Krishna speaks9.10

मयाऽध्यक्षेण प्रकृतिः सूयते सचराचरम्।हेतुनाऽनेन कौन्तेय जगद्विपरिवर्तते॥

mayādhyakṣeṇa prakṛtiḥ sūyate sa-carācaramhetunānena kaunteya jagad viparivartate

Word by word
mayā — by meadhyakṣeṇa — directionprakṛtiḥ — material energysūyate — brings into beingsa — bothcara-acaram — the animate and the inanimatehetunā — reasonanena — thiskaunteya — Arjun, the son of Kuntijagat — the material worldviparivartate — undergoes the changes

The verse says

With me as the one overseeing it, nature gives birth to everything that moves and everything that does not. That is the reason, Arjuna, that the world turns.

In plain words

Adhyakṣa — the one who watches over. Literally, the one before whose eyes it happens.

Not a worker inside the machine. Not a hand on the lever.

And yet the verse says his presence is the reason anything runs at all.

Where you've felt this · in study

The invigilator in an exam hall does nothing for three hours. She walks up one aisle and down another and hands out extra paper twice. The room behaves completely differently for her being in it, and not one thing she did would appear on a list of what happened.

Going deeper

Presence as a cause is a strange idea until you look for it, and then you find it everywhere.

The verse is careful. Nature does the producing. Krishna is described as the one in whose presence it occurs, and that is named as the reason the whole thing turns. Not a push, not an intervention. A standing condition without which nothing would be going on.

This also removes a picture people find hard to shake — of God deciding each event, one at a time, like a person operating machinery. Nothing here works that way.

What it might change for you is how you think about attention. Being watched over, in the ordinary sense, changes a room without anything being done to it. This verse says that is the shape of the arrangement you are living inside.