Purity, Passion and Ignorance are the Qualities which the Law of nature bringeth forth.
They fetter the free Spirit in all beings.
O Sinless One! Of these, Purity, being luminous, strong and invulnerable, binds one by its
yearning for happiness and illumination.
Passion, engendered by thirst for pleasure and attachment, binds the soul through its
fondness for activity.
But Ignorance, the product of darkness, stupefies the senses in all embodied beings,
binding them by chains of folly, indolence and lethargy.
Purity brings happiness, Passion commotion, and Ignorance, which obscures wisdom,
leads to a life of failure.
O Prince! Purity prevails when Passion and Ignorance are overcome; Passion, when Purity
and Ignorance are overcome; and Ignorance when it overcomes Purity and Passion.
When the light of knowledge gleams forth from all the gates of the body, then be sure that
Purity prevails.
O best of Indians! Avarice, the impulse to act and the beginning of action itself are all due
to the dominance of Passion.
Darkness, stagnation, folly and infatuationare the result of the dominance of Ignorance,
O joy of the Kuru-clan!
When Purity prevails, the soul on quitting the body passes on to the pure regions where
live those who know the Highest.
When Passion prevails, the soul is reborn among those who love activity; when Ignorance
rules, it enters the wombs of the ignorant.
They say the fruit of a meritorious action is spotless and full of purity; the outcome of
Passion is misery, and of Ignorance darkness.
Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness
When Purity is in the ascendant, the man evolves; when Passion, he neither evolves nor
degenerates; when Ignorance, he is lost.
As soon as man understands that it is only the Qualities which act and nothing else, and
perceives That which is beyond, he attains My divine nature.
When the soul transcends the Qualities, which are the real cause of physical existence,
then, freed from birth and death, from old age and misery, he quaffs the nectar of
immortality.
Arjuna asked: My Lord! By what signs can he who has transcended the Qualities be
recognized? How does he act? How does he live beyond them?
Lord Shri Krishna replied: O Prince! He who shuns not the Quality which is present, and
longs not for that which is absent;
He who maintains an attitude of indifference, who is not disturbed by the Qualities, who
realises that it is only they who act, and remains calm;
Who accepts pain and pleasure as it comes, is centred in his Self, to whom a piece of clay
or stone or gold are the same, who neither likes nor dislikes, who is steadfast, indifferent
alike to praise or censure;
Who looks equally upon honour and dishonour, loves friends and foes alike, abandons all
initiative, such is he who transcends the Qualities.
And he who serves Me and only Me, with unfaltering devotion, shall overcome the
Qualities, and become One with the Eternal.
For I am the Home of the Spirit, the continual Source of immortality, of eternal
Righteousness and of infinite Joy.”
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The godless do not know how to act or how to renounce. They have neither purity nor
truth. They do not understand the right principles of conduct.
They say the universe is an accident with no purpose and no God. Life is created by sexual
union, a product of lust and nothing else.
Thinking thus, these degraded souls, these enemies of mankind – whose intelligence is
negligible and whose deeds are monstrous – come into the world only to destroy.
Giving themselves up to insatiable passions, hypocritical, self-sufficient and arrogant,
cherishing false conception founded on delusion, they work only to carry out their own
unholy purposes.
Poring anxiously over evil resolutions, which only end in death; seeking only the
gratification of desire as the highest goal; seeing nothing beyond;
Caught in the toils of a hundred vain hopes, the slaves of passion and wrath, they
accumulate hoards of unjust wealth, only to pander to their sensual desire.
This I have gained today; tomorrow I will gratify another desire; this wealth is mine now,
the rest shall be mine ere long;
I have slain one enemy, I will slay the others also; I am worthy to enjoy, I am the
Almighty, I am perfect, powerful and happy;
I am rich, I am well-bred; who is there to compare with me? I will sacrifice, I will give,
I will pay – and I will enjoy. Thus blinded by Ignorance,
Perplexed by discordant thoughts, entangled in the snares of desire, infatuated by passion,
they sink into the horrors of hell. Self-conceited, stubborn, rich, proud and insolent, they make a display of their patronage,
disregarding the rules of decency.
Puffed up by power and inordinate conceit, swayed by lust and wrath, these wicked
people hate Me Who am within them, as I am within all.
Those who thus hate Me, who are cruel, the dregs of mankind, I condemn them to a
continuous, miserable and godless rebirth.
So reborn, they spend life after life, enveloped in delusion. And they never reach Me,
O Prince, but degenerate into still lower forms of life.
The gates of hell are three: lust, wrath and avarice. They destroy the Self. Avoid them.
These are the gates which lead to darkness; if a man avoid them he will ensure his own
welfare, and in the end will attain his liberation.
But he who neglects the commands of the scriptures, and follows the promptings of
passion, he does not attain perfection, happiness or the final goal.
Therefore whenever there is doubt whether thou shouldst do a thing or not, let the
scriptures guide thy conduct. In the light of the scriptures shouldst thou labour the whole
of thy life.”