A Song of Fortune - A Classical Gita: Notes & Links

1) In this text the original Sanskrit names were presented the way they are found in the Bhagavad Gîtâ. The classical situation of warriors ready for the battle at Kurukshetra can, in a Modern parallel, be compared with the situation of a political debate between politicians of a conservative and progressive stance. This parallel is elaborated in the Modern version of this book. Krishna would then to the standards of today belong to the progressive side of the political spectrum, even though he is primarily there as the neutral witness, while the power of his rule, his culture, would belong to the conservative side of society. The name of Krishna literally translated means dark, and refers to his dark skin. In Modern English he would be called Dwayne. Other honorary titles used in this book all were translated so that the western mind could have a better understanding of the atmosphere of the conversation going on.

2) Arjuna, literally translated with 'the clear one', or 'the white one' would in English receive the name of Aylen, the Mapuche Indian name for clarity or happiness in North America.

3) The original term used here is dharma. Traditionally in this context the so-called vidhi is mentioned as a reference to the dharmic principles. These are satya, s'auca, tapas and dayâ - truth, purity, penance and compassion or also âtmatattva-wise (see next note) expressed as being truthful, faithful, charitable and peaceful to the basic, modern derived, âtmatattva prayer concerning these regulative principles: 'May peace with the natural order, rule the world in respect of the truth, sharing all with each in moderation, faithful to the cause of unity'. In the Vedic literatures these values are also called the legs of the bull of dharma. In our Modern time these legs, hurt by Kali ('Quarrel'), have decayed, so that one speaks of the four sinful activities of gambling, drinking, prostitution and animal slaughter (dyûtam, pânam, striyah, sûnâ), typical for the godless person of the Kali era. That person of Kali, being of classical sin and human weakness, was tolerated, but restricted to the places typical for these sins, by the first emperor to rule after Krishna left the planet about five thousand years ago: Parîkchit (the 'Investigator', see also Bhâgavata Purâna 1.16 & 17.

4) The term âtmatattva stands for the principle or reality of the soul, entailing love for knowledge, and here is here presented as true knowledge. It has an equivalent Sanskrit term: jñâna, spiritual knowledge. To the Western Greek tradition is it best translated with filognosy. The term represents the comprehensive logic of spiritually covering all the six basic visions (darshanas) of the human, cultural respect concerning the factual (philosophy and science), the principle (analysis and spirituality) and the personal (in the religious and political sense). Oneness and harmony of consciousness is the objective of this naturalistic/idealistic love in which one, in order to counter the troubles of not knowing, is of physical exercise, meditation, study, contemplation, discourse, song and service to God and one's fellow man, according to the natural order of time in association with the ether. It is a syncretic approach properly assigning each form of materialism, political association or scientific paradigm, its distinct place and mission in society. An âtmatattva-person, or filognostic, derives, in being faithful to the basic principles of nonviolent compassion, penance, cleanliness and truthfulness, partly from religious approaches as diverse as Hinduism, gnosticism in all its cultural diversity, Buddhism, Taoism/Confucianism, Universal Sufism and Vaishnavism (see further theorderoftime. org).

5) The foolish and the corrupted applies in âtmatattva to a category of people caught in the dilemma of the materialist: directed at the vision he is a fool (mudha), directed at the means he is corrupt (papa). Both ways he is wrong because with him there is no proper matching of the specific means of a specific opulence (bhaga) with the logical end of the vision (darshana) belonging to that opulence (see also note 6 & 11). Thus the bhaga of penance is e.g. the means to arrive in yoga at transcendence, but with a political aim it is a form of material foolishness which, as a state-wise negativity, is called isolationism; one isolates oneself with those measures from the rest of the world. The âtmatattva person though finds the proper match and thus also the pious balance of this or that religious respect between the means employed and the vision which is the purpose, and then aligns himself with the âtmatattva integrity of the different types of balance between the means and the ends. Existing for themselves each of these different types of balance constitute a superego, but if they individually find and know their place in the world culture they are truly of the supersoul.

