The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] It is, in essence, extremely difficult to speak within Western culture about a phenomenon such as the Bhagavad Gita. It is difficult for the reason that, even today, something still prevails in the broadest circles that makes it extremely difficult to form a sound judgment in this area. Within Western culture, there is a tendency to view everything that speaks to the human soul—such as the Bhagavad Gita—as a doctrine or a kind of philosophy. People tend to approach such creations of the human spirit primarily from an idealistic, perhaps even conceptual, standpoint.

[ 2 ] This touches on something that makes it difficult in our time to properly assess the major historical impulses in the history of human development. How often, for example, is it pointed out today that one finds this or that in the Gospels as the teachings of Christ, and then it is shown that these depths of the teachings of Christ Jesus can also be found here and there in earlier times. Then it is said: See, it is the same thing after all! — It is not even incorrect to say that it is the same, for one can demonstrate in countless cases that the teachings of the Gospels are found in earlier works of the human spirit; and one cannot say that, when someone asserts that this or that teaching is found here or there, they are asserting anything incorrect.

[ 3 ] And yet: Although what is said in this way is not incorrect, it is nonsense when viewed in the light of a truly penetrating examination of human evolution. And human spiritual life will first have to get used to recognizing that something can be entirely correct and yet still be nonsense. Only when this statement is no longer viewed as a contradiction will it be possible to judge certain things impartially. One will be able to judge it impartially when someone says that, in a certain respect, they see in the Bhagavad Gita one of the greatest creations of the human spirit within Earth’s evolution; that, in a certain respect, they see in the Bhagavad Gita a creation of the human spirit that has never since been surpassed. And if this person says this and also says that what entered the world through the Christian proclamation, through the proclamation of the Christ impulse, nevertheless represents something entirely different—something that could not be attained even if one were to imagine the Bhagavad Gita’s beauty and grandeur increased a hundredfold—then this is no contradiction. If someone says one thing on the one hand and this latter thing on the other, this may be perceived as a contradiction by today’s abstract thinking, and yet it is by no means a contradiction.

[ 4 ] Yes, one can go even further. One might ask: When was the greatest thing ever spoken—something that could serve as an impulse for the human self, for the human ego, to establish this human ego within the world as part of human evolution? What is the most significant source of power? When did the most powerful event occur for this human ego? — It happened back then, when Krishna spoke to Arjuna, when the most powerful, most significant, most decisive, and most fiery words reached Arjuna’s ear to enliven the human ego, the self-consciousness. Nowhere in the entire world can anything be found that was more powerful in its encouragement of the human ego than that which is found in the most living power of Krishna’s words to Arjuna.

[ 5 ] However, these words should not be taken in the way they are often interpreted in the West, where even the greatest and most beautiful words are assigned a kind of purely abstract philosophical meaning. Such an interpretation completely misses the essence of the Bhagavad Gita. That is why Western scholars have so terribly mistreated and misrepresented the Bhagavad Gita, especially in our time. They have even managed to stir up a controversy over whether the Bhagavad Gita gives greater prominence to Sankhya philosophy or to some other school of thought! Indeed, there has even been a very prominent scholar who, in his edition of the Bhagavad Gita, printed certain verses in small type because he believes they ought to be virtually edited out, as they must have been included by mistake. He believes that only what corresponds to Sankhya philosophy—or at most to Yoga philosophy—belongs in the Bhagavad Gita. But one might say that, in the way we speak of philosophy today, there is no philosophy to be found in the Bhagavad Gita at all. One could at most say: Philosophical schools of thought emerged in ancient India out of certain fundamental dispositions of the human soul. But these certainly have nothing to do with the Bhagavad Gita in the sense that they may be regarded as an interpretation or a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita.

