Gita 11.19 – The universal form is not just blinding but also burning

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11.19 Anadi no beginning Madhyantam there is no beginning, there is no middle there is no end Anantaviryam you have unlimited prowess unlimited glory power is one pointer towards glory so unlimited power Anantabahu earlier it was Anekabahu there were more than one, many but here it is not just many Anantabahu there are unlimited forms eyes are the moon and the sun I am seeing you with mouth is blazing so fire coming out of that mouth the world is being burned the universe is being burned over here Vishwa earlier two verses the effulgence was talked about in terms of its effect of blinding illumination Vashyamitam Durndiksham Samantad Deeptanalarkad the effulgence is so bright that it is difficult to see we know from physics that there are two kinds of light sources there are cold light sources and there are bright light sources so for example, tube light is considered a cold light source it gives illumination but it doesn't cause heat, the bulb causes heat, if we touch even the glass around the bulb it often becomes hot or to speak of if we touch the filament so earlier the point was that the illumination was there that was stressed but now here it is said that there is not only illumination but there is also burning Sutejasa Vishwamitam Tapantam the whole world is becoming heated up the universe is getting heated up by this effulgence Sutejasa and earlier it was said that the effulgence was there all around and that was blazing but here it is not just effulgence that is talked about, it is fire that is talked about that Vashyamitam Deeptahutashavatram so while there is effulgence coming from the whole body, there is a fire coming from the mouth and that fire coming from the mouth is blazing and Teja is Sutejasa Vishwamitam Tapantam by your own effulgence the whole universe is getting heated up now there is there are two aspects broadly here there is a dimension and there is the ramification the dimension is astonishing mind boggling it is stated there is no beginning, there is no middle there is no end this was talked about earlier but this is being repeated when it was said that Arjuna had said that in 11.16 and now he is repeating that so repetition again is fourth emphasis now the universal form itself is unending, extending as far as the eye can see and going on and on and on now specific details are talked about here that basically the middle two lines Anandabahu often whenever artistic depictions of the universal form are made the form is shown with many arms but we cannot the finite human art cannot show unlimited arms so the unlimited arms are talked about over here Anandabahu and then there is Shashisurya Netram Shashisurya that refers to there is a sun and there is the moon, they are the eyes that means that the celestial bodies are incorporated within the body of the supreme person so there is a conceptualization of universal form that is described especially in the second canto of the Bhagavatam and actually it is reiterated throughout the Bhagavatam and there it is described how various parts of the universe various planetary systems in the universe are connected with are manifested in various parts of the universal form there also the theme comes in the sun and the moon. Now Krishna is not going into cosmology in detail in the Bhagavad Gita nor is he doing any cosmological correlation or rather the Bhagavad Gita itself doesn't do it Arjuna does not go into that level of detailed description but broadly speaking the idea of saying the sun and the moon are the eyes that means that there is a correlation that there is the incorporation of the whole universe within the universal form so so one way of talking about hugeness is by saying so many arms. Another way of stressing the hugeness is to say that huge bodies like the sun and the moon they are the eyes deep kahuta shivaktaram and further it is stated that the mouth is burning so basically the description of further elaboration of the bodily form and this kind of elaboration was not there till now it is coming now specifically that from the mouth fire is coming out now later on it will be described that the warriors are entering into the mouth of this universal form so it is interesting that both kinds of flow will be described that fire is coming out and the warriors are going into the form what this means is that fire is is not just causing burning but it seems to have some kind of suctional pull by which it draws people into it just like we have black holes there is a powerful gravity pull that things get drawn into it so that part will be described later this is a ongoing description of the perception that Arjuna is having and it is said that fire is coming out now normally wherever there is fire especially where the fire is not regulated now we all need fire we need fire for cooking we need fire for yajnas but in all those situations the fire is regulated so wherever the fire is not regulated that fire can become dangerous even disastrous and here especially when fire is coming out from the mouth now it's a very fearsome sight normally fire there is a whole a whole conception of some special feature of people called fire eaters they many times they just create some optical illusion where they seem to be eating up fire in some cases some people may have some mystical powers by which they might be able to do such things but essentially still taking fire from outside inside is still astonishing and disconcerting enough but getting fire out of the mouth that is that is that can be horrifying imagine you are just talking with someone and they open their mouth and fire blazes out it will be horrifying so when to say that from somebody's mouth fire is coming out that means that there is it's a very scary vision so Arjuna will talk about later about how he is becoming afflicted by fear at this stage there is a description and his own emotion is not yet talked about there was an initial indication of Arjuna's emotion when Sanjay described what Arjuna did he is overwhelmed with astonishment and his hair was standing and he offered his obeisances that was talked about in 11.14 but at this point the focus is not yet on Arjuna describing his own emotion Arjuna is describing the vision and he is describing his comprehension of the vision his identification of what all he is seeing in the vision and as as he starts making more and more sense of things then there will be more specific result of emotions also specific result in terms of emotions also in him you know when we see just a vague vague clutter of say paint on a canvas it usually doesn't invoke any emotion maybe except a dismay or disdain at such a splattering of paint but as we start discerning features as more and more things become specific then those specific things trigger emotions in the heart similarly as Arjuna is starting to see many many specific things in the universal form those emotions will get activated and he will verbalize those emotions also which we will see in our future talks Thank you.