Shrimad Bhagavad Gita: Divine Glories (Chapter 10)

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The tenth chapter of the Bhagavad-gita is called the Yoga of Divine Glories (Vibhuti Yoga) as it describes the power and the pervasiveness of the Self. The chapter begins with Arjuna asking Sri Krsna, how we can keep in touch with the eternal aspects of the Lord, in this world of plurality. An answer to this particular question forms the rest of the chapter.

Packed with indications of the joyous Infinite among the joyless finite objects, we find Sri Krsna indicating Himself as the supreme factor without which specimens belonging to each class cannot maintain themselves as existent beings. He concludes by stating the impossibility of exhausting analysis of all things and beings in which He is present by saying, "Of what avail is it to you to know all these diversities? I exist supporting the entireuniversebyaportion of Myself.

In any textbook of a systematic exposition of thought, later chapters will have their roots in earlier statements, and the continuity of narration in and the consistency of development of the themes are both unavoidable. Although these chapters are named separately and therefore, look almost completely independent of each other there is an imperceptible matrix of ideas holding them all together. This chapter may be traced back to have risen from some dozen different verses in different earlier chapters. Of them, the most predominant and striking source is the stanza in the seventh chapter wherein, after describing the higher and the lower nature of the Eternal, the Lord concludes, 'I am the origin and the dissolution of the whole universe', and therefore he added, 'Beyond Me there is naught. All this is strung in Me, as a row of jewels on a thread.

Having known that the mud is the essence in all pots, it will be but an application of that knowledge, if one explains to indicate the place of mud in all available pots. And yet, in science this is the method. After knowing that the circulatory system is that which collects the assimilated essence of food and distributes the same to all parts of the body and that it is again the stream in the circulatory system that collects all the poisonous refuse in each cell and brings it all for purification in the lungs, the knowledge is not complete until a careful investigation is held to observe, analyse and classify the circulatory systems in different species of the living kingdom.

Similarly, although Krsna as the Self, Eternal and All- pervading is the source of all names and forms, He has to indicate to Arjuna His exact place and worth in the comity of things and beings in the universe.