Gita 2026 Lesson 7 CHAPTER II: Samkhya Yoga v 54-72

 Gita 2026 Lesson 7

CHAPTER II: Samkhya Yoga v 54-72

It seems the impending end of civilization—the latest war of

Kuruksetra—is casting a dark shadow over class participation. I

understand! As poet Carl Sandberg said, “It’s a large morning to be

thoughtful of.” While the Gita is relevant even in hard times, you

may have to make new plans and pay more attention to the news.

Do what you have to do, but know we miss you. I’ll persevere until

I’m the only one left, but I do love working with multiple

perspectives. As I imagine Krishna saying in the Epilogue: “You

really are a miraculously complicated creation of mine, don’t you

know? I always intended humans to do more than scrabble for food

or run swords through each other.”

I’m doing decently after my heart ablation and radioactive

imaging, but I still notice fuzziness of mind and my typing is

ghastly. Those medicines really do linger, and degrade thinking. I

apologize for any blunders, and have tried to spot them with

proofreading.

Bindu

Dear Scott, 

Thank you so much for your thoughtful response and for sharing

your memories of Guru Nitya. Your insights always bring clarity

and reassurance, and I’m truly grateful for the way you illuminate

these teachings. I looked into the writings you mentioned — thank

you for pointing me to them.

Being a woman, the very first thing I explored was the few

recipes from Nitya’s kitchen… and I have to admit, I immediately

wanted to cook the wisdom pie! ��

Your explanation about goals and spiritual practice really

helped me. It softened something inside, and I appreciate how

gently you guide us away from selfpressure and toward simple,

honest living.

Thank you again for your kindness, wisdom, and steady

encouragement. It means a great deal. Thank you for everything.

The world of spirituality is filled with many faces—some

guiding with sincerity, others masking their intentions with the

appearance of holiness. Throughout history, and especially now in

an age shaped by social media and technology, it has become

increasingly easy for false gurus to craft images of purity and

authority. From a young age, I learned that not every person in a

position of guidance truly embodies wisdom or compassion. In my

childhood, teachers were considered gurus, deserving of

unquestioned respect. Yet I also witnessed how some misused that

respect, crossing boundaries and leaving young girls frightened,

silent, and unsure of whom to trust. As children, we carried not

only the burden of fear but also the worry that adults might not

believe us—or worse, blame us. These early experiences carved

sensitivity into my mind and taught me that external appearances

can never be the measure of true guidance.

My spiritual understanding deepened over time, especially

with the teachings of Krishna and the explanations of Nitya

Chaitanya Yati. Krishna’s guidance about desires reshaped my

relationship with emotions: he teaches that a wise person does not

fight desires but sees through them with clarity. Desires lose their

control when the mind discovers inner fulfillment. Then I learned

the concept of  verticalization  , a metaphor that opened an entirely

new dimension of understanding for me. Horizontal living, I

realized, is the path many of us walk unconsciously—moving from

job to money to status to attractions and disappointments, always

reacting to the world outside. It is a life governed by praise, blame,

success, and failure. In contrast, vertical living invites awareness

inward and upward. It asks us to ground ourselves in something

deeper, to develop the roots of consciousness that help us observe

rather than be carried away. This shift touched me deeply; it

became something I wanted to practice, not just admire from a

distance.

Nataraja Guru’s explanation of the obstacles to

contemplation—attachment, anxiety, and anger—resonated

strongly with me. For much of my life, anger was my natural

response when things did not go my way. It was not intentional; it

was simply the pattern I had learned to survive. But through

spiritual study, selfreflection, and guidance, something began to

shift. My reactions softened. Awareness stepped in where

emotional storms once took over. I began to understand that

detachment is not coldness; it is freedom. It is choosing clarity

over turbulence.

This inner shift became visible even in my professional life.

