In an inspired surge of friendliness and love, though Krishna, in all haste, promised that He would explain “His expression in the individual” (Yoga) apart from the description of “His glory as the Cosmic man” (Vibhuti), He Himself realised, whilst trying to indicate Himself object by object, the impossibility of exhausting the treatment. Infinite are the total number of things and beings in the Universe, and it is never possible to exhaust all of them one by one. With a cry of despair, and yet in an attitude of extreme love for his disciple, Lord Krishna brilliantly summarises this chapter in this closing stanza. WHAT WILL IT AVAIL THEE TO KNOW ALL THESE DIVERSITIES — In fact it is useless to explain the presence of the Infinite in every finite form. It is impossible for a pot-maker to show the mud in all the existing pots in the world; nor can any one indicate the ocean-aspect in every wave in the sea. All that we can do is explain to the student the art of recognising the mud aspect in a few pots so that the student can independently come to recognise mud in all existing pots. It is never possible for a mathematics teacher to exhaust all the examples, but the student is taught the art of solving problems through a limited number of typical examples, and thereafter, the student, all by himself, gains the capacity to solve any similar problem independently.
I, WITH ONE PART OF MYSELF, SUPPORT THIS WHOLE UNIVERSE — In philosophical usage, the term Jagat means “all the fields of experiences which man has, as a physical body, as a psychological being and as an intellectual entity.” This would mean that the Jagat is the sum-total of the world perceived by my senses, plus the world of my emotions and sentiments, plus the world of my ideas and ideologies. The entire field that is comprehended by the sense organs, the mind and the intellect, is to be understood in its totality as Jagat. In short, this term conveniently embraces, in its meaning and import, the entire “realm of objects.”
The declaration here in the last line, therefore means that the total world-of-objects is supported, tended and nourished by a quarter of — meaning, a portion of — the Subject, the Self. Krishna, as the Self, naturally declares here that the whole Jagat is supported by a portion of His glory. The statement has yet another philosophical implication, inasmuch as it declares that there are in the Truth vast portions which are uncontaminated by the disturbances which we call Jagat. No doubt, in the homogeneous Truth, there cannot be distinctly separate portions of different features; however, this is a kindly method of indicating a transcendental idea with the terrestrial words of finite language.
