494
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam
[Canto 1, Ch. 9]
name, fame, pastimes, etc. Therefore, the concentration of the mystic  yogī  and that of the devotee are not on the same level. The concentration of the mystic is something mechanical, whereas that of the pure devotee is natural in pure love and spontaneous affection. Bhīṣmadeva was a pure devotee, and as a military marshal he constantly remembered the battlefield feature of the Lord as  Pārtha-sārathi , the chariot driver of Arjuna. Therefore, the Lord's pastime as  Pārtha-sārathi  is also eternal. All the pastimes of the Lord, beginning from His birth at the prison house of Kaṁsa up to the  Mauśala-līlā  at the end, all move one after another in all the universes, just as the clock hand moves from one point to another. And in such pastimes His associates like the Pāṇḍavas and Bhīṣma are constant eternal companions. So Bhīṣmadeva never forgot the beautiful feature of the Lord as  Pārtha-sārathi , which even Arjuna could not see. Arjuna was behind the beautiful  Pārtha-sārathi  while Bhīṣmadeva was just in front of the Lord. As far as the military feature of the Lord is concerned, Bhīṣmadeva observed this with more relish than Arjuna.
All the soldiers and persons on the Battlefield of Kurukṣetra attained their original spiritual form like the Lord after their death because by the causeless mercy of the Lord they were all able to see Him face to face on that occasion. The conditioned souls rotating in the evolutionary cycle from the aquatics up to the form of Brahmā are all in the form of  māyā , or the form obtained by one's own actions and awarded by material nature. The material forms of the conditioned souls are all foreign dresses, and when the conditioned soul becomes liberated from the clutches of material energy, he attains his original form. The impersonalist wants to attain the impersonal Brahman effulgence of the Lord, but that is not at all congenial to the living sparks, parts and parcels of the Lord. Therefore, the impersonalists again fall down and get material forms, which are all false to the spirit soul. A spiritual form like the Lord's, either two-handed or four-handed, is attained by the devotees of the Lord either in the Vaikuṇṭhas or in the Goloka planets, according to the original nature of the soul. This form, which is cent percent spiritual, is the  svarūpa  of the living being, and all the living beings who participated on the Battlefield of Kurukṣetra, on both sides, attained their  svarūpa , as confirmed by Bhīṣmadeva. So Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa was not only merciful to the Pāṇḍavas, but He was also merciful to the other parties because all of them attained the same result. Bhīṣmadeva wanted the same facility also, and that was his prayer to the Lord, although his position as an associate of the Lord is assured in all circumstances. The conclusion is that whoever dies looking on the