Saturday, 26 September in the 500 and 200 centuries rooms of Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri and Bhagavad-Gita from  the Indian tradition, compared by Marco Ferrini, have inspired and charmed about six hundred people from all over Italy.

         The Historical-Artistic context has hosted the event superbly.  The battle scenes of Vasari’s paintings, the Genio della Vittoria of Michelangelo and the statues of Vincenzo De Rossi which represent the Fatiche di Ercole seemed to evocate the crucial moments of the existential journey of Dante in the Divine Comedy and Arjuna in Bhagavad-Gita.  The anguishing crisis that they both live, which seems to them worse than death, takes them through a hard battle (la Guerra si del cammino e si de la pietade) from which they both come out victorious. 

         At first, Marco Ferrini, drew a cultural and social-historical-political contextualization of both works.  He described the peculiar traits of the medieval civilization of Dante’s times and of the ancient Hindu-Vedic tradition with reference to their respective sources.  Ferrini offered a widespread cultural prospective through a stimulating comparison-dialogue between East and West, tracing the connections between cultures that are only apparently far from each other:   the great Greek and Classic Latin works, the ancient Vedic Rishi, the alchemic medieval tradition and the Dolce Stil Novo, the Islamic literature and the mystical sufi, Christianity and the tradition of the Vaishnava Bhakti.

         On two big screens there were images that showed the contents of both works.  Meanwhile Ferrini explained the psychological profiles of Dante and Arjuna’s characters in their surprising convergences.  Two great political individuals,a prior and a prince who, in their existential and social drama, passionately undertake the search of an evolutionary path which will take them from the dark forest to the light of high consciousness which are the nice intellect for Dante and the buddhi-yukta from Krishna in Bhagavad-Gita.

         Through Ferrini’s explanations, the voices of Dante and Arjuna seemed to talk to each other and express the same existentiality problems of which we can experience the surprising reality.  These crucial questions were answered by Virgilio and Beatrice’s teachings in the Divine Comedy and by Krishna in Bhagavad-Gita which offer convergent solutions and values of reference.  In both cases, the crisis experience shows to be the greatest stimulus for ones evolution which passes through the recognition and the overcome of one’s limits all the way to his illumination and his meeting with God.  Dante re-conquers light through his descent into inferno where we can see ones vices and human mean actions and Arjuna finds his peace by fighting in spirit of offer to God, that battle of Kurukshetra that each individual is called to face in his life.

         By answering questions from the public the characteristics of the levels of conscience of inferno, purgatory and paradise emerged vividly.  They correspond to bhur, bhuvah, svahah in the Hindu-Vedic psycho-cosmogony.

         The protagonists of Bhagavad-Gita and the Divine Comedy were identified and represented in their deepest meaning.  By exiting the halo of a merely literal and academic interpretation, they have strongly and clearly expressed their instances.  The spectators were able to see themselves in their vicissitudes, they have met them in their lives, they have found them inside themselves because they are a surprising expression of weakness and virtues and of different tendencies and levels of consciousness.

         Following are some subjects discussed during the comparison between the Divine Comedy and Bhagavad-Gita.  The archetypical image of the teacher, the obstacles found in a journey, the individual-society relationship, the alchemic ways of purification of the hearth and mainly love as the top of the realization experience in both initiative paths.  Bhakti in Hindu-Vedic tradition and the divine love of the Divine Comedy represent in both works the common goal to reach and, at the same time, the common way that leads to that supreme goal.  In this goal is the sense of life before death and beyond death.

         The journey between Earth and Heaven, between death and immortality, darkness and light, man and God, egoistical passions and immortal love is the adventurous journey that Dante and Arjuna undertake in parallel fashion and it is the same journey that each individual had the chance to undertake to regain his harmonic position in the universe and realize himself beyond the conditioners of ego, time and space.

         Bhagavad-Gita and the Divine Comedy, Ferrini concluded, are operas of never ending value and their extraordinary convergences remove the contrapositions between Orient and the West.   They destroy lay and religious fanaticisms and teach to integrate the human being with the Divine and realize the Divine without reneging the human being.  Bhagavad-Gita and the Divine Comedy can not only profitably talk between each other, but also enable the dialogue between today’s people, the individual and society, the creatures, the create and the Creator, by leading, with their highest expressions, to the realization of the divine wisdom e immortal love.  “L’amor che move il sole e le altre stelle. “