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New York University; New York, New York, USA

Vanderbilt Hall
24 March 1970

Out of His infinite Bounty, boundless Love and deepest, soulful Concern, Sri
Krishna has unveiled the secret supreme—that He is in everything and He
embodies everything. Arjuna’s stark delusion has been removed and dispersed.
He now enjoys his soul’s translucent peace.
Sri Krishna speaks out of the abundance of His Love. Arjuna listens to Him
with his heart’s loftiest devotion, and believes in Him unreservedly and soulfully.
Arjuna’s singular belief cries for its transformation; his aspiration cries for an
experience. His mind understands the Truth. But his heart pines to vision the
Truth and to live the Truth. Hence, he needs this experience, unavoidable and
inevitable. In chapter 11 of the Gita, Sri Krishna graciously and immediately
grants it, the experience unparalleled.
“O Arjuna, behold in My Body the entire universe.” Arjuna’s physical eyes
naturally fail to vision it. The Lord grants him the eye of supernal vision, the eye
that sees the unseen—the Yogic eye.
The body that the Lord speaks of is a spiritual body. Hence, to see the spiritual
body, Arjuna must needs be endowed with a spiritual eye. The body signifies
form. The formless abides in this form. The Vision Transcendental and the
Reality Absolute play in unison in and through the Cosmic Form. The body of
flesh and blood undergoes innumerable vicissitudes, but not the body of
unlimited, divine form and deathless substance. This divine body is the
embodiment and revelation of Truth’s Divinity, Infinity, Eternity and
Immortality.
Sañjaya says to Dhritarashtra, “O Rajan, Krishna, the supreme Master of
Yoga, the Almighty Lord, reveals to Arjuna His Form divine, supreme. Arjuna
now sees Krishna as the Supreme Godhead, Parameshwara.”
Arjuna sees the many in the One Supreme possessing myriad mouths,
numberless eyes, limitless marvels, wielding divine weapons, wearing divine
garments and jewels, bearing celestial garlands of supernal fragrance. The
effulgence of a thousand suns bursting forth all at once in the skies will hardly
equal the supreme splendour of the Lord. Arjuna beholds Infinity in multiplicity
in the divine person of Sri Krishna. Overwhelmed, ecstasy flooding his inmost
being, with his hands folded, his head bowed, he exclaims, “O Lord, in Thee, in
Thy Body, I behold all gods and all grades of beings, with distinctive marks. I see
even Brahma seated resplendent on His lotus-throne and seers and sages all
around, and symbolical serpents—all divine.”
When we go up with all our heart’s snow-white flaming aspiration, we enter
into the Cosmic Consciousness of the Seers. This path is an upward path. It is the
path of embodiment and realisation. There is another path known as the path of
revelation and manifestation. This path is the downward path. Here our consciousness
flows down through the cosmic energy, the symbolic serpents, circling
and spiralling.
Verses 15 to 31 eloquently and psychically describe what Arjuna saw in Sri
Krishna with his newly acquired Yogic sight.
The fight is yet to start. The mighty warriors are ready and eager to fight. To
his greatest surprise, Arjuna sees the utter extinction of the lives of the warriors
in Sri Krishna. Before the birth of the fight, he sees the death of the warriors.
Destroyed they are. As he sees the fires of Sri Krishna’s flaming and all-devouring
mouth, his very life-breath quivers. The disciple cries out, “Thy Compassion, my
Lord Supreme, I implore. I know Thee not. Who art Thou?”
“Time am I. Time, the mighty destroyer, am I. Doomed they are. Whether you
fight or not, they are already dead. Even without you, your foes will escape no
death. Arise, O Arjuna, arise! Victory’s glory and renown you win. Conquer your
enemies. Enjoy the vast kingdom, enjoy. By Me is ordained their lives’ surrendered
hush. You be the outer cause. Just be My instrument, nothing more.”
“Nimittamatram bhava—Be thou a mere instrument.”
There can be no greater pride, no better achievement, than to be God’s own
instrument, for to be an instrument of God is to be infallibly accepted as His very
own. In and through the instrument-disciple, the Master-Guru sees and fulfils
God’s divine Purpose.
Sri Krishna is the all-devouring Time. This vision, according to our outer eyes
and understanding, is terrible. But, according to our inner vision and inner
comprehension, it is natural and inevitable. Sri Aurobindo says,
Time represents itself to human effort as an enemy or a friend, as a
resistance, a medium or an instrument, But always it is really the instrument
of the soul. Time is a field of circumstances and forces meeting and
working out a resultant progression whose course it measures. To the ego
it is a tyrant or a resistance, to the Divine an instrument. Therefore, while
our effort is personal, Time appears as a resistance, for it presents to us all
the obstruction of the forces that conflict with our own. When the divine
working and the personal are combined in our consciousness, it appears as
a medium and condition. When the two become one, it appears as a servant
and instrument.
Krishnaprem, the great seeker, says,
It is impossible to state in words this wondrous insight. All things
remain the same yet all are changed. Time flashes bodily into Eternity; the
streaming Flux itself is the Eternal, which, though It moves unceasingly,
moves not at all.
The Upanishadic lore echoes and re-echoes in our aspiring hearts: “That
moves and yet That moves not. That is far distant and yet That is close and
near…”
Time houses Truth. Sri Krishna tells the Truth, the Truth Eternal, about
Himself. Here we can recollect the significant words of Virginia Woolf: “If you
do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people.”
Conversely, if you know the spiritual truth about yourself, you must needs know
the truth about others. Sri Krishna showed the divine Truth that was Himself.
We can also cheerfully walk with Marcus Aurelius: “I cannot comprehend
how any man can want anything but the Truth.”
To doubt the spiritual Master before one’s own illumination dawns is not
uncommon in the spiritual history of the world. Even some of the dearest
disciples of great spiritual Masters have done so. But for the seeker to leave the
Master precisely because doubt haunts him is an act of sheer stupidity. Stick, stick
unto the last. The blighted doubts will disappear into thin air. The splendour of
Infinity and Eternity will blossom in the bosom of Time. Your mounting
aspiration will accomplish this task.
Arjuna’s throbbing heart voices forth, “Thou art the primeval Soul.” He cries
for Sri Krishna’s forgiveness. Owing to his past ignorance, he had not realised Sri
Krishna in His divine nature. His past was full of wrong deeds, what with
ignorance and what with carelessness. He begs with a throbbing heart for
forgiveness for his acts of omission and commission rendered unto Sri Krishna.
“Bear with me as father with his son, as friend with his friend, as lover with
the beloved.” Sri Krishna no doubt forgives Arjuna. He assumes his normal,
natural and familiar form.
Arjuna comes to realise that it is only the Grace divine that has endowed him
with the Yogic eye to see the Unseen, the Glory supreme of the Lord, the present,
past and future.
He also learns from the Lord that “neither the study of the Vedas, nor
sacrifice, nor alms, neither austerity nor study can win this cosmic vision.” Even
the Cosmic Gods yearn for a glimpse of this Universal Form which He has just
shown to Arjuna out of His boundless Compassion.
Faith, devotion, surrender. Lo! Sri Krishna is won. No other way Him to
realise, Him to possess.