The quality that belongs to kriyā śaktiḥ is known as rajoguṇa (rajas) and is expressed in vikṣepa śakti, the projecting power, the power that seemingly 'throws out' a world, also called manifestation.

Kriyā comes from the Sanskrit dhātu (seed) kṛ. Karma, action and the effects of action also come from here. These are all related. The pressure on the individual system to do (and modern man knows this all too well, few people can sit still with themselves, without doing anything), is the karmic momentum. The fruit of many lifetimes of action.

This pressure can be reduced step by step. To make the karma milder, we as humans also need knowledge. By knowing about practices such as saying 'no' to an urge (uparati/uparama), withdrawing the senses (dama, nivṛtti, pratyāhāra) in order to gain control and peace of mind (śama).

In a human being, kriya śakti also implies the power to know, jñāna śakti, and the power to desire, icchā śakti, because an action is preceded by a thought and a desire, a wish, in which knowledge is present: 'I want that'. An action also needs a saṅkalpa, a correct assessment of the situation and a decision about what to do.

These three forces, jñāna, icchā, kriya work together, in increasing degrees from subtle to grosser, in the projecting force vikṣepa śakti.

Of course, īśvara is the mechanism for all this. Māyā/ īśvara, this amazing universal opera in me. But it feels like I, as a person, am doing it. Another reason I am not the doer is that there is no doer. Consciousness (cit) is eternally free from apparent agency.