As “the Knower,” Krishna is the unchanging consciousness That watches the creative drama within the Field of His being, and He declares that the power to discriminate between “the Field” and its “Knower” is the essential condition of wisdom.
But the underlying substance of “the Field’ is as eternal in its own mode as its in-dwelling Consciousness. This formless substance in which “the Knower” reflects and contemplates His image with such inexhaustible diversity, this womb of darkness in which the Creative Light quickens innumerable seeds of life, Vedanta names Mula-prakriti.
This is the dark ocean, which is also a mirror of the sky, in and through which the infinite nature of the One is mediated to our human senses. In the Supreme Brahman eternal mind and eternal substance brood in sublime communion. Infinite thought is at one with infinite potentiality. Within this Self-existent harmony the mystery of creative love is enacted and the marriage of the Light and the Darkness consummated, of which a universe of life is unceasingly born.
Manifested existence is inconceivable without non-being. Were it not latent in Being itself, such Being would be incapable of Self-expression. For creative expression consits in a perpetual transmutation of non-being into Being. In this transforming act non-being is not denied or repudiated. It is embraced and loved and so gathered into the heart of Being where it belongs.
— Hugh I’anson Fausset, from The Flame and the Light