Suppose you have some textbooks that you wish to donate to a library or a school. Your initial thought isn’t selfish, but as you go to your room to pick them up, you see an advertisement in a newspaper, which describes a trade-in offer for old textbooks. You learn for each book you exchange, you can get a discount. You suddenly change your initial plan, and head for the bookstore. Then again, you feel that the weather is not ‘appropriate’ and change your plan.
In this hypothetical instance, the human mind got engaged in three inherent modes of Nature within a few minutes. The initial thought about sharing books with students was sattva, the decision to exchange them at the bookstore, guided by attachment to money, was rajas, but the final act of slackness was tamas. When the tamas mode gets activated, even attachment to money is not powerful enough to make us accomplish a task.
Sattva, a Sanskrit word that means “being-ness” (sat is “being” and tva is “ness”) brings about awakening of the soul and creates peace. The sattvik mind is kind, compassionate, loving, forgiving, truthful, intelligent and strong.
The nature of rajas is of attraction, longing and attachment, and it strongly binds us to the fruits of our work. It is directed outward and causes or motivates egoistic actions (achievement of power, control and dominance). Rajas karma is money-oriented and calculative, with a tinge of egoism. When acting in this mode, we care about what is easy and agreeable to us.
Tamas is the power of darkness and materiality. It is active when we do something in a state of total confusion, when our intellect starts making wrong judgments, when we lack the understanding for doing something, or when we lack awareness of our act’s consequences. Tamasik mind represents complete delusion, ignorance, indecision, sleep, haughtiness, fear, censure of good acts, loss of memory, violation of all rules of conduct.

Balancing Gunas
Sattva mode implies health-conscious consumption and includes items like fruits, veggies, cereals, and selected dairy products. Rajas mode of eating focuses on taste, not nutrition value, or is attached to sense of gratification. Tamas food includes spoiled, tasteless, and unclean items. One who ingests such items eats because of ignorance.
So how does this relate to us? On a macro level, from a Vedic perspective, the universe and all of nature is inextricably linked to the gunas and are formed from them. On a personal level, these same qualities and processes are at work within each of us. Both our bodies and minds are subject to the ebb and flow of the gunas within us. In the philosophy of Yoga, all matter in the universe have three gunas, which are always present in all beings and objects surrounding us but vary in their relative amounts. We have the ability to consciously alter the levels of gunas in our bodies and minds. A guna can be increased or decreased through the interaction and influence of external objects, lifestyle practices and thoughts. However, for any real healing of the mind to be possible, we must understand these forces and learn how to work with them as they exist not only in the world but in our own psyche.

The writer is a medical astrologer