Chapter 7 · Verse 12·Spoken by Krishna
ये चैव सात्त्विका भावा राजसास्तामसाश्च ये। मत्त एवेति तान्विद्धि नत्वहं तेषु ते मयि
ye chaiva sāttvikā bhāvā rājasās tāmasāśh cha ye matta eveti tān viddhi na tvahaṁ teṣhu te mayi
Whatever states there are of sattva, rajas, and tamas, know that they come from me alone. I am not in them; they are in me.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
rishna gathers up everything in the world under three headings and traces it all back to himself. 'Bhava' means a state or mode of being, any condition that arises in a creature. The three kinds are sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic, named after the three gunas, the basic strands or qualities out of which nature is woven: sattva (clarity, calm, purity), rajas (drive, agitation, passion), and tamas (heaviness, dullness, delusion). Commentators fill these in with concrete examples. Sattvic states include calm, self-restraint, knowledge, dispassion; rajasic states include greed, joy, pride, arrogance, engagement; tamasic states include sorrow, delusion, sleep, indolence. The verse declares that all of these, whatever states arise in beings, come from Krishna alone, since there is no other source outside him.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Rāmānujācārya · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Bhāskara · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas
The verse then draws a careful, one-directional relationship between the Lord and these states, and the commentators stress that the two halves do not cancel each other. 'I am not in them; they are in me.' This asymmetry is the heart of the verse. Though the states are born from Krishna, he is not in them in the sense of being dependent on them, ruled by them, or caught up in them the way an ordinary embodied being is caught in its own moods and circumstances. The relationship runs only one way: they rest on him, draw their being from him, and are subject to him, while he stays free, the support that is never supported by what it holds up.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrī Bhāskara · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Several commentators explain how the source can give rise to states without being changed or stained by them, using the same favorite images. The Lord is like a rope from which an imagined snake seems to arise: the rope lends the snake-appearance its very existence and visibility, yet the rope is not affected by anything that belongs to the snake. So too the states have their being and their shining only from the Lord, while the Lord, untouched, lends them only his own being and light. This is why he does not become 'samsaric,' caught in the round of birth and death, even though the whole field of changing states comes out of him.
Braided from 6 commentators
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Sant Jñāneśvar
Read in its setting, the verse is the deliberate closing summary of the passage that began a few verses earlier, where Krishna had named himself the taste in water, the light in moon and sun, the sound in space, the strength of the strong, and so on. Those were sample cases; this verse generalizes them into a rule that covers every state of every thing, gathering the whole class together rather than adding one more example. The 'and' here is the summing-up, not a fresh item. So the verse is the doctrinal seal on the teaching that the Lord is the inner ground of all the guna-states while himself never being held inside them or qualified by them.
Braided from 7 commentators
Vedānta Deśika · Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Vallabhācārya · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
On this reading the asymmetry of the verse rests on the difference between what is ultimately real and what is only imagined upon it. The Lord is the one real substrate; the three kinds of states are like the snake superimposed on a rope, having no independent standing of their own. Because they are merely imagined and dependent, while the Lord is ultimately real, their qualities and faults cannot belong to him; the substrate stays untouched by the projection, lending it only being and shining. This also answers a worry: if the Lord were the self of everything, would he not become changeable and faulty along with the world? The answer is that 'they are in me' must not be read as the Lord really being modified; the modification belongs only to name and speech, like things seen in a dream or conjured by a magician. One source notes that this position only holds firm when read through vivarta-vada, the teaching that the world is an apparent transformation, not a real one. Another source adds the Lord's compassion as the framing: he is eternally pure, awake, and free by his very being, the self of all, the cause that burns up the seed of the faults of transmigration, and the verse leads into why the world still fails to recognize him.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Here the relationship of the states to the Lord is the relationship of body to indwelling self. All the sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic states, as things to be enjoyed, as bodies, as senses, and as the causes of this and that, arise from the Lord and abide in him as his body. The asymmetry is read not through superimposition but through dependence for standing: a body depends on its self in order to exist, but the self does not depend on the body. With ordinary selves the body at least serves some use to the self; for the Lord there is no such need from his creation. His only purpose in it is play, lila. So 'they are in me' means they rest in him as his body, and 'I am not in them' means he is never at any time dependent on them for his own standing.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
On this reading the states and the things that bear them are genuinely real and genuinely distinct from the Lord, not imagined. The property-bearers, water and the rest, are themselves dependent on the Lord and are objects of his enjoyment, and so too are their properties, such as taste. The Lord is not engaged in his world the way an ordinary craftsman is, for whom the qualities of the cloth arise only as a side-effect of weaving the cloth; rather, the Lord is separately and deliberately at work in the very properties of things, and even in the properties of those properties. The verse's 'I am not in them' is read precisely as his not being supported by them: he does not stand by depending on them, even though the self abides in all beings. This reading is anchored throughout in scriptural authority and preserves a real difference of persons between the Lord and the dependent world.
Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
Here the world is the Lord's own playful self-becoming, and the states are read in a devotional, rasa-centered key. The Bhagavan stands as the material cause of all the states while remaining wholly free of every guna-affection, and the states stand wholly within him as his own portions. One source draws the sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic states straight from the body of devotion: the bristling of hair on beholding what is related to the Lord, the bodily agitations of love, even the swoons and faintings that come in the recollection of separation from him. These qualities have been brought forth by the Lord for the sake of rasa, the savor of loving relationship, and they awaken in their own rasa through contact with him and render him service. So they abide in him; it is not that he becomes rasa-laden in them as an ordinary soul does after such states have arisen. The devotee of the path of nourishing grace therefore takes the whole world as nothing but his Lord's play, while holding firmly that the Lord himself is never grasped by any quality.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhedabheda
This reading fills the three kinds of states with whole classes of beings: the sattvic ones are the gods and the like, the rajasic ones the demons and humans, the tamasic ones the serpents and the like. All of them proceed from the Lord alone. 'I am not in them' is glossed as his not being dependent on creatures, and 'they are in me' as their activity depending on him. The reading then moves straight on to the next verse, where these three guna-made states are what deludes the whole world so that it fails to recognize the Lord who is beyond them and imperishable.
Śrī Bhāskara
Kashmir Shaivism
On this reading the verse points toward the recognition that 'Vasudeva is all.' Sattva and the rest are made of the Lord, but the Lord is not made of them. Because of just this, one who is himself made of the Blessed One comes to know everything by way of the Blessed One, whereas one who rests in sorting out the manifold separate things never reaches the truth of the Blessed One. The world, deluded by the gunas, does not apprehend the truth of Vasudeva, which lies beyond the gunas. Only the rare great soul, whose inner organ is favored by a descent of the supreme power that comes when many births of action have at last ripened into evenness, reaches that truth through the knowledge that all is Vasudeva.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
These commentators read the verse as the Lord folding every subordinate thing back into himself as his own manifestation, and they fill in the same three columns: sattvic states such as tranquility and restraint, and the gods; rajasic states such as joy and arrogance, and the demons; tamasic states such as sorrow and delusion, and the night-rangers. They arise from the Lord because they are the effects of the qualities of his own nature, his prakriti. 'I am not in them' is glossed as his not being subject to them as a living being is, and 'they are in me' as their existing only as held in him and subject to him. One source closes the chain of non-difference texts with the advaitic modal that the Lord pervades them as their ground and is not modified by them, naming this as the very savor of Sat-Cit-Ananda-Bhagavan-Vasudeva, the one now to be worshipped. Another offers a string of natural images: all change comes from the Lord's being yet his being is not subject to change, as clouds appear to change in the sky though the pure sky is not in them, as water comes from clouds though the clouds are not in the water, as lightning flashes from the friction of water in the clouds though there is not a drop of water in the flash, as smoke rises from fire though no fire is found in the smoke.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These commentators draw the practical and devotional weight out of the verse. One frames it as a world made wholly of the three gunas, where every being and object is a mixture in which one quality predominates and gives the thing its character, and then states the asymmetry through the familiar images: the snake depends on the rope but the rope never depends on the snake, the waves belong to the ocean but the ocean does not belong to the waves. Another puts it simply: God is not dependent on these manifestations, they are dependent on him, and without him they would be impossible. A third develops the verse into spiritual direction: since everything that happens in all creation gets its very existence and aliveness from the Lord alone, and since whatever is remarkable in the states is really the Lord's, the seeker's eye should go to the Lord and not to the states themselves. If the eye goes to the Lord one is set free; if it goes to the states one is bound.
Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If sattvic, rajasic, and tamasic states all alike come from God, including greed, sorrow, and delusion, does that not make God the author of evil and dissolve the difference between right and wrong action?
The verse does trace every state without exception back to the Lord, since there is no other source outside him; this is the plain force of 'know all of them to arise from me alone.' But the second half of the verse is exactly what keeps this from staining him: 'I am not in them; they are in me.' He is the ground from which the states arise, not a being who is caught up in them, ruled by them, or modified by them. The relationship runs one way only.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrī Bhāskara
Commentators picture this with the rope and the snake. The rope lends the imagined snake its whole appearance and existence, yet nothing that belongs to the snake belongs to the rope. So the states draw their being and their shining from the Lord while he stays untouched by their qualities and faults, like a rope unstained by the modification of the snake imagined on it. He gives them his being and light; he does not take on their character.
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda
As for right and wrong action, one commentator meets this worry head-on and answers that the verse does not loosen the moral rules. Where the question is one of doing or not doing, the ordinary distinction stands: do the enjoined action and refuse the forbidden, because pleasant and painful circumstances are the fruits of right and wrong action respectively. Treating a forbidden act as 'all God anyway' and doing it only means the Lord meets you in the form of the suffering it brings. The verse's larger vision belongs to meditation and knowing, where the Supreme alone is taken to heart and the passing world is seen through; it is not a license that erases conduct.
Swami Ramsukhdas
Contemplation
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