Gita 11.38 – The source and the goal of all knowledge is known by devotion

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relish his love in this life and forever in the hereafter. Thank you.

Bhagavad Gita 11.38. Here Krishna is speaking, or rather Arjuna is speaking to the Vishwaroopa, offering prayers, and he states over here, you are the original god, you are the primeval person, you are the ultimate shelter of this universe, you are the knower, you are the one who is to be known, you are the supreme shelter, you have pervaded the whole universe, which is your infinite form. So, this verse offers insightful glories of the supreme lord. It is describing here, so this is, prior to this Krishna, Arjuna has said that, first 36th verse he said that, oh, the godly are delighted by hearing your glories and the ungodly are fleeing away, it is appropriate.

And then he describes Krishna's supreme position, Vishwaroopa is the god of all the gods, and now he is continuing that, so Adideva, Mahadeva is the name which is often used for lord Shiva, his position is above the other devatas, but here Vishwaroopa is used, referred to by the name Adideva, Purusha of Puranas, the primeval person. We have a Mahayana phrase where he says, so here this Purusha of Puranas, Purana Purusha, so essentially the same point is being made in a different way over here. So, what is the significance when we say Krishna is the original, the concept of origin itself is philosophically complicated to understand with unguided intelligence.

Immediately when we talk about the origin of everything, the question comes up, what is the origin of that? If everything came from god, where did god come from? So, actually this question assumes that god exists at the same level as everything else, and therefore god has to be within the causal chain. When he is within the causal chain, that means that he is also an object of the world, but that itself is a wrong assumption. God is not a thing of the world, god is not an object of the world, he is a source of the world.

So, when he manifests in the world, he walks at one place, goes to another place, then if I appear as if he is an object of the world, but he is never one. Even when he seems to be in the world, actually the world is in him, and that means actually the whole universe is resting within him, he is a shelter, and that is something which is not easy, or sometimes not even possible to conceive with our present mental apparatus. The problem is not the possibility of god doing it, the problem is the possibility of our comprehending how god can do it.

So, it is not his ability that is questioned, it is our comprehension capacity that is being questioned. So, he exists outside the time domain, and he actually makes things happen inside the time domain, and he sets off the trigger effect, just like a person, just like a novelist writes a novel, and the novelist is outside, but because of the novelist only all the characters in the novel are moving around. So, we can find out within the novel, okay, this person's father is this one, this person's mother is this one, like that we can go backwards, but when we want to know the novelist, we want to find the novelist in the novelist's storyline itself.

So, like that Krishna exists outside the whole frame. So, the whole universe is destroyed, at that time the elements rest again in Krishna, in his form as Vishnu, they have withdrawn into him. So, knowledge originates in you and knowledge culminates in you.

You know everything, and you are the ultimate object to be known. Paramchitama, that Paramchitama, you are the supreme destination. So, when we know Krishna, we attain Krishna.

So, the purpose of all our intellectual searching is ultimately to know Krishna, because when we understand him, at that time our search for knowledge attains its perfection. When they become jnanavan, the bhaatmas, they understand how attractive, supremely attractive Krishna is, how loving he is, and naturally they want to surrender to him, and in that way they become wholeheartedly devoted to him. So, Vedanyamchit, he is the knower of everything, it is he who gives us knowledge, remembrance, forgetfulness, as we mentioned in 15.15 in the Gita, but it is he whom we are supposed to be with.

So, now, by you the whole universe is pervaded. This statement is significant because this indicates that actually it is Krishna who is our ultimate well-wisher. It is Krishna who is there all around us.

He has pervaded the whole universe, he has pervaded our bodies in the form of the super-soul, and he is all around us, and if we want to access him by meditating on him, by calling out his names, by letting our heart's desire express itself through our bhakti, we can all experience him, and by experiencing him, we can become more and more attracted to him till we ultimately attain him.