6) The lesser intelligence of this or that idealist religiousness is determined by the one-sidedness of its logic. To each proper match of an opulence with a certain vision there is a form of religiousness which, even though perfectly valid, on itself is a lesser intelligence than the comprehensive intelligence of âtmatattva assigning each of these forms of logic its proper place in its epistemology. Thus we have e.g. Hinduism which, as a form of diversified demigod worship, works as a proper match between the opulence of being intelligent with the knowledge and the vision of being methodical in philosophy. But on itself it is only a religion of philosophy when it fails in the scientific paradigm, the artistic analysis, the gnostic order, the syncretic personality and the communal, political commitment of respectively Buddhism, Taoism/Confucianism, gnosticism, Universal Sufism and Vaishnavism. Hinduism is, just as the latter ones mentioned may be, in its existence for itself defying the multicultural world order of âtmatattva, more of the superego than of the supersoul (see also note 4 and 11).

7) His opulence, His fulness (gnostically called pleroma) is known in six types of fortune or six opulences: intelligence (or knowledge), power, beauty, renunciation, fame and riches. They constitute the manifest and the non-manifest aspects of space, matter and time, the basic elements of the universe. The Sanskrit word for opulence is bhaga, and the title in Sanskrit used here of Bhagavân thus means the fortunate one, or the one of the opulences. In classical Vaishnava rhetoric the name is often translated with the Supreme Personality of Godhead or simply the Lord (see also note 11 and the previous two).

8) One day of God, consisting of 1000 cycles of creation or mahâyugas, is called a kalpa in Sanskrit. There are 360 days in such a year and 100 years in a life of the Creator who is called Brahmâ in the Vedic culture of which Krishna as a master of yoga, or Krishna as Yogîs'vara, speaks.

9) While this verse states: 'a leaf, a flower, a fruit and water', the bhakti practice of offering food entails a vegetarian wholesome diet consisting of beans, cereal, fruits and vegetables, and cheese and milk.

10) The names of the seven great sages - also called the sons of the creator, Brahmâ - the original Sanskrit refers to here are: Marîci, Atri, Angirâ, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu and Vasishthha, and the four Manus are the progenitors Svâyambhuva, Svârocisha, Raivata and Uttama.

11) The six characteristics of the fullness or the opulence we speak of in the âtmatattva are, as stated in note 7. derived from the three basic elements of creation: time (kâla), space (âkâs'a) and matter (prakriti). According to the manifest and non-manifest of these basic elements we arrive at the full of His opulence: intelligence and knowledge as the manifestation of space, as the reflection of spacial awareness, while the power of the ether is the invisible mover in the beyond. While beauty and harmony constitute the manifest of God in the material world, penance is the unapparent lead of the witness of transcendence that is not seen. To the manifest of time we have the fame of the Lord manifesting in every age and worshiped in all religions as the avatâra, the prophet, the son or the master of meditation and such, while the non-manifest of time is the richness of having the time or the money that time has been converted into. With the opulences of intelligence, power, beauty, renunciation, fame and riches, as the means of God, the six âtmatattva visions (the darshanas) are the purpose. The perfection of intelligence is found in the vision of philosophy (nyâya), the perfection of power is found in the paradigm of science (vais'eshika), the perfection of harmony is found in the analysis (sânkhya), the perfection of renunciation is found in the gnosis of unification in consciousness (yoga), the perfection of fame is found in the religious ceremony (karma- or pûrva-mîmâmsâ), while the perfection of the riches is found in the politics of facing one another with comments (vedanta or uttara-mîmâmsâ). A mismatch of the two characterizes the imbalance of the materialist who is either corrupt in heading for the means of the bhaga in stead of for the vision, or foolish in heading for the wrong darshana as the purpose. A proper match of the two leads, consequently practiced, to one of the six respective basic religions or spiritual disciplines in âtmatattva: Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism-Confucianism, gnosticism, Universal Sufism and Vaishnavism. Filognosy is the integrity superseding, incorporating, embracing and integrating even the superegos of these -isms which, even though they are balanced, nevertheless are not cross-culturally comprehensive in their spiritual commitment. Filognosy in its epistemology simply states that each of these religions or disciplines consitutes a particular type of valid logic (see also the notes 4, 5 and 6).

