Page:Philosophy of bhagawad-gita.pdf/85

Rh Even I, who am unborn, imperishable, the Lord of all beings, controlling my own nature. take birth through the instrumentality of my māyā.

O Bharaṭ, whenever there is a decline of ḍharma or righteousness and spread of aḍharma or unrighteousness, I create myself.

I take birth in every yuga, to protect the good, to destroy evil-doers and to re-estahlish ḍharma.

O Arjuna, he who understands truly my divine birth and action, abandoning his body, reaches me, and does not come to birth again.

Many, who are free from passion, fear and anger, devoted to me and full of me, purified by spiritual wisdom, have attained my condition.

This passage refers, of course, not only to the Logos in the abstract, but also to Krshna’s own incarnations. It will be noticed that he speaks here as if his Logos had already associated itself with several personalities, or human individualities, in former yugas; and he says that he remembers all that took place in connection with those incarnations. Of course, since there could be no karmabanḍham as far as he was concerned, his Logos, when it associated itself with a human soul, would not lose its own independence of action, as a soul conﬁned by the bonds of matter. And because his intellect and wisdom were in no way clouded by this association with a human soul, he says he can recollect all his previous incarnations, while Arjuna, not yet having fully received the light of the Logos, is not in a position to understand all that took place