[ 6 ] One does a general disservice to the spiritual life of the East by equating it with what the West understands as philosophy. For in the sense that the West understands philosophy, there was no such thing as philosophy in the East. In this regard, the spirit of the times—which is actually only just beginning; yesterday we already spoke of a relationship that human souls, so to speak, still have to learn—the spirit of the times is still misunderstood. Above all, we must be able to hold fast to that view which was at least possible to gain from yesterday’s lecture, which showed us how the human soul, under certain conditions, can quite realistically, in fact, confront that being whom we attempted yesterday to characterize from one aspect as Krishna. Far more important is the knowledge that, under certain conditions, the soul of Arjuna confronts that spirit which has prepared the age of self-consciousness. The soul of Arjuna stands face to face with this spirit, which works in the world with this mighty creative power. — This is far more important than all the debate over whether Sankhya or Vedic philosophy is to be found in the Bhagavad Gita. That living entities stand before us, the real depiction of worldly conditions and the spirit of the times—that is what matters. And we have attempted to characterize these by, on the one hand, striving to show to which age a way of thinking and feeling such as Arjuna possesses might belong; on the other hand, by trying to understand the age of self-consciousness itself; and furthermore, by showing what creative, preparatory spirit the soul of Arjuna might have manifested. Now, the main point is that when we thus vividly contrast one being with another, we need more than a merely one-sided characterization. We first need a certain comprehensiveness so that we can get to know this being even more closely. This comprehensiveness will be made available to us through the following considerations.

[ 7 ] If we truly ascend with our soul into those regions where one can perceive a being such as Krishna, then our soul must be ready to first have genuine perceptions and genuine experiences in the supersensible worlds. On the surface, what I am saying seems quite self-evident. And yet, in view of what people usually expect from the higher worlds, the matter is by no means so self-evident. I have repeatedly pointed out that misunderstanding upon misunderstanding arises because people seek to ascend into the supersensible worlds laden with a whole host of prejudices: they do indeed wish to be led into the supersensible, but to something they already know from the sensory world. They want to perceive forms there—if not in gross matter, then at least forms that appear to them in a kind of light-cloak; they feel they must hear sounds similar to those of the physical world. He does not realize at all that, by expecting such things, he is ascending into the supersensible worlds with preconceptions: for he wants the supersensible world to be such that, though refined, it is essentially the same as the sensory world. Light and color, or at least color and brightness—that is what human beings are accustomed to in the sensory world. Thus, they believe they can only truly encounter real realities in the supersensible worlds if the beings of the higher world also appear to them in this way. Now, one really ought not to have to say this at all, for the beings of the supersensible worlds are, after all, exalted above all that is sensory; they do not present themselves in their true form through sensory qualities, for sensory qualities presuppose the eye, the ear, and the sense organs in general. In the higher worlds, however, perception does not occur through the sense organs, but through the soul organs. But then something can happen that is such that I can really only interpret or explain it in a very trivial way, I would say. Let us suppose, for instance, that I first describe something to you in words, and then I feel the need to sketch what I have described to you with a few strokes on the blackboard. In doing so, I make tangible what I have expressed in words. It would not occur to anyone to take the drawing for the corresponding reality. For suppose I wanted to describe a mountain to you. I now describe this mountain to you by saying: It is remarkable that there is a mountain somewhere that rises into the air with three peaks. — You can certainly form a mental image just by me telling you this, but I may still feel the need to draw what I said on the blackboard in a concrete or schematic way. Surely it would not occur to anyone to say: There we have what he described, right there. — I have merely visualized it. It is the same when one expresses what is experienced as a supersensory experience by giving it form and color and casting it in words taken from the sensory world. Only this is not done by the ordinary intellect; rather, a higher sensibility of our soul carries out this entire process. For example, our soul immerses itself in invisible worlds, let us say in the invisible world of the Krishna-being. Then it feels the need to place this Krishna-being before itself. But what it places before itself is not the Krishna-being itself at all, but a drawing, a supersensory drawing. Imaginations are such drawings, what one might call supersensory visualizations. And the misunderstanding that so often arises is that one sensualizes what the higher soul forces depict—and what can also be described in words—thereby taking it for the essence of the matter. That is not the essence of the matter; rather, the essence of the matter must first be intuited through this and only gradually be perceived.

