SrI: SrImathE SatakOpAya nama: SrImathE rAmAnujAya nama: SrImath varavaramunayE nama:
na kartṛtvaṁ na karmāṇi
lokasya sṛjati prabhuḥ
na karma-phala-saṁyogaṁ
svabhāvas tu pravartate
‘Neither actorship nor act, doth the (prabhu[1. Ātma is prabhu from the root pra-bhavati. It lives (in contrast with lifeless matter). See Dvaita Commentary.]) lord of the body create for the world; nor even the bond between act and (its) fruit. ‘Tis Nature (svabhāva) that prevails.[2. Vide, Bh: Gī: VI-5, 6; XIII-5, 6, 19 to 21; and Theosophist, Vol: VIII, p: 436.]’
The prabhu is the ruler of the body=ātma. By essence, he is above the influences of deeds (karma) and abides in his own nature. This prabhu is not the originator —in the world or regions abounding in matter-bound existences, viz., the four-fold divisions of deva, animal, human and immovable minerals etc., kingdoms —of the several kinds of agencies (or authorships of acts) pertaining thereto, nor of actions themselves, emanating from those entities; nor of the links which connect act to act-born fruit, such as becoming a deva etc.
What is it, then, that does all this? It is the Nature that prevails. By Nature is meant the material reminiscence or instinct (vāsanā). This kind of actorship etc., springs from union with matter in its forms of deva etc., fashioned by the chain of deeds generated in the immemorial past. The actorship etc., is also the result of the habit or instinct (vāsanā) of the mistaken notion that the forms of deva etc., do themselves constitute the ātma.
Hence actorship (or authorship) of acts etc., —which is the product of union with matter— is no essential characteristic of ātma.
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