(Image Courtesy Mahanidhiswami)

Divine Bliss Is Incredibly Wonderful In All Of His Forms

अदृष्टपूर्वं हृषितोऽस्मि दृष्ट्वा
भयेन च प्रव्यथितं मनो मे |
तदेव मे दर्शय देवरूपं
प्रसीद देवेश जगन्निवास || 11.45||

adṛiṣhṭa-pūrvaṁ hṛiṣhito ’smi dṛiṣhṭvā
bhayena cha pravyathitaṁ mano me
tad eva me darśhaya deva rūpaṁ
prasīda deveśha jagan-nivāsa|| 11.45||

Shloka Translation
BG – Ch. 11- Ver. 45:

I’m pleased and (but) terrified to see you in a shape I’ve never seen before; my thoughts is confused. Please show me your magnificent form. Be happy, O Lord of Lords, O Universe’s Home.

Explanation

Aishwarya bhakti and madhurya bhakti are the two types of bhakti. Aishwarya bhakti is when a devotee is inspired to engage in devotion by thinking on God’s almighty nature. Shock and reverence are the prevailing emotions in aishwarya bhakti. The sense of separation from God and the necessity to maintain decency of behaviour are constantly there in such devotion.

Madhurya bhakti is a devotional state in which the devotee has a close personal relationship with God. “Shree Krishna is mine, and I am his,” is the overwhelming sentiment in such devotion. The cowherd boys of Vrindavan who loved Krishna as their buddy, Yashoda and Nand baba who loved Krishna as their child, and the gopis who loved him as their beloved are all examples of madhurya bhakti. Madhurya bhakti is far more sweet than aishwarya bhakti.
Believers form four types of relationships with Shree Krishna, overlooking God’s almightiness:

Dāsya bhāva – Our Master is Shri Krishna, and I am his servant. Shree Krishna’s personal servants, have dasya bhava devotion. It includes the emotion that God is our Father or Mother, which is a version of dasya bhava.

Sakhya bhāva – Shree Krishna is our friend, and I am his closest partner, cowherd lads from Vrindavan had sakhya bhv devotion.

Vatsalya bhava – Shree Krishna is our son, and I am his mother. Yashoda and Nand baba’s devotion was in vatsalya bhava.

Mādhurya bhāva – Our Beloved is Shree Krishna, and I am his lover. The gopis of Vrindavan’s devotion was in mādhurya bhāva.

Arjuna is a sakhya bhava devotee who enjoys a close friendship with the Lord. Arjuna was overcome with awe and reverence upon witnessing God in his universal form, yet he yearned for the sweetness of sakhya bhava that he had grown accustomed to. As a result, he prays to Shree Krishna to conceal the almighty form he is now seeing and reveal his human form once more.

Verse & what we can learn

The fear of losing something “ours.” The fear of losing knowledge or being deceived comes next. The third is the dread of losing joy and happiness, or, in other words, the fear of grief. We are terrified of losing our existence, knowledge, and enjoyment, to put it another way. We understand that the atman, the eternal essence of limitless existence, knowledge, and enjoyment, is our true nature. The ego, or the fallacy that we are not the everlasting essence, is hence the source of anxiety. When we understand our genuine nature as the limitless eternal essence, there is no room for fear.

If we assume that “I am the body,” however, all of the body’s troubles and concerns, such as disease, old age, and death, become our worries. The fear of death, which is the fear of losing one’s physical being, becomes our fear.
When Arjuna considered himself a part of the cosmic form, his ego evaporated for a brief instant. When his ego returned, it brought all of his wrong associations with the body, mind, and so on with it. The cosmic form appeared to Arjuna as something outside of himself, something capable of destroying him. He confessed his fear to Shri Krishna and pleaded with him to return to his normal form.

To acquire knowledge and to implement that knowledge in life one needs to be mentally and physically active and healthy and for that daily meditation is a great tool.

There are various types of meditation like Buddhist meditation, heartfulness meditation, mindfulness meditation, meditation for stress, and each meditation benefits are countless. There is also numerous meditation techniques for beginners which help in practicing daily meditation so go ahead and start your journey towards a peaceful and balanced life.

In the next shloka Arjuna continues to pray to Shri Krishna.

Let’s learn to live with “The Gita” via Meditation Affinity…