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Pancharatra: Bhagavad Gita 14th chapter.
The Blessed Lord spoke:
I will now explain the highest knowledge, which, when understood, has led all sages to the ultimate perfection.
Those who have taken refuge in this knowledge and attained similarity with me are not born during creation and are not disturbed during dissolution.
"My womb is the great Brahman, and in it I place the seed. From this, O Bharata, comes the birth of all beings."
O son of Kunti, all forms that are born in various wombs, Brahman is their great womb, and I am the seed-giving father.
O mighty-armed, the qualities of goodness, passion, and ignorance, born of nature, bind the immutable soul to the body.
In that context, the quality of goodness, being pure, is illuminating and free from any ailment. It binds the soul through attachment to happiness and knowledge, O sinless one.
O son of Kunti, understand that passion, characterized by attachment, is born from desire and attachment. It binds the embodied soul through attachment to actions.
O Bharata, understand that the darkness which arises from ignorance is a delusion affecting all living beings. It binds them through negligence, laziness, and sleep.
"O Bharata, goodness binds one to happiness, passion to activities, while ignorance, by covering knowledge, binds one to madness."
O Bharata, when passion and ignorance overpower, goodness prevails. Similarly, passion, goodness, and ignorance interact in various ways.
When light arises in all the gates of the body, it is to be understood that knowledge has increased and that goodness is indeed present.
O chief of the Bharatas, when passion increases, greed, activity, the initiation of actions, restlessness, and desire arise.
O son of Kuru, when darkness is increased, these qualities—darkness, inactivity, negligence, and delusion—certainly arise.
When a person dies during the dominance of the mode of goodness, they reach the pure worlds inhabited by the greatest sages.
When one dies in the mode of passion, they are reborn among those who are attached to action. Similarly, those who die in the mode of ignorance are reborn in the wombs of the deluded.
The fruits of good deeds are pure and untainted, while the fruits of passion lead to sorrow, and those of ignorance lead to darkness.
Knowledge arises from purity, while greed comes from passion. Carelessness and delusion are born of ignorance, and indeed, ignorance itself.
People who are in the mode of goodness ascend upwards, those in the mode of passion stay in the middle, and those in the mode of ignorance descend downwards.
When one perceives no other agent than the qualities and understands what is beyond them, he attains my divine nature.
The embodied soul, having transcended these three qualities born of the body, is liberated from the miseries of birth, death, and old age, and attains immortality.
Arjuna spoke:
O Lord, by what signs does one transcend these three qualities? What is the conduct of one who has transcended these three qualities, and how does one go beyond them?
The Blessed Lord spoke:
O son of Pāṇḍu, he neither hates the manifestations of light, activity, and delusion, nor desires their cessation.
One who remains indifferent and is not disturbed by the qualities, who certainly remains thus without moving, is considered to be established in self-realization.
One who is equanimous in both pain and pleasure, self-possessed, sees a clod, stone, and gold as the same, treats the pleasant and unpleasant equally, remains steady, and is unaffected by blame or praise of oneself.
He who remains the same in honor and dishonor, treats friends and enemies alike, renounces all undertakings, and transcends the qualities of nature, is said to have transcended the modes of nature.
One who serves me with unwavering devotion, transcending these qualities, becomes eligible for attaining the state of Brahman.
I am the ultimate foundation of Brahman, the immortal, imperishable, eternal, dharma, happiness, and the ultimate truth.
