A highly scientific and extremely subtle philosophical truth has been suggested in this stanza. In his attempt to explain why and how the ego-centric personality in man fails to cognise His all-full nature, the Lord touches, by implication, the very fundamentals discovered and discussed by modern biologists in explaining the evolution of organisms. The instinct of self-preservation is the most powerful urge under which the individualised ego tries to live its life of continuous change. This instinct of preservation expresses itself in the intellectual zone as binding desires for things that contribute to the continuous welfare and well-being of the individual’s mundane existence.

When the impulse of desire, flowing from a bosom towards an object of attachment, gets half-way bumped upon an object or a being that stands between the bosom that craves and the object-of-craving, the refracted desire-thoughts express themselves as aversion (II-52, 53). In the tug-of-war between these two forces of desire and aversion, the hapless ego gets torn asunder and comes to suffer the agonising pain of lynching tensions within. Naturally, its mind-and-intellect become fully preoccupied with its pursuits of the things of its desire, and with its efforts at running away from the objects of its aversion. Soon the ego-centric personality becomes endlessly preoccupied, totally confused and completely exhausted. The host of thought-disturbances that are thereby created in the mental, and in the intellectual zones, breed among themselves and add day by day to the chaos within. The ‘agitation’ (Vikshepa) is that which veils (Avarana) the Truth from the direct cognition of the individual.

Therefore, the only way by which we can come to rediscover our equipoise and tranquillity as the Eternal Self, is to arrest, control and win over the agitations of the mind. All spiritual practices in all religions of the world are techniques — either emotional, or intellectual or physical — that aim at bringing about at least one solitary moment of perfect mental poise. Such a moment of poise is the moment of perfect mental illumination, the auspicious hour of Self-re-discovery and fulfilment of the reunion.

But unfortunately, adds the Lord in a divinely pathetic note, “ALL BEINGS FALLS INTO THIS DELUSION AT THEIR VERY BIRTH.” This is not a pessimistic submission as to the sorrowful destiny of a man, to escape from which he is incapacitated from birth. Unlike the Christ-religion, our Krishna-religion does not conceive a man as “a child of sin.” The Master-optimist, the Teacher of Hope, the Joyous Dancer of the Jamuna banks, is expressing here only a philosophical truth, that the very birth of an individual into a given embodiment, with its available environment, is the tragedy that he himself had planned out elaborately for the fulfilment of his own deep cravings and secret desires.

To get out of these delusions and gain the right knowledge constitutes the Sacred Goal of Life, and the Geeta is the Song of the Self that enchants the erring souls away from their confusions to the inviting fields of the joyous Perfection.

TO SHOW THEN WHAT THE QUALIFICATION OF THOSE WHO SEEK THE TRUTH ARE, THE FOLLOWING IS GIVEN:

Iccha-dvesa-samutthena, by what arises from likes and dislikes: iccha, likes, and dvesa, dislikes, are iccha-dvesau; anything arising from them is icchadvesa-samutthah. (Creatures are duluded) by that. By what? When that is thus sought to be known in particular, the Lord answers: dvandva-mohena, by the delusion of duality. Delusion (moha) that originates from duality (advandva) is dvandva-moha. Those very likes and dislikes, which are mutually opposed like heat and cold, which relate to happiness and sorrow and their causes, and which come into association with all beings in due course, are termed as duality (and this deludes all creatures). As regards them, when likes and dislikes arise from the experience of happiness, sorrow and their causes, then, by bringing the wisdom of all beings under their control, they create bewilderment which is the cause of the impediment to the rise of knowledg about the reality of Self, the suprem Truth. Indeed, exact knowledg about objects even in the external world does not arise in one whose mind is overpowered by the defects, viz likes and dislikes. It goes without saying that knowledge of the indwelling Self, beset with many obstacles as it is, does not arise in a completely bewildered person whose intelligence has been overcome by them. Therefore, bharata, O scion of the Bharata dynasty; owing to that delusion of duality arising from likes and dislikes, sarvabhutani, all creatures become deluded. Parantapa, O destroyer of foes; they yanti sammoham, become bewildered, come under delusion; sarge, at the time of their birth, i.e. at the time of their origination. The idea is that all creatures that come into being do so prepossessed by delusion. ‘Since this is so, therefore all creatures, being deluded and having their wisdom obstructed by that delusion of duality, do not know Me who am their Self. Hence, they do not adore Me as their Self.’ ‘Who, again, are those that, becoming free from the delusion of duality, come to know You, and adore You as the Self in accordance with the scriptures?’ In order to elaborate the subject enquired about, it is being said: