The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] When it comes to fully understanding a work such as the Bhagavad Gita, that sublime song, it is necessary, in a certain sense, to first prepare one’s soul, to first guide it toward the kind of perception and feeling that actually underlies it. Yet what I have just said applies, in essence, only to the situation of people whose own feelings and sensibilities must initially be as far removed from the Bhagavad Gita as those of the Western population. It goes without saying that we can immediately grasp a contemporary spiritual achievement. It is also natural that a people, or the members of a people, always immediately feel a spiritual achievement that springs directly from the substance of the people, even if it belongs to earlier times. But when it comes to the Bhagavad Gita, it is the Western populations—not the South Asian populations—who are completely distant in feeling and sensibility. If one wishes to approach this work of poetry without prior spiritual preparation, one must prepare oneself for this entirely different spiritual and emotional mood if one is to understand the Bhagavad Gita. That is why so many misunderstandings must arise. A spiritual achievement that stands out from a completely foreign people, from the 9th and 10th centuries B.C., before the founding of Christianity, cannot be understood as immediately by Western populations as, say, the Finnish people understand the Kalevala, or the Greeks the Homeric poems—or rather, the entire Western population these Homeric poems. If we wish to delve further into this point, we must once again gather together certain elements that might point the way to the Bhagavad Gita.

[ 2 ] I would like to draw attention to one thing above all else. The pinnacles of spiritual life have, in fact, always been mysteries to the broader horizons of human understanding. And in a certain sense, this has remained true right up to our own age. Among the distinctive characteristics of our age—which we have, insofar as we stand at the dawn of this age, described in some detail—it will certainly be the case that certain things that have remained mysteries in the wider world, known only to a very few, will truly become known, that they will become popular and spread more widely into the broader strata of humanity. And because this is so, you are sitting here. Our movement is intended to mark the beginning of this bringing forth of such things, which have actually always remained secrets to the wider circle of humanity. And some perhaps unconscious reasons that drew you to the anthroposophical worldview, to the anthroposophical spiritual current, stemmed precisely from this unconscious understanding that certain secrets must now pour into every soul, into every heart.

[ 3 ] But even up to the present day, from other points of view, certain things have remained secrets—not because they were kept secret, but because it is inherent in the natural development of humanity that they had to remain secrets. It is said that the secrets of the ancient mysteries were protected from the outside world by very specific, strict rules. But even more than by these rules, these secrets were actually protected by certain fundamental characteristics of humanity in ancient times, since humanity in general would not have been able to understand them. This is how these mysteries remained protected, and this lack of understanding provided a much stronger protection than any external rule. In fact, precisely because of certain peculiarities of the materialistic age, this is the case to a greater degree for certain things, in that they actually remain secrets. This expresses something very heretical regarding our age. There is, for example, nothing more protected in central Europe than Fichte’s philosophy. Not that it is protected by strict rules, not that it has remained a secret, for Fichte’s teachings are in print and are also read; but they are not understood; they are secrets. And so much of what must conform to general development is secret knowledge; there is much that remains a secret, even though it is publicly revealed.

[ 4 ] However, there is a peculiarity in human evolution not only in this regard, but also in a completely different one—and this is important for the perspectives from which we must approach the Bhagavad Gita—: Everything that can be called the emotional, mental, and sensorial atmosphere of ancient India, from which the Bhagavad Gita arose, was, in its complete spirituality, essentially accessible only to the understanding of a few. Now, what remains—and here again is a peculiarity of human development that is quite wise, even if it initially seems paradoxical—is that what an age has produced through a few people remains, in its true depth, a mystery even as it spreads more widely among the general population. Even for contemporaries, for followers, indeed for the entire people who belong to this spiritual pinnacle, the teaching—and specifically that revealed through the Bhagavad Gita—remained a mystery, and the true depth of this spiritual current also remained unknown to posterity. Although a certain faith in it, and perhaps even great enthusiasm, developed in the subsequent period, a truly deep and thorough understanding was not developed. Neither the contemporaries nor posterity developed a genuine understanding. Again, only a few in the intervening periods had a true understanding. This, however, means that in the judgment of posterity, what once existed as such a special spiritual current is distorted to an immense degree.

