PURUSHA RESTS SEATED IN PRAKRITI — The Purusha (Spirit) has no samsara. But the “Knower of-the-Field,” Purusha, when It identifies Itself with the “Field” (Prakriti), becomes the experiencer. He identifies with the body and the senses which are the effects of Prakriti.

HE EXPERIENCES THE QUALITIES BORN OF PRAKRITI — The sensations arising out of the matter-envelopments (Prakriti) such as pleasure and pain, heat and cold, success and failure etc., constitute the painful shackles on the “Knower-of-the-Field.” The destinies of Matter become the tragic experiences of the Spirit, not because they are in the Spirit, but because the Spirit unnecessarily makes an unhealthy contact, through its own identification, with the realm of sorrow.

He not only experiences the joys and sorrows in life but also develops a blind attachment to them and this is “THE CAUSE FOR ITS BIRTH IN GOOD OR EVIL WOMBS.” “As its desire, so is its will” is a scriptural declaration of an eternal truth. While living in the world, the “Knower-of-the-Field” experiences the pleasures and joys interpreted by the world-of-Matter and gets attached to them, and thereby develops residual impressions (vasanas), and takes to conductive fields where it can eke out its cherished satisfaction through vivid experiences.

When the Spirit, eternally joyous and infinitely all-full, orders a “Field” and identifies Itself with it, It becomes the “Knower-of-the-Field” (Purusha). The Spirit, as Purusha, suffers its own delusory samsara, because, having entered the field in its pre-occupation with the world-of-objects, and in its clinging attachment to the “Field,” it looks, as though it has forgotten its own nature divine. Thus, ‘ignorance'(avidya), and attachment to the “Field,” are the two causes because of which the Satchidananda seems to have become the miserable, bemoaning, tearful, samsarin. The re-discovery of the Self and the awakening to our spiritual nature would, therefore, be through the path of (a) detachment from the “Field” and (b) experience of the Real-Knowledge; vairagya and viveka are the means for regaining the God in ourselves.

THE LORD CONTINUES TO TEACH US DIRECTLY WHAT THAT “SAVING KNOWLEDGE” IS:

Hi, since; purusah, the soul, the experiencer; is prakrtisthah, seated in Nature, which is characterized as ignorance and gets transformed into body and organs, i.e., (since the soul) has become identified with Nature; therefore, bhunkte, [Bhunkte, lit. enjoys, here means ‘experiences’.-Tr.] it enjoys, i.e. experiences; gunan, the qualities-manifest as happiness, sorrow and delusion; prakrtijan, born of Nature, thinking thus, ‘I am happy, sorrowful, deluded, learned.’ Even though ignorance continues as a cause, still the main cause of worldly existence, of birth, is the contact, the self-identification, with the qualities-happiness,sorrow, and delusion-when they are experienced, as is affirmed by the Upanisadic text, ‘What it desires, it resolves’ (Br. 4.4.5) [See Sankaracarya’s Comm. on this.-Tr.]. That very fact is stated here: Gunasangah, contact with the qualities; is karanam, the cause; asya, of its, the soul’s, the experiencer’s; sad-asad-yoni-janmasu, births in good and evil wombs. Self-identification with the qualities is the cause of the experience of births in good and evil wombs. Or the meaning is, ‘Self-identification with the qualities is the cause or its worldly existence through birth in good and evil wombs,’ where the words ‘of worldly existence’ have to be supplied. The good wombs are he wombs of gods and others; evil wombs are the wombs of gods and others; evil wombs are the wombs of beasts etc. From the force of the context it is to be understood that there is no contradiction in including even human wombs among ‘good and evil wombs’. It amounts to saying that ignorance-called ‘being seated in Nature’-and the contact with. i.e. the desire for, the qualities are the causes of worldly existence. And this is said so that they can be avoided. And in the scripture Gita it is a well-known fact that knowledge and dispassion, accompanied with renunciation, are the causes of removing this (ignorance and self-identification with the qualities). That knowledge about the field and the Knower of the field, too, has been presented earlier. This has also been said in, ‘…by realizing which one attains Immortality’ (12), etc., through the process of refutation of elements alien (to the Self) and superimposition of qualities belonging to others (that are not the Self). [Verse 12 deals with the refutation of alien elements, and vere 13 with the superimposition of qualities belonging to others.] A direct presentation is again being made of that (knowledge) itself: