Prakṛti and Puruṣa (प्रकृति-पुरुष)
Prakṛti is nature — the whole active, changing order of matter, energy, mind, and personality. Puruṣa is the conscious principle that inhabits it without being one of its products. Chapter 13 sets them as “both beginningless” (BG 13.19) and assigns the labour cleanly: BG 13.20–BG 13.21 — “prakṛti is said to be the cause in the doing of what is done; puruṣa is said to be the cause in the experiencing of pleasure and pain.” Chapter 3 states the practical upshot bluntly: BG 3.27 — “actions are performed in every case by the strands of prakṛti; one deluded by Ahaṃkāra (अहंकार) thinks ‘I am the doer’.”
Why the distinction is the whole point
The Guṇatraya (गुणत्रय) belong to prakṛti, never to the puruṣa they condition — so BG 14.19, the turn of chapter 14, is simply the seer recognizing that “the strands are the agents” and it is not among them. BG 13.23 makes the consequence explicit: one who knows puruṣa and prakṛti this way, “however he lives, is not born again.” The dualism is not offered as metaphysics for its own sake; it is a tool for locating oneself on the witnessing side of a line one had been straddling.
Related
- Kṣetra–Kṣetrajña (क्षेत्र-क्षेत्रज्ञ) — chapter 13’s “Field and Knower of the Field” is the same split told in the vocabulary of a body and its perceiver
- Guṇatraya (गुणत्रय) — the three strands are how prakṛti acts; recognizing them as prakṛti’s, not one’s own, is what the distinction is for
- Ahaṃkāra (अहंकार) — the “I-maker” is precisely the misassignment of prakṛti’s activity to the puruṣa
Verses that reference this
All actions are wrought by the qualities of nature only. The self, deluded by egoism, thinketh: "I am the doer."
But he, O mighty-armed, who knoweth the essence of the divisions of the qualities and functions, holding that "the qualities move amid the qualities," is not attached.
Even the man of knowledge behaves in conformity with his own nature; beings follow nature; what shall restraint avail?
Earth, water, fire, air, ether, Mind, and Reason also and Egoism—these are the eightfold division of My nature.
This the inferior. Know My other nature, the higher, the life-element, O mighty-armed, by which the universe is upheld.
My womb is the great Eternal; in that I place the germ; thence cometh the birth of all beings, O Bhârata.
In whatsoever wombs mortals are produced, O Kaunteya, the great Eternal is their womb, I their generating father.