HOLDING THIS VIEW — Holding the view, as described in the previous stanza, that the world has no substratum, that there is no controlling power, and that the world continues to exist and procreate by itself, if a society were to live, giving full vent to animal nature, it will only achieve restless-ness and strife, disaster and destruction for itself.
RUINED SOULS — A balanced personality can only be for the individual who has, to begin with, a clear conception and a correct judgement of himself. Whenever an individual forgets himself, he acts in a manner unbecoming to the dignity of his birth, education, culture and social status, like a mad man or a drunken fool. When a materialist thus works in ignorance of his own divine status, he, naturally, behaves as though he is an animal — insulting the divine status of his own evolution.
OF SMALL INTELLECT (Alpa-Buddhayah) — Once an individual refuses to recognise the “Divine Presence of Truth,” embracing and underlying life, he will function in life as a self-centred, selfish entity, endlessly striving to eke out his own personal satisfaction from the material world. Seeking complete fulfilment in the gratification of his sensual urges, he strives hard but discovers only a carping disappointment, a burning hunger and a sense of defeat in life. Krishna, in his infinite kindness, sympathises with such men and calls them “MEN OF SMALL INTELLECT.”
FIERCE DEEDS — “If a materialist does not want to believe in the Eternal Reality, and if others must believe in some Permanent Truth, why not allow equal freedom to both — the believers and non-believers?” This is a natural question that will arise in any man, if he be truly democratic and tolerant in his point-of-view. Anticipating such a doubt in a sincere student, Krishna says, in the second line of the stanza, that when an individual loses his faith in the Higher Reality, he becomes licentious at all levels of his expression. Prompted by his selfish urges to seek and discover his fulfilment in life, he would, perhaps, ultimately bring about irremediable disasters to his era. Historically, the world to-day is going through the same predicament as declared and anticipated in the Geeta!!
Materialists, who do not recognise the Truth, seeking Its expression through life’s happenings, will unconsciously bring about such a discordant note of disharmony in the community that it will plunge the world into a bloody mire of disastrous wars.
THE VIEW-POINT OF THE LIFE OF A MATERIALIST AND HIS MOTIVES IN HIS EVERY-DAY LIFE, ARE BEAUTIFULLY DESCRIBED IN THE FOLLOWING STANZAS:
