Something was changing in Arjuna as he gazed at the vast form. The fear was still there, fluttering in his chest. But underneath the fear, something steadier was rising: a deep, quiet knowing.

At first he had only seen the parts: the arms, the faces, the crown, the blaze of light. Now, slowly, he began to understand what the whole thing meant.

"Everything I have ever loved fades," Arjuna thought. "Flowers wilt. Kingdoms fall. Even the great mountains, given enough time, crumble to sand. Even I, the mightiest archer of my age, will one day grow old." Everything in the world was like a wave — it rose, it shone for a moment, and it sank back down.

But this form before him did not rise and sink. It simply was, the way the ocean is, while the waves come and go upon its surface.

"You do not perish," Arjuna whispered. "You are the imperishable one — the deepest truth that every seeker is really searching for, behind all the smaller things they chase."

He looked again at the immense body holding gods and worlds and creatures within it, and a new thought came to him. A great house needs a foundation, or it falls. A great tree needs roots, or it topples. What held up the entire universe — all the worlds, all the beings, all of time itself?

The answer was right in front of him. "You do," Arjuna said. "You are the resting-place of everything. The whole universe leans on You the way a sleeping child leans on its mother and does not even know it is being held."

And he saw one thing more. Whenever goodness grew weak in the world, whenever cruelty rose up and the right way was forgotten, something always, eventually, set it straight again. That something was here too.

"You are the changeless guardian of dharma," Arjuna said, "the keeper of what is right, watching over goodness so that it can never be lost forever. You are the everlasting Spirit, ancient beyond all beginnings. This — at last — is what I understand You to be."