Chapter XIV (VERSE 8, 13)
Gunatraya Vibhaga Yoga – The Yoga of Gunas
CHAPTER XIV
(Verses 8)
तमस्त्वज्ञानजं विद्धि मोहनं सर्वदेहिनाम् ।
प्रमादालस्यनिद्राभिस्तन्निबध्नाति भारत ॥ १४-८॥
But, know thou TAMAS is born of ignorance, deluding all embodied beings, it binds fast, O Bharata, by heedless-ness, indolence and sleep.
TAMAS IS BORN OF ‘IGNORANCE’ — Under the influence of Tamas man’s intellectual capacity to discriminate between the right and wrong gets veiled and he starts acting as if under some hallucination or stupefaction. Lord Krishna says that Tamas, in the human personality, binds it to its lower nature by providing it with endless misconceptions and miscomprehensions of the true divine purpose of life, which, naturally, forces one in that condition to live in indolence, heedless of the higher purposes. One thereafter lives ever asleep to the nobler and the diviner aspirations of life. There is no consistency of purpose, brilliance of thought, tenderness of emotion, or nobility of action in an individual who comes under the contamination of the Tamoguna influences.
So far, the Lord has been systematically mentioning the symptoms which are observed in our mental life when these gunas pollute our inner tranquility. These three gunas not only bring about different amounts of divine brilliance in a given individual but also limit the Eternal Self, in all Its perfection, to feel and act as THOUGH It is limited and conditioned by the matter-envelopments.
(Verses 13)
अप्रकाशोऽप्रवृत्तिश्च प्रमादो मोह एव च ।
तमस्येतानि जायन्ते विवृद्धे कुरुनन्दन ॥ १४-१३॥
Darkness, inertness, heedlessness and delusion — these arise when ‘TAMAS’ is predominant, O descendant-of-Kuru.
DULLNESS, INERTNESS, HEEDLESSNESS AND DELUSION — When these symptoms are recognised by an individual in himself, according to the Geeta, the seeker can take it that he is suffering from Tamas. Dullness (Aprakashah) is that condition of the intellect where it is incapable of arriving at any decision, a state when a sort of drowsiness veils the potentialities of one’s intelligence and makes it impossible for one to discriminate between the right and the wrong. This condition is experienced everyday by every one of us, as sleep conquers our nature at night.
INACTION (Apravritti), IDLENESS — The tendency to escape all responsibilities, the sense of incapacity to undertake any endeavour and the lack of enthusiasm to strive for and achieve anything in the world — is the state of inaction explained herein. When Tamas predominates, all ambitions are sapped. Energy is dormant; capacity is gone, and thereafter, eating and sleeping alone become the individual’s main occupations in life.
The natural effect on the personality of a man who is living such a life is that, as an individual, he becomes heedless of the higher calls within himself. Nor can one be, in fact, a Ravana-like destructive criminal. Even to be bad, it needs a good amount of enthusiasm and an endless spirit of activity.
He not only becomes incapable of responding to the good or the bad in him, but also slowly sinks into delusions. He miscalculates the world around him, misinterprets his own possibilities, and always makes mistakes in determining his relationship with the world around. When thus an individual fails to understand rightly himself, the world outside, and his own right relationship with the world around him, the life becomes an error — his very existence, a sad mistake.
After thus indicating how the mind and intellect would react under the three distinct influences of Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas, the Gita Acharya wants us to understand that, not only are these gunas effective while we live the present embodiment, but the tendencies of the mind, cultivated and developed, pursued and strengthened while living, will determine the life and condition of the individual even after death.
Life after death is a topic that does not seem to have been fully thought out in any other school of philosophy except in the exhaustive Science of Life, Hinduism. All other creeds have their own different explanations but none of them actually believes that there is no life after death. The other creeds have only dogmatic declarations regarding life after death, but they have no logical thought development regarding this topic which can be crystallised into a complete philosophy.
Earlier in the Geeta, we had exhaustively dealt with this topic of re-incarnation. We had indicated that death is the total divorce of the subtle-body from its physical structure. Therefore, death is the destiny of the body in me and not a tragedy of my ever-existing personality. I, as my subtle-body, move out of the present physical-structure, when I have exhausted my purpose with the present body. The subtle-body is constituted of my mind-and intellect which is nothing but a bundle of thoughts. Even while I am living in this body, my thoughts determine my movements, both physical and subtle. Therefore, the Hindu philosophers are logical when they indicate that after death, one would still be pursuing the resultant of one’s thoughts, which one had in life while acting through the body.
When I am transferred from my present station of office to another area, I can call at my bank and expect to get from them not the total amount of money I had DEPOSITED in the past, but only the “BALANCE” that stands to my credit. So too, the resultant of the positive and negative thoughts entertained, actions done, motives and intentions encouraged, should determine the type and texture of the thoughts in us at the moment of our leaving the physical structure.
That the quality of our thoughts is influenced by the type of guna that influences our inner make up is a truth that is already known. Therefore, it is logical that the predominant guna, cultivated by each one of us through the life of activities and thoughts, should determine the direction and the range of the disembodied, in its flight to the beyond after its release from the body. These possibilities are explained in this section of the Geeta.