Text 5
tamo rajaḥ sattvam iti
prakṛter abhavan guṇāḥ
mayā prakṣobhyamāṇāyāḥ
puruṣānumatena ca
tamaḥ — ignorance; rajaḥ — passion; sattvam — goodness; iti — thus; prakṛteḥ — from nature; abhavan — became manifest; guṇāḥ — the modes; mayā — by Me; prakṣobhyamāṇāyāḥ — who was being agitated; puruṣa — of the living entity; anumatena — in order to fulfill the desires; ca — and.
When material nature was agitated by My glance, the three material modes — goodness, passion and ignorance — became manifest to fulfill the pending desires of the conditioned souls.
The Lord casts His glance over material nature to remind her that the conditioned souls have not worked out their chain of fruitive activity and mental speculation and that creation is therefore again necessary. The Lord desires that the conditioned souls get the opportunity to become Kṛṣṇa conscious in love of Godhead by understanding the futility of life without the Lord. The modes of nature arise after the glance of the Lord and become inimical to one another, each mode attempting to conquer the other two. There is constant competition between birth, maintenance and annihilation. Although a child desires to take birth, the cruel mother may desire to kill the child through abortion. Although we may desire to kill the weeds in a field, they stubbornly take birth again and again. Similarly, we often desire to maintain our physical status quo, but still deterioration sets in. Thus there is constant competition among the modes of nature, and by their combinations and permutations the living entities try to enjoy innumerable material situations without Kṛṣṇa consciousness. The word puruṣānumatena indicates that the Lord sets the stage for such material futility so that the conditioned souls will eventually come back home, back to Godhead.