Chapter 16 · Verse 18·Spoken by Krishna
अहङ्कारं बलं दर्पं कामं क्रोधं च संश्रिताः।मामात्मपरदेहेषु प्रद्विषन्तोऽभ्यसूयकाः
ahankāraṁ balaṁ darpaṁ kāmaṁ krodhaṁ cha sanśhritāḥ mām ātma-para-deheṣhu pradviṣhanto ’bhyasūyakāḥ
Clinging to egotism, force, and arrogance, to desire and anger, these spiteful people hate me, present in their own bodies and in the bodies of others.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
he verse lists the inner equipment of the demonic person: ahankara (egoism, the conceit 'I'), bala (force or strength), darpa (pride or insolence), kama (desire), and krodha (anger). Most commentators unpack each term plainly. Egoism is the false sense of a great, distinguished self, often built on qualities one does not actually have. Force is bodily or worldly power used to overpower others, and it tends to arise out of desire and attachment. Pride is the swelling that makes one disregard and disrespect others, even teachers and elders, and so step past dharma. Desire is the longing for wished-for objects, and anger is the aversion that flares at the unwished-for. The asura does not merely possess these traits; he 'resorts to' them, takes shelter in them, leans his whole life on them.
Braided from 13 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
Egoism is named the root from which all the other faults grow. Several commentators trace it back to ignorance: the 'I'-making is a superimposition on the Self, a false claim of excellence, and from this nescience-born conceit the rest follow. It is called the hardest fault to give up, the thing the discerning must abandon with the greatest effort. The whole list is read as a single swelling movement: ego feeds force, force couples with pride, pride overflows into desire, and desire's heat kindles anger, so the traits reinforce one another and grow denser, like blacking laid on darkness.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Sivananda · Sant Jñāneśvar
The gravest mark of the asura is not any single vice but pradvesha: positive, active hatred of the Lord. And this Lord is not far away; he dwells as the inner witness within the asura's own body and within the bodies of all others. The commentators stress this placement. The very Lord whom the asura hates is the consciousness, the indweller, seated in his own heart, watching his thoughts and deeds. To turn against the indwelling Lord is the deepest possible inversion, because the one hated is the seeker's own true ground.
Braided from 15 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
This hatred is concrete, not abstract. It shows itself as transgressing the Lord's command, which is scripture and remembered tradition: to violate the shastra and act on one's own whim is itself counted as enmity toward the Lord, just as defying a king's order is known in the world as hostility to the king. It also shows itself as hatred of other beings, since the Lord indwells them too, so to hate beings is to hate him. And the last word of the verse, abhyasuyaka, names the fault-finder: one who imputes defects to the virtues of the good, who cannot bear the qualities of those on the right path, and who reaches for a flaw wherever he sees a merit, finding a stain even in the sun.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Because of this hatred, the asura is cut off from the means of liberation, and his outward ritual is hollow. Even when he performs sacrifice and gift, the inner means, namely knowledge, dispassion, and devotion to the Lord, are cast far away. His sacrifices are done without faith, so they only afflict the self in vain, and his unsanctioned violence to creatures only injures the very consciousness that indwells them. Devotion cannot purify one who hates the object of worship, so the asura, devoid of every means, falls.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
Egoism is read as nescience itself: the 'I'-making is a false superimposition of a distinguished self on the Self through qualities one has or merely imagines, and this ignorance is the root of every fault and every harmful act. It is the hardest thing to renounce, abandoned only by the discerning with the greatest effort. The Lord hated by the asura is the witness, the consciousness that watches all cognitions and actions within one's own and others' bodies. One source adds a further gloss on 'me in their own and others' bodies': the hating is also of the consciousness-portion that the asura afflicts through faithless ritual and through unruled injury to creatures, and yet a further gloss that it is the slighting of the Lord's play-incarnation, mistaken for a mere human, and of his devotees, as when the deluded slight him for having taken a human body.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Each trait is spelled out as a specific self-sufficient thought: egoism is 'I, depending on no other, do everything'; power is 'my power alone suffices, none is my equal'; pride is 'for one like me everything comes by my mere wish'; anger is 'all who harm me I shall slay.' The Lord hated is the Highest Person, the antaryamin who is present in the asura's own body and in the bodies of others as the very causer who makes all beings act. The hatred takes the form of cavilling, setting forth a fault in the Lord's standing by crooked arguments, unable to bear him. This hating is read as the structural negation of the bhakti the chapter has been favouring: the asura's inner stance is the exact inversion of the bhakta's.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
This school focuses on the question of how the Lord, dwelling in all bodies, relates to the asura's action, and answers an objection. It is not that Vishnu instigates no one; he is the compeller within. To the disputant who argues, 'if the Lord is the doer of all, then let him make even me, who am idle, act now, and let him restrain the one who is acting,' the scriptural reply (cited from the Yaska text in the Samaveda) is that such a one will go ever downward, into perpetual hell. The Lord's indwelling and impelling does not excuse the asura; the asura's enmity earns unending fall.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
