Introduction to Section 7.8

In the last decad, the Alvar felt tormented by the mental vision of the Lord’s limbs, one after the other, rousing his appetite for God-enjoyment all the more. The Lord would not, however, fulfil the Āḻvār’s aspiration even now and is obviously waiting for the appropriate moment of consummation. The Āḻvār knows the Lord’s mind all right but still he is egged on by the exuberance of his God-love to crave for immediate union. So great was his ardour that non-fulfilment thereof should have normally resulted in his immediate extinction. He was, however, still kept alive, much to his surprise and he enquired of the Lord how exactly He enacted this wonder. “Well,” said the Lord “this is not the only wonder wrought by Me, better behold My kaleidoscopic cosmic wealth”. The Lord thus exhibited unto the Āḻvār many wonders, as against just one on which he sought elucidation. Overawed by the amazing magnitude of the Lord’s wealth and wonders, even as sage Akrūra beheld with dismay the Divine Brothers (Balarāma and Kṛṣṇa) inside the running water of river Yamunā, as well as on the river bank, the Āḻvār voices forth in this decad, his mental reactions to the wonderful phenomena in front of him. It might be recalled that the Lord had displayed unto the Āḻvār His cosmic wealth and splendour earlier also in III-4 and VI-3. In III-4, however, the Āḻvār just didn’t know where to begin and what to say, unable to express himself with any degree of precision; in VI-3, the Lord revealed His extra-ordinary capacity to/achieve the impossible and compose, with perfect ease, the incompatibles, the opposites, within His fold. And now, we see an over-awed Āḻvār attempting to describe the wonderful phenomena before him and seeking clarification from the Lord in respect of the bewildering complexities, baffling intellectual comprehension.