Arjuna lifted his eyes to the great form's head, and at first he was comforted, because he saw something he recognised.

There was the crown, a tall, glittering diadem, the kind a king of kings might wear. And there, held in mighty hands, were two things Arjuna had seen Krishna carry a thousand times: the heavy mace that could shatter armies, and the spinning discus, the chakra, whose razor edge no enemy could escape. "I know these," Arjuna thought, with a flicker of relief. "This is still Krishna. There is the crown. There is the mace. There is the wheel."

But the relief lasted only a heartbeat.

Because around the crown, and around the mace, and around the wheel, and around the whole immense body, light was pouring out — not gentle moonlight, not the warm gold of a lamp, but light like a furnace, light heaped upon light, a great mountain of brilliance blazing in every direction at once.

Arjuna had once tried, as a small boy, to look straight at the midday sun. His eyes had stung and watered and snapped shut on their own, and his teacher had warned him never to do it again. Now imagine that sun, he thought — and beside it a roaring fire — and behind them both another sun, and another — all of them shining out of one single form.

He raised a hand to shield his face. He squinted. He turned his head. There was no angle from which he could look comfortably, because the light came from everywhere, all around, with no shadow to rest his eyes in.

It was beautiful. It was also almost unbearable.

"I see You," Arjuna said, his voice thin, his eyes half-closed. "Crowned, bearing the mace and the discus — a blazing mass of light glowing on every side. But, O Lord, You are so bright that I can hardly look at You. You shine like fire and sun together, and there is no measuring You at all."

And he understood that some things are so full of glory that our small eyes can only catch the edge of them, the way you can feel the sun's warmth long before you could ever bear its face.