SEVENTH CHAPTER

1. THE TWO NATURES

1. The Blessed Lord said: Hear, O Partha, how by practising Yoga with a mind attached to me and with me as ashraya (the whole basis, lodgement, point of resort of the conscious being and action) thou shalt know me without any remainder of doubt, integrally.¹

2. I will speak to thee without omission or remainder the essential knowledge, attended with all the comprehensive knowledge, by knowing which there shall be no other thing here left to be known.

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1.The implication of the phrase is that the Divine Being is all, vasudevah sarvam, and therefore if he is known integrally in all his powers and principles, then all is known, not only the pure Self, but the world and action and Nature. There is then nothing else here left to be known, because all is that Divine Existence. It is only because our view here is not thus integral, because it rests on the dividing mind and reason and the separative idea of the ego, that our mental perception of things is an ignorance. We have to get away from this mental and egoistic view to the true unifying knowledge, and that has two aspects, the essential, jnana, and the comprehensive, vijnana, the direct spiritual awareness of the supreme Being and the right intimate knowledge of the principles of his existence, Prakriti, Purusha and the rest, by which all. that is can be known in its divine origin and in the supreme truth of its nature. That integral knowledge, says the Gita, is a rare and difficult thing.

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3. Among thousands of men one here and there strives after perfection, and of those who strive and attain to perfection one here and there knows me in all principles of my existence.

4. The five elements (conditions of material being), mind (with its various senses and organs), reason, ego, this is my eightfold¹ divided Nature.

5. This the lower. But know my other Nature² different from this, O mighty-armed, the supreme which becomes the Jiva¹ and by which this world is upheld.

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1 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. Here is the first new metaphysical idea of the Gita which helps it to start from the notions of the Sankhya philosophy and yet exceed them and give to their terms, which it keeps and extends, a Vedantic significance. An eightfold nature is the Sankhya description of Prakriti. The Sankhya stops there, and because it stops there, it has to set up an unbridgeable division between the soul and -Nature; it has to posit them as two quite distinct primary entities. The Gita also, if it stopped there, would have to make the same incur- able antinomy between the Self and cosmic Nature which would then be only the Maya of the three gunas and all this cosmic existence would be simply the result of this Maya; it could be nothing else. But there is something else, there is a higher principle, a nature of spirit, para prakritir mama.

2 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 active power of his Nature, Krishna assevers, "This is the womb of all beings." 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."

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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 inflfeite 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, para prakritir jivabhuta, 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 v^hat is initially meant by the supreme Nature.

1. The supreme Nature, para prakriti, is then the infinite timeless conscious power of the self-existent Being out of whichall 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 eternel multiple soul of the Purushottama appears as individual spiritual existence in all the forms of the cosmos. All existences are instinct with the life of the one indivisible Spirit; all are supported in their personality, actions and forms by the eternal multiplicity of the one Purusha. We must be careful not to make the mistake of thinking that this supreme Nature is identical with the Jiva manifested in Time in the sense that there is nothing else or that it is only nature of becoming and not at all nature of being: that could not be the supreme Nature of the Spirit. Even in time it ie something more; for otherwise the only truth of it in the cosmos would be nature of multiplicity and there would be no nature of unity in the world. That is not what the Gita says: it does not say that the supreme Prakriti is in its essence the Jiva, jivatmakam, but that it has become the Jiva, jivabhutam; and it is implied in that expression that behind its manifestation as the Jiva here it is originally something else and higher, it is nature of the one supreme spirit. The Jiva, as we are told later on, is the Lord, Ishwara, but in his partial manifestation, mamaivan- shah; even all the multiplicity of beings in the universe or in numberless universes could not be in their becoming the integral Divine, but only a partial manifestation of the infinite One. In them Brahman the one indivisible existence resides as if

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6. Know this to be the womb of all beings. I am the birth of the whole world and so too its dissolution.

7. There is nothing else supreme beyond Me, O Dhananjaya. On Me¹ all that is here is strung like pearls upon a tread.

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divided, avibfwktam cha bhuteshu vibhaktam iva cha sthitam The unity is the greater truth, the multiplicity is the lesser truth, though both are a truth and neither of them is an illusion

It is by the unity of this spiritual nature that the world is sustained, yayedam dharyate jagat, even as it is that from which it is born with all its becomings, etad-yonini bhutani sarvani, and that also which withdraws the whole world and its existences into itself in the hour of dissolution, aham kritsnasya jagatah prabhavah pralayastatha. 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 supreme nature of spiritual being gives us then both an original truth and power of existence beyond cosmos and a first basis of spiritual truth for the manifestation in the cosmos. But where is the link between this supreme nature and the lower phenomenal nature ?

