A declaration · reflective in mood · builds on earlier teachings
“Repeated delusion keeps pulling a person farther from the divine.”
Those deluded beings, born again and again into shadowed births, never reach me and sink into a lower state.
The verse in reading order — each Sanskrit word with its meaning beneath. Hover a word to focus on it.
Read literallyshadowed · birth · having entered · deluded ones · birth after birth · me · not reaching · indeed · O son of Kunti · then · go · lower · state
People trapped in delusion keep taking shadowed births again and again. Because they never turn toward the divine, they sink into still lower states.
Krishna speaks this verse, on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, in the chapter titled "Daivasura Sampad Vibhaga" (The Divine and Demoniac Natures).
Verse 20 sits in Chapter 16 of the Bhagavad Gita — Daivasura Sampad Vibhaga, "The Divine and Demoniac Natures". The chapter has 24 verses in total.
You keep making the same self-sabotaging choice after the breakup, after the apology, after the warning. The pattern does not feel dramatic — until you notice it has become your life.
Did you like this verse?
It shifts the mind from treating repeated bad choices as isolated mistakes to seeing them as a reinforcing descent.
What this verse means
People trapped in delusion keep taking shadowed births again and again. Because they never turn toward the divine, they sink into still lower states.
Context & commentary
On the battlefield of Kurukshetra, Arjuna is frozen between duty and grief. Krishna has just described the dark nature of destructive people, and now he shows the end of that path: repeated rebirth in shadowed conditions, with no rise toward him.
Why this verse still matters
You keep making the same self-sabotaging choice after the breakup, after the apology, after the warning. The pattern does not feel dramatic — until you notice it has become your life.
“There is urgency in seeing how repeated confusion hardens into a downward pattern.”
Explore related themes: delusion (19 verses)