Bhagavad Gita 9.10

mayādhyakṣeṇa prakṛtiḥ

sūyate sa-carācaram

hetunānena kaunteya

jagad viparivartate

 

“Under my supervision, nature unfolds,

Through everything moving and nonmoving, my control still holds.

By this vision, O seeker, know the way,

The world turns and flows each day.”

 

My dear Lord, appreciating your supreme controllership means being open to the miraculous while attentive to the practical.

O omnipotent Lord, it is you who infuse material nature with its powers, including its law of cause and effect. To be conscious of you is to be conscious of natural principles such as gravity. Therefore, I must be careful if I come close to the edge of a mountain cliff. Of course, you can—and sometimes do—intervene in material nature to fulfill higher purposes, as when you protected your devotee Prahlada after he was hurled from a mountain by his demoniac father, Hiranyakashipu. Yet such interventions are exceptions.

Yet you want me to understand the workings of material nature and take responsibility to act in harmony with it—so that I may be, at the very least, safe, and at the very best, successful within the boundaries of material existence.

Let me not, O merciful Lord, misunderstand or misuse your supreme controllership as an excuse to neglect my subordinate responsibility within material nature. Grant me the faith to know that you can perform miracles that transcend natural laws—and the reason to understand the cause-and-effect principles that govern this world, aligning my actions accordingly. May I thus harmonize reason with faith, using both in your service and for your glory.

***

09.10 This material nature, which is one of My energies, is working under My direction, O son of Kuntī, producing all moving and nonmoving beings. Under its rule this manifestation is created and annihilated again and again.