. They are peaceful, steady and have soothing influence on people around.They
are seldom influenced by events. Their strength and discernment are such that they can
play around with sticky situations and emerge victorious without great damage to
themselves. They know how to withdraw from any excess in good time. They are balanced
and unconsciously confident.
Each one of us predominantly belongs to one of these three categories. We also reflect these
three gunas in different proportions in our general behaviour. Further, such behaviour is
not constant. While we come to the balanced state of Sattwa Guna also, our attention
constantly keeps moving like pendulum from Rajasic to Tamasic. Thus ourpersonality
shows tendency for one of the two extreme behaviours- either sensitive emotional and
dreamy one or the active, dynamic and dominating one. It is difficult to maintain balance
between the two, i.e. to be in the Satwic state.
The Manusmriti draws attention to the distinction between Gunas
as follows:
When man experiences in his soul a feeling full of bliss a deep calm as it were, and a pure
light, then let him know that it is among those three the quality of Goodness(Sattwa).
What is mixed with pain and does not give satisfaction of the soul one may know to be the
quality of Activity, which is difficult to conquer and which ever draws embodied souls
towards sensuous objects (Rajas).
What is coupled with delusion, what has the character of an indiscernible mass,what cannot
be fathomed by reasoning what cannot be fully known, one must consider as the quality of
be fathomed by reasoning what cannot be fully known, one must consider as the quality of
Darkness (Tamas).
To put in simple words:
Sattwa is Illumination, Good.
Rajas is passionate, Activity and
Tamas is Darkness and obstruction.
Sri Aurobindo has given Guna Theory in simple and clear words as follows:
Sattwa is the force of equilibrium and translates in quality as good harmony and happiness
and light, Rajas is the force of kinetics and translates in quality as struggle and effort,
passion and action, Tamas is the force of in-conscience and inertia and translates"in quality
as obscurity and incapacity and inaction. Ordinarily used for psychological self- analysis,
these functions are valid also in physical nature.
Thus Sattwic state is a balanced position between the two extremes the Rajasic state and the Tamasic State.
In fact the physical nature also displays manifestation of these three types of moods. When
the sun rises in the morning, the nature looks cool calm and rejuvenated. The rising Sun
illuminates the world. The nature of everything in the world also is in Sattwic mood. As the
sun rises high everything gets into activity, thus manifesting theRajsic Guna. In the evening
with the sunset every activity slows down as if with tiredness and dissipation of energy and
then becomes inactive (the state of inaction) thus showing the inertia or the Tamsic Guna.
As is evident, every guna is important and we cannot do without any one of them e.g.
without getting proper sleep, we cannot perform our activity properly in the daytime.The
nature keeps dwelling in these three states and is able to maintain the balance without going
nature keeps dwelling in these three states and is able to maintain the balance without going
to extreme in Rajasic or Tamasic state. We human being also need to learn how to maintain
this balance as Sattwa prevails/develops in this state.
Vinoba Bhave has picked up the R-guna in particular, and given us a number of examples
from the world around to clarify its nature. In his own words: The chief mark of Rajas is the
desire to do all sorts of things, an overweening ambition to do superhuman deeds. Through
Rajas we conceive a limitless desire for action, a consuming greed.
The bird flies in the air. Why should 1 not fly too? The fish lives in the water why should I
not make a submarine and live in water too? Thus, having got a human body we find
satisfaction in competing the sub-human specie like birds and fish.
Under its (Rajas) influence man burrows deep into earth, brings out from its bowels of a few
stones and calls them rubies and diamonds. Possessed by the same agitation, he dives into
the sea and brings up the rubbish from the depths, calls it as pearl.
Today a reception in Madras, tomorrow in Calcutta and the day after in Bombay or Nagpur.
His ambition is to get civic addresses from every municipality in the land. He sees glory
everywhere.
To the modem mind, however, all the examples cited by Vinoba constitute the symbols of
progress and achievement by mankind. But do such activities bring the real progress and
achievement for the mankind? If it was so, we should have been happy and peaceful in the
prevailing situation. When the Rajasic Guna dominates us, we forget that all human
endeavours have to be for the benevolence of the humanity on the whole, and not for the
individual self-interest disregarding implication on others. Such Rajasic achievements bring
pain only to the achiever in the long run.
Can you make out the difference in the dynamism of Mahatma Gandhi and that of Hitler?
Mahatma Gandhi's dynamism is driven from Sattwic forces of Purity, Simplicity, non
violence, compassion, whereas Rajsic Guna like anger, arrogance, dominance and
selfishness drove the dynamism of Hitler.
The decisions taken in the earlier case were wise decisions, which were painful for a short
term but brought long-term gains for the whole nation. In the later case the decisions were
egocentric and selfish, but destructive for the humanity.Even the self-interest achieved were
which resulted in short- term gains and resulted in long-term pains.Thus Sattwa result in
wise decisions and Rajas in clever decisions.
