Arjuna has heard the teaching. Now he wants to see it. Show me your form of majesty, he says, if you judge me able to bear the sight. Krishna gives him divine eyes and reveals himself. Countless mouths, eyes, divine ornaments, weapons raised. If a thousand suns rose at once, their blaze might approach this splendour. Arjuna sees the whole universe, everything that moves and does not move, divided endlessly yet gathered into one body. Wonder seizes him. His hair stands on end. Then the vision turns terrible. Warriors from both armies — Bhishma, Drona, Karna, the kings — pour headlong into fanged, burning mouths, like rivers flooding toward the ocean, like moths hurling into flame. Their heads are crushed between the teeth. Arjuna's awe collapses into terror. Who are you? he asks, trembling. Krishna answers: I am time, ripened, come to consume worlds. Even without you, none of these warriors will survive. I have already slain them. Be merely my instrument. The revelation forces Arjuna past every comfortable idea about the divine. This is not a gentle presence. It creates and it devours with the same face. Arjuna begs to see the familiar form again, and Krishna, softly, takes it back. The gentleness that returns is real, but it sits on top of something immeasurable. Krishna then names the only way this vision is possible: not by scripture, austerity, charity, or sacrifice, but by love that holds nothing back. The chapter does not explain the terrible vision away. It lets it stand. Whatever you think the sacred is, it is also the thing that terrifies you. Holding both is the beginning of devotion that is not naive.