The senses, hearing and the rest, the five, the learned call superior to the body, more excellent than the gross, outer, bounded body, by reason of subtlety, inwardness, pervasiveness and the like. So too, superior to the senses is the mind, whose nature is resolving and doubting. And superior to the mind is the understanding, whose nature is certainty. And that which is innermost to all that can be seen, to all that ends with the understanding, the embodied one whom desire, joined with the senses and the rest as its seats, deludes through the covering of knowledge: superior even to the understanding is He, the seer beyond the understanding, the supreme Self. Then what?

They call the senses the chief among the obstructors of knowledge, since, while the senses are busy with objects, knowledge regarding the self does not arise. Higher than the senses is the mind, since, even when the senses are stilled, while the mind is bent toward objects, knowledge of the self is not possible. Higher than the mind is the understanding, since, even when the mind is turned away from other objects, while the understanding is engaged in a perverse resolve, knowledge of the self does not arise. And if, even when all these, up to the understanding, are stilled, desire, which is the equivalent of wishing, born of rajas, is present, then that very desire, setting these too, the senses and the rest, going among their objects, blocks knowledge of the self. This is what is said in 'but he who is higher than the understanding': desire is what is higher even than the understanding. This is the meaning.

To speak of knowledge, in the form of the weapon for slaying the enemy, Krishna names what is to be known, with 'the senses'. It has been said, 'taking the sword of unattached knowledge, cross to the far shore'. The senses are higher, more excellent, than the body. Not only is He higher than the buddhi, but, in the manner the scripture states, higher even than the unmanifest, as the scripture says, 'higher than the unmanifest is the Person' (Katha Upanishad 3.11). And release does not come through the mere knowledge of one portion as stated here and there, for the gathering-together of all the qualities was declared by the Lord in the section on the gathering of qualities, in 'bliss and the rest belong to the principal one' (Brahma-sutra 3.3.11) and the like. So too the Garuda says elsewhere, 'those who, having understood, in the authorless Vedas and in the Vaishnava texts, all the qualities that are stated everywhere and all that have come down through the tradition, see, with all of them together, the supreme Hari, theirs alone is release, and in no other way at all'. Therefore He is to be known as higher even than the unmanifest. And it is not the living being that is meant here, since it has been said, 'even the taste turns away from him when he has seen the Supreme' (2.59), and 'without knowing the One higher than me, how could there be a conquest of desire?'. Hence it is the knowledge of the supreme Self that is meant here. In the verse that follows, the word 'self' means the mind, and 'by the self' means by the buddhi.