Ichchha Dvesha Samutthena

Krishna now names the root cause of why the world cannot know Him: dvandva-moha — the delusion born from pairs of opposites. Desire and aversion, liking and disliking, wanting and rejecting. From the very moment of birth, all beings are caught in this pull.

A newborn cries the instant it arrives. Something is wanted, something is uncomfortable. This twin pull — toward pleasure and away from pain — begins before a person can even think. It is not a personal failure. It is the nature of embodied existence. And as long as this duality rules the mind, seeing the divine clearly remains difficult.

'Sarge' — at the time of birth. This delusion is not something that develops over time through bad habits. It arrives with the body itself. But it can be transcended. The next shloka will show how.

Shloka 7.26 stated that no one knows Krishna. 7.27 explains why: dvandva-moha. And 7.28 will provide the remedy — the exhaustion of sin through virtuous action. These three shlokas form a tightly linked sequence.

The Katha Upanishad records Yama telling Nachiketa: 'nayam atma balhinena labhyah' — this Self cannot be attained by the weak. The Gita's dvandva-moha is one form of that weakness — the mind caught between desire and aversion.