Chapter 14 · Verse 22·Spoken by Arjuna
श्री भगवानुवाचप्रकाशं च प्रवृत्तिं च मोहमेव च पाण्डव।न द्वेष्टि सम्प्रवृत्तानि न निवृत्तानि काङ्क्षति
prakāśhaṁ cha pravṛittiṁ cha moham eva cha pāṇḍava na dveṣhṭi sampravṛittāni na nivṛittāni kāṅkṣhati
Krishna said: He does not hate light, activity, or delusion when they arise, nor does he long for them when they cease.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
rishna is beginning his answer to the question Arjuna just asked (in 14.21) about the one who has gone beyond the three gunas, the gunatita. The three gunas are the basic strands of nature: sattva, the quality of clarity and balance; rajas, the quality of restlessness and drive; and tamas, the quality of dullness and confusion. This verse names their three signature effects. 'Illumination' (prakasha) is the effect of sattva: the lighting-up of the senses and mind so that things are clearly known. 'Activity' or 'engagement' (pravritti) is the effect of rajas: the urge to act and launch into work. 'Delusion' (moha) is the effect of tamas: the cloud of confusion. These three are named as samples that stand for all the effects of the gunas, not as an exhaustive list.
Braided from 16 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
The mark Krishna gives is twofold, and both halves are about the absence of an inner reaction. When these effects rise up and come fully into operation on their own, the gunatita does not hate them; and when they fade and cease on their own, he does not long to have them back. He neither resents their coming nor courts it, neither pushes them away when they are here nor reaches after them when they are gone. The same even stance holds across the rise and the fall of all three, sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic alike. This evenness is the first sign of one who has crossed beyond the gunas.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Several commentators sharpen this by contrasting the gunatita with someone who still sees wrongly. The ordinary person narrates these states as happening to himself: 'a dull confusion has arisen in me and by it I am deluded'; 'a painful restlessness has set me in motion and shaken me from my own true state, a falling from myself'; 'the sattvic clarity is binding me by attaching me to happiness and pride in my learning.' Because he takes the rajasic and tamasic states as painful and falsely his own, he hates them; because he takes the sattvic state as pleasant, he later hankers for it once it has gone. The gunatita does none of this. He does not hate the arisen states with the thought 'this is pain,' and does not crave the ceased states with the thought 'this is pleasure,' because he no longer takes them as belonging to himself.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda
Most commentators stress that this first mark is inward and private; it is a sign the person knows in himself, by his own self-experience (sva-samvedya), and not something another can observe from outside. Aversion and its absence, longing and its absence, rest within a person; another cannot directly apprehend them. So this mark is for one's own sake, a seal one recognizes upon oneself, not a public credential others can read.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda
Divergence
Dvaita
These commentators refuse to read the verse as saying the gunatita has, in every way, no aversion or desire toward the effects of the gunas. The key qualifier is 'for the most part.' The gunas come in two kinds, gross and subtle. From the gross gunas arise the ordinary worldly illumination, activity, and delusion; from the subtle gunas arise states whose object is the supreme Lord. Toward the first, gross kind, the gunatita for the most part has no aversion or desire, though not absolutely, since by the force of operative karma such reactions may sometimes still arise. But toward the second, subtle kind, desire genuinely does remain: the liberated one would long for subtle sattva and would cast off and even hate the thick tamas that enters him. Scripture is cited for this: the Bhallaveya branch of the Samaveda, and the Moksha-dharma, which teaches that the gods and seers established in sattva are never deprived of subtle sattva, and that one deprived of it would belong to the realm of modification and could never reach the supreme Person. Since the liberated do reach release, they must possess subtle sattva. Far from being purely neutral, the gunatita is positively oriented toward the subtle sattva that has the Lord for its object and resolved upon the goal of release.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
Alongside the plain reading of evenness toward the guna-effects when they set in upon the not-self, these commentators offer a distinctively devotional rereading. The illumination, activity, and delusion are not read as bare overlays of embodied ignorance. They are laukika-shaped imitations of supramundane (alaukika) experience that the Lord himself sets up in the devotee's faculties by his own will (iccha), for the ripening of devotional savor (rasa-siddhi). Even 'delusion' is reread as the melting-away of separation, an experience born of the Lord's will but worn in worldly form. On this reading the gunatita's neither-hating-nor-craving is the devotee's restful trust in that divine will which itself sets the gunas in motion and withdraws them; he does not strive to relinquish what the Lord's will has given, nor crave it back when that will has withdrawn it.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Advaita Vedānta
