Summary:

Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 5, Verse 24: A mind that has undone its distortions receives teachings fully, without dismissal or selective listening. The wise person's fulfilment comes from within – not from marriage, career, or circumstance – because the self is already full and lacks nothing. This is a fact to wake up to, not a feeling to manufacture. Reveling in oneself means needing nothing external for entertainment, knowing nothing can truly diminish or add to you. The mind, once thought to be the final light, is itself witnessed by steady, unchanging consciousness. Knower-knowing-known (pramata-pramana-prameya) are one consciousness in three apparent forms.

Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 5, Verse 25: A rishi keeps moving, and is one who knows. Four qualities define them and serve as active means for seekers. Impurities are not moral failures but patterns that create suffering; unprocessed emotions buried over years resurface as anger, bypassing, or seeker-identity addiction. Turning the intellect inward – through writing, acknowledgement, and prayer – dissolves them. Self-mastery means investigating and reframing recurring anger. From a clean inner landscape, naturally arises motivation to serve others happily.

Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 5, Verse 26: Unhealthy desire pressures you into abandoning decency and losing perspective; it is managed by recognising few things are truly indispensable and that everyone, including you, is expendable in the big picture. Healthy anger connects to justice, but frequent anger gradually corrupts character – clean it up by seeing others act from their own pain. Carrying binding desires and anger is like seeing a reflection in disturbed water. Moksha is always now – it is the recognition that your nature is already free (since you're doing to free yourself from limitations, inadequacy). Thinking moksha is tomorrow is like believing sight, which you already have now, will take place tomorrow; that means you'll be always waiting for some special sight, and dismissing the current sight.

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Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 5, Verse 24
Three Qualities of a Wise Person

यः अन्तः-सुखः अन्तर-आरामः तथा अन्तर्-ज्योतिः एव यः ।
सः योगी ब्रह्म-निर्वाणम् ब्रह्म-भूतः अधिगच्छति ॥ ५-२४॥
yaḥ antaḥ-sukhaḥ antara-ārāmaḥ tathā antar-jyotiḥ eva yaḥ ।
saḥ yogī brahma-nirvāṇam brahma-bhūtaḥ adhigacchati ॥ 5-24॥

The one whose fulfilment is in oneself, the one who revels in oneself, the one whose mind is awake to oneself, that wise person alone, whose self is Brahman, gains the freedom which is Brahman.

Mind of the Wise Has Undone Distortions

Having taken time to see the problematic world was arising from own distortions and partial thinking – and undoing the distortions – the mind was able to relate to the teachings more and more, and receive them as intended.

Such a mind is not dismissing teachings it finds uncomfortable due to past trauma – such as “How can you say the rapist of a child is Ishvara! The criminal deserves to go to hell!”.  Nor is it engaging in selective listening. 

Here's 3 qualities of a mind that not only undone it's distortions, but also the reality is crystal clear…

Three Qualities of the Wise Person

Kṛṣṇa uses three words to describe the one whose knowledge is complete:

1. Antaḥ-Sukhaḥ – Fulfilment in Oneself

Antaḥ-sukhaḥ means one's fulfilment comes from within oneself.

Most of the time, you look outside yourself for happiness – to people, situations, and things – and that is why problems follow. If you believe your fulfilment depends on being married, having children, or landing the right job – you’ve already lost.

Lasting fulfilment belongs to the one who understands the nature of ‘I'.  It is already full, lacks nothing, needs nothing.

The understanding “I am fullness, I am already fulfilled” is not a feeling you work yourself up into, nor sourced from rebelliousness or disappointment in life. It is a FACT you wake up to.

2. Antaḥ-Ārāmaḥ — Reveling in Oneself

‘Revel' here means play – the way a child plays, needing nothing extra to be happy.

Normally, you need a lot of things around you to stay cheerful – cinemas, games, company, something to do. You are always reaching for the next source of amusement.

The wise person finds entertainment by taking refuge in the fact that nothing can get to Me anymore. Noone can truly hurt me, judge me, diminish me, add to me.

At the relative level, entertainment is loka-sangraha.

3. Antaḥ-Jyotiḥ — The Mind Awake to Oneself / Mind is Awake to Its Own Truth

Before knowledge, the mind is thought of as the final light that illumines the world. Without the mind, none of the senses can function properly. For example, when a person is daydreaming and someone calls out their name, the name does not register, because the mind's attention is not directed toward the ears. In this sense, the mind is like a torch that lights up the world through the five senses.

However, the wise person comes to notice something: the mind's attention is not constant – it brightens and dims all the time. In the morning, the mind is sharp and alert. After a long day, it grows dull and heavy.

To be aware that attention is getting brighter or dimmer, there must be something witnessing that change – a light that is itself steady and unchanging.

For instance, a flickering candle can only be seen as flickering against a steady background. That deeper, unwavering light (jyotiḥ) is cit – consciousness, the self.