[ 8 ] I already mentioned in the second lecture that, in addition to all its other qualities, the Bhagavad Gita is also a wonderful, dramatic composition. I have attempted to describe the dramatic composition of the first four cantos, but this dramatic intensification rises from canto to canto as we proceed further into the realms of occult vision. And it must also evoke a certain sound judgment regarding the artistic composition of the Bhagavad Gita when we ask ourselves: Is there perhaps a focal point in the Bhagavad Gita, a focal point of this intensification? The Bhagavad Gita has eighteen cantos, so the ninth could be a focal point of this intensification. Now, in the ninth canto—precisely in the middle—we read the remarkable words that are succinctly expressed: “And now, having told you everything, I shall now reveal here the most secret thing for the human soul.”—Truly, at this moment, a wondrous word that sounds seemingly abstract but is deeply significant. And then the most secret thing: “Understand! I am in all beings, but they are not in me. — Yes, just as people are, they very often ask: What does true mysticism, true occultism, say? — People want absolute truths, but there are none. There are only truths that are correct in a given situation, that are true under certain circumstances and conditions. But they must be so. It cannot be an absolutely correct statement: I am in all beings, but they are not in me. — Yet it is the statement spoken as the deepest wisdom of Krishna in that situation, when Krishna stood before Arjuna, and it applies—not abstractly, but in reality—to that Krishna who is the creator of the human inner self, of human self-consciousness. And in a marvelous crescendo, we are led to the very heart of the Bhagavad Gita, where these words flow toward us. In the ninth canto, they are spoken to Arjuna, and in the eleventh canto, shortly thereafter, something else occurs.

[ 9 ] What, then, can we expect when we are familiar with the artistic elevation of the Bhagavad Gita and the occult truths it contains? First of all, in words that are artistically elevated, one must feel the deepest meaning, sense the deepest truth. Arjuna has been guided by Krishna up to a certain point. But if one takes the ninth and tenth cantos—that is, the very middle of the Bhagavad Gita—one notices something very peculiar, namely a certain difficulty in truly visualizing the mental images presented, in bringing them to life for the soul. Try letting precisely this ninth or tenth canto take effect on your soul.

[ 10 ] As you emerge from the first canto, your soul is, as it were, carried along by the continuous artistic crescendo. First, immortality is spoken of; then your feelings are heightened by the mental images awakened through yoga, which inspire the soul. But then your soul resonates, as it were, with its feelings in something that may still be familiar to it. We are led even further. In a marvelous crescendo, the mental image of the initiator of the epoch of human self-consciousness is introduced. There we can be inspired by the figure who brought self-consciousness to humanity. We are still very much living in concrete feelings and sensations familiar to the soul.

[ 11 ] Then the ascent continues even higher. It describes how the soul can become ever freer and freer from the external physical body; it describes a concept, very familiar to the Indian, that the soul can withdraw into itself, can undo the actions experienced by the body, that the soul can become self-contained and gradually attain yoga, gradually reaching oneness with Brahman. In the following hymns, we see the certainty of the feeling—that sensation which can still be nourished by everyday life—gradually fade away.

[ 12 ] And as the soul approaches the ninth canto, it rises to, so to speak, dizzying heights of indefinable experiences. And if one now tries to approach the ninth and tenth cantos with mental images drawn from ordinary life, one simply cannot make sense of them. It is indeed the case that when one reaches the ninth and tenth cantos, one feels: Here I stand as if on the summit of a human achievement born of the occult, for which one must draw upon that which the evolving soul itself must first accomplish if understanding is to be present.

