Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
The Bhagavad Gita
Three yogas — knowledge, action, devotion — converge on a personal Lord who is also the impersonal absolute
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | The Bhagavad Gita |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Cyclical |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Space · Curvature | Undefined |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Non-local |
| Matter · Extent | Finite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Matter · Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Non-local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Total |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Both |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Scripture |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Energy · Conservation | Variable |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Reversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
The Bhagavad Gita
Time is real for the embodied soul but emerges from the Lord; in chapter 11 Krishna identifies himself with time itself: "Time am I, world-destroying, grown mature, engaged here in subduing the world" (11.32). Birth and death are real within saṃsāra but the soul passes through them — "as a man casts off worn-out garments and takes new ones" (2.22). The cosmos cycles: at the end of each Brahmā-day, all beings are absorbed into the unmanifest, only to emerge again (8.18-19).
Space
The Bhagavad Gita
Space is pervaded by the Lord: "I am seated in the hearts of all" (15.15); "All beings exist in me, but I am not in them" (9.4-5). The eleventh chapter's universal vision — Arjuna sees "innumerable arms, bellies, mouths and eyes" (11.16), "the entire universe with its manifold divisions assembled in one place" (11.13) — collapses ordinary spatial intuitions. Space is real practically but non-local at the level of the Lord.
Matter
The Bhagavad Gita
Matter (prakṛti) is the Lord's "lower nature" — the eightfold manifestation of earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intellect, ego-sense (7.4) — distinguished from the "higher nature" which is the individuated jīva-life. Material forms are emergent and impermanent; liberation is precisely seeing through them without renouncing one's social duty (svadharma) within them. The classical Hindu compromise between renunciation and action.
Observer
The Bhagavad Gita
The Gita's observer is plural at the empirical level (each jīva is a distinct soul, embodied across many lives) and active under the call to selfless duty (niṣkāma karma). Knowledge in the highest sense is total — the wise see the Lord in all and all in the Lord (6.29-30) — but achieved through devotion rather than reasoning alone. The metaphysical agency is unambiguously personal: Krishna intervenes, speaks, persuades, promises deliverance (18.66). Moral authority is scriptural — the Veda — but Krishna himself is the higher source.
Energy
The Bhagavad Gita
The cosmic process of creation and dissolution is energetic: at the beginning of each kalpa, beings emerge from the Lord's unmanifest nature; at its end, they return. The three guṇas (sattva, rajas, tamas) are themselves energetic categories — luminosity, activity, inertia — through which prakṛti operates (chapters 14, 17, 18). Energy is variable at the cosmic scale (the universe is breathed in and out of being) and reversible across the cycle.
Information
The Bhagavad Gita
What is conserved across lives is the karmic-volitional deposit of the jīva. "At the time of death, whatever state of being one remembers, that state alone is attained" (8.6) — the moral-cognitive state at death conditions the next birth, a strict personal-information conservation. At the cosmic scale the Lord himself is the unchanging witness; the manifest order is variably manifest but never lost.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The Gita is famously read in incompatible ways because it genuinely holds together commitments that pull against each other. Krishna is both the impersonal Brahman ("I am the Self") and the personal Lord ("worship me"); the soul is both identical with the divine and a distinct devotee; action is both demanded (do your duty) and to be transcended (act without attachment to fruits). The attribute fingerprint here favours the Vaiṣṇava (personal-Lord) reading on Metaphysical Agency, with Advaita-shaped Observer Number and Information attributes. A pure-Advaita reading would shift Metaphysical Agency to Cosmic-ordering and Observer Number to Singular.