A seeker, who is striving to conquer his own mind must know all its subtle inclinations by which, again and again, his thoughts run amuck only to return and increasingly sabotage his inner personality.
KNOW “RAJAS” TO BE THE NATURE OF PASSION — Where there is an onslaught of Rajoguna–Influences in the bosom, man’s mind is wrecked with a hundred painful passions. Passions are the main symptoms of the working of Rajoguna in the psychological field. Passion expresses itself in a million different urges, desires, emotions, and feelings. Yet, all of them can fall only under two distinct categories: desires and attachments. Thus, in the Geeta, Lord Krishna mentions these two as the very sources from which all passions arise.
GIVES RISE TO THIRST AND ATTACHMENT — The term used in Sanskrit for ‘desire’ is ‘thirst’. When an individual is thirsty, nothing, for the time being, is of as much importance as water, which alone can satisfy his thirst. Just as a thirsty man would struggle and suffer, wanting nothing but water to relieve his pangs, so too, a human personality thirsts for the satisfaction of every desire that burns him down. Once the desire is fulfilled, a sense of attachment comes like a vicious passion to smother down all the peace and joy of the mind. DESIRE is our mental relationship towards ‘objects’ which have not yet been acquired by us and ATTACHMENT is the mental slavishness binding us to the objects so acquired.
These two — DESIRE for the acquisition of things and the creation of situations which are expected to yield a certain quota of personal happiness, and the sense of clinging ATTACHMENT to things already so acquired — are the volcanoes that constantly throw up their molten lava to scorch and raze the smiling fields of life. The burning lava, that is emitted by these fiery mountains, comprising the various passions that man expresses in his sensual life, make up the strifes and struggles to acquire, to possess and to guard what is already gained.
IT BINDS FAST THE EMBODIED ONE BY ATTACHMENT TO ACTION — When once an individual has come under the influence of Rajas, he expresses innumerable desires, and bound in his own attachments, he lives on in the world manifesting a variety of passions. Such a passionate being-goaded by his desires for things not yet acquired, and crushed under the weight and responsibility of his attachments to things that he possesses — can never keep quiet but must necessarily act on endlessly earning and spending, and yet thirsting for more and more. Anxious to have more, fearing to lose, he becomes entangled in the joys of his successes, involved in the pangs of his failures, and lives as an “embodied-one,” chained by his own actions.
Actions are born of passions. Passions arise from desires and attachments. And all these are the symptoms of the presence of the Rajoguna-influences upon our mind. Thus, if Sattwa-guna binds us with its own anxieties for happiness and peace, wisdom and knowledge, as has been said in the previous stanza, Rajo-guna also seemingly binds the Infinite Self to Matter-vestures and makes It play the part of a limited being through an endless array of inexhaustible actions. Though the Self is not an agent (ACTOR), Rajas makes It act with the idea “I AM THE DOER.”TAMAS ALSO HELPS TO BIND THE DIVINE TO THE MORTAL FLESH. HOW?
