This being the penultimate verse in the chapter, it is a beautiful summary of all the main secrets-of-life explained at length in it. When, through the practice of Karma Yoga, we have learnt to renounce our attachments to the fruits-of-action, and yet to work on in perfect detachment — when every doubt in us regarding the Goal-of-life has been completely removed in our own inner experiences of the nobler and the diviner in us — as a result of the above two, the ego comes to rediscover itself to be nothing other than the Atman. Then the individual ego comes to live “POISED IN THE SELF AS THE SELF.” When such an individual works, his actions can never bind him.

It is only egoistic activities motivated by our ego-centric desires that leave gross impressions on our inner personality, and thus painfully bind us to reap their reactions. With a sense of detachment and in right-knowledge, as indicated in the above scheme, when an individual has completely destroyed his ego-sense, his actions cannot bind him at all. As a dreamer, I might commit a murder in my dream, of my dream-wife, but when I awake from my dream, I shall not be punished for the crime that I seem to have committed in my dream. For, the dreamer has also ended along with the dream. The dreamer committed the murder and deserves punishment; but in the waker, the dreamer is absent. Similarly, the ego-centric actions can bind and throttle only the ego, but when the ego has become Atmavantah, meaning “POISED IN THE SELF” — just like the dreamer when he gets poised in the waker — the activities of the ego can no more bind the Self. The ego “POISED IN THE SELF,” is the experience of the Real Self; the dreamer poised in the waker, is the waker.

THIS BEING THE WONDROUS RESULT AND THE SUPREME PROFIT THAT ‘TRUE-KNOWLEDGE’ CAN GIVE TO THE DELUDED, KRISHNA ADVISES ARJUNA:

Yoga-sannyasta-karmanam, one who has renounced actions through yoga: that person who is a knower of the supreme Goal, by whom actions called righteous or unrighteous have been renounced through the yoga characterized as the Knowledge of the supreme Goal. How does one become detached from actions through yoga? The Lord says: He is jnana-samchinna-samsayah, one whose doubts (samsaya) have been fully dispelled (samchinna) by Knowledge (jnana) characterized as the realization of the identity of the individual Self and God. O Dhananjaya, he who has thus renounced actions through yoga, atmavantam, who is not inadvertent, not careless; him, karmani, actions, seen as the activities of the gunas (see 3.28); na nibadhnanti, do not bind, (i.e.) they do not produce a result in the form of evil etc. Since one whose doubts have been destroyed by Knowledge-arising from the destruction of the impurities (of body, mind, etc.) as result of the practise of Karma-yoga-does not get bound by acitons owing to the mere fact of his actions having been burnt away by Knowledge; and since one who has doubts with regard to the practice of the yogas of Knowledge and actions gets ruined-