
According to modern sciences, the Universe is made up of basic physical particles that include electrons, protons, neutrons, mesons, gluons and quarks.
At a spiritual level, however, the Universe is made up of something even more basic. These basic particles are known as the three subtle basic components (trigunās) namely Sattva, Raja and Tama. In the word triguna, "tri" stands for three and "gunās" stand for subtle-components.
The characteristics of each of these components are described in brief in the following table:
