- The three types of people are equivalent to the three Guna’s -

There are three types of people who are ready to practice Advaita Vedanta, or atma-vichara or self-realization.
The three types of people are the seekers, disciples and the devotees.

We have discussed this before but this is a little different.
The three types of people are equivalent to the three Guna’s.
Tamas, Rajas and Sattvic.
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Tamas means dullness, inertia and this refers to the seeker.
Rajas is action and this refers to the disciple.
Sattvic means purity and this refers to the devotee.
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Guna tamas/Seeker

Now when I say a seeker is dull and that’s the tamas quality, this is from the standpoint of Advaita Vedanta.

But a seeker is a very advanced soul compared to the billions of people on this earth who are wandering around in total delusion and they have not as yet become seekers.
So a seeker is really an advanced stage.
Yet a seeker has a tremendous ego.
They run around from teacher to teacher, read tons of books, always looking to find something for themselves.
Their concern is only me, me and mine.
I want to become enlightened, what can I get in this class, what’s in it for me.
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Their attention is on the personal self.
They go to one teacher, they hear about another teacher they go to that teacher, they hear about somebody else they go there, but at least they’re seeking.
They don’t really go anywhere.
They can go through thousands of incarnations.
Thousands upon thousands of incarnations as a seeker always looking to themselves.
Involved only with themselves.
They cannot keep the mind off themselves.
They find fault.
They always find something wrong with the class.
They compare one class to the next class.
One teacher to the next teacher, trying to pull out all of the information they can get from the teacher and couldn’t care less about anything else.
Yet if the seeker becomes sincere they evolve to the point where they become a disciple.
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Guna Rajas/Disciple

A disciple begins to settle down and this is the rajas quality, action.
They begin to act upon what they see.
They have an infinity for one teacher and they go to that teacher more than anybody else.
They act upon what the teacher says but they’re still external.
They read certain books pertaining to the teachers direction but they’re still not true to the teacher, they’re still interested in themselves but they stay mostly with one teacher.
Then if someone real good comes along and they hear the word they go to listen to this other person yet they always come back to the one teacher.
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They’re still concerned of themselves.
They also become sometimes trouble makers, they gossip a lot, they’re craving excitement.
So when things are smooth in the class they look for a way to make a little problem through gossip but they really mean well.
If they keep on being sincere they will evolve into a devotee.
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Guna Sattva/Devotee

Now the devotee has come a long way.
The devotee no longer thinks about themselves, they have forgotten about themselves.
They don’t even care about becoming self-realized.
They have no desire to become liberated.
They have no desires whatsoever.
They act spontaneously and take one day at a time.
They surrender completely to the Sage.
They have no life of their own.
They think of the Sage day and night.
There is no room in their minds for anything negative.
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A devotee never judges.
A devotee understands that the Sage is coming from a different consciousness from theirs.
So what the Sage does they may not understand too well but they don’t care.
The devotees are the people who maintain and sustain the Sage.
They look at the Sage as themselves.
What they do for themselves they do for the Sage.
The devotees are the life blood of the Sage and it’s the devotees that become liberated.
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In every movement of a high nature.
Ramana Maharshi, Rama Krishna, Shankara, many others too numerous to mention, it is only the devotees who become liberated because they don’t care about it.
Their personal-’I’ is gone.
They have surrendered the personal-’I’ to the Sage.
There is no-one left to quarrel.
There is no-one left to think something is wrong.
There is no-one left to judge.
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Why do I share this with you?
Because it’s time that most of you understood this truth and remember it.
What are you really here for?
You’re here to realize that you are not the body or mind.
That you’re absolute reality, that you are pure awareness.
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How can you realize this if you have other things in your mind?
If you’re thinking about the world and worldly conditions.
The world has always been here and the things that the world is going through, it has gone through again and again and again in previous ages.

T. 091 - The Three Guna’s