During a recent onetoone conversation with  manager, I found

myself unexpectedly calm, even guiding him to look at difficulties

with a broader perspective. Instead of absorbing stress, I reminded

him that not everything lies within our control and that

unnecessary worry only clouds the mind. That moment showed me

how much I had changed. The anger and heaviness I once carried

had given way to balance, and the teachings I had spent months

absorbing were quietly shaping the way I engage with the world.

My personal life, too, carries the imprint of my past. Growing

up, my parents worked hard, and as the youngest child with much

older siblings, I often lived in silence and solitude. Loneliness

became familiar, but instead of drowning in it, I built an inner

world to survive. I created imaginary drawers in my mind, each

holding emotions I could not express. Sometimes even today, I

open those drawers and see the younger version of myself—the

girl who felt alone, sensitive, and misunderstood. I hug her in my

imagination, offering the comfort she once needed. This practice,

though born from childhood necessity, has become a form of

healing. It reminds me that suffering does not disappear, but

awareness can transform it.

Life now feels like an ocean to me—vast, deep, and

everpresent. Emotions rise and fall like waves. Some arrive

suddenly, some pass quietly, but the ocean itself remains stable. I

have learned to return to that inner stillness more quickly than

before. The world hasn’t changed, but my relationship with it has. I

still feel deeply, still remember the pain of the past, but I no longer

drown in it. I observe, breathe, and return to balance.

In this journey, my mind has slowly become a student, humble and

curious. And the Absolute—the inner truth, the quiet awareness

beneath everything—has become my true guru. I no longer seek

guidance outside with the desperation I once had. Instead, I turn

inward, toward the clear space where wisdom arises naturally.

Spirituality, for me, is no longer an escape but a way of

understanding life more honestly. It is learning to live fully without

allowing desire, anger, or attachment to rule the mind.

This is the path I continue to walk: a journey from horizontal

living to vertical awareness, from emotional conditioning to

clarity, from fear to quiet inner strength.

Scott: Guru Nitya was also a fantastic real chef, whose food was

always delicious. He had the knack! It’s one of the best of all

siddhis.

Nitya also had a fine sense of humor, evident in those silly

recipes.

We should attribute the explanations of simple, honest living

to Narayana Guru, though I’m happy to be a bearer of his good

tidings, as processed by his successors, Nataraja Guru and Guru

Nitya. In my class preparation this morning, for Atmopadesa

Satakam verse 62, I’ve been reading lines like this from Guru

Nitya: “The Guru is here suggesting to us the most gentle pressure

in the search. At the same time it is not lukewarm. It is an urjita, an

out-and-out search, but that search is not directed to just one

isolated area. Life itself is the search. It goes on until we come to

what is called paramapadam, an absolute state.”

Yoga applies to respect for the teacher, too: the respect is

important, but it must be earned and honest. Caution and

skepticism have their places, even with gurus, but especially with

teachers of children. It should be made known that cruel people

insist on being obeyed and are not above invoking God to back

themselves up. It seems like there is a new wave of brutality

arising now, from self-styled keepers of the faith, in many different

faiths—a repeating tragedy of our species.

Instilling fear in children is a serious crime, in my estimation.

I’m happy to hear that you grew out of it into a healthy state of

clarity, Bindu. For many, the fear is not worked through, and it can

lead to offloading it on the next generation.

It’s wonderful to read of your deepening understanding. The

Gita teaches at many levels, but the best of all may be how it

inspires and amplifies a mature person’s awareness. For that

matter, it’s more of an instruction manual for teachers than for

students.

I love the way you are consoling and educating your younger

self. Therapy at its best. Isn’t it fascinating to recall how we took

things wrongly, and were hurt by things that weren’t meant to be

hurtful, when we were young? Only then can we truly let them go.

Gopica

This lesson opened a gateway for me, revealing what detachment

truly means. The five senses feed us distractions that entangle us,

pulling us from our purpose. Repeated readings are helping me

dive deeper.

Recently, I faced this in my family. My 83-year-old mother-in-law

suffered a preventable accident, requiring painful surgeries.

Thankfully, she's recovering faster than expected, not stuck in

trauma but coping well with medicines. I live far away in a city;

my husband rushed to her town. His elder brothers rely on us

financially, viewing us only as providers. They rarely inform or

connect with us except to ask for money. Her pension has been

misused by them, leading to shocking surprises. Now, with extra

costs beyond her insurance (which my husband pays), we're

stretched thin as it is taking a toll on our financial needs.

I urged my husband to share our financial reality and split excess

costs among the brothers. This required a tough conversation. I

noticed my own reactions: anxiety over expenses, anger at their

behavior, leading to instructions rather than dialogue. Hooks from

the situation threatened my grounding.

Lesson 7 arrived like a blessing, urging me to witness without

entering fear or anger. I saw distorted values in the family system

clearly, from a detached perspective. Key insights anchored me:

"It’s not difficult to be mindful; what’s difficult is to remember to

be mindful."

"We can still savor every bite of our food, it’s just that we don’t

gobble it as if we are starving or push it away without tasting it."

"When you are able to see the Absolute in all things, your attention

is drawn to a deeper level than sensory awareness."

"In order to be certain of our knowledge, we absolutely must

analyze the data flooding into the system from a detached

perspective. Only when all significant errors are deleted can our

reason be considered 'well founded.'"

"Be alive to what’s happening, and ponder it later. Learn to move

on from the feelings that catch hold of you in a static way, that

induce repetition compulsions."

"What being here now really means is that we should discard

regrets about the past and anxiety about the future, which can bog

down our consciousness with distracting and unpleasant sidetracks

that we can do nothing about."

These guided me to mindful discussions, inside and out. Like

Arjuna learning sthitaprajna-steady in joy and sorrow, I'm

attempting to practice equanimity amid the uncontrolled.

Thank you!

Scott: Gopica, I have always found that those who engage with the

Gita quickly find opportunities to apply its wisdom to their lives,

and it makes me very happy to hear. Sometimes it seems as if

Krishna himself is providing the problems to illustrate his

philosophy, but I know that’s anthropomorphic thinking, and I do

it just for fun. Almost always.  The point is, the Gita is deeply

relevant to real life issues, and you are already finding it valuable.

The more you practice intelligent detachment—getting “distance”

on a situation—the easier it becomes to apply it the next time. It

sounds like the accident is mending. I’m sure your thoughtful

participation was helpful.

Bailey

         Unitive Reasoning

       (March 4) I am very encouraged to read Bindu’s very positive

reaction to my comments on her “abyss” experience in Morocco,

as well as Scott’s warm praise for my response to #6.  The focus of

#7, is it fair to say, is action –the impulses which drive one, to act

the fears or reluctances that inhibit or qualify acting, and living on

in the wake of the consequences of action.

     My decision to go to India, in the Fall of 1971, was impelled by

my failure to move ahead with researching and writing my doctoral

dissertation.  My choice was to set it aside, not to abandon it; nor

did it abandon me. During the weeks in Ooty that Spring, as I

attended Nataraja Guru’s early morning coffee classes, joined in

the chanting before the morning meal, and plunged into reading

about his life and the framework of Vedanta my mind never

stopped poking and prodding at the questions which had driven my

research in France the previous year, and after Guru’s Samadhi in

March 1973 my mind had become clear –clear enough—that I

could resume that journey, finish that job.  It was my mother who

took the initiative, when I was back in France that August, of

contacting my professors at the University of Pennsylvania to get

me reinstated, bringing me back to the States, and promising me a

monthly stipend of $300 to enable me to devote all my energies to

the research and writing back in Paris.  I was able to turn Cristine’s

parents’ comfortable bourgeois apartment (Boulevard Pereire,

Paris XVIIe) into my office since they were off in Mauritius where

her father had been appointed France’s Ambassador.  

     And I was vastly encouraged and aided by Patrick Périn, who

had originally welcomed me to his native Charleville-Mezieres in

the Ardennes in the Fall of 1970, and gotten me started on the

Merovingians. He was then teaching in a private school while he

did his thesis; now, Fall 1973, his doctorate in hand and thesis in

press, he had moved to Paris, named curator of archaeological

collections (the first such since before WWII) at Musée

Carnavalet, the museum of the history of Paris in the historic

Marais quarter. As it happened he was just then organizing for that

Fall an international colloquium on archaeology and post-

Roman/early medieval Gaul-becoming-Francia (AD 300-600) at

Carnavalet which became my portal for my re-engaging, as well as

becoming a fundamental reference for the re-ignition, in France, of

the field itself.  Patrick had also begun to teach a seminar on

Archaeology and the Merovingians at the Sorbonne (within a

graduate school called l’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, created

in the 1860’s, which no longer exists).   I signed up, finished my

dissertation on funerary archaeology and the evolution of

Christianity in Gaul, re-engaged with my career as a field

archaeologist by excavating with Patrick alongside an old church

(Eglise St. Pierre) atop Montmartre, springboarding from there to

other excavations in Burgundy and Languedoc which were to keep

me busy into the 1990s. Patrick gave me a desk in the archaeology

department of Musée Carnavalet, encouraged me to begin giving

papers at scholarly meetings (in French), publishing (in

French—English too) and I was a founding member of

the Association francaise et internationale d’archéologie

mérovingienne) which he created and over which he presided until

his retirement of Director of France’s National Archaeology

Museum (located in a former royal chateau at Saint-Germain-en-

Laye, west of Paris) in 2012.  When my academic career in

America at last took off with a one-year appointment at Loyola

University of Chicago 1988-89 I got him invited there to give his

first American lecture in English (I translated it); in 1992 he

headlined a symposium of Merovingian archaeology I organized at

the International Medieval Studies Conference at Kalamazoo,

Michigan) and was keynote speaker in 2006 at the Late Antique

conference at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.  In

the years I travelled to France almost every summer (1988-2019)

excavating, doing research, staying connected... I would see him,

often stayed with him and his growing family, we would eat well,

drink, talk Merovingian archaeology late into the night–glass in

hand.  In the early 2020’s Patrick began having mobility issues –

by last Spring he walked with difficulty, was no longer able to

drive.  So, late May, Christine and I took the train from Paris out to

the charming little house alongside the Fontainebleau Forest where

he and wife Charlotte have been living, and spent a most pleasant

afternoon (was an Ardennes specialty with sausage, cabbage and

potato served?)

      Patrick Périn died, age 83, on February 6.  How full is my

heart!  As I wrote to Charlotte, he was, and always will remain, for

me, the best of friends.

     Living, as we all of us are living, in a world of relativity – or

should one better use plural: worlds of relativities?—which “we”

are always constructing/deconstructing, what to say here and now

about such a friendship?  Assign it to a category such as

ephemeral? – however agreeable, however nourishing personally,

however useful, however satisfying professionally—arising,

flourishing, ending as Time’s cycles continue, like waves washing

up on the beach, leaving one’s feet pressed into the damp sand as

they recede?  The thought arises: never again to take the train in

the Gare de Lyon, to walk from the station at Bois-le-Roi, to pass

through the gate as the dog barks his welcome... aha! one catches

one’s “mind” (I prefer the French term le mental to “ego”, so

redolent of Freudian theory) conjuring up emotion:  let us feel

sad!  Sad is the proper tribute to real friendship!  Well, I do feel

sad.  I wasn’t/am not ready for Patrick to die!  OK—that’s the

reality, you say?  The American poet Edna St Vincent Millay says

“I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the cold

ground./ So it is, so it has been.../I know. But I do not approve.

And I am not resigned.”  A poem that captured my fancy in youth,

returns at moments like these.  My mind darts back to the

telephone call in March 2004 with the news that our dear friends

Leonard and Tanya had died in an auto accident en route to a

dinner party we had just attended.  To the letter from the parents of

my graduate school roommate Charlie Funnell which was I think

forwarded to me in Ooty: Charlie had successfully defended his

thesis on the Brooklyn Bridge, was engaged to be married, entered

the hospital for routine surgery in connection with his

asthma...died.   On the verge of beginning the life he had worked

for, Charlie with his quirky sense of humor, suddenly gone???– oh

no, no, no!  That can’t be the reality! Here goes an inner voice:

What are you doing, bky?  Entertaining yourself, n’est-ce

pas?Oops!  Am I straying from the proper seriousness of the

Vedantic Path?  

      (March 9)  Thinking, over the past few days, about the long

(but now so quickly fled!) story of Patrick and me, professional

and spiritual paths, life and death another perspective suggests

itself.  The pursuit of Truth.  It seems to me now that I was drawn

to Patrick, from the very first evening we spent together in

Charleville-Mezieres, by his enthusiasm for research as the pursuit

of truth in the context of history, his confidence that it is there to

be found, that it matters, that it deserves to be pursued with a

critical spirit.  Such confidence has not been taken for granted in

intellectual circles in France (or the USA, or the Western world) in

our lifetimes; indeed, challenging the very notion that “objective”

truth might possibly exist in history has been a powerful

intellectual current in our time.  There is no “there” there!  It is all

stories!  Your story, my story, our story, their story –

“deconstructing” the stories became the exciting, fashionable

intellectual game to play from the 1970s.  Instead of seeking to

establish the “facts” like our unsophisticated positivist

predecessors, we construct plausible “scenarios” –prepared to

admit, perhaps with a shrug, that these are bound to reflect our

subjective preferences – personal/ cultural/collective.  A

contemporary re-invention of the relativism the Sophists were

teaching in the Athens of Socrates’ day.  In ours, an ability to

marshal “data” in the light of “theory” became the requirement for

career advancement in various quarters where the interpretation of

history and archaeology were concerned.

      The short phrase that arises spontaneously to characterize my

relationship to Patrick Périn is: my Master in Matters

Merovingian.  Since “master” is a term often used in writing about

the spiritual path, often as a synonym for “guru”, it is important not

to misuse it here.  Gilles Farcet (the “spiritual” author Christine

and I are currently reading together), distinguishes between an

authentic “master/guru” in the Vedanta tradition (such as Ramana

Maharshi, or Swami Prajnapad or his own master Arnaud

Desjardins) who can be said to “know”, and an “instructor”, who

has come far enough along the path to be able to help others not so

far along to progress toward an understanding of the Teaching

which he/she has not yet fully grasped.  Crucially, both the

“instructor” and the “aspirant/seeker” must be honest and

scrupulous, motivated by a sincere desire to understand truth

within the framework of their human limitations.  At the time I

first met him in Charleville-Mezieres, Patrick was an advanced

graduate student who had also himself excavated Merovingian

burials; I had read a little about them.  Their chronology, which

involved a quasi-statistical analysis of how the patterns of “grave-

goods” – the set of objects buried with a subject—evolved over

time was at the heart of his study (since its publication in 1982 it is

accepted as the standard reference).  He suggested I pursue a study

of the “funerary practices” as a whole, and planned an approach for

me: visiting museum artefact collections, attending conferences,

working in the best libraries.  I forged ahead on this path, gaining

recognition (my 1977 article in France’s leading medieval

archaeological journal remains pertinent) even as his career as an

archaeologist, a museum curator, and an adjunct professor at the

Sorbonne complexified and his national and international stature

grew.  But I was never, as he sometimes pointed out, his

student.  After our early collaborations our research trajectories

differed, as I became engaged in more “medieval” projects.  Most

years, though, up to his retirement in 2012, I would visit to resume

our ongoing conversation, updating myself on Matters

Merovingian. Sometimes I did a paper in the field, perhaps at a

conference he organized – the last one, in 2011, was held at

National Archaeology Museum he, at the pinnacle of his career,

directed...  

     (March 12)  So why devote all this attention here to Patrick

Périn and my relationship with him?  Because he was –and

continues to be—not a Master in the sense of the Spiritual Path

(our conversations never touched on “spiritual” matters though he

was well aware of why I went to India and what I did there), but in

the sense of Instructor (as Gilles Farcet defines this term) on the

Truth Path.  Truth as it can be found in the relative realm of

historical affairs.  From our very first contact and throughout I felt

in Patrick, and was inspired by, not only his conviction that

historical research is a worthwhile and rewarding, even joyful,

endeavor, and his generosity in accompanying me along that

path.  Above all he was a man of action.  His passing now is a

shock for which I wasn’t prepared, but he will remain alive for me,

I think, as long as I remain alive.  I am so grateful.

Scott: The Gita is through and through about action, but the focus

of the second half of chapter II is reason’s contribution to

wisdom—a truly subtle matter. Dialectical reasoning will also be

taught all along the way.

How profound to lose a dear friend like Patrick, and how

important to bring your connection fully to mind, as a final, though

not last, grand gesture. Yes, we feel sorrow with our whole mind,

not merely our ego, unless we are petty indeed. (The abstraction of

our ‘heart’ is also within the mind.) So yes, let us feel sad at the

passing of a dear one!

I recall being asked (in a Gita class at the Unitarian church,

long ago) by a young man whose mother had just died, and he

wanted to know if it was okay for him to feel sad about it. I assured

him that nothing in spiritual life precluded authentic feelings, and

if he was not sad it would compound the tragedy.

Why do religions and spiritual paths tell us we won’t feel

pain or sadness, if only we know God? It appeals on an ill-

considered level, I guess.

Thank you for the St Vincent Millay poem, which I do not

know.

Bailey, we are now in “the mortality zone.” It’s only natural

to be getting inklings of what that implies….

Of general appeal in your response, Bailey, is the old-

fashioned attraction to truth as something that can—must—be

uncovered. From my perspective, deconstruction is just another

way to dig through false constructs to unearth the kernel of high

value buried at the site. Humans tend to overexaggerate their

ideologies, like “deconstruction,” but we don’t have to. If one has

nothing left after deconstructing a theory, perhaps their idea of

truth is too limited. Does it exclude the shining void, the Absolute

principle, consciousness itself? Is it fair to consciously rule out

consciousness? I’d say not. It’s not fair.

Is it fair to always require data, as you imply? Up to a point,

sure. But many of the best things in life are not measurable or

perceptible. Let’s not leave them out. Subjectivity doesn’t help

with finding hidden artifacts, but it’s essential to our feelings.

This is a very large topic, Bailey, and I hope you’ll keep

kicking it around. Maybe our fellow travelers (if any) will

contribute thoughts of their own.

I appreciate Farcet’s distinguishing what I’d call layers of the

guru principle: fully-realized guru, instructor, and eager aspirant,

(why not add open-minded stumbling bumbler?), all of whom,

after the first category, as you so well express it, “must be honest

and scrupulous, motivated by a sincere desire to understand truth

within the framework of their human limitations.” Check out

Nitya’s parallel quote I clipped in for Bindu, where life itself is the

search.

I fear your preferred museums do not include dioramas of

Christians riding dinosaurs—why is that? You could probably get

to the Creation Museum in a matter of hours….

For someone who has made the excavation of funerary

practices a central theme of his career, isn’t it strange and awesome

to watch our friends leaving the planet, and meditate on—and yes,

lament—their temporariness? How even in a single lifetime,

human interests have changed so dramatically that we may feel

already forgotten, vestiges of the past.

We have a Fearless Leader who is desperately working to

affix his name to every building, as if what will be remembered of

him because of it has meaning. It’s a pathetic motivation, for sure:

a substitute for love in his life. As Robert Frost wrote, in Birches:

Earth’s the right place for love / I don’t know where it’s likely to

go better. I see lots of names on buildings, but they don’t bring the

person they represent back to life.