Another way to explain what it means that your mind is awake to the truth (self):

Before knowledge, the mind (subject) saw itself different from the seen (object). Mind was satyam (independent), and objects were mithya (changing). 

After knowledge, the one who is always seeing, thinking, enjoying and hearing something, and the something that’s heard/seen – are both understood to be the same order of reality (mithya). Both are changing, dependent and made of parts. For instance, the mind is dependent on waking-state to manifest, and it's made of four parts (manas, buddhi, cittam, ahamkara).

The Dream Analogy

In a dream, you are as-though all three things at once – the individual person in the dream, every object that appears in the dream, and the thoughts about the dream objects. All three depend on your existence, while you (the waker) were none of them, while you (the waker) were appearing as them in the dream. 

Waking life works exactly the same way:

• • • • The one who sees/thinks/emotes/thinks, the subject — is the self.
      • The act of seeing — is the self (ie: when tree on a street is seen by the eyes, a tree-vrtti in the mind refers to “the act of seeing”).
      • And the thing being seen — is also the self.

What looks like three separate things – knower, knowing, and known – is one single consciousness assuming three forms-names.

Brahma-Bhūtaḥ and Brahma-Nirvāṇa

In this verse, the wise person is referred to as yogī or brahma-bhūtaḥ [one whose self is Brahman] – the one whose ātmā is no longer separate from Brahman.

For instance, a pot that recognizes its made of clay, from that moment on, as manner of speaker, “the pot is so much bigger then the pot”. 

What does this wise person gain?

Brahma-nirvāṇa, which is enlightenment or moksha.

The word nirvāṇa means “put out / extinguished / disappearance”. Nirvāṇa is not extinction of self; it is the extinction of the sense of limitation imputed upon the self.

Note About “Renunciation” Word Used in CH5

From verse 22 onwards, Kṛṣṇa has been describing the sarva-karma-sannyāsī – the one who has renounced all action. As we’ve seen, this renunciation is not about physically giving up actions (eg: turning to unemployment). It is a renunciation through knowledge. One has come to drop the false notion that they are the one doing or experiencing anything.

NEXT VERSE: Answers “What does the inner life of a free person look like, and how do I become one?”

Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 5, Verse 25
Who is a Rishi (an Enlightened sage)?

लभन्ते ब्रह्म-निर्वाणम् ऋषयः क्षीण-कल्मषाः ।
छिन्न-द्वैधाः यत-आत्मानः सर्व-भूतहिते रताः ॥ ५-२५॥
labhante brahma-nirvāṇam ṛṣayaḥ kṣīṇa-kalmaṣāḥ ।
chinna-dvaidhāḥ yata-ātmānaḥ sarva-bhūtahite ratāḥ ॥ 5-25॥

Sages whose impurities have been destroyed, whose doubts have been resolved, who have self mastery (and) who are happily engaged in the good of all beings, gain liberation.

Who are these enlightened “Sages” (ṛṣis)?

The word ṛṣi carries two meanings: one who keeps moving (who does not get caught up in any one place or situation), and one who knows.

A rishi isn’t necessarily an ascetics, or has matted hair, or performed extreme austerities. He is one whose mind is clear and able to see nuances that common people miss.

Kṛṣṇa points out four qualities that are both the natural expression of a rishi, and the active means [sādhanas] through which you can “become” a liberated rishi:

1. “Whose impurities have been destroyed” [kṣīṇa-kalmaṣāḥ]

Impurities are not the be labeled as moral failures, or indicators of self-worth. Rather see impurities in you as patterns that create suffering.

It is in your interest to free yourself from them, as mind can’t be truly productive nor engage in deeper enquiry, when it’s inner landscape is filled with smelly weeds.

Whatever smells the loudest in your mind on a daily bases, and takes away your contentment, is an impurity.

How Impurities Arise from Buried, Unresolved Stories

Your intellect [buddhi] in school was directed entirely outward: to understand mathematics, history, science – things out there. It was never taught to turn inward and process what is going on in your own emotional life. That gap has consequences.

How Emotions Get Buried

When an uncomfortable emotion arises, the untrained response is to quietly set it aside – “this shouldn't be in me”. And life moves on. While emotion is pushed in the unconscious.

Over time, you may find yourself with everything external seemingly in place – children grown, home comfortable, life settled – and yet unexplained anger begins to surface. This is unresolved emotions from years ago, finally demanding to be seen.

The Method: Turning the Buddhi Inward

To heal the emotion that keeps recurring, you need to begin with acknowledgement: “Others don't get triggered by this situation, but I do. That means it must be connected to something unresolved in me”. This admission stops blame from going outward, and empowers you to solve this.

Writing as Inquiry

A powerful way to being solving buried stuff/impurities, is by writing. Start with a simple sentence: “This situation – or this person – makes me angry when ___.”

