Finding the Common Ground Between Science and Spirituality This configuration of activity and inactivity is called rajas, which in Sanskrit means activity characterized by emotion, mist, clouds, and lack of clarity (29) Rajas is marked by insatiable desires, craving, passion, attachments, and ambitions that keep beings around in mindless activity in pursuit of things of their attachment (30) The word rajas denotes behavior like that of a king with lofty and insatiable ambitions but without the capability to deserve the outcome With this attribute, a person keeps working with limited success, resulting in a perception of never-ending gaps between their actual reality and their imagined goals This attribute applies only to the animate when activity is the result of sensations and feelings that not lend themselves to conscious volition or thought Although we are aware of them, we are not necessarily in charge of them In other words, they control us rather than us controlling them Examples are feelings of our in-built fears, aversions, cravings, and a sense of helplessness This attribute defines our life of activity, run primarily by such emotions rather than considered volition This attribute results when the mind, identifying primarily with its subconscious state, keeps the individual engaged in mindless activity without clarity of thought “Greed and constant activity Excessive projects, cravings, Restlessness: these arise When rajas is the ruling trait.” (31) A balance of activity and inactivity: The expression of consciousness referred to as conscious or deliberate action underlies this attribute The dominance of this attribute over the others is what in modern terminology is known as the “rest-and-digest” mode of being (32) 79