मया ततमिदं सर्वं जगदव्यक्तमूर्तिना ।मत्स्थानि सर्वभूतानि न चाहं तेष्ववस्थितः ॥
mayā tatamidaṁ sarvaṁ jagadavyaktamūrtināmatsthāni sarvabhūtāni na cāhaṁ teṣvavasthitaḥ
By Me, all this universe has been extended in space in the ineffable mystery of my being; all existences are situated in Me, not I in them.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Essays on the Gita
all are situated in Me, not I in them,
The supreme being of the Divine is beyond manifestation: the true sempiternal image of him is not revealed in matter, nor is it seized by life, nor is it cognisable by mind, acintyarūpa, avyaktamūrti. What we see is only a self-created form, rūpa, not the eternal form of the Divinity, svarūpa. There is someone or there is something that is other than the universe, inexpressible, unimaginable, an ineffably infinite Godhead beyond anything that our largest or subtlest conceptions of infinity can shadow. All this weft of things to which we give the name of universe, all this immense sum of motion to which we can fix no limits and vainly seek in its forms and movements for any stable reality, any status, level and point of cosmic leverage, has been spun out, shaped, extended by this highest Infinite, founded upon this ineffable supracosmic Mystery. It is founded upon a self-formulation which is itself unmanifest and unthinkable. All this mass of becomings always changing and in motion, all these creatures, existences, things, breathing and living forms cannot contain him either in their sum or in their separate existence. He is not in them; it is not in them or by them that he lives, moves or has9·4 his being,—God is not the Becoming. It is they that are in him, it is they that live and move in him and draw their truth from him; they are his becomings, he is their being.* In the unthinkable timeless and spaceless infinity of his existence he has extended this minor phenomenon of a boundless universe in an endless space and time.
- matsthāni sarvabhūtāni na cāhaṁ teṣvavasthitaḥ.
Thus the Gita begins by affirming that the Supreme contains all things in himself, but is not in any, matsthāni sarva-bhūtāni9·4–5, “all are situated in Me, not I in them,” and yet it proceeds immediately to say, “and yet all existences are not situated in Me, my self is the bearer of all existences and it is not situated in existences.” And yet again it insists with an apparent self-contradiction that the Divine has lodged himself, has taken up his abode in the human body, mānuṣīṁ tanum āśritam, and that the9·11 recognition of this truth is necessary for the soul’s release by the integral way of works and love and knowledge. These statements are only in appearance inconsistent with each other. It is as the supracosmic Godhead that he is not in existences, nor even they in him; for the distinction we make between Being and becoming applies only to the manifestation in the phenomenal universe. In the supracosmic existence all is eternal Being and all, if there too there is any multiplicity, are eternal beings; nor can the spatial idea of indwelling come in, since a supracosmic absolute being is not affected by the concepts of time and space which are created here by the Lord’s Yogamaya. There a spiritual, not a spatial or temporal coexistence, a spiritual identity and coincidence must be the foundation. But on the other hand in the cosmic manifestation there is an extension of universe in space and time by the supreme unmanifest supracosmic Being, and in that extension he appears first as a self who supports all these existences; bhūta-bhṛt, he bears them in his all-pervading self-existence. And, even, through this omnipresent self the supreme Self too, the Paramatman, can be said to bear the universe; he is its invisible spiritual foundation and the hidden spiritual cause of the becoming of all existences. He bears the universe as the secret spirit in us bears our thoughts, works, movements. He seems to pervade and to contain mind, life and body, to support them by his presence: but this pervasion is itself an act of consciousness, not material; the body itself is only a constant act of consciousness of the spirit.
Evening talks
Sri Aurobindo laughing: _ Yes – the Gita also makes the Divine appear variously: the Divine says, “I am in everybody”, and then, “Everybody is in me”, and finally, “Everybody is in me but I am not in them.”
