The Quality of Rajas and Its Impact on the Spiritual Sadhana

The quality of Rajas, when it predominates in the action of the individual seeking spiritual growth, can have quite disruptive effects. A certain amount of focus and energy is required for any spiritual endeavour, to be sure, but there is a fine line between too little energy and too much. Rajas is the Guna that prods the vital nature and can raise up desire as a motive force. Desire in the sadhak can take the form of an attempt to attain spiritual experiences or realisations, with an emphasis on doing it quickly and successfully, from the standpoint of the ego-personality.

If we examine how Rajas works, it first lures the seeker into establishing a particular desire as the purpose or result to be attained. It tends to act with abandon, without planning, without due consideration for the right manner, right time, right place and right circumstance, which considerations are the province of the sattwic quality. This can lead to considerable waste of energy, increase of friction, development of unintended consequences, or an energetic atmosphere that is chaotic, pressured, or overly demanding, in fact, just the opposite of what is needed by the spiritual force as it seeks for aspiration and receptivity as the basis it needs to accomplish its purpose. On the other side, when Rajas fails to achieve its desires, it tends to fall back into a state of Tamas, characterized by torpor, despondency, depression, and fatigue. This oscillation betwee
Rajas and Tamas is well-known and characteristic.

Even if the rajasic effort bears some fruit, it tends to have some serious potential negative effects due to the energy that was deployed and the manner in which it was deployed. There are seekers who attempt to ‘storm the gates of heaven’. They may actually call forth various forces, but at the risk of ill-health, disharmony, mental disturbances or even death! They frequently discover that calling forth a power into the limited ego-personality can be a ‘two-edged sword’. On the one side, they acquire, at least temporarily, a new power, a new great experience, a new energetic level. On the other side, the human frame is not capable of holding and managing that energy and may break down or ‘spill’ the energy.

Goethe explored the issue of calling forth powerful forces without the requisite readiness in Faust. Dr. Faust uses various spells and formulae to bring forth a great vital power. When the being embodying that power actually appears, Faust is distressed to learn that he cannot control that power, that it far exceeds the scope of his human personality and he quakes with fear. He later accepts the guidance and leadership of Mephistopheles who opens the path to the fulfillment of his desires, including his sexual exploitation of a young maiden, his seeking for power and influence as he also undertook to expand his knowledge and powers of action in the world. Faust struggled with the forces he called forth through his rajasic desire-filled energy and only at the end, through the strength of his soul, was he able to be redeemed at the point of his death.

Many people, lured by the desire for great new power practice extremes of pranayama (or other methods), and are thereby able to experience the influx of great force. There are numerous cases of hidden unfulfilled desires rising up from the depths of the subconscient when these forces come and shake the being to its core. One of the characteristics of Rajas is the push to gain power, wealth or sexual dominance. There are instances of mental or emotional imbalance, vital disruptions and even physical imbalances and disturbances. One of the reasons it is considered to be essential to have an experienced guide or Guru when one undertakes practices of this sort is to help the seeker find and maintain a suitable balance, to integrate the new force and energy effectively without this type of potentially harmful effects ruining the individual’s life and spiritual practice.

There are cases where people suddenly start hearing voices that they believe are divine. As they begin to carry out the guidance or direction provided by these voices, they may soon find out that they were listening to deceptive beings who are controlling them and feeding off of their energy. There are other cases where individuals find their nervous being shaken and disrupted and they develop tremors or other characteristics that speak to the inability to hold the energy they are receiving. In other cases, there can be mental or emotional breakdowns, mood swings, schizophrenic episodes, emergence of multiple personalities, development of feelings of dominance or greatness that mislead the seeker into arrogating to his personal being a sense of some kind of destiny of preeminence or leadership, or other manifestations of some kind of lack of integration in the being and the corresponding lack of balance. In some instances, lower impulses, including bullying, sexual exploitation, exercising domination over others, anger, can come to the fore, particularly if the sadhak has left certain impulses unfulfilled or suppressed prior to beginning the practice.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “Desire often leads either to excess of effort, meaning often much labour and a limited fruit with strain, exhaustion and in case of difficulty or failure, despondence, disbelief or revolt; or else it leads to pulling down the force. That can be done, but except for the yogically strong and experienced, it is not always safe, though it may be often very effective; not safe, first, because it may lead to violent reactions or it brings down contrary or wrong or mixed forces which the sadhak is not experienced enough to distinguish from the true ones. Or else it may substitute the sadhak’s own limited power of experience or his mental and vital constructions for the free gift and true leading of the Divine.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pg. 114