The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita : 14-7.

Chapter 14: The Absolute Pervading the Universe-7.

But there is a more enigmatic declaration yet to come—na ca mat-sthani bhutani.

It also cannot be said that the world is in God, though it may be said in one way that it is in God.

Inasmuch as an effect has to have a cause, and the world reveals the characteristics of an effect, it has to be based on a cause that is wider than itself, vaster than its expanse, and we posit the existence of a Creator as the cause of this world, this universe.


So in this sense we may say that the world is rooted in God—mat-sthani sarva-bhutani.

But the omnipresence of God excludes the possibility of anything getting rooted in Him, because to imagine the rootedness of one thing in another is to assume the difference of one thing from another, an indirect refutation of the omnipresence of the Supreme Being.

Nothing external to God exists, He being the all-comprehensive Infinite, and That, external to which nothing is and nothing can be, cannot be regarded as a cause of an effect which has to be rooted in it as if it is an outside something.

So immediately the Teacher of the Gita assumes a role which is quite different from the one in which He declared that the whole world is rooted in God.


Look at the mystery and majesty of God—pasya me yogam aisvaram—behold the grandeur of the Absolute.

We will be stunned even to think of it.

The hair will stand on end, the mind will get stupefied, the senses will get blinded, the speech will get hushed and the whole personality will melt even at the thought of this majesty of the supreme Absolute, wherein nothing can be found that is in this world, while everything here is also to be present in the Supreme Being.

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued  ....