Gyaneshwari -Sant Gyaneshwar
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Chapter-11
The Universal Form
Thus you grant favour, even to those who cause injury to you and bestow unmerited grace on the evil doers. You went to Bali to ask for alms and became his door-keeper. When the harlot, who had never worshipped you or listened to those who sang your glory, called her parrot fondly by your name, you granted her a home in Vaikuntha. On the slightest pretext you make others come close to you. How then will you treat me differently? The wish-yielding cow by her plentiful milk gives relief to those in distress, how then can her calves suffer the pangs of hunger? So it will never happen that the Lord will not grant my request and will withhold from me his universal form. But my only request is that you should make me worthy of seeing it (106-110). If you are sure that I shall be able to see this revelation, you should fulfill my ardent wish. When Arjuna made this earnest entreaty, the Lord of six Divine attributes, could not contain himself. Then Arjuna and Lord Krishna appeared as if they were the monsoon and the cloud brimful with ambrosial grace or the spring and the cuckoo. More than the Sea of Milk in which rises high tide at the sight of the full moon, the Lord was overjoyed with redoubled affection for Arjuna, and in that state of ecstatic joy, he said aloud, “O Partha, see these unlimited forms of mine (111-115).” Arjuna had desired to see only one form of God, but the Lord revealed to him that the whole universe is his form. So unbounded is the generosity of the Lord that he bestows a gift thousand-fold of what a devotee desires. His deepest mystery, which was held back from the thousand-eyed Shesha, hidden from the Vedas and kept secret from his spouse Lakshmi, he disclosed to Arjuna. See how luck favoured Partha. Just as a person goes into the state of dream from the state of wakefulness and becomes all the things he sees in a dream, so Lord Krishna became the manifold universe (116-120). Then dropping his human form and tearing off the curtain of gross vision, he revealed his cosmic form in its full grandeur. Without even stopping to think whether Arjuna would be able to see this vision with his naked eyes, he said all at once in the ecstasy of love, ‘Behold these forms of mine’. |
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