In these two verses Sri Krishna describes how His power of maya is instrumental in the process of creation and dissolution of the universe.
The whole process of creation, preservation and dissolution is due to the Lord’s maya, His lower prakriti or nature consisting of the three gunas in their undifferentiated state and yet He is unaffected by it. Vedanta while recognizing the fact of creation does not approve of the act of creation. The Lord does not create the universe from nothing or void, for nothing only can come out from nothing. Therefore Vedanta believes that the Lord, because of His power of lower nature, maya, projects out of Himself (manifests) all the names and forms at the time of creation. Consciousness or His higher nature endows them with life.
At the end of the time-cycle, the names and forms of the manifested universe go back into the seed state and remain merged in Prakriti. At this state the three gunas of Prakriti remain in equilibrium. When this balance is disturbed, again creation takes place. This process of creation and dissolution is without beginning. Thus the better terms to indicate creation and dissolution are manifestation or evolution and mergence or involution. The Lord, in His pure essence, remains unaffected by the activities of His maya, though the insentient maya is activated because of its proximity to the Lord.
Verse 8 says that the Lord, with the help of Prakriti manifests the universe. Because of His very proximity, insentient Nature acts. Maya or Prakriti is under His control. But Jiva or the created being is under the control of maya.
Living beings come out of Prakriti which remains dormant at the end of the previous cycle. Dissolution or the state in which the three gunas remain at perfect balance is called the sleep (dormant state) of Prakriti.
The beings at the end of the previous cycle merged in Prakriti are still under the influence of maya or ignorance. As Prakriti becomes active at the beginning of the next cycle, the beings also assume appropriate births according to their past karma.
Since the creation is falsely superimposed upon the Lord, what is perceived to be the universe existing in time and space is, from the point of Reality, nothing but the Lord Himself. Just as in the illusion of a rope appearing as a snake, the falsely perceived snake is in reality nothing but the rope.
IS THE LORD PARTIAL?