This commentator grounds the gunatita's freedom from aversion and attachment in a specific conviction: the falsity of these states, like a dream. The arisen effects are 'of the nature of sorrow' yet he does not hate them, and the ceased effects are 'of the nature of happiness' yet he does not crave them, precisely 'through the conviction of their falsity like a dream.' The non-reaction is not mere discipline but the natural consequence of seeing these states as unreal.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī
Advaita Vedānta
This commentator maps the verse onto a precise yogic scheme. The full manifestation of illumination, activity, and delusion belongs to the post-meditation state (vyutthana); the not-longing for them belongs to the absorbed state (samadhi) in which they are withdrawn. The one ever firm in samadhi is the supreme Brahman-knower. He then sets the verse against the seven stages of yoga from the Yoga-Vasishtha: auspicious-desire, consideration, tenuous-mind, attainment of sattva, non-attachment, non-being-of-objects, and the turya state. The first three are the means-stages; the fourth, attainment of sattva, is the fruit-stage of Brahman-realization in which the yogi does not yet fully enjoy the bliss of living liberation; the last three are sub-grades of living liberation, distinguished by whether one rises by oneself, by another's effort, or by neither. The gunatita of this verse is placed as the one ever firm in samadhi.
Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
Modern
This commentator carefully reframes the three terms so they are not read as defects in the gunatita. Prakasha he takes as the clarity of the senses and mind by which things are known, with knowledge (jnana) included in it, since clarity is sattva's principal effect. Pravritti he distinguishes sharply from raga: rajas has two faces, attachment and mere activity; the attachment that causes suffering does not stand in the gunatita, but action itself still proceeds, desireless and effortless, from his apparent body, and that desireless activity is what is named here. Moha too he splits: the deep delusion of not discerning the real from the unreal is gone from the gunatita, but ordinary perceptual slips (mistaking rope for snake, taking an innocent as guilty on another's report) can still occur. His central distinction is between vrittis merely happening (samashtigata, collective, carrying no personal liability) and vrittis being done (vyaktigata, joined with attachment and aversion, making one their doer and bringing their fruit). The gunatita lets the guna-states happen without doing them; his very seeing does not turn that way, since nothing remains in his vision but the one supreme reality.
Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If even the liberated person still has clarity, activity, and confusion arising in body and mind, in what sense has he gone beyond the gunas at all?
The verse locates the freedom not in the absence of these states but in the absence of reaction to them. The gunatita is not someone in whom illumination, activity, and delusion never arise; they do arise and cease in him as in anyone, set going and withdrawn by their own causes. What marks him is that he neither hates them when they come nor longs for them when they go. The transcendence is an inner evenness across their rise and fall, not their disappearance.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas
What he has actually crossed beyond is the false ownership of these states. The ordinary person narrates them as happening to himself, calling the confused state 'I am deluded,' the restless state 'I have fallen from myself,' the clear state 'I am learned and happy,' and so reacts with aversion or craving. The gunatita does not take them as his own, holding instead that these belong to the bodily nature and have no power to disturb him. So the going-beyond is a shift in what one identifies with, not an emptying-out of mental life.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas
This is exactly why the verse calls this a mark known only to oneself. From outside, the gunatita and the ordinary person may look the same, since clarity, activity, and confusion appear in both. The difference is inward: the presence or absence of aversion and longing, which rest within a person and cannot be observed by another. The transcendence is real but private, a seal one recognizes in one's own experience.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Contemplation
When some state rises in your mind, whether a flash of clear understanding, a surge of restless activity, or a cloud of confusion, notice the quiet difference between it merely happening and you doing it. States arise and pass in everyone, even in the one who has crossed beyond the gunas; that arising is not your slip. The slip is to grab the state with liking or hating, to take it as 'mine,' to make yourself its doer. So when a state appears, do not panic even if it is the worst kind. Do not protest 'why must this rise, let it not be,' for that is hatred; do not plead 'let it come again, let it stay,' for that is attachment. Let what comes come and what goes go. There is a wide difference between looking and merely appearing: a thing appearing on its own carries no fault, but your turning to look at it, claiming its state as your own, is where you get caught. The witness of all this change must itself be changeless, for the changing cannot watch the changing. So stand as that unchanging witness, neither pleased nor displeased, and the coming and going of the gunas will make no real difference in you.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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