Text 18]
Conversation Between Maitreya and Vidura
771
tāmisram—andha-tāmisra; tamaḥ—tamas; mohaḥ—moha; mahā-tamaḥ—mahā-tamas or mahāmoha.
TRANSLATION
First of all, Brahmā created from his shadow the coverings of ignorance of the conditioned souls. They are five in number and are called  tāmisra ,  andha-tāmisra ,  tamas ,  moha  and  mahāmoha .
PURPORT
The conditioned souls, or living entities who come to the material world to enjoy sense gratification, are covered in the beginning by five different conditions. The first condition is a covering of  tāmisra , or anger. Constitutionally, each and every living entity has minute independence; it is misuse of that minute independence for the conditioned soul to think that he can also enjoy like the Supreme Lord or to think, “Why shall I not be a free enjoyer like the Supreme Lord?” This forgetfulness of his constitutional position is due to anger or envy. The living entity, being eternally a part and parcel servitor of the Supreme Lord, can never, by constitution, be an equal enjoyer with the Lord. When he forgets this, however, and tries to be one with Him, this condition is called  tāmisra . Even in the field of spiritual realization, this  tāmisra  mentality of the living entity is hard to overcome. In trying to get out of the entanglement of material life, there are many who want to be one with the Supreme. Even in their transcendental activities, this lower grade mentality of  tāmisra  continues.
Andha-tāmisra  involves considering death to be the ultimate end. The atheists generally think that the body is the self and that everything is therefore ended with the end of the body. Thus they want to enjoy material life as far as possible during the existence of the body. Their theory is: “As long as you live, you should live prosperously. Never mind whether you commit all kinds of so-called sins. You must eat sumptuously. Beg, borrow and steal, and if you think that by stealing and borrowing you are being entangled in sinful activities for which you will have to pay, then just forget that misconception because after death everything is finished. No one is responsible for anything he does during his life.” This atheistic conception of life is killing human civilization, for it is without knowledge of the continuation of eternal life.
This  andha-tāmisra  ignorance is due to  tamas . The condition of not knowing anything about the spirit soul is called  tamas . This material world is also generally called  tamas  because 99% of its living entities are ignorant of