CHAPTER 11, TEXT 19: You are without origin, middle or end. Your glory is unlimited. You have numberless arms, and the sun and moon are Your eyes. I see You with blazing fire coming forth from Your mouth, burning this entire universe by Your own radiance.
Arjuna has been given divine eyes to behold the universal form. Although we - the readers - do not have divine eyes, in our mind's eye we can somehow behold this dazzling form. Just by reading these words, my mind is awestruck, attempting to grasp the magnitude of God's greatness.
No beginning, middle, or end.
Numberless arms.
The sun and moon are Your eyes.
Blazing fire pouring from Your mouth,
burning the universe
by Your own radiance.
The images, the vastness flash through my mind and leave me breathless and awestruck.
Interestingly, Arjuna has made very similar exclamations in verses 17 and 18:
You are inexhaustible
You are the oldest
Your form has a glaring effulgence
spreading like blazing fire
or the immeasurable radiance of the sun.
Arjuna is repeating himself. Although there are poetic reasons for repetition, such as the power of persuasion, added emphasis, and creating rhythm, there is a far simpler reason that Arjuna is repeating himself: he is overcome with wonder. Prabhupad writes, "Here and in many other places there is repetition, but according to the scriptures, repetition of the glories of Kṛṣṇa is not a literary weakness. It is said that at a time of bewilderment or wonder or of great ecstasy, statements are repeated over and over. That is not a flaw." Certainly we can all identify a time in our lives when we were overcome with bewilderment, wonder, or ecstasy, and all we could do was repeat ourselves.
Forgive me, but the phrase that keeps coming to me when I read these verses is:
Oh
my
God.
Literally.
Oh my God.
I want to just keep repeating that phrase as the images flash through my mind - a beginningless and endless form, blinding radiance of the sun, rivers of fire, the planets are God's eyes, the eternality of the universe...
Oh my God.
Oh my Krishna.
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