All of Prakriti, everything that is not pure awareness, is woven from three qualities, the gunas, in shifting proportion:
- Sattva — clarity, lightness, harmony.
- Rajas — activity, drive, restlessness.
- Tamas — inertia, heaviness, dullness.
Nothing is purely one; the mix is always moving. A heavy, foggy morning is tamasic; a wired, can't-stop evening is rajasic; a clear, settled, wakeful stillness is sattvic.
Practice tends the mind toward sattva, but gently, because clinging even to clarity is still clinging. Sattva is the door, not the room: a clear mind is the precondition for seeing, not the seeing itself.