Krishna continues describing the mindset he introduced in the previous shloka. These people are driven by desires. They consider heaven the supreme goal. They perform elaborate rituals — not for inner growth, but for the specific purpose of gaining pleasure and power. And the fruit of all this effort? Rebirth. Another round on the wheel.
The trap is elegant in its cruelty: desire leads to ritual, ritual leads to reward, reward feeds desire, desire demands more ritual — and the cycle rolls on, life after life. At no point does the person step back and ask: is there something beyond this loop? Krishna is pointing at that missing question.
This is not a rejection of ritual or devotion. It is a diagnosis of what happens when practice becomes transactional — when the only reason to pray is to get something, when the only measure of a spiritual life is the reward it yields. That transactional mindset keeps a person bound, no matter how elaborate the practice.