BG 11.40 — Viśvarūpa-Darśana-Yoga

Bhagavad Gītā 11.40Chapter 11 · Viśvarūpa-Darśana-Yoga · Krishna → Arjuna · triṣṭubh

नमः पुरस्तादथ पृष्ठतस् ते नमो ऽस्तु ते सर्वत एव सर्व ।

अनन्तवीर्यामितविक्रमस् त्वं सर्वं समाप्नोषि ततो ऽसि सर्वः ॥

namaḥ purastād atha pṛṣṭhatas te

namo 'stu te sarvata eva sarva

ananta-vīryāmita-vikramas tvaṃ

sarvaṃ samāpnoṣi tato 'si sarvaḥ

spokensingle-voice recital; rendered via IndicF5 conditioned on a Sanskrit reference clip

meaning

Arjuna prostrates before you, behind you, on every side. With infinite power and immeasurable reach, you pervade everything, and so you are everything.

ekras · bhāṣya

Namah in front, behind, on every side — to You, sarva. Ananta-virya, amita-vikrama — You pervade all, therefore You are all. The verse shows the disciple's body bowing in every cardinal direction; the closing reasoning is precise.

Krishna is everything because Krishna pervades everything.

Shankara reads the verse precisely. Namah purastat — bow in front — atha prishthatah — and from behind. Sarvatah eva sarva — from every side, sarva. Ananta-virya — endless valor — amita-vikrama — measureless reach. Sarvam samapnoshi — You pervade everything — tatah asi sarvah — therefore You are everything. The reasoning chain is structural: pervasion entails identity; the bhakta who bows in every direction acknowledges the pervasion-identity.

Madhusudana reads with characteristic precision: the verse formalizes the cosmological pervasion as identity.

Krishna pervades; therefore Krishna is. The predicates ananta-virya and amita-vikrama anchor the pervasion in cosmic capacity.

Ramanuja reads with characteristic warmth: the bhakta's bows in every direction are the body's recognition that Krishna is at every direction.

Madhva reads on the bheda-frame: the eternally distinct jiva bows in every direction recognizing svatantra Hari at every direction.

Vallabha reads through pushti-marga: the prasada is omnidirectional; the bhakta bows omnidirectionally.

Shridhara reads cleanly: bows in front, bows behind, bows everywhere; pervasion equals identity.

Context

where

Chapter 11 · Viśvarūpa-Darśana-Yoga · meter triṣṭubh

who speaks

Krishna → Arjuna

preceded by — BG 11.39

You are Vāyu, Yama, Agni, Varuṇa, the moon, Prajāpati, and the great-grandfather of all. I bow to you a thousand times, and a thousand times again, for there is no end to bowing.

What's going on

Arjuna prostrates before you, behind you, on every side. With infinite power and immeasurable reach, you pervade everything, and so you are everything.

Sūtras through this verse (46)

AbhinavaguptaclassicalB

Recognition, not additionbetween

11.1Now: experience what was taught.───→here11.40───→11.55See the world as Śiva's own body.

RāmānujaclassicalB

The śāstra is one bracket (2.12 → 18.66)between

11.1Arjuna confirms the bracket from inside.───→here11.40───→18.66The teaching closes with one command.

VallabhaclassicalA

Two paths — rule-bound and grace-onlybetween

10.14Faith comes only from the Lord's own giving.───→here11.40───→11.55Grace-soul acts only when the Lord wills.

show all 46

AbhinavaguptaclassicalC

Vision is the structural centerbetween

11.8The eye is given, never earned by work.───→here11.40───→11.49Cosmic returns to gracious; ananya means non-dual.

AbhinavaguptaclassicalD

Avatāra: appearance without departurebetween

9.4He pervades, yet is not in any of it.───→here11.40───→11.46Cosmic and gracious one self-luminous.

AbhinavaguptaclassicalG

Saṃvit: one referent under many namesbetween

11.34Consciousness itself swallows the cosmos.───→here11.40───→12.5Every 'Me' from Krishna is Śiva-consciousness speaking.

AbhinavaguptaclassicalH

Bhakti as non-dual recognitionbetween

9.22Consciousness tending its own self-knowing modes.───→here11.40───→11.49Ananya bhakti is non-dual recognition.

AbhinavaguptaclassicalI

Anugraha: grace as the active powerbetween

11.35By grace-nature, the secret discloses itself.───→here11.40───→18.62Peace by grace — never by accumulation of work.

RāmānujaclassicalC

Three ṣaṭkas (1–6 / 7–12 / 13–18)between

11.1The aiśvarya-delusion now to be removed.───→here11.40───→12.1Sa-guṇa or nir-guṇa, which path wins?

