The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] It has been a little over a year since I was allowed to speak here in this place about those things that lie so deeply in all our hearts, about those things that we believe must now be incorporated into human understanding, because from this time onward, human souls will feel more and more that knowledge of these things truly belongs to the needs, to the deepest longings of the human soul. And it is with deep satisfaction that I welcome you for the second time to this place, together with all those who have come here to show, in your midst, how their hearts and souls are connected to our sacred cause across the entire globe.

[ 2 ] The last time I had the opportunity to speak to you here, we turned our spiritual gaze toward vast journeys into the regions of the universe. This time, our task will be to focus more on the realms of earthly development. But we will have to delve into regions that will lead us no less to the gates of the eternal revelation of the spiritual in the world. We will have to speak of a subject that will seemingly carry us far away from the here and now in time and space, but which will nonetheless lead us to that which which lives in the here and now just as it does in all times and all spaces, which will lead us in an intimate way to the mysteries of the Eternal in all being, which will lead us to the ceaseless human search for the sources of eternity, for those sources within which the life-giving sap is also to be found for all that people, since they have gained an understanding of it, call almighty love. For wherever we are gathered, there we are gathered in the name of the striving for wisdom and the striving for love; there we are gathered in the longing for the sources of this love. And that which is spread out and can be contemplated within the vast expanse of the entire cosmic universe can also be contemplated in the struggling human soul everywhere. And this comes to meet us all the more powerfully when we turn our gaze to one of those mighty manifestations of this struggling human spirit, as they are found in such achievements of human life, one of which we take as the basis for our present reflections. Let us speak of one of the greatest, most powerful manifestations of the human spirit, of the ancient Bhagavad Gita, which, in its foundations, is proving to be of renewed importance to us precisely in our time.

[ 3 ] It was not long ago that the peoples of Europe—indeed, the peoples of the West in general—knew very little about this Bhagavad Gita. Only in the last century has the fame of this wonderful poem and knowledge of this marvelous song begun to spread in the West. But this is precisely what is to be the subject of our lecture series this time: that the understanding—not mere knowledge—that the understanding of the wonderful Eastern Gita can essentially only come about when the foundations of this magnificent song are revealed more and more to human souls, those foundations which may be called its occult foundations. For what we encounter in the Bhagavad Gita sprang from an age of which we have often spoken in the context of our reflections on Spiritual Science; the mighty sensations, feelings, and ideas of the Bhagavad Gita sprang from an age into which the manifestations of ancient human clairvoyance still shone. For those who wish to feel what the Bhagavad Gita breathes out, page by page, as it speaks to us, something reveals itself, page by page, like a breath of humanity’s ancient clairvoyance.

[ 4 ] This marked the Western world’s first encounter with the Bhagavad Gita at a time when that same Western world had little understanding of the most primordial, clairvoyant sources of the Bhagavad Gita. Nevertheless, this hymn to the deity—or, rather, to the divine—struck the Western world like a bolt of lightning, so that a man from Central Europe at that time, when he first became acquainted with this wondrous Eastern song, openly declared that he must count himself fortunate to have lived to see the time when he could become acquainted with that marvel expressed in the Bhagavad Gita. And this man was not one who was unfamiliar with the spiritual life of humanity over the centuries, indeed millennia; this man was one who had looked deeply into the spiritual life of the peoples: it was Wilhelm von Humboldt, the brother of the famous author of *Cosmos*, Humboldt. Other members of the Western world as well, people from the most diverse linguistic regions, all felt similarly. But how significant this feeling appears when one—let this be mentioned from this perspective—allows the *Bhagavad Gita* to take effect upon oneself, beginning with its first cantos.

[ 5 ] Perhaps, especially in our circle, one often has to work one’s way toward complete impartiality, because, despite the fact that the Bhagavad Gita has been known in the West for such a short time, the holy storm with which it has seized people’s souls has had such an effect that one approaches it from the outset with the feeling of having something like a sacred object before one and no longer makes it entirely clear to oneself what the actual starting point is. Let us, perhaps even somewhat grotesquely soberly, first place this starting point before our soul.

