NINTH CHAPTER

The Blessed Lord said:

1. To thee, who dost not carp, verily shall I now declare this, the most profound knowledge, united with realisation, having known which, thou shalt be free from evil (Samsara).

2. Of sciences, the highest; of profundities, the deepest; of purifiers, the supreme, is this; realisable by direct perception, endowed with (immense) merit, very easy to perform, and of an imperishable nature.

3. Persons without Shraddha for this Dharma, return, O scorcher of foes, without attaining Me, to the path of re-birth fraught with death.

4. All this world is pervaded by me in My unmanifested form: all beings exist in Me, but I do not dwell in them.

5. Nor do beings exist in Me (in reality), behold My Divine Yoga! Bringing forth and supporting the beings, My Self does not dwell in them.

6. As the mighty wind, moving always everywhere, rests ever in the Akasha, know thou, that even so do all beings rest in Me.

7. At the end of a Kalpa, O son of Kunti, all beings go back to My Prakriti: at the beginning of (another) Kalpa, I send them forth again.

8. Animating My Prakriti, I project again and again this whole multitude of beings, helpless under the sway of Prakriti.

9. These acts do not bind Me, sitting as one neutral, unattached to them, O Dhananjaya.

10. By reason of My proximity, Prakriti produces all this, the moving and the unmoving; the world wheels round and round, O son of Kunti, because of this.

11. Unaware of My higher state, as the great Lord of beings, fools disregard Me, dwelling in the human form.

12. Of vain hopes, of vain works, of vain knowledge, and senseless, they verily are possessed of the delusive nature of Rakshasas and Asuras.

13. But the great-souled ones, O son

of Pritha, possessed of the Divine Prakriti, knowing Me to be the origin of beings, and immutable, worship Me with a single mind.

14. Glorifying Me always and striving with firm resolve, bowing down to Me in devotion, always steadfast, they worship Me.

15. Others, too, sacrificing by the Yajna of knowledge (i.e., seeing the Self in all), worship Me the All-Formed, as one, as distinct, as manifold.

16. I am the Kratu, I the Yajna, I the Svadha, I the Aushadham, I the Mantra, I the Ajyam, I the fire, and I the oblation.

17. I am the Father of this world, the Mother, the Sustainer, the Grandfather; the Purifier, the (one) thing to be known, (the syllable) Om, and also the Rik, Saman and Yajus.

18. The Goal, the Supporter, the Lord, the Witness, the Abode, the Refuge, the Friend, the Origin, the Dissolution, the Substratum, the Storehouse, the Seed immutable.

19. (As sun) I give heat: I withhold and send forth rain; I am immortality and also death; being and non-being am I, O Arjuna!