एतद्योनीनि भूतानि सर्वाणीत्युपधारय ।अहं कृत्स्नस्य जगतः प्रभवः प्रलयस्तथा ॥
etadyonīni bhūtāni sarvāṇītyupadhārayaahaṁ kṛtsnasya jagataḥ prabhavaḥ pralayastathā
Know this to be the womb of all beings. I am the birth of the whole world and so too its dissolution.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Essays on the Gita
It is in this sense that the Gita is speaking when it says that all the totality of work finds its completion, culmination, end in4·37 knowledge, sarvaṁ karmākhilaṁ jñāne parisamāpyate. “As a fire kindled turns to ashes its fuel, so the fire of knowledge turns all works to ashes.” By this it is not at all meant that when knowledge is complete, there is cessation from works. What is meant is made clear by the Gita when it says that he who has destroyed all doubt by knowledge and has by Yoga given up all works and is in possession of the Self is not bound by his works,4·41 yoga-sannyasta-karmāṇam ātmavantaṁ na karmāṇi nibadhnanti, and that he whose self has become the self of all existences, acts and yet is not affected by his works, is not caught in them, receives5·7 from them no soul-ensnaring reaction, kurvann api na lipyate. Therefore, it says, the Yoga of works is better than the physical renunciation of works, because, while Sannyasa is difficult for embodied beings who must do works so long as they are in the body, Yoga of works is entirely sufficient and it rapidly and easily brings the soul to Brahman. That Yoga of works is, we have seen, the offering of all action to the Lord, which induces as its culmination an inner and not an outer, a spiritual, not a5·10 physical giving up of works into the Brahman, into the being of3·30 the Lord, brahmaṇi ādhāya karmāṇi, mayi sannyasya. When7·6 works are thus “reposed on the Brahman,” the personality of18·57 the instrumental doer ceases; though he acts, he does nothing; for he has given up not only the fruits of his works, but the works themselves and the doing of them to the Lord. The Divine then takes the burden of works from him; the Supreme becomes the doer and the act and the result.
This is to throw the sense of the Gita into language suited to our modern way of thinking; but if we look at its description of the Para Prakriti, we shall find that this is practically the substance of what it says. For first, this other higher Prakriti is, says Krishna, my supreme nature, prakṛtiṁ me parām. And this “I” here is the Purushottama, the supreme Being, the supreme Soul, the transcendent and universal Spirit. The original and eternal nature of the Spirit and its transcendent and originating Shakti is what is meant by the Para Prakriti. For speaking first of the origin of the world from the point of view of the active7·6–7 power of his Nature, Krishna assevers, “This is the womb of all beings,” etad-yonīni bhūtāni. And in the next line of the couplet, again stating the same fact from the point of view of the originating Soul, he continues, “I am the birth of the whole world and so too its dissolution; there is nothing else supreme beyond Me.” Here then the supreme Soul, Purushottama, and the supreme Nature, Para Prakriti, are identified: they are put as two ways of looking at one and the same reality. For when Krishna declares, I am the birth of the world and its dissolution, it is evident that it is this Para Prakriti, supreme Nature, of his being which is both these things. The Spirit is the supreme Being in his infinite consciousness and the supreme Nature is the infinity of power or will of being of the Spirit,—it is his infinite consciousness in its inherent divine energy and its supernal divine action. The birth is the movement of evolution of this conscious Energy out of the Spirit, parā prakṛtir jīvabhūtā, its activity in the mutable universe; the dissolution is the withdrawing of that activity by involution of the Energy into the immutable existence and self-gathered power of the Spirit. That then is what is initially meant by the supreme Nature.
It is by the unity of this spiritual nature that the world is sustained, yayedaṁ dhāryate jagat, even as it is that from which7·5–6 it is born with all its becomings, etad-yonīni bhūtāni sarvāṇi, and that also which withdraws the whole world and its existences into itself in the hour of dissolution, ahaṁ kṛtsnasya jagataḥ prabhavaḥ pralayas tathā. But in the manifestation which is thus put forth in the Spirit, upheld in its action, withdrawn in its periodical rest from action, the Jiva is the basis of the multiple existence; it is the multiple soul, if we may so call it, or, if we prefer, the soul of the multiplicity we experience here. It is one always with the Divine in its being, different from it only in the power of its being, — different not in the sense that it is not at all the same power, but in this sense that it only supports the one power in a partial multiply individualised action. Therefore all things are initially, ultimately and in the principle of their continuance too the Spirit. The fundamental nature of all is nature of the Spirit, and only in their lower differential phenomena do they seem to be something else, to be nature of body, life, mind, reason, ego and the senses. But these are phenomenal derivatives, they are not the essential truth of our nature and our existence.
The Arya — text not in the CWSA
Gita VII. 1–28
