Yada Te Mohakalilam

Mohakalilam — the swamp of delusion. The image is vivid. Delusion is not a wall you hit; it is a marshland you wade through, where each step sinks and clings. Krishna tells Arjuna: when your intellect crosses this swamp, something remarkable will happen.

You will become indifferent to what you have already heard and to what remains to be heard. This does not mean knowledge becomes useless. It means the anxious hunger for more information, more opinions, more arguments will quiet down. Clarity replaces accumulation. Just as fog lifting reveals the road that was always there, delusion lifting reveals the truth that was always present.

This shloka describes the process of awakening. First delusion clears, then attachment to external teachings fades, and finally the mind settles into steady realization.

The phrase shrutasya cha — indifference even to what has been heard — points to a subtle teaching. Once knowledge becomes lived experience, even the attachment to scripture falls away. The raft is left behind once the river is crossed.