In the spiritual world, living beings show attachment to other beings and God. There such attachment is the source of bliss as it is addressed to perfect personalities. While in the material world, a living being remembers that the attachment was the source of the infinite bliss and tries to feel the bliss here by attachment to different personalities. But in the material world consciousness of all living beings is contaminated. This contamination makes them imperfect, but an imperfect personality from its inception is not able to give happiness. Soul cannot get rid of its ability to develop attachments. In fact, soul can never get rid of its nature of eternity, enjoyment and knowledge. In the spiritual world, all living beings associate with each other and the Lord. This association brings happiness. We subconsciously “remember” this happiness and remember that we got it via association. In the material world, this attachment trait puts us on the spot. The Bhagavad-Gita describes this process as follows (chapter 2, verses 62, 63):
While contemplating the objects of the senses, a person develops attachment for them, and from such attachment lust develops, and from lust anger arises.
From anger, delusion arises, and from delusion bewilderment of memory. When memory is bewildered, intelligence is lost, and when intelligence is lost, one falls down again into the material pool.
Thus, the material absorption starts with the misuse of our ability for attachment. Happiness of soul is infinitely dependent on its relations with the Lord. This very inclination to associate causes sufferings to conditioned persons with material consciousness. Egocentric material consciousness makes a person lose the spiritual perfection. In the material world, a person can be attracted by another person but in the process of association it is doomed for а disappointment. Indeed, any time when we look for happiness in association, we want to experience that feeling which we had in the spiritual world associating with the Lord and His devotees. Dissatisfaction which appears as the result of imperfect association degrades to violence via which we want by all means to get that spiritual enjoyment which we remember of. This state is like certain madness when we take someone by the scruff of the neck and say, “Give me happiness, hear me? Give it, just as you choose! Ah, do not you give it? Well, then take that! And that!", and there starts the chain of violence. While a conditioned living being has some hopes for happiness, it flatters, but when it loses the hope, it “goes beast-mode” when it is under the influence of ignorance; or becomes a philosopher if it is under the influence of goodness. In the material world, a living being gets entangled as it develops incorrect attachments and as a consequence becomes disappointed. This is what the material world is for, for us at every step to realize a simple truth: happiness came to us only from association with the Lord and His devotees. Although not all living beings come to this conclusion when disappointment or suffering (which is the same) knocks at the door. Personal attitude to suffering depends on which condition (the guna) one is under. Here we will try to briefly and easily explain the Aryan view point on cause-and-effect relationships functioning in the material world. Cause-and-effect relationships of the material world are called gunas. The guna means the rope. The guna, thus, is that law with which the material world ties us to the particular cause-and-effect mechanism of the nature according to our merits. To begin with, all living beings in this world have got four defects: