Verse 11.24

Verse 11.24: “For, as I behold Thee, radiant, touching the skies, of manifold hue, with gaping mouths and large blazing eyes, I, with my inmost soul in trepidation, find neither courage nor tranquillity, O Vishnu. (353)

Commentary called Jnaneshwari by Jnaneshwar:

Thou hast indeed these several angry mouths and faces, which have beaten hollow the great destroyer Himself in striking terror, and with their ever-widening gape have made the very sky itself shrink. The great expanse of sky itself limits it not, nor does the wind careering in the three worlds enfold it; and see how the vapours that can consume fire itself, are cracking all around. And again, not one is like another, being of diverse colours; thus helped by these colours, the world-destroying fires dissolve the world. Of such unmeasurable heat are these vapours that they might turn the whole frame of the universe to ashes, and yet in the mouths the teeth and the jaws are visible. (It looks) as though the very wind is being convulsed into spasms: or the very sea is being swallowed by an inflow of high floods, or that the fire of the all-consuming poison is out to destroy with the help of the sea-stirring fire, or again as though the deadliest poison is drunken with fire, or death itself has started as an unrelenting carnage.

Such an all-devouring mouth has gaped forth as it were, under the cover of the deadly fire of this thy person. And it is as wide as the cavity of the sky itself when it is tom asunder and bursts open: or it looks as though the deep void of the nether world is rent open by Lord Shiva, when Hiranyaksha (brother of Hiranyakashyapu) whisked off the earth under his armpit and took shelter in a hold underground. So vastly stretches out from end to end to infinity this mouth with the tongues lolling out so furiously. The whole universe cannot make a single morsel for it, and is thus saved from its ravenous sport. And in the cavity of the jaws yawning the valley of Death, the tongue lolling looks like the venomous flames reaching out into the sky from the hissing dragons of the nether world.

The teeth too in their glowing lustre stick out on the lips and resemble the ramparts in the city of clouds decorated with bands of world-consuming lightnings. And how horrid the eyes look out from the hollow of the forehead and frightening terror itself as if the violent outburst of death incarnate is blazing out from the dark. What mayest thou intend to fulfil by this mask of terror is indeed out of my ken. Yet certain it is that I am struck with death-terror. In fond conceit did I yearn to set my eyes on thine all-filling presence, and how richly have I deserved all this as the fruit of that unearthly longing! What an exquisite vision, O Lord, have I beheld of thine all-filling presence!! My eyes are now sated with that pleasure.

Earthy is this body, and who indeed cares if it perishes? Now my very soul and spirit is in peril, and I gravely doubt if that spirit would remain. For, terror may shake the body, or at most might distress the mind, and even unnerve the intellect: but now the inner soul itself, that is beyond and above all these, enjoying its blissful state—that very tranquil soul is a sickening sight: or what a tremendous power this realisation of thine all pervading Presence is? It has even dislodged the illumination of self-knowledge; and my tie of discipleship to thee—my divine master—is itself in peril. Oh God, in the presence of thy all-pervading being, my heart is almost in a dead faint and I am struggling to gird it with courage. Courage has lost her ground in my name and then I have had this vision of thine all-pervading Presence. Be that as it may, thy spiritual precept has totally bewildered me. Oh, my poor helpless soul, that is running wild, eager to find a heaven of rest and finds it not. Life itself has fled before this great rack and ruin in the shape of this spectacle of thine all-filling divinity. How then should I live at all if I were to keep quiet?