Essays on the Gita

XVIIDeva and Asura 1THE PRACTICAL difficulty of the change from the ignorantand shackled normal nature of man to the dynamicfreedom of a divine and spiritual being will be apparentif we ask ourselves, more narrowly, how the transition can beeffected from the fettered embarrassed functioning of the threequalities to the infinite action of the liberated man who is nolonger subject to the gunas. The transition is indispensable; forit is clearly laid down that he must be above or else withoutthe three gunas, triguṇātīta, nistraiguṇya. On the other hand itis no less clearly, no less emphatically laid down that in everynatural existence here on earth the three gunas are there in theirinextricable working and it is even said that all action of manor creature or force is merely the action of these three modesupon each other, a functioning in which one or other predominatesand the rest modify its operation and results, guṇā guṇeṣuvartante. How then can there be another dynamic and kineticnature or any other kind of works? To act is to be subject to thethree qualities of Nature; to be beyond these conditions of herworking is to be silent in the Spirit. The Ishwara, the Supremewho is master of all her works and functions and guides anddetermines them by his divine will, is indeed above this mechanismof quality, not touched or limited by her modes, but stillit would seem that he acts always through them, always shapesby the power of the swabhava and through the psychologicalmachinery of the gunas. These three are fundamental propertiesof Prakriti, necessary operations of the executive Nature-forcewhich takes shape here in us, and the Jiva himself is only aportion of the Divine in this Prakriti. If then the liberated manstill does works, still moves in the kinetic movement, it must be1 Gita, XVI.