Gita 10.42 – Appreciate Krishna’s opulence by appreciating the potency of his fragment

A spark attracts such adulation, thank you bhya hamidam krishnam ekam senasti tojagat this is the last verse of the 10th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita 10.42 Krishna is concluding this chapter by declaring that it is he who is the the one who is manifest in all the attractive things of this world, he has given a list from text 20 to 38 of the various opulences and then after that when he speaks here, he speaks about how the list of opulences is indicative, it is not exhaustive that there are many other opulences that can be seen as his, there are many other things in this world that can be seen as manifestations of his opulence and how to discern something as his opulence, he gives general principle in the previous verse, that's 10.41 yad yad vibhuti mat sattvam shri madhur jitame bhava tattva devavagacchatvam mamateyam shisambhava well you know that all opulent beautiful glorious creations spring from but a spark of my splendor so if we see a magnificent building today if we see a charismatic leader if we see a brilliant sports star we can see that they are all manifesting Krishna's opulence and then in this verse he goes further and generalizes that general principle also when he states here athava bahunai te na if however alternatively you argue bahunai te na, in this multiple way what is the need for you to know all these multifarious manifestations what do you need to know that for I say why not if I want you to know Krishna do I not need to know his opulences Krishna gives one breathtaking statement about his opulence he says that vishthabhyaham idam kritsnam kritsnam idam is everything in this world, in this universe ekamshena sthito jagat ekamshena by my, by a full of me by a fragment of me everything in this existence is sustained so it's pervaded and sustained so we can look at the whole of existence and see it as a manifestation of Krishna's opulence rather than looking for specific things within this existence and seeing them as Krishna's opulence either way, the point remains that we can see Krishna's opulence even in this world, now the word amshya is significant here, it had come earlier just in the previous text when mamatejo amshya sambhava, this is a manifestation of my teja my it's a spark of my splendor here in this verse when Krishna uses the word amshya it is more in the sense of a spark of himself a part of himself, a fragment of himself Krishna also uses the word amshya later in the 15th chapter when he says mamayvamsho jivalokhe jeevabhutah sanatana manah shashthani indriyani prakriti sthani karshati, there he says mamayvamsho jivalokhe, that these living beings are my amshas and they are eternally my parts but if they don't act as my part then they struggle with the mind and senses in this world after speaking this, he speaks further that or rather that concept of amshya is elaborated in the Puranas and the Gaudiya Vaishnava Acharyas explain it to be in terms of svamsha and viminnamsha so svamsha is the direct part of Krishna, his personal expansion or Prabhupada would translate it as plenary part of Krishna, plenary actually means complete so complete part might seem like a paradox but it means that the various manifestations of Vishnu the way the Bhagavatam in the Gaudiya Vaishnava philosophy explains, they come from Krishna at the same time they are not it's not that they are not God they are also God they are also the absolute truth and in that sense their divinity is not to be minimized by worshipping them also one can attain liberation but because they come from Krishna so they need to be seen as in that sense parts of Krishna, that is svamsha Krishna himself manifesting as expansions but along with that there is a viminnamsha viminnamsha means that there are fragmented parts, separated parts viminnam so these are minuscule, these are infinitesimal the svamsha are also infinite like the absolute the viminnamsha are small, they are finite and the viminnamsha are actually the living entities so basically the word amsha means part now here when Krishna is talking about the amsha that sustains the whole world he is clearly not talking about the finite living entities, he is not talking about the viminnamsha he is talking about the svamsha his own parts, so if we look at the sequence through which existence, through which the material existence manifests, so there is Krishna from whom Balram comes, from whom from whom there is Vasudev Sankarshan Pradyumna Narada from whom there is Narayana, from whom there is the second quadruple expansion the view of Vasudev Sankarshan Pradyumna Narada and after that there are the purushavataras, Maha Vishnu, Garbhodakshaya Vishnu and Shirodakshaya Vishnu so Maha Vishnu is considered to be the super soul, it is from Maha Vishnu that the universe has come out, emanate from his bodily pores as it is explained and then further within each universe Shirodakshaya Vishnu enters, lies down in the causal ocean and from his navel the primeval lotus comes out on which Brahma appears and then Brahma creates the universe, the planetary systems more specifically and then within as the Brahma Samhita says refers to each small atom so within each universe it is Shirodakshaya Vishnu that manifests sorry it is Garbhodakshaya Vishnu that manifests and within each atom within the universe Parmanu it is the Shirodakshaya Vishnu that manifests so here when Krishna says that by one portion of me the whole universe is sustained what he essentially means is that it is he who is sustaining it is he in his manifestation as the Garbhodakshaya Vishnu who is sustaining the universe and Garbhodakshaya Vishnu is one part of Krishna, if we start from Krishna then it is several levels down we have Balram then the second level Narayan and at fourth level is again second quadruple expansion of and after that fifth is Maha Vishnu and sixth is Garbhodakshaya Vishnu so it is a sixth level manifestation we could say so Ekamsha one part and like this Krishna has so many expansions some of them in the spiritual world some of them in the material world and this way we can all move closer to Krishna and attain Krishna by understanding his proximity to us there is proximity and there is intimacy you know so proximity means it is usually in terms of physical location so intimacy means in terms of more of emotional affection so knowledge of Krishna's proximity can kindle intimacy or awareness of Krishna's proximity can awaken intimacy because if we think that God is far away somewhere out there in the spiritual world where he is performing his pastimes and we feel that I am all alone here in this world struggling for existence then it is often quite difficult to maintain faith in God and to perceive here but if we understand that God is so close he is there in my heart as a super soul and he is around me in his multifarious manifestation in fact everything that exists is sustained by him so God is within me and around me and in this way God is so proximate to me and by remembering that this proximity of God is because of his affection for us we can also feel inspired to direct our affection towards him and especially when we do this by practicing the process of bhakti yoga then gradually and increasingly we relish intimacy with him and we relish the supreme sweetness of that intimacy.