Preparing for the Miraculous

what arjuna saw: the dark side of the force 77see too the very form and body of this Godhead,” of theAbsolute Existence about whom he has been told and whohas done the telling.“Thou shalt see, replies the Avatar, my hundreds andthousands of divine forms, various in kind, various in shapeand hue ... Thou shalt see wonders that none has beheld.Thou shalt see today the whole world related and unifiedin my body and whatever else thou willest to behold.” Yetwhat Arjuna has to see, the human eye cannot grasp. “Butthere is a divine eye, an inmost seeing, by which the supremeGodhead in his Yoga can be beheld, and that eye Inow give to thee,” says Sri Krishna. 9The glory of the Supreme is disclosed to the warrior.“The supreme Form is then made visible. It is that of theinfinite Godhead whose faces are everywhere and in whomare all the wonders of existence, who multiplies all the manymarvellous revelations of his being, a world-wide Divinityseeing with innumerable eyes, speaking through innumerablemouths, armed for battle with numberless divine upliftedweapons, glorious with divine ornaments of beauty,robed in heavenly raiment of deity, lovely with garlands ofdivine flowers, fragrant with divine perfumes. Such is thelight of this body of God as if a thousand suns had risen atonce in heaven. The whole world multitudinously dividedand yet unified is visible in the body of the God of Gods.”Arjuna, in ecstasy, cries out: “Thou art the supreme Immutablewhom we have to know, thou art the high foundationand abode of the universe, thou art the imperishableguardian of the eternal laws, thou art the sempiternal soulof existence!”However, in the absoluteness of the God of Gods thereis also the opposite side, the terrible dark side completing9 These quotations and the following in this section are from Essayson the Gita, pp. 377 ff.