Essays on the Gita

392 <strong>Essays</strong> on the Gitaand infinite and the same in the individual and in the universe.And at first his blindness, his treatment of this Divine as themere outward man, his seeing of only the mental and physicalrelation seems to him a sin against the Mightiness that wasthere. For the being whom he called Krishna, Yadava, comrade,was this immeasurable Greatness, this incomparable Might, thisSpirit one in all of whom all are the creations. That and not theveiling outward humanity, avajānan mānuṣīṁ tanum āśritam,was what he should have seen with awe and with submissionand veneration.But the second suggestion is that what was figured in thehuman manifestation and the human relation is also a realitywhich accompanies and mitigates for our mind the tremendouscharacter of the universal vision. The transcendence and cosmicaspect have to be seen, for without that seeing the limitations ofhumanity cannot be exceeded. In that unifying oneness all has tobe included. But by itself that would set too great a gulf betweenthe transcendent spirit and this soul bound and circumscribedin an inferior Nature. The infinite presence in its unmitigatedsplendour would be too overwhelming for the separate littlenessof the limited, individual and natural man. A link is needed bywhich he can see this universal Godhead in his own individualand natural being, close to him, not only omnipotently thereto govern all he is by universal and immeasurable Power, buthumanly figured to support and raise him to unity by an intimateindividual relation. The adoration by which the finite creaturebows down before the Infinite, receives all its sweetness anddraws near to a closest truth of companionship and onenesswhen it deepens into the more intimate adoration which lives inthe sense of the fatherhood of God, the friendhood of God, theattracting love between the Divine Spirit and our human souland nature. For the Divine inhabits the human soul and body;he draws around him and wears like a robe the human mind andfigure. He assumes the human relations which the soul affects inthe mortal body and they find in God their own fullest sense andgreatest realisation. This is the Vaishnava bhakti of which theseed is here in the Gita’s words, but which received afterwards