VII: 5

[Krishna Jaya]

Chapter 7, Verse 5

"This is Nature
In its lower manifestation,
But beyond this,
I have another,
Higher, supreme Nature,
The fountain of Life
Whereby this Universe
Pours forth its Being."

Swami Shivananda:

The eight-fold Nature described in the previous verse is known as the lower Prakriti. It constitutes the unified field of matter. The higher Nature, Para Prakriti, is my very Self, says Krishna, by which Life is sustained. It is that which enters the whole world and upholds it. It is the very Life-element by which the Universe is sustained in its evolution.

Paramahansa Yogananda:

The Krishna or Christ consciousness is the intelligence of God immanent in all of creation as the unchanged and unchanging pure reflection of God. Para Prakriti is that same consciousness expressing itself through the creative power of individuality and diversity.

[In the past, whenever I came across this image of immanence as the pure reflection of God, it gave me trouble, because it just didn't seem to fit very well, so this time I looked up "reflection" in the dictionary. One of the definitions is, "the action of the mind by which it is conscious of its own operation." This is in line with the idea of a witnessing presence as alert stillness.]

Eckhart Tolle:

When you look at a tree, you are aware of the tree. When you have a thought or feeling, you are aware of that thought or feeling. When you have a painful or pleasurable experience, you are aware of that experience. These seem to be true and obvious statements, yet if you look at them closely, you find that in a subtle way their very structure contains a fundamental illusion that becomes unavoidable with the use of language. Thought and language create an apparent duality and a separate person when in fact there is none.

The truth is this. You are not somebody who is aware of the tree, the thought, the feeling or the experience. You are the awareness or consciousness in which those things appear. As you go about your daily activities, can you be aware of yourself as that awareness in which the entire content of your life unfolds?

[The awareness or consciousness in which everything appears is known as the Self in the Gita. It is inactive and changeless. The higher power in the Universe provides the impetus behind the world of manifestation which arises from the changeless Self and later subsides back into it in a succession of cycles without beginning or end. The changeless substratum and the higher power are essentially, indivisibly one and make up what is known as the Supreme Self. Krishna embodies the Supreme Self, at once the divine foundation of all and the higher power in the Universe.]

 

 

 

Sri Aurobindo:

 

The Supreme Prakriti is the essential quality and force, Swabhava, the inherent principle in all the becomings of all beings, the divine power behind their phenomenal existence.  All this activity of forms, all this mental and sensuous striving of the lower nature is only a phenomenon, which could not exist at all except for this spiritual force and this power of Being.  When we dwell in the phenomenal nature only, we are not able to get at the real truth of our active existence.  The real truth is this spiritual power, this divine force of Being, this essential quality of spirit in which things exist and from which they draw all their potencies and seeds of their movements.  Get at that truth, and we shall get at the divine principle of our living and the motivating power behind our evolution.

 

The supreme nature, Para Prakriti, is then the infinite, timeless, conscious power out of which all existences in the cosmos come out of timelessness into time and thus into manifestation.  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 in another way, the eternal multiple soul of the Purushottam (the supreme soul, the transcendent and universal spirit, Krishna himself) appears as individual spiritual existence in all the forms of the cosmos.  All existences are infused with the life of the one indivisible spirit.  All are supported in their personalities, actions and forms by the eternal multiplicity of the one, supreme Purusha.

 

We need to be careful not to make the mistake of thinking that this supreme nature is identical with the Jiva manifested in time.  That could not be the supreme nature of the spirit.  The Gita does not say that the supreme Prakriti is in its essence the Jiva, but that it has become the Jiva.  The implication is that behind its manifestation as the Jiva it is originally something else and higher; it is the nature of the one supreme spirit.  The multiplicity of beings in the universe cannot be in their becoming identical with the integral divine, but only a partial manifestation of the infinite one.

 

In the multiplicity of beings, the Self, the one indivisible existence resides as if divided.  The unity is the greater truth, the multiplicity is the lesser truth, though both are a truth and neither of them is an illusion.  The fundamental nature of all things is Spirit.  Only in the Jivas’ lower, differential phenomena do they seem to be something else, i.e., thought and form.  These are phenomenal derivatives.  They are not the essential truth of our nature and our existence.  The supreme nature of spiritual Being gives us both an original truth and power of existence beyond the cosmos and a first basis of spiritual truth for the manifestation of all the elements of the cosmos.