May Gītā: 11.45
Adṛṣṭa-pūrvaṁ hṛṣito ’smi dṛṣṭvā
bhayena ca pravyathitaṁ mano me
tad eva me darśaya deva rūpaṁ
prasīda deveśa jagan-nivāsa
‘After seeing this universal form, which I have never seen before, I am gladdened, but at the same time my mind is disturbed with fear. Therefore please bestow Your grace upon me and reveal again Your form as the Personality of Godhead, O Lord of lords, O abode of the universe. ’
Bhagavad Gītā 11.45
One of the most beautiful things about the Gita is that for every word of quantum level wisdom, every glimpse of supernatural imagery, we have Arjuna’s questions or reactions to it all. He often says what we are thinking. This is because Arjuna is just like us. Most of the time he doesn’t “get it”. Which is good because if he did, the Bhagavad Gita would be a lot shorter than 18 chapters.
Of all those chapters, number 11 has to be the most mind - boggling. Krishna gives Arjuna the power to see his proper divine form. Not to be confused with his more acceptable divine form with four arms and a bewildering number of reincarnations. This is the real deal.
The vision which unfolds is not unlike most modern depictions of the universe. This is either an extraordinary coincidence or a clue that telescopes have been around a lot longer than historians would have you believe.
As we currently understand it , the universe is made up of billions of galaxies which are falling helplessly into the jaws of billions of black holes along with everything - and every one - that ever existed. Krisna appears to embody all these black holes, anll these stars and galaxies…and more besides. It’s not made explicit in the Gita but somewhere in the corner of this vision Arjuna might have noticed the projected fate of this very planet. Our less than glamorous prognosis includes being swallowed up by the sun in about 150 million years time…several millions of years before it consumes the entire solar system. This all happens long before our arm of the Milky Way swirls into the black hole at the middle of this galaxy, a process which is already well under way. To sum it up: Being on the Earth is rather like being suspended in a huge tub of slowly emptying bath water : helplessly circling a celestial plughole.
This vision Krishna is allowing Arjuna to see is not meant to be gratuitously horrific or cruel. He simply wants his disciple to understand that the ultimate action of time is the destruction of everything. At which point Arjuna asks if he can have his normal vision back, please, because it’s all too much to behold. Just like we would.
What are we to make of this vision we have just witnessed? We are, after all, the blink of an eye in the bigger picture. Actually we’re more like a fraction of a fraction of a blink. Do we assume nothing we do can possibly be of any consequence and hide under the covers until it’s all over? Of course not. We get out there and do our best to make our blink (and as many other blinks) as meaningful as possible. Because our blink of the eye has the potential to matter as much as all the rest.