Verse 8

¹Bhagavan said: Now I will tell you fully the marks of the real things, each on its own, knowing which a person is set free from the strands that belong to nature. ²Knowledge, which is a person's seeing of the self and is for the highest good: what they speak of by that name I set out for you, and it breaks open the knot of the heart. ³The self, the Person, has no beginning, is beyond the strands, and is beyond nature. He is his own dwelling, turned inward, self-lit, and everything is held together by him. ⁴This mighty one, in play, took up nature, who is subtle and shining and made of the strands, when she came upon him as if of her own accord.

⁵Seeing her bringing forth creatures of many kinds by the strands, creatures in her own likeness, he was bewildered here at once by her who hides knowing. ⁶So, by thinking of himself as another, the person takes nature's doing for his own, and when the strands do the work he thinks the doing is his. ⁷From that comes his round of birth, his bondage, and his being ruled by another; and it happens to one who does nothing, who is the Lord, the watcher, whose self is at rest. ⁸They know nature to be the cause where there is a doing, an instrument and a thing done, and the Person, who is beyond nature, to be the cause where pleasure and pain are had.