1 This is only an image which we cannot press very far ; for the pearls are only kept in relation to each other by the thread and have no other oneneas or relation with the pearl- string except their dependence on it for this mutual connection.

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Let us go then from the image to that which it images. It is the supreme nature of Spirit, the infinite conscious power of its being, self-conscient, all-conscient, all-wise, which maintains these phenomenal existences in relation to each other, penetrates them, abides in and supports them and weaves them into the system of its manifestation. This one supreme power manifests not only in all as the One, but in each as the Jiva, the individual spiritual presence; it manifests also as the essence of all quality of Nature. These are therefore the concealed spiritual powers behind all phenomena. This highest quality is not the working of the three gunas, which is phenomenon of quality and not its spiritual essence. It is rather the inherent, one, yet variable inner power of all these superficial variations. It is a
fundamental truth of the Becoming, a truth that supports and gives a spiritual and divine significance to all its appearances. The workings of the gunas are only the superficial unstable becomings of reason, mind, sense, ego, life and matter, sattwika- bhava rajasas tamasash cha', but this is rather the essential stable original intimate power of the becoming, swabhava. It is that which determines the primary law of all becoming and of each Jiva; it constitutes the essence and develops the movement of the nature. It is a principle in each creature that derives from and is immediately related to a transcendent divine Becoming, that of the Ishvara, madbhavah. In this relation of the divine bhava to the swabhava and of the swabhava to the superficial bhava, of the divine Nature to the individual self-nature and of self-nature in its pure and original quality to the phenomenal nature in all its mixed and confused play of qualities', we find the link between that supreme and this lower existence. The degraded powers and values of the inferior Prakriti derive from the absolute powers and values of the supreme Shakti and must go back to them to find their own source and truth and the essential law of their operation and movement. So too the soul or Jiva involved here in the shackled, poor and inferior play of the phenomenal qualities, if he would escape from it and be divine and perfect, must by resort to the pure action of his essential quality of swabhava go back to that higher law of his own being in which he can discover the will, the power, the dynamic principle, the highest working of his divine nature.

This is clear from the immediately subsequent passage in which the Gita gives a number of instances to show how the Divine in the power of his supreme Nature manifests and acts within the animate and so-called inanimate existences of the universe.

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8. I am taste ¹ in the waters, O son of Kunti, I am the light² of sun and moon, I am pranava³ (the syllable OM) in all the Vedas, sound in ether and manhood in men.

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1 'The, Divine himself in his Para Prakrit! is the energy at the basis of' the various sensory relations of which, according to the ancient Sankhya system, the ethereal, the radiant, electric and gaseous, the liquid and the other elemental conditions of matter are the physical medium. The five elemental conditions of matter are the quantitative or material element in the lower nature and are the basis of material forms. The five tanmatras —taste, touch, scent and the others—are the qualitative element. These tanmatras are the subtle energies whose action puts the sensory consciousness in relation to the gross forms of matter,—they are the basis of all phenomenal knowledge. From the material point of view matter is the reality and the sensory relations are derivative; but from the spiritual point of view the truth is the opposite. Matter and the material media are themselves derivative powers and at bottom are only concrete ways or conditions in which the workings of the quality of Nature in things manifest themselves to the sensory conscious- ness of the Jiva. The one original and eternal fact is the energy of Nature, the power and quality of being which so manifest? itself to the soul through the senses. And what is essential in the senses, most spiritual, most subtle is itself stuff of that eternal quality and power. But energy or power of being in Nature is the Divine himself in his Prakriti; each sense in its purity is therefore that Prakriti, each sense is the Divine in his dynamic conscious force.

2 In each case it is the energy of the essential quality on which each of these becomings depends for what it has become, that is given as the characteristic sign indicating the presence of the divine Power in their nature.

3 The basic syllable OM is the foundation of all the potent creative sounds of the revealed word; OM is the one universal formulation of the energy of sound and speech, that which contains and sums up, synthetises and releases, all the spiritual power and all the potentiality of vak and shabda and of which the other sounds, out of whose stuff words of speech, are woven, are supposed to be the developed evolutions. That makes it quite clear. It is not the phenomenal developments of the senses or of life or of light, intelligence, energy, strength, manhood, ascetic force that are proper to the supreme Prakriti. It is the essential quality in its spiritual power that constitutes the swabhava. It is the force of spirit so manifesting, it is the light of its consciousness and the power of its energy in things revealed

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9. I am pure scent in earth and energy of light in fire; I am life in all existences, I am the ascetic force of those who do askesis.