[ 5 ] As a rule, one cannot look to the descendants of a people to gain an understanding of what is at stake. For example, one cannot look today to the basic sentiments and feelings of the Indians to find a true understanding of the spiritual current that permeates the Bhagavad Gita in its deepest sense. One will find enthusiasm—a belief imbued with heart and feeling—in the richest measure, but not deep understanding. This applies not only to those ancient times, but especially also to the era that has just passed, from the 14th and 15th centuries through to the 19th century. This is particularly true even for the professed believers, for the followers. It is, after all, an anecdote, but one that contains a profound truth—as is often the case with anecdotes—that a great European thinker is said to have remarked upon his death: “Only one person understood me, and he misunderstood me.” — An anecdote, but a profound truth! So one might say: Even for this bygone era, there is a spiritual substance that represents a height, yet which, in the broadest sense, remained unknown in its true nature even to its contemporaries. This is connected to something to which I would like to draw your attention.

[ 6 ] There are certainly many very intelligent minds to be found today among the Eastern, Indian population—indeed, exceptionally intelligent minds—but the very nature of their feelings and sensibilities has already distanced them from an understanding of the sentiments that emanate from the Bhagavad Gita. These are the ones. On the other hand, what reaches these people from Western culture is only that which lacks depth, offering merely a superficial understanding. This results in two things. One possible outcome is that among the Eastern population, and particularly among the descendants of the Bhagavad Gita people, something may develop that gives them a clear sense, when they observe what comes from the superficialized Western culture: This culture lags far behind what is already given in the Bhagavad Gita. For they still have more access to the Bhagavad Gita than to that which lies deeper in Western spiritual life. That is why we must understand the judgment of many Indians, for whom what we have in terms of spiritual culture is something tremendously surprising. But there are also other Indians who would like to take in precisely the depths of Western spiritual culture. There are certainly Indian minds that would be quite willing to take in such spiritual substance as might meet us when we bring together—we could name many thinkers or other spiritual people—when we bring together Soloviev, Hegel, and Fichte. There are many Indian thinkers who would like to take in this spiritual substance. On one particular point, I myself was able to gain some experience. Quite early on, when we had founded our German Section, an Indian thinker sent me—and also many other Europeans—a treatise. In this treatise, he sought, so to speak, to connect what Indian philosophy offers in a certain way with weighty European ideas, such as one might grasp in their truth if one delved more deeply into Fichte and Hegel. But the entire treatise was of no use, for despite all the honest striving of this individual—nothing at all is to be said against this striving, no, it should be praised, but the facts are what they are—despite all his sincere efforts, to anyone familiar with the actual mental images of Fichte and Hegel, what the Indian thinker produced turned out to be sheer dilettantism. The treatise was of no use, and that is a perfectly natural phenomenon.

[ 7 ] We can say: Here we have a person who is making a sincere effort to penetrate a completely different school of thought—one that came later in her own time—but she cannot get past the obstacles created by historical development. Yet when she does attempt to penetrate it, the result is false and implausible nonsense. I later heard a lecture by another individual—who was unfamiliar with the true depths of European spiritual development—that was based on this Indian thinker. This was a European figure who, being entirely unfamiliar with the depths of European development, had learned what had been put forward by this Indian thinker and presented it as special wisdom to his followers. The followers, of course, also did not know that they were dealing with something based on a completely erroneous intellectual foundation. But for those who could penetrate to the heart of the matter, what was communicated by a European figure who had learned from the Indian was enough to make one’s hair stand on end—pardon the expression—it was simply dreadful! It was a misunderstanding grafted onto another misunderstanding. That is how difficult it is to gain an understanding of everything the human soul is capable of producing. Our ideal must be to truly understand all spiritual pinnacles. If one takes this to heart and feels it deeply, then on the one hand one will receive a certain ray of light regarding how difficult the approaches to the Bhagavad Gita actually are; but on the other hand, there are misunderstandings upon misunderstandings that are no less fateful. We in the West fully grasp this when we look up in the East to all the ancient creative spirits of earlier times, whose activity flows through Vedanta philosophy and the profundity of Sankhya philosophy; we understand when the Eastern spirit looks up with fervor to what appears, seven or eight centuries after the founding of Christianity, as a culmination in Shankaracharya; we understand all this, but we must understand it differently if we truly wish to arrive at a deep understanding. We need to understand even more—and we must now posit this as a kind of hypothesis, for it has not yet come to pass—in human evolution. Let us suppose, for a moment, that those who were the creators of that great, lofty spirituality which flows through the Vedas, the Vedanta, and the philosophy of Shankaracharya, let us assume that these spirits were to reappear in our time with the same spiritual gifts, with the same acumen with which they stood in the world back then, and that they had experienced spiritual creations such as those of Soloviev, Hegel, and Fichte. What would they have said? So let us assume that what matters to us is not what the adherents of Vedanta philosophy, of Shankaracharya, say, but what these spirits themselves would have said. I am fully aware that I am now expressing something very paradoxical, but when one does so, one must think of what Schopenhauer once said: It is the fate of poor truth that it must always become paradoxical in the world, for it simply cannot sit upon the throne of error. So it takes its seat on the throne of time; it turns to the guardian angel of time. That angel’s wingbeats are so vast and long that the individual perishes beneath them. — Therefore, one must not shrink from the fact that the truth must sound paradoxical. That is paradoxical, but it is precisely true.

