Omm Namo Bhagavate

From sattwa comes jnana.  Jnana is awareness, and awareness is the nature of the self, the being, the purusha.  Experience is the nature of the becoming, or prakriti.  Jnana is of two types: experiential and revealed.  Experiential knowledge we call jnana.  Revealed knowledge we call vijnana or wisdom.  Awareness comes from sattwa, but sattwa is an attribute of prakriti, an attribute of the becoming.  Why does an attribute of prakriti bring awareness to the purusha?  Because prakriti and purusha are the same.  Prakriti is the manifest aspect of purusha; purusha is the unmanifest aspect of prakriti.  Both are beginningless.  Wherever there is purusha, there must be prakriti and wherever there is prakriti, there must be purusha.  The difference is that the prakriti is visible, and purusha is always invisible.  This is the reason we cannot see or feel the awareness.  We can simply be aware about awareness.  When someone says, “I feel my awareness,” he is actually feeling the highest form of experience.

Experience is of three types.  One is gross, higher than that is subtle and the highest is so subtle that you cannot describe it.  The grossest is called tamas.  Experience in the subtle format is the rajas.  Thinner and subtler than that is sattwa.  Sattwa is the experience that takes you beyond experience.  You become awareness and remain in awareness.  That’s the nature of the being.  Every human form is both being and becoming.  As becoming, the jiva experiences the world; as being the jiva is completely detached from the becoming.  Sattwa is the mode, power and force that brings the being to its own nature.  It proceeds in two stages.  One is the knowledge; the second is the revelation or wisdom.  Knowledge is the awareness of the being.  Wisdom is the awareness of the being while experiencing the becoming.  At the level of knowledge, one will be able to witness the becoming, but at the level of wisdom, one can enter into the becoming and be a part of it, without losing the awareness of the being.  In Gita that is called the supreme state.

This will come with sattwa.  Sattwa is the natural state of the being, although it is an attribute of the becoming.  This is the reason there is no need to consciously put effort to enter into sattwa.  It is produced naturally.  Rajas requires effort, and tamas comes through contamination.  If a person is allowed to remain alone and does not perform any type of activities or have any contact with the outer world, and does not invoke any type of desire, he will automatically go back to his state of sattwa.  That is the natural state of prakriti.  Below the sattwa is the rajas, and below rajas is the tamas.

Tamas is a very unnatural state of prakriti.  This is the reason anyone who remains in a tamasic cycle for a long time is heading for self-destruction.  Tamas brings self-destruction, rajas brings self-expansion, and sattwa brings self-ascension.  Through sattwa one can transcend the zone of becoming.  In yoga we always recommend the seeker to curtail the cycle of tamas, intervene in the cycle of rajas, and remain in sattwa.  If you remain in sattwa, it increases automatically.  That is why tamas is to be consciously reduced, rajas consciously controlled, and sattwa consciously maintained. When Arjuna asked how one can proceed to the gunatita state, Krishna told him to maintain the level of sattwa.  Maintaining means it automatically happens.  Consciously you can activate rajas or tamas, but sattwa comes naturally and you should simply maintain it.

In the main ashram we have tried so many experiments just to make people sattwic.  We ring the bell, reward them for attendance and punish them for absence–all this to motivate them but they cannot attend programs regularly because their nature is not sattwic, so that pull for sattwa is not there.  They have so many excuses: “I cannot come for chanting because my leg is in pain, my back is hurting.”  What type of excuse is this—tamasic, rajasic or sattwic?

Participant: Tamasic.

Swamiji:  Yes, tamasic.  “I cannot come because at that time I am in a very deep state.”  What type of excuse is this?

Participant: If it is true it is sattwic.

Swamiji: In Verse 535, Gita says rajas increases greed.  The symptom of greed is the consciousness of more and less: if I go there I will gain more or lose more.  So this excuse, “I could not go because here I feel more in a deep state,” is not sattwa.  Sattwa knows no comparison.  It is beyond all qualification.

Knowledge is awareness, and it is produced within.  Sattwa simply makes it visible and clear; when someone is in the state of sattwa the clarity comes.  When the person is in rajas there is confusion and the person is not able to make a decision.  When the person is in tamas, only the outer is visible: “All the defects belong to X.  I am flawless.”  That is pure tamas.

The phase of sattwa comes and goes.  If you know how to maintain the level of sattwa, then its cycle will be prolonged automatically.  If you bring a tamasic person near a sattwic one, the tamasic person cannot become sattwic.  In the presence of a pure sattwic person, a tamasic person will feel tamas activated because sattwa is more powerful, although it is subtler.  Since it is more subtle, this sattwa energy enters into the system of a tamasic form and activates the guna cycle.  Tamas is dominant there, so when sattwa enters the tamas is activated.  The little rajas that was in the gross physical plane is overpowered–that little wakefulness will go, and the person will sleep.  This is the reason people sleep when there is an Interaction, or during meditation.  The bombardment of the surrounding sattwa activates that guna which is dominant in the system, and tamas drives one to sleep and sloth.

To maintain sattwa, you have to begin with the outer universe, the outer prakriti.  Outer prakriti enters into the sattwa phase automatically at three o’clock in the morning.  It continues up to forty-eight minutes after sunrise, when the rajas phase begins.  The rajas phase continues up to forty-eight minutes prior to sunset.  Then the tamas phase starts.

The yogi should see from his own system when the each guna phase begins.  Suppose your sattwa cycle begins at three-thirty in the morning.  If you force yourself to get up when your system is not conducive to it, you will become sick.  That might be your tamas phase but if you force yourself to get up, thinking that is yoga, it all bogus.  You will be sick and miserable, you cannot do yoga and you also cannot do bhoga, that is, you cannot experience the good things of life.

You have to find out your cycle.  Note it down, because these cycles come and go with systematic regularity.  If your sattwa phase begins at, say, three-thirty, it will always begin at that time.  Prakriti is in perpetual harmony.  In India, in the early morning hours we study the scriptures, meditate, and contemplate on scriptural concepts because when outer prakriti is in sattwa phase it is easier for a seeker to dive in to the inner meaning.  Swadhyaya and discourses by the guru to the awakened seekers occur during early morning.

What you are now receiving is knowledge.  It makes us aware of the being.  Vijnana, or wisdom, gives us the capacity and strength to intervene with prakriti.  First is knowledge, then comes wisdom, but wisdom will come only if you apply knowledge to life.  If you don’t, you will never become wise.  Having knowledge is good, but to become wise is best.

Knowledge applied into practice will push you to the level of wisdom, but how can you practice it if you are not able to maintain the level of sattwa?  You can practice it only if you are applying it when you are in a sattwic state.  The sattwic cycle prolongs itself if sattwa is maintained.

If you attain wisdom, you will get the strength and capacity to intervene.  The intervention must begin with your own prakriti, in your own system.  When the sattwa phase is active, that is the time this should be applied into life situations.  That’s the secret of entering into the gunatita phase.

Next is rajas.  It produces hankering and greed.  Rajas is to be controlled.  If you don’t put a brake on it, it will produce passion, because rajas is passionate by nature, and passion will create hankering, greed, and a sense of not having enough.  That’s the first symptom.  After the phase of sattwa, when rajas begins, that will be the first feeling: “My meditation is not enough.  Let me sit some more time.”  Greed, hankering, the feeling of insufficiency, and scarcity consciousness are clear examples of rajas.  Feeling poor is good, but the feeling of not having enough is terrible.  I welcome poverty, but I hate scarcity.  Not having is better than having a little because that will corrode your system.  This is the reason, if I have a little money and you ask me for some, I am happy to give you everything.  That makes me feel that now at least I am zero, so that another person with scarcity consciousness will not come to me.  Rajas is passionate by nature.  If you don’t control it, it will drive you to unimaginable consequences.  Multimillionaires and billionaires commit all these economic crimes because rajas is continuously fueling the greed.

Next is tamas.  From tamas comes attachment, heedlessness and callousness.  That is very dangerous because it leads to ajnana–ignorance, clouding and veiling.  Ajnana is lack of awareness, getting fully identified with the experiential state and feeling that only that is real.  If you are feeling happy now and conclude that this state should always remain, that’s ajnana.  States come and go.  The state of happiness will give way to the state of unhappiness; the state of joy will give rise to the state of turbulence.  This is natural.  A jnani is able to see that through the eye of experience because he has gone through the cycle.

When tamas enters the system of a sattwic person, the first thing that will happen is the person will feel he has too many works to do and too little time.  That shows that tamas has entered into the mental.  From the mental it descends to the vital: that is, after swallowing the mental it begins to swallow the vital and the person will feel restless: “Don’t disturb me.  I have so many things to do.”  That restlessness means the vital is now being swallowed by tamas.  Next it will swallow the physical and the circle will be complete.

Another symptom of tamas is the need to justify and rationalize.  These are two different things.  Rationalizing means the person knows he is wrong, but he is advocating the principles of ethics, morality and ideology.  Rationalization is pure tamas.  To mix with a person who is rationalizing is more harmful than to mix with a person who is justifying, because a person who is justifying may be ignorant.  He is still not able to see clearly so he is justifying, thinking that he is right.  Whereas a person who is rationalizing knows fully well what is wrong.  That’s the most poisonous person.  Company of this type must be avoided altogether.  The Mother of Pondicherry says, don’t even remember these people, because their vibration is contagious.  If they come to mind, consciously divert your thought to other things.

