When the war was about to begin, Arjuna had stood between the two armies with a heart full of fog. He could not tell up from down. His bow had slipped from his hand. His knees had given way. Everything he looked at seemed wrong, and he could not see a single path forward.

Now, many words later, the fog was lifting.

Krishna had spoken to him through the long pause before battle — about the Self that is never born and never dies, about doing one's duty without grabbing at the reward, about steadiness of mind, about love that holds the whole world. Verse after verse, like a lamp carried slowly through a dark house, light had reached every room of Arjuna's worry.

He looked at Krishna now, his friend, his charioteer, holding the reins so calmly between the waiting armies.

"You did this for me," Arjuna said quietly. "Not because you had to. Out of kindness. You took the deepest, most hidden secret there is — the truth about who I really am, the Self that lives behind everything, and you placed it in my hands as a gift."

He pressed his palm to his chest, where the fear had sat so heavily that morning.

"And the confusion is gone. Truly gone. It was like a thick mist over my eyes, and your words were the sun that burned it away. I can see again. I know who I am."

Krishna said nothing, only smiled the small smile of a teacher who watches a student finally understand.

But Arjuna's wonder did not stop there. Once the fog clears, the eyes grow hungry. Having heard about the One who is the source and end of all beings, Arjuna found a new longing rising in him: not to hear about the Lord any longer, but to *see* him. To behold, with his own eyes, the form behind all the words.

He did not know yet what he was asking for. He only knew that his heart, no longer afraid, was ready to look.