THE HOLY GITA
CHAPTER NUMBER 11
VISVARUPA DARSANA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF THE VISION OF THE COSMIC FORM:
VERSE NUMBER 03
Text in Transliteration:
evam etad yathaa ‘ttha tvam aatmaanam paramesvara
draashtum icchaami te roopam aisvaram purusottama
Sanskrit words and phrases and their meaning:
evam = thus; etat = this; yathaa = as; aattha = has declared; tvam = thou; aatmaanam = thyself; paramesvara = O Supreme Lord; drashtum = to see; icchaami = (I) desire; te = thy; roopam = form; aisvaram = sovereign; purushottama = O Purusha Supreme.
Text in English:
As You have declared Yourself to be, so it is, O Lord Supreme. (Yet) I desire to see Your Iswara form, O Purushottama.
COMMENTARY BY SRIMAT SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:
Divine attributes are inherent in Iswara. As brilliance cannot be separated from burning fire divine excellences cannot be effaced from Him. Outstanding features such as knowledge, lordship, strength, potency, heroism and brilliance may be easily marked in Him. There are hidden glories which may be cognized only when He condescends to reveal. Arjuna supplicates for a vision of His latent glories.
COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:
It is one thing to know that the Eternal Spirit dwells in all things and another to have the vision of it. Arjuna wishes to see the Universal Form, the visible embodiment of the Unseen Divine how He is the “birth and passing away of all beings.” X 8 The abstract metaphysical truth should be given visible reality.
COMMENTARY BY SRIMAT SWAMI SIVANANDA:
Some commentators take the two halves of this verse as two independent sentences and interpret it thus:
“So it is, O Supreme Lord, as Thou has declared Thyself to be. (But still) I desire to see Thy form as Ishvara, O Supreme Person.”
Rupamaisvaram: Thy form as Ishvara, that of Vishnu as possessed of infinite knowledge, sovereignty, power, strength, prowess and splendour.
Comments by the blogger:
In chapter X the Lord Has given a detailed description as to His great and infinite glories.
Yet Arjuna is not satiated.
As Swami Sivananda has said elsewhere, seeing the supreme Cosmic Form of the Lord is not the be all and end all. That if it were so, the Gita would have concluded with the chapter XI. So, according to him, seeing the cosmic vision is one of the stages in the development of self-realization.
Arjuna’s delusion and sorrow have come to a conclusion with the chapter X and he is ready to fight the war. He is no longer shaking in his shoes at the very thought of taking the lives of his own kith and kin. Now he is in an upbeat mood. And he loves the Lord more than ever for His compassion and the graded way He has taken him through the knowledge of Self Culture and the inevitability of performing his swadharma or Arjuna’s self-ordained duty.
In his upbeat mood, Arjuna wants to see the Lord’s Cosmic Form as well.
And through the description of Sanjaya we too get to see in our mind’s eye the great Form of the Lord.
What is actually seen by Arjuna and Sanjaya gets described in words of mouth. Human language, as we know, is paralytic and insufficient when it comes to describing an essentially a spiritual EXPERIENCE. Still, Sanjaya has done a great job in lending words to the inexorable experience. So we should try to form a vision of our own through a devout and faithful study of the ensuing verses.
Lord Krishna showed the Form of this world even as a boy!
As a boy, when at play, Sri Krishna ate the soil of the earth like any other child at play. And when His concerned mother asked Him to open His mouth and show the soil, what she saw in the mouth of the Lord was the Form of the whole world!
So it is for the second time, the Lord Has taken pity on His incomparable devotee and shows instead of just the earth, the whole Cosmos!
What is pertinent here is that in Hinduism it is rightly and strongly believed that the whole cosmos is filled with and impregnated only by the Lord. And there can be nothing here alien and extraneous to the Lord. Both the king and the pauper and the totality of the animal kingdom not to speak of the teeming millions of the planets and the Five Elements all are God and God alone!
This is said in Esha Upanishad as “the Vasudheva Kutumbaka” which, incidentally was recalled and quoted ably by our able Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi in his fine speech rendered at Davos, Switzerland.
How wonderful it is to realize that we all are parts of the Lord!
If it be so, could there be any strife between nations and individual human beings?
Who is good? Who is bad? Who is small? Who is big and great and rich?
Everyone is the Lord!
This is another form of Cosmic Vision.
So we should not treat even the basest among us with contempt. We must pray for those who think we are their enemies. Because we all are one and the same Lord Material!
There can be no differences among us. There are no differences in actual existence. Every difference is only the imaginary thing.
We are God and everything here is God only.
This is one of the fundamental visions of the Hindu Sages and Seers from the Rig-Vedic period onwards.
But Hinduism does not believe in Propagation of the religion.
Every Tom, Dick and Harry is out to propagate his religion in a very studiously professional way! This is one of the sorrows in the history of the world and needs to be corrected at least now under the able Prime Minister, Mr. Modi!
But I am not arguing that the 15 crore Indians who form the minorities of India should be won over to our religion!
For it is a matter of past History of India. We cannot put the clock back.
But further and unhindered acts of professional propagation and conversion must be stopped.
How? When our Constitution itself allows propagation to them how can we stop the deluge of funds coming to India to be distributed in cash and kind to our people, our brothers and sisters?
It is dead easy, at least, in theory.
We should bridge the chasm existing between the Hindu brethren.
They try and convert only those of our brothers and sisters who are treated as belonging to the lower castes. And the next reason is the economic barrier. They can convert only the economically disadvantaged Hindus among the lower castes.
Caste factor is a great barrier even if Modi’s government brings prosperity to India as a whole.
The so-called high caste Hindus must go out of their way in embracing the so-called low caste Hindus. This is how we can get over the constitutional guarantee to the minorities to propagate their religion and indulge in conversion.
While speaking about all these things, we should not forget the 15 crore Indian minorities are our brothers and sisters as are the peoples of various countries of the World!
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