By reason of My proximity, Prakriti produces all this, the moving and the unmoving. Because of this, O son of Kunti, the world wheels round and round. (Bhagavad Gita Chapter 9 Verse 10)
It is Prakriti who produces all this creation. But how? By transforming herself into all these animate and inanimate manifestations. But Prakriti is not conscious. How can then she create? Through My presence, as the witness; I bestow on Prakriti My consciousness, by which she begins the process of evolution.
Strictly speaking, no one creates; for nature is unconscious and therefore cannot create, and God is consciousness itself and as such incapable of action. Creation is but the fact of the coexistence of nature and consciousness, destruction being another mode of this coexistence. Bring the magnet near the iron, and the iron moves. The presence of the magnet calls forth motion in the iron. Place ice over a fire. The ice melts: it changes its form and substance; from solid it becomes fluid from fluid gaseous. The transformation takes place through the presence or proximity of the fire. So it is with God’s creation. Wherever we look we find duality. There is light and darkness, attraction and repulsion, positive and negative, cause and effect. We find man and woman, soul and body. And the highest manifestation, God and nature.
Nature is God’s manifest energy, His shakti, His maya. In Sanskrit the terms are Purusha and Prakriti. In reality these two are one. Purusha and Prakriti are the two coexisting aspects of the one Existence. Man and woman together form humanity. Prakriti and Purusha together form God. The one is God as much as the other. The one Existence, which we call God or Brahman, is known as Purusha and Prakriti, or soul and energy or nature. These are its highest expression, its highest manifestation. When there is manifestation there is duality. And from this highest state of duality, soul and nature and all other duality have proceeded. As the dynamo charged with energy becomes active, so nature charged with consciousness produces out of herself all manifestation. As the sun shining on the water charges the water with its own heat, so the Purusha shining on the power latent in Prakriti, things begin to manifest. And this is the eternal process called creation.