A deeper personal 'Gnosis' achieved through the Baghavad Gita

Translated into English

Gnosis in an Age of Madness

Back in 2020, when much of the world seemed gripped by a kind of irrational mass hysteria, I found myself craving something increasingly rare in modern life: silence.

Not merely physical silence, but intellectual silence. Space away from the noise of governments, media cycles, social conformity, and the endless pressure to think collectively rather than individually. I wanted solitude because I wanted clarity. I wanted to think. More importantly, I wanted to experience true gnosis.

English is a curious language, perhaps because we have developed a habit of hollowing out words and reshaping them until their original meanings become obscured. The word gnosis comes from the Greek and simply means “to know.” Not to speculate. Not to believe. Not to repeat fashionable opinions. But to know through direct understanding and experience.

Today, if one searches for “Gnosticism,” one is immediately directed toward discussions of obscure early Christian sects eventually defeated by what became the orthodox Church — itself later fragmented into countless denominations and interpretations. Yet the deeper meaning of gnosis predates all of these institutional struggles. It concerns awakening, perception, and the pursuit of truth beyond appearances.

The opposite of gnosis is agnosis — not knowing. We still preserve traces of this in the modern word agnostic, commonly used to describe someone uncertain whether God exists or whether such knowledge is even possible.

But what fascinated me during that strange period of global fear was not merely theology. It was the realization that modern civilisation itself seemed fundamentally agnostic — disconnected from deeper truths, trapped within systems of reaction, distraction, and shallow materialism.

It was during this search that I turned toward the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most profound spiritual and philosophical texts ever written.

Part of the ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, the Gita unfolds on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Prince Arjuna faces an existential crisis as he prepares to fight against his own teachers, relatives, and friends. Overcome by despair and moral confusion, he turns to Krishna — not merely as a charioteer, but as a divine guide.

What follows is not simply religious instruction, but a timeless meditation on duty, consciousness, reality, and liberation.

The teachings of the Gita struck me because they stand in direct opposition to the anxious materialism of the modern age.

Krishna teaches Arjuna about dharma — righteous duty performed without attachment to outcomes. In modern society, nearly every action is tied to reward, status, fear, or social approval. The Gita instead teaches detachment: to act correctly because it is right, not because it is profitable or popular.

The text also outlines multiple paths toward liberation:

• Karma Yoga — the path of selfless action.
• Bhakti Yoga — the path of devotion.
• Jnana Yoga — the path of knowledge and wisdom.
• Dhyana Yoga — the path of meditation and inner stillness.

What is remarkable is that these are not presented as competing doctrines, but as complementary routes toward the same ultimate truth.

The Gita repeatedly returns to one central idea: the true self is eternal. The body decays, societies rise and fall, empires collapse, public opinion shifts like sand in the wind — but consciousness itself belongs to something deeper and more enduring.

In one of the text’s most extraordinary moments, Krishna reveals his universal form to Arjuna, showing the infinite interconnectedness of all existence. It is a vision that dissolves the illusion of separateness and forces confrontation with the overwhelming scale of reality itself.

Reading the Gita during that era of fear and conformity felt strangely liberating because it placed contemporary chaos into perspective. Modern civilisation often conditions people to identify entirely with external structures — careers, governments, ideologies, tribes, social validation. Yet texts like the Gita remind us that inner mastery matters far more than external control.

The irony is that in an age overflowing with information, genuine wisdom has become increasingly rare.

We are surrounded by data, yet starved of understanding.

Perhaps that is why solitude matters. Why silence matters. Why periods of withdrawal from collective madness can become spiritually necessary.

Because sometimes the only way to truly know is to step away long enough to hear your own thoughts again.