TWELVE

Understand the Terrain

–1–

We turned the corner, and there she was: the Eiffel Tower. I had been to this iconic Paris landmark several times, and I confess, I find lifeless monuments a little disappointing. When I’m finally in front of them, there’s something oddly flat and pedestrian about them. On this summer morning, however, it was different—I had never seen the Eiffel Tower as magnificent as this, not even in pictures.

The monument hadn’t changed; the city hadn’t changed; I was much the same person. So, what was different? My vantage point.

Most tourists head straight to the base of the Eiffel Tower. This time, we had Ariana, a close friend teaching at La Sorbonne, as our tour guide. She took us to Trocadéro, perched on a hilltop on the other side of the River Seine from the Tower. Across a gorgeous park and tiled plaza, complete with gilded statues, you’re exposed to a stunning, unobstructed view of the Eiffel Tower. Local Parisians were enjoying their lunch on the steps. I felt I was in on a secret.

What we see depends not only on what we’re looking at, but also where we’re looking from. In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna goes to some lengths to explain this to Arjuna.

On a journey, it’s important to understand the terrain. Some terrains offer beautiful, unobstructed views and make for an easy passage. Some are troublesome and require immense effort. Others are dark and treacherous, liable to confound and entrap the traveller.

Krishna differentiates between three types of “terrain”: Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. Think of Sattva as the hilltops of life. They offer us clear, undisturbed panoramic views. When the mind is influenced by Sattva, a person feels satisfied at heart. She’s no longer troubled by a million longings. Sattva manifests as mindfulness, tranquillity and wisdom. The Sanskrit word sattva means “beingness” and refers to a deep awareness of what is.

But it’s difficult to remain on the mountaintop. We are forced back down to the more troublesome slopes of striving and attachment, and into the murky valleys of lethargy and forgetfulness.

Rajas is a vantage point on life that fills a person with a million desires, leading her to be anxious, ceaselessly striving, and forever dissatisfied. A person influenced by Rajas is always trying to reshape the world. The Rajas terrain involves a difficult climb up a steep slope, with all the exertion, longing, triumph and frustration of such a pursuit.

Then you have Tamas, the dark valleys of life, with treacherous, disorientating marshes and haunted forests of bewilderment. When lost in Tamas, “darkness”, we fall into lamentation, moroseness, self-pity, resentment, frustration, anger, hatred and a myriad of other forms of negativity. This is the terrain we’re likely to find ourselves in during a dark night of the soul. It can manifest as a strong desire to give up on life.

Travellers can find themselves stuck in Tamas for an excessively long time. They drift into an existential sleep, even while appearing awake. They forget why they’re on the road, or even that there is a journey at all.

Millennia ago, the sages of India differentiated between Sattva, Rajas and Tamas to help us live more consciously; to help us better understand our own state of consciousness, the qualities of our environment, and how those qualities influence us. Krishna summarizes these three competing qualities by what they produce in our heart:

Wisdom arises from Sattva; greed arises from Rajas; and negligence and bewilderment arise from Tamas, as well as folly.²³

Krishna has already explained the nature of the self, the “knower of the field”. Now he wants us to understand the “field” itself. The yoga warrior must understand who she is, but she must also be able to navigate the field of life.

–2–

He looked at me with beady eyes. His face was pale, covered in a thick layer of ashes.

“I’m not allowed to leave the crematorium,” he said. “I’ve lived in and around its walls for nearly two years.”

We were in the ancient city of Jagannath Puri, on the eastern coast of India. I had often walked past the city’s walled cremation ground, or burning ghat, on Swargadwar Road, uneasy about its proximity to the city’s bustling streets. When the wind blows from the sea, an unsettling smell of burnt flesh permeates the market. The funeral pyres burn without rest.

“What do you eat? Where do you sleep?” I asked the ascetic.

“We only accept what’s left behind in the crematorium. For the first year I slept in the open. Then someone left an old stretcher, and I used that to build a simple shelter.”

