THIRTEEN: SPIRIT AND MATTER
“Arjuna asked: My Lord! Who is God and what is Nature; what is Matter and what is the
Self; what is that they call Wisdom, and what is it that is worth knowing? I wish to have
this explained.
Lord Shri Krishna replied: O Arjuna! The body of man is the playground of the Self; and
That which knows the activities of Matter, sages call the Self.
I am the Omniscient self that abides in the playground of Matter; knowledge of Matter
and of the all-knowing Self is wisdom.
What is called Matter, of what it is composed, whence it came, and why it changes, what
the Self is, and what Its power – this I will now briefly set forth.
Seers have sung of It in various ways, in many hymns and sacred Vedic songs, weighty in
thought and convincing in argument.
The five great fundamentals (earth, fire, air, water and ether), personality, intellect, the
mysterious life force, the ten organs of perception and action, the mind and the five
domains of sensation;
Desire, aversion, pleasure, pain, sympathy, vitality and the persistent clinging to life, these
are in brief the constituents of changing Matter.
Humility, sincerity, harmlessness, forgiveness, rectitude, service of the Master, purity,
steadfastness, self-control;
Renunciation of the delights of sense, absence of pride, right understanding of the painful
problem of birth and death, of age and sickness;
Indifference, non-attachment to sex, progeny or home, equanimity in good fortune and in
bad;
Unswerving devotion to Me, by concentration on Me and Me alone, a love for solitude,
indifference to social life;
Constant yearning for the knowledge of Self, and pondering over the lessons of the great
Truth – this is Wisdom, all else ignorance.
I will speak to thee now of that great Truth which man ought to know, since by its means
he will win immortal bliss – that which is without beginning, the Eternal Spirit which
dwells in Me, neither with form, nor yet without it.
Everywhere are Its hands and Its feet; everywhere It has eyes that see, heads that think
and mouths that speak; everywhere It listens; It dwells in all the worlds; It envelops them
all.
Beyond the senses, It yet shines through every sense perception. Bound to nothing, It yet
sustains everything. Unaffected by the Qualities, It still enjoys them all.
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