Insight into Controlling Rajas

Insight into Controlling Rajas

By Swami Jyotirmayananda

After overcoming tamas (iner­tia), an aspirant must endeavor to control rajas, which is characterized by restless activity, uncontrolled desires and various impurities of the mind. Rajas, thus, creates karmic entanglements leading to repeated cycles of birth and death.

Rajas and tamas are intimately related. The average individual is tossed from rajas to tamas and then from tamas to rajas again and again. Tamas continues to intensify his ig­norance, and rajas continues to cre­ate a basis for painful circumstances resulting from karmic entangle­ments.

Kama (lust), krodha (anger) and lobha (greed) are expressions of rajas as it blends with tamas in varying degrees. The Bhagavad Gita describes them as the triple gates to hell.

The Srimad Bhagavata (11-25- 3) states, “The following are expressions of rajas: desire and lust, selfish activity, pride, craving, inflexibility of nature, seeking after the blessings of Gods for the fulfillment of selfish desires, creating differences (discord and dishar­mony), indulgence in the pleasures of the senses, enthusiasm based on pride, love for praise and fame, sentimental attachment, frivolous­ness, ego-centric valor, selfish exer­tion, and egoistic strength.”

As tamas is controlled by an aspirant, he becomes aware of increasing energy within himself. If he is unable to cope with this overflowing energy, he develops many restless desires. His mind becomes highly agitated and distracted. Be­cause of mental distraction he is unable to direct his energy towards any one project. He is further un­able to bring in any coordination between his intellect and senses. Though he may understand the painful consequences of uncon­trolled sensual indulgence, yet he cannot restrain himself from the sense-enjoyments.

A sense-object appears desir­able because the distracted mind is unable to examine it from every angle. A parable is told of a person who saw what appeared to be a fur pelt being carried away by the cur­rents of a river, and quickly he jumped into the river to get hold of it. When he grabbed the fur pelt, he unwillingly became a prey to a hungry bear, since most of its body was hidden beneath the water. In the same manner, people see only the superficial glitter in the objects of the world. Unable to see the ferocious claws of disillusionment and karmic entanglement that lie behind their apparent charm, they involve themselves in the ever deeper bondage of the world-pro­cess.

Lord Krishna states in the Gita that lured by the apparent charm of an object, a person begins to think of it with a sense of fondness. This creates a psychological attach­ment towards the object. From at­tachment there arises desire. When desire is not fulfilled, the rajas gives way to tamas, resulting in anger. Anger causes delusion, and delu­sion robs the intellect of its ratio­nality. And when the intellect has become thwarted, one is headed towards his downfall.

Important Facts About Rajas

Rajasic Mind: The rajasic mindis characterized by distraction and restless desires. The rajasic chitta is filled with the impressions of self­ishness, attachment, hatred and egoistic illusions.

Rajasic Body: The body un­der the influence of rajas becomes restless and the pranas become dis­harmonized. While tamas produces laziness in the body, rajas makes the body abnormally active. Dur­ing projects one is motivated by his selfish desires. One is inclined to work beyond one’s capacity, lead­ing to a state of physical exhaustion and mental depression. Overpow­ered by rajas a person goes to ex­tremes — sleeping too much, stay­ing awake for abnormal periods of time, spending too much time in entertainment, and eating or fast­ing too much. Led by rajas a person does not evolve a harmonious pat­tern in his daily life, and, therefore, his body yields to manifold physical ailments.

Rajasic Food: A rajasica is in­clined to that food which excites the passions of the mind, thus giv­ing him the possibility of increas­ing pleasures of the senses. In gen­eral, highly seasoned food, foods that have lost their vitality through over-cooking, and foods that are burdened with artificial preserva­tives are rajasic in nature. Excessive salt, sugar, onion, garlic and other spices become rajasic, because a person is more interested in satisfy­ing his palate than in keeping his body healthy. Such foods only bur­den the body with toxins leading to the development of various diseases. Since rajasic foods external­ize the mind, they are not condu­cive to the practice of reflection, meditation and spiritual enquiry.

Rajasic Faith: Rajasic faith urges one to worship many Gods for the fulfillment of various de­sires. Such a faith leads to the devel­opment of narrow-minded con­cepts about God and religion, and creates disharmony and dissension in the world.

Rajasic Gifts: A rajasica gives gifts with the expectation of secur­ing his sentimental relationships with others. He remembers the gifts he gives and the persons to whom they were given, and he expects that these persons must repay him with suitable gifts. Although a rajasica expresses tender senti­ments, with the slightest opposi­tion his tenderness turns into an­ger and hatred.

Rajasic Pleasure: Rajasic plea­sure is sweet in the beginning but bitter in the end. Although the enjoyments of the senses spur the mind with excitement, ultimately they only give rise to raga-klesha, the affliction of attachment. A person excited by apparent pleasure loses all insight into the fact that his unconscious is sowing seeds of misery, which will bear bitter fruits in a very short time.