[ 8 ] If the Vedic poets, the founders of Sankhya philosophy, were to rise up—indeed, I would say, if Shankaracharya himself had witnessed the works of Soloviev, Hegel, and Fichte in the 19th century—then all these minds would have said: What we strove for back then, what we hoped would appear to us through our clairvoyant gift, Soloviev, Hegel, and Fichte accomplished in the 19th century through the very nature of their minds. We believed we had to ascend to clairvoyant heights. Yet what appeared to us then had, as a matter of course, already penetrated the souls of Hegel, Fichte, and Soloviev. — Paradoxical, but true! This sounds paradoxical to Westerners who, in a naive unawareness, look to the Easterners and place themselves alongside them, thereby misunderstanding what is in the West. This gives rise to the following strange, grotesque image. We imagine the Vedic poets, we imagine the founders of Sankhya philosophy, indeed we imagine Shankaracharya himself, looking up in enthusiasm to Fichte and other minds, and alongside them we imagine a number of people today who do not respect the spiritual substance of Europe and lie prostrate in the dust before Shankaracharya and his predecessors, yet do not care about what Hegel, Fichte, Soloviev, and others have accomplished! This is a grotesque picture, but one that corresponds to the truth in all seriousness. Why is this so? When we consider all that historical facts present to us, we cannot understand these facts in any other way than through such a hypothesis. Why is this so?

[ 9 ] It becomes clear to us when we consider the course of human development and look back to those times from whose spiritual substance the Bhagavad Gita flowed. How, then, should we actually picture the people of that time? We can describe their state of mind something like this: What people today experience in many ways within their dream consciousness—this mental image, this content of the soul, this visual mental image—was, back then, the ordinary way of forming mental images, the natural, everyday state. We can therefore call this ordinary consciousness of that time dream consciousness, or rather, dreamlike consciousness, dreamlike pictorial consciousness; by no means as it was on the ancient Moon, but developed. That was, so to speak, the state of the soul from which the souls had come, in the descending line of development. Before that lay what is now completely veiled from us as general consciousness: sleep consciousness, from which, however, in ancient times came dreamlike inspiration—that consciousness which is veiled from the sphere of our consciousness during sleep. This consciousness was something that entered into the ordinary pictorial consciousness of these ancient people in much the same way, though somewhat more rarely than dream consciousness is for us. But it was different in yet another way in those ancient times. Our dream consciousness today generally offers reminiscences of ordinary life. In those ancient times, however, when this consciousness still reached into the higher worlds, it also offered reminiscences of the higher, spiritual worlds. Then it came down more and more.

