I shall declare once more, again, the supreme knowledge, the connection being across the intervening words: though told more than once in all the earlier chapters, I shall declare it again. It is supreme because its object is the supreme thing. What knowledge is it? The best of all kinds of knowledge, since its fruit is the best. 'Of kinds of knowledge' does not mean of humility and the rest, but of the knowledges whose objects are things to be known, sacrifice and the like; those do not lead to liberation, but this does. By the words 'supreme' and 'best' He praises it, to make a longing arise in the listener's understanding. Knowing which knowledge, attaining it, all the sages, the renouncers, those given to reflection, have gone, have reached, the supreme perfection, the one named liberation, upward from this bondage of the body. He shows that this perfection is unfailing.

The Blessed Lord spoke. The supreme knowledge, the knowledge other than what was told before, namely the knowledge concerning the qualities sattva and the rest, which is included within nature and the person, I shall again declare; and that knowledge is the best of all the knowledges concerning nature and the person, knowing which all the sages, given to dwelling on it, have gone from this round of transmigration to the supreme consummation, have attained the consummation that is the gaining of the self's own form, purified. Again the Lord marks off that knowledge by its fruit.

This is a brief sub-gloss. For a fuller reading of this verse, see Madhusūdana, Śaṅkara, or Rāmānuja above.

Salutation to the giver of knowledge, who brings about the means. In the chapters that follow, Krishna speaks chiefly of the means.