Chapter 13: The Field and Its Knower
क्षेत्र-क्षेत्रज्ञविभागयोग
The body is the field and awareness is its knower. Seeing the difference, and the one Self in all beings, brings freedom.
Verse 13.1The Blessed Lord said: This body, son of Kuntî, is called the Field; that which knoweth it is called the Knower of the Field by the Sages.Verse 13.2Understand Me as the Knower of the Field in all Fields, O Bhârata. Wisdom as to the Field and the Knower of the Field, that in My opinion is the wisdom.Verse 13.3What that Field is and of what nature, how modified, and whence it is, and what He is and what His powers, hear that now briefly from Me.Verse 13.4Rishis have sung in manifold ways, in many various chants, and in decisive Brahma-sûtra verses full of reasonings.Verse 13.5The great Elements, Individuality, Reason, and also the unmanifested, the ten senses and the one, and the five pastures of the senses;Verse 13.6Desire, aversion, pleasure, pain, combination, intelligence, firmness; these, briefly described, constitute the Field and its modifications.Verse 13.7Humility, unpretentiousness, harmlessness, forgiveness, rectitude, service of the teacher, purity, steadfastness, self-control.Verse 13.8Dispassion towards the objects of the senses, and also absence of egoism, insight into the pain and evil of birth, death, old age and sickness,Verse 13.9Unattachment, absence of self-identification with son, wife or home, and constant balance of mind in wished-for and unwished-for events,Verse 13.10Unflinching devotion to Me by yoga, without other objects, resort to sequestered places, absence of enjoyment in the company of men,Verse 13.11Constancy in the wisdom of the Self, understanding of the object of essential wisdom; that is declared to be the Wisdom; all against it is ignorance.Verse 13.12I will declare that which ought to be known, that which being known immortality is enjoyed—the beginningless supreme Eternal, called neither being nor non-being.Verse 13.13Everywhere That hath hands and feet, everywhere eyes, heads, and mouths; all-hearing, He dwelleth in the world, enveloping all,Verse 13.14Shining with all sense-faculties without any senses; unattached supporting everything and free from qualities enjoying qualities;Verse 13.15Without and within all beings, immovable and also movable; by reason of His subtlety imperceptible; at hand and far away is That.Verse 13.16Not divided amid beings, and yet seated distributively; that is to be known as the supporter of beings; He devours and He generates.Verse 13.17That, the Light of all lights, is said to be beyond darkness; Wisdom, the Object of Wisdom, by Wisdom to be reached, seated in the hearts of all.Verse 13.18Thus the Field, Wisdom and the Object of Wisdom, have been briefly told. My devotee, thus knowing, enters into My Being.Verse 13.19Know thou that Matter and Spirit are both without beginning; and know thou also that modifications and qualities are all Matter -born.Verse 13.20Matter is called the cause of the generation of causes and effects; Spirit is called the cause of the enjoyment of pleasure and pain.Verse 13.21Spirit seated in Matter useth the qualities born of Matter; attachment to the qualities is the cause of his births in good and evil wombs.Verse 13.22Supervisor and permitter, supporter, enjoyer, the great Lord, and also the supreme Self; thus is styled in this body the supreme Spirit.Verse 13.23He who thus knoweth Spirit and Matter with its qualities, in whatsoever condition he may be, he shall not be born again.Verse 13.24Some by meditation behold the Self in the self by the Self; others by the Sânkhya Yoga, and others by the Yoga of Action;Verse 13.25Others also, ignorant of this, having heard of it from others, worship; and these also cross beyond death, adhering to what they had heard.Verse 13.26Whatsoever creature is born immobile or mobile, know thou, O best of the Bhâratas, that it is from the union between the Field and the Knower of the Field.Verse 13.27Seated equally in all beings, the supreme Lord, unperishing within the perishing—he who thus seeth, he seeth.Verse 13.28Seeing indeed everywhere the same Lord equally dwelling, he doth not destroy the Self, and thus treads the highest Path.Verse 13.29He who seeth that Matter verily performeth all actions, and that the Self is actionless, he seeth.Verse 13.30When he perceiveth the diversified existence of beings as rooted in One, and spreading forth from it, then he reacheth the EternalVerse 13.31Being beginningless and without qualities, the imperishable supreme Self, though seated in the body, O Kaunteya, worketh not nor is affected.Verse 13.32As the omnipresent ether is not affected, by reason of its subtlety, so seated everywhere in the body the Self is not affected.Verse 13.33As the one sun illumineth the whole earth, so the Lord of the Field illumineth the whole Field, O Bhârata.Verse 13.34They who by the eyes of Wisdom perceive this difference between the Field and the Knower of the Field, and the liberation of beings from Matter they go to the Supreme.