Plan 63. Tamas
In Sanskrit, the word tamas means "darkness", "dark". Darkness is the absence of light. Light is knowledge, darkness is ignorance; ignorance is the lower mind. In Sanskrit, there is also a second meaning of this word - "snake". Tamas is the snake of darkness, the longest snake in the game, which relentlessly pulls the player into an illusion from the radiance of the plane of reality.
In the seventh chakra, tamas is the ignorance that arises from attachment to sense perception. This ignorance comes after the player realizes the state of happiness and thinks that this is the end of the need to fulfill karma. But here the player cannot stop all karma yet. From the field of happiness, the highest karma is six points, the lowest is one. The action cannot stop completely.
Tamas is complete surrender to illusion. The player loses sight of the never ending nature of the game. He forgot that until he reaches liberation, the game is not over. Inaction is an attempt to avoid the law of karma. Karma is Dharma in action. A player in a state of tamas forgets that the game does not stop at the seventh level and that, having achieved samadhi, he has not yet achieved liberation. When the upward movement slows down, it must still continue, and the only direction from the higher chakra is down. The longest snake in the game awaits a player who neglects his karma. There are three factors at work in any action.
The first is Dharma, the essence of action.
The second is karma, the action itself.
The third is inaction, inertia, resistance.
Due to the nature of the game, inactivity directs the flow of energy downward. Karma is inevitable. Trying to avoid it is itself karma, action. Trying to avoid karma is karma that pulls the player down to the second field of the game, into the illusion.
Tamas is synonymous with the state of deep sleep. When the sense organs are completely disabled and the consciousness sinks into sleep, the player in this state is no better than a corpse, even if he is still breathing. In meditation, when all activity of the mind is completely stopped and sensory perception is directed inward, it is very easy for the player to slip from the sattvic state of non-action into a dream ending in deep sleep.
That is why the field of tamas is on the seventh level of the game. This is where tamas becomes a snake. On the lower planes, tamas was necessary for the player. But here, on the plane of meditation, which is a form of non-action, tamas is a snake that reverses the flow of energy, causing the player to fall back into illusion. Tamas is an attribute of tamoguna, its manifestation in the microcosm. When the same power is discussed as an attribute of prakriti in the eighth row of the game, it is called tamoguna.