Bhagavad Gita Chapter 15, Verse 10 (BG 15.10) — Meaning, Translation & Commentary

# BG 15.10 This is a universal truth experienced everywhere: though a person of ordinary intellect may perceive an object, he cannot comprehend it fully and accurately. True knowledge of a thing is available only to those who are learned in that subject. Any person may read a literary work, but only a scholar of language can truly understand the author's vision and experience its complete beauty. Only a jeweler can assess the quality and true value of gems; others can merely look upon them. All people may hear music, but only a skilled musician can appreciate the classical subtlety and beauty of supreme singing. Similarly, it is through the presence of this conscious Self that we experience objects, feelings, and thoughts. Yet only the Self-realized person recognizes this and lives as the very nature of the Self. The Self eternally exists; it never ceases to be. At the time of leaving the body, it is the Self that provides consciousness to the subtle form. Throughout a particular life, the Self illuminates all experiences. The Self is the revealer of mental experiences of pleasure and pain, and of the intellect's judgments. In this way, the knowledge of the sattvic (peaceful), rajasic (agitated), and tamasic (deluded) qualities of our mind—which changes moment by moment—is possible only through consciousness. Yet the unwise fail to recognize that very presence through which all experience becomes possible. Ordinary people become so attached and absorbed in their experiences and their objects that their entire attention is drawn to external things and the beauty of beautiful forms. They neglect and fail to recognize that Self whose presence alone makes any experience possible. Entirely opposite to these are the wise ones who, turning away from the proliferation of names and forms, behold the essential truth underlying this proliferation—that Brahman which, dwelling as the Self in their hearts, illuminates all. They perceive this Self-principle through the eye of wisdom. The eye of wisdom is not some inner sense organ. When a seeker endowed with discrimination and dispassion contemplates the Self through the teachings of Vedanta, the Self-knowledge gained from that contemplation becomes the eye of wisdom. Sri Shankaracharya has given an artistic description of this eye of wisdom in his work Atma Bodha. In the next verse, we shall describe the reason for the failure of the ignorant and the success of the wise in the vision of the Self.