As you write, you may find stories within stories – because the mind works by association.

Once a buried story surfaces, ask Ishvara to be relieved of it – because these stories were never yours. They were accumulated, borrowed, absorbed.

If this inner work is left undone, self-knowledge ends up being planted in dry, unfertile soil.

Examples How Impurities Manifest:

• 1. The identity built around a wound – where pain has become so familiar that healing feels like losing a part of who you are. Then when teacher says “Ask Ishvara to help you release impurities”, the impurity silently overrides that with, “You don’t understand my situation, my hurt, my background!”. Or “Yes, but not me. Not yet. Maybe everyone else.” This comes from deep belief that “I’m defective”.
  2. Spiritual bypassing: Using Advaita as escape hatch. “Everything is Brahman, nothing is real” – becomes a way to not feel grief, anger, or loneliness. Meaning knowledge is used as armour for the ego.
  3. The seeker identity: Unconsciously, the last thing you want is to actually arrive. Because arriving means the seeker disappears. Years of satsangs, teachers, books – it has become who you are.
  4. A dysregulated nervous system: “The Body Keeps the Score” book says: unprocessed trauma lives in the body, keeping the nervous system locked in threat mode. Thus the teaching “you are already whole and safe” cannot land.
  5. Approval-dependency: This is like a heavy-process running in the background of the OS, taking up 60% of CPU: “Am I good enough? Does the teacher approve of me? Am I progressing faster than others?” This one is common in spiritual communities.

2. “Whose doubts are resolved” [chinna-dvaidhāḥ]

Chinna means uprooted, not merely silenced. The doubts that haunt a seeker take many forms:

• • Is the self [ātmā] limitless or limited? Eternal or non-eternal? One or many?
  • Is the individual [jīva] truly different from the Lord [Īśvara]?
  • Is the world real or unreal?

For the sage, all such doubts have been carefully analysed and the knowledge freed of every possible uncertainty.

3. “Who has self-mastery” [yatātmānaḥ]

Nobody has ever seen an external object called “anger/desire” – yet everyone knows of it.

Additionally, nobody can totally remove anger/desire, because it’s an inbuilt program.

Self-mastery is acknowledging that anger/desire is useful for survival and refining your character.

But when anger or fear arises from imagining unfavorable scenarios (such as losing someone who invokes your pleased self), and you start acting/speaking from that place – that calls for investigation.

Ask yourself, “What is this fear related to? My imagination/my expectations/etc”.

Be relentless in addressing emotions that are bothering you.

Even when you reframe it once, mind will bring it up repeatedly due to past repetition. Thus, you need to repeatedly address repeated patterns. Requires time, effort, Ishvara’s grace.

4. Having self-mastery, the sage “…happily engages in good of all beings” [sarva-bhūta-hite ratāḥ]

Many think philosophy/Vedanta makes you selfish as you’re only focusing on yourself. However philosophy helps you put your house in order – which gives you more control of your life.

Degree to how much you’re control of your life [owning to intelligently overcoming challenges in the past – and learning from each fall], is degree of peace you enjoy.

Additionally, philosophy reduces sense of isolation and loneliness. You come to see you’re always given opportunities for growth.

Thus sense of entitlement and complaining reduces, while cheerfulness increases, and motivation to serve, to contribute happily increases.

SIDE NOTE: Notice how different this narrative is from pop culture interpretations of BG, such as: “Give up desires, be detached, stay away from material things, etc”.

NEXT VERSE: Krishna says kama/krodha are two non-negotiable things that must be addressed for self-knowledge to take place in a seeker [yati]…

Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 5, Verse 26
Reducing Anger and Unhealthy Desire is a Must!

काम-क्रोध-वियुक्तानाम् यतीनाम् यत-चेतसाम् ।
अभितः ब्रह्म-निर्वाणं वर्तते विदित-आत्मनाम् ॥ ५-२६॥
kāma-krodha-viyuktānām yatīnām yata-cetasām ।
abhitaḥ brahma-nirvāṇaṃ vartate vidita-ātmanām ॥ 5-26॥

For the sannyāsins who are free from desire and anger, whose mind is under control, (and) who know the self, there is liberation, both here and in the hereafter.

“For the yati (seekers) who are free from desire and anger”

A yati (seeker) can includes anyone with a genuine desire for moksha – including karma-yogi, mumukṣu, vividiṣā-sannyāsī). 

For liberation, they must manage…

1. Desire (kāma):

Desire is a privilege that gives ability to engage and fulfill what matters to you.

However, the “desire” Krishna points in this verse is a “binding, or unhealthy desire”. They make you…

• • • Abandon decency (by overlooking other needs and focusing on yours alone).
    • Make you lose perspective of big picture.
    • They create pressure where you can’t be at peace unless the desire is fulfilled in the way you want it, and when you want it.