[ 13 ] It is truly remarkable how finely the Bhagavad Gita is composed in this regard. We can proceed through the fifth, sixth, and seventh cantos as we develop the concepts we first encounter in the first canto. In the second canto, the human soul is called upon to understand the eternal within the flux of phenomena. Then, soon after, what is lost in the depths of yoga is introduced. This begins in the third canto. But then a completely new mood enters the Bhagavad Gita. While in the first cantos we always have an intellectual mood, something that sometimes reminds us of Western philosophical moods, something now begins that, if we wish to understand it, requires devotion and an understanding of yoga. We need a devotional mood. If we allow this devotional mood to rise ever higher toward the sublime, becoming ever more and more devout in our souls, then we are no longer carried by what becomes yoga in the first cantos—that breaks off—but rather a very special mood carries us upward into the ninth and tenth cantos. For the words that sound in our ears remain a dry, empty clanging if we approach them with the intellect. They give warmth, they radiate warmth, when we approach them with devotion. Whoever wishes to understand the Bhagavad Gita may take intellect and reason as their starting point and follow the first cantos, but as they proceed, a devotional mood must arise in their heart when they reach the ninth canto, where the words of the sublime Krishna resound in their soul like a wondrous sound. Whoever approaches the ninth canto may then feel a sense of devotion, as if he must take off his shoes before entering this sanctuary, for he feels he is stepping onto sacred ground, upon which he must walk in a devout mood. And then comes the eleventh canto. What can follow now, when we have, so to speak, reached the culmination of the devout mood? What will be next?

[ 14 ] Once a person has ascended to the summit to which Krishna led Arjuna—a summit that can be reached either through occult vision or in a state of reverent devotion—then the sacred formless, the supersensible, can now enter. The supersensible can be poured into the imagination. Then the heightened, elevated power of the soul—which no longer belongs to reason but to imaginative cognition—can form images of that which is essentially formless and image-less in its very nature. And this happens in the Bhagavad Gita, after we have been led up to that sacred ground before which we take off our shoes: this happens right at the beginning of the second half of the sacred song, around the eleventh canto. There, after it has been appropriately introduced and prepared, the wisdom of Krishna, to which Arjuna has been led step by step, is conjured up before his soul in images. And the grandeur of the depiction in this Eastern poem truly strikes us most powerfully there, where Krishna, after Arjuna has been brought into his presence, appears in image, in the imagination. One may well say: experiences of this kind, experiences that must be lived through by the innermost power of the human soul, have scarcely been presented in such a significant manner anywhere else. And for those who are capable of feeling, the imagery that Krishna now describes to Arjuna will always be profound and meaningful. This is the marvelous aspect of the composition of the Bhagavad Gita: that we are led, as it were, by Krishna—as by an inspiring being—up to the tenth canto, and that there the contemplative bliss of Arjuna now comes into action. There Arjuna becomes the narrator. And he describes his vision in such a way that one hesitates to attempt to reproduce what is said there.

[ 15 ] “I see all the gods within your body, O God; and likewise the multitudes of all beings: Brahman, the Lord, upon his lotus throne, all the Rishis, and the celestial serpents. With many arms, bodies, mouths, and eyes, I see you everywhere, in endless forms. I see no end, no middle, nor even a beginning in you, O Lord of the Universe. You, who appear to me in all forms, who appear to me with a diadem, with a mace and with a sword, a mountain in flames, radiating in all directions: thus I see you. My vision is dazzled, like radiant fire in the sun’s splendor and immeasurably vast. The Imperishable, the highest to be known, the greatest good—thus do you appear to me in the vast cosmos. Eternal guardian of eternal law, that is you. As the eternal primal spirit, you stand before my soul. You show me neither beginning, nor middle, nor end. Infinite are you everywhere, infinite in power, infinite in the vastness of space. Like the moon, yes, like the sun itself, great are your eyes, and from your mouth it shines as from a sacrificial fire. I look upon you in your blaze, how your blaze warms the universe; whatever I can perceive between the earth’s surface and the vastness of the heavens, your power fills all this with you alone. And every heavenly realm, all three worlds tremble, when your wondrous, awe-inspiring form reveals itself to their gaze. I see how whole hosts of gods approach you, singing your praises, and I stand there before you in awe, folding my hands. All the seers and all the blessed ones cry out “Hail” before you. They praise you with all their hymns of praise. The Adityas, Rudras, Vasus, Sadhyas, Vishvas, Ashvins, Maruts, and Manes, the Gandharvas, Yakshas, Siddhas, Asuras, and all the blessed ones praise you, gazing up at you in wonder: a body so gigantic, with many mouths, many arms, many legs, many feet, many bodies, many throats full of teeth. Before all this, the world trembles, and I too tremble. The sky-shaking, radiant, many-armed one, with open mouth, with great flaming eyes. When I behold you thus, my soul trembles. I find no steadiness, no peace, O great Krishna, who is Vishnu himself to me. I gaze as if into your menacing inner being; I see it as it is, like fire, just as it will act, one day at the end of all time. I gaze at you in a way I cannot comprehend. Oh, be merciful to me, Lord of the gods, the world’s dwelling place.”

