Spirituality should purify desire, not feed it.

This verse continues the critique of desire-driven religiosity. Krishna identifies the specific orientation that makes 'flowery speech' spiritually dangerous: it is driven by 'kāma' (desire) and aimed at 'bhoga-aiśvarya' (enjoyment and power). Such practitioners use the sacred forms — elaborate rituals, specific observances — not as a means of transcendence but as a more sophisticated strategy for getting what the ego wants: sensory pleasure, social status, and a favorable next life.

The phrase 'svarga-parā' (those for whom heaven is the highest goal) is particularly pointed. Krishna is not saying that heaven is bad, but that making heaven the highest aspiration — rather than liberation (moksha) or the direct realization of the self — keeps the practitioner trapped in the cycle of desire and rebirth.

A heaven driven by desire is just a more pleasant version of the same fundamental orientation: 'I want. I want to receive. How do I use spiritual means to secure what I want?' This is what later teachers would call 'spiritual materialism.'

The modern parallel is vivid: the use of meditation for peak performance and competitive advantage, the use of prayer as a transaction with God to secure specific outcomes, the use of spiritual community primarily for social networking. None of these uses are entirely without value, but they all represent desire-driven spirituality that uses sacred forms without penetrating to the transformative core.

Krishna is asking Arjuna — and us — to be honest about whether our spiritual practice is genuinely pointing us toward freedom or simply providing a more sophisticated means of satisfying the same old desires.