Chapter 10 - Verse 11

Out of mere compassion: Out of mercy, anxious as to how they may attain bliss. I dwell in their antah-karana* which is engaged in thinking exclusively of the Self and destroy the darkness of ignorance,-that illusory knowledge which is caused by the absence of discrimination,—by the lamp of wisdom, by the lamp of discriminatory knowledge, fed by the oil of pure Devotion (Bhakti-prasada), fanned by the wind of earnest meditation on Me, furnished with the wick of right intuition purified by the cultivation of piety, chastity and other virtues, held in the antah-karana which is completely detached from all worldly concerns, placed in the wind-sheltered enclosure of the mind which is withdrawn from the sense-objects and untainted by attachment and aversion, and shining with the light of right knowledge generated by incessant practice of concentration and meditation.

i.e., in the antah-karana functioning on the plane of Spirit exclusively. Darkness here includes both the beginningless nescience and the illusory perception resulting from that nescience. It cannot be removed by matter or any material phenomenon, belonging as it does to the same class as darkness; therefore the Lord has said that He Himself destroys darkness. But the Spirit (Chaitanya) cannot directly remove darkness. It is only an intellectual state that is found to illumine an object unknown before. Hence it is that the Spirit removes ignorance by itself shining through a state of the intellect such as the one induced by the teaching of the Sastra. It is either the Spirit manifesting itself through an intellectual state, or an intellectual state pervaded by the Spirit, that can destroy nescience and illusory knowledge.

Arjuna’s question about the Lord’s manifestations.

Having heard of the Lord’s Glory and His mysterious power, Arjuna says: