Gita for Youth - Yoga of the Three Gunas (Gunatraya Vibhaga Yoga)

Chapter 14: The distinction of the three Gunas

Sri Krishna said, “Let Me now again impart a very great wisdom to you, which is the very best of all knowledge. By knowing this the sages have achieved perfection. By the aid of this knowledge, whoever comes to acquire My nature (i.e. going beyond the qualities), that person is never born again in any creation, nor is he destroyed during universal destruction or Pralaya.

“’My source of creation is the manifestation of Brahman called great Prakrti. It is impregnated with the seeds of creation, from which all beings arise. The great Prakrti or the superior Nature gives birth to all creatures emanating from all sources, and I am the donor of the seeds of creation.”

The primary source of creation is the eternal Nature or the unmanifest from which everything springs up and into which everything dissolves. This is the source wherefrom the five primal elements come up and these elements combine to create all bodies – subtle or gross. Therefore the Mahat Prakrti or the great Prakrti is the mother, the womb wherefrom all creation emerges. The seed of this creation is however the desire to create or project and that is provided by the Iswara or the Supreme Being. The creation is really the projection of the Atman or the Supreme Being as manifestation of the many forms with the help of Prakrti which is also the Mahamaya or the great delusive force. The creation or the projection of the Atman into many forms is like the seeds of the father being sown in the fertile womb of the mother to procreate, driven by the desire to have progeny.

According to the scriptures, from unmanifest (causal) emerges Mahat or cosmic intelligence, also called Hiranyagarbha (golden egg), from cosmic intelligence emerges Ahamkar or cosmic ego, from cosmic ego emerge the subtle essences (Tanmatras), from the subtle emerge the gross five elements. A combination of the gross five elements in different proportions gives rise to all created objects.

“Sattva, Rajas, Tamas are the threefold qualities arising from the Mother Nature. These three are used for binding the Self in the body.”

In order to sustain the creation the divine sparks which have flown from the great fire, the projection of the Self into myriads of the beings, the grand cosmic illusion, it is necessary to bind the Atman into the body and start the wheel of action or Karma, so that even upon destruction of the bodies, the Atman continues to remain in bondage, till, atlast, it finds a way out of the maze of the world. That “way out” is obtained by attaining the divine knowledge or wisdom, that there exists only one Truth, i.e. called God, everything else is transient and therefore unreal. For this, the individual needs to know itself, i.e. it needs to break its identification with the body that it assumes. Until that happens, the Mother Nature continues to educate it to facilitate the soul’s journey towards this eternal knowledge and the fountain of bliss. This is represented as divine play by the dualists and “Maya” or delusion by the monists. Once the education is complete, Mother opens her arms and the beings realize their divinity and unity with the Supreme Being and attain emancipation from the bondage. The bondage is perpetuated by the three qualities. One of these qualities always dominates over the others and determines the inherent nature of the being, although these qualities are present in various proportions.