From this verse onwards, Lord Krishna explains in five noble stanzas, the Hindu psychological theory of the fall of man from Godhood. This is only to bring home to Arjuna that he, the mighty-armed, must try to conquer all his Indriyas from all sides. Such a man, concludes Krishna, is a-man-of-Perfection as conceived in and contemplated upon, as explained in and glorified by the scriptural books of the Hindus.

This section also gives us a clear pasttern of the autobiography of all seekers who have, after long periods of practice, come to wreck themselves upon the rocks of failure and disappointment. To a true seeker in Vedanta, no fall is ever possible. Instances of unsuccessful seekers are not few, and in all of them the mistake that we notice is that they ultimately fell back to be victims of sense-entanglement; and in all those cases we also notice that the fallen one drank the very dregs of it; there is no half-way house for such victims — a slip for them means total destruction!!

The ladder-of-fall is very beautifully described here. The path of destruction for a seeker is so elaborately detailed in these stanzas that, fallen as we are, we shall know how to get back to our pristine glory and inward perfection.

Like a tree emerges from a seed, the source of all evil starts from our own wrong thinking, or false imaginations. Thought is creative; it can make us, or mar us. If rightly harnessed, it can be used for constructive purposes; if misused, it can totally destroy us. When we constantly think upon a sense-object, the CONSISTENCY OF THOUGHT creates in us an ATTACHMENT for the object of our thought; and, when more and more thoughts flow towards an object of attachment, they crystallize to form a BURNING DESIRE for the possession and enjoyment of the object-of-attachment. The same force of the motion, when directed towards obstacles that threaten the non-fulfilment of our desires, is called anger (Krodha).

An intellect fumed with anger (Krodha) comes to experience DELUSION and, the deluded intellect has no power of discrimination, because it loses all MEMORIES-OF-THE-PAST. Any one filled with anger is capable of doing acts totally forgetting himself and his relationship with all others. Sri Shankaracharya says in this connection that a deluded fool, in this mental condition, might even fight with his own teachers or parents, forgetting his indebtedness to these revered persons.

Thus, when an individual, through wrong channels of thinking, becomes ATTACHED to an object, the attachment matures into a burning DESIRE to posses that object. Then, when an obstruction to possess that object-of-desire shoots him up into a fit of ANGER, the mental disturbance caused by the emotion DELUDES the intellect and makes the individual FORGET his sense of proportion and his sense of relationship with things and beings around him. When thus, a deluded intellect forgets its dignity of culture, it loses its discriminative capacity, which is called, in common parlance, as ‘conscience’ (Buddhi). Conscience is that knowledge enjoyed for differentiating the good from the evil, which often forms a standard in ourselves, and, whenever it can, warns the mind against its lustful sensuousness and animalism. Once this ‘conscience’ is dulled, the man becomes a two-legged-animal with no sense of proportion, and with no ears for any subtler call in him, than the howling urgent hungers of the flesh. Thereby, he is guaranteeing for himself a complete destruction inasmuch as such a bosom cannot come to perceive, or strive for, the Higher, the Nobler and the Diviner.

THE CONTEMPLATION OF SENSE-OBJECTS HAS BEEN DESCRIBED AS THE SOURCE OF ALL EVILS. NOW THE MEANS OF DELIVERANCE (MOKSHA) IS DESCRIBED AS FOLLOWS:

Pumsah, in the case of a person; dhyayatah, who dwells on, thinks of; visayan, the objects, the specialities [Specialities: The charms imagined in them.] of the objects such as sound etc.; upajayate, there arises; sangah, attachment, fondness, love; tesu, for them, for those objects. Sangat, from attachment, from love; sanjayate, grows; kamah, hankering, thirst. When that is obstructed from any quarter, kamat, from hankering; abhijayate, springs; krodhah, anger. Krodhat, from anger; bhavati, follows; sammohah, delusion, absence of discrimination with regard to what should or should not be done. For, an angry man, becoming deluded, abuses even a teacher. Sammohat, from delusion; (comes) smrti-vibhramah, failure of memory originating from the impressions acquired from the instructions of the scriptures and teachers. When there is an occasion for memory to rise, it does not occur. Smrti-bhramsat, from that failure of memory; (results) buddhi-nasah, loss of understanding. The unfitness of the mind to discriminate between what should or should not be done is called loss of understanding. Buddhi-nasat, from the loss of understanding; pranasyati, he perishes. Indeed, a man continues tobe himself so long as his mind remains fit to distinguish between what he ought to and ought not do. When it becomes unfit, a man is verily ruined. Therefore, when his internal organ, his understanding, is destroyed, a man is ruined, i.e. he becomes unfit for the human Goal. Thinking of objects has been said to be the root of all evils. After that, this which is the cause of Liberation is being now stated: [If even the memory of objects be a source of evil, then their enjoyment is more so. Hence, a sannyasin seeking Liberation cannot avoid this evil, since he has to move about for food which is necessary for the maintenance of his body. The present verse is an answer to this apprehension.]