The fourteenth chapter turns from the field in general to the three gunas that constitute the whole working of the lower Nature. Sattwa binds by light, harmony and the very attachment to knowledge and happiness; rajas binds by desire and passion, by restless action and the craving for the fruit; tamas binds by inertia, negligence, confusion and sleep (14·6). Sri Aurobindo stresses the subtle point that even sattwa, luminous and necessary as it is for the ascent, remains a mode of Nature and is therefore not yet the final freedom.
Krishna describes how the gunas prevail by turns and overpower one another. When sattwa is in the ascendant, light and understanding are born; when rajas dominates, there arise greed, activity and unrest; when tamas grows strong, darkness, indolence and delusion cover the being. The soul’s after-state and future movement follow the quality that was uppermost: sattwa leads upward to the worlds of the pure, rajas holds it in the middle field of desire-driven action, and tamas sinks it downward.
But the aim of the Gita is not merely to become sattwic. Sattwa purifies and prepares, giving clarity, ethical control and spiritual openness; yet the liberated soul must rise beyond all three modes alike. The gunas work in Nature, and the soul must become the witness who observes their operation without identifying himself with it. This witness-poise continues the knowledge of the previous chapter and prepares the surrender of the last.
Arjuna asks for the marks of the one who has gone beyond the gunas. Krishna answers by describing a perfect equality: such a man neither shrinks from the arising of light, activity or delusion nor longs for them when they cease, but sits like one unconcerned, knowing that it is only the modes that act (14·22). He is equal in pleasure and pain, self-poised, regarding alike a clod, a stone and gold, the same in blame and in praise, in honour and dishonour, toward friend and foe, having renounced all egoistic initiation of works.
Yet Sri Aurobindo notes that the Gita does not leave the seeker in a merely passive witnesshood. The passage beyond the gunas is completed by an unswerving love of the Divine: by serving him with an undeviating Yoga of devotion the soul crosses the modes of Nature and grows fit for the becoming of Brahman (14·26). The chapter closes by founding the Brahmic status upon the Purushottama himself, who is the support of the immortal Brahman, of the eternal dharma and of the absolute bliss (14·27). Liberation is thus not merely an escape from the modes of Nature but a union with the Divine who is both beyond Nature and within her.
