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Rise above the Gunas religion

CHENNAI: It is incumbent on every Jivatma to gain the knowledge that helps liberate the self from the cycle of birth. This knowledge is known as Brahma Jnana. The Bhagavad Gita deals exhaustively with this knowledge and of the various means of gaining it, and by assimilating the teaching in this sacred text one can hope to swim across the ocean of Samsara, pointed out Swamini Satyavratananda in a lecture.

Since the whole creation is a mixture of matter and spirit, Prakriti (Nature) and Gunas (modes) automatically inhere in creation including the body mind complex. The three modes (Gunas) of Satva (goodness) Rajas (attachment) and Tamas (dullness) are the main cause of human bondage.

Though there is a hierarchical gradation in the three modes with regard to their nature and characteristics, and Satva Guna is rated high as against Rajas and Tamas, all these modes bind the individual. Satva Guna is seen as brightness or illumination (Jnana) and capable of giving pleasure and happiness, Rajas through attachment and action gives both sorrow and greed and Tamas by delusion and confusion leads to dullness and negligence. But all these modes hold an individual to the world and Lord Krishna advises the path to transcend them. Even Satva Guna that gives knowledge or the chance to gain knowledge leads to bondage and unless one understands that the self is beyond Gunas one is not free.

When the difference between the soul and the body becomes clear, the Jivatma begins to see the inner self as a mere observer of the actions, etc, of the body mind complex to which it is attached.

Lord Krishna explains the difference between the observer and the observed in terms of Kshetrajna (the knower of the field) and Kshetra (field), where the two entities — the subtle soul and the gross body — are seen to be together and yet distinct.

Putting this distance between the observer and the observed enables the immortal self residing with the perishable body to merely witness the changes undergone by the body mind complex. There is no pain or joy, no disease or old age, no death, etc., for the observer, while all these pertain only to the latter.

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