Your Nature and Moods: the Gunas

Understanding Your Nature and Moods

Essential to the practice of Raja Yoga is the study and understanding of the three Modes of Nature or Gunas and the way they operate in the human personality through moods. The three Gunas operate at all levels of creation—material and mental. They are Tamas (inertia or dullness), Rajas (restlessness or externalization), and Sattwa (purity or harmony).

The entire universe is influenced by the three Gunas. In a magnet, there is a positive pole that attracts, a negative pole that repels, and a balancing point where both poles are neutralized. So too, in creation there is a principle that creates bitterness or repulsion—Tamas; a principle that creates attachment or attraction—Rajas; and a principle that harmonizes both—Sattwa.

There is a vast storehouse of energy within every human being. Tamas or inertia, which is expressed in the personality as laziness, dullness, pessimism and procrastination, keeps this energy locked-up. When Tamas increases in the personality, you feel helpless, hopeless and dejected, and you feel you can do nothing. When this inertia is sublimated, however, you suddenly become aware of so much energy within you that you do not know what to do with it. You become restless. This is Rajas in action. It is characterized by immense energy and vitality, and may manifest in the form of numerous ideas and creative talents.

It can be a confounding experience to suddenly have so many ideas simultaneously crowding your mind and not being able to pursue any one of them for lack of concentration. If Rajas is not controlled, it leads to the development of selfishness, greed, infatuation, hypocrisy and vanity in the individual.

Raja Yoga trains you to sublimate Tamas into Rajas, and then to channelize Rajas into Sattwa, through which immense creativity and spiritual progress can be achieved. Sattwa is the state of mind in which harmony, joyousness, expansion, peace and contentment flow in abundance. With the study and practice of Raja Yoga, one can understand, control, manipulate, and unfold these Modes of Nature towards the goal of personality integration.

From the book Integral Yoga: The Secret to Enlightenment by Swami Jyotirmayananda, published by the Yoga Research Foundation. © Swami Jyotirmayananda. All rights reserved.

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