इदं शरीरं कौन्तेय क्षेत्रमित्यभिधीयते ।एतद्यो वेत्ति तं प्राहुः क्षेत्रज्ञ इति तद्विदः ॥
idaṁ śarīraṁ kaunteya kṣetramityabhidhīyateetadyo vetti taṁ prāhuḥ kṣetrajña iti tadvidaḥ
The Blessed Lord said: This body, O son of Kunti, is called the Field; that which takes cognizance of the Field is called the Knower of the Field by the sages.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Essays on the Gita
First, the whole of existence must be regarded as a field of the soul’s construction and action in the midst of Nature. The Gita explains the kṣetram, field, by saying that it is this body which is called the field of the spirit, and in this body there is someone who takes cognizance of the field, kṣetrajña, the knower of Nature. It is evident, however, from the definitions that succeed that it is not the physical body alone which is the field, but all too that the body supports, the working of nature, the mentality, the natural action of the objectivity and subjectivity of our being.* This wider body too is only the individual field; there is a larger, a universal, a world-body, a world-field of the same Knower. For in each embodied creature there is this one Knower: in each existence he uses mainly and centrally this single outward result of the power of his nature which he has formed for his habitation, īśā vāsyaṁ sarvaṁ yat kiñca, makes each separate sustained knot of his mobile Energy the first base and scope of his developing harmonies. In Nature he knows the world as it affects and is reflected by the consciousness in this one limited body; the world exists to us as it is seen in our single mind,—and in the end, even, this seemingly small embodied consciousness can so enlarge itself that it contains in itself the whole universe, ātmani viśva-darśanam. But, physically, it is a microcosm in a macrocosm, and the macrocosm too, the large world too, is a body and field inhabited by the spiritual knower.13·2