[ 6 ] A poem unfolds before us, plunging us from the very first pages into the wildest, most turbulent battle. We are led to a scene that is scarcely less wild than the one into which Homer immediately plunges us in the *Iliad*. Indeed, we continue to observe how this scene presents to us something that one of the most important figures appearing there—perhaps even the most important one—perceives from the outset as a battle among brothers: Arjuna. Before us, this Arjuna appears as one who dreads the battle, for he sees his blood relatives among the enemies over there. His bow slips from his grasp as he realizes that he is to enter into a battle, a murderous battle with people who are descended from the same ancestors from whom he himself is descended, through whose veins flows the same blood that runs in his own. And we almost begin to empathize with this lowering of the bow, with this recoiling before the terrible fratricidal battle. And before our eyes rises Arjuna’s great spiritual teacher, Krishna. And a magnificent, a sublime teaching is presented to us by Krishna in the most wonderful colors, so that all this appears as a spiritual lesson to Arjuna, who is his disciple. But what is the ultimate point of all this? That is what one must first soberly bring to mind, what one must not overlook. What is the actual point of this? Yes, it is simply not enough to merely engage with the great, seemingly sacred teaching that Krishna gives to Arjuna. The circumstances in which it is given must also be taken into account. We must take into account the situation in which Krishna urges Arjuna not to fear the battle against his brother, to take up his bow, and to throw himself with full force into the devastating battle. One must also keep this in mind. Like a spiritual cloud of light that is at first incomprehensible, Krishna’s teachings emerge in the midst of the battle, and they serve as a call not to shrink back in this battle, but to stand firm within it, to do one’s duty in this battle. When one keeps this in mind, this teaching is, so to speak, transformed by its context. But this framework leads further out into the entire fabric of the “Mahabharata,” the great, mighty epic of which the Bhagavad Gita is in turn a part. It leads us out from Krishna’s teaching into the storms of everyday life, into the chaotic storms of human struggles, human error, and earthly strife. This teaching almost appears to us as a justification of these storms of human struggles. If we first bring this before our eyes in a sober manner, so to speak, quite different questions may yet arise regarding the Bhagavad Gita than those that arise when one finds in various things—which one believes one can understand—something akin to what is found in ordinary human works. And perhaps it is necessary to point out the context of the Bhagavad Gita in order to truly bring to light the world-historical significance of this magnificent song, and then to draw attention to that which makes the Bhagavad Gita increasingly important to us, especially in the present day.

[ 7 ] As I have already said: the Bhagavad Gita entered the Western world as something entirely new, and the feelings, sensations, and thoughts underlying the Bhagavad Gita were also almost entirely new. What, after all, did Western culture—from Eastern culture up to the very time when it first encountered the Bhagavad Gita—actually know about it? Apart from a few things that became known specifically in the last century, very little! Apart from certain efforts that remained secret, Western culture was not immediately aware of the significance of what runs through the entire Bhagavad Gita as its central nerve, as its most important impulse. When one approaches such things as the Bhagavad Gita, one feels how little human language, human philosophy, and human ideas—which apply to, dominate, and indeed suffice for everyday life—how little these are sufficient to characterize such pinnacles, such summit points of human spiritual life on earth. One needs something quite different from ordinary descriptions to express what shines out at us from such a revelation of the human spirit.

