Lord Krishna
Divine TeacherThe Supreme Lord, the charioteer and divine guide of Arjuna. Krishna delivers the eternal wisdom of the Gita, revealing the nature of the soul, duty, and the path to liberation.
Speaking: Chapter 16, Verse 7
Verse 7
The Yoga of the Divine and Demonic Natures
The demonic do not know what to do and what not to do. Neither purity, nor right conduct, nor truth is found in them.
Context & Meaning
The demonic nature is described here at its root: a fundamental confusion about pravṛtti and nivṛtti — what to engage with and what to withdraw from, what to pursue and what to renounce. This is not merely bad decision-making but a disorientation at the level of values itself. When the inner compass is broken, no amount of external information corrects the course. And the three consequent deficiencies follow logically: no śauca (purity — the maintenance of inner and outer cleanliness), no ācāra (right conduct — the behavioural expression of ethical understanding), and no satya (truth — the commitment to reality over self-serving distortion). A being without these three lacks the basic infrastructure of moral life.
Scholar Commentaries
1 commentary · Public domainAdi Shankaracharya
AdvaitaThe root disorder is not a specific sin but a failure of discrimination (viveka). The demonic type does not know what to do and what not to do — which means their actions are driven not by understanding but by desire, fear, and habit. Without the inner compass of discernment, purity, right conduct, and truthfulness become impossible — not because the person is incapable, but because they have no reliable internal standard to measure themselves against.