In the ladder of evolution, we can conceive of these stages of development. The lowest state of development is seen in the vegetable and the animal kingdoms. The middle stage of evolution is seen in man who has intelligence, health and brightness. And a higher state of existence is seen in the disembodied heavenly beings. Here evolution means: “a greater awareness of experience, a lesser amount of agitations and a sharper power of intelligence.” The yard-stick used here to measure evolution is the quantity of joy or happiness, peace or bliss, experienced by the being.
No doubt, in this measurement, the stone-life is of zero evolution, inasmuch as it has no awareness at all of the world. The plant-life comes next, wherein Consciousness has dimly started expressing Itself. In the animal kingdom, this Awareness has become clearer and more vivid. Of the animals, man is, no doubt, the greatest being with the fullest Consciousness and the sharpest intellect. But, man also has his own limitations, and functions only within a limited field of time and space. The ample possibilities reached when once these limitations of man are broken down are indicated as the greatest state of existence enjoyed by beings of a still higher evolution, and they are called the “Denizens of Heaven.”
Every double-storeyed house must also have its staircase. Invariably, after climbing a few steps, there is a landing from which we turn and climb up the rest of the stairs to reach the rooms on the first floor. Those who are standing on the lower flight of steps are considered of a lower evolution. Those who are standing on the landing are of the middle type and those who are standing on the top-flights are of the highest evolution. The vegetable and the animal kingdoms stand on the lower rungs. Man stands on the landing and the Higher Beings on the upper flights of steps. Remember, none of them has reached upstairs to enjoy the comforts of its halls and rooms. Those who are standing on the landing. have the freedom either to go up or to go down. If this picture has come into our mind, we have, to a large extent, understood the concept of evolution as conceived by Hindu – Philosophy, wherein “the evolution of a specimen is always measured by the degree of Consciousness unveiled through Matter in the given subject under observation.”
THE SATTWA-ABIDING GO UPWARDS — Those who are living a pure life of discrimination, clear thinking, right judgement and self-discipline, cultivate more and more Sattwa in themselves. When the mind is thus kept in quietude, at once creative and dynamic, it evolves upwards.
THE RAJASIC DWELL IN THE MIDDLE — Those who are of Rajasic nature, with all their desires and agitations, ambitions and achievements, again and again manifest as men until they acquire the required purity.
THE TAMASIC GO DOWNWARDS — Those who are revelling in misconceptions, heedless of the higher calls in themselves, deluded by their own lust and passion, existing in a state of drowsiness and inertness, devolve themselves into the lower natures.
The stanza is only summarising the ideas expressed earlier, when Krishna discussed the effects of the gunas even in the continuity of existence after death. But where then is the release? That even Sattwa binds us with our attachment to knowledge and happiness has been already explained. Then when can I be free? All these three, Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas, are gunas meaning “ropes,” that bind us down to the flesh and its sorrows, the world and its imperfections, the mind and its agitations, the intellect and its throbbings. When is man free to enjoy the Godhood, as a being totally released from all his contacts with the pluralistic world and from all his subtle attachments to it?
So far we were told at length of the nature of the gunas, of the symptoms from which the most predominating guna in us can be diagnosed, of their reactions in our life, and of how they affect our future, etc. We were told that the predominant gunas in us is the heritage which we gather from our past and the present is coloured by it and the future again is determined by the play of these gunas. All these are but explanations of the causes of bondage — a sense of bondage rooted in illusion, arising from the fact that the Self in us gets identified with the Matter-vestures around it.
The experience of the finite world, the misery of the jerks, the sorrows of its imperfections, the tragedies of its disappointments — all together constitute the samsara of the “ego,” which is nothing other than the Infinite Self (Purusha), expressing through Matter (Prakriti), and identifying with it. Release can be had only when we transcend all the gunas.
A patient is suffering from high temperature, excruciating headache and back pain. All three are symptoms of his illness. When the fever is down the patient is still suffering. We can say the patient has fully recovered, not when these three symptoms have ended, but only when the patient has also regained his old health and energy. Similarly, the three gunas may be present in each of us, in different proportions, but the true release comes not only when all chains have been snapped — meaning all the gunas are transcended — but when we are also established in the Spiritual Experience.
This process of escaping from the subjective shackles on our psychological and intellectual nature is called “liberation” or Moksha. Bound by their own limitations, the greater possibilities in us are now idling away in our own bosoms. To redeem them from their prison-houses of confusions and pains, agitations and sorrows, passions and lust, is all that spirituality seeks.
TO DESCRIBE THE PATH OF LIBERATION AND EXPLAIN “MOKSHA” GAINED, FROM A RIGHT JUDGEMENT OF THE WORLD OUTSIDE, THELORD SAYS:
