Transcript:

So, have you watched Star Wars? Remember the lightsaber? It has two interesting features. The first one is very easy to do. It's very easy to start a lightsaber. You can get high-energy lasers, and you can collate them; you get a lightsaber. The problem is, very difficult to stop the laser. So, to get a lightsaber, it has to be started, and it has to be stopped. Very important. 

Exactly the same thing happens in nature. There is a guna called the guna of rajas, which is the enabler of any motion to start. Any activity or any motion to start needs rajas. To stop that action needs tamas. Usually, the guna of tamas is confused with inertia or laziness. That's not the right interpretation. Tamas is the guna that stops an action that has already started because of Rajas. And one minus the sum of these two is the guna of sattva, which is the guna of well-being, balance, joy, all that. 

So, you can not do anything to increase sattva, by the way. All the practices that are prescribed on the spiritual path are either reducing rajas and/or reducing tamas. And by in silence, sattva goes up.