How to reduce the strength of unhealthy desires?

1. 1. 1. Assess what is truly good for your well-being: Binding desires (or binding likes/dislikes) can be managed by understanding few things are truly indispensable, or essential for your well-being.  For instance, once you thought certain books/information was indispensable. Today, you look at the same book, and find it’s information irrelevant.
      2. Everyone is expendable, including you: Additionally, if one of your desires is to constantly serve, because your self-worth is tied up to being needed — come to see that everyone, including you, is expendable (non-essential, unnecessary) in the big picture. For instance, the universe has run without you for billions of years. However, while alive, ensure your presence nourishes (brings up) people.

2. Anger (krodha):

Healthy anger: This is connected to sense of justice. EG: You’re angry towards villain in movie for causing pain. Thus, don’t feel bad you have anger. However if there’s frequently reoccurring anger, you need to set boundaries how long and often this anger is expressed – else you gradually become an angry person – which isn’t in your interest. Clean up your frequent anger fits towards a person by understanding person is coming from their own pain, and you’re in a shared environment that isn’t made just to accommodate your likes and dislikes, but everyones.

Unhealthy anger: Comes when binding desire is obstructed.

Question:If self-knowledge is the goal, why bother with kāma and krodha at all?

Trying to pursue self-knowledge while binding desires and unhealthy anger rule your inner landscape – is like trying to see your reflection in disturbed water.

“Who knows the self [viditātmā], there is liberation (moksha)”

Meaning who knows the self was never the doer, nor enjoyer/sufferer. The one who said “wow!”, or “you touched my heart”, is not the self.

One has let go of notions that were producing psychological lack/inadequacy.

Moksha is Always Now

Moksha means freedom. And the Vedas say, “Everyone wants moksha”. This is easily provable. Every action you've ever done was to remove suffering, pain or sense of limitation. It was done to free self from limitation.

“I want to be free of this that's weighing me down!”.

An fulfilled desire is only fulfilled so it's presence stops bothering you, at least for a bit, after which you can appreciate your freedom from desire.

Yesterday you were doing things for sake of freedom (moksha), today you're doing things for sake of freedom (moksha). Tomorrow you'll do things for sake of freedom (moksha). Thus moksha is always now, now, now. It can never be tomorrow.

OBJECTION: “But person realizes moksha at some point in their life; in that sense, it is ‘tomorrow’ ”. ANSWER: The word ‘tomorrow’ is only in reference to how many more incorrect notions need to be removed to realize that you are moksha (freedom) today. 

If think moksha is tomorrow, that changes nature of pursuit – from knowledge (that my nature is always free and doesn't need to keep fulfilling desires) – to experience (expecting something entirely new to happen tomorrow which you don’t have now).

Two examples showing what happens if seeker believes enlightenment is an experience; something to be gotten tomorrow:

1. 1. 1. You already have eyes. But if someone convinces you that you'll get the ability to see tomorrow, you stop using your eyes and start waiting for a future experience of sight – chasing what you already have right now!
      2. A person forgets their glasses are on their head and searches the whole house for them. The moment someone points it out, they don't acquire the glasses, nor get some new special experience of the glasses. One simply stops the search. If one believed the glasses would appear tomorrow, the pointing-out would not work, as the person simply doesn’t believe they have the glasses right now.

Why There’s No Coming Back After Liberation:

Let's use an analogy to explain…

Suppose you got jailed for murder. You genuinely believed you pushed the person off a cliff.

Some years in, a wise detective re-opens the case, and discovers it wasn’t you. They present the evidence, and convince you didn't do it.

Immediately, whatever complexes formed about self in relation to the murder that was never done by the self, is dropped.

“I am bad person, I am irresponsible, I am guilty, I am a sinner” is extinguished (nirvana-ed) at once.

You are free not only from the jail (ie: body-mind), but the thoughts that were weighing you down to the jail (body-mind).

In short: You find yourself wearing a body-mind instrument, long as you believe it is “mine”.

 

NEXT VERSE:

• Up to now Krishna talked about Karma-Yoga, dealing with emotions, taking care of desires/anger. Now Krishna introduces meditation – because you already have the Gītā knowledge, yet still misbehave (ie: react in anger, speak harsh words, judge, etc).
• The Sugar-in-Coffee Analogy: Sugar is added to a cup of coffee, but it settles at the bottom without being stirred. The person drinking it tastes no sweetness and blames his maid (teacher/lineage) for not adding sugar – yet the sugar is already there, just unmixed. The problem is not the absence of sugar, but its failure to mix. The Gītā teaching must permeate every droplet of your personality; this is done only through alone time, closed eye meditation; there’s no other means.

 

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Course was based on Swami Dayananda (Arsha Vidya) home study course.

Recorded 20 Sept, 2026