Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

Mirabai (c. 1498–1547) — the Rajput princess who abandoned rank and convention for her all-consuming love of Krishna. Her songs remain among the most beautiful expressions of bhakti yoga ever composed. There is a woman who, in 16th-century Rajasthan, left a royal palace, defied her in-laws, drank poison that didn't harm her, and spent her life composing and singing songs of love to a god whose image she carried everywhere. There is a 12th-century Tamil saint who reportedly climbed into the arms of a Krishna statue and was never seen again. There is a weaver from Varanasi who said that God was the thread running through everything, and wove that knowledge into every cloth he made. There is a 15th-century Maharashtrian saint who was so absorbed in divine love that his family had to drag him home from the temple, and the entire village gathered to hear him sing. These are the bhaktas — the devotees who followed Bhakti Yoga , the path of love. And the Bhagavad Gita, when Arjuna ...

Two armies face each other on the plain of Kurukshetra. The conch shells have sounded. The battle is about to begin. And then the greatest archer in the world — Arjuna , hero of the Pandavas — lowers his bow. He cannot fight. On the other side of the battlefield are his teachers, his uncles, his cousins, his friends. To kill them would be to destroy his family and his world for the sake of a kingdom. He collapses in his chariot, overwhelmed by grief and confusion, asking his charioteer: "What should I do?" His charioteer is Krishna , the eighth avatar of Vishnu, the Divine in human form. What Krishna says in response — over the next 18 chapters of the text embedded in the epic Mahabharata — is the Bhagavad Gita (भगवद् गीता): the "Song of the Lord," or the "Song of God." It is one of the most profound, most read, and most translated texts in the history of human thought — a 700-verse synthesis of the essential teachings of Hindu philosophy, addressed t...