He whose mind has been refined by the teaching of scripture and teacher and by reasoning, in whom there is no notion that takes the form 'I am the doer', who sees that it is precisely these five, the seat and the rest, falsely fashioned in the self by ignorance, that are the doers of all action, not himself, while he himself is the mere witness of their workings, breathless and mindless, pure, beyond even the imperishable, alone, changeless, even as the scripture declares; he whose understanding, the inner organ that serves him as a limiting adjunct, is not stained, does not become attached and repentant with the thought 'I did this; for that I shall go to hell', he is the man of good understanding, he sees. Even having slain all these worlds, all these creatures, he does not slay, he does not perform the act of slaying, and he is not bound, not joined to the fruit of demerit that would be its effect. It may be objected that 'having slain, he does not slay' is a self-contradiction, even if it is meant as praise. This is no fault, for it holds good with reference to the worldly and the highest points of view. With reference to the worldly view, that takes the body and the rest for the self and so says 'I am the slayer', the Lord says 'having slain'. With reference to the highest view shown above, he says 'he does not slay, he is not bound'. Both of these hold good. It may be objected that the self does act, in concert with the seat and the rest, since the word 'alone' is used in 'the doer to be only the self'. This is no fault, for the self being changeless by nature, it cannot be joined together with the seat and the rest. Only what is subject to change can be joined with others, or have agency by being so joined; but the changeless self can be joined with nothing, so concerted agency does not hold of it. The aloneness of the self is therefore its own natural state, and the word 'alone' is mere restatement of that. The changelessness of the self is established by revelation, by remembered scripture, and by reasoning. That it is unchangeable is said in 'this is called unchangeable'; that 'the qualities alone act' and 'though seated in the body he does not act' and the like is established again and again in the Gita itself; and in the revealed texts by such phrases as 'it seems to think, it seems to move'. And by reasoning the royal road is that the truth of the self is partless, dependent on nothing, and changeless. Even if change were granted to the self, its own change could only belong to itself; the actions of the seat and the rest would not be the self's. For one being's action, not done by another, cannot come to belong to that other. What ignorance has falsely transferred is not really his. As silverness is not the shell's, as the dirtiness of a surface is, by ignorance, transferred by children to the sky which it does not really belong to, so the change of the seat and the rest belongs to them alone, not to the self. Therefore it is rightly said that, since no stain of the notion 'I am the doer' touches him, the knower does not slay and is not bound. Having promised, in 'this slays not, nor is it slain', and then having stated the self's changelessness with the reason 'it is not born', and having briefly said at the start of the teaching, in 'know the indestructible', that the knower's qualification for action ceases, the Lord, having unfolded this in the middle as occasion arose here and there, here sums it up to gather the meaning of the teaching into one: 'the knower does not slay and is not bound'. And this being so, since the conceit of being embodied does not hold, the renunciation of all action falsely fashioned by ignorance does hold; so it is established that for renouncers the threefold fruit of action, the unwished for and the rest, does not arise, while for others, lacking that, it inevitably does. This is the meaning of the teaching of the Gita, here brought to its conclusion. This, the essence of the meaning of all the Vedas, is to be carefully examined and grasped by the learned and the keen-witted; we have shown it here and there by dividing the text into topics, following scripture and reasoning. Now what sets action going is told.

He whose disposition, the particular mental state whose object is the particularity of agency, is, by the dwelling on the supreme Person's agency, not made by egotism, not made by the conceit of 'I'; that is, he in whom the knowledge 'I do' is not found; he whose understanding is not stained; that is, he in whom the understanding 'in this action, since agency is not mine, this fruit is not connected with me, and this action is not mine' arises; he, even having slain these worlds in war, does not slay them, and not only Bhishma and the rest; this is the meaning. So by that action called war he is not bound, does not experience its fruit. This is the meaning. Since all this dwelling on non-agency and the rest comes about only by the growth of the quality of sattva, to make known the worthiness-to-be-taken-up of sattva, and being about to unfold the unevenness, made by the qualities sattva and the rest, in action, the Lord first states the manner of the prompting of action.

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

Krishna praises that knowledge, with 'he whose state of mind is not the doer's'. And he who is slightly bound is also one who has a slight conceit of being the doer.