Three Gunas – In Gita Verse 7.12 Know that all states of being – be they of goodness, passion or ignorance – are manifested by My energy. I am, in one sense, everything, but I am independent. I am not under the modes of material nature, for they, on the contrary, are within Me.
Krishna is talking about the three GUNAS, three qualities: SATVA, RAJAS, TAMAS.
God he has to be a trinity, because everything that exists has three layers. Hindus call them three GUNAS, three qualities: SATVA, RAJAS, TAMAS.
He says that they are manifested by my energy but still I am independent of them. Means all these three qualities belong to the manifest world, but I am beyond these three that is TURIYA, the beyond.
It will be very easy for us to understand through Love.
THE greatest miracle in life is love, and it is the greatest mystery also; greater than life itself, because love is the very essence for which life exists.
Love is the source, and love is the end also. So one who misses love misses all.
But don’t misunderstand love as an emotion – it is not. Love is not an emotion, it is not a feeling. Love is the subtlest energy; subtler than electricity. The very substratum of all energies is love.
It manifests in many ways. First try to understand love, then the other treasures will be easy to understand.
Man is a trinity, as Christians have called God a trinity. God may be, may not be, but man is a trinity: body, mind, soul. In fact because of his deep understanding of human beings Christ came to say that God is a trinity.
If there is any God he has to be a trinity, because everything that exists has three layers. Hindus call them three GUNAS, three qualities: SATVA, RAJAS, TAMAS. Christ called them the trinity.
When love expresses through you it first expresses itself as the body. It becomes sex. If it expresses through the mind, which is higher, deeper, subtler, then it is called love. If it expresses through the spirit, it becomes prayer.
And there is something in you which is beyond the trinity also. Hindus have called that ‘the fourth’, TURIYA. They have not named it, because it cannot be named.
The three can be named; they belong to the manifest world. The fourth cannot be named; it belongs to the unmanifest. But it is the substratum of all. They simply called it ‘the fourth’, TURIYA.
In the fourth, love becomes samadhi, nirvana, enlightenment.
First, when love – the same energy – expresses through the body, it becomes sex. If everything goes well and sex is natural and flowing it is a beautiful experience because you can have a glimpse of the second through it. If sex goes really very deep, so that you forget yourself completely in it, you can even have a glimpse of the third through it. And if sex becomes a total orgasmic experience, there are rare moments when you can even have a glimpse of the fourth, the TURIYA, the beyond, through it.
Let me put it this way – Love is not sexual but it arises out of sexuality, that has to be understood.
It is just like a lotus flower coming out of dirt and mud. But it is not dirt, and it is not mud. It is a total transformation of them. Between sex and love there is as much distance as there is between muddy water, mud, and a lotus flower. If you had not known it already you could not have imagined that this lotus has come out of ordinary mud. Impossible to conceive, to comprehend, because the lotus is such a transformed phenomenon. So different. Of some other world. It does not seem to be part of THIS earth. But it comes out of this earth.
Krishna says that I am unmanifest which is present in all the manifestations like love which is present in all the Gunas but love is independent of Gunas. Like waves are part of the ocean but the ocean is independent of waves.
Tags: Three Gunas
