The Bhagavad Gita by Eknath Easwaran

The Field & the Knower ╯
how they think. This idea will be picked up and elaborated on
in detail in the concluding chapters of the Gita.
Verses 7–11 then describe the person who understands
his or her own true nature. This is an attractive picture of
the modest, truly wise person who is in control of his or her
own life. One implication of these verses is that it is quite an
achievement to understand the difference between the field
and the Self, the knower. Most people confuse the two, taking
the body and mind to be who they are. In the usual course of
events, we may be totally unaware that there is a Self, a consciousness
underneath the surface awareness of a separate “I.”
Verses 12–17 describe the ultimate underlying reality: Brahman,
pure, undifferentiated consciousness, the divine ground
of existence.
Verse 19 returns us to the discussion of the basic duality
of mind/matter and spirit (Self). Again the technical terms
prakriti and Purusha are used. Purusha is the knower and
prakriti the field. From the union of these two all things are
born. Both prakriti and Purusha are essential to the creation
of the world: nothing could exist without the spiritual basis of
Purusha, and nothing could develop in a manifest form without
the mind and matter of prakriti.
With its need to think of abstract principles in human
terms, Hinduism embodies these two eternal principles in the
figures of Shiva and Shakti, the divine Father and Mother. The
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