I, having become the sun, give heat with some of My rays, fierce ones. I send forth rain with some of My rays; having sent it forth, I draw it back again with some of My rays, and after eight months I send it forth again in the rainy season. I am the deathless for the gods, and death for mortals. The real (sat), that which exists as related to a thing in some way, that thing; and its opposite, the unreal (asat), I am too, O Arjuna. The Blessed Lord is not, however, the utterly unreal; in Himself, or as effect and cause, He is both the real and the unreal. Those who, by the modes of turning-away described above, by the discernings of oneness, of separateness and the rest, honouring Me with sacrifices, worship Me, the knowers, reach Me alone, each according to his discerning. But those who, ignorant, are desirers of desires.

In the form of fire, the sun, and the rest, it is I myself that give heat; in the hot season and so on it is I myself that hold back the rain; and likewise in the rainy season it is I myself that pour it forth. The nectar by which the world lives, and death too by which it dies, both of these are I myself. What need of much speech here? The existent and the non-existent too are I myself. The existent is what is now present; the non-existent, what is past and what is to come; since the conscious-and-unconscious thing abiding in every state is My body, abiding with that and that mode, it is I myself. This is the meaning. Thus, abiding with the whole world for My body, the world abiding as the divided names and forms in manifold ways, as distinct, abiding with that mode, it is I myself; and those who dwell on this with the knowledge of oneness and worship Me, they alone are the great souls. Having thus told the conduct of the great souls, the men of knowledge whose single enjoyment is the experience of the Blessed One, in order to show the difference of those great souls, the Lord states the conduct of the ignorant who crave desires.

'The existent' is the effect, and 'the non-existent' is the cause. As the lexicon has it, 'because it is of manifest form, the existent is called the effect by the wise; and because it is of unmanifest form, the non-existent is named the cause'. And the Bharata says, 'the world, which is both non-existent and existent, and that which is beyond the existent and the non-existent'.