Dynamism is very important and we need it. But if guided by Rajas qualities, it will be
misguiding /blind dynamism. If it is guided by sattvic qualities, it will be constructive,
productive not harming others.
- Sri Aurobindo
Conclusion:-
Thus Dynamism under Sattwa is holistic. Sattwic Guna are qualities, which we term as
Human Values. Sattwic psycho-forces enlarge the perspective of gain as a whole - not my
personal gain, but gain for all.
"Where the power of will is strong, where authority is well established within, there man, avoiding the attraction of the tamasic inertia, gains the excellence of the rajasic-disciplined action. There man gradually develops in knowledge, possessions, and prowess."
Game of three Gunas:-
We can categorize the typical personality in real life as hybrids like Sattwo-rajasic or Rajo-tamasic and so on. In these hybrids it is the first guna, which is relatively stronger than the second. Thus, while in all phenomenal events and in mans empirical existence the presence of all the three gunas is inevitable, yet their formulation in a hierarchic order promises to be an important source for development and self- growth.
The key problem is that because of predominance of Rajas and Tamas and because Sattwa is
nearly dormant, the effect of the interplay of the gunas is seen in the form of anger, abuse in
parliament, armories at places of worship, corruption in bureaucracy, mutual envy and
distrust, the incidence of mutual diseases and suicides in society.
As Sattwa is pure, fine and good, it helps the human beings in becoming aware of and
sensitive to the inner higher self. Progress and achievement have to be turned towards the
inner world of man also. The worth and value of so-called progress and achievement in the
external world can be judged by the level of human development that it brings. In other
words, it should help human beings in their emancipation and evolution towards a wider
consciousness. Hiriyanna conveys the nature of the process of altering the balance or proportion of the three gunas, and its end-result in the following words:The strengthening
of Sattwa hastens our approach towards a purer mind, taking it closer tothe purusha or
poorna or atman aspect or our being. Our idiosyncrasies and biases then begin to be
reduced, for Sattwa is the substance of purity and light itself And thus we can move closer to
understanding things as they are. This is the crux of our quest for personal organizational
effectiveness, and the improvement of the quality of work-life.
As already explained, we are faced with the bad effects of Rajas(or)Tamas only when we go to extremes in any of them.However if we are able to come out of these extremes we are in a
balanced (middle) state on the pendulum of the three Gunas, i.e.Sattwa. Meditation or mind
stilling exercise gives us an opportunity to withdraw from outer world for a time being and
attain the balanced state of sattwa within. Our intuitive power also helps us in this balanced
state of Sattwa only.
Myth of the Mind:-
We have talked about pure mind and brain, and their relationship in Unit I. We have discussed three types of qualities above and their impact in our day to day life as well as in an organisation. We have also seen that Sattwa gives a balanced state which is attain by developing Pure Mind in Mind stilling Exercise. According to Indian philosophy, our mind takes us away from the real world into the Myth. Infect, mind itself is a myth, and gives a particular perception to our vision of the outer world. Thus our vision gets distorted. Whatever we received in our brain through our five senses from the exterior world; our mind reacts to it (a) on the basis of our past experiences and habits, which we may call as conditionings, and/or (b) out of Ego or our own desires, feelings of jealousy envy, pride etc. If the mind becomes still, it will not react to all these situations and we will be able to witness the things in thoughtlessness. In such thoughtless witness state only, we can be in the reality. In such a balanced state, our perception is not tinted through our pre-conditionings (Tamas) or our Ego (Rajas). Thus thoughts are there so long we mind the things. When there is no thought, we may call it a state of pure mind. Such a state is a Sattwic state.
Does this mean that we are put to inaction in this state?
No. Action in this state is not a reaction of mind but an automatic response in the given situation and thus a pure action. It is an unconscious action like all the activities of the nature. Naturally the dissipation of energy will be very low. We can compare such actions to the working of our involuntary nervous system, the working of all our internal systems, the blood circulatory system, the respiratory system etc. We do not think that we have to respire. The process continues automatically. If the lungs are not getting sufficient oxygen, or need more oxygen (during jogging or running), the respiration automatically becomes faster and deeper. Such spontaneous becomes the action, which are taken in the state of pure mind. We may call them actions in a Sattwic state, in a state of thoughtless awareness. We can thus perform in complete calmness without agitation, noise or rigorous thinking in mind.
In today’s world where Ethical Governance is a global concern, different countries are making efforts in achieving clean government. An outright approach is towards developing service orientation in the public service. The government servants are expected to serve with the at your service attitude. Such a temprament can be an outcome of a Pure Mind only, which is neither influenced by the preconditions or the preconceived ideas, nor by the ego or the selfish interests: neither by the Tamasic guna nor by the Rajasic guna. The balanced state of Sattwa can only provide the public services without deviation of funds or interest in one’s own interest.
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