Those who are wholly deluded, utterly bewildered, by the qualities of Nature become attached to the actions of the qualities, thinking 'we do action for a fruit'. Those attached to action, who do not know the whole, who see only the fruit of action, the dull, the dull-witted: the knower of the whole, the knower of the Self, should not himself unsettle them; the unsettling is precisely the splitting of their understanding, and he should not do it. How, then, is action to be done by the ignorant person eligible for action, the seeker of liberation? He says.

But those of incomplete knowledge, who have set out for the beholding of the self, being joined with matter, are utterly deluded by the qualities of matter regarding the self as it really stands, and so become attached only to the actions of the qualities and not to the self's own nature as set apart from them; therefore they are not able for the discipline of knowledge, and their qualification is for the discipline of action alone. Such dull men of incomplete knowledge the man of complete knowledge should not, by himself abiding in the discipline of knowledge, unsettle. For those dull men, who follow the conduct of the foremost, on seeing this man risen up from the discipline of action, would themselves become unsettled in mind, dislodged from the discipline of action. Therefore the foremost man, himself standing in the discipline of action and not dwelling on the self's non-agency by way of knowledge of the truth of the self, having shown that the discipline of action alone is the means to the beholding of the self that needs no other means, should keep those dull men of incomplete knowledge content. This is the meaning. That even for one qualified for the discipline of knowledge the discipline of action is better than the discipline of knowledge has already been said before. Therefore the man to be pointed to as exemplary should, for the holding-together of the world, do action itself. By the determining of the self's own nature as set apart from matter, agency was placed on the qualities and the manner of the performance of action was told. And this dwelling on the qualities as the agent is just this: that this agency is not prompted by the self's own nature, but is made by the connection with the qualities, the dwelling being made by the discernment of what would and would not be the case, that it is made by the qualities. Now, by the determining of the selves as being the body of the supreme Person and so of a nature governed by Him, the Lord, placing on the supreme Person, the highest Person who is the Self of all, both the agency made by the qualities and the agency of the self, states that action is to be done.

Those deluded among the gunas of nature, the senses and the rest. For attachment to objects and the rest arises from identifying with the senses and the rest. 'Among the actions of the gunas' means among objects and actions, as the definition runs, 'sound and the rest, the senses and the rest, sattva and the rest, things auspicious, and things not primary, are all called gunas by those versed in etymology'. Were sattva and the rest alone to be accepted as the gunas, the phrase 'the gunas among the gunas' (3.28) would not be apt.