Krishna has been describing the liberated person from multiple angles. Here he gives a precise functional test: not a philosophical description of freedom, but a concrete internal condition that can be directly observed in oneself.
śaknotīhaiva yaḥ soḍhuṃ prāk śarīra-vimokṣaṇāt | kāma-krodhodbhavaṃ vegaṃ sa yuktaḥ sa sukhī naraḥ ||
The person who, here in this life itself, before the body is released at death, is able to endure the force that arises from desire and anger, that person is integrated (yukta) and that person is happy.
Most descriptions of liberated states are portraits. This one is a diagnostic. Can you feel the surge of desire or anger, and remain present without being carried? That's the whole test. It's not about what you believe, how long you've meditated, or what tradition you follow. It's observable, repeatable, and honest.
The word soḍhum (to bear, to endure) is doing careful work. Suppression would be a different word. What Krishna is pointing at is the capacity to feel the full force of desire or anger without the feeling automatically becoming action or avoidance. The wave comes; you don't collapse under it and you don't pretend it isn't there.
Desire reaches toward what's absent. Anger resists what's present. Together they cover almost every way a person gets hijacked: straining toward a future that isn't here, or fighting against a present that is. Between these two, enormous amounts of human energy are consumed. Krishna picks these two precisely because they are the primary engines of suffering, not rare states but daily ones.
The verse deliberately closes off the escape of deferral. You don't need to wait for a different life, a different body, a different circumstance. The same nervous system that fires with craving is the one in which steadiness can be found. This is both demanding and generous: demanding because there's nowhere to hide, generous because nothing else needs to change.
Krishna doesn't say this person will be rewarded with happiness, or that happiness will come eventually. He says: that person IS happy. The happiness is not a downstream effect of the endurance; it IS the endurance, seen from the inside. When you're no longer grinding against desire and anger, the quiet that remains is what the word sukhī points at.
Person A gets a difficult email: a deal falls through, a colleague undercuts them, a close relationship sends a cold message. The feeling of anger or wounded wanting moves through them immediately, and they either act from it right away (the angry reply, the anxious follow-up text at midnight) or they push it down and it festers. Either way, the force owns them. Person B gets the same email. The same feeling rises. They notice it, feel the physical pull of it, and wait. Not because they've killed the feeling, but because they've practiced being with it long enough that there's a small gap between the feeling and the next move. That gap is everything. They respond from something steadier. They don't carry the heat into the next three interactions. That person, Krishna says, is the happy one.
Verse 5.24 takes the inner test further: Krishna describes the person who finds their joy, light, and freedom entirely within. The outer world stops being the source. When ready, say: "5.24"