In this Weekly Wisdom, Gurudev shares an ancient Vedic secret to how the human personality functions in relation to different types of energy.
The entire world is made up of five elements, each with three qualities: sattva, rajas, and tamas. At any given time, one of these qualities dominates our lives and our environment.
When sattva is dominant, we feel light, happy, pleasant, joyful, alert, and awake. Our perception is very clear.
When rajas is dominant, there are lots of thoughts, restlessness, too many desires, and too many things to be done. Either you’re happy and excited or sad.
When tamas is dominant, there’s delusion, wrong understanding, and dullness.
Three dominant energies
When sattva dominates in our lives, rajas and tamas stay in the background with minimal effect. When rajas dominates, sattva and tamas are in the background, and when tamas dominates, sattva and rajas are in the background.
Wisdom helps us decide what to do, when to do it, and whether to do something or not. This discriminating power is ours because we possess freedom.
While animals cannot, we can overeat and get sick, oversleep and feel dull, overindulge in activities, and get restlessness, nervous breakdowns, ulcers, and other symptoms.
Types of food
These three qualities are even present in our food. The right amount of food, sweet, fresh, and gently spiced, not too much, is sattvic food. People with sattvic tendencies like that.
When there’s a rajasic tendency in you, you like everything to taste very strong. Vinegar, strong pickles, anything strong, salty, too sweet or hot.
Tamasic people like anything old and stale. Ancient foods, those that shouldn’t be eaten or are harmful, are tamasic foods.
Mental types
Our minds, attitudes, and actions can be sattvic, rajasic, or tamasic.
Rajasic people’s enthusiasm is based on the results of their actions. They either go up high or down low. They put in too much effort and thought to get small things done.
The sattvic intellect does the job joyfully and stays unmindful of the result. Things happen or don’t happen. Either way, their enthusiasm isn’t based on the job’s results.
Tamasic people take too long to do small things. They regret what they’re doing and dislike their work all the time. Their intellect is completely disgusted yet alive.
Knowledge types
There are also three types of knowledge. Sattvic consciousness is the realization that there is only one sense, being, and consciousness in all beings.
Rajasic knowledge is attributing different things to different people. You see them all as either good or bad.
Tamasic knowledge is understanding them all in a wrong way, seeing others as not alive. People who commit crimes or are violent don’t see life in the people whom they destroy. Otherwise, they couldn’t shoot and kill someone. A butcher never thinks the sheep, goat, or chicken which he’s butchering had life. If he did, he wouldn’t be able to perform his job.
Tamasic knowledge makes you unable to see things as they are. When tamasic knowledge dominates, all sorts of delusions arise.
All of our practices are very helpful. They increase your level of sattva. When sattva increases, then there’s alertness, awareness, and joy in life.
Sorrow and misery are associated with rajas, and delusion and dullness are associated with tamas. So, when you see somebody who is sad and has regrets, just have compassion.
You don’t judge people and brand them as good or bad. You simply see the qualities that are active. There’s only one big mind that’s responsible and functioning. That divine mind is all there is. This is sattvic knowledge.
In everybody’s life, these three cycles come and change like spirits.
How to balance these qualities
Balance can be attained through the practices. When we do meditation and silence, the purpose is to raise sattva.
Usually, a person lives in either slumber or deep sleep. Either one is dreaming when asleep or dreaming when awake. It’s very rare that one experiences clarity of mind. The rest of the time, the mind is a jumble, a mess. You think about the past, future, and past again all the time. You daydream.
There is little awareness or awakening, so there is little happiness, joy, or sattva. Pranayama, SKY, meditation, listening to knowledge—all these increase sattva.
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Editor’s note:
To experience Gurudev’s ancient secret to modern well-being, SKY Breath Meditation (Sudarshan Kriya) for yourself, register for the Art of Living Part 1. SKY has helped millions of people worldwide improve all aspects of their lives.
