With this stanza, not only does the chapter conclude, but, the special advice demanded by Arjuna has also been finally given. Through ‘knowledge’ alone is ‘ignorance’ended; through a lived experience of the Self alone can we end our ‘ignorance-of-the-Self.’ This spiritual ‘ignorance,’ we have already found, creates ‘desires.’ The Lord has indicated earlier that ‘desire’ functions and thrives in the fields of the sense-organs, the mind, and the intellect. Through the processes of meditation, when we withdraw from our false identifications with the objects, the body and the mind, the ‘desire’-faculty, that was till now roaming about and functioning in the outer fields, is gathered and established in the intellect.

As long as we maintain in ourselves the limiting adjuncts of the matter-envelopments, so long we cannot realise our divine potentialities, but instead, in our delusion, we will understand ourselves to be nothing more than the little ego — limited, bound, finite and ever-sobbing. After the re-discovery of our own diviner existence we will be able to live “restraining the self by the Self.” In a perfect Buddha’s life, his ego functions completely under the control of the diviner in him. No more then can the ‘desire’-impulses, if at all they arise in the mind, play their mischiefs and bring about any devastations in his inner life.

It is very interesting to note that the philosophy of the Geeta preaches a constructive re-organisation of life and not the destruction or rejection of life’s possibilities. “Desire,” being a painful leprous oozing wound, we are lovingly advised about the balm to cure the malady, and to live thereafter, in all efficiency, as a Master of circumstances and a Lord of our own emotions. A seeker who has accomplished this in himself is called a God-man, a Sage, a Prophet!

Buddhva, understanding; atmanam, the Self; evam, thus; as param, superior; buddheh, to the intellect; and samstabhya, completely establishing; atmana, with the mind, i.e. establishing (the Self) fully in spiritual absorption with the help of your own purified mind; O mighty-armed one, jahi, vanquish; this satrum, enemy; kama-rupam, in the form of desire; which is durasadam, difficult to subdue-which can be got hold of with great difficulty, it being possessed of many inscrutable characteristics.