In this episode of “5 Minutes,” Dr. Robert Svoboda explores the three gunas and their role in understanding the nature of the mind and the universe.

First of all, let me reiterate that the three gunas are part of the Sankhya philosophy, the Sankhya way of describing how the universe evolves. They emerge from ahamkara, which is the principle of self-identification, and they go on to develop into other aspects of reality.

Rajas does not evolve into anything other than activity, which is what rajas means. Sattva evolves into the thinking mind and the ten sense organs. Tamas evolves into the subtle elements, or tanmatras, and then into the dense elements, the five Mahabhutas: earth, water, fire, air, and space.

Tamas is always moving in the direction of becoming more fixed. This does not necessarily mean more immobile, although that can happen when tamas moves toward the earth element. It means becoming more fixed in whatever pattern is already occurring.

Tamas means inertia. You can have static inertia, like the earth element, which can remain unmoving for millions of years. Or you can have dynamic inertia, like a heavy train moving along tracks. Even if the engine is turned off, the train will continue moving for a long distance because a great amount of mass has been set into motion, and it requires time and energy to slow it down.

This is the nature of tamas. It means that whatever has been happening tends to continue happening. Sometimes this is beneficial, but often it becomes a problem because things need to change regularly.

Rajas is the principle of change. This is why rajas and tamas are regarded as the doshas of the mind. If there is too much tamas, you do not want to change. If there is too much rajas, you always want to change.

Sattva is connected with truth. The word sat means true, and sattva indicates possessing truth or trueness. It means accurately perceiving what is happening, accurately relating to it, using rajas when necessary and tamas when necessary.

Many people think that tamas is always bad and should be avoided, while sattva is always good and should always be increased. But this is not actually the case. One of the Upanishads explains that although the egoism of tamas is problematic, it can be even worse to become egotistic because you believe you are completely balanced, because you believe you possess the truth through excessive sattva.

Therefore, the important thing with the three gunas is that they exist in harmony, just like everything else in the organism. We do not want too much rajas, because then we will change too much, but we need enough rajas to allow movement and transformation. We do not want too much tamas, because then we become too fixed, but we need enough tamas to provide stability.

If we are stable enough, we can make changes while maintaining our foundation. We need enough sattva to understand when rajas should become active and when it should become quiet, when tamas should be engaged and when it should be released, and to maintain balance among all three.