Commentary

Commentary

This verse explains why so few people know the Supreme, as stated in the previous verse. It is not merely that information is hard to come by. It is that every being enters embodied life already in a state of delusion — sammoham — arising from the fundamental pair of opposites: ichchhaa and dvesha, desire and hatred. These two forces are the first experience of the embodied soul. From the moment of birth, the infant desires warmth, milk, comfort, closeness — and recoils from cold, hunger, discomfort, separation. The dance of attraction and aversion begins immediately, and it never stops.

The Sanskrit root of dvesha connects to separation and pushing away; the root of ichchhaa connects to wanting and pulling toward. Together, these two create a perpetual oscillation — a dvandva, a duality, a swing — that keeps the mind in constant motion. Pleasure sought, pain avoided; love wanted, loneliness feared; victory craved, defeat dreaded. The mind caught in this oscillation cannot rest. And a mind that cannot rest cannot perceive the truth. This is the mechanism of delusion. Not a mistake. Not a punishment. The natural condition of embodied existence.

Importantly, Krishna uses the word sarge — at birth, at the moment of creation/entry into the body. The delusion is not something acquired over time. It is the very condition of embodiment itself. When the eternal soul takes a material body, it inherits the material mind’s structure of attraction and aversion. This is what every human being is born into. The great mercy of the Gita is that it names this condition clearly, so that those who recognise it can begin the work of releasing it.

Historical Context

The pair ichchhaa-dvesha — desire and hatred — is treated as the primary mechanism of bondage across the major schools of Indian philosophy. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (2.3) list raga (attachment) and dvesha (aversion) as two of the five kleshas, the root afflictions of the mind. The next verse of the Gita offers the way out: those whose sins are destroyed and who act piously transcend these dualities and worship with determination.