“Put your money where your mouth is,” we may tell someone who recommends big things without making any practical commitment. Suppose they respond by taking out from their pocket a bunch of currency notes and putting it in their mouth. Laughing at the absurdity, we would stop them: “Don’t take things so literally – use your intelligence.”

Non-literal usages are integral to living languages – and they feature especially in literary works such as poems. The Bhagavad-gita is, as its very name conveys, a poem. Accordingly, it features vivid figurative usages. Consider, for example, the Gita verse (02.69): That what is night for all living beings is day for the self-controlled, and vice versa. A literal reading makes no sense – unless the verse addresses two time zones twelve hours apart, and assumes that all self-controlled people live in one time zone and all common people in the other. But nothing in the verse’s context suggests that it is discussing geography; this Gita section (02.54-72) explains the characteristics of the spiritually realized.

A non-literal reading harmonizes much better with the context. If day refers figuratively to the arena of interest, and night to the arena of disinterest, the verse means: the sensual indulgence that fascinates general people doesn’t attract the self-controlled.

As a general principle, the Gita’s literary ornaments serve to enhance its message, not obscure it. So, non-literal interpretation shouldn’t be used to cloud that message, as happens when proponents of non-violence deem the Gita’s battlefield setting merely figurative. This setting drives home the Gita’s universality and urgency – if even a warrior on a battlefield found the Gita relevant, so too will we.

Overall, when we use our intelligence(18.63) to study the Gita devotionally (18.70), its import is revealed to us by Krishna’s grace.

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