Maha Gunas: How universal consciousness affects our health and well-being
In much the same way that our three doshas are fixed from the moment of our conception, the three ‘Maha Gunas’ (qualities of universal consciousness) were born at the exact moment the physical world was created.
Keeping our maha gunas in balance to maintain good mental health is just as essential as keeping our vata, kapha and pitta doshas in balance to keep our physical body fit and strong.
However, unlike our three doshas, our three maha gunas aren’t fixed. We have a lot more freedom over how to manage them.
What are the three maha gunas?
The maha gunas are sattva, rajas, and tamas. Think of them as universal energies that have a natural place in our lives and are in a constant state of ebb and flow.
‘Gunas’ (or ‘Guna’, when we talk about them individually) is a Sanskrit word that means ‘quality, attribute, tendency, or peculiarity.’ They are the ways that reality affects our physical, mental, and spiritual states, and how we choose to deal with them can have a significant influence on the path our life takes.
When we recognise and understand how the gunas impact us, we’re much closer to understanding our oneness with the universe and much more likely to make healthy, balanced, and harmonious life choices. The maha gunas don’t just influence our subtle body and mind; they are central to every phenomenon in the natural world around us.
Sattva is the guna of harmony, balance, intelligence, compassion, insight and joy. It is the quality that gives us clarity and wisdom and love, happiness, peace, and freedom.
Rajas is the guna of activity, kinetic energy, longing, and change. It is the quality that motivates us to take action and drives us to follow our passions. It can also make us feel emotional extremes like courage and euphoria, anxiety and anger.
Tamas is the guna of inertia, negativity, materialism and darkness. It is the quality that tries to undermine everything light and positive by making us feel lazy, guilty, sad or confused and preventing us from moving forwards.
When you look at them side-by-side, it’s easy to see that sattva, rajas and tamas are all parts of the same journey. Tamas is negativity and darkness, and rajas is the movement that takes us out of the dark and into sattva’s positivity and light. All three maha gunas are always present within us, but we can consciously control how much they affect us by staying mindful of our thoughts, decisions, and lifestyle choices.
Understanding the maha gunas
If you’ve ever tried to meditate, you know how unstable and ever-changing your mind can be. Often, all three gunas can be involved in one single thought process, taking us from doubt and fear to courage and joy and then back again. An excellent example of this is how we can feel excited about doing something one moment and then feel so anxious or uncertain that we’ll ‘talk ourselves out of it’ the next.
That’s got a lot to do with the predominant guna of our mind.
We all have a natural mental disposition, a way of looking at the world that is uniquely ours. To control the maha gunas, we have to practice self-observation and self-control so that we can learn to consciously shift our thoughts away from the negative states of tamas and rajas and into the sattvic state of harmony and purpose.
When you wake up feeling refreshed after a healthy night’s sleep, you’ll notice the calmness and clarity of sattva. When you undertake your work feeling purposeful and motivated, the rajas of activity will carry you through. When you’re ready to rest at the end of the day, you’ll feel the tamas of inertia preparing you for sleep.
But when we oversleep or wake up feeling so tired that we want to hit the snooze button and spend another hour in bed, that’s tamas holding us back. To counteract tamas, we should get out of bed and do some exercise to stimulate rajas. Once rajas has activated our mind and body, we’ll be on a better track for the rest of our day and, if our day continues along that track, there’s a good possibility that we’ll eventually feel the balance and satisfaction of sattva.
Just taking the action of rajas can be enough to give us the clarity of sattva – for example, how going for a walk in the park when we’re feeling muzzy-headed can lift our spirits and clear our mind.
On the other hand, if we’d hit the snooze button and stayed in bed, the inertia of tamas may very possibly have dominated the rest of our day. We’d have felt sluggish and unfocused, and if we did eventually take action (rajas), it would probably be very unwilling and half-hearted. It’s unlikely we’ll have experienced sattva at any point, and we’ll end the day feeling tired, out-of-sorts, and maybe even a little bit guilty about the precious hours we’ve just wasted.
Taking control of the maha gunas
Even though our goal is sattva, we must never forget that rajas and tamas are always there too. We must stay aware of all three gunas simultaneously, which will make it much easier for us to flow between them and achieve sattva’s balance. However, it’s not just about staying aware of the three gunas; it’s about taking conscious action to reduce tamas and rajas and increase sattva whenever possible.
Reducing tamas means avoiding over-indulgence (i.e.overeating and oversleeping) and not giving in to inactivity or fear. From a dietary point of view, you should also avoid red meat, processed or refined foods, alcohol and caffeine.
Reducing rajas also means avoiding over-indulgence, but in a very different way. You shouldn’t over-work, over-exercise, over-think, or be over-stimulated by the environment around you. From a dietary point of view, you should also avoid fried, greasy, or spicy foods and stimulants like caffeine and chocolate.
Increasing sattva doesn’t just mean reducing tamas and rajas, but actively seeking out the activities, people and situations that bring you happiness and fulfilment. Following an Ayurvedic lifestyle, eating sattvic foods like vegetables, legumes, fruits and whole grains, and beginning a daily yoga practice are all fantastic ways to encourage sattva.
Finally, it’s important to understand that, just like all three doshas, all three maha gunas are necessary for our health and well-being. Just because we’re feeling tamas doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. It means it’s a sign to take action, or at least take a very close look at why tamas is there so we can take positive action to understand it or remove it. For example, if you find yourself in a situation where you must hold your ground, it is tamas that gives you the energy to be unmoveable.
Similarly, an increase in rajas doesn’t always have to have negative consequences. If you’re feeling especially passionate about something that upsets you and rajas makes you speak out loudly and honestly about it, that can have positive benefits too. Depending on the situation, it could even open the gate to calming things down and eventually introduce the compassion, wisdom and understanding of sattva.
That’s why mindfulness of our maha gunas is essential, so that we can control them, reduce them, or use them to our best advantage.
We need all of our maha gunas, and understanding our primary guna and how it relates to our predisposing dosha is a powerful way to achieve health, balance, and well-being in every aspect of our life. That’s what I’ll be talking about in my next blog.
Until then, to your enduring health and happiness in Ayurveda.
