Sanskrit
तत्रैवं सति कर्तारमात्मानं केवलं तु यः । पश्यत्यकृतबुद्धित्वान्न स पश्यति दुर्मतिः ॥ १६ ॥
tatraivaṃ sati kartāram ātmānaṃ kevalaṃ tu yaḥ paśyaty akṛtabuddhitvān na sa paśyati durmatiḥ
Translation
That being so, he verily who—owing to untrained Reason—looketh on his Self, which is isolated, as the actor, he of perverted intelligence, seeth not.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Given that five factors are always in play, whoever looks at the isolated, unitary Self as the sole actor is, in Krishna’s word, of “perverted intelligence” — he doesn’t actually see clearly. This is the sharpest statement in the chapter of a distinction chapter 13 first drew between the field, where all this causal machinery operates, and the knower of the field, the true Self, which the Samkhya framework here implies never really “acts” at all.
Concepts