Chapter 13

Arjuna said: Gracious Kesava, I would like to hear now about Life as it appears, and the Soul beyond that observes it, and about what it is that we know — or imagine we know.

Krishna said: Yes, son of Kunti, listen. This flesh you see is called Kshetra, the field on which Life plays out its game. And what observes and knows that field is the Soul, the Kshetrajna. In every such field, Indian prince, I myself am the Kshetrajna — I am the one who surveys. Real knowledge is only that knowledge which grasps the known through the knower. What this field of life is, what qualities it has, where it comes from, why it keeps changing, and what the faculty is that perceives it, how powerful that faculty is and how it perceives — hear all this from me.

The elements, conscious life, the mind, the unseen vital force, the body’s nine strange gates and the five realms of sense; desire and aversion, pleasure and pain, thought woven deep within, and the persistence of being — all these are what the Soul works upon Matter to produce.

Humility, truthfulness, harmlessness, patience and honor, reverence for the wise, purity, steadiness, self-control, disdain for the pleasures of the senses, self-sacrifice, recognition of the certainty of suffering in birth, death, old age, disease, pain, and sin; detachment, holding loosely to home, children, wife, and everything that ties people down; a heart that remains calm through good fortune and bad, with a will firmly fixed on worshiping me — only me — without pause; loving solitude, avoiding the noise of foolish crowds; persistent effort to reach awareness of the Highest Soul, and the grace to understand what is gained by reaching it — this, Prince, is true Wisdom. Anything else is ignorance.

Now I will speak of the highest knowledge to know — the Truth that gives a man the nectar of immortality to drink: the Truth of Him, the Para-Brahm, the All, the Uncreated. He is not Asat, not Sat, neither Form nor the Formless, yet both and more. His hands are everywhere, his feet planted everywhere, his eyes everywhere observing, his ears in every place listening, his faces everywhere lighting up and encompassing his worlds. He is glorified through the senses he has given, yet he is beyond sense; he sustains all yet remains unattached; master of all forms and modes, yet he has neither form nor mode himself. He is within all beings — and outside them too; motionless, yet always moving; not perceived because his presence is too subtle and immediate; close to all, to each, yet immeasurably far. He is not many, yet he subsists in everything that lives. He is to be known forever as the Sustainer, and yet at the end of time he brings everything to its end — and creates it anew. He is the Light of Lights, shining eternally in the heart of darkness. He is Wisdom and the path of Wisdom, the Guide of all the wise, planted in every heart.

So I have told you about the stuff of Life, its shaping, and the knowledge needed to understand it. Whoever, worshiping me, perceives this will surely come to me.

Know that both Nature and Spirit have no beginning. Know that qualities, and the changes among them, are produced by Nature; that Nature sets the active body to work, but Spirit informs it, and so produces the feeling of pain and pleasure. Spirit, linked to molded matter, enters into bond with the qualities framed by Nature, and thus, married to matter, brings about rebirth in good or evil wombs.

Yet even within this bodily prison, Spirit remains pure — supreme Spirit, surveying, governing, guarding, possessing; still Lord and Master — Purusha, the Ultimate, one Soul with me.

Whoever knows himself this way, and knows his soul as Purusha working through the qualities and modes of Nature, has had the light dawn on him. Whatever body he wears now, he will never take up that load again. A few find the Soul within the self through meditation, self-taught; some reach it through long philosophy and a holy life; some by works. Others, who don’t reach it on their own, hear of the light from other lips and seize it, cling to it, worship it — and these too, true to what they have been taught, pass beyond Death.

Indian Prince, wherever there is life — moving or unmoving, plant or even still seed — know that what exists there has grown through the bond of Matter and Spirit. Know that the one who truly sees is the one who sees, in all alike, the living, lordly Soul, the Supreme Soul, imperishable among the perishing. Whoever sees in every place and every form the same one Living Life does no further wrong to himself, but takes the highest road that leads to bliss. He truly sees who sees that actions are simply Nature’s way of working, something for the Soul to act through, while remaining not the agent itself; who sees the multitude of separate living things — each of its kind — issuing from One and blending back into One. Then he has Brahma; he attains.

Prince, that Ultimate, High Spirit, uncreated, without qualities, takes no stain from actions even when it enters flesh; it does nothing. Like the ethereal air, which pervades all things and, by its sheer subtlety, takes on no taint, the subtle Soul sits everywhere, unstained. Like the light of the all-piercing sun, which is not changed by anything it shines on, the Soul’s light shines pure in every place. Those who, with this eye of wisdom, see how Matter and what works upon Matter are distinct, and how Spirit and flesh are in conflict — those wise ones travel the road that leads to Life.

Here ends Chapter XIII of the Bhagavad-Gita, titled “Kshetrakshetrajnavibhagayog,” or “The Book of Religion by Separation of Matter and Spirit.”