[ 10 ] Those who strove back then in the same way that we do today through our occult development were striving for something entirely different. When we undergo our occult development today, we are aware that we have taken a path downward into everyday consciousness, and we are now striving upward. Those ancient seekers also strove upward. For them, the dream state represented everyday life; from there they strove upward. What did they achieve there? With all their effort, they achieved something entirely different back then than what we seek to achieve. If, back then, one had presented to these people the book I have attempted to write in our time: “How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?”, then these people would not have known what to make of this book. That would have been folly in those days; it makes sense only to people today. Back then, everything these people did with their yoga and their Sankhya aimed at reaching a height that we find today in the deepest achievements of our time, which we find precisely in Soloviev, Hegel, and Fichte. Everything strove toward an ideal conception of the world. This is why anyone who truly sees through the matter finds no real difference—setting aside feelings, expressions, moods, and the spirit of the times—between Soloviev, Hegel, Fichte, and Vedanta philosophy. Only, back then, Vedanta philosophy was what people aspired to; today, it has descended into everyday consciousness.

[ 11 ] If we wish to describe the state of our souls, we can do so in the following way. First, we have that which was still illuminated clairvoyantly for the Indian, but which is veiled from us: the consciousness of sleep. What we strive for lay in the darkness of the future for those ancient times. This is what we might characterize as imaginative knowledge: the fully conscious, ego-permeated pictorial consciousness, the fully conscious imagination, as I described it in my book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds*. That is, first of all, the abstract element that should be inserted here. But there is something far more important in all this abstractness; it lies in the fact that, so to speak, for the human being today—if only he makes truly energetic use of the powers existing within his soul—that which the people of the Bhagavad Gita era strove for with all their might can be found right on the street. This can truly be found on the street, though only for a Soloviev, Fichte, or Hegel. That is what lies within it; but there is something else within it as well. What is found on the street today was achieved back then through the full application of Sankhya’s acuity and the depth of yoga. This was attained through the soul’s utmost effort, through the mind’s highest elevation.

[ 12 ] Now create a mental image of how things look different to someone who lives, for example, on the summit of a mountain where there is a house and who constantly enjoys a magnificent view, and how completely different that view is to someone who has never seen it before and who must first make the arduous climb from the valley to reach it. If you have that view every day, you get used to it. The difference between what Shankaracharya, the Vedic poets, and their successors accomplished, and what Hegel and Fichte accomplished, does not lie in the conceptual content—not in the content itself—but in the fact that Shankaracharya’s predecessors strove from the valley toward the summit, and that their acumen, their Sankhya acumen, their yogic immersion led them there. In this work, in this overcoming of the soul, lies the experience, and this experience made the matter, not the content. That is what is immensely significant; that is what, in a certain sense, can serve as a comfort. For what the European can find on the street, he does not respect. Europeans prefer to take it in the form in which it presents itself to them in Vedanta or Sankhya philosophy, because then they unconsciously appreciate the efforts that lead to it. That is the personal aspect of the matter.

[ 13 ] There is a difference between arriving at a certain understanding in one place or another, and arriving at it through the soul’s strenuous effort. It is quite another matter whether one arrives at a certain understanding in this or that way, for it is the work of the soul that gives life to the matter. We must bear this in mind. Today, what was once attained solely through Shankaracharya and deep yoga practice can be found on the street—though only by people like the spirits mentioned. We do not need abstract commentaries; we need only the opportunity to shift our perspective, to first immerse ourselves in the living experience of that time. Then, however, we also begin to understand that the external expressions themselves, the outward form of the ideas, were experienced quite differently by the people of that time than they can be lived through by us today. Not to offer abstract commentaries that are pedantic and schoolmasterly, but to show how the entire configuration of feeling and sensibility was different in the Bhagavad Gita than it is now, we must study—not in an external, philological way—how things actually appeared in terms of the sensibility, the feeling, and the mood of a soul from the time into which we must place the Bhagavad Gita, a soul that lived itself into the Bhagavad Gita back then. Even though the conceptual explanation of the world, figuratively speaking, is at the bottom today—what was at the top back then—even though both are the same: the form of expression is different, the content of thought is the same. Those who wish to remain with the abstract content of thought will find that understanding is quite easy. But those who wish to re-experience the experience will not find it so; they will have to make an effort to follow the path, to empathize. It was only along this ancient path that such concepts arose, the understanding of which we today take far too lightly: these are the three concepts—and I attach no importance whatsoever to how they are contained as conceptual ideals in the Bhagavad Gita—these are the three concepts that have flowed into the words: Sattva, Rajas, Tamas.