“But why do you do this?” I asked.

“We believe that Tamas, darkness, is the highest quality. Sattva brings discernment: ‘This is good, that is bad; this is clean, that is dirty.’ We believe everything is the same, and so we want to destroy discernment. To do this, we cultivate Tamas.”

“How?” I asked.

“We do things that promote Tamas. Maybe it’s better you don’t know.”

I remembered Krishna telling Arjuna that those who culture Tamas worship ghosts and departed beings. I was beginning to feel a little afraid.

“If you’re not allowed to leave the crematorium, why are you out here now?” I asked.

“I recently started having doubts about my path,” the young man replied. “I’ve been reading teachings on yoga that explain the benefits of Sattva. Through Sattva, these teachings say, we gain higher knowledge.”

The sacred yoga texts explain that Sattva, Rajas and Tamas each have a function. Tamas, for example, generates lethargy and sleep. A good night’s sleep gives us renewed energy to actively engage with life. When situated within these beneficial contexts, Tamas and Rajas are not undesirable energies.

At the same time, the yogi must also choose which quality to actively culture in her life. The yoga texts recommend Sattva, advise us to avoid Tamas, and alert us to the shortcomings and mixed results of Rajas. But here was an ascetic who lived in a crematorium and practised the reverse: not yoga, but vi-yoga, that which takes us away from yoga.

The sun was beginning to set, and it was time for us to part ways. As I said goodbye outside the main entrance to the burning ghat, the ascetic pointed out his teacher some twenty yards away.

I froze in fear. Covered from top to bottom in human ashes, a large-framed man was surveying me with reddish eyes. His thickly matted hair touched the ground. He seemed intoxicated. Motionless, he stared blankly ahead, holding what looked to me like a human skull, his fingers hooked through the eye sockets.

“He has been living in crematoriums and charnel grounds for more than twelve years,” the student explained. “That skull in his hand is what he eats from.”

“What does he eat?” I ventured, swallowing hard.

“His own excrement mixed with milk.”

–3–

“I hardly made any progress on my assignment today,” my friend Wendy confided. “Every time I want to work on it, something comes up and I get side-tracked.”

Wendy was in her late twenties, with three children. She had her first child in her late teens. Now that the children were older, she was taking a degree course in journalism.

Her mother Janine, keen to correct Wendy at every turn, signalled her disapproval: “If you keep letting yourself get distracted, you’ll never get that assignment done. You’ll end up flunking the course, and then what?”

“Why do you always have to criticize?” Wendy sprang back.

“Of course you’ll do well, darling,” Wendy’s partner Horatio assured her. “I have no doubt about it. You always do well.” Horatio wasn’t as sure as he made believe, but the tension created by Wendy’s anxiety made him uncomfortable, so his instinct was to stifle it with reassurance. This was easier than listening. Horatio’s definitive assurance made Wendy feel under even more pressure. She felt silly for voicing her fears.

“Why don’t you try blocking off some time for your assignment,” Horatio now counselled. “Shut your office door, switch off your mobile, and don’t log on to Facebook or check your emails.”

Wendy didn’t say anything. She didn’t need advice; she needed to be heard.

“I know what you mean,” Wendy’s brother Joe declared, enthusiastically. He had been waiting for his turn to speak. “I’ve been getting distracted a lot lately myself. It always seems to happen when I have a big deadline looming. Just last week, I needed to complete another financial statement analysis report for my department and…”

Wendy was getting frustrated. Joe had just railroaded the conversation, making it all about him, again.

Joe’s girlfriend, Susan, noticed. She was a good listener, and admired Wendy’s courage in pursuing her dream to become a journalist. When Joe finished, she brought the conversation back: “Wendy, you said you weren’t able to make much progress today. You kept getting side-tracked?”

“Yes, it’s almost as if I’m looking for something to distract me. I think I’m afraid whatever I write might not be good enough.”

