सत्त्वं रजस्तम इति गुणाः प्रकृतिसंभवाः।निबध्नन्ति महाबाहो देहे देहिनमव्ययम् ॥

Sattva is the best. Rajas comes next. Tamas is the lowest and the worst. The three alities indicate the triple mentality. They produce attachment in the individual souls, delude them and bind them down, as it were, to Samsara. Just as the three conditions of childhood, youth and old age are found in the same body, so also the three alities inhere in the mind. The soul gets limited by identifying itself with body and the three alities. It is subject to birth and death and experiences happiness and misery, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow till it realises its identity with the supreme Self.The word Guna is usually translated as quality. It does not signify property, attribute or quality, such as the blue colour of a cloth. Gunas are really the primary constitutents of Nature and are the basis of all substances. Therefore it is not proper to call them alities inhering in substances.If you want to attain freedom or perfection, if you wish to become immortal, you must rise above the modes of Nature. You must transcend the Gunas.If the water in the vessel is agitated, the reflected sun in the water also appears to be agitated through Pratibimba Adhyasa (superimposition of reflection on water). Even so the pure unchanging Self appears to be bound by the alities of Nature through superimposition. In reality the Self is ever free and untainted