12) The order of time in relation to the moon is also called the cakra order in âtmatattva. It implies, next to a scale of time divided in twelve or twenty-four hours, a division of the solar year in twenty-four parts as well, which, much like the reformed roman calendar of Julius Caesar, offers 15-day (pañca-das'a) fortnights or a leaped week order starting at the shortest day of the 21/22nd of December. Thus there are 48 weeks in a cakra year. The so-called legal days of work (roman called dies fasti) and rest (dies nefasti) are in this calendar system fixed on the phases of the moon. Thus one has a kind of Saturday or Sabbath reserved for religious ceremonies and such, which runs right through the cakra week with the tempo of the moon. This way one is of a natural consciousness in this aligning with the different tempos of the sun and moon. There is also a regular intercalation to the month, which makes for six two-month seasons of 61 days (missing one with 60 midsummer). This in contrast with the regular lunisolar Hindu 12/13 month calendar which leaps to the hour-angle and thus is irregular in its monthly order. There is with the cakra order even the leaping of the day, the clock thus practically speaking, every week with a couple of minutes the most, according to the equation of time, as also a moving (20 min. per year later) galactic new year's day (starting from 2000 AD at the 6-7 July midnight) for the day the planet earth is closest to the galaxy center of Sagittarius A, according to the precession of the equinox. In principle the year is dynamically leaped with a day whenever that is needed and not on a fixed day end of February, so that the calendar is always within the range of a single day of deviance. But practically one may conform to the leaping of the gregorian calendar, which as yet (2009) is gradually running out with a day in about 3300 years. Thus in âtmatattva the cakra order is complete in its astronomical respect for the natural dynamics of cyclic time (see further theorderoftime.org) and so it constitutes the perfection of matching with the original Vedic truth of this Song of Fortune (see also Bhâgavata Purâna 3.11: 10). The cakra calendar offers a historical year-count in AUC, ab urbe condita, from the foundation of the city of Rome, to be free from religious preferences in legal matters. The year 2000 AD equals the year 2753 AUC, offering the exact number of years defining the age of, our originally roman but now Vedically reformed, âtmatattva cakra calendar.

13) The king of heaven: is usually interpreted here as being Indra, but to the original word of vâsava, it may also be recognized as the celestial sky which is Vedically considered the representation of Vâsudeva, Lord Krishna, visible in the sky as a matter of fact (see Bhâgavata Purâna 5.23: 4 & 8). He thus rules over the demigods of the sun and the moon as their integration, the way a clock rules with its plate over the small and the big hand. One traditionally meditates this with the mantra namah jyotih-lokâya kâlâyanâya animishâm pataye mahâ-purushâya abhidhîmahîti, which means: 'Our obeisances unto this resting place of all the luminous worlds, unto the master of the demigods, the great Personality in the form of time, upon whom we meditate'. But in âtmatattva we simply reset the clock to the sun every cakra week with the so-called tempometer, a solar astrarium clock.

14) The mountain Krishna identifies himself with and which is called Meru in Sanskrit, is visible through the telescope as the mountain of stars in the middle of the galaxy. In a metaphorical sense it is a mountain of transcendence in the center of one's consciousness which is to be climbed by the devotee in bhâgavata dharma, or emancipation in devotion, in order to reach the creator Brahmâ, the personification of the Absolute Truth sitting on top.

15) Being the time the Lord is also threefold (trikâla): not just in the sense of past, present and future or one's meditating in the morning, the evening and the night, but also in the sense of the three Vishnus of the relative ether (see note 26): the time of space time or the time of the expansion of the cosmos which is linear, the time of attraction or contraction in the universe which is of a cyclic nature, and the local time experienced which is psychological or relative. As the threefold of time the Lord may also be recognized in the time of the sun, the moon and the celestial sky, who taken together present what one could call the clock of God.

16) The name of Vyâsadeva is in Western terms best translated with the hebrew name Asaph. It is the same person mentioned as the author of this song of God, this song of Fortune, this Bhagavad Gîtâ, who is âtmatattva-wise named Godcollect, or better described: 'he who collected of the verses of God'. Some doubt this name because any sage gathering the wisdom can be called Vyâsa. But in Vaishnavism one is convinced of his identity as being Krishna Dvaipâyana Vyâsadeva or Bâdarâyana - he who resides in Badarikâ, a meditation resort in the Himalayas named after the jujube trees growing there. He was the sage who was a grandfather of the Kuru dynasty, the family which five thousand years ago opposed on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, where originally this conversation between Krishna and Arjuna took place. That thus happened just before the great battle as is described in the Mahâbhârata, the greatest epic verse in the world which was also written by Vyâsadeva. He was the son of the sage Parâs'ara and Satyavatî, and a half-brother of Vicitravîrya and grandfather Bhîshma.

17) What is called the 'legal rule', reads in Sanskrit as clout: the so-called danda.

18) The three worlds: heaven, the earthly purgatory and hell. Vedic term for world: loka.

19) The formulation of this part of the verse was originally a more simple enumeration of these fields: 'the basic elements, the false ego, the intelligence and the unapparent as surely also the eleven of the senses'. For purposes of clarity they were more elaborately translated here. These external fields of the material elements, the intelligence, the non-manifest and the false ego are directly associated with the basic division of the dimensions of quality and quantity, as also with the different civil virtues which are called the purushârthas. The tradition says we are qualitatively equal to God, but different as for the quantity. Quality gives the dimension of the concrete versus the abstract interest and quantity offers the dimension of the individual versus the social interest. Thus one has the four fields of the material elements (individual/concrete), the intelligence (individual/abstract), the unapparent (abstract/social) and the ego (concrete/social). The virtue of regulating the lust (kâma) is settled in the ego field. The virtue of regulating money (artha) is settled in the business field of the material elements, the virtue of regulating the religion (dharma) is settled in the field of intelligence, and the virtue of finding liberation (moksha) is settled in the club field of associating to the unapparent God, or god, ruling over the sportive or religious gathering.

20) The translation of this part of the verse was originally of a more simple enumeration: 'the eleven of the senses, the five sense objects, like and dislike, happiness and distress, the combinations of them, consciousness and the determination, form the field of action with its transformations'. For purposes of clarity again they have been more elaborately described in this translation in respect of Modern research findings concerning the brain functions. The different areas of the brain, the internal fields, are the frontal and occipital parts of the brain representing respectively the outgoing personality and perceptive powers, the upper cortical part of mental constructs and the lower emotional parts of basic physical functions, and the lateral parts of the left hemisphere which is predominantly linear and time-oriented and the right hemisphere which is specialized in spacial duties or parallel functions.

21) This is in Sanskrit also called the Brahman. It stands for God, the spirit and the Absolute Truth, it is inside and outside, it forms the completeness of the knower, the known and the knowledge (see also the next note).

22) The personal and the impersonal of material nature are as real and eternal as the category they belong to. It can be compared to the laws of nature presented in mathematical terms and the reality they refer to: both are as real as the category of physics they belong to. The impersonal of material nature, prakriti, and the personal of the male principle, the person, purusha, cannot be separated, just as one cannot separate light from darkness. Together they constitute the fundamental duality of the reality that is called the greater soul or the universal self of Brahman, God or the Absolute, that contains all the elements of matter and spirit which are the visible and knowable of everything in existence.

23) The three modes of ignorance, goodness and passion, tamas, sattva and rajas mentioned earlier in the Song, are supported by the three disciplines of divinity of respectively destruction (person: S'iva, reality: Paramâtmâ - Supersoul), maintenance (person: Vishnu, reality: Bhagavân - the Fortunate One) and creation (person: Brahmâ, reality: Brahman - the Absolute Truth) which each again respectively carry the three characteristics of slowness, knowledge and movement.

24) These examples of time as the conditioning order (10.30 & 11.32), the ether as a causal force field determining the spin of planets (9.8), and the modes of nature as a mover of natural action (14.19), are derived from verses in the Song speaking about a doer that is not the individual person; they do not belong to the original Sanskrit of this verse. The Lord identifies with them as belonging to the impersonal aspect of His nature. He Himself is the integrity binding them all as the ether condensed into a material form and as the time enlivening with a specific calendar of local preferences.

25) The two person story concerns the individual soul and the Supersoul residing within the same body like two birds sitting in a tree: one bird enjoys the fruits of labor while the other one is watching.