10. Know me to be the eternal seed of all existences, O son of Pritha. I am the intelligence of the intelligent, the energy of the energetic.

11. I am the strength of the strong devoid of desire and liking.¹ I am in beings the desire which is not contrary to dharma, O Lord of the Bharatas.

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in a pure original sign that is the self-nature. That force, light, power is the eternal seed from which all other things are the developments and derivations and variabilities and plastic circumstances. Therefore the Gita throws in as the most general statement in the series, "Know me to be the eternal seed of all existences, 0 son of Pritha." This eternal seed is the power of spiritual being, the conscious will in the being, the seed which, as is said elsewhere, the Divine casts into the great Brahman, into the supramental vastness, and from that all are born into phenomenal existence. It is that seed of Spirit which manifests itself as the essential quality in all becomings and constitutes their swabhava.

l The practical distinction between this original power of essential quality and the phenomenal derivations of the lower nature, between the thing itself in its purity and the thing in its lower appearances, is indicated very clearly at the close of the series.

But how can the Divine be desire, Kama for this desire, this Kama has been declared to be our one great enemy who has to be slain. But that desire was the desire of the lower nature of the gunas which has its native point o{ origin in the rajasic being, rajogima-samndbhavah; for this is what we usually mean when we speak of desire. This other, the spiritual, is a will not contrary to the dharma. Dharma. in the spiritual

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12. And as for the secondary subjective becomings of Nature, bhavah (states of mind, affections of desire, movements of passion, the reactions of the senses, the limited and dual play of reason, the turns of the feeling and moral sense), which are sattwic, rajasic and tamasic, they are verily from me, but I am not in them, it is they that are in me.¹

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sense is not morality or ethics. Dharma, says the Gita elsewhere, is action governed by the swabhava, the essential law of one's nature. And this swabhava is at its core the pure quality 6f the spirit, in its inherent power of conscious will and its characteristic force of action. The desire meant here is therefore the purposeful will of the Divine in us searching for and discovering not the pleasure of the lower Prakriti, but the Ananda of its own play and self-fulfilling; it is the desire of the divine Delight of existence unrolling its own conscious force of action in accordance with the law of the swabhava.

1 What again is meant, by saying that the Divine is not in the becomings, the forms and affections of tlie lower nature, even the sattwic, though they all are in his being ? In a sense he must evidently be in them, otherwise they could not exist. But what is meant is that tlie true and supreme spiritual nature of the Divine is not imprisoned there; they are only phenomena in his being created out of it by tlie action of the ego and the ignorance. The ignorance presents everything to us in an inverted vision and at least a partially falsified experience We imagine that the soul is in the body, almost a result and derivation from the body; even we so feel it: but it is the body that is in the soul and a result and derivation from the soul. We think of the spirit as a small part of us—the Purusha who is no bigger than the thumb—in this great mass of material and mental phenomena: in reality, the latter for all its imposing appearance is a very small thing in the infinity of the being of the spirit. So it is here; in much the same sense these things are in the Divine rather than the Divine in these things. This lower nature of the three gunas which creates so false a view of things and imparts to them an inferior character is a "Maya, a power of illusion, by which it is not meant that it is all

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13. By these three kinds of becoming which are of the nature of the gunas, this whole world is bewildered and does not recognise Me supreme beyond them and imperishable.

14. This is my divine¹ Maya of the gunas and it is hard to overcome; those cross beyond it who approach Me.

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non-existent or deals with unrealities, but that it bewilders our knowledge., creates false values, envelops us in ego, mentality, sense, physicality, limited intelligence and there conceals from us the supreme truth of our existence. This illusive Maya hides from us the Divine that we are, the infinite and imperishable spirit. If we could see that the Divine is the real truth of our existence, all else also would change to our vision, assume its true character and our life and action acquire the divine values and move in the law of the divine nature.

1 It is itself divine and a development from the nature of the Divine, but the Divine in the nature of the gods; it is daivi, of the godheads or, if you will, of the Godhead, but of the Godhead in its divided subjective and lower cosmic aspects, sattwic, rajasic and tamasic. It is a cosmic veil which the Godhead has spun around our understanding; Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra have woven its complex threads; the Shakti, the Supreme Nature is there at its base and is hidden in its every tissue. We have to work out this web in ourselves and turn through it and from it leaving it behind us when its use is finished, turn from the gods to the original and supreme Godhead in whom we shall discover at the same time the last sense of the gods and their works and the inmost spiritual verities of our own imperishable existence. "To Me who turn and come, they alone cross over beyond this Maya."

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