Now comes the intervention.  How to cut tamas to size and put rajas within the track?  When tamas is coming be one hundred percent sure that rajas is already there.  Without rajas, tamas cannot stand, and without tamas, rajas can never reach this unchecked speed.  If rajas is uncontrolled, it means tamas is assisting.  If the rajas is on the foundation of sattwa, the rajas will drive the seeker towards higher and higher realization and experience of the awarenessional world.  But rajas on the foundation of tamas will bring the consciousness down to the world of maya, matter.

Tamas can be curtailed by reducing your rajasic activities.  All the activities that cater to the ego are rajasic.  Ego is ego, whether it is sattwic, rajasic or tamasic.  Ego is not soul.  Its uncontrolled expansion is not allowed.  This is the reason many a time I have said, if you want to do certain things but you do not have the money or the manpower, be thankful.  Prakriti knows best.  There is a reason why it is not happening.  Don’t put too much effort because that will mean you are interfering in prakriti’s play.  Study the situation as a symptom of prakriti’s signal.

Tamas produces heedlessness.  Heedlessness means that you, the pure awareness, are being covered by something, and you are not able to see through it.  Heedlessness is like quicksand.  It appears to be firm, but once you plant your foot it sinks and is trapped.  The same is true of moha, or attachment.  These two are very sneaky and slippery.  A yogi should not prolong them.  Descend, but only for a purpose, and when the purpose is served, immediately ascend.  Otherwise it will push you to the ajnana state of complete veiling, and fully cloud the awareness.  If that happens, the first thing that will come is I-ness. When that arrives, so does duality.

If you maintain the level of sattwa you will go higher than experience, to awareness.  You are naturally pushed to the awarenessional plane when you transcend this duality, comparison, scarcity, poverty and plenty.  These are all in the relative plane. You will them transcend naturally and automatically as per natural law. Those who are in rajas remain in between.  Below is the gross, above is awareness.  In between is the experience of maya and its solidified form of matter, like money, property and fame. This is all rajas that gives us the identification with the experiential world. Those who are in tamas continuously go down, until they acquire a horrible, unspeakable nature.

The nature of prakriti is to expand.  Tamas expands with the company of tamas and rajas expands in a rajasic environment.  Sattwa maintains itself, rajas needs a fertile environment, and tamas is transmitted. This is the reason in our ashram I don’t allow two people to stay in one room.  The human body is like a machine constantly manufacturing energy.  Tamas is outwardly docile and silent, but very dangerous.  Like the king cobra, tamas will silently come and swallow you.  Rajas will hammer you.  It is painful, so you will immediately notice it, but tamas is painless– slow poisoning.  This is the reason in all the ashrams where there are true yogis and true seers they are extremely choosy about whom they will allow to stay.

One person’s transcendence carries hope for the whole humanity if that person is consciously willing to calmly endure the turmoil of maya.  Great bhaktas are always the foundation for divine’s descent.  This is why great bhaktas always suffer.  Divine does not suffer; divine comes to relieve the suffering of the devotees.  If the devotee is not suffering, divine has no excuse to intervene.  If the Pandavas will not be tortured and poisoned and banished and humiliated, Krishna has no entry point to do his massive intervention in prakriti’s plane.

These two verses reveal the secret entry-point to practice the gunatita stage.  The first to be taken care of is tamas.  That requires maximum effort.  If you are in rajas, it is easy for another rajasic person to put you in check.  If you are in sattwa you don’t need the help of anyone, because sattwa maintains itself.  But one tamasic person requires the effort of a dozen sattwic people to break his tamas.  Tamas is most dangerous.  This is why Krishna told Arjuna that the force that compels man to commit sin against his own will is the desire and anger that come from rajas.  Which type of rajas?  Tamasic rajas.  If rajas is allowed to dwell on the foundation of tamas, it will smash everybody.

A yogi should always be alone, because company is contamination.  You might be a very sattwic person, but I may be in a rajasic phase, so my rajas will contaminate your sattwa.  I may be in a sattwic stage and you might be in a tamas or rajas phase.  That is why yogis should meet with each other for functional necessity only.  But social beings cannot stay alone; they will feel miserable.

Tamas is to be curtailed, rajas is to be controlled, sattwa is to be maintained.  If those are done, then you are entering the ladder of gunatita and beginning the process of transcendence. 

[From a 2010 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai, India]