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Chapter 15 of 18

पुरुषोत्तमयोग Puruṣottama Yoga The Inverted Tree

Chapter 15: The Inverted Tree

20 verses

The world is a tree rooted upward, and cutting it is not destruction but recognising what it was growing out of.

Chapter 15 opens with the strangest image in the book: the world as a fig tree with its roots in the air and its branches spreading downward, the Vedas for leaves. Everything visible is foliage; the source is in the other direction.

The instruction that follows is an axe — cut it, with non-attachment — and it arrives before any account of what the tree is. That order is deliberate. Understanding is not the prerequisite for the cut; it is what the cut is for.

Then the chapter does something it gives no warning of. Having reached the highest dwelling, which no sun lights, it comes all the way back down: the divine is the sap in a plant, the fire in a stomach, the breath going in and out. And it ends by naming a third thing beyond both the perishable and the eternal — the position the whole book has been working toward.

15.1The tree rooted upwardKrishna speaks1 of 20

ऊर्ध्वमूलमधःशाखमश्वत्थं प्राहुरव्ययम्
छन्दांसि यस्य पर्णानि यस्तं वेद स वेदवित्

ūrdhva-mūlam adhaḥ-śhākham aśhvatthaṁ prāhur avyayam
chhandānsi yasya parṇāni yas taṁ veda sa veda-vit

They speak of an imperishable sacred fig with its roots above and its branches below, whose leaves are the Vedas. One who knows it knows.

The world is a tree growing the wrong way up.

An aśvattha, the sacred fig, with its roots above and its branches below, and the Vedas for leaves. It draws from what cannot be seen and spreads into what can.

The image does the work of an argument. Everything visible is the foliage of something whose source is in the other direction — so looking harder at the branches is exactly the wrong move.

Going further

Roots above, branches below. The image the chapter is named for and the one its art was made from.

A tree drawing from what is unseen and spreading into what is visible — so the world we can point at is the foliage, and the source is in the direction we do not look. The inversion is doing the whole job, and the verse offers no argument for it. It simply says: they speak of such a tree, and one who knows it knows.

Word by wordśhrī-bhagavān uvācha — the Supreme Divine Personality said · ūrdhva-mūlam — with roots above · adhaḥ — downward · śhākham — branches · aśhvattham — the sacred fig tree · prāhuḥ — they speak · avyayam — eternal · chhandānsi — Vedic mantras · yasya — of which · parṇāni — leaves · yaḥ — who · tam — that · veda — knows · saḥ — he · veda-vit — the knower of the Vedas

Chapter 15 · The Inverted Tree · ← → to move, d for depth

All 20 verses

  1. 15.1 ऊर्ध्वमूलमधःशाखमश्वत्थं प्राहुरव्ययम् The tree rooted upward
  2. 15.2 अधश्चोर्ध्वं प्रसृतास्तस्य शाखा गुणप्रवृद्धा विषयप्रवालाः Branches both ways
  3. 15.3 न रूपमस्येह तथोपलभ्यते नान्तो न चादिर्न च संप्रतिष्ठा Cut what you cannot see
  4. 15.4 ततः पदं तत्परिमार्गितव्य यस्मिन्गता न निवर्तन्ति भूयः Then look for the root
  5. 15.5 निर्मानमोहा जितसङ्गदोषा अध्यात्मनित्या विनिवृत्तकामाः Who reaches it
  6. 15.6 न तद्भासयते सूर्यो न शशाङ्को न पावकः No sun lights it
  7. 15.7 ममैवांशो जीवलोके जीवभूतः सनातनः A fragment of my own self
  8. 15.8 शरीरं यदवाप्नोति यच्चाप्युत्क्रामतीश्वरः Carried like scent on wind
  9. 15.9 श्रोत्रं चक्षुः स्पर्शनं च रसनं घ्राणमेव च Presiding over the senses
  10. 15.10 उत्क्रामन्तं स्थितं वापि भुञ्जानं वा गुणान्वितम् The eye of knowledge
  11. 15.11 यतन्तो योगिनश्चैनं पश्यन्त्यात्मन्यवस्थितम् Striving is not enough by itself
  12. 15.12 यदादित्यगतं तेजो जगद्भासयतेऽखिलम् The radiance is mine
  13. 15.13 गामाविश्य च भूतानि धारयाम्यहमोजसा In the earth and the sap
  14. 15.14 अहं वैश्वानरो भूत्वा प्राणिनां देहमाश्रितः The fire that digests
  15. 15.15 सर्वस्य चाहं हृदि सन्निविष्टो मत्तः स्मृतिर्ज्ञानमपोहनं च Memory, and its loss
  16. 15.16 द्वाविमौ पुरुषौ लोके क्षरश्चाक्षर एव च Two beings in the world
  17. 15.17 उत्तमः पुरुषस्त्वन्यः परमात्मेत्युदाहृतः And then a third
  18. 15.18 यस्मात्क्षरमतीतोऽहमक्षरादपि चोत्तमः Why the name is highest
  19. 15.19 यो मामेवमसम्मूढो जानाति पुरुषोत्तमम् Knowing this is knowing everything
  20. 15.20 इति गुह्यतमं शास्त्रमिदमुक्तं मयाऽनघ Nothing left outstanding

Where this sits

Chapter 15 against the whole of it: who is speaking, verse by verse, and how much of the book this chapter is.

Who speaks across the whole Gita, with chapter 15 marked. The Inverted Tree runs from verse 552 to 571 of 701. Chapter 1: Arjuna's Despair — 47 verses Chapter 2: The Eternal — 72 verses Chapter 3: Action — 43 verses Chapter 4: The Lineage of Knowing — 42 verses Chapter 5: The Unwetted Leaf — 29 verses Chapter 6: The Windless Place — 47 verses Chapter 7: The Thread — 30 verses Chapter 8: The Two Paths — 28 verses Chapter 9: The Simple Offering — 34 verses Chapter 10: The Glories — 42 verses Chapter 11: The Cosmic Form — 55 verses Chapter 12: Devotion — 20 verses Chapter 13: The Field and Its Knower — 35 verses Chapter 14: The Three Strands — 27 verses Chapter 15: The Inverted Tree — 20 verses Chapter 16: Two Natures — 24 verses Chapter 17: Three Kinds of Faith — 28 verses Chapter 18: Release — 78 verses

The argument so far

  1. Chapter 1 Arjuna's nerve fails on the field, and the question that opens the book is not a spiritual one but a practical one he cannot answer.
  2. Chapter 2 The first answer is that Arjuna is not the body he is afraid of losing, and that grief for what cannot die is grief misplaced.
  3. Chapter 3 Withdrawing from action is not available to anyone alive; what is available is acting without gripping the result.
  4. Chapter 4 Action, knowledge and Krishna himself all have a deeper structure than they appear to, and knowing it is what makes action free.
  5. Chapter 5 What has to be renounced is attachment rather than activity — the leaf in water, unwetted.
  6. Chapter 6 The mind is trained the way anything is trained, by returning to the practice on the days it does not work.
  7. Chapter 7 Behind both matter and awareness there is one reality, and everything else is a thread strung on it.
  8. Chapter 8 Everything that appears is temporary; the work of yoga is to train attention toward the one thing that is not.
  9. Chapter 9 The highest knowledge turns out to ask for the simplest thing: what is offered matters less than the attention it is offered with.
  10. Chapter 10 Wherever something is most fully itself, the Divine is most visible in it — a list of glories given because the whole cannot be listed.
  11. Chapter 11 Arjuna asks to see it and cannot bear what he sees, which is the book's reply to anyone who wants the vision rather than the practice.
  12. Chapter 12 Devotion is offered as the reachable path, and the chapter is careful to say that a lesser version of it, honestly done, still counts.
  13. Chapter 13 There is a field and there is what knows the field, and nearly every confusion in the book comes from mistaking one for the other.
  14. Chapter 14 Three strands run through everything — clarity, drive and inertia — and freedom starts with noticing which one is moving you.