This verse is made the chapter's diagnostic centre. The asura's final mark is not negligence nor mere error but pradvesha, positive enmity toward the Lord, the Purushottama, the lila-doer here in this world and the conscious self standing in every body. All the asuric doctrines listed earlier in the chapter reduce to this one hatred, and the whole portrait of the asuri sampad is to be read backwards from this verse. Leaning on 'in him are they and in them am I,' the reading is that the asura, taking refuge in egoism, force, pride, desire and anger, hates the very indwelling Lord whose own nature he is; where pushti-bhakti would have flowered as loving recognition of that inward Lord, the asura turns from him with enmity and slanders that devotion in others. The asuri sampad is thus named the precise inversion of the bhakta's mood.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
The verse is marked as the chapter's gravest indictment: the asuri sampad is not a private failing but positive enmity toward Bhagavan himself, who stands by his consciousness-portion as the antaryamin in every body. Force is read as the strength of arrogance, pride as its swelling, desire and anger as its arms, so the asura's whole self-presentation is a steady aversion toward the very Lord who indwells him. One source reads hatred of the Lord as arising from hatred of the holy, those wholly given to the Supreme Self, since the Lord abides in their bodies too. Another holds that the asuras despise both the Veda and the Lord whom it sets forth, imputing faults by crooked reasonings to the virtues of the Lord and of the Veda. One Marathi source dwells vividly on the self-torturing magic by which they wound the body the Lord indwells, and on the slander, sharpened with bitter hatred, that they aim at virtuous women, saints, the charitable, and devotees who are the Lord's favourite dwellings.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These commentators draw out the psychology and the everyday application. Egoism is the self-arrogating principle, an effect of ignorance and the source of all defects, very hard to overcome but conquerable through right enquiry (vichara). Force is read with a caution that powers gained without ethical foundation (yama) will be misused; one source even reads the warning back onto the yogic path, that siddhis are obstacles to shun. One source frames the contrast directly: as the devotee rests on the Lord, the asura rests on ego, obstinacy, pride, desire and anger, convinced that the world will not run without them and that prestige depends on holding them. The enmity is shown concretely: when good promptings and settled truths rise in the heart, the asura pushes them aside and scorns them, going against the very Self seated in his own inner organ; and his fault-finding extends to charging the Lord with partiality and saints with hidden lust, anger, and hypocrisy, until he scoffs at the very possibility of dharma.
Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If the Lord dwells within the asura and even impels all beings to act, how can the asura be blamed for hating him, and is anyone truly shut out from grace?
The indwelling and impelling of the Lord does not cancel the asura's responsibility. To the very argument 'if the Lord is the doer of all, let him make idle me act and restrain the one who acts,' the answer given is that such a disputant goes ever downward; the Lord's inner agency is real, but using it to excuse one's enmity only deepens the fall.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
What is actually blamed is not a metaphysical predicament but a chosen stance. The hatred is concrete: it is the deliberate transgressing of the Lord's command in scripture and tradition, acting on one's own whim, just as defying a king is known to be hostility to the king. It is the active pushing-aside of the good promptings that rise in one's own heart. The asura is not passively caught; he takes shelter in ego, force, pride, desire and anger and leans his whole life on them.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīla Baladeva
Grace is not arbitrarily withheld; it is refused. Devotion cannot purify one who hates the very object of worship, so it is the hatred itself that shuts the door. The same sources that name this enmity also name the way back, which is the opposite gesture: to recognize and welcome the indwelling Lord, to honor him in oneself and in all beings, since he dwells in every body alike. The door closed by enmity is opened by that turning.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrī Puruṣottama
Contemplation
Notice the exact moment this verse points to in your own heart. When a good prompting rises, a clean impulse, a settled truth of the path coming clear, watch what you do with it. The asura's mark is to push it aside, to scorn it, to refuse to take it in. That very Self you would be brushing off is the Lord seated in your own inner organ. The practice, then, is the opposite gesture: when such a sphurana rises, receive it, let it stay, act on it rather than on the whim that flatters the ego. And watch the second move too, the reflex to find a flaw wherever you see a virtue, to charge a good person with hidden motives, to call sincerity a show. Remember that the same Lord dwells in every being, so to despise a being is to despise him. To honor the good in others, and to welcome the good rising in yourself, is to turn toward the very one the asura turns away from.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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