frees itself from the urge of desire, for whatever reason, there is a temporary settling
down of itself in itself, and we experience pleasure or happiness.
Thus, we have a complex character in our personalities, part of which belongs to one
realm, and another part belongs to another realm altogether. We have the earthly
part as well as the celestial part combined in us—the divine and the elemental—due
to which we belong to this world as well as the other world at the same time. We are
gods and brutes at one stroke. This is the reason why we have daily experiences of
vicissitude and an urge for the quest of what has not been achieved, and a tendency
to ask for more and more, never getting satisfied with anything that is provided. All
this is the individual nature of the drasta—the perceiver, the cogniser, the
experiencer of the phenomenal.
The object of experience is constituted of the elements which have subtle forces
behind them as their causes. These elements are principally known as the
mahabhutas—prithvi, jala, tejo, vayu, akash—earth, water, fire, air and ether. These
elements, by permutation and combination, form all the objects of this world—
whether animate or inanimate. Every body, whether it belongs to a living organism
or it is merely inanimate matter, is made up of these five elements. What we call a
living organism is nothing but a physical body animated by a percentage of
consciousness. When the percentage of consciousness that animates a physical body
is very meagre, very feeble, then it is what we call the vegetable kingdom or the plant
life, where there is only a slight indication of there being life. When it gets intensified
it becomes the animal, the human being, etc.
Thus, all the variety of beings that we see in the world—in all the fourteen realms, we
may say, whether living or non-living—are the product of the admixture of purusha
and prakriti, consciousness and matter. This material background of the world,
which is known as prakriti, is constituted of the three gunas—sattva, rajas and
tamas, as we know very well. These gunas are referred to in this sutra as prakasha,
kriya and sthiti. Prakasha means light, luminosity, transparency, resplendence—the
capacity to reflect. That is the prakasha condition, the essence of the sattva guna,
which is one of the properties of prakriti. It is something which is different from
what we know as kinesis and stasis. It is a third thing altogether which we cannot see
in this world. It is not activity; it is not inertia. It is something quite different from
both. Rajas is activity, dissipation, division and isolation. Self-affirmation of
individuality, desire, restlessness—all these things are the essence of kriya, or the
rajasic principle. It will never rest in itself. It is always in a state of motion. The
opposite of it is sthiti or stability, inertia, rootedness, fixity, which is the character of
tamas. It will not move. It is the weighty fixity of character which we see in objects
under given conditions.
The physical nature is constituted of these three forces which we may call dynamism,
stasis and equilibrium. Dynamism is rajas, stasis or inertia is tamas, and equilibrium
is sattva. We never see equilibrium anywhere in this world. Everywhere it is either
activity—movement, or there is inertia—stasis. We have flashes of sattva in
conditions we call happiness or joy, but that is very rare. It is not always; it will be
found infrequently.
Prakāśa kriyā sthiti śīlaṁ (II.18). Thus, the property of any object in this world is
threefold. It can rest as a potency for any of these aspects—sattva, rajas or tamas—