A Teacher
Krishna
The deathless Self and the yogas of action, devotion, and knowledge
The transmission
Krishna is presented here as the teacher of the Bhagavad Gita - a traditional and scriptural figure rather than a documented historical individual. In the Gita, set on the battlefield of Kurukshetra within the epic Mahabharata, Krishna serves as charioteer and counselor to the warrior Arjuna and delivers a sustained discourse on duty, action, devotion, and the nature of the Self.
The Gita as a text is generally dated by scholars to roughly the 2nd century BCE through the 2nd century CE, though the figure of Krishna in Hindu tradition is far older and woven through Vedic and Puranic literature.
The historicity of a man named Krishna is debated and not essential to his role here; what matters is the teaching the scripture places in his mouth. That teaching has shaped Indian spirituality for two millennia and traveled widely into Western metaphysical circles.
Krishna articulates the imperishability of the true Self: “these bodies are perishable, but the dweller in the body is eternal, indestructible.” He lays out complementary paths to liberation - karma yoga (selfless action), bhakti yoga (loving devotion), and jnana yoga (discriminating knowledge) - presenting them not as rivals but as interwoven routes to the same realization.
For a mind-power atlas, the Gita is a primary headwater of the conviction that consciousness, not the body or circumstance, is the ground of identity and freedom.
What they gave
The deathless Self: Teaches that the real self (atman) is eternal and untouched by birth and death, grounding the mind-power intuition that consciousness is prior to and more fundamental than the material body.
- Action without attachment: Karma yoga reframes work and outcome - act fully, release attachment to results - a discipline of inner orientation that anticipates non-attached, intention-led approaches to manifestation.
- Devotion as transformation: Bhakti yoga makes wholehearted, single-pointed love and surrender a direct means of inner change, paralleling later teachings on faith and focused conviction.
- Knowledge that liberates: Jnana yoga locates freedom in discriminating the eternal witness from the changing field, a recognition of consciousness as fundamental.
In their words
You were never born; you will never die. You have never changed; you can never change. Unborn, eternal, immutable, immemorial, you do not die when the body dies.
The line they stand in
Influenced by: Upanishadic Vedanta, Samkhya metaphysics, and the Vedic devotional and sacrificial tradition that the Gita synthesizes.
- Influenced: The later bhakti movement, commentators such as Adi Shankara, and modern teachers including Swami Vivekananda and Paramahansa Yogananda, through whom Gita teaching reached Western Vedanta and New Thought audiences.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- Bhagavad Gita (the teaching of Krishna)c.2nd century BCE