Secrets of the Soul 25

dehino ’smin yathā dehe
kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā
tathā dehāntara-prāptir
dhīras tatra na muhyati

“As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change.” [Bhagavad-gita 2.13]

Study Bhagavad-gita as it is, without your or anyone else’s bogus misinterpretation; then you will be benefited. Kuru-ksetre dharma-ksetre [Bhagavad-gita 1.1]. It is a fact: Kuruksetra is a dharma-ksetra. Samaveta yuyutsavah: and the persons assembled there, namely, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, wanted to fight. Yuyutsavah: the same word as Japanese jujitsu, fighting. That’s all right, because the Vedic ksatriyas’ duty is to fight to establish religious principles in human society.

Where is the need for any interpretation? It is history. They selected a nice place, Kuruksetra, a dharma-ksetra or place of religious pilgrimage and sacrifice, and there they fought to settle the family feud over the succession. So the meaning is perfectly clear. Why there should be any interpretation, like “The Pandavas are the five senses and Kuruksetra means this body”?

There is no necessity of allegorical interpretation of Bhagavad-gita. Interpretation is required when the meaning is not clear. Even then, there are rules of interpretation according to subject and context. But when the meaning is clear, there is no need for interpretation. That is the Vedic system. Amongst Vedic scholars, if things are clear, there should be no interpretation.

In each and every verse of Bhagavad-gita, the meaning is very, very clear—as clear as sunshine. So there is no question of interpretation. Therefore the only edition of Bhagavad-gita that we can recommend is Bhagavad-gita As It Is, the original 1972 Macmillan edition by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. We stress this because there are at least 640 different editions of Bhagavad-gita, and almost every one of them puts forth a different interpretation. That is the system going on now.

Most authors present Bhagavad-gita in their own way, but not a single person became a self-realized devotee of Kṛṣṇa by reading all those books. Now since the Esoteric Teaching of Bhagavad-gita is being presented as it is, thousands of people are becoming devotee of Kṛṣṇa. Our lineage presents Kṛṣṇa’s words in Bhagavad-gita as the message of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and intelligent people accepted it because there is no adulteration.

Our value proposition is to understand Bhagavad-gita without adulteration. Try to understand Bhagavad-gita as it is originally presented by Kṛṣṇa, without any bogus human interpretation. Then you will get real knowledge of spiritual life. Otherwise, you will remain in the same ignorance, before reading Bhagavad-gita and after reading Bhagavad-gita. This is the value proposition of the mystery school of the Esoteric Teaching, for it leads naturally to the perfection of yoga.

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