[ 8 ] I would like to begin by presenting two images to our minds, so that they may serve as a foundation for the descriptions that follow. One image is from the Bhagavad Gita itself, the other from Western spiritual life—and in such a way that it lies relatively close to this Western spiritual life, whereas the image we wish to take from the Bhagavad Gita itself seems, for the time being, to lie quite far from Western spiritual life. Let us now first place before our soul an image that we find in the Bhagavad Gita itself: The great, sublime song unfolds in such a way that it describes to us how, in the midst of battle, Krishna appears and reveals the mysteries of the world—powerful, great teachings—to his disciple Arjuna. Then this disciple is overcome by the urge to see this soul in a form, spiritually formed, to truly recognize the one who speaks such sublime things to him. He asks Krishna to reveal himself to him, just as he can reveal himself in his true spiritual form. And then Krishna appears to him—and we will return to this description later—he appears in his all-encompassing form, a great, sublime, magnificent beauty, a sublimity that embodies the mysteries of the world. We shall see that there is little in the world as magnificent as this description of how the teacher’s sublime spiritual form reveals itself to the seeing eye of his disciple. Before Arjuna’s eyes spreads the desolate, chaotic battlefield where much blood is to flow, where the fratricidal struggle is to unfold. The soul of Krishna’s disciple is to be transported away from this desolate, chaotic battlefield, and the soul of this disciple is to behold a world, is to be immersed in a world in which Krishna lives in his true form, a world removed from all struggle, all strife, a world of the most sublime, exalted bliss, a world in which the mysteries of existence are revealed, a world removed from everyday life, from battle and strife, a world to which the human soul, in its innermost, most essential being, actually belongs. The human soul is to know of this world; it is to learn to know of this world, and then it shall be possible for it to descend once more, to intervene again in the chaotic, desolate struggles of the world of this life. Truly, when we follow the description of this image with feeling, we ask ourselves: What is actually going on in Arjuna’s soul? What is this soul like? It stands in the midst of the turmoil of battle, as if this turmoil were being forced upon it. Thus this soul feels as if it belongs to a blissful world where there is no human suffering, no human struggle, no human death. Thus this soul of Arjuna yearns upward toward a world of the eternal, of the blissful. But with a necessity that can arise only from the impulse of the sublime Krishna, this soul must be compelled to engage in the wild, chaotic, everyday struggle. It wants to turn its gaze away from this chaotic, wild struggle. Like something foreign, like something entirely unrelated to it, so does the life of the earth, as it is all around, appear to this Arjuna-soul. We can literally feel: This soul is still one that yearns upward toward the higher worlds, as if it still wished to live with the gods, and still perceives human life as something foreign, unrelated, and incomprehensible. Truly, a wondrous image, containing the greatest and most sublime moments: a hero, Arjuna, surrounded by other heroes, by hosts of warriors, a hero who perceives everything that spreads out before his eyes as something foreign, otherworldly, and alien, who must first be pointed to this world by a god, and who does not understand the world of this life unless a god makes it understandable to him, Krishna.

[ 9 ] It may sound quite paradoxical, but I know that those who can delve deeper into the matter will understand what I mean when I say the following. Arjuna stands before us like a human soul who must first be made to understand the earthly realm of the world, the material aspects of the world. And now the Bhagavad Gita is meant to have an effect in Western cultures on people who do indeed have an understanding of all that is earthly, who have advanced so far in materialism that they have a very good understanding of all that is earthly, of all that is material. The Bhagavad Gita is meant to become understandable to souls who are separated by a deep chasm from all that, upon true contemplation, presents itself as the Arjuna soul. All that toward which the Arjuna soul—which must first be tamed by Krishna to the earthly—shows no inclination seems to be very understandable to the Western world. The difficulty seems to lie in rising to the level of the Arjuna soul, to that soul which must first be taught to understand all that for which there is a great deal of understanding in Western countries: the sensual, the material-earthly. A god, Krishna, must teach Arjuna an understanding of all that which surrounds us as our culture. How easy it is in our time to teach people an understanding of that which surrounds them. This requires no Krishna. One would do well to take a clear look at the chasms that can lie between human natures, and not take too lightly the understanding that a Western soul can gain for a nature such as that of Krishna or Arjuna. Arjuna is a human being, but one so very different from the people who have gradually developed themselves within Western culture.

[ 10 ] This is the one image I want to talk about, for words can do little to convey these things. Images that we seek to grasp with our souls can do so more effectively, since they speak not only to understanding, but to that which will forever be deeper on earth than any understanding—to sensation and feeling.

[ 11 ] Now I would like to present another image to our souls, an image that I do not wish to say is any less sublime than this image from the Bhagavad Gita, but which is infinitely closer to what Western culture is. There is a sublime image, a beautiful, poetic image, which Westerners are even familiar with and which means a great deal to them. What do I actually mean by this? I have presented an image: the appearance of Krishna before Arjuna. Let us now ask: How many people in the West believe in the reality of this image, believe that Krishna once appeared before Arjuna and spoke in this way? Let us ask how many Western souls believe in the reality of this image. — Admittedly, we stand at the starting point of a worldview that will lead to this being not merely a belief, but a knowledge. But we are just at the starting point of this worldview, at the starting point of the anthroposophical worldview. The other image is much closer to us. There is truly something in it that makes sense to Western culture.

