Verse 17

¹⁷Of that seer, the Lord, unmoved, the self of all: I, myself created, create what is to be created, urged on by his glance alone. ¹⁸Clarity, passion and darkness are the three strands of him who is beyond the strands, taken up by the all-pervading one's maya for the maintaining, the sending forth, and the withdrawing. ¹⁹In the states of effect, of cause and of agent, the strands, resting upon substance and knowledge and action, always bind the Person, who is ever free and the master of maya. ²⁰By these three marks the Bhagavan, the one beyond the reach of the senses, whose course is discerned by himself alone, brahmin, is the ruler of all, and of me.

²¹The master of maya, wishing to unfold, took up by his own maya time and action and nature, which had come to him of their own accord. ²²From time came the disturbance of the strands, from nature came transformation, and from action came the birth of the great principle, over which the Person presides. ²³From the great principle as it changed, swollen with passion and with clarity, there arose that in which darkness is chief, made of substance and knowledge and action. ²⁴That is called I-making, and as it changed it became threefold, the vaikarika and the taijasa and the tamasa being its division: the power of substance, the power of action, and the power of knowledge, lord.