Know that without making a sacrifice one cannot live happily in this world [material], and what to say of the following [of the next life]?

These various sacrifices are authorized by the Vedas [the original holy scriptures] and designed according to the various forms of action. Knowing this, you will achieve liberation.

Higher than the sacrifice of material goods is the sacrifice of knowledge, because ultimately the sacrifice of action finds its finality in absolute knowledge.

Seek to know the truth by approaching a spiritual master, inquire of him with him submissively while serving him. The realized soul can reveal knowledge to you, for it has seen the truth.

And when you will know the truth, you will understand that all beings are an integral part of Me, that they live in Me, and belong to Me.

While even you are the most base of sinners, once you embark on the vessel of spiritual knowledge, you will cross the ocean of suffering. Like the blazing fire that turns wood into ashes, the brazier of knowledge reduces to ashes all the consequences of material actions.

Nothing in this world as pure and sublime as absolute knowledge. Ripe fruit of all yogas, he who possesses it finds joy in himself at the right time. The man of faith bathed in absolute knowledge, and master of his senses, soon knows the highest spiritual peace.

But the ignorant and unbelieving, who doubt the sacred writings, cannot become aware of God. For the one who doubts, there is no happiness either in this life in this world, nor in the next.

He whose spiritual knowledge has uprooted doubts, and who, having renounced the fruits of his deeds, is firmly established in the consciousness of his real self, he remains free from the chains of action. Armed with the sword of knowledge, you must resolve the doubts that ignorance has made to germinate in your heart.

The teaching that Krishna, God, the Supreme Person has just transmitted to us, describes the eternal function of being alive as each of us is. This divine knowledge includes two forms of sacrifice; the abandonment of all material possession and the purely spiritual deepening of the true self, that is, the awareness of being a spiritual soul and not the body of matter. If we are not motivated by the quest for spiritual realization, the sacrifice of our goods is only a material act. On the contrary, let it be done for a spiritual purpose, that we serve Krishna with love and devotion, and he will be perfect.

At the spiritual level also we find two forms of activity, one devoted to the understanding of our nature and our position in relation to God, and the other