For the first time since the teaching began, Krishna's voice
dropped to something close to a whisper. Not because the words
were secret, but because what he was about to say carried a weight
that loud voices cannot hold — the way you whisper when you point
at a deer standing at the edge of a forest, knowing that one wrong
sound will make it vanish.
"The atman," he said, and stopped. He looked at his own hands as
though even he were searching for the right shape for what he
meant. "Some rare souls catch a glimpse of it. Just a glimpse —
like lightning over the Yamuna at night, a flash that shows you
the whole river and both banks and the trees on the far shore,
and then it is dark again and you are left standing with your
mouth open, trying to hold the picture."
Arjuna listened. The conch-shells and war drums had faded from
his awareness. Even the horses had gone still, as if they too
were leaning in.
"Others try to describe it," Krishna continued. "Sages. Rishis.
They sit by sacred fires and search for words the way a potter
searches for the right pressure on wet clay. They say it is like
the sky — present everywhere, touched by nothing. They say it is
like the ocean — the waves are not the ocean, but neither are
they separate from it. They say it is smaller than the smallest
atom and larger than the largest space. And every description is
true, and every description falls short, the way a drawing of
fire can show you the shape of the flame but cannot warm your
hands."
He paused. A single bead of sweat traced a line down Arjuna's
temple.
"And there are those who hear these descriptions — who sit at
the feet of great teachers and listen with open ears — and even
they walk away amazed but not understanding. Not because they are
foolish. Because the atman is not a thing that fits inside the
mind. It is the thing that looks out through the mind. You cannot
see your own eye, Arjuna. You can only see because of it."
Krishna smiled, and in his smile was something rare for a teacher:
humility before his own subject. Even God, speaking of the soul,
spoke with wonder.
