This scene is the Bhagavata's theological argument told as a domestic accident. Krishna's playmates tell Yashoda he has been eating mud; she opens his mouth to check and sees the entire universe — the elements, the stars, the directions, time itself, and her own village and herself inside it. She has a moment of recognition, understands what she is holding, and then Krishna withdraws the vision, and maternal affection closes over the memory. The theological point is precise: the relationship depends on her not knowing. Gaudiya theology ranks the devotional moods and puts the parental and the erotic above the reverential for exactly this reason — that awe keeps you at a distance, and the closest relationships to God are the ones in which his divinity is forgotten. It is one of the few religious images in any tradition of a mother being briefly shown the cosmos and then, mercifully, allowed to forget it.