The Song Divine (Pocket Edition)

[Nitaidas]

I am happy to announce that the English-only edition of The Song Divine (Bhagavad-gita) has just come out. It is the same as the larger version except that the Sanskrit has been removed. It is therefore also smaller and less expensive. I refer to it jokingly as the pocket edition, though it is really too big for most pockets. Anyway, I wanted a smaller book that people could carry with them. The English versions of all of the summaries in the appendix are also included. It now comes to about 194 pages as compared with nearly 400 pages of the complete version. The translation is the same one by C. C. Caleb. It should be available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in a few days. Get your copies hot off the press! One of the nice things about this Gita is that it can be given as a gift. I may try to establish a trust the pay for the free distribution of it in the future. At present there does not seem to be any organization that gives free copies of the Gita in the way that Gideon's gives free Bibles. We should do something about that.

Here is the cover:



It looks quite a bit different from the complete edition. That image is a native depiction of the cosmic form, one of the few I have ever found done before the 20th century.

[gerard]

Congratulations Nitai-ji for this publications of the Gita!

Another old picture of the Visvarupa you might like is the one I put on Flickr:

www.flickr.com/photos/76104785@N00/
page 4




It is in a private collection and published in: Krishna; the Divine Lover, Myth and Legend through Indian Art, Edita Lausanne, 1982.



There are attempts made to put the Gita in hotel rooms in America:

www.motelgita/

[Nitaidas]

Apr 28, 2012 8:11:44 GMT -6 gerard said:

Congratulations Nitai-ji for this publications of the Gita!

Another old picture of the Visvarupa you might like is the one I put on Flickr:

www.flickr.com/photos/76104785@N00/
page 4




It is in a private collection and published in: Krishna; the Divine Lover, Myth and Legend through Indian Art, Edita Lausanne, 1982.



There are attempts made to put the Gita in hotel rooms in America:

www.motelgita/

Greetings Gerard,

it is great to see you again on the forum. What have you been up to? I hope that all is well with you and that you will grace us with your wit and presence more often.

Thanks for the kind words. I work away at things and sometimes manage to finish them.

Thanks for the info on the other old image of Visvarupa. I will check it out.

My intention is not exactly to put Gita's in every holel room. But I would like to be able to give them away for free to anyone who wants one. If I can make them inexpensive enough and get some sort of self-perpetuating non-profit going then there will always be a Gita available. Gita Press also produces nice in expensive Gitas, but I don't think that they give them for free.

[Nitaidas]

Gerardji,

Yes. I just saw your Visvarupa posting. It is wonderful. Where is it kept? Can you tell me? If I have a chance to do another Gita, perhaps with my own translation instead of Caleb's, I would like to have it on the cover. Any old images of Krsna and Arjuna between armies?

[gerard]

Thank you Nitai-ji, I'm fine, just spacing off through the religious landscape, my opinion fluid as the Ganges, and as murky.

At the moment I'm done with the "esoteric" or the "occult" interpretation of scripture as I'm beginning to suspect that that is mostly - not all - a 19th century hype.

I was trying to make sense of Rudolf Steiner but in his two books on the Bhagavadgita he doesn't have much to say. I think he read two translations (Von Schroeder mainly and one I can't identify) and a book by Joseph Dahlmann on Sankhya and perhaps a book by Richard Garbe. On that basis - and his clairvoyancy of the Akashic Records - he gives 19 lectures.

My impression is that Steiner is slightly schizoid. He starts quite normal and then it gets curiouser and curiouser. Two things stick out. Krishna is the twin-soul of Adam [Kadmon? = Adi Purusha], held back in the spiritual world till it was time for him to descend in order to make it possible for human beings to develop individuality. When is not clear as Steiner places the beginning of Kali Yuga at 3100 BC and the Bhagavadgita at 900 - 600 BC.

Another point in these books is his pet theory that not one Jesus child was born, but two. That would explain the discrepancies in the Gospels. In this context this is relevant as Steiner sees the coming of Jesus Christ as the most important happening in history in which Zoroaster, Krishna and Buddha are involved as spiritual "parts" of those two Jesus children (who at age twelve fuse into one).

Of course Western esotericism is not only 18th and 19th century but has deep roots in alchemy, gnosticism, manicheism, Jacob Boehme etc. Perhaps even in Tantra through the parampara of the Bengal Tantriks -> Sufis -> Abulafia -> Zinzendorff -> Swedenborg -> William Blake.