Wendy paused. This was a sudden insight for her, an unexpected moment of clarity. She didn’t know where her words came from. Suddenly she understood something important about herself that would no doubt serve her well in life.

In that brief interval and the conversation that flowed from it, Susan and Wendy formed a connection of trust and understanding. Intimacy even. They became friends.

Communication can be of three broad types, depending upon whether Sattva, Rajas or Tamas is dominant.

Generally, most of our conversations are strongly influenced by Rajas and Tamas. When covered by Tamas, we tend to criticize and shut others down; our words are judgmental, demeaning, undermining, hurtful or destructive.

When driven by Rajas, we try to shift the conversation to ourselves. When others are speaking, we don’t really listen: we’re waiting for our turn to speak. In Rajas, we’re driven by our own immediate needs—the need to be liked and admired, the need to be right, the need to influence, the need to be at the centre.

In Sattva, we approach a conversation without any personal agenda, and in doing so we’re able to listen, without judgment. Communication in Sattva leads to vitality and a deeper connection between the speaker and listener. It encourages the participants to reveal their heart, and leads to trust and intimacy.

In the conversation at Wendy’s home, Wendy’s mother tends to fall into a pattern of criticism, activated by Tamas. This in turn provokes an angry and defensive response in Tamas from Wendy, creating further emotional distance between mother and daughter. Tamas, a destructive force, leads to argument and discord.

Wendy’s brother is strongly influenced by Rajas. This manifests as a desire to steer conversations towards himself, his own needs and interests. In Rajas, as in Tamas, we’re not able to listen to others. We can feign attentiveness, but we’re unable to suspend our preoccupation with ourselves and enter the experience of the other person. While someone is speaking, we’re busy thinking about our next statement rather than listening to what’s being said.

A conversation in Rajas can seem animated, colourful and interesting, but the participants don’t feel energized or vitalized by it. There’s no heart-to-heart connection, no sacred bridge between worlds, no union of souls.

Horatio, too, is moved by Rajas, which leads to a failure of understanding. When Wendy expresses her anxiety or inner turmoil, he’s unwilling to suspend his own needs for a moment and share her uncertainty. He must resolve it, and so offers unrequested advice.

Susan, however, is able to listen and open up the conversation. She encourages Wendy to go deeper into her experience. Her capacity to listen with sustained immersion in another’s experience gets people to reveal their heart.

When our primary objective is to undermine someone or what they are saying, without constructive intent, our communication is in Tamas. Examples are quibbling, blaming, personal attacks and self-abuse. Such communication is fuelled by Tamasic states such as fear, jealousy, prejudice or insecurity.

When our primary concern is to establish our own position, our communication is in Rajas. We do this when we make the conversation all about ourselves or when we try to convince someone, control their actions, or establish our superiority.

By contrast, when two or more people speak to each other without judgment or agenda, really listening to what the other person says, that exchange of life energy is communication in Sattva. Such communication allows new ways of seeing to emerge. It leads to healing, understanding, insight and wisdom. Through this kind of genuine, open exchange, we energize and inspire each other. We enhance each other’s lives.²⁴

According to the rishis, communication in Sattva is best, while communication in Tamas is best avoided. Communication in Rajas is sometimes unavoidable, but should be tempered as much as possible with Sattva, so that it has some life-enhancing properties and doesn’t degenerate into Tamas.

Importantly, these three forms of communication also apply to our private communication with ourselves, our “self-talk”, which also manifests in Sattva, Rajas or Tamas.²⁵

–4–

Jeremy was a young entrepreneur. He had attended several courses on how to get rich quickly, paying a lot of money for these courses. They helped him focus his energy. In these sessions, hundreds of other young entrepreneurs, fuelled by infectious desire, listened rapturously, hypnotized by the prospect of making it rich.

Jeremy began buying small single-family houses. At that time, the banks in the UK offered generous buy-to-let, interest-only mortgages. They required only the smallest of deposits. This was before the property crash, in a buoyant market.

