Reading the Bhagavad Gita, Chapters 13-14

Chapter 13:

“Arjuna asked: My Lord! Who is God and what is Nature; what is Matter and what is the

Self; what is that they call Wisdom, and what is it that is worth knowing? I wish to have

this explained."(p.36)

Me, too.

Krishna's answers, condensed and reorganized:

"Who is God?" and "what is it that is worth knowing?"

Krishna doesn't actually answer the first directly, but I'm pretty sure we're supposed to infer that Krishna is God, since                
 

"I will speak to thee now of that great Truth which man ought to know, since by its means he will win immortal bliss – that which is without beginning, the Eternal Spirit which dwells in Me...It is the upholder of all, Creator and Destroyer alike; It is the Light of lights, beyond the reach of darkness; the Wisdom, the only thing that is worth knowing or that wisdom can teach; the Presence in the hearts of all."(pp.36-37) 

But also:

"God dwelling in the heart of Nature experiences the Qualities which nature brings forth;
and His affinity towards the Qualities is the reason for His living in a good or evil body.
Thus in the body of man dwells the Supreme God; He who sees and permits, upholds and
enjoys, the Highest God and the Highest Self."(p.37) 

So maybe the writer is getting at some mystical "all gods are one and that one is everything and we humans are also gods" kind of thing?  I'm losing patience with trying to parse testable statements from all these fine-sounding words.

"What is Nature?"
"Nature is the Law which generates cause and effect" (p.37)  I'm okay with that.  Physics for the win!

"What is Matter?"
"The five great fundamentals (earth, fire, air, water and ether), personality, intellect, the mysterious life force, the ten organs of perception and action, the mind and the five domains of sensation; Desire, aversion, pleasure, pain, sympathy, vitality and the persistent clinging to life, these are in brief the constituents of changing Matter."(p.36)

I'd rather go with quarks.  Or whatever quarks are made of, if it turns out quarks are not the elementary particles.  For everyday life, the periodic table is a wonderfully explanatory and predictive thing. 

"What is the Self?"
"The body of man is the playground of the Self; and That which knows the activities of Matter, sages call the Self."(p.36)  For a book written long before MRI, I think that's a decent definition.

What is that they call Wisdom?"                                                                                            

"Humility, sincerity, harmlessness, forgiveness, rectitude, service of the Master, purity, steadfastness, self-control; Renunciation of the delights of sense, absence of pride, right understanding of the painful problem of birth and death, of age and sickness; Indifference, non-attachment to sex, progeny or home, equanimity in good fortune and in bad; Unswerving devotion to Me, by concentration on Me and Me alone, a love for solitude, indifference to social life;Constant yearning for the knowledge of Self, and pondering over the lessons of the great Truth – this is Wisdom, all else ignorance."(p36) 

I'll keep harmlessness and self-control.  The rest I think we should throw out and instead start with consent, commitment to continual study and corresponding revision of conclusions given current evidence, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of the Child, the twelve virtues of rationality, and amendments as needed.

For the rest of the chapter we have yet more on those who attain enlightenment/Nirvana:

"Some realise the Supreme by meditating, by its aid, on the Self within, others by pure
reason, others by right action.

Others again, having no direct knowledge but only hearing from others, nevertheless
worship, and they, too, if true to the teachings, cross the sea of death....Those who with the eyes of wisdom thus see the difference between Matter and Spirit, and know how to liberate Life from the Law of Nature, they attain the Supreme.”(pp.37-38)

Once again, evidence, please.  Show us evidence of self-cognizant patterns composed entirely of energy without a matrix composed of quarks in some form, and then we can talk.

End chapter 13.  Chapter 14: The Three Qualities
This chapter is just another restatement or refinement of the doctrine of non-attachment that has been repeated continually throughout the Bhagavad Gita so far:

"Purity, Passion and Ignorance are the Qualities which the Law of nature bringeth forth.
They fetter the free Spirit in all beings...When Purity prevails, the soul on quitting the body passes on to the pure regions where live those who know the Highest.
When Passion prevails, the soul is reborn among those who love activity; when Ignorance
rules, it enters the wombs of the ignorant."(p.39)

"Arjuna asked: My Lord! By what signs can he who has transcended the Qualities be
recognized? How does he act? How does he live beyond them?
Lord Shri Krishna replied: O Prince! He who shuns not the Quality which is present, and
longs not for that which is absent;
He who maintains an attitude of indifference, who is not disturbed by the Qualities, who
realises that it is only they who act, and remains calm;
Who accepts pain and pleasure as it comes, is centred in his Self, to whom a piece of clay
or stone or gold are the same, who neither likes nor dislikes, who is steadfast, indifferent
alike to praise or censure;
Who looks equally upon honour and dishonour, loves friends and foes alike, abandons all
initiative, such is he who transcends the Qualities.
And he who serves Me and only Me, with unfaltering devotion, shall overcome the
Qualities, and become One with the Eternal."(p.40)

I feel like either Krishna or Arjuna is just stalling for time at this point.  End chapter 14.  4 more chapters and 10 more pages to go.