विश्वरूपदर्शनयोगः
viśvarūpadarśanayogaḥ
Behold with the divine eye the One in whom all the worlds are gathered, look without fear into the mouths of Time, and find behind them the face of the Charioteer.
- vibhūti — the Godhead seen ray by ray in his pre-eminent powers
- viśvarūpa — the One seen as the All, and the Friend found again within the Terrible
The tenth chapter taught the eye to find God one splendour at a time; the heart, delighted and unsatisfied, now asks for the whole. “I desire to see thy divine form and body, O Purushottama” (11·3). It is not the formless silence that Arjuna asks to behold, Sri Aurobindo observes, but the Master of works and of Nature, the Spirit revealed in the universe from whom he must receive the command to his part in the world-action. For this the human eye is insufficient, and the Teacher gives him the divine eye, an inmost seeing (11·8).
What follows is the most tremendous passage of the poem. The whole world, moving and unmoving, is unified in one body (11·7); the light of it is as if a thousand suns had risen at once in heaven (11·12); and Arjuna, “overcome with marvel and joy and fear,” bows and adores with clasped hands (11·14). The keynote, as Sri Aurobindo reads it, is the vision of the One in the Many and the Many in the One, the vision that reconciles and unifies. But the same Form turns towards the terrible. It opens mouths of flame, and the kings and captains of both armies rush into them as rivers hurry to the sea and moths to a kindled fire (11·25–29); the disciple finds no peace and cries out, “I know not the will of thy workings” (11·31).
The answer is the heart of the chapter. “I am the Time-Spirit, destroyer of the world, arisen for the destruction of the nations” (11·32); “by me and none other already even are they slain, do thou become the occasion only, nimittamātraṃ bhava, O Savyasachin” (11·33). This is not a sanction of egoistic violence; it abolishes the ego from the action. Sri Aurobindo insists that God the Time-Spirit does not destroy for the sake of destruction but to clear the way for a greater rule, and that the divine worker will cherish no hatred, no lust after strife, but do his work for the holding together of the world.
Not appalled by the face of the Destroyer, he will see within it the eternal Spirit imperishable in all these perishing bodies and behind it the face of the Charioteer, the Leader of man, the Friend of all creatures.
That reassuring truth is what the rest of the chapter unveils. Arjuna’s first words after the command are already a hymn: “Rightly and in good place, O Krishna, does the world rejoice and take pleasure in thy name” (11·36). And then the most human of confessions breaks from him: all the times he called the Lord of the worlds “O Krishna, O Yadava, O comrade,” in jest, at play, on the couch and in the banquet, not knowing this greatness; let him bear with me “as a father to his son, as a friend to his friend and comrade, as one dear with him he loves” (11·41–44). Sri Aurobindo sees here no diminution of the vision but its necessary mediation, the seed of that Vaishnava bhakti which later received a more ecstatic extension.
It is the profound sense of that which makes us see in the dark face of Kali the face of the Mother and to perceive even in the midst of destruction the protecting arms of the Friend of creatures, in the midst of evil the presence of a pure unalterable Benignity and in the midst of death the Master of Immortality.
“I rejoice, but my mind is troubled with fear” (11·45). The Teacher answers, “Cast away fear and let thy heart rejoice” (11·49), and resumes the gentle form of grace and sweetness; and Arjuna, beholding again the human face, says that his heart is filled with delight and he is restored to his own nature (11·50–51). The greater Form, the Lord declares, is not won by Veda or austerity or gift or sacrifice, but only by the bhakti which loves him alone in all things (11·54); and he gathers the whole way into one verse: be a doer of my works, my bhakta, free from attachment, without enmity to any creature (11·55).
The disciple leaves this threshold with the command received and the terror transfigured; he has seen that the Friend and the Destroyer are one face. But the lower nature in him could not yet bear the vision with tranquillity, and a question rises from that very weakness: by what way, and in what form of the Divine, shall love be lived?
Essays on the Gita
- The Vision of the World Spirit; Time and Destroyer
- The Vision of the World Spirit; The Double Aspect
Key verses
