Shloka 24
Nārada’s Questions and Brahmā’s Reply: Vāsudeva as the Source; Sarga–Visarga; Virāṭ-rūpa Mapping
सोऽहङ्कार इति प्रोक्तो विकुर्वन् समभूत्त्रिधा । वैकारिकस्तैजसश्च तामसश्चेति यद्भिदा । द्रव्यशक्ति: क्रियाशक्तिर्ज्ञानशक्तिरिति प्रभो ॥ २४ ॥
so ’haṅkāra iti prokto vikurvan samabhūt tridhā vaikārikas taijasaś ca tāmasaś ceti yad-bhidā dravya-śaktiḥ kriyā-śaktir jñāna-śaktir iti prabho
အဲဒီအရာက ပြောင်းလဲလာသောအခါ ‘အဟင်္ကာရ’ ဟု ခေါ်ကြပြီး သုံးမျိုးဖြစ်လာသည်—ဝೈကာရိက၊ တೈဇသ၊ တာမသ။ အရှင်ဘုရား၊ ဤခွဲခြားမှုသည် ပစ္စည်းအင်အား၊ ဉာဏ်အင်အား၊ လုပ်ဆောင်မှုအင်အား ဟူ၍ သိကြသည်။ နာရဒ၊ သင်သည် နားလည်နိုင်သူဖြစ်သည်။
Materialistic ego, or the sense of identification with matter, is grossly self-centered, devoid of clear knowledge of the existence of God. And this self-centered egoism of the materialistic living entities is the cause of their being conditioned by the other paraphernalia and continuing their bondage of material existence. In the Bhagavad-gītā this self-centered egoism is very nicely explained in the Seventh Chapter (verses 24 through 27). The self-centered impersonalist, without a clear conception of the Personality of Godhead, concludes in his own way that the Personality of Godhead takes a material shape from His original impersonal spiritual existence for a particular mission. And this misleading conception of the Supreme Lord by the self-centered impersonalist continues, even though he is seen to be very interested in the Vedic literatures such as the Brahma-sūtras and other highly intellectual sources of knowledge. This ignorance of the personal feature of the Lord is due simply to ignorance of the mixture of different modes. The impersonalist thus cannot conceive of the Lord’s eternal spiritual form of eternal knowledge, bliss and existence. The reason is that the Lord reserves the right of not exposing Himself to the nondevotee who, even after a thorough study of literature like the Bhagavad-gītā, remains an impersonalist simply by obstinacy. This obstinacy is due to the action of yoga-māyā, a personal energy of the Lord that acts like an aide-de-camp by covering the vision of the obstinate impersonalist. Such a bewildered human being is described as mūḍha, or grossly ignorant, because he is unable to understand the transcendental form of the Lord as being unborn and unchangeable. If the Lord takes a form or material shape from His original impersonal feature, then it means that He is born and changeable from impersonal to personal. But He is not changeable. Nor does He ever take a new birth like a conditioned soul. The conditioned soul may take a form birth after birth due to his conditional existence in matter, but the self-centered impersonalists, by their gross ignorance, accept the Lord as one of them because of self-centered egoism, even after so-called advancement of knowledge in the Vedānta. The Lord, being situated in the heart of every individual living entity, knows very well the tendency of such conditioned souls in terms of past, present and future, but the bewildered conditioned soul hardly can know Him in His eternal form. By the will of the Lord, therefore, the impersonalist, even after knowing the Brahman and Paramātmā features of the Lord, remains ignorant of His eternal personal feature as ever-existent Nārāyaṇa, transcendental to all material creation.
FAQs
This verse explains that ahaṅkāra is a cosmic principle that, when it transforms, divides into three modes—goodness, passion, and ignorance—becoming the basis for matter (dravya), action (kriyā), and knowledge (jñāna).
Parīkṣit is hearing how creation unfolds from subtle causes; Śukadeva clarifies that the modes of nature act through ahaṅkāra, producing the fundamental capacities for material substance, activity, and cognition.
By recognizing how goodness, passion, and ignorance shape one’s identity and choices, a devotee can cultivate sattva, reduce rajas and tamas, and redirect the sense of “I” toward service to the Supreme.