Chapter XVI

Krishna lists the positive virtues and qualities that characterize those destined for heavenly birth, including fearlessness, wisdom-seeking, charity, humility, patience, and purity.

Krishna contrasts the divine qualities by listing the negative traits of those destined for hellish regions: deceitfulness, arrogance, anger, harsh speech, and ignorance.

Krishna establishes that heavenly birth leads to deliverance while birth among the Asuras leads to bondage, and urges Arjuna to rejoice that his lot is for heavenly birth.

Krishna asserts that all living beings are marked with either divine or undivine stamps, having just explained the divine and now promising to reveal the undivine.

Krishna characterizes the undivine as those who deny cosmic law and divine order, claiming the world has no Lord or purposive cause and is merely a house of lust.

Krishna describes how the undivine, enslaved by insatiable desires and blind ambition, accumulate wealth through base deeds and false pride, ultimately falling into delusion.

Krishna declares that the undivine, characterized by self-obsession and arrogance, are his enemies whom he casts repeatedly into devilish wombs across lifetimes until they worship him.

Krishna reveals that hell has three gates—lust, wrath, and avarice—and teaches that those who avoid these three gates find peace and reach heaven's gate.