26) The term ether (âkâs'a) here must be remembered in its most Modern sense as relativistic, viz. as the gravitational and causal forcefield which in its operation differs depending on the space it defines, that is to say a local, elemental or planetary space, a universal or galactic space and the cosmic or space-time determined primal expansion of our material reality. It is the doer as also the non-doer in the sense of a non-involved sameness. This is Vedically remembered as the three types of Vishnu: Mahâ-vishnu of Kâranodakas'âyî-vishnu, Garbodakas'âyî-vishnu and Ksîrodakas'âyî-vishnu. Vishnu should be considered the representation of the element of the ether, just as the ether should be considered a manifestation of His reality as the original integrity of God from whom all the others are found, so confirms the Bhâgavata Purâna (2.5: 25 and 11.5: 19).

27) In the Bhâgavata Purâna there is a story of a man named Purañjana who lives in a city of nine gates. This city stands for the body with its nine openings. The story is a metaphor for a sense-oriented life, a materialistic life of an individual soul who like a dog follows his impulses as also his wife who rules over his senses. The gosvâmî, the spiritual master in Vaishnavism is described as a master of the senses. Another name of Krishna is Sensemaster: Hrishîkes'a.

28) Filognostic songs are the into one's own language translated and according to one's own musical culture arranged devotional songs of the originally in Sanskrit and Bengali written mantras, bhajans, prayers and other hymns of the disciplic succession of the Vaishnav teachers of example, the teachers of instruction, who handed down this knowledge through history. These songs are meant to be sung together in association when one assembles to read this book and /or other holy books of the Vedic culture like The Story of the Fortunate One (the Bhâgavata Purâna), but may also serve as mantras for aligning in solitude.

29) In this context it is important to realize that, as in note 22, the personal and impersonal of God collected in the term purusha, as used here, cannot be separated since the term God covers the complete of all dualities as its unifying category. Thus God is a person or integrity of material life, a lordship (Îs'vara), as also impersonally the aggregate of the material universe, understood as His gigantic body called the virâth rûpa in Sanskrit, animated by the - masculine - principle of time (kâla) and the causal forcefield of the relative ether (âkâs'a).

30) The four types of food refer in the original Vedic culture to the way food is consumed: carvya, that what is chewed; lehya, that what one licks; cûshya, that what is sucked up; and peya, that what is drunk. But âtmatattva-wise one may also consider it a reference to the four basic types of foodstuff essential to the vegetarian: fruits and vegetables, beans, cereal, and dairy.

31) In this text is the term consciousness âtmatattva-wise defined as a state of being; a form or integrity of awareness of a certain difference in time. One is, seen from a Modern perspective, at a certain frequency, time-mode or paradigm aware with a way of differentiating, which builds on the knowledge of the self (identifications), the body (relations) and the culture (discourse). Thus one speaks of a cultural and natural consciousness (asat and sat): culturally a relative and unstable materialistic form of consciousness which, based on material motives, manipulates the time; and naturally a more absolute consciousness based on the respect of the order of the sun, the moon and the stars as seen in the sky. Krishna presents himself in this book as the integrity of a natural, absolute consciousness which liberates the seeker when he submits to the discipline of yoga.

32) A mind trained for self-correction is aware of the four weaknesses inherent to being a conditioned human being, viz. to make mistakes, to have illusions with them, to deceive oneself and others thus, and next to end up with wrong notion: bhrâma, pramâda, vipralipsâ, karanâpâtava.

33) The order forsaking the world of the spiritual teachers of Vaishnavism, the vishnu-monks, the sannyâsîs, carries a so-called tridanda: a staff consisting of three rods representing the three austerities in terms of deeds, the voice and the mind. The impersonal sannyâsîs carry a one-rod staff or ekadanda.

34) 'Aum that eternal' refers to the standard prayer of om tat sat expressed by brahmins in the performance of classical Hindu sacrifices. Apart from the meaning given in the text, it means: 'Oh Aum, that blessed, true and original name of God, oh Pranava!' The word sat means true and real, and the word tat means literally 'that' and refers to the original reality as also to the principle, like in the context of the word tattva, which literally means 'that state of being'. It is also found in the expression tat tvam asi, meaning 'that thou art', a mantra indicating the oneness of the witness and the witnessing when one in meditation faces the reality as it is. In western terms we say things like 'that's it' and 'that's that', meaning about the same: be happy with the things the way they are. The latin word amen, 'so be it', used in Christianity, translates in Sanskrit best as astu, the word for 'let it be'.

35) In the strict sense the renounced order here refers to the order of monks and nuns, monasteries, spiritual communities and convents, where one with a strict time regime full-time is engaged, or liberated, in devotional service without desiring any profit or appreciation of ego. In a broader sense this being liberated in egolessness is also true, in a lesser degree, for the other half of humanity that, not working for a salary, serves the fellow man with nothing but love, gratitude and voluntarism.

36) The five causes in the âtmatattva of the western philosophy with Aristotle are also called the substantive cause concerning the person (purusha), the normative cause of the local interest managed in the spiritual (dharma) and the formative cause concerning the impersonal of material elements and a created manifest universe together with a culture of wisdom, sages and incarnations (avatâra). The fourth cause in Aristotelian logic is the constructive or evolutionary cause (kâla) which here by sage Vyâsa (Godcollect) is separated in a concern about the effect of the past, the roads traveled, and the future of what would lie ahead as ones fate. These five can also be considered the five basic objects or forms of meditation, with each cause working for itself leading to a meditation on either the person, the facts of creation, the principles, the past or the future.

37) See, concerning these three interests of one's sensuality, religiosity and material business, also what was said about the purushârthas under note 19.

38) The four classes in society, the varnas (lit. colors), are in Vedic terms the brâhmanas or intellectuals, the kshatriyas or rulers, the vais'yas, the traders and farmers, and the s'ûdras, the servants and laborers. They are the bookworms, the meddlers, the peddlers and the followers in society. To the modes the intellectuals are supposed to be of goodness, the rulers to be of a mixture of passion and goodness, the traders to be of passion and the laborers to be of ignorance. Together with the four âs'ramas, or statuses closely connected to ones age - brahmacârîs, the celibate students, the grihasthas, the young adults married, the vanaprasthas, the middle aged withdrawn types and the elderly or the renounced order of the sannyâsîs - they constitute the varnâs'rama identity or caste, which is called the status-orientation âtmatattva-wise. That identity constantly needs the reform to the equality of the soul that is found in the transcendence of enlightenment with the emancipation in yoga - kaivalya - in order not to run into any falsehood of ego.

39) The author is at this point ambiguous. 'That' what is referred to can be the personal presence of God, the Lord in the beyond, as also the impersonal of that what He stands for: the force field of the ether which rules all material nature.

40) Dharma is the central concept used here in this discourse on yoga. The term refers to the duty, the virtue, the religion as also to the nature or character of something. It implies piety, righteousness, naturalness and devotional action or service. One discriminates two types: pravritti and nivritti dharma, respectively the conservative type and the progressive type. The conservative type of pravritti dharma is more the traditional religion, which as an institution defies the progress by setting in clear terms the boundaries of what would belong to the liberation in service to the institute which must be preserved, while the progressive type of nivritti dharma is more spiritual and of enlightenment, and constitutes the road of renouncing worldly actions, to be of contemplation and self-realization. Vyâsa uses the two words in verse 30 of chapter 18a. Varnâs'rama dharma refers to the classical societal duties according to one's profession and status. Sanâtana dharma refers to one's faithfulness with the regulative principles, to which one speaks of the bull of dharma with its four legs (see also note 3). Bhâgavata dharma is the duty relating to the Lord, and the association of devotees: the nine stages of emancipation in devotional yoga or bhakti yoga. There are also five forms of adharma or godlessness: opposing, vidharma; deviating, paradharma; blaspheming, upadharma; distorting, chaladharma; deceiving of sophism, âbhâsa (see Bhâgavata Purâna 7.5: 23-24; 7.15: 12-13).

41) The translator Anand Aadhar Prabhu, or in âtmatattva terms Master Foundationbliss, was before he became independent in 1984 a clinical psychologist called René P.B.A Meijer, who studied at the State University of Groningen in the Netherlands. After his graduation he practiced in a clinical setting and also in a private practice for a couple of years, but then gave up his practice as a psychotherapist, in order to devote himself to the science of yoga and the love of knowledge, the âtmatattva, or the filognosy which resulted from the unification of his consciousness.

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