[ 14 ] What do these words actually mean? Unless one actively empathizes with the feelings expressed in these words, one cannot follow a single line of the Bhagavad Gita—especially the later sections—with the proper emotional tone. On a higher level, the inability to empathize with these concepts is roughly akin to trying to read a book in a language one does not understand at all. It is not a matter of looking up a term in a commentary, but rather of learning the language. Thus, the point here is not to interpret the words sattva, rajas, and tamas in a pedantic, schoolmasterly manner. In these words lies the sensibility of the Bhagavad Gita era—something immensely significant, as it were, a path leading to an understanding of the world and its phenomena. If one wishes to characterize this path, one must free oneself from much that is not to be found in the minds of Soloviev, Hegel, and Fichte, but which lies in the ossified, otherwise abstract Western thinking. By Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas is meant a way in which one can immerse oneself in the various states of worldly existence, how one can immerse oneself in the most diverse realms of this worldly existence. It would be wrong and abstract to attempt to interpret these words solely on the basis of ancient Indian sensibilities. It is easier to take them in the true sense of life as it was then, but as much as possible from experiences of our own lives. It is better to draw the outer coloring of these concepts freely from our own experience.

[ 15 ] Let us consider the way in which a person immerses themselves when they seek to engage meaningfully with the three kingdoms of nature around them. The entire approach to these three kingdoms differs, of course, for each individual kingdom. I do not seek an exhaustive understanding of these words; I wish to evoke an approach to these concepts. When a person faces the mineral kingdom today, they get the feeling that through their thinking they penetrate this mineral kingdom with its laws; they live together with it, so to speak. In the ancient times of the Bhagavad Gita, this understanding would be called a sattvic understanding of the mineral kingdom. An understanding of the mineral kingdom would thus be a Sattva understanding. — Today, however, the situation is different with the plant kingdom; there we constantly encounter resistance, in that we cannot penetrate into life with our present understanding. To investigate and analyze the kingdoms of nature physically and chemically, and to comprehend them, is an ideal today. Some fantasists, however, believe today that by arbitrarily producing as much as they like based on external form—so that it resembles the generative process—they have come closer to the idea of life. But that is mere fantasy. Human beings do not penetrate the plant kingdom with their understanding to the point of life; they do not, therefore, penetrate the plant kingdom as absolutely as they do the mineral kingdom. Today, one can only observe life in the plant kingdom. But what one can only observe, what one cannot grasp with one’s understanding, is rajasic understanding. — When we come to the animals, the situation is different again. That form of consciousness which is in the animal eludes our ordinary understanding far more than the life of the plant. What the animal actually lives cannot be grasped through cognition. The understanding that human beings today bring to the animal world through their science is a Tamasic understanding.

[ 16 ] One more characteristic point should be mentioned regarding the understanding of how a person should relate to the terms Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas. There is another aspect of understanding for people today. However, this understanding must go beyond mere conceptual characterizations. If one relies on scientific concepts of the forms of activity in living beings, one will never arrive at a true understanding. Sleep, for example, is not the same in humans as it is in the animal kingdom. If one defines sleep, one has done little more than if one were to regard a knife used for shaving or sharpening pencils as the same as a knife used for cutting meat. But if we keep our minds open to understanding and approach the concepts of Tamas, Rajas, and Sattva from another angle, we can cite something else from our present-day lives. People nourish themselves with various things—animals, plants, and minerals. These different foods naturally have different effects on the human constitution. We truly approach an understanding of Tamas, Rajas, and Sattva when we consider that a person imbues themselves with Sattva states when they eat plants. But if they seek to comprehend them, they become a Rajas state for them. So, in terms of nutrition, the consumption of plant matter is the Sattva state; the consumption of minerals, salts, and so on is the Rajas state; the state brought about by eating meat is the Tamas state. We cannot, therefore, maintain the order if we start from an abstract definition. We must keep our concepts flexible. This is not said to cause horror among those who are forced to eat meat. I will also mention another area shortly where the situation is different again.

