Sattva attaches to happiness, rajas to action, and tamas veils knowledge and attaches to negligence. Shankara sees this threefold binding as explaining the entirety of human psychological bondage. Ramanuja teaches that understanding these mechanisms is preparatory for surrender to God. The Bhakti tradition uses this awareness to motivate the devotee's turn toward the divine. Madhva explains with precision that each guna creates a distinct addiction — to happiness, to action, or to negligence — chaining the soul to a different mode of Prakriti. Abhinavagupta sees three ways consciousness contracts: through the pleasure of clarity, the restlessness of desire, and the heaviness of ignorance. Vallabha teaches that each guna distracts the soul from God differently, and the pushti devotee learns to recognize and offer all distractions to the Lord. Tilak provides a practical diagnostic: complacency indicates sattva, agitation indicates rajas, paralysis indicates tamas. Vivekananda advises self-observation and conscious elevation of one's dominant state.