Krishna calls this the wisdom of all wisdoms, and says the saints who rely on it pass to perfection and are not born again. The universe is a womb where he plants the seed of all lives. Then he names three qualities of Nature that bind the changeless Spirit in changeful flesh: sattva, rajas, and tamas.
Sattva, soothfastness, is pure and clear and binds the soul to happiness and truth. Rajas, passion, is kin to appetite and binds through the strain of works, with longing, unrest, and the urge to gain. Tamas, ignorance, is born of darkness and binds through stupor, sloth, and drowsiness. Where one is weak, another rules. A soul that leaves the body in sattva goes to the place of those who know the truth. One that dies in passion goes to the world of spirits tied to works, and one that dies in ignorance is born again in an unlit womb. Their fruits are sweet truth, painful toil, and deeper darkness.
Whoever watches life and sees that the qualities are the only actors, while knowing what rules beyond them, comes near to Krishna. Passing beyond the three, the soul overcomes birth, death, sorrow, and age. Arjuna asks how to know such a person and how he lives. Krishna says he is not angry when the qualities are present or wishful when they are absent, and he sits among them like a stranger, saying, "These be the Qualities," when trouble breaks. Grief and joy sound alike to him, and clod, marble, and gold are one. He is the same in praise and blame, and to friend and foe. Such a person, adoring Krishna with single faith, is fit to become Brahma.
Coming Up in Chapter 15
Krishna turns to a strange picture: a banyan tree with its roots above and its boughs beneath, whose green leaves are hymns that whisper truth. Those who know the tree, he says, must sharpen the axe of detachment and cut its clinging roots to reach the Father, the First.
