Here is the most daring and original thought of Vyasa, we may say, throughout the entire Geeta. The Supreme, on account of His unquestioned freedom, by His own perfectly free will, takes upon Himself the conditioning of matter, and manifests Himself in a particular embodiment in the world, for serving the deluded generation of that time. To the Lord, His ‘ignorance’is but a pose assumed, not a fact lived. A mortal becomes victimised by his Avidya, while the Lord is Master of His Maya. A driver is bound by his duty to the vehicle, while the owner of the vehicle is Lord of it. He uses the vehicle for his purposes, and whenever he reaches his immediate destination, he leaves the vehicle with all freedom, and enjoys his own independent activities. But, the poor driver, bound to the vehicle, will have to guard it against intruders and serve the vehicle as its servant. The Lord uses the matter-envelopments and their limitations as a convenience and as a set of necessary tools in His game of protecting the creation.

Thus, though the Lord is Unborn and Changeless in His Nature, and ever a Lord of matter, yet, keeping His Maya perfectly under His own control, He comes into the world, through His own free will. All the time He is fully conscious of His own Divine status and unchallenged prerogative. He does not come into being as others do, compelled by His past Karma, to live here in the world under the thraldom of Nature. He is not bound by His mental temperaments but He is ever free from the mischiefs of His own Maya.

You ask your servant to take your heavy motor-cycle to the nearby garage for refilling it. If you watch him doing it you will have some idea of what the Lord is trying to express here. To that poor man, the unwieldy machine is a calamity, a suffering. To push it across the road is a risky adventure for him, because the machine, by its own weight, guides him, he being powerless to assert his mastery over it. On the other hand, if you yourself were to ride, or push, the motor-cycle, you can joyously, and easily, do so. The vehicle remaining the same, in your hands it becomes a slave to carry you, while the poor servant was being dragged by the clumsy weight of the heavy machine!

To an ordinary man who is ignorant of the working of his vehicle, it becomes a painful agony and a difficult responsibility to make use of these instruments. To the Lord, the world is no problem, and His personal equipments and their appetites are always perfectly under His own control. He comes to lord over every situation.

This perfect freedom of a God-man could not have been more beautifully brought out in so few words as in these incomparable lines.

“WHEN AND FOR WHAT PURPOSE IS THE INFINITE SO BOUND?”.. THE ANSWER FOLLOWS:

Api, san ajah, though I am birthless; and avyayatma, undecaying by nature, though I am naturally possessed of an undiminishing power of Knowledge; and so also api san, though; isvarah, the Lord, natural Ruler; bhutanam, of beings, from Brahma to a clump of grass; (still) adhisthaya, by subjugating; svam, My own; prakrtim, Prakrti, the Maya of Visnu consisting of the three gunas, under whose; spell the whole world exists, and deluded by which one does not know one’s own Self, Vasudeva;-by subjugating that Prakrti of Mine, sambhavami, I take birth, appear to become embodeid, as though born; atma-mayaya, by means of My own Maya; but not in reality like an ordinary man. It is being stated when and why that birth occurs: