​Gita 10.39 – God is the one without whose existence no existence is possible

Thank you Krishna is speaking this is text 39 this is among the concluding verses of the Vibhuti Yoga chapter and from here onwards Krishna is summarizing the principles that are conveyed through his description through his listing of the various vibhutis that happened in the previous verses from text 20 to text 38 Krishna Krishna says here all living beings all of existence in fact Arjuna Arjuna I am the seed for all of existence there cannot be any without me without my existence there cannot be Mayabhutam Characharam there cannot be any existence of the moving or the non-moving living beings without me so Krishna here speaks about how he is the basis of all of existence in 10.8 he has talked about how he is the source of all of existence there he has stated that he is the source of all existence actually some commentators talk about a certain difference between aham sarvasya prabhavam attah sarvam pravartate so prabhava means it is the origin everything comes from me pravartate means everything exists in me but even that sense is not explicit over there that is made even more emphatic in this verse when it is stated that the two aspects are made very clear that I am the seed of all of existence that means prabhava everything comes from me but in a normal relationship say so say the father is you could say the source of the children but then the children don't lifelong depend on their father yes in the childhood they depend on their father but after they grow up they earn their own living they have their own homes and they don't depend on their parents at that time or their father at that time so a similar is not the relationship between Krishna and this existence so Krishna says first part that he is the source of everything but that might lead to a deistic conception of God that okay God is the primeval the unmoved mover the cause of all causes but afterwards he is the first mover the first mover as they say Aristotle would talk about God in those terms but after that he doesn't have control over what is happening after that things go on their own there is a conception that many people have but Krishna disapproves that when he says that without me nothing could exist so a father cannot say that without me you cannot exist sometimes an arrogant father may say that if you don't do my will I will not give you any of my inheritance you will have to go out of my house son will say fine I will go out of your house and I will earn my own living son may be defiant or whatever or the father may be overbearing but whichever way it is the son doesn't have to depend on the father in the normal course of the relationship but in our case we always depend on Krishna even if we say that I will raise my own crops but we cannot create our own land even if we purchase our own land still the land is a part of the earth we have not created the earth in that sense we have not created the land we have simply purchased it from someone else who has also not created it so our very existence depends on Krishna without him we would not exist and that means that if we did not exist then we would not be able to do anything so our very existence not only is Krishna our source Krishna is also the basis of our existence so this does not mean a sustainer the parents are the sustainers of the children but then the parents are also partial sustainers Prahlad Maharaj in one of his famous prayers he says that that even the parents cannot maintain the children if if they are neglected by the absolute truth that means the absolute is the ultimate maintainer in his examples that how a drowning person cannot be rescued by a boat a sick person cannot be helped by a physician and a child cannot be helped by a parent unless there is the arrangement of the lord there is the help of the lord so the apparent help cannot be transformed into actual help without the sanction of the transcendental lord and similarly parents maintain the children in some aspects say they provide food, they provide clothing, shelter they provide a healthy environment or whatever they provide medicines when the children are sick but in spite of all these things sometimes the children child may just fall sick and die or child may have some accident and pass away or whatever of course these are very distressing incidents when distressing events when they happen heart wrenching events when they happen for the parents but still the point is that the parents are not the maintainers in the absolute sense so the parents cannot ensure the child's existence and the parents can neither say that without me the child cannot exist especially the child as they grow up, children as they grow up they can exist so similar but that is not the case with Krishna Krishna provides us not just the direct need which we have such as food, clothing, shelter he provides them through but along with that he also provides a wide variety of things such as he provides us our body he provides us intelligence, he provides us inspiration he provides us everything with which we are able to do anything so whatever we do we are able to do it by his grace and as Krishna said nothing can exist without me and this is an understanding of God which takes us beyond the realm of belief when we ask does God exist or does not exist at that time usually we think of God as some distant controller whom we can petition for making things better in our life now some people may say such a controller exists, such a controller does not exist different people may have different opinions for this but if we consider that Krishna is not just some distant controller but that Krishna is the ground of all being so that means nothing can exist without Krishna but Krishna is the very source and basis of everything once we understand this point then we can just move forward steadily in whatever we are doing because then at least at an intellectual level if we have the right understanding of God then the question of question of belief or disbelief in God's existence does not really arise because just as if somebody asks is a circle circular well a circle by definition has to be circular that is the very meaning of the word circle so similarly when we talk about the absolute truth if we say that the absolute truth is the ground of all being is the basis of all being is the existence without which nothing can have existence then the very fact that we have existence means that the absolute truth must have existence because without that existence we would not exist so this is a prominent argument used for the existence of God in philosophical circle this is called the Kalam argument it comes from middle Arabia where Kalam is a theological term for reference to the absolute what it means is that the universe has a beginning and things that begin have an original cause therefore the universe has an original cause three simple statements but they lead to a very powerful conclusion things that begin have a cause therefore the universe must have a cause so the universe must have a cause that is outside the universe because when the universe began before that the universe was not there to cause its beginning so now that trans-universal cause the exact identity of that we cannot perceive with our finite senses but with our basic logic we can infer that there is some trans-universal cause and attempts by some atheistic scientists to try to show how everything could have come from nothing they are just involving prestidigitation you know false logic, sophistry deceptive wordplay by which they try to redefine nothing so that nothing is quite a lot of things so when they say everything came from nothing the way they conceive nothing is actually not nothing that is very complex quantum mechanical vacuum which requires pages upon pages of intricate mathematics to describe and that definitely is not nothing so here Krishna by explaining himself from this fundamental definitional perspective that he is the source of everything and nothing can exist without him he reinforces the logical coherence of the existence of the absolute and he also stresses his own transcendence so when he has in the previous verses stated that there are so many ways in which he manifests through his vibhuti some people may get the question does God have his own existence beyond all this and that is stated in the subsequent verses also it is pointed out when it is stated that actually whatever is attractive it gets a spark of its attractive splendor from Krishna so in that sense how Krishna is supremely attractive that will be discussed in future verses we will talk about that when we come to that.