विभूतियोगः
vibhūtiyogaḥ
To the heart that has begun to take delight in him the Beloved speaks his supreme word, and the whole world becomes the shining of a hidden Face.
- matparāyaṇaḥ — the whole being turned to the Divine as its one supreme goal
- vibhūti — the Godhead seen in every power of his becoming
The ninth chapter left the disciple in possession of the royal secret, the Divine who contains all things and is contained by none, who yet accepts from the striving soul a leaf, a flower, a cup of water offered in love. The tenth does not open with a new argument; it opens with an intimacy. Bhūya eva, “again,” says the Teacher, “hearken to my supreme word,” and he gives the reason why it may now be spoken: it is “for thy soul’s good, now that thy heart is taking delight in me” (10·1). Arjuna stands at this threshold no longer only as a questioner whose reason must be convinced, but as one in whom love has quietly begun; and it is to this beginning of delight, prīti, that the highest knowledge is entrusted.
For this delight of the heart in God is the whole constituent and essence of true bhakti, bhajanti prīti-pūrvakam.
The word itself is first a word of origins. Neither the gods nor the great Rishis know any birth of the Unborn, for he is in every way their source (10·2); and all the states and becomings of creatures, understanding and forgiveness and truth, grief and pleasure, fear and fearlessness, proceed from him alone (10·4–5). This is no knowledge that turns away from the world; it is the world traced back to its fountain, so that he who knows the Unborn “lives unbewildered among mortals” (10·3). Then the chapter breaks into the verses of love. The wise adore in rapt emotion; their consciousness full of him, they illumine one another and are ever contented and joyful (10·8–9); and to these the Lord gives the buddhi-yoga, the Yoga of the understanding, and, lodged within their self, lifts the blazing lamp of knowledge (10·10–11). Here love and knowledge are no longer two roads that meet at the summit; the heart’s delight has become the very door by which a divine intelligence enters.
Arjuna answers with the fullness of an accepting mind, “Thou alone knowest thyself by thyself, O Purushottama” (10·15); and yet the heart that has tasted asks for more. How shall he think of the Divine everywhere, in what pre-eminent becomings shall he find him (10·17)? “It is nectar of immortality to me, and however much of it I hear, I am not satiated” (10·18). Sri Aurobindo hears in this unsated cry a first hint of what the Gita itself leaves unexpressed and later Vaishnava and Shakta devotion sang more intensely: the universal Ananda, the play of the Mother, the sweetness and beauty of God’s Lila.
The Teacher consents, with the warning that there is no end to the detail of his self-extension (10·19). “I am the Self which abides within all beings,” he begins (10·20), and then the names pour out: the radiant sun among lights, imperishable Time, spring the fairest of seasons, the silence of things secret and the knowledge of the knower, Vyasa among the sages, Arjuna among the Pandavas (10·21, 10·33–38). In this seeming profusion Sri Aurobindo discerns an order, an ascending power in the manifestation that lifts through higher and higher forms towards the ideal nature of the Godhead; and he reads the vibhūti as power in its widest sense, not might alone but knowledge, love, beauty, sweetness. Yet the ascent never licenses contempt of the lowly.
God must be seen and loved in the ignorant, the humble, the weak, the vile, the outcaste. In the Vibhuti himself it is not, except as a symbol, the outward individual that is to be thus recognised and set high, but the one Godhead who displays himself in the power.
So the chapter closes on a double note. Whatever is beautiful and glorious and mighty in the world is a splendour, light and energy of the Divine (10·41); and all of it together is but an infinitesimal portion by which he upholds the universe (10·42).
Yet the highest power and manifestation is only a very partial revelation of the Infinite; even the whole universe is informed by only one degree of his greatness, illumined by one ray of his splendour, glorious with a faint hint of his delight and beauty.
The disciple leaves this threshold with an eye trained to find the Friend in every excellence of the world, and with a heart that the rays have only made more hungry for the Sun. He has seen the Godhead one splendour at a time; he will now ask to see him whole.
Essays on the Gita
Key verses
