तमस्त्वज्ञानजं विद्धि मोहनं सर्वदेहिनाम् ।प्रमादालस्यनिद्राभिस् तन्निबध्नाति भारत ॥
tamastvajñānajaṁ viddhi mohanaṁ sarvadehināmpramādālasyanidrābhis tannibadhnāti bhārata
But Tamas, know thou, born of ignorance, is the deluder of all embodied beings; it binds by negligence, indolence and sleep, O Bharata.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Essays on the Gita
Tamas, finally, is born of inertia and ignorance and its fruit14·8 too is inertia and ignorance. It is the darkness of tamas which obscures knowledge and causes all confusion and delusion. Therefore it is the opposite of sattwa, for the essence of sattwa is enlightenment, prakāśa, and the essence of tamas is absence14·13 of light, nescience, aprakāśa. But tamas brings incapacity and negligence of action as well as the incapacity and negligence of error, inattention and misunderstanding or non-understanding; indolence, languor and sleep belong to this guna. Therefore it is the opposite too of rajas; for the essence of rajas is movement and impulsion and kinesis, pravṛtti, but the essence of tamas is inertia, apravṛtti. Tamas is inertia of nescience and inertia of inaction, a double negative.
But then there is the question, how does our infinite and imperishable spirit, even involved in Nature, come thus to confine itself to the lower action of Prakriti and undergo this bondage and how is it not, like the supreme spirit of which it is a portion, free in its infinity even while enjoying the self-limitations of its active evolution? The reason, says the Gita, is our attachment to the gunas and to the result of their workings. Sattwa, it says, attaches to happiness, rajas attaches to action,14·9 tamas covers up the knowledge and attaches to negligence of error and inaction. Or again, “sattwa binds by attachment to knowledge and attachment to happiness, rajas binds the embodied spirit by attachment to works, tamas binds by negligence and indolence and sleep.” In other words, the soul by attachment to the enjoyment of the gunas and their results concentrates its consciousness on the lower and outward action of life, mind and body in Nature, imprisons itself in the form of these things and becomes oblivious of its own greater consciousness behind in the spirit, unaware of the free power and scope of the liberating Purusha. Evidently, in order to be liberated and perfect, we must get back from these things, away from the gunas and above them and return to the power of that free spiritual consciousness above Nature.
Record of Yoga
(c) Tamas is Aprakasha and Apravritti. The result is fear, idleness, too much of sleep, ignorance.
