53. When your mind is no longer disturbed by the flowery words of the Vedas, because you have fixed the mind in the total material substance, you have reached divine consciousness.
Significance:
Having divine consciousness means you realise your qualitative oneness with God, Krishna. And you also understand how God controls everyone in the material world, the world of the constantly changing.
54. Arjuna said: O Krishna, what are the symptoms of one whose consciousness is thus united in transcendence? How does he speak, how does he move, and what is his language?
Significance:
They are not the symptoms Arjuna showed, but then again, Arjuna was not liberated at the time.
55. The Supreme Personality of Godhead states: when a man give all variety of desires for sense gratification, which arise from mental concoction, and when the self, thus purified, finds satisfaction in the self alone, then he is considered to be in pure transendental consciousness.
Significance:
Bhagavad-Gita 6.6 states: “For one who conquered the mind the mind is the best of friends, for one who has failed to do so, the mind will remain the greatest enemy.” So one has to simply conquer the mind by engaging in devotional service and become godly because of it. First of course one has to recognise ones actual greatest enemy, which is ones own mind. Without being able, or willing, to do so one cannot engage in solving the problem. Chanting the Hare Krishna maha mantra, among other activities, is the method the devotees of Krishna promote to get rid of ones most heavy karmas, ones most heavy intoxications.
56. One who is not disturbed in mind even amidst the threefold miseries or elated when there is happiness, and who is free from attachment, fear and anger, is called a sage of steady mind.
Significance:
Freedom from anger doesn’t mean one cannot be angry. One can be angry in Krishna consciousness but one suffers no consequences from it since being on the transcendental plane one suffers no reactions from whatever one does. So a Krishna conscious person is always very peaceful. It is the level which is being explained in for instance Bhagavad-Gita 5.8 and 5.9. There are many fake pacifists, and they prefer having the false claim of peace and have the cheap show of so called peace because they like to be honoured. Fake pacifists are very degraded and very violent, besides very fearful. Fear is a very bad advisor, but losers use it to legitimize their, and others, bad habits.
57. One who is unaffected by whatever good or evil he may obtain, neither praising it nor despising it, is firmly fixed in perfect knowledge.
Significance:
Calmness in all activities is the way to go. Bhagavad-Gita 18.17 states: “One who is not motivated by false ego, whose intelligence is not entangled, though he kills men is this world does not kill, nor is he bound by his actions”. On the other hand, when a person is envious, hypocritical, and wrathful and has his activities in that type of consciousness he paves his own way to hell, pays a very lofty price for his madness. Indeed, it is always risky to be a thuggish person.
58. One who his able to withdraw his senses from the sense objects, as the tortoise withdraws its limbs within the shell, is firmly fixed in perfect consciousness.
Significance:
Being able to separate the mind from its idols and saying goodbye to them ones buddhi must be manifest. In the early innings of ones Krishna consciousness one serves God in awe and reverence, in ignorance and fear. One realises one cannot win the game from the universe, parts of which are “time” and “death”.