Knowledge of the Supreme Soul.

Bhishma said Delusion or loss of judgement arises from the quality of Darkness. Anger, cupidity, fear and pride originate from the quality of Ignorance, O foremost of Bharata's race. When all these are destroyed, one becomes pure.

By obtaining purity, a person acquires the knowledge of the Supreme Soul which is effulgent, incapable of deterioration, without change, pervading all things, having the unmanifest for his refuge, and the foremost of all the gods.

By His illusory power men fall away from knowledge and become senseless, and their knowledge being darkened, yield to anger.

From anger, they become subject to desire. From desire originate cupidity, delusion, vanity, pride and selfishness. From such selfishness proceed various sorts of acts.

From acts originate various ties of affection and from those ties of affection springs sorrow or misery and from acts imbued with joy and sorrow proceeds the liability to birth and death.

On account of the obligation of birth, one is compelled to live within the womb,—for the union of vital seed and blood. Living there is defiled with excreta urine and phlegm, and always fouled with blood that is created there.

Overwhelmed by thirst, the Intelligence Soul becomes fettered by anger and the rest that have been described above. It seeks, however, to escape those evils. In this respect, women must be considered as instruments which set the stream of Creation a going.

By their nature, women are Kshetra, and men are Kshetrajna in respect of qualities. Therefore, wise persons should not pursue women especially.

Indeed, women are like dreadful Mantra powers. They stupefy persons shorn of wisdom. They are sunk in the quality of Darkness. They are the eternal embodiment of the senses.

On account of the strong desire that men cherish for women, offspring proceed from them, due to the action of the seminal fluid. As one throws off from his person such vermin as are born there but as are not on that account any part of oneself, so should one cast off those verinin of one's body that are called children, who, though regarded as one's own, are not his own in sooth.

From the seminal fluid and sweat creatures spring from the body, influenced by pristino acts or in the course of nature. Therefore, a wise man should feel no regard for them.

The quality of Darkness rests on that of Ignorance. The quality of Goodness, again, rests on that of Darkness. Darkness which is unmanifest overspreads itself on Knowledge, and creates the phenomena of Intelligence and Consciousness has been described as the seed of individual Souls. That, again, which is the seed of such knowledge is called the Jiya (or Individual Soul). On account of acts and the virtue of time, the Soul goes through birth and repeated rounds of re-birth.

As in a dream the Soul plays as if invested with a body which, of course, is due to the action of the mind, similarly, it gets in the mother's womb a body in consequence of qualities and propensities created by pristine deeds.

Whatever senses, while it is there, are awakened by pristine deeds as the operating cause, become created in Consciousness in consequence of the mind co-existing with attachments.

On account of the past thoughts of sound that are awakened in it, the Soul, subjected to such influences, gets the organ of hearing. Similarly, from attachment to forms, its eye is produced, and from its desire after smell its organ of smelling.

From thoughts of touch it acquires the skin. Likewise, the five vital airs are acquired by it, viz., Prana, Apana, Vyana, Udana, and Samana, which make the body agoing.

Encased in body with all limbs fully developed on account of pristine deeds, the Soul takes birth, with both physical and mental sorrow, in the beginning, iniddle, and end.

It should be known that sorrow originates from the very formation of body in the womb). It increases with the idea of self. From renuciation of these, sorrow is destroyed. He who knows sorrow's end attains to Liberation.

Both the origin and the destruction of the senses depend on the quality of Darkness. A wise man should act with proper scrutiny with the help of the eye of the scriptures.

The senses of knowledge, if they succeed in acquiring all their objects, can never stupefy the man who is without thirst. The embodied Soul, by making its senses weak, is saved from the obligation of re-birth.