Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 20, 2025
It is for this reason that they are known as 'gunas. You have further said that the world's having one cause only must be postulated in order that an ultimate cause may be reached. But as the sattva, rajas, and tamas are not one but three, you yourself do not assume one cause, and hence do not manage to arrive at an ultimate cause.
Nor must it be said that qualities such as whiteness, although present in the effect, may not indeed be causes, but that substances such as gold and the like which are present in certain effects are invariably accompanied by the quality of being causes, and that hence also the substances called sattva, rajas, and tamas, which are found present in all effects, are proved to be the causes of all those effects.
For sattva and so on are attributes of substances, but not themselves substances. Sattva and so on are the causes of the lightness, light, &c.. belonging to substances such as earth and the like, and hence distinctive attributes of the essential nature of those substances, but they are not observed to be present in any effects in a substantial form, as clay, gold, and other substances are.
Sattva and so on which constitute the distinctive elements of the causal substance are the causes of the various nature of the effects. Now those effects can be connected with their causes only in so far as the internal organ of a person possessing sattva and so on undergoes modifications. And that a person possesses those qualities is due to karman.
When he succeeds in harmonising the two first, he attains the state of Sattva, and rejoices in wisdom and peace. When he succeeds in harmonising mind and body only, he is in the state of Raja, which is unstable and dangerous. When the body preponderates, he is in the state of Tamas, "that bindeth by heedlessness, indolence and sloth."
Man's lot depends therefore on the correlation of these three states. When he dies in the state of Sattva, his soul rises to regions of the utmost purity and bliss, and comprehends all mysteries, in close communion with the Most High. This is true immortality. But those who have not escaped from Raja and Tamas must return to earth and reincarnate in mortal bodies.
"These four stages have their correspondence in the eternal GUNAS or qualities of nature, TAMAS, RAJAS, and SATTVA: obstruction, activity, and expansion; or, mass, energy, and intelligence. Thus has nature marked every man with his caste, by the predominance in himself of one, or the mixture of two, of the GUNAS. Of course every human being has all three GUNAS in varying proportions.
They are sattva, explained as goodness and happiness; rajas, as passion and movement; and tamas, as darkness, heaviness and ignorance. The word Guṇa is not easy to translate, for it seems to mean more than quality or mode and to signify the constituents of matter.
This Pradhana is constituted by the equipoise of the three gunas, and thus is a cause possessing a nature equal to that of its effect, i.e. the world; for the world is of the nature of pleasure, pain, and dullness, which consist of sattva, rajas, and tamas respectively. The case is analogous to that of a jar consisting of clay; of that also the cause is none other than the substance clay.
Prakriti, consisting in the equipoise of Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas is one, itself non-sentient but subserving the enjoyment and final release of the many sentient beings, eternal, all-pervading, ever active, not the effect of anything, but the one general cause.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking