पश्य मे पार्थ रूपाणि शतशोऽथ सहस्रशः।नानाविधानि दिव्यानि नानावर्णाकृतीनि च॥
paśya me pārtha rūpāṇi śataśo ’tha sahasraśaḥnānā-vidhāni divyāni nānā-varṇākṛtīni ca
Word by word
The verse says
Krishna said: Then see my forms, Arjuna — in hundreds, in thousands. Many kinds, divine, in many colours and shapes.
In plain words
No hesitation and no conditions.
Paśya — look. The imperative, repeated through the next three verses.
He does not ask whether Arjuna is sure. He says look, and starts counting in hundreds.
Where you've felt this · in creative work
You ask a potter who has worked for forty years if you can see some of her work. You are expecting a shelf. She opens a door into a room you did not know was there, with everything she has not sold in it, going back decades, and says: help yourself.
Going deeper
Generosity rather than reluctance is the keynote here, and it sets the emotional temperature for a chapter that becomes terrifying.
There is no suggestion of a test, no warning, no price. The request is granted immediately and in excess of what was asked — hundreds, thousands, many kinds. Whatever happens in the next twenty verses, it does not happen because Krishna was withholding something or punishing an overreach.
That is worth fixing in mind before the vision turns frightening, because the fear that comes later can colour the reading backwards.
For somebody who has ever been afraid that asking for too much from the divine would be presumptuous, this is the answer the chapter gives before anything else happens. The asking was fine. The difficulty, when it arrives, is not a rebuke.