​Gita 10.13 – The sages’ reiteration of Krishna’s words boosts our conviction and devotion

Bhagavad Gita 10.13 So here Krishna is speaking to Arjuna is speaking to Krishna reiterating the understanding that he has acquired by hearing the Gita till this point and in the previous verse he stated that how Krishna is the absolute truth the supreme absolute truth, he is not just Brahman but he is Parambrahman and in this verse he goes on to say this is what all the great sages have spoken about you and who are the sages, he lists some of them they were Narada Muni is called the sage among the gods he is especially a well-known advisor of the gods he lists three other great sages and you yourself have said this to me also so Ishwara Prabhupada in his comments would often say that Arjuna is glorifying Krishna, Parambrahma, Paramdhama some people may say this is just flattery one friend is flattering another but though friends might speak like this but not in an emergency conversation in a battlefield and certainly not when matters of great philosophical import have just been discussed and further pointing out to the fallacy of the flattery argument is the symphony of voices who are saying the same thing that symphony is that it is not just Krishna who is speaking his glory, it is great sages like Vyasadev who has written all the Vedic literature Arjuna had had contact with all these sages many of them had come for the Rajasuya Yajna when Yudhishthira had performed it and afterwards of course Pandavas would host the guests sages as guests when they were in the kingdom as kings and later on when they were in the forest they would meet the forest sages again and again so Arjuna has heard about Krishna's divinity and supremacy from all these sages also if you look back at the Mahabharata it is a vast book but certainly there are incidents for example in the Mahabharata when Narada Muni and Markandeya Rishi both visit the Pandavas and that time Markandeya Rishi speaks about his adventure in the Supreme Lord and that time he points out how Krishna is supreme Narada Muni also reiterates that and like that if we see the whole narrative of the Mahabharata just as this happened in the forest when the Pandavas were in exile and they would invest their time in spiritual growth by hearing from the great sages similarly here Arjuna has heard from the great sages at various points about Krishna's divinity or Krishna's supremacy and so in that sense the knowledge that Krishna has given in the Bhagavad Gita is not entirely new or unprecedented it is knowledge that is very very important for the sake of understanding things as they are for the sake of realizing reality as it is that it is our eyes have certain vision through which we see things and that vision is often imperfect to the extent we can move from that vision to the vision of perfection that is we can move towards recognizing how the supreme lord is all attractive how the supreme lord is the one who is declared by all great authorities to be the supreme to that extent we can become utterly devoted to him the symphony of voices we see this even in the tradition it's not just one person whom we may go to temple or we read some book or some material tract where we read about Krishna's divinity we look back in the tradition and there are so many great saints so many great scholars so many illustrious people who accepted Krishna's supremacy and that resonance of their convictions becomes the booster for our conviction of course there is no substitute for realization ultimately we don't need to take steps towards not just hearing and getting conviction by hearing from others but also by moving onwards steadily towards Krishna by by practicing the protest verses of bhakti which is described in the 9th chapter as 9.2 Krishna has stated that that this higher truth can be realized directly through experience from within we can realize it from within and when we do so, when we realize it from within then we move steadily onwards towards Krishna and that is what is the innermost aspiration of the human heart to know Krishna and to love Krishna and here also is a you know possibly subconscious expression of the intellectual and cultural training that Arjuna had acquired at those times he immediately refers back to the authorities to or those who are considered authority to at that time to back up his points just like in today's culture if you want to say that a particular food is somebody is eating a particular food and we want to tell them that this food contains too much fat it will increase your obesity then you might say this but if you want to be more authoritative after all anybody can label any food and there are so many people who label so many different kinds of food that is good or bad so we will want to we want to be authoritative we will immediately quote some authority to back up our point about how we can avoid getting into unnecessary complications in life by making statement that we cannot back up with authority when our own credibility loses and then our relationships suffer and our life ends up becoming complicated so we need to back whatever we say with authority and Arjuna does that because he is talking about spiritual subject matters here so he looks for spiritual authority so he does we might if you are talking about health we will quote some reliable health authority some famous dietician or famous health bodies research survey reports published in some respected journal might quote that to establish the authoritativeness of what is the basis for our making such a statement the Bhagavad Gita is quite clear in terms of its proclamation of Krishna's divinity that it is not there is in today's world the idea that there are many people who are actually multifaceted there are many people who are focused in multiple ways on doing learning things and doing various things but all our multiple facets are meant to turn our face towards Krishna and that comes when we are convinced that Krishna is the absolute truth and that's why we need to recognize the authoritativeness of the great authorities who declare Krishna to be supreme and by that boost our conviction about Krishna's supremacy and thus move onwards towards Krishna steadily and ultimately attain him.