RāmānujaclassicalD

Karma-yoga as kainkarya (worship)between

9.27Whatever you do, do it as offering.───→here11.40───→11.55Five clauses, one shelter: mat-karma-kṛt.

RāmānujaclassicalE

Bhakti as continuous recollectionbetween

10.10I give the buddhi-yoga to those who love.───→here11.40───→11.54Undivided love beholds it.

RāmānujaclassicalH

Prapatti / śaraṇāgati — universal upāyabetween

9.32Even the lowest birth reaches Me through this.───→here11.40───→11.55Five clauses for the one who is Mine.

RāmānujaclassicalI

Vibhūti as evidence for antaryāminbetween

11.13Arjuna sees all at once.───→here11.40───→13.2The whole vibhūti clinches sāmānādhikaraṇya.

RāmānujaclassicalJ

Śeṣa-śeṣī · pati-vrata similebetween

9.34Set toward Me, the seeker's whole posture.───→here11.40───→11.55He is the one telos.

AbhinavaguptaclassicalE

Field and field-knower as Parameśvaraapproach

───→here11.40───→13.1One knower in every field — Parameśvara.

RāmānujaclassicalK

Tri-guṇa diagnostic for the bhaktaapproach

───→here11.40───→13.20Both natures cause the body's binding.

AbhinavaguptaclassicalA

Knowing and acting are one powerexit

11.34Already slain — the question is finally retired.───→here11.40───→

Madhusūdanaclassicalmadhusudan_bhagavad_arpana

Madhusudan Bhagavad Arpanabetween · other

9.22Yogakshema as offering returned───→here11.40───→11.55Five offering-clauses

MadhusūdanaclassicalD

Offer the act to the Lord and it stops bindingbetween

9.22The undivided ones the Lord himself sustains.───→here11.40───→11.55The whole Gītā distilled to five offering-clauses.

MadhusūdanaclassicalE

Devotion is how knowing actually arrivesbetween

9.22Constant thought of Me is self-contemplation itself.───→here11.40───→11.55The five-clause crystal is bhakti named whole.

MadhusūdanaclassicalF

Every middle chapter opens with a bow to the teacherbetween

11.1I worship the unborn, the self-luminous teacher.───→here11.40───→11.55With awe I praise him, Kāśirāja, my teacher.

MadhusūdanaclassicalH

Krishna with form is the ground beneath formless Brahmanbetween

10.8From Me everything flows; wise ones know this and worship.───→here11.40───→11.55The crystal verse names the saguṇa in absolute form.

MadhusūdanaclassicalK

Arjuna's grief has two roots, not onebetween

11.1Arjuna marks the universal moha cured.───→here11.40───→18.73Confusion gone, memory gained — the cure complete.

JayatīrthaclassicalC

Refuting Śaṅkara-style readings, named or unnamedbetween

11.16Aneka- is not just two-or-more.───→here11.40───→13.5Brahma-sūtra is text, not just utterance.

JayatīrthaclassicalE

Vishnu-sarvottamatva read into apparently neutral wordsbetween

11.16Many-armed is Viṣṇu, not a pantheon.───→here11.40───→12.1Beyond avyakta is puruṣa, and Viṣṇu.

JayatīrthaclassicalF

Bhakti-tāratamya: gradation among devotees, gradation in fruitbetween

9.25Each worship reaches its own destination.───→here11.40───→11.55Five-clause sādhana names the apex.

JayatīrthaclassicalG

Citation as proof — śruti, smṛti, MB, Aṣṭādhyāyī, Pañcarātrabetween

11.16Aṣṭādhyāyī 5.4.78 settles aneka-.───→here11.40───→15.1Aṣṭādhyāyī 3.2.4 settles aśvattha.

JayatīrthaclassicalI

Lakṣaṇā-control — literal preferred when availablebetween

11.16Aneka- means many; no upacāra needed.───→here11.40───→13.5Brahma-sūtra is text, not paraphrase.

VallabhaclassicalB

Grace alone — the technical markbetween

9.32The unsheltered take shelter and reach Me.───→here11.40───→11.54Undivided love — sādhana stripped, grace-clothed.

VallabhaclassicalG

The Lord plays — calf-affection, not contractbetween

9.32The unsheltered run to their cowherd-Lord.───→here11.40───→11.54The form revealed is Krishna in blue, not abstract.

VallabhaclassicalH

Stilling the mind — into the Lordbetween

6.47Stilling the mind into Vāsudeva — not into nothing.───→here11.40───→11.54Vision opens only to the love-stilled mind.

VallabhaclassicalI

A closed three-source citation gridbetween

9.32Even the unsheltered reach the highest goal.───→here11.40───→11.54Bhāgavata + Brahmasūtra fuse at the vision-verse.

VallabhaclassicalJ

Strategic silence — pointers, not absencesbetween

11.21The cosmic-form catalogue is bracketed.───→here11.40───→11.45The frame, not the catalogue, carries the doctrine.

ŚrīdharaclassicalB

The Lord descends out of compassionbetween

11.1By high compassion He showed the world-form.───→here11.40───→11.43Teacher, and teacher's teacher beyond compare.

ŚrīdharaclassicalC

Devotion is both the way and the homebetween

9.34Mind on Me, bowed to Me — you reach Me.───→here11.40───→11.54By undivided love alone — knowable, seen.

ŚrīdharaclassicalH

The grammar of single-pointednessbetween

9.22The undivided are my one foundation.───→here11.40───→11.54Undivided love alone unlocks the world-form.

ŚrīdharaclassicalD

The path that turns no one awayexit

9.32Women, śūdras, all, also reach the goal.───→here11.40───→

VedāntadeśikaclassicalB

Prapatti — bhakti's access for those the long path defeatsbetween

9.34Mind on Me, devoted — you reach Me.───→here11.40───→11.54Bhakti without rival is the seeing-instrument.

VedāntadeśikaclassicalF

Saṅgati — anticipation-and-resolutionbetween

9.1Chapter 7's residue of wonder forces 9's disclosure.───→here11.40───→11.54The saguṇa-bhakta privileged ahead of 12.1.

VedāntadeśikaclassicalJ

Sañjaya's frame — evidentiary, not ornamentalbetween

1.2Dṛṣṭvā tu — Sañjaya speaks to be heard later.───→here11.40───→11.50Sañjaya names the viśva-rūpa as witness.

Ekrasmodernbhakti

Bhakti — devotion pathbetween · v2

9.30Even the wrong-doer───→here11.40───→11.54Only by undivided bhakti

RamsukhdasclassicalF

Surrender — the single shelterbetween

9.30Even a great wrongdoer, fixed on Me, is good.───→here11.40───→11.55Five clauses join into one shelter.

Ramsukhdasclassical

Sādhaka Sañjīvanī commentary at this versebetween

───→here11.40───→

Ekrasmodernforgiveness

Forgivenessapproach · other

───→here11.40───→12.13Friendly, compassionate

Gauravmodernkarma_yoga_hand

Karma Yoga Handbetween

11.32Wrist, kalai. Kala, time. 'Kalo'smi loka-kshaya-krit pravriddhah.' Gaurav arrive───→here11.40───→18.47Pointing finger. Svadharma. 'Shreyan svadharmo vigunah para-dharmat svanushthita

ŚaṅkaraclassicalH

The Lord is friend of every beingbetween

10.42With one part I pervade this whole world, and stand.───→here11.40───→11.55Acting for Me, holding Me supreme — that is the road.

Śabda · lemmas (15 unique · 21 occurrences)

सर्व·सर्वम्·सर्वः sarva ×3 — all, entire · vocative masculine singular noun / accusative neuter singular noun / nominative masculine singular noun
समाप्नोषि sam-√āp — (sam- + āp: to obtain) · present indicative 2nd person singular verb

show all 15

ते·त्वम् tvad ×3 — you (2nd person pronoun stem) · dative singular noun / nominative singular noun
नमः namas ×2 — salutation, reverence (the namas particle) · nominative neuter singular noun
अस्तु·असि √as ×2 — to be (verbal root) · present imperative 3rd person singular verb / present indicative 2nd person singular verb
पुरस्तात् purastāt — in front, before (adv.)
अथ atha — now, then (auspicious opening particle)
पृष्ठतस् pṛṣṭhatas — from behind (pṛṣṭha + -tas)
सर्वतस् sarvatas — everywhere, on all sides (sarva + -tas)
एव eva — indeed, truly, only (emphatic particle)
अनन्त ananta — endless, infinite (an- + anta 'end'); an epithet of Viṣṇu · compound · also at 1.16, 2.41, 10.29, 10.40, 11.11, 11.19 +4
वीर्य vīrya — valor, vigor, prowess · compound
अमित amita — measureless, infinite (a- + mita) · compound
विक्रमः vikrama — stride, valor (vi- + √kram) · nominative masculine singular noun
ततस् tatas — from there, then, therefore

Praśna · so what (7)

01If obeisance in every direction is logically required because the Lord is sarva (All), does the verse implicitly render directional or sectarian worship — worship facing a single altar or a single form — philosophically incomplete?
02Ananta-vīrya and amita-vikrama are power-epithets used in a moment of existential terror: what does it mean that infinite power, when truly seen, produces prostration rather than confidence?