Rajasic Firmness: Rajasic firmness is based upon pride and selfishness. A person who pursues a selfish project with great tenacity also clings to his egoistic concepts with great intensity. He shows firm­ness only in pursuing the pleasures of the senses and in holding on to his illusions.

Rajasic Renunciation: A rajasica renounces his home in or­der to escape his duties and re­sponsibilities. His dispassion is based upon a sentimental frustra­tion.

Rajasic Sleep: When a person goes to sleep while his mind is overpowered by rajas, his sleep is inter­rupted by many dreams of wishfulness, which can be either pleasant or painful in nature. But such a rest is not complete, and the person wakes up with a clouded mind, it is very painful for him to get out of bed and to face the day with a cheerful disposition. Such people have to rush to newspapers to fill their minds with so many exciting events before they can effectively begin their day. They waste much of their time in sleep and delusion.

Death during Rajas: If one dies while rajas is predominant, he goes to the subtle worlds where he con­tinues to maintain his rajasic consciousness, and then having en­joyed the subtle pleasures (or pain­ful consequences) of his karma, he is again born in a human embodi­ment.

A mind distracted by numer­ous desires cannot enjoy the bliss of the Self that is revealed in a serene mind. Therefore he is drawn to conditions where the senses play a great part and the intellect is left in a state of dullness. Having incar­nated in a human embodiment, a rajasica continues to experience pleasure and pain until he turns his steps to the road of sattwa.

Ways of Overcoming Rajas

Vairagya: An aspirant must develop dosha drishti — perception of the defects of the objects of the world — by reflecting upon the pain­ful consequences of sense-enjoy­ments. The objects of the world are characterized by transience, il­lusoriness and falsehood. An as­pirant should therefore dwell upon the painful experiences in­volved in birth, disease, old age and death, which he must en­counter again and again through repeated embodiments. In this way he should intensify his longing for Self-realization.

Satsanga: An aspirant should place himself under the influence of those who are spiri­tually advanced. He should avoid negative associations — the asso­ciations of rajasic and tamasic personalities whose minds are filled with violence, hatred, selfishness and delusion.

Swadharma: An aspirant should understand the differ­ence between swadharma and paradharma. Actions that are in harmony with his personality are called his swadharma or his own duty. Many turn away from their natural duties because of greed for fame, name and power. They take to paradharma, or other’s duty, and exert a lot of energy in order to perform those actions. But such actions cause great ner­vous tension, and if a person does succeed in such actions, he becomes highly elated, thus wast­ing even more mental energy and creating even more illusions. If he fails, then he falls into an overpowering state of tamas by be­coming despondent and bitter.

On the other hand, if one is free from the pressure of desire and greed, he is inclined to those actions that are in harmony with his personality. He rejoices in do­ing what is natural to him. While performing such actions, he is not pressured by expectations of ab­normal rewards, and, therefore, he is able to perform actions qualita­tively and quantitatively, and with an increasing sense of fulfillment. His actions are not burdened with a sense of boredom.

But having gained an insight into swadharma, an aspirant must then gain a further insight into Karma Yoga — converting his own duty into a process of spiritual unfoldment If one were to direct his energies towards the service of hu­manity (nishkamya seva), he could bring about an amazing change in his personality; he would become transformed into a Divine person­ality. This point has been elabo­rately explained by Lord Krishna in the Gita. That is, when one performs his duty with an atti­tude of serving the Lord, it be­gins to purify his mind. So a practitioner of Karma Yoga, while performing actions that are helpful to him as well as to humanity, enjoys an increasing inner calmness.

Advanced Techniques: Japa, meditation and spiritual enquiry are the advanced meth­ods of filling the mind with sattwa or purity. As an aspirant learns these techniques and practices them in his daily life, rajas be­comes increasingly inclined to sattwa, resulting in the develop­ment of a magnanimous person­ality. But by filling the mind with sattwa, it is not meant that one should become deprived of ra­jas. Rather, what is needed is to flow in activity with a firm foot­ing in sattwa. When rajas then operates under the dictates of sattwa, one’s life becomes filled with goodness. He grows in dharma (virtue), aishwarya (in­ward sense of freedom and mas­tery over himself), jnana (wis­dom) and vairagya (dispassion).

Therefore, follow the ex­ample of Sages and Saints. Channelize rajas into sattwa and remove the distractions of the mind. Then being inwardly re­laxed, with your heart firmly estab­lished in the sweetness of Divine Love and your intellect bathed in the luminous showers of wisdom, perform dynamic actions for the welfare of all creation.

“International Yoga Guide” Vol. 34, NO. 10, June 1997

...