The doers of evil, the workers of sin, the deluded, do not take refuge in Me, the supreme Lord, Nārāyaṇa: they are the lowest of men, the basest among men. Their knowledge has been carried off by māyā, stolen away, and they have taken to the demonic disposition, marked by violence, falsehood and the like. But those highest of men, of meritorious deeds.

Evildoers, doers of sinful deeds, of four kinds by the gradation of their evildoing, do not take refuge in Me: the deluded, the lowest of men, those whose knowledge is carried off by maya, and those who have resorted to the demonic state. The deluded are those of perverse knowledge, who, through not knowing My own nature in the way described before, are attached to the objects of matter alone, holding, in the way described before, that the self, whose single savour is being subordinate to the Blessed One, and the host of things to be enjoyed, are subordinate to themselves. The lowest of men are those who, even when My own nature is known in a general way, are unfit to be turned toward Me. Those whose knowledge is carried off by maya are those whose knowledge regarding Me and My lordship, though it had arisen, has been carried off by deceitful arguments that make that knowledge seem impossible. Those who have resorted to the demonic state are those for whom knowledge regarding Me and My lordship, firm and well established, becomes a ground only for hatred; each later kind is the more sinful.

Then why do not all cross over? To that Krishna says, with 'not Me'. Being doers of evil, they are deluded, and for that very reason the lowest of men; and being those whose knowledge is carried off, they are deluded, and for that very reason given over to the asuric disposition. He will speak of that with 'engagement and withdrawal' (16.7) and the rest. The 'carrying off' (apahara) is an overpowering. This was said in the Vyasa-yoga, 'knowledge is the nature of the living beings, and it is overpowered by maya'. 'Asuras' are those who delight in the breaths (asu); so it is said in the Naradiya, 'the gods have knowledge for their chief mark, while the asura is given over to the breaths'.