Fearlessness, purity of being, steadfastness in knowledge and yoga, almsgiving, self-control, sacrifice, self-study, tapasya, and straightforwardness, (16:1)
Non-violence, truthfulness, absence of anger, renunciation, tranquility, without calumny, compassion for beings, uncovetousness, gentleness, modesty, absence of fickleness, (16:2)
Vigor, patience, fortitude, purity, absence of hatred, absence of pride–they are the endowment of those born to a divine state. (16:3)
Hypocrisy, arrogance, conceit, anger, harshness and ignorance are the endowment of those born to a demonic state. (16:4)
The divine state is deemed to lead to liberation, the demonic to bondage. Do not grieve: you are born for a divine state. (16:5)
There are two types of beings in this world: the divine and the demonic. The divine has been described at length. Hear from me of the demonic. (16:6)
Demonic men know not what to do or refrain from; purity is not found in them, nor is good conduct, nor is truth. (16:7)
“The world,” they say, “is without truth, without a basis, without God, produced by mutual union,* with lust for its cause–what else?” (16:8)
Holding this view, these lost souls, small-minded and of cruel deeds, arise as the enemies of the world, bent on its destruction. (16:9)
Attached to insatiable desires, full of hypocrisy, arrogance and intoxication, having accepted false ideas through delusion, they act with foul purposes. (16:10)
Clinging to boundless cares ending only in death, with gratification of desire as their highest aim–convinced that this is all– (16:11)
Bound by a hundred snares of hope, given over to desire and anger, they seek to gain by unjust means accumulation of wealth to gratify their desires. (16:12)
“Today this has been acquired by me. This I shall also obtain. This is mine, and this gain also shall be mine. (16:13)
“That enemy has been slain by me, and I shall slay others, too, for I am the Lord, I am the enjoyer, I am successful, powerful and happy. (16:14)
“I am wealthy and high-born,” they say, “who else is equal to me? I shall sacrifice, I shall give, I shall rejoice.” Thus, they are deluded by ignorance. (16:15)
Led astray by many imagined fancies, caught in a net of delusion, addicted to the gratifying of desire, they fall into a foul hell. (16:16)
Self-conceited, stubborn, filled with the intoxication of wealth, they sacrifice in name only, for show, not according to the prescribed forms. (16:17)
Clinging to egotism, power, haughtiness, desire and anger, these malignant people hate me in their own and in others’ bodies. (16:18)
These malicious evildoers, cruel, most degraded of men, I hurl perpetually into only the wombs of demons here. (16:19)
Entering the demonic wombs, and deluded birth after birth, not attaining to me they fall into a progressively lower condition. (16:20)
Triple is the gate of this hell, destructive of the Self: desire, anger and greed. Therefore one should abandon these three. (16:21)
A man who is liberated from these three gates to darkness does what is best for him, and thus goes to the Highest Goal. (16:22)
He who casts aside the injunctions of the scriptures, following the impulse of desire, attains neither perfection nor happiness, nor the Supreme Goal. (16:23)
Therefore the standards of the scriptures should be your guide in determining what should be done and what should not be done. Knowing what the scriptural injunctions prescribe, you should perform action here in this world. (16:24)
* Aparaspara is translated “mutual union” by many translators into English, but it literally means “not one by the other,” or “not by a succession.” In his translation Judge has: “not governed by law,” and Aurobindo: “a world of chance.” It seems to me that the idea is denial of both cause and effect and the manifestation of the universe in an orderly and hierarchical manner according to exact laws. We are all familiar with the atheistic-materialistic ideas about the universe being without meaning, purpose or even order. It seems to me that Vyasa is indicating that such a view of the world without either God or cosmic order is demonic.
Om Tat Sat
Thus in the Upanishads of the glorious Bhagavad Gita, the science of the Eternal, the scripture of Yoga, the dialogue between Sri Krishna and Arjuna, ends the sixteenth discourse entitled: The Yoga of the Division between the Divine and the Demonic.
Read Chapter Seventeen: The Yoga of the Division of Threefold Faith