Krishna says that neither the gods nor the kingly sages know His nature, because He made them. Only the person with faith-enlightened eyes sees Him as He is, unborn and undying. Every human quality comes from Him: intellect, skill, endurance, truthfulness, joy and grief, birth and death, fear and fearlessness, shame and honour, the wish to give and the will to help. To those who love and serve Him He gives a mind of perfect mood, and He lights the lamp of wisdom inside their darkened souls.
Arjuna answers that he knows this is true. He calls Krishna the High Abode, the first and the eternal, as the saints Narada, Vyasa, Asita, and Devala have said. But how can he come to know Him, however long he muses on Him? Under what forms can he grasp Him? He asks Krishna to say again, clearly, where His greatness appears, because his ears cannot drink enough of such words.
Krishna agrees to unfold some of His glories. He is the spirit seated in every creature's heart. He is the sun by day and the moon among the stars by night, OM in sacred speech, the Himalaya among hills, the fig-tree among trees, the sea among waters, Garuda among birds, the tiger among beasts, Rama among warriors, and the Ganges among rivers. He is time itself, the death that seizes all, and the birth that brings beings to light. Among the Pandavas, He is Arjuna, because Arjuna is His.
Whatever lives, lives by Him, and wherever there is wondrous work, majesty, or might, it has come from Him. No tongue can finish telling these glories. The chapter closes on a question: how could Arjuna take in the vastness of this? Krishna made all of it, and yet He stays apart as its separate Lord.