[ 12 ] We look back several centuries before the founding of Christianity to a soul whom, half a millennium before the founding of Christianity, one of the greatest minds of the Western world placed at the center of his reflections. We look to Socrates and, in spirit, to the dying Socrates. Socrates, the dying Socrates, as Plato depicts him among his disciples in his famous dialogue on the immortality of the soul. In this image, the other, the beyond, is only sparsely hinted at, represented as the daemon who speaks to Socrates. Socrates stands before us in the hours preceding his entry into the spiritual worlds, surrounded by his students. In the face of death, he speaks of the immortality of the soul. Many read this wonderful dialogue on immortality, which Plato has given us, precisely to depict this scene of his dying teacher. But today people read only words, concepts, and ideas. There are even people—and they should not be blamed—who, faced with this magnificent depiction by Plato, question the logical validity of what the dying Socrates is explaining to his students. These are the people who cannot sense that there is more for the human soul, that something more important, more meaningful than logical proofs, than scientific debates, lives within our souls. Let us set aside entirely what Socrates says about immortality; let us have the most educated, the most profound, the most refined person among his students say in a different situation what Socrates says to his students; let us have him say it under different circumstances; indeed, let us allow what this most refined, most logical, most educated person says to be a hundred times better logically grounded than it is with Socrates: and yet it may be a hundred times less valuable! One will only fully realize this when one begins to thoroughly understand that there is something for the human soul that is of greater value, even if it seems more inconspicuous, than the most sound logical proofs. If some educated, refined person speaks to his students at some point about the immortality of the soul, that can certainly be very significant. But the true significance is not revealed by what is said—I know I am now expressing something very paradoxical, but something very true—rather, it is the fact that this teacher says something to his students, but afterwards continues to attend to the ordinary affairs of his life, and his students do the same. Socrates speaks these things to his students in the hour preceding his passing through the gates of death. He proclaims the doctrine of the immortality of the soul at the very moment when, in the next instant, his soul will separate from his physical body. It is one thing to speak of immortality to the students left behind in the hour of death, which does not come upon him as an indeterminate fate; it is another to go about one’s ordinary daily business afterward. It is yet another to actually enter the worlds that lie beyond the gates of death after such a conversation. It is not Socrates’ words that should primarily affect us; it is the situation that should do so. But let us take all the strength of what has just been attempted to characterize, let us take all that which meets us like a breath in Socrates’ conversation with his students about immortality, let us take the full, immediate power of this image—what do we have before us? We have before us the Greek world, the world of Greek everyday life, that world in which the daily struggles of life led to the best of the country’s sons being given the cup of hemlock. We have before us the last earthly words of this noble Greek, the last words he intended solely to lead the people standing around him to a point where their souls believe in that of which they can no longer have knowledge, where their souls believe in what is for them an afterlife, in the spiritual world. That a Socrates is necessary to lead earthly souls, through the strongest of reasons—namely, through action—to a vision of the spiritual worlds in which the soul lives once it has passed through the gate of death: this conjures before our soul an image that is well understood by Western souls. The culture of Socrates is well understood by Western souls. Socrates standing before his students, who stand so directly before the reality of death: this image is indeed comprehensible to Western souls. We can only truly understand Western culture if we know that, in this sense, it has indeed been Socratic culture through the centuries, through the millennia.

[ 13 ] But let us compare one of Socrates’ disciples, who truly could have no doubt about the world around him—for he was, after all, a Greek— let us compare how this person must be introduced to the supersensible world; let us compare this with the disciple of Krishna, with Arjuna, who can have no doubts whatsoever about the supersensible world, but who becomes bewildered by his kinship, by the entire existence, indeed, by the very possibility of the sensory world.

[ 14 ] I am well aware that historians, philosophers, and scholars of all kinds might now come forward and say, with seemingly sound reasoning: “Yes, but just look at what is written in the Bhagavad Gita and what Plato says.” One could just as easily prove the opposite of all that, the opposite of what you have just said. — But I also know that those who speak this way do not wish to perceive the deeper, magnificent impulses that are drawn, on the one hand, from that image in the Bhagavad Gita, and on the other hand, from the image of the dying Socrates as Plato depicts him. Yet a gulf lies between these two worlds, despite all the similarities one might find. Why is this so?