I might get back one day on schizophrenia and the origins of religion. I found Harvard psychiatry professor and atheist Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind a good read. I probably mentioned that book here before. Although I stick to my Darwin + Devas theory, so I might have a touch of the schizoids myself of course.



I uploaded the picture of the Universal Form anew on Flickr, this is a bit bigger and better. Flickr downsizes the pictures. And I added two battlefield pictures as I am not able to put a picture on this forum. I could send anyone who wants bigger versions of these scans an email. Let me know.

www.flickr.com/photos/76104785@N00/

The copyright of the Universal Form picture might be hard to obtain. It is in a private collection and in the book I can't find which one. The publisher mentioned above cannot be found on the net. Maybe you can locate the editors: Enrico Isacco and Professor Anna L. Dallapiccolo.

[Nitaidas]

May 1, 2012 6:01:42 GMT -6 gerard said:

Thank you Nitai-ji, I'm fine, just spacing off through the religious landscape, my opinion fluid as the Ganges, and as murky.

At the moment I'm done with the "esoteric" or the "occult" interpretation of scripture as I'm beginning to suspect that that is mostly - not all - a 19th century hype.

I was trying to make sense of Rudolf Steiner but in his two books on the Bhagavadgita he doesn't have much to say. I think he read two translations (Von Schroeder mainly and one I can't identify) and a book by Joseph Dahlmann on Sankhya and perhaps a book by Richard Garbe. On that basis - and his clairvoyancy of the Akashic Records - he gives 19 lectures.

My impression is that Steiner is slightly schizoid. He starts quite normal and then it gets curiouser and curiouser. Two things stick out. Krishna is the twin-soul of Adam [Kadmon? = Adi Purusha], held back in the spiritual world till it was time for him to descend in order to make it possible for human beings to develop individuality. When is not clear as Steiner places the beginning of Kali Yuga at 3100 BC and the Bhagavadgita at 900 - 600 BC.

Another point in these books is his pet theory that not one Jesus child was born, but two. That would explain the discrepancies in the Gospels. In this context this is relevant as Steiner sees the coming of Jesus Christ as the most important happening in history in which Zoroaster, Krishna and Buddha are involved as spiritual "parts" of those two Jesus children (who at age twelve fuse into one).

Of course Western esotericism is not only 18th and 19th century but has deep roots in alchemy, gnosticism, manicheism, Jacob Boehme etc. Perhaps even in Tantra through the parampara of the Bengal Tantriks -> Sufis -> Abulafia -> Zinzendorff -> Swedenborg -> William Blake.

I might get back one day on schizophrenia and the origins of religion. I found Harvard psychiatry professor and atheist Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind a good read. I probably mentioned that book here before. Although I stick to my Darwin + Devas theory, so I might have a touch of the schizoids myself of course.



I uploaded the picture of the Universal Form anew on Flickr, this is a bit bigger and better. Flickr downsizes the pictures. And I added two battlefield pictures as I am not able to put a picture on this forum. I could send anyone who wants bigger versions of these scans an email. Let me know.

www.flickr.com/photos/76104785@N00/

The copyright of the Universal Form picture might be hard to obtain. It is in a private collection and in the book I can't find which one. The publisher mentioned above cannot be found on the net. Maybe you can locate the editors: Enrico Isacco and Professor Anna L. Dallapiccolo.

Interesting, gerardji, as always. What is your Darwin and Devas theory? I seem to have forgotten about it.

Do you really think that there was some direct connection between Abulafia and Bengali tantriks? Seems unlikely to me. But who knows? The fact that there is sexual symbolism in Kabbalah does not mean it came from India.

What in brief is the thesis of Jaynes' book? Sorry to put you to work, but I have not read it and maybe some of the others here might be interested.

Well, I recognize one of the battle scenes as part of the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the one in which Arjuna and Krsna face Karna. But have you ever come across a native Indian rendition of the conversation between Krsna and Arjuna before the battle? I had to settle for the battle between Arjuna and Karna as a cover for the full edition of the Bhagavad-gita.

I am also going to be looking for some images of Mahaprabhu soon. Any suggestions? I have our re-edition/republication of Lord Gauranga coming up and then Murarigupta's Sri Krsnacaitanyacaritamrta.

[gerard]

May 1, 2012 21:53:19 GMT -6 Nitaidas said:

Interesting, gerardji, as always. What is your Darwin and Devas theory? I seem to have forgotten about it.

My theory is simply Darwinian evolution but in stead of the mechanism of coincidence I believe the Devas and Devis are doing their invisible work, unprovable by fossils.

