With Me of changeless self as overseer, of the very nature of mere seeing on every side, My māyā, the Nature made of the three qualities, marked by ignorance, gives birth to, brings forth, the world of moving and unmoving things. So too runs the verse of the mantra: 'One God, hidden in all beings, all-pervading, the inmost Self of all beings, the overseer of action, the dweller in all beings, the witness, the knower, the one and only, free of qualities' (Śvetāśvatara 6.11). By this cause, namely My being the overseer, O son of Kuntī, the world of moving and unmoving things, made of the manifest and the unmanifest, turns about in all its states. For all the activity of the world has for its occasion the world's coming under the role of an object of seeing: 'I shall enjoy this', 'I see this', 'I hear this', 'I feel pleasure', 'I feel pain', 'for that I shall do this', 'this I shall know', and so on, all resting on apprehension and ending only in apprehension. And the mantras 'who is the overseer of this in the highest heaven' (Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa 2.8.9) and the rest show this very meaning. From this it follows that, there being no other conscious being besides the one God who is mere consciousness, the overseer of all, who in the supreme truth is not connected with any enjoyment, there is no other enjoyer. As to the question and answer 'from what occasion is this creation', they are untenable, by such verses of the mantra as 'who truly knows, who here can declare it, whence it was born, whence is this sending-forth' (Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa 2.8.9). And the Blessed Lord has shown it: 'knowledge is veiled by ignorance, and thereby creatures are deluded' (Gītā 5.15). Thus, though I am of this nature, eternally pure, awake and free, all-knowing, and the very Self of all creatures.

Therefore My nature, conforming to the action of the field-knowers, looked upon by Me, of true resolve, as the overseer, gives birth to the world with its moving and unmoving things; by this cause, namely My looking-upon that conforms to the field-knowers' action, the world revolves. See thus the lordly discipline of Me, the son of Vasudeva: My ownership, My being of true resolve, My freedom from the faults of cruelty and the like, and so on. As revelation says, 'from Him the mayin sends forth this universe; in it the other is bound by maya', 'let one know matter to be maya, and the great Lord the mayin'.

If He is as one indifferent, then prakriti brings forth of itself; to that Krishna says, 'with Me'. The sense is that I alone am the seer and the doer of prakriti's bringing-forth. So the scripture says, 'from whom the bringing-forth of the world is brought forth, who sent forth the living beings on the earth with the waters' (Mahanarayana Upanishad 1.4).