[ 15 ] This is because the Bhagavad Gita stands at the end of the ancient clairvoyant age of humanity; because in the Bhagavad Gita something resounds to us like the final echo of ancient human clairvoyance; because, on the other hand, in the dying Socrates we encounter one of the first of those people who struggled through millennia with that human insight, with those human ideas, thoughts, and feelings that seem to have been cast out of the old clairvoyant age, which developed in the intervening period as they had to prepare for a new clairvoyant age, toward which we are striving today through the proclamation and reception of what we call the anthroposophical worldview. In a certain sense, no gulf is deeper than that which opens up between Arjuna, the disciple of Krishna, and a disciple of Socrates. But we live in a time in which human souls, after having sought for centuries in their course through various transformations, through their incarnations, a life of external knowledge, are once again seeking union with the spiritual worlds. Fundamentally, the fact that you are sitting here is the most vivid proof that within you live such souls that seek this union—that union which is meant to lead the souls, in a renewed way, to those worlds that resonate with us, as in a wondrous revelation, in what Krishna proclaims to his disciple Arjuna. That is why, as something that corresponds to the deepest longings of our souls, much of what lies at the occult foundation of the Bhagavad Gita resonates with us.

[ 16 ] In ancient times, the soul was familiar with the bond that connects it to the spiritual realm. The supernatural, the beyond, and the spiritual were well known to it. We stand at the beginning of an era in which the human soul is once again seeking access, now in a new way, to the supersensible, spiritual worlds. It must seem to us like a spur to this seeking when we can tell ourselves that what we are seeking was indeed once there in a certain way—a way that can no longer be our own, but which was nevertheless once there. Indeed, we will find this that was once there to a particularly high degree in the revelations of the sacred songs of the East, in the revelations of the sublime Gita, addressed by Krishna to his great disciple Arjuna.

[ 17 ] Yes, just as the opening words of great human works usually seem significant—the opening words of the Iliad and the Odyssey certainly seem significant to us—so too do the opening words of the Bhagavad Gita seem significant. What is to be depicted is narrated by his charioteer to the blind king and leader of the Kuru faction, who is currently engaged in a fratricidal war with the Pandava faction. A blind leader! This already strikes us as symbolic. The people of ancient times did indeed have a vision into the spiritual worlds; they lived, as it were, with their whole mind, with their whole soul, in connection with gods and spirits. Everything that surrounded them here on the earth seemed to them only in constant connection with the divine-spiritual existence. Then came a different age. And just as Homer is described to us in Greek legend as blind, so too is the leader of the Kuru party described to us as blind; it is to him that the conversations Krishna speaks to his disciple are recounted, conversations that instruct this man about what takes place in the sensory world. Indeed, even that which extends from the spiritual world into the sensory world must be recounted to him. Significant is the symbol of how blind the ancient people were to their immediate surroundings, their souls reaching back with all their memories and spiritual connections to primeval times. They were sighted in spirit, beholding in the soul—those who, as in higher visions, could experience all that lived as spiritual mysteries. Those who were meant to understand in a deeper sense what is taking place in the world, who were meant to understand this in its spiritual context, are depicted as blind in the ancient legends and songs. Thus we encounter the same symbol in the Greek poet Homer as well as in that figure who confronts us right at the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita. And into what era are we led? Into the time that has often been presented to us in a different way as the time of the transition of primeval humanity into present-day humanity. But why does the fact that the battle between brothers is to take place have such a strong effect on Arjuna?

[ 18 ] We know, of course, that ancient clairvoyance was, in a sense, bound to the external bond of blood. The bond of blood—the flow of the same blood through the veins of a group of people—was rightly held in sacred reverence in ancient times. For it was to this that the ancient perception of a certain group soul was bound. The people who not only felt but knew themselves to be blood relatives did not yet possess an “I” as it exists in modern human beings. Wherever we look, we find in ancient times connections in which the individual human being did not feel at all that such an “I” existed, as it does for people today, but rather existed solely within the group, within a community that constituted the community of blood. What do tribal soul, national soul, and folk-souls mean to people today? Certainly, sometimes this national soul, for example, or people’s soul, is the object of the greatest enthusiasm, but we may say: in the face of the individual human “I,” this people’s soul, this tribal soul, does not hold up. — It may be a harsh statement, but it is true. For it is the case that human beings once did not say “I” to themselves, but to the group of their tribe or people. This sense of group soulhood, however, still lives in Arjuna as he watches the fratricidal battle rage around him. He does not yet know how to say “I” to himself; he understands even better how to feel that group “I” which expressed itself in all those souls. That is why the battle raging around him is so horrific to him.

