prakṛitiṁ puruṣhaṁ chaiva viddhy anādī ubhāv api
vikārānśh cha guṇānśh chaiva viddhi prakṛiti-sambhavānKnow that prakṛiti (material nature) and puruṣh (the individual souls) are both beginningless. Also know that all transformations of the body and the three modes of nature are produced by material energy.
The material nature is called Maya, or prakṛiti. Being an energy of God, it has existed ever since He has existed; in other words, it is eternal. The soul is also eternal, and here it is called puruṣh (the living entity), while God Himself is called param puruṣh (the Supreme Living Entity).
The soul is also an expansion of the energy of God. śhaktitvenaivāṁśhatvaṁ vyañjayanti (Paramātma Sandarbh 39) “The soul is a fragment of the jīva śhakti (soul energy) of God.” While material nature is an insentient energy, the jīva śhakti is a sentient energy. It is divine and intransmutable. It remains unchanged through different lifetimes, and the different stages of each lifetime. The six stages through which the body passes in one lifetime are: asti (existence in the womb), jāyate (birth), vardhate (growth), vipariṇamate (procreation), apakṣhīyate (diminution), vinaśhyati (death). These changes in the body are brought about by the material energy, called prakṛiti, or Maya. It creates the three modes of nature—sattva, rajas, and tamas—and their countless varieties of combinations.
Krishna says that Prakriti is the source of all actions in this world, not the Purusha. We are now coming back to the topic that was hinted upon in the karma yoga chapter. Typically, most of us attribute the agency, or the doership of our actions, to our own self. We say “I did this”, “I did not do that” and so on. Shri Krishna makes it perfectly clear that the intellect, the ego and the mind in our body receive input from our senses, filter it through our vaasanaas, and send instructions to our organs of action. All this is going on within the realm of Prakriti, that continues projecting the IMAX movie of the world. In other words, the “I” does not do anything, but Prakriti does everything.
Next, the role of the Purusha is described. The Purusha is the awareness principle, the knowledge principle present in the body. From our perspective, he is concerned with the experience of only one body out of the millions of bodies in that IMAX movie – our body. What is his role? His role is to know. If we put a drop of a bitter liquid on our tongue, it sends an electrical current to the mind based on the chemical makeup of the bitter liquid. But ultimately, it is only the Purusha that has the capacity to come up with the knowledge that “this liquid is bitter”. On one level, Purusha knows what the senses and the mind report. Without the Purusha, there will be nothing to know what Prakriti has projected. It would be like projecting a movie without an audience to see it.
So then, when this knowledge of bitterness is filtered through our vaasanaas or our “programming”, it can result in either joy or sorrow. Some of us like bitter taste, some of us don’t. This difference comes from the variety in our vaasanaas, our individual programming. So whenever external objects are arranged by Prakriti in a pattern that is conducive to our vaasanaas, the Purusha experiences joy. In other words, whenever we say “I am happy”, it is the Purusha experiencing happiness. Similarly, sorrow is also experienced when objects are undesirable.
Here, encapsulated in these two lines of this shloka, is the state of our lives. Our body with its organs interacts with other bodies in this world. It performs actions whose results are experienced by the Purusha as joy and sorrow. The cycle of joy and sorrow continues from one action to another action, from one experience to another experience. This is “samsaara”.
Now, there seems to be a problem. Right from the second chapter, we have been told that our true nature is the eternal essence. It pervades the entire universe. It is eternal, indestructible and indivisible. We have also been told that Prakriti, through some inexplicable magic, projects the entire universe of names and forms. How then, does the third entity called Purusha come into being? And also, how does it take on one body out of all the bodies in the world as its own, and experience only that body’s joy and sorrow?
Shri Krishna reveals the root cause of samsaara, of our repeated experience of joy and sorrow.
Next, the role of the Purusha is described. The Purusha is the awareness principle, the knowledge principle present in the body. From our perspective, he is concerned with the experience of only one body out of the millions of bodies in that IMAX movie – our body. What is his role? His role is to know. If we put a drop of a bitter liquid on our tongue, it sends an electrical current to the mind based on the chemical makeup of the bitter liquid. But ultimately, it is only the Purusha that has the capacity to come up with the knowledge that “this liquid is bitter”. On one level, Purusha knows what the senses and the mind report. Without the Purusha, there will be nothing to know what Prakriti has projected. It would be like projecting a movie without an audience to see it.
So then, when this knowledge of bitterness is filtered through our vaasanaas or our “programming”, it can result in either joy or sorrow. Some of us like bitter taste, some of us don’t. This difference comes from the variety in our vaasanaas, our individual programming. So whenever external objects are arranged by Prakriti in a pattern that is conducive to our vaasanaas, the Purusha experiences joy. In other words, whenever we say “I am happy”, it is the Purusha experiencing happiness. Similarly, sorrow is also experienced when objects are undesirable.
Here, encapsulated in these two lines of this shloka, is the state of our lives. Our body with its organs interacts with other bodies in this world. It performs actions whose results are experienced by the Purusha as joy and sorrow. The cycle of joy and sorrow continues from one action to another action, from one experience to another experience. This is “samsaara”.
Now, there seems to be a problem. Right from the second chapter, we have been told that our true nature is the eternal essence. It pervades the entire universe. It is eternal, indestructible and indivisible. We have also been told that Prakriti, through some inexplicable magic, projects the entire universe of names and forms. How then, does the third entity called Purusha come into being? And also, how does it take on one body out of all the bodies in the world as its own, and experience only that body’s joy and sorrow?
Shri Krishna reveals the root cause of samsaara, of our repeated experience of joy and sorrow.
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