Jeremy started off with £300,000. Remarkably, eighteen months later he was sitting on a property portfolio worth more than £7 million, with equity of more than £3 million.

For Jeremy, this wasn’t enough. It was only the beginning. He felt impatient. His dream was to amass more than £100 million before his fortieth birthday. No one was going to stop him. So, he set up a real estate business.

The fledgling business was a very busy place to work. It had the same hunger and industry, the same speed and exuberance, the same unstoppable energy as its founder. It also carried the same greed and impatience, which sometimes led to the cutting of corners.

The business grew from a home operation into a larger firm with many employees. The growth was so rapid that there wasn’t enough time to care for all the details. Deals were made, but documents not filed properly; negotiations were conducted, but parties not properly vetted; land was purchased, but full due diligence not always completed; opportunities were seized, but risks not always appreciated or planned for.

The energy was predominantly Rajas, with a measure of Tamas. As Krishna explains, action taken with disregard of consequences, of loss or harm, and of personal capacity is in the nature of Tamas.²⁶

The sages refer to Sattva, Rajas and Tamas as the gunas, which in Sanskrit also means “ropes” or “what binds”. This indicates the tremendous power of these qualities upon one’s consciousness.

How we begin something is so important. The quality of our consciousness is carried right through to the end, in an inexorable chain that is difficult to undo.

We can begin or end anything—a relationship, an enterprise, even our day—in any of the three gunas. In Sattva, beginnings and endings are thought-through, deliberate, orderly and peaceful. In Rajas, they tend to be rushed to achieve some urgent purpose at all costs. As a result, they’re usually poorly planned, disorderly, chaotic and disruptive. Beginnings and endings in Tamas are induced by lethargy, neglect, anger, jealousy or some other destructive tendency.

An action impelled by one guna will tend to yield a result in that same guna, if not in a lower guna. The results we experience tend to reflect the quality of our actions; and the quality of our actions mirror the quality of our state of mind.²⁷

The results we experience can also be divided into three kinds. Actions in Sattva yield results that are positive, stable, durable, congruous, appropriate, balanced and agreeable. Actions in Rajas tend to yield mixed results, while actions in Tamas tend to deliver disempowering, destructive and disabling results. According to the ancient texts, one who acts in Sattva experiences fulfilment, one who acts in Rajas achieves mixed misery and happiness, and one who acts under the influence of Tamas is morose and dejected.²⁸

The outcome of Jeremy’s business was mixed. Things began to go wrong. Investors wanted their money back and partners proved unreliable, even potentially fraudulent in some cases. The company filed for bankruptcy.

–5–

I had come to the Indian Embassy in London to renew my visa, aiming to return to Mathura, India, in time for Janmashtami, the celebration of Krishna’s birth. An elderly official spotted me, dressed in the simple robes of my tradition. He must have become curious, for he called me into his small office. I noticed a copy of the Bhagavad Gita on his desk.

After asking a few questions, the consulate official began telling a story: “A young traveller was once crossing a remote forest. He hoped to reach a great city nearby in time for Diwali, the festival of lights. At the grand temple in the heart of the city, he planned to offer a lamp, some forest flowers and three moonstones to Krishna, the beautiful lord of his heart.

“Deep in the forest, three robbers fell upon the unwary traveller. The first pulled out a large knife, intent on killing the traveller immediately, without a second thought.

“The second robber, who was more calculating, stopped him: ‘Of all crimes, murder is the most serious. If we’re caught, our punishment will be death. It’s better we simply take everything this man has and leave him tied to a tree.’

“And so, the three robbers went through the young man’s travelling bag and took whatever they deemed valuable and went on their way.

“Later that evening, the third robber returned to the crime site, alone. He found the young traveller still tied to a tree.

“‘I’m truly sorry for all you’ve endured,’ the robber said, tears in his eyes. ‘I hope you haven’t suffered too much. Here, let me untie you.’

