Verses 10.22-10-30
The closing sequence of Bhagavad-gītā Chapter 10 can seem tedious.
After Kṛṣṇa declares his affection for Arjuna in the first lines, his disciple again asks for more detailed knowledge about him. God answers him over the final 19 verses of the chapter in the form of no fewer than 58 comparisons of himself to the greatest phenomena of the universe: ‘Of the rich, I am richest’ (10.23), ‘of the mountains, I am tallest’ (10.25), ‘of the rivers, I am longest’ (10.31), and so on.
But the model used by Kṛṣṇa in these lines never involves just a simple comparison. It is never a simple matter of ‘this’ or ‘that’. Kṛṣṇa’s presentation of himself always takes the form of a progression. It always builds on a quality that can be increased, intensified, or deepened.
And, of course, no matter what the greatness of whatever is considered great, Kṛṣṇa will hold that ultimate position. In a range of possible ranks Kṛṣṇa’s position is that of perfection.
Kṛṣṇa knows the world as perfect, while we cannot understand what that perfect world is. This is the way the God works: what he creates is perfection. He doesn’t know how to create anything less. No matter what the world becomes, no matter what it evolves to be, God will be the greatest of it. Ordinary souls, jīvas, will never know this perfection.
And yet, this tough reality of Hindu cosmology accepts one exception, one particularity. Among all the material things that make up the universe, there is an immaterial quality that can always increase, in its opulence and intensity, in its depth and its reach: love.
If the universe of things is finite, the universe of feelings is infinite. If the universe of all things that can be seen with the material eyes, heard with the material ears, tasted with the material tongue, is materially limited, then our relish of these things is endless. Our emotional relation to them is without limit, our love for them is without end.
Love is the name of the infinite spiritual experience of the finite material world.
Kṛṣṇa, the creator, can of course conceive of the world because he created it. Rādhārāni, on the other hand, conceives of the world through the heart. Or more correctly, the world is experienced, lived, felt, as endless because Rādhārāni’s heart is endless, because her prema-śakti (divine loving energy) is endless.
The universe is there to discover. But it is only because the loving experience of each individual soul, each jīva, grows every day, that there is any experience to be had at all. With every beat of our hearts, with every movement of our eyes, with every murmur in our ears, we play a part in creating the universe of feeling.
If Kṛṣṇa is the creator of the universe of things, then Rādhārāni is the creator of the universe of feelings. It is a universe whose bounds we cannot imagine because they simply cannot be imagined.
The love in the world expands with a force that the creator of the world, Kṛṣṇa, could never have imagined, and still cannot imagine.
And yet the desire of that creator, his near helpless longing, is to feel the love that is the cause of his creation. He cannot explain it, he does not want to. He only want to feel it, to relish it, to love her.
This is the perfection of love, love that perfects us, perfect love.