... humanity, not rigidly applicable to all its individuals, neither is it sharp and definite in all stages of the moral or spiritual history of the race or in all phases of the individual evolution. The tamasic man who makes so large a part of the whole, falls into neither category as it is here described, though he may have both elements in him in a low degree and for the most part serves tepidly the lower... been seeking for this just and high Law and whatever it has and Nature. Shastra does not mean a mass of customs, some good, some bad, unintelligently followed by the customary routine mind of the tamasic man. Shastra is the knowledge and teaching laid down by intuition, experience and wisdom, the science and art and ethic of life, the best standards available to the race. The half-awakened man who leaves ...
... contempt for those with whom he has to deal, especially for wiser men and his betters. A dull laziness, slowness, procrastination, looseness, want of vigour or of sincerity mark his action. The tamasic man is ordinarily slow to act, dilatory in his steps, easily depressed, ready soon to give up his task if it taxes his strength, his diligence or his patience. The rajasic doer of action on the contrary ...
... tamasic in others. According as one or other of the modes usually dominates his general temperament and type of mind and turn of action, it is said of him that he is the sattwic, the rajasic or the tamasic man; but few are always of one kind and none is entire in his kind. The wise are not always or wholly wise, the intelligent are intelligent only in patches; the saint suppresses in himself many unsaintly ...
... The Tantric distinction is between the animal man, the hero man and the divine man, paśu, vīra, deva . Or we may grade the difference according to the three gunas,—first, the tamasic or rajaso-tamasic man ignorant, inert or moved only in a little light by small motive forces, the rajasic or sattwo-rajasic man struggling with an awakened mind and will towards self-development or self-affirmation, and ...
... and shock of the world-energies whirling about him and converging upon him as he succumbs to them, is overborne by them, afflicted, subjected; or at the most, helped by the other qualities, the tamasic man seeks only somehow to survive, to subsist so long as he may, to shelter himself in the fortress of an established routine of thought and action in which he feels himself to a certain extent protected ...
... Prakriti. That law is the compelling rule of the three gunas. It is a triple stair that stumbles upward towards the divine light but cannot reach it. At its base is the law or dharma of inertia: the tamasic man inertly obeys in a customary mechanical action the suggestions and impulses, the round of will of his material and his half-intellectualised vital and sensational nature. In the middle intervenes ...
... godhead within us. It will be done without the mantra, without the dedicating thought which is the sacred body of our will and knowledge lifted upwards to the godheads we serve by our sacrifice. The tamasic man does not offer his sacrifice to the gods, but to inferior elemental powers or to those grosser spirits behind the veil who feed upon his works and dominate his life with their darkness. The rajasic ...
... passivity is to be fit for immortality— amṛtatvāya kalpate . It is to be dhīra , the ideal of our ancient civilisation, which does not mean to be tamasic, inert and a block. The inaction of the tamasic man is a stumbling-block to the energies around him, the inaction of the Yogin creates, preserves and destroys; his action is dynamic with the direct, stupendous driving-power of great natural forces ...
... According to the Indian terminology, a sattwic person is one who is moved by the principle of knowledge, equanimity and light, as opposed to a rajasic man who is moved by his desires and passions and a tamasic man who lives in inertia and obscurity. ...
... desire, creativity and productivity, ordinary impulse to love and to be loved, and it tends to fall into the mechanical routine of life and organizations to which tamas tends to cling. Finally, the tamasic man is totally governed by routine, mechanical repetition of the cycle of life and unintelligent acquiescence to ignorant inertia that does not allow the individual to press beyond the established routine ...
... others, fail or change in others. One can't make a rule. Page 487 Looking at myself, I wonder how a vitalistic man like me can pass his days in cellular imprisonment without any suffocation! That kind of change happens. One may say that a tamasic, indolent man can't be activated by the Divine to that extent. Of course he can. Am I really wrong? No, but there are many sides... receive your right force. It does not follow. Another man may have the knowledge but Page 489 receive nothing. If he receives, his knowledge and capacity help the Force to work out the details. It seems that though you have no patent or latent military capacity ... Not in this life. your Force has, and it wakes up in the man the right judgments etc. This is all a mystery beyond... the same the Force has put all these potentialities there in a certain evolution which works itself out automatically. (3) In the case of a man acting as an instrument of the Force the action is more complicated, because consciously or unconsciously the man must receive, also he must be able to work out what the Force puts through him. He is a living complex instrument, not a simple machine. So if ...
... utilizes for the pleasure and pain of the individuality. The rajasic man is the creator, the worker, the man of industry, enterprise, invention, originality, the lover of novelty, progress and reform. The growth of rajas therefore necessarily meant the inception of a great problem for society. In the tamasic and sub-tamasic states man develops the all-important faculty of conservatism, reverence for the... character, is called tamasic, rajasic, or sattwic. In the early stages of upward evolution tamas predominates, in the medial rajas, in the final sattwa. In the early evolution of man it is inevitable, therefore, that the obscuration of tamas should be very heavy and that the characteristic of passive receptivity to outside surroundings should be markedly predominant. Early man is active only under... progress Page 295 is an excellent example of the rajaso-tamasic community. The English race is preeminently rajaso-tamasic; tamasic by its irrational clinging to what it possesses not because it is inherently good or satisfying but simply because it is there, because it is part of its past and its national traditions; tamasic by its habit of changing not in obedience to any inner voice of ethical ...
... disappear. Tamas and tamasic ego are implied in each other. When one yields to tamas, one indulges the tamasic ego. Ego-centricity The ego-centric man feels and values things as they affect him. "Does this please me or displease, give me gladness or pain, flatter my pride, vanity, ambition or hurt it, satisfy my desires or thwart them?" etc. The unegoistic man does not look at things like... and Egoism I suppose the ego came there [ into human activity ] first as a means of the outer consciousness individualising itself in the flux of Nature and, secondly, as an incentive for tamasic animal man to act and get something done. Otherwise he might merely have contented himself with food and sleep and done nothing else. With that incentive of ego (possession, vanity, ambition, eagerness... rajasic ahankara which exalts itself unduly is not good for the sadhana, creating pride, vanity and delusion, so this opposite thing, called often tamasic ahankara, is not good, for it creates diffidence, despondency and in some people inertia. The tamasic ego is that which accepts and supports despondency, weakness, inertia, self-depreciation, unwillingness to act, unwillingness to know or be open ...
... some things, develop in others, fail or change in others. One can't make a rule. Looking at myself, I wonder how a vitalistic man can pass his days in cellular imprisonment without any suffocation! That kind of change happens One may say that a tamasic, indolent man can't be activised by the Divine to that extent. Of course he can. Am I really wrong? No, but there are many sides... suddenly appear, by force of Yoga. I say they can and I gave my own case as proof. I could have given others also. The question involved is also this—is a man bound to the character and qualities he has come with into this life—can he not become a new man by Yoga? That also I have proved in my sadhana, it can be done. When you say that I could do this only in my case because I am an Avatar (!) and it is... discovery and achievement. The question of a Muthu becoming a Ramakrishna, i.e. a great spiritual man may look to you like being an exercise in unreal numbers or magnitudes because it exceeds the actual observable facts in the case of this Muthu who very evidently is not going to be a great spiritual man—but we were arguing the matter of essential principle. I was pointing out that in the essentiality ...
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