[ 19 ] Let us put ourselves in the place of this soul of Arjuna, so that we may sense that there lives within it something like a horror, that there is something within it that wants to kill what belongs together—a soul that senses what lives in all souls and what wants to kill itself. Let us put ourselves in the place of this soul of Arjuna, who feels how brothers are killing one another, want to tear one another to pieces, who feels as if a soul were sensing that that which belongs to it—the body—is being torn to pieces. Thus the soul of Arjuna feels as if the limbs of a body were fighting—the heart against the head, the left hand against the right hand. Let us consider that this soul faces the battle that is to take place in such a way that this battle appears as a battle against its own physicality. Let us consider what this soul feels at the moment when it lowers the bow, when the battle of the brothers appears to it like a battle of the right hand against the left hand of a human being: then we feel the mood of the opening of the Bhagavad Gita, then we feel—I must say something here that again appears, but only appears, paradoxical, grotesque, that seemingly speaks against the most sacred feelings—: Arjuna stands there, not yet fully grasping the individual self, but grasping the old, the group self, which presents itself to him so unnaturally in battle. In this mood, Krishna, the great teacher, steps before him. — We must say it once and for all: with the greatest art, with the most incomparable art, Krishna, the holy God, stands before Arjuna, teaching him what a human being must renounce and must will if he wishes to ascend in his evolution in the true sense.

[ 20 ] Let us continue to follow this Krishna and his teachings. What does he actually say? What is he talking about? About “I” and “I” and ‘I’—always and only “I.” I am in the earth, I am in the water, I am in the air, I am in fire, I am in all souls, I am in all manifestations of life, even in the sacred Aum, I am the wind that blows through the forests, I am the most precious of the mountains, I am the most precious of the rivers, I am the most precious of men, I am the ancient seer Kapila among the blessed. — Truly, this Krishna says nothing less than: I acknowledge nothing other than myself, and I accept the world only insofar as it is I. — I and I and I and nothing else speaks from the teachings of Krishna.

[ 21 ] Let us be perfectly clear about this: Arjuna stands there, not yet comprehending the Self, though he is meant to do so, and facing him—like a comprehensive, universal cosmic egoist—is the God who accepts nothing but Himself, and even demands that others accept nothing but Him, indeed, that in everything in earth, water, fire, air, in everything that lives on earth, indeed in everything that lives in the three worlds, one should see nothing other than him.

[ 22 ] It is strange to us how, to someone who cannot yet comprehend the “I,” a being is presented—as if in a lesson—that claims to be recognized solely as one’s own self. Whoever wishes to examine this in the light of truth should read through the Bhagavad Gita and seek to answer the question: with what word should one describe that which Krishna says of himself and which he demands be acknowledged? Universal egoism—that is what speaks through Krishna. And so it seems to us that from the sublime Gita the refrain resounds everywhere in our spiritual ear: Only when you, O people, acknowledge my all-encompassing egoism, will there be salvation for you.

[ 23 ] The greatest achievements of human intellectual life always present us with riddles; we see them in their proper light only when we also acknowledge and recognize that they pose great riddles for us. Truly, a difficult riddle seems to be set before us when we now face the task of comprehending what we might call a most sublime teaching, linked to the proclamation of universal egoism. It is not through logic, but in the great contradictions of life that we perceive, that the occult mysteries reveal themselves to us. It will be our task to move beyond that which is strange within Maya to arrive at the truth, so that we may recognize what it actually is that we, when speaking within Maya, rightly call universal egoism. From within Maya, we must pass through this enigma into reality, into the light of truth. How this works, and how we will transcend this to reach reality—that will be the subject of our next lectures.