The Lord said: 'Kshetra (the Field) is another name for the human body and Kshetrajna
means one who knows the Field. Understand Me as the Knower of the Field in all
bodies. Real knowledge means discrimination between the Field and the knower of
the Field. The five great elements, namely, earth, water, fire, air and ether,
individuality (ahamkara), intellect, the unmanifest, the ten senses,*
mind, the five sense objects, desire and hatred, pleasure and pain, sanghata
(the power of combination inherent in the constituents of the body),
consciousness and cohesion,—these constitute the Field with its modifications.
Knowledge of these is essential, as they have to be renounced. Wisdom is the
foundation on which such renunciation can be based. Wisdom here means and
includes humility, unpretentiousness, non-violence, forgiveness, rectitude,
service of the teacher, purity, steadfastness, self-restraint, indifference to
sense objects, absence of egoism, insight into the evil of birth, death, old
age, disease and pain, detachment from wife and children, hearth and home,
friends and relations, equimindedness to good and bad fortune, whole-hearted
devotion to God, love of solitude, dislike for the enjoyment of sensual
pleasures in company with others, thirst for knowledge of the soul, and at last
the beatific vision. And the reverse of this is ignorance. Now let me tell you
something about that which has to be known with a view to salvation. That is
beginningless supreme Brahma. Brahma is beginningless because it is unborn and
was there when there was nothing. It is neither sat (existent) nor
asat (non-existent) but beyond them both. But from another standpoint it can
be called sat, because it is eternal. Human beings cannot recognize it as
such; therefore it is said to be beyond even sat. It pervades the whole
universe. It may be said to have a thousand hands and feet, and though it seems
to have hands and feet, it is devoid of the organs of sense for it does not need
these organs. Sense organs are transitory while Brahma is eternal. And although
being all-pervasive and all-sustaining, it may be said to be enjoying the
qualities (gunas), it is free from them. Where there are gunas,
there is change (vikara), but Brahma is changeless. It may be said to be
outside all beings, because it is out for those who do not know it. And it is
within all beings as it is all-pervading. Similarly it is both moving and
unmoving. It is subtle and hence imperceptible. It is distant as well as near.
It is undivided in the sense that it is imperishable though name (nama)
and form (rupa) perish, but it also seems to be divided as we say that it
is within all creatures. It creates, preserves and destroys. It is the light of
lights beyond darkness, and the end of all knowledge. Brahma which is planted in
every heart is jneya, the one thing worth knowing. All knowledge is a
means to the end of being united with it.
'God and His maya (nature) are both without beginning. Modifications (vikaras)
are born of maya and these give rise to various kinds of action
{karma). On account of maya, the soul experiences pleasure and pain
and the fruit of merit {punya) and demerit {papa). He who, having
realized this, does his duty in a spirit of detachment is not born again in
spite of his activity, for he beholds the face of God in all faces, and seeing
that not a leaf moves but by the divine will he is free from egotism,
understands that he is separate from the body and that the soul, though living
in the body, remains by means of knowledge unaffected like the omnipresent
ether.'