Being beginningless, having no beginning, a beginning being a cause, that which has no cause is beginningless; for what has a beginning passes away by its own self, but this, being beginningless and so partless, does not pass away. Likewise, being free of qualities: one who has qualities passes away by the loss of his qualities, but this, being free of qualities, does not pass away. So this supreme Self is imperishable, He whose passing-away does not exist. Since it is so, though standing in the body, since the perceiving of the Self is in bodies it is said to stand in the body, He yet does not act; and just because He does not act, He is not stained by the fruit of it; for it is the doer who is stained by the fruit of action, but this one, being a non-doer, is not stained by the fruit. Who, then, is it that, in bodies, acts and is stained? If it is some embodied one other than the supreme Self that acts and is stained, then what was said, the oneness of the field-knower and the Lord, 'know the field-knower as Me' (Gītā 13.2) and the rest, is untenable; and if there is no embodied one other than the Lord, then it must be said who it is that acts and is stained, or that there is no other. This being in every way hard to know and hard to state, the Upaniṣadic vision taught by the Blessed Lord has been abandoned by the Vaiśeṣikas, the Sāṅkhyas, the Jainas and the Buddhists. To this the Blessed Lord Himself gave the answer, 'nature engages' (Gītā 5.14): the dealing of acting and being stained belongs only to the nature that is mere ignorance; it is not, in the supreme truth, in the one supreme Self. Therefore, for those steadfast in knowledge, established in this supreme-truth Sāṅkhya vision, the supreme-order wandering ascetics who have set aside the dealings of ignorance, there is no eligibility for action: this the Blessed Lord has shown here and there.

As space, though all-pervading and though conjoined with all things, is not, by reason of its subtlety, stained by the natures of all things, so the self, by reason of its exceeding subtlety, though abiding everywhere, in the bodies of god, man, and the rest, is not stained by the natures of this and that body.

Nor is there any perishing and the rest for Him, Krishna says, with 'because of beginninglessness'. For what has a beginning is, as a rule, subject to perishing and made of the gunas. The sense of 'He does not act' and the rest was told before. There is no worldly activity and the like for Him, and so it is like the expressions 'without cognition' and the rest, which deny only the worldly form.