भूमिरापोऽनलो वायुः खं मनो बुद्धिरेव च ।अहंकार इतीयं मे भिन्ना प्रकृतिरष्टधा ॥
bhūmirāpo’nalo vāyuḥ khaṃ mano buddhireva caahaṃkāra itīyaṃ me bhinnā prakṛtiraṣṭadhā
The five elements (conditions of material being – the solid, liquid, fiery, gaseous and ethereal), mind (with its various senses and organs), reason, ego, this is my eightfold divided Nature. This the lower. But know my other Nature different from this, O mighty-armed, the supreme which becomes the Jiva and by which this world is upheld
Gītā 7·4Then, to start with and in order to found this integral knowledge, the Gita makes that deep and momentous distinction which is the practical basis of all its Yoga, the distinction between the two Natures, the phenomenal and the spiritual Nature… An eightfold Nature constituted of the five bhūtas,—elements, as it is rendered, but rather elemental or essential conditions of material being to which are given the concrete names of earth, water, fire, air and ether,—the mind with its various senses and organs, the reason-will and the ego, is the Sankhya description of Prakriti.
There is a supreme nature of the Divine which is the real source of cosmic existence and its fundamental creative force and effective energy and of which the other lower and ignorant Nature is only a derivation and a dark shadow.
The supreme Nature, parāprakṛtiḥ is then the infinite timeless conscious power of the self-existent Being out of which all existences in the cosmos are manifested and come out of timelessness into Time. But in order to provide a spiritual basis for this manifold universal becoming in the cosmos the supreme Nature formulates itself as the Jiva. To put it otherwise, the eternal multiple soul of the Purushottama appears as individual spiritual existence in all the forms of the cosmos.
