At the end of the second chapter of the Gita, Krishna speaks of jnana as leading to liberation, while also exhorting Arjuna not to falter in his Kshatriya duty. Arjuna is very much impressed by the path of jnana and personally wishes to pursue it.
In a discourse, Swami Advayananda pointed out that Arjuna confesses that his confused mind is still more so because Krishna’s instruction is clearly ‘know the self’ while the emphasis is on ‘do karma yoga.’ He seeks clarification on this point and also wishes Krishna to tell him what he should do at that juncture.
Krishna makes it clear that the path of jnana is more challenging as it rests on one’s maturity and purity of mind; not all are ready to meet this tall demand. ‘Knowing the self’ is not just being aware of the meaning of the self as the essence of it as sat-chit-ananda. One has to transcend the mind and abide in the self. It has to be an intuitive recognition of the all pervading Supreme Brahman in the entire creation, including all the beings and objects in it. If this knowledge always preoccupies one’s mind and governs one’s thought, word and deed, then one moves towards the state of abiding in the self.
From time immemorial many have strived to attain it and only a few have been successful. Even sincere efforts to maintain purity of mind can easily be thwarted since none is exempt from the influence of the gunas and Prakriti. But Krishna says that it is possible to rise to that state of mental purity through the performance of one’s duties in the right spirit. This is the karma yoga, doing one’s duties in a detached manner without expecting any personal rewards. Then one is sure to gain that chitta suddhi, the springboard from which one can traverse the path of jnana. So both jnana and karma are integral to one another.