[ 16 ] This is the vision as Arjuna perceives it, now that his soul has been lifted to the very height where a vision of Krishna is possible. And then we hear what Krishna is, resounding once more to Arjuna like a powerful inspiration. Let us listen to it. It is truly as if it were not merely sounding in Arjuna’s spiritual ear, but resounding through all the ages to come in the next world-age. We now sense more deeply at this point; we sense what it actually means: a new impulse is given to an age, to a world-age, and the creator of this impulse appears before Arjuna’s clairvoyant eye. We feel with Arjuna himself. We remember that Arjuna stands in the midst of the battle’s turmoil, where brother’s blood is to fight against brother’s blood. We know that what Krishna has to offer is based above all on the fact that this epoch of clairvoyance, with all the sacredness that was within it, had come to an end, and that a new epoch was to begin. And when we consider the impulse of the new epoch, which was to begin with fratricide, when we correctly understand the impulse that penetrated all the wavering concepts and institutions of the preceding epoch, then we correctly grasp what Krishna causes to resound within Arjuna.

[ 17 ] “I am the primeval age that destroys the whole world. I have appeared to sweep away mankind. And even if you bring death to them in battle, all the warriors standing there in ranks are doomed to die even without you. Rise up fearlessly. You shall gain glory by defeating the enemy. Rejoice at the victory and dominion that beckon. It will not be you who has killed them when they fall in battle. Through me, they are all already slain before you can bring death upon them. Be but an instrument, be but a warrior with a hand! Drona, Jayadratha, Bhishma, Karna, and the other heroes of battle whom I have slain, who are already dead—now you shall slay them, so that my work may be manifested outwardly. When they fall dead in Maya, killed by me, you kill them. And what I have done will appear to have been done by you. Do not tremble! You can do nothing that I have not already done. Fight! They will fall by your sword, those whom I have killed.”

[ 18 ] These words are not spoken to bring to humanity the voice that speaks of killing, but to bring to humanity the voice that speaks of the fact that there is a center within the human being that must emerge in the age following Krishna, and that the impulses which are initially the highest attainable for human beings penetrate this center, that there is nothing in human evolution that is not connected to something with which the human ego is also connected. Only then does the Bhagavad Gita become something that immediately lifts us up, elevating us to the horizon of the entire evolution of humanity. And the one who allows these shifting moods of the Bhagavad Gita to take effect upon them gains far more than the one who, for example, wishes to receive schoolmasterly teachings on Sankhya or Yoga from the Bhagavad Gita. If one is able to proceed as far as the ninth or tenth canto, if one gains a glimpse of the dizzying heights to which yoga leads, then one will begin to grasp the meaning and spirit of such an imagination as confronts us in that mighty vision of Arjuna, which is already so great and mighty as a sensorial representation that we can gain a sufficiently high, intuitive insight into the power and sublimity of the creative spirit that intervened in the world through Krishna. What can speak to the individual human being as the highest speaks in Krishna to Arjuna. And what the individual human being can rise to when he elevates the powers present within him to the highest, the highest to which the individual human soul can educate itself when it works on itself in the best sense: that is Krishna.

