Introduction to Tantra Sastra - Aghori

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INTRODUCTION TO TANTRA ŚĀSTRA
dent activity or operation on tamas produces sorrow and
delusion respectively. Where sattva or happiness is
predominant, there sorrow and delusion are suppressed.
Where rajas or sorrow is predominant, there happiness
and delusion are suppressed. And where tamas or
delusion predominates there, as in the case of the inorganic
world, both happiness and sorrow are suppressed.
All objects share these three states in different proportions.
There is, however, always in the jīvātma an admixture
of sorrow with happiness, due to the operation
of rajas. For happiness, which is the fruit of righteous
acts done to attain happiness, is after all only a vikāra.
The natural state of the jīvātma—that is, the state of its
own true nature—is that bliss (ānanda) which arises
from the pure knowledge of the Self, in which both
happiness and sorrow are equally objects of indifference.
The worldly enjoyment of a person involves pain to self
or others. This is the result of the pursuit of happiness,
whether by righteous or unrighteous acts. As spiritual
progress is made, the gross body becomes more and
more refined. In inanimate bodies, karma operates to
the production of pure delusion. On the exhaustion of
such karma, the jīvātma assumes animate bodies for the
operation of such forms of karma as lead to sorrow and
happiness mixed with delusion. In the vegetable world,
sattva is but little active, with a corresponding lack of
discrimination, for discrimination is the effect of sattva
in buddhi, and from discrimination arises the recognition
of pleasure and pain, conceptions of right and
wrong, of the transitory and intransitory, and so forth,
which are the fruit of a high degree of discrimination, or
of activity of sattva. In the lower animal, sattva in
buddhi is not suficiently active to lead to any degree of