The Bhagavad Gita by Eknath Easwaran

╭ chapter fourteen
which combines inertia, sloth, darkness, ignorance, insensitivity.
This is the lowest state in terms of evolution; for tamas
means a dead stability, where nothing much happens for good
or ill. Worse, tamas can mean not just stability but a sliding
backwards in the struggle of evolution, where to stand still
may mean to be left behind (14:18).
In any given personality or phenomenon all the three gunas
are likely to be present. It is the mix of the three that colors
our experience. Sattva may be dominant, with an admixture
of rajas or tamas. Or perhaps rajas dominates, with a little sattva
and a good measure of tamas. Finally, the personality may
be basically tamasic, with a few rays of the light of sattva and
a little of the heat of rajas. In any case, no mix of the three
gunas is stable, for it is the very nature of prakriti to be in constant
flux. The gunas are constantly shifting, always changing
in intensity.
It is essential that the gunas, even the purity and goodness
of sattva, be transcended if the soul is to attain its final release.
For the three gunas are forces that operate within the world
of prakriti: in fact, their three strands make up the whole fabric
of the phenomenal world. Liberation lies beyond the conditioning
of prakriti, in the realm of Purusha. When Arjuna
asks Krishna to describe the person who has gone beyond
prakriti’s net, Krishna replies that such a person is detached
from the constant shifting and interaction of the gunas. Identified
with the Self, he or she realizes that the gunas and their
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