[ 19 ] When we trace the evolution of humanity across the Earth in our thoughts, it becomes clear to us from the general evolutionary worldview—as attempted, for example, in *The Secret Science*—that, in this sense, the Earth is indeed the stage upon which the human being has been brought to the “I,” as all possible stages took shape and succeeded one another from epoch to epoch. When one traces evolution in this way from age to age, one says to oneself: Here they have now been transplanted onto the Earth, these human souls; the highest thing they are to attain is to become free souls. Human beings become free souls when they develop all the powers that can only be attained in the human soul as an individual soul. But in order for them to be able to do this, Krishna first worked suggestively, then more and more, and finally directly in that epoch of human evolution that preceded the epoch of self-consciousness.

[ 20 ] Within the evolution of the Earth, there is not a single being who could give as much to the individual human soul as Krishna. But specifically to the individual human soul. Now I say a word in all serenity, in all serenity, when I set it against all the description I have tried to give of Krishna: Besides the individual human soul, there is humanity on Earth. On Earth, besides the individual human soul, there are also all those matters that do not belong to a single human soul. One can imagine that a human soul feels within itself the impulse: I want to go as far as a human soul can go in its perfection. — This striving could exist. Then the individual human soul, each in its isolation, would initially develop to an indefinable extent. But there is a humanity. There are matters pertaining to the Earth that connect this Earth to the entire world. Let us suppose that the Krishna impulse had reached the individual human soul. What would have happened then? It would have happened—not at that time, perhaps not even until today, but in the course of Earth’s evolution—that every single soul would have developed a higher impulse within itself, so that the current of human evolution, of collective development, would have split off from the age of self-consciousness onward. It would have happened that the individual human souls would have advanced to the highest development, but also in separation, in dispersion. The paths of the human souls would have diverged further and further apart, as the Krishna impulse would have been actively at work within each individual. That elevation of human existence would have occurred in which the individual souls would have emerged from the common stream, bringing their individuality to its highest development. One might say: Like a single star, the ancient era would have shone into the future with many, many rays. The old age would have sent many individual rays into the new age, and each of these rays would have proclaimed the glory of Krishna into the future world age. This was the path humanity was on during the six to eight centuries preceding the founding of Christianity. Then something else approached from the opposite side.

[ 21 ] Where did the Krishna impulse come from? The Krishna impulse enters the human soul when it creates and draws ever more deeply from its own being from within, when it draws ever more out of itself in order to ascend to those regions where Krishna is attained. But then something came that approached humanity from the outside, something that human beings could never have attained on their own, something that came from the other side, reaching out to each and every one. Thus the souls, who were becoming isolated, encountered a common essence that came from the outside, from the universe, from the cosmos, toward the age of self-consciousness—not as something that could be attained through individual effort, but as something that belonged to all of humanity, to the entire Earth. From the opposite side, the other has come: the Christ impulse.

[ 22 ] Thus, we first see in a more abstract form how a process of individualization is at work within humanity—a process that was meant to lead ever further into individualization—and how the Christ impulse met the souls seeking to become individual, bringing these souls back together into a unified humanity. What I wanted to explain today was initially something like an abstract definition, an abstract characterization of the two impulses, the Krishna impulse and the Christ impulse. I tried to show how these two impulses are close to one another in the age of humanity’s middle development, yet how they come from opposite sides. One can therefore say something quite incorrect if one confuses the two worlds of revelation—the world of Krishna on the one hand, the world of Christ on the other. What I have expounded in a more abstract form, let us bring into a more concrete form in the next lectures. I would like to conclude today’s reflection, however, with a simple statement that is meant to succinctly capture the essence of what are actually the most important impulses for human evolution. If we turn our gaze to what happened between the 10th century before the Christ impulse and the 10th century after it, we can distill this into the following words: The Krishna Impulse flowed into the world for every single human soul, and the Christ Impulse flowed into the Earth for all of humanity. — It should be noted here that, for those who can think concretely, all of humanity is not merely the sum of all individual human souls.