Bhagavad Gita Chapter 14, Verse 3

Chapter 14 – Gunatraya Vibhaga Yoga · Speaker: Krishna

Sanskrit verse

मम योनिर्महद् ब्रह्म तस्मिन्गर्भं दधाम्यहम् ।
सम्भवः सर्वभूतानां ततो भवति भारत ॥

Transliteration

mama yonirmahad brahma tasmingarbhaṃ dadhāmyaham .
sambhavaḥ sarvabhūtānāṃ tato bhavati bhārata ॥

Meaning

My womb is the great Brahman, primordial nature; in it I place the seed. From that, O Bharata, comes the birth of all beings.

Word meanings

मम – My
योनिः – womb, source of birth
महत् ब्रह्म – the great Brahman — primordial nature
तस्मिन् – in that
गर्भम् – the germ, the conscious seed
दधामि – I place
अहम् – I
सम्भवः – the birth, origin
सर्वभूतानाम् – of all beings
ततः – from that
भवति – takes place
भारत – O descendant of Bharata (Arjuna)

Anvaya (word order)

भारत, महत् ब्रह्म मम योनिः, तस्मिन् अहं गर्भं दधामि; ततः सर्वभूतानां सम्भवः भवति ।

Explanation

Before describing the gunas, Krishna explains how spirit and matter come together at all. Here 'the great Brahman' (mahad brahma) does not mean the Supreme Reality but primordial nature, prakriti. Shankara notes that nature is called 'great' because it is larger than and prior to all its effects, and 'Brahman' because it nourishes and expands into all its modifications.

Krishna calls this nature His yoni, His womb. Into it He places the garbha, the germ. That germ is the conscious principle, the multitude of individual souls, which Chapter 7 called His 'higher nature'. Inert matter by itself can produce nothing; only when the Lord's conscious power is joined with it does creation begin.

The image is simple and profound. Just as a child is born of the union of mother and father, at the cosmic level every being, from Brahma the creator down to a blade of grass, arises from the union of divine consciousness with material nature. This shows that the Lord is not a distant spectator of the world but its originating cause and controller.

The verse carries two implications that the chapter builds upon. If every being springs from the Lord's seed, then all creatures belong to one family. And because every body is born from the womb of prakriti, every body naturally carries prakriti's three gunas. The following discussion of how the gunas bind the soul rests on this foundation.

Context

The previous verse spoke of freedom from creation and dissolution; now Krishna describes the process of creation itself. The next verse develops the same idea: in every womb, nature is the mother and the Lord is the seed-giving father.

Life lesson

Our existence comes from the union of divine consciousness and nature. The body belongs to nature, but the conscious spark within is God's. Seeing this, we learn to honour the divine in ourselves and in every living being.

Key terms

Mahad brahma: Primordial nature, the vast cause of all material forms
Yoni: Womb, source of birth
Garbha: The conscious seed placed by the Lord in nature