The field and its knower

Krishna calls the body — with its senses, mind, emotions and elements — the kshetra, the “field.” The conscious awareness that knows this field is the kshetrajna, the “knower of the field” — the soul. “Know Me as the Knower of the field in all fields,” says Krishna; the one Spirit is the witness behind every body.

What true knowledge is

Remarkably, Krishna defines “knowledge” not as information but as character (13:7–11): humility, sincerity, non-violence, forgiveness, uprightness, service to the teacher, purity, steadfastness, self-control, dispassion, absence of ego, even-mindedness, unswerving devotion, love of solitude, and constant pursuit of Self-knowledge. All this, he says, is wisdom; the opposite is ignorance.

Purusha and Prakriti

He describes the two beginningless principles: Prakriti (Nature, the field, the source of all change and the three gunas) and Purusha (the conscious Spirit that experiences them). Suffering arises when the soul forgets itself and identifies with the field; liberation dawns when it remembers it is the ever-free knower, untouched, “like the sun that lights the whole world” or “like space that pervades everything yet is not stained.”

Seeing the One in all

“He who sees the supreme Lord dwelling equally in all beings, the imperishable amid the perishable — he truly sees” (13:27). To see the same deathless Self everywhere is to cease harming oneself and to reach the highest goal.

For the Kriya yogi

This chapter trains the central act of meditation: stepping back from body and mind (the field) to rest as the silent witness (the knower). Kriya Yoga makes this disidentification a living, breath-by-breath experience. Return to the Bhagavad Gita overview.

This is part of our complete Bhagavad Gita summary of all 18 chapters.