“The robber, who knew the forest well, led the young traveller to a path out of the woods. In the distance was the beautiful city, lit up by thousands of lights. There were lamps in every window and on every terrace.

“The robber opened the traveller’s hand and returned his three precious moonstones.

“‘I’ll leave you here,’ the robber said, with a sadness in his eyes.

“‘But no, you must come with me,’ the traveller exclaimed. ‘I haven’t had a chance to thank you for what you’ve done. Come into the city. I’ll tell everyone of your kindness, and you’ll be rewarded.’

“The robber remained silent. He said at last, ‘I’m a robber. If I go into the city, I’ll be recognized and caught. This beautiful city is yours, but I must remain exiled in the woods.’”

After telling this story, the consulate official paused, looking at me intently. “The dense forest is this world,” he explained. “We, the soul, are the traveller. If we’re on a yoga path, we’re trying to reach the great city of lights.

“The three robbers in the woods are Tamas, Rajas and Sattva. These three bind the soul in the dense forest of this world.

“Thoughtless and destructive, the first robber, Tamas, binds the soul to darkness and lethargy. Capable of great cruelty, he has little regard for the suffering of others. Rajas, by contrast, has a plan—and that plan centres around his personal gain. Rajas binds the soul through hankering and attachment.

“Sattva, the quietest of the three, feels pained to see others suffer. His function is to release the soul from Tamas and Rajas. In other words, Sattva loosens the bonds of this world. Illuminating and peaceful, Sattva can lead the soul to the boundary of enlightenment, the beautiful city of lights.

“But Sattva can’t go further. Even Sattva has no place in the sacred realm of the soul. Therefore, ultimately, the yogi must transcend all three gunas, including Sattva.”

The elderly official paused and turning to me squarely, asked, “Why can’t Sattva enter the city of lights?”

“Because Sattva too is a guna, or thief,” I replied. “Krishna explains in the Bhagavad Gita that Sattva binds us through attachment to happiness and to knowledge.”²⁹

“Yes, Sattva, the purest of the three gunas, is a big help on the journey of the soul; but Sattva can’t enter the highest level of consciousness, beyond the play of form of this world. Sattva can only show the way,” the official said.

The official was dressed in an immaculate pinstriped navy suit. I remembered that day that we can’t judge someone by their outward appearance. A wise soul may be dressed in monk’s robes or in a suit, dress, jeans or yoga leggings. It’s easy to forget Arjuna was suited up as a warrior. So was Krishna.

There are wise souls all around us who can inspire us on our journey of yoga. Krishna, the Universal Teacher, sends them our way at the right time to help us.

The consulate official continued, “So how can we rise beyond the gunas?”

“Krishna tells Arjuna that he can transcend Sattva, Rajas and Tamas through Bhakti, sacred love,” I replied.³⁰

“Do you know what the three precious moonstones represent?” the official asked. This was the most unusual interview I had ever had.

“Well, the traveller wants to offer them to Krishna, the beautiful lord of his heart. These gemstones are taken away by Rajas and Tamas, but are returned by Sattva. I think they represent our body, mind and words. When we truly offer these with love, we transcend the three gunas.”

The official showed no sign of agreeing or disagreeing. Instead, he asked another question: “And someone who has transcended the gunas, what are they like?”

I remembered that Arjuna had asked Krishna this same question. “Such a person is equal in happiness and distress, fortune and misfortune,” I replied. “They’re self-contained. They don’t derive their identity from this world, so remain unmoved whether praised or blamed, honoured or condemned. They don’t distinguish between friends and enemies, but see all beings equally on the level of the soul. They understand that everything in this world is simply the play of the three gunas.”³¹

The official broke into a big smile. He opened my passport and stamped it with a five-year multiple-entry student visa.

“You’re on your way to Mathura to make an offering to Krishna on Janmashtami,” he said. “I’m not able to travel to that great city with you, but I’ll help you get there. I certainly won’t hold you back.”