The Gunas

by pandava bandhava das

There is a clear connection between the concept of the three gunas which are constantly fighting for supremacy and the dialectics of Hegel and Aristotle where every reality is seen to contain the seed of its own denial. We could say that the doctrine of the gunas is the core doctrine in this case and that the thesis-antithesis-synthesis theory of Hegel is simply a manifestation of this eternal doctrine. 

The interchanging gunas are the reason why sometimes it seems that the nondevotees can have good qualities. Actually those qualities are manifestations of the gunas which control them for the present moment. Soon however the gunas change and then the nondevotees do not look so nice anymore. That means that they do not posses those good qualities; good qualities can be possessed by devotees only because the devotees are above the gunas and because they attain these good qualities by the mercy of Krishna who is the reservoir of all good qualities. This is made clear in Srimad Bhagavatam:

"All the demigods and their exalted qualities, such as religion, knowledge and renunciation, become manifest in the body of one who has developed unalloyed devotion for the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Väsudeva. On the other hand, a person devoid of devotional service and engaged in material activities has no good qualities. Even if he is adept at the practice of mystic yoga or the honest endeavor of maintaining his family and relatives, he must be driven by his own mental speculations and must engage in the service of the Lord's external energy. How can there be any good qualities in such a man?"

It is so amusing to hear how nonbelievers speak of being objective. In reality every one of them is subjected to the particular combination of gunas he happens to be under at his current birth and at the present moment of his life. Objectivity means that there should be a proper standard way of thinking; in the case of the atheists however, the only standard are their fluctuating thought patterns dictated by the gunas. The state of the gunas predetermines their value system and the value system sets their convictions. This is made clear by Srila Prabhupada in his purport to Bhagavad gita 17.3:

"The word çraddhä, or "faith," is very significant in this verse. Çraddhä, or faith, originally comes out of the mode of goodness. One's faith may be in a demigod or some created God or some mental concoction. One's strong faith is supposed to be productive of works of material goodness. But in material conditional life, no works are completely purified. They are mixed. They are not in pure goodness. Pure goodness is transcendental; in purified goodness one can understand the real nature of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. As long as one's faith is not completely in purified goodness, the faith is subject to contamination by any of the modes of material nature. The contaminated modes of material nature expand to the heart. Therefore according to the position of the heart in contact with a particular mode of material nature, one's faith is established. It should be understood that if one's heart is in the mode of goodness his faith is also in the mode of goodness. If his heart is in the mode of passion, his faith is also in the mode of passion. And if his heart is in the mode of darkness, illusion, his faith is also thus contaminated. Thus we find different types of faith in this world, and there are different types of religions due to different types of faith. The real principle of religious faith is situated in the mode of pure goodness, but because the heart is tainted we find different types of religious principles. Thus according to different types of faith, there are different kinds of worship."

When Srila Prabhupada speaks about “faith” in this purport he means not just adherence to particular belief system or religion. Faith here means any type of conviction about anything, including things usually viewed as purely secular phenomena such as politics, science, philosophy, food, or clothes. Any attraction we have for any object of this world is a result of the combinations of the gunas.

This same attraction defines the nature of our mind. Having material mind means that we like certain things in this material world and the way by which we are attracted and bound to them is through our mind.  That what we know as our material mind in essence is simply the condition of material attraction. It is our state of being attracted to matter, gross or subtle. One who is attracted to matter has a material mind. And one who is attracted only to Krishna has a spiritual mind.

That gives the mind the fateful role of our chain to this world of despair. The interesting thing is that we are not usually aware of this sinister function of the mind and tend to follow his dictations. Thus we find ourselves in the situation of being its prisoners without even realizing it and this makes the escape almost impossible. For it is one thing to escape a well guarded prison, and another thing to even plan an escape when you are not even aware that you live in a prison. Srila Prabhupada explains this situation in another famous purport from Gita:

"In the material world, the center of all activities is sex, and thus this material world is called maithunya-ägära, or the shackles of sex life. In the ordinary prison house, criminals are kept within bars; similarly, the criminals who are disobedient to the laws of the Lord are shackled by sex life. Advancement of material civilization on the basis of sense gratification means increasing the duration of the material existence of a living entity. Therefore, this lust is the symbol of ignorance by which the living entity is kept within the material world. While one enjoys sense gratification, it may be that there is some feeling of happiness, but actually that so-called feeling of happiness is the ultimate enemy of the sense enjoyer"