Do you really think that there was some direct connection between Abulafia and Bengali tantriks? Seems unlikely to me. But who knows? The fact that there is sexual symbolism in Kabbalah does not mean it came from India.

Between Tantriks and Abulafia I inserted the Sufis as the missing link, based on Marsha Schuchard's delightful article "Why Mrs Blake cried: Swedenborg, Blake, and the Sexual Basis Of Spiritual Vision." which I uploaded for your pleasure here: www.scribd.com/softbrain/d/92055818-Swedenborg-Blake-and-the-Sexual-Basis-of-Spiritual-Vision

What in brief is the thesis of Jaynes' book? Sorry to put you to work, but I have not read it and maybe some of the others here might be interested.

I realize I edited out a bit too much, so that my reference to Jaynes became unclear.

Jaynes' idea is that formerly everybody used to be schizophrenic. The left hemisphere didn't know what the right hemisphere was doing. The two halves of the brain were isolated from each other, not integrated at all. Everybody was walking around like an automaton, acting on the command of the voices they heard. They thought these voices were the voices of gods, they didn't realize these voices were coming from their own right hemisphere. That is the bicameral mind of the title of his book.
Then through catastrophes and cataclysms the wall between the two halves started to break down, or the two halves started to get integrated. This happened about three thousand years ago. The beginning of modern consciousness. The voices of the gods became weaker and weaker. The twilight of the gods. The rise of religion, of the worship of the people who could still hear the voices, later they died out too and they put up images of these last people, the beginning of idols on altars. Schizophrenia is seen as a throw-back to that old consciousness when we all heard voices.

(I think people then started to use drugs and invented yoga to recapture that old time feeling, but I haven't figured out a way yet of combining Jaynes' work with the real existence of gods. Although, by just removing the pathology of the equation you could say, yes, we were capable of hearing and seeing the gods, we lost that capacity and now we have to practice yoga to get that back.)




Sorry, no other pictures.

[gerard]

I could perhaps add that Jaynes was wrong in thinking that the general schizophrenia started to disappear at the end of the 2nd millenium BC. I sometimes think that everybody who is in a belief system (and who isn't) is still slightly schizo. And how many people go through like robots?

As a volunteer I work with mental patients, most of them schizophrenic, so I have first hand experience in seeing how easy it is to flow in and out of reality.

[kalki]

Apr 30, 2012 11:40:53 GMT -6 Nitaidas said:

Apr 28, 2012 8:11:44 GMT -6 gerard said:

My intention is not exactly to put Gita's in every holel room. But I would like to be able to give them away for free to anyone who wants one. If I can make them inexpensive enough and get some sort of self-perpetuating non-profit going then there will always be a Gita available. Gita Press also produces nice in expensive Gitas, but I don't think that they give them for free.

in countries like Singapore and Malaysia, a lot of Buddhist groups take up the task of printing and distributing freely various Buddhist texts or writings of Buddhist masters. I think if a connection was made to a Hindu group over there, they would likely be happy to finance a free for distro project of the Gita.

asians in these countries seem to have a lot of emphasis on this kind of work as a way of cleaning their karma.

[ash]

May 5, 2012 14:57:29 GMT -6 gerard said:

As a volunteer I work with mental patients, most of them schizophrenic, so I have first hand experience in seeing how easy it is to flow in and out of reality.

I think schizophrenia is a "team effort," at least in the beginning.

The usual individualistic approach tends to focus on the individual per se, regardless of how others around him behave.
This approach may be appropriate when assessing arahants, who are rightfully expected to be fully self-sufficient, but not when assessing ordinary people.

RD Laing published the transcripts of conversations with psychiatric patients. When you look at the way the conversations between the patients and their parents or significant others go, it's hard to believe that there is something wrong only with the patients.

There is some evidence that schizophrenia is correlated to a particular type of abusive communication (namely, the use of double binds). Gregory Bateson researched that.

Other people can easily put an individual into a situation where no matter what the individual would do, would be wrong or to his disadvantage.
Whereby the words and actions of other people needn't be extreme at all.

Anything from "If you would be a better person, I wouldn't have to criticize you all the time and we'd be happy together" to "You don't trust me."

Give a person enough of these and/or in critical moments, and it's just a matter of time before they either go crazy, or become numb or abusive.

[gerard]

May 7, 2012 23:55:18 GMT -6 ash said:

it's hard to believe that there is something wrong only with the patients.

That's why I got Julian Jaynes into the discussion.

[Nitaidas]

This book is now available on Barnes and Noble here.

And from Amazon here.