People we know live on in our hearts. The ones we only hear

about are something less. My great grandparents mean nothing to

me, beyond a name in a ledger. I surely mean nothing to them. Yet

meaning is what buoys me up in my life.

Beautiful how you conclude with Patrick’s meaning for you,

how profound he was, and remains.

In our class last Tuesday, I was lamenting that Nitya was no

longer with us, and I dearly wanted him around for this terrible

moment in history. (When Trump was “elected” by Elon Musk, I

briefly regressed to infancy and the feeling of “I want my

Mommy.” My relentlessly optimistic, take care of everything

mother.) Andy spoke valiantly that what he loved most was that

Nitya was still with us; he had never gone away. Our classmates

who only know him through his writings and our classes, must

have felt it less, but for those who knew him personally, it is a

major feature of our lives. He is still a powerful presence. Your

concluding words about Patrick, Bailey, echo our convictions, and

I’ll reprint them so you don’t have to check back:

Above all he was a man of action.  His passing now is a shock

for which I wasn’t prepared, but he will remain alive for me, I

think, as long as I remain alive.  I am so grateful.

Annex: Academia relies on ideas that are supposed to be grounded

in previous, widely-accepted or proven facts. This means original

academic thinking takes place in a very narrow range, and that’s

perfectly reasonable. What Nataraja Guru calls speculation is

original thinking with a wider purview.

Digging up an ancient site provides original material, which

is then fleshed out with speculation about its function. You must

have specialized in this, no?

My Heracles exegesis was also well-informed speculation

based on a few shards. It is not academically acceptable, since

there is almost no existing interpretation for me to base it on,

beyond a strictly literal one which has degenerated over the

centuries, going from Heracles being the most heroic and powerful

demigod to a mere thug. My interpretation being not only heroic

but spiritually oriented, it does not make sense in an academic

context. I did find a couple of borderline sources, but most of it

comes directly from my own contemplative penetration into the

symbolism of the action, guided by Dr. Mees’s mythic

9interpretations in his Revelation in the Wilderness.

Likewise, in the Gita, I have a lot of background, but to

assemble my commentary I did original thinking for every verse:

sitting with the accumulated material while wondering just what it

was intended to convey. I think you agree: the result is worthwhile,

but there are few facts. Interestingly though, while working on a

verse, very often supporting ideas would surface in articles that

came my way.

Non-fiction deals with specific facts and truths; fiction

presents generalized truths. The Gita is fiction that moves us, in

myriad ways.

My lengthy introduction to the Labors of Herakles ends with

Herakles as Buffoon, which in turn ends with:

Bestselling author of all time, Agatha Christie, in The Labors of

Hercules (NY: Dell, 1968, p. 9), ridicules the romantic

attraction to the classics that prevailed in the West not too long

ago. At the behest of a priggish academic type enamored of the

age-old romances, ace detective Hercule Poirot—himself

named after Hercules—is perusing the Greek myths and thinks:

Take this Hercules—this hero! Hero indeed? What was he

but a large muscular creature of low intelligence and criminal

tendencies!... This ancient Hercules probably suffered from

grand mal. No, Poirot shook his head, if that was the Greeks’

idea of a hero, then measured by modern standards it

certainly would not do. The whole classical pattern shocked

him. These gods and goddesses—they seemed to have as

many different aliases as a modern criminal. Indeed they

seemed to be definitely criminal types. Drink, debauchery,

incest, rape, loot, homicide and chicanery—enough to keep a

juge d’Instruction constantly busy. No decent family life. No

order, no method. Even in their crimes, no order or method!

“Hercules indeed!” said Hercule Poirot, rising to his feet,

disillusioned.

To a materialist, virtually all the wisdom of the ancients is

nothing more than tedious superstition and unscientific

speculation. But, as I have rediscovered in scrutinizing

Heracles, myths are like the Absolute itself: hiding in plain

sight, waiting patiently to be noticed for the treasures they safeguard. Feel free to take a look.