14.1 Krishna, the messenger, conveyed the word of God: Again I will declare the highest knowledge, the best of all knowledge, knowing which the sages have passed from this world to the highest perfection.

14.2 Those who take refuge in this knowledge and conform to My way are not dismayed when creation begins, nor troubled when it is brought to its end.

14.3 The vast womb of matter is My creation; into it I place the seed of life, and from it comes the birth of all beings, O Bharata.

14.4 Whatever forms are born in any womb, O son of Kunti, great matter is their womb, and I, the Creator, give the seed.

14.5 Goodness, passion and darkness, the qualities born of matter, bind the soul fast in the body, O mighty-armed.

14.6 Of these, goodness, being pure, is radiant and free from ill; it binds by attachment to happiness and to knowledge, O sinless one.

14.7 Know that passion is of the nature of craving, born of thirst and clinging; it binds the soul, O son of Kunti, by attachment to action.

14.8 Know that darkness is born of ignorance and deludes all embodied beings; it binds by heedlessness, sloth and sleep, O Bharata.

14.9 Goodness attaches one to happiness, passion to action, O Bharata; darkness, veiling knowledge, attaches one to heedlessness.

14.10 Goodness prevails by overcoming passion and darkness; passion prevails over goodness and darkness; and darkness over goodness and passion.

14.11 When the light of knowledge shines through all the gates of the body, then know that goodness has increased.

14.12 Greed, restless activity, undertakings, unrest and longing arise when passion increases, O best of Bharatas.

14.13 Dullness, inertia, heedlessness and delusion arise when darkness increases, O joy of the Kurus.

14.14 If one meets death when goodness prevails, he goes to the pure realms of those who knew the Highest.

14.15 He who dies in passion is raised among those attached to action; he who dies in darkness is raised among the deluded.

14.16 The fruit of good action is called pure and good; the fruit of passion is pain; the fruit of darkness is ignorance.

14.17 From goodness comes knowledge, from passion greed, from darkness heedlessness, delusion and ignorance.

14.18 Those firm in goodness rise upward; the passionate remain in the middle; the dark, sunk in the lowest quality, go downward.

14.19 When the seer perceives no doer other than the qualities, and knows Him who is beyond the qualities, he draws near to Me.

14.20 When the soul rises beyond these three qualities that arise in the body, it is freed from birth, death, old age and sorrow, and attains life everlasting.

14.21 Arjuna said: By what marks, O Lord God's messenger, is one known who has gone beyond the three qualities? How does he live, and how does he pass beyond them?

14.22 Krishna, the messenger, conveyed: He who does not hate light, activity or delusion when they come, nor long for them when they cease;

14.23 who sits as one unconcerned, unshaken by the qualities, knowing that it is only the qualities that move, and stands firm without wavering;

14.24 who is the same in pain and pleasure, self-possessed, who regards a clod, a stone and gold alike, equal toward the pleasant and the unpleasant, steadfast, the same in blame and praise;

14.25 the same in honour and disgrace, the same to friend and foe, who has renounced all selfish undertakings – he is said to have gone beyond the qualities.

14.26 And he who serves Me with unwavering devotion, worshipping none but Me, passes beyond these qualities and is fit to be united with My mercy.

14.27 For I am the ground of the Eternal and the Imperishable, of everlasting righteousness and of perfect bliss; all of these are Mine and from Me alone.