Know Nature and the Puruṣa, the two Natures of the Lord, both, to be beginningless, having no beginning; since the Lord is the eternal Lord, it is fitting that His two Natures too be eternal. The very possession of two Natures is the Lord's lordship; the two Natures by which the Lord is the cause of the world's arising, continuance and dissolution, being beginningless, are the cause of transmigration. Some explain the compound as 'not having a beginning', holding that by this the Lord's being the cause is established; for if Nature and the Puruṣa were themselves eternal, the world would be made by them and the Lord would not be its maker. That is wrong: before the arising of Nature and the Puruṣa there would be nothing to be ruled, and so the Lord would come to be no Lord; with transmigration uncaused there would be no release; scripture would be purposeless; and there would be no bondage and liberation. But with the eternality of the Lord and of His two Natures all this is tenable. How? Know the modifications and the qualities, about to be told, the modifications from the intellect down to body and the senses, and the qualities transformed into the forms of the cognitions of pleasure, pain and delusion, to be born of Nature: Nature, the Lord's power that is the cause of modification, the māyā made of the three qualities, is the source of those modifications and qualities; know them to be born of Nature, transformations of Nature. What, then, are those modifications and qualities born of Nature?

The effect is the body; the causes are the senses, of the nature of knowing and acting, together with the mind; in their doing of their actions, nature, presided over by the person, is itself the cause; that is, the action that is the means of experience rests on nature transformed into the shape of the field and presided over by the person. But of the person there is only presiding; that, beyond it, is what is more, told in 'the doer, because scripture would otherwise be meaningless' and the rest; for the person's agency is just the being the cause of the effort that presides over the body. The person, conjoined with nature, is the cause in the experiencing of pleasures and pains, that is, the seat of the experience of pleasure and pain. This is the meaning. Thus the difference of effect of nature and person when mutually conjoined has been told. The Lord states that the person, though of itself having the single happiness of the experience of itself, is the cause of the experiencing of the pleasure and pain that belong to objects.

To speak of 'and from what, and what' (13.4), Krishna states, in brief, prakriti, the modifications, and the person. 'Gunas' are sattva and the rest. Since there is only a very slight distinction between them, namely that creation comes from dissolution, the modifications are stated separately. The Madhucchandas branch says, 'the three qualities of the to-be-done and the not-to-be-done, from which there is a slight arising at birth'.