Sanskrit
ईश्वरः सर्वभूतानां हृद्देशेऽर्जुन तिष्ठति । भ्रामयन्सर्वभूतानि यन्त्रारूढानि मायया ॥ ६१ ॥
īśvaraḥ sarva-bhūtānāṃ hṛd-deśe'rjuna tiṣṭhati bhrāmayan sarva-bhūtāni yantrārūḍhāni māyayā
Translation
The Lord dwelleth in the hearts of all beings, O Arjuna, by His illusive Power causing all beings to revolve, as though mounted on a potter's wheel.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
One of the most quoted verses in the entire text, and it earns the attention: the Lord dwells in the heart of every being, whirling all beings by his illusive power (maya) as though mounted on a machine — Besant renders yantra-arudha as “mounted on a potter’s wheel.” It condenses the Gita’s whole metaphysics into a single image: a divine presence genuinely immanent in every heart, operating not as an occasional visitor but as the hidden mechanism turning all beings through their conditioned lives, an idea that reaches back to 3.27’s claim that action is performed entirely by the gunas of prakriti while the ego merely mistakes itself for the doer. The verse offers no comfort about autonomy — it offers something else instead, the possibility of consciously locating oneself in relation to the very force doing the turning.