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From the Introduction...

Five thousand years ago Lord Krishna, the enigmatic and legendary Teacher who came at the beginning of kali yuga, both ended a cycle and struck a keynote for the long Dark Age into which humanity would be plunged. On the battlefield of duty, kurukshetra, which was dharmakshetra, Krishna, the charioteer, made a striking and puzzling statement to the mighty archer, Arjuna — who went through all the many vagaries and ambivalences of friendship and discipleship, and indeed at the end proved himself to have been a worthy friend and pupil of Krishna. After revealing great mysteries to Arjuna through the universal vision of the Divine Eye, Krishna said to Arjuna: But what availeth all this knowledge to thee, O Arjuna? Upholding this entire universe with a single fragment of Myself, I still stand apart. (X.42) This statement points to the profoundly elusive relations between the transcendent and the immanent, the unmanifest and the manifest, in all subsequent theologies and concepts of the Godhead. Put forward here in a dramatic manner that seems personified, nevertheless it has the curious obscurity of an impersonal cosmic enigma. There is a world and yet there is no world. The world has a Mind and a Logos, and yet it does not. There is meaning to the world and yet there is absurdity to it. There is a supreme concern and compassion in the world flowing from whatever precedes it, whatever sustains and nourishes it, whatever destroys and re-creates it. At the same time, there is a supreme detachment that may sound to some almost like cold indifference.

Although it is a classical formulation, the importance of the statement is not merely what it says about Krishna. Like everything else that a Great Teacher does, it is meant to release in Arjuna authentic representations of an archetypal stance. Whatever part he chose or course of action he took, it was possible for Arjuna to have unconditional help from Krishna. It was also possible for Arjuna — in relation to his world — both to be involved and to stand outside it. This central message of Krishna became a clue for ancient warriors who were torn between deploring the end of what looked like a Golden Age in comparison to what was emerging, and nurturing a deep concern to preserve and maintain something sacred in the New Age. Thus, the Gita became a keynote pointing to a new modulus of growth, a principle of self-reliance not merely grounded in individual human nature but also serving as a basic pattern for social structures.

Lord Krishna strings the sacred teachings of the Bhagavad Gita on the golden thread of mental posture, the relation between the spiritual seeker and Divine Wisdom embodied as the Light of the Logos in lustrous beings. Mental posture refers primarily to an attitude of mind, and constitutes the sacred trust between chela and guru. Those who wish to become sincere and true servants of all humanity with its immense suffering, and of the Great Masters of Wisdom with their inexhaustible light, must prepare themselves by a process of purgation whereby they negate the false conceptions of themselves derived from the world into which they are born through their heredity, upbringing, environment and education. This is done by a method of intense self-questioning. Upanishadic-Platonic thought is essentially a dialogue with oneself. When people begin to ask questions of themselves, and also attempt to apply the principles evolved in formulating questions in a multiplicity of contexts, then they gradually begin to glimpse the dynamic, albeit mysterious, relation between the manifest and the unmanifest...