Verse 10.32-33

Verse 10.32: “Of (inanimate) Creations, the Beginning, the End, as also the Mid-stay I am, O Arjuna; of lores I am the Atmic-Lore, of controversialists I am the (truth-seeking) Dialectic.

Verse 10.33: “Of letters I am ‘A’ and of the group of compounds I am the Copulative Compound. I alone am the Exhaustless Time, and I the Omni-facing (Creator). (259)

Commentary called Jnaneshwari by Jnaneshwar:

Just as a soul yearning to pluck at all the stars in the heaven must tie up the whole sky in his bag; or one must clasp in his armpit the entire global earth before the atoms of the earth are numbered, even so, he that longs to behold the full expanse of My divine manifestations, shall know the all and the one of My real being. The entire tree must be uprooted to make it yield the branches, the flowers, and the fruits all at once: So My real being, pure and entire, shall have to be known to be able to visualise all My manifestations. Or else how endlessly long should you hear of them separately. Therefore, know ye, once for all, that I am all in all like the threads that make the web by warp and woof. I am, O, Kiriti, the beginning, the middle and the end, of the entire universe.

Once awakened to My all pervasive divine being, how trivial indeed would be the recounting of manifold manifestations? But that is yet beyond thy tether, so let it pass. Since you ask Me about the manifestations, do hear now, Oh husband of Subhadra, that I am the Atman knowledge (adhyātma vidyā) amongst all lores. And argumentation am I in those that love to talk; for with them it never comes to an end even with the consensus of all the sciences. Rather it widens its horizon with every attempt to close it, increases the argument, giving greater scope to eloquent oration, which the orators so much love.

The controversy in the arguments is myself,” said Govinda, “I am the letter ‘A’ amongst the letters of the Alphabet; amongst compounds I am definitely Dwandwa (dvandva—formed of two syllables—suggesting dual existence in the world); I am Time (Kala) who devours all—from the very fly to the Creator God Brahmadeva. I am also the inexhaustible Time, who dissolves the entire universe including the mountains Meru and Mandara, who swallows the boundless floods that deluge the universe at the time of the dissolution of the world, who clasps the very fire of universal conflagration and devours the wind, and who also holds the sky in his womb at the end of the world,” said the husband of Goddess Lakshmi and added, “I am also the creator who revives again the entire universe.”