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The Lord said:
1. Again I shall teach you the supreme knowledge – the best of knowledges – knowing which, all sages have gone from here to the supreme attainment.
2. Relying upon this knowledge, they have reached my level of existence, and even at the beginning of a cycle of creation they are not reborn, nor do they cease to be at its dissolution.
3. Great Brahman is my womb, in it I place the embryo; the origin of all creatures derives from that, Bharata.
4. Whatever forms are produced in any wombs, Son of Kunti, Brahman is their great womb and I am the seed-giving father.
5. Purity, passion, and darkness, the constituents arising out of material nature, bind the imperishable embodied self to the body, Great Arm.
6. Of these, purity, being free from taint, is illuminating and healthy; it binds through attachment to the pleasant and through attachment to knowledge, sinless Arjuna.
7. Son of Kunti, know that passion is characterised by desire, arising out of craving and attachment; it binds the embodied self through an attachment to action.
8. But know that darkness is born from ignorance, perplexing all embodied selves; it binds through negligence, indolence, and sleep, Bharata.
9. Purity causes attachment to the pleasant, passion to action, Bharata; but darkness, by obscuring knowledge, causes attachment to negligence.
10. Having overcome passion and darkness, purity prevails, Bharata; as does passion, having overcome purity and darkness, and darkness, having overcome purity and passion.
11. When the light that is knowledge is produced in all the apertures in this body, then one knows that purity has prevailed.
12. Greed, exertion, the undertaking of actions, restlessness, ambition: these appear when passion prevails, Bull of the Bharatas.
13. Obscurity and indolence, negligence and delusion appear when darkness prevails, Joy of the Kurus.
14. When the embodied self dies during the dominance of purity, then it enters the unpolluted worlds of those who know the highest.
15. Having died in passion, it is born among those attached to action; similarly, dying in darkness it is born among the wombs of the doltish.
16. They say that the result of properly performed action has the nature of purity and is unpolluted; but the result of passion is suffering, and the fruit of darkness, ignorance.
17. From purity comes knowledge, and from passion greed, from darkness come negligence and delusion, as well as ignorance.
18. Those established in purity go upwards, the passionate stand in the middle, those fixed in darkness, the lowest mode of the constituents, go below.
19. When one who sees clearly recognises that there is no agent other than the constituents, and realises what is higher than the constituents, he attains to my state of being.
20. Having gone beyond these three constituents, which are the sources of the body, the embodied self, released from birth, death, old age, and suffering, attains immortality.
Arjuna said:
21. By what distinguishing characteristics is the man who has transcended these three constituents recognised, Mighty Lord? How does he conduct himself? And how does he go beyond these three constituents?
The Lord said:
22. Pandava, he is neither averse to illumination, activity, nor delusion when they have arisen, nor desires them when they have ceased.
23-25. The man sitting apart, disinterested, unmoved by the constituents, saying to himself, “It is the constituents that are operating,” who stands firm and does not waver, to whom pain and pleasure are the same, who is self-possessed, to whom a clod of earth, a stone, and a piece of gold come alike, to whom the pleasant and the unpleasant and blame and praise are equal, who is constant, who is indifferent to honour and dishonour, impartial towards friendly or hostile factions, and who has renounced all undertakings, is said to have gone beyond the constituents.
26. And the man who with unswerving discipline of devotion serves me, having gone beyond these constituents, is fit to become Brahman.
27. For I am the foundation of Brahman, of the immortal and imperishable, of the eternal law, and of absolute bliss.