Undisciplined, vulgar, stubborn, deceitful, malicious, lazy, despondent, and procrastinating — such an agent is called tamasic.

The tamasic agent is described through eight qualities that together paint a portrait of deep spiritual inertia: ayukta (lacking discipline or mental control), prākṛta (crude, vulgar — operating at the lowest level of natural impulse without refinement), stabdha (stubborn, immovable — unable to learn or change), śaṭha (deceitful, crooked), naiṣkṛtika (malicious, harmful to others), alasa (lazy), viṣādī (despondent, prone to despair), and dīrghasūtrī (procrastinating — beginning nothing, finishing nothing). This is not a condemnation of persons but a diagnosis of states: these qualities are the manifestations of tamas in the human personality, and they can be recognised, named, and worked against.