show all 7

03All six schools agree that the Lord 'pervades' (samāpnoṣi) — yet they disagree on whether the pervaded world retains real, qualified, or merely apparent status. How does that ontological disagreement change what the act of prostration communicates?
04Madhusūdana notes that finite heroes possess either vīrya (power) or vikrama (skilled application) — rarely both, never infinitely. What does this taxonomy imply for how humans allocate effort between raw capacity and disciplined technique?
05Śrīdhara's gold-and-ornament simile suggests the world is an unfabricated modification of the one material cause. If so, is there a meaningful distinction between worshipping Kṛṣṇa and worshipping the world?
06Rāmānuja ties sarvatva (being the All) to the body-soul relationship (śarīratva): the world is the Lord's body, not a creation standing outside him. What practical obligations does treating the natural world as a divine body place on a practitioner?
07Madhva's Mahābhārata citation defines ātman by function — obtaining, consuming, having continuous being. Does this functional definition make the ātman more or less accessible as an object of worship than the form-bearing Viśvarūpa Arjuna is seeing?

Vyavahāra · try it in your life

Advaita

When you encounter someone you dislike intensely, the Advaita practice suggested here is directional: try bowing — internally, even briefly — in that direction too. The verse's logic is that refusing any direction of obeisance is a claim that something exists outside Brahman, which is the very avidyā (ignorance) the text is dissolving. The refusal to acknowledge the divine in an adversary is not moral fastidiousness; it is a metaphysical error.

Viśiṣṭādvaita

In Rāmānuja's reading, every person you serve is literally a body of the Lord — your service is kainkarya (dedicated service) directed at the śeṣin through the śeṣa (the body, the dependent). The Viśiṣṭādvaita application is professional as much as spiritual: treat your organisation, your family, the people you manage as a qualified whole whose inner life is the Lord, and the quality of your attention will shift from transactional to reverential.

show all 6

Dvaita

Madhva insists the jīva is eternally distinct and dependent. The everyday discipline implied is clarity about one's own smallness without despair: you are not Hari, you cannot become Hari, and this is not a loss. The practice is to identify the one area of your day in which you have been acting as if your own prowess were infinite — and to consciously hand that zone back to Hari as his domain, retaining your role as a dependent agent executing his will.

Śuddhādvaita

Vallabha's ānanda-śakti reading suggests an aesthetic practice: cultivate the ability to experience ordinary beauty — a good meal, a piece of music, a moment of sunlight — as Kṛṣṇa's prapañca, his world-display offered to himself through your senses. The shift is not from enjoyment to renunciation but from unconscious consumption to conscious reception of prasāda (grace-gift). Every pleasure becomes a form of the Lord's ananta-vīrya touching you.

Bhakti

Śrīdhara's suvarṇa-kaṭaka simile has an immediate application to relationships: the people who irritate or confuse you are the same gold in a different ornament-shape. The devotional practice is to pause before a difficult interaction and consciously invoke the underlying material — 'this person, like me, is a form of the sarva-rūpa Lord.' This is not a technique for suppressing conflict but for locating the relationship inside a larger frame that makes the conflict workable.

Advaita-Bhakti

Madhusūdana's distinction between vīrya (raw power) and vikrama (skilled application) is directly applicable to professional learning. Most people either accumulate capacity without developing disciplined technique, or over-index on technique without building genuine underlying strength. His reading of the verse as Arjuna deliberately contrasting the Lord with Bhīma and Duryodhana becomes a diagnostic: which side of that imbalance do you currently live on, and what is the one practice that addresses the deficit?

Adhiṣṭhāna · substrate signature

substratev2.6-frozen

parserByT5-Sanskrit-multitask (Nehrdich/Hellwig/Keutzer EMNLP 2024)

mūlaBelvalkar critical edition (BORI 1947), via Ambuda multi-witness

show all metadata

weightsa=1 · b=0.01 · e_v=0.005 · z=0.2 · h=0 · th=0.01

anchorfit on Ramsukhdas's Sādhak Sañjīvanī (1980), frozen across the eight-commentator panel; cross-validated R@4 = 71.6% on Śaṅkara

extracted2026-04-21

methodPaper 1, Section II.B

↓ view raw per-verse object (JSON)↗ per-verse-object schema ↗ substrate code (MIT) + data (CC-BY 4.0)

The schema generalizes to any bounded-polysemy corpus with discrete primary text units, attested witness traditions, identifiable schools, and formal substrate. Port the per-verse object; refit weights on a domain-appropriate Layer-3 anchor; ship.

Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 11, Verse 40: Krishna to Arjuna — Viśvarūpa-Darśana-Yoga