Sanskrit
मया ततमिदं सर्वं जगदव्यक्तमूर्तिना । मत्स्थानि सर्वभूतानि न चाहं तेष्ववस्थितः ॥
mayā tatam idaṃ sarvaṃ jagad avyaktamūrtinā matsthāni sarvabhūtāni na cāhaṃ teṣv avasthitaḥ
Translation
By Me all this world is pervaded in My unmanifested aspect; all beings have root in Me, I am not rooted in them.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
This is the chapter’s central metaphysical claim and its central paradox in one breath: Krishna pervades everything in unmanifest form, all beings rest in him, yet he does not rest in them. Verses 5-6 unpack this apparent contradiction rather than resolve it away — worth noting that the text presents it as something to behold (“paśya me yogam aiśvaram,” v.5), not something to argue into consistency. Mat-sthāni sarva-bhūtāni, na cāhaṃ teṣv avasthitaḥ — “all beings in Me, yet I not in them” — is the sharper, harder-edged version of BG 7.7’s thread of pearls: containment without being contained. It is offered as a yoga to behold, not a puzzle to solve.
Study deeper
Word by word
- mayā tatam idaṃ sarvaṃमया ततं इदं सर्वं
- by Me all this is pervaded (mayā + tatam + idam + sarvam)
- jagad avyaktamūrtināजगद् अव्यक्तमूर्तिना
- the world, [by Me] whose form is unmanifest (jagat + avyakta-mūrtinā)
- matsthāni sarvabhūtāniमत्स्थानि सर्वभूतानि
- all beings rest in Me (mat-sthāni + sarva-bhūtāni)
- na cāhaṃ teṣv avasthitaḥन चाहं तेष्व् अवस्थितः
- and yet I do not rest in them (na + ca + aham + teṣu + avasthitaḥ)
Commentary
Site Commentary
Notice the asymmetry even in how the two halves of the claim are phrased: “beings are rooted in me” arrives as a simple compound, almost a fact of grammar, while “I am not rooted in them” needs an explicit verb and negation to say. The sentence itself performs the lopsided relationship it describes — containment running one direction only, expressible as a given on one side and only as a denial on the other.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Site Commentary — Second Reading
The asymmetry this verse states isn’t just a grammatical curiosity — it’s the reason the chapter insists on devotion rather than analysis as the way to know Krishna. If effects fully contained their cause, you could work backward from careful study of the world to its source; this verse blocks that route in advance, since the container is explicitly not among the things it contains. That’s the epistemic problem raja-vidya exists to solve: not a puzzle to be reasoned through, but a structure that reasoning alone can’t get behind.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- Not every relationship in your life runs both directions equally — you can matter enormously to someone's life while their absence from yours costs you little, and naming that asymmetry honestly beats forcing the relationship into a mutual frame it doesn't have.
Professional
- A platform team can be foundational to every product built on it while remaining invisible to those products' day-to-day decisions — recognize when your dependency runs one way, and stop expecting the reciprocal visibility a two-way relationship would earn you.
Family & Social
- If you find yourself central to a family member's life while they stay peripheral to yours by comparison, that asymmetry isn't necessarily a wrong to correct — some support really does run one direction, and accepting that plainly beats resenting it.
Ask yourself
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