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punisher and the polity of them that would win victory. I am silence. I am knowledge. There is no end of my divine manifestations."
The knight now asks to see the real form of the deity, which was revealed to him. "If in heaven the glory of a thousand suns should appear at once, such would be his glory."
After this comes the real animus of the Divine Song in its present shape. The believer that has faith in this Vishnu is even better than the devotee who finds brahma by knowledge.
The philosophy of knowledge (which here is anything but Vedantic) is now communicated to the knight, in the course of which the distinction between nature and spirit is explained: "Nature, Prakriti, and spirit, Purusha (person), are both without beginning. All changes and qualities spring from nature. Nature is said to be the cause of the body's and the senses' activity. Spirit is the cause of enjoyment (appreciation) of pleasure and pain; for the Spirit, standing in nature, appreciates the nature-born qualities. The cause of the Spirit's re-birth is its connection with the qualities, (This is S[=a]nkhya doctrine, and the same with that propounded above in regard to activity.) The Supreme Spirit is the Support and great Lord of all, the [=a]tm[=a), while brahma (=prakrit) is the womb in which I place My seed, and from that is the origin of all things. The great brahma is the womb, and I am the seed-giving father of all the forms which come into being. The three 'qualities' (conditions, attributes), goodness, passion, and darkness, are born of nature and bind the inexhaustible incorporate (Spirit) in the body. The quality (or attribute) of goodness binds the soul with pleasure and knowledge; that of passion (activity), with desire and action; that of darkness (dulness), with ignorance. One that has the attribute of goodness chiefly goes after death to the highest heaven; one that has chiefly passion is born again among men of action; one that has chiefly darkness is born among the ignorant. One that sees that these attributes are the only agents, one that knows what is higher than the attributes, enters into my being. The incorporate spirit that has passed above the three attributes (the origin of bodies), being released from birth, death, age, and pain, obtains immortality. To pass above these
