In tamas, we're helpless. If you've ever felt helpless—for instance, if you have some addiction and you can't give up, or you feel so depressed that you can't do anything—this is the modality of tamas.

Above tamas comes rajas. Rajas is the modality of intense activity. That is, we are creative. In rajas however, the setback is that no matter what we get, it's not enough, because we remain in that active and creative mode. We attain something, we create something, but it has to become more. We may attain a position—for instance, you may become a city council member, but then think, "Well, that's nothing. I want to be the mayor." When you become mayor, you may think, "Well, why don't I become governor?" And after becoming governor etc etc. There's never an endpoint. In modern parlance, it's called the hedonic treadmill; that is, no matter what I get, it's not enough. And there are plenty of songs and poems from ancient times and modern times expressing the experience of being in rajas and tamas. For instance, "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" and many, many more, like "Too Much Is Not Enough," etc.

And then there's the highest of the modalities in this world, called sattva. Sattva is the modality of clarity, where we see ourselves beyond the body. Gone is the drive to attain something, because we realize we already are something. We are something that's so amazing. And as Kṛṣṇa describes in the Bhagavad Gītā, when you see yourself beyond the body, you realize that this is the most amazing thing: the soul itself. Kṛṣṇa says 'āścaryavat', he calls it amazing, 'āścaryavat.' Some see it as amazing, some hear of it as amazing. And when you analyze who you really are, you examine your consciousness, or you become introspective, then you don't feel that you have to attain anything necessarily, because you already are something, and you're here right now, and you feel tuṣṭa, or satisfaction in the self. This is sattva.

But there's a modality beyond sattva, which is called śuddha-sattva, which is a completely transcendental realm—transcendental to the modes—meaning you've gone beyond any of the modalities of the material world. And this is pure consciousness. So the perfection of the teachings of Bhagavad-gītā and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is to come to that pure consciousness.
Verse for discussion:https://vedabase.io/en/library/sb/1/2/24/
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