The three forms of material suffering no longer exist for him whom the Lord thus touched with his unmotivated mercy. Having become serene, his intelligence does not take long to strengthen. The being unconscious of his spiritual identity can neither control his mind, nor strengthen his intelligence, how then, will he know serenity, and how, without it, will he be able to taste happiness?

As a violent wind sweeps a basket across the water, it suffices for one of the senses to entrain the mind for the intelligence to be carried away.

So whoever turns his senses away from their objects has a sure intelligence. What is night for all beings becomes, for the man who has mastered his senses, the time of awakening. What, for all, is the time of awakening, is the night for the collected sage. He who remains steadfast despite the incessant flow of desires, like the ocean remains immutable despite the thousand rivers flowing into it, can only find serenity, but not he who seeks to satisfy these desires.

He who is no longer attracted by material pleasures, who is no longer a slave to his desires, who has rejected all spirit of possession and who has freed himself from the false ego, can alone know perfect serenity.

These are the fashions of spirituality. Whoever settles there, even at the moment of death, comes out of his confusion, and the kingdom of God opens for him.

The knowledge that Krishna, God, the Supreme Person offers through this sublime teaching, and the Bhagavad-gita or “the song of the Lord”, [Words of Krishna, Christ, God, the Supreme Person], marks the beginning of spiritual life.

Any material act, with its consequences, is governed by the three gunas. Acts are material when they are performed in the hope of reaping the fruits of them for oneself, and it is they who hold us prisoners of the world of dense matter. If the Vedas deal with material activities, it is in order to gradually extract men from their life of material pleasures to lead them to the highest spirituality.

We must raise our consciousness to the spiritual level and inquire about supreme transcendence. All the inhabitants of the material universe must fight for their envy. It is for them that the Lord, after having created the material universe, revealed the Vedic knowledge [of the Vedas, the original holy scriptures], so that they learn how to lead their life in such a way as to free oneself from matter. After dealing with how to obtain material pleasures, the holy scriptures offer the chance to achieve spiritual realization.

All our actions, with their consequences, are ruled by the gunas as long as our material body lives. We just have to learn not to be affected by the duality of joys and sorrows, heat and cold, etc. If we tolerate them, the anguish caused by the desire for gain and the fear of loss will be totally dissipated. A man achieves this spiritual peace when he is fully aware of Krishna, and leaves it entirely to his will.