[ 17 ] Let us suppose that someone wishes to perceive the external world not through ordinary science, but through clairvoyance appropriate to our time, and let us suppose that such a person is in a state of clairvoyance and then brings the phenomena and facts of the environment into their clairvoyant consciousness. Then these phenomena and facts must evoke a state similar to that of ordinary understanding of the three kingdoms of nature: namely, the Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas states. Thus, the experiences that enter into clairvoyant perception evoke states in the human soul. Specifically, that which can enter into the purest form of clairvoyant perception—which already corresponds to purified clairvoyance—evokes the Tamas state. The Tamas state is evoked by purified—not in the moral sense—clairvoyance. And a person who truly wishes to perceive spiritual things purely from the outside, through the clairvoyance we are to attain today, must bring about the Tamas state through clairvoyant activity. And then, when he returns with this knowledge to the ordinary world—where he momentarily forgets his clairvoyant insight—and enters a new state of awareness, he finds himself in the Sattva state. The Sattva state is thus the everyday cognition of our present time. And in the intermediate state of faith, of relying on authority, one is in the Rajas state. Knowledge in the higher worlds brings about the Tamas state in human souls; knowledge in the ordinary environment brings about the Sattva state; faith, reliance on authority, and creed bring about the Rajas state. We see: Those who are forced by their organization to eat meat need not be alarmed that the meat will put them into a Tamas state, for this is also achieved through purified clairvoyance.

[ 18 ] What kind of state is the Tamas state? The Tamas state is the state in which, through natural processes, some aspect of the external world is most deprived of the spirit. If we describe the spirit as light, then the Tamas state is the lightless state, the dark state. As long as our organism is filled with spirit in a natural way, we are in the Sattva state, the state in which our perception of the external world also resides. When we sleep, we are in the Tamas state, but we must bring about this state in sleep so that our spirit can detach itself from our body and penetrate the higher spirituality around us. If one wishes to reach the higher worlds—as the Evangelist already says—which is the darkness of humanity, then human nature must be in the Tamas state. But because people are in the Sattva state, not in the Tamas, the dark state, the Evangelist’s words are: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it,” can be translated roughly as: And the higher light drew near to the human being. But the human being was filled with a natural Sattva and did not let it out; therefore, the higher light could not enter, for the higher light can only shine into the darkness. — Because it is the case that, so to speak, the concepts are constantly being reversed when we seek understanding through such vivid concepts as Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas, we must therefore accustom ourselves not to take these states as absolute. There is no absolute lower or higher in the correct understanding of the world, but only in a relative sense.

[ 19 ] A European scholar took offense at this. It was a scholar who himself translated Tamas as “darkness”; he took offense at the fact that another scholar translated Sattva as “light.” He translates Sattva as “goodness.” In such matters, all sources of misunderstanding are accurately expressed, for when a person is in the Tamas state—whether asleep or in clairvoyant perception—let us take only these two cases where a person is in the Tamas state—then he is indeed in darkness with regard to the external world. Therefore, ancient Indian thought was correct. However, it could not use a word like “light” instead of the word “sattva.” One may always translate tamas as “darkness,” yet with regard to the external world, the sattva state is not one that could always simply be interpreted as “light.” When we speak of characterizing light, it is quite correct to call the bright colors—red, orange, yellow—the Sattva colors in the sense of Sankhya philosophy. However, in this sense, the color green must be called a Rajas color, and the colors blue, indigo, and violet must be called Tamas colors. This is absolutely correct. One can say: effects of light and phenomena of brightness generally fall under the concept of Sattva effects, but the concept of Sattva phenomena also includes, for example, human goodness and loving behavior. Although light falls under the concept of Sattva, this concept is broader; light is not actually identical with it. Therefore, it is incorrect to translate Sattva as “light,” but it is certainly possible to translate Tamas as “darkness.” It is also not correct to say that “light” does not capture the concept of Sattva. But the criticism that the other scholar directs at a person who may well be fully aware of this is also unjustified, for the simple reason that, after all, if someone says, “Here is a lion,” no one would correct him by explaining: “No, here is a predator.” Both are correct. That hits the nail on the head. It is certainly true that when someone says, “Here stands a lion,” they also see a predator before them. Likewise, it is correct for someone to classify Sattva as belonging to the light based on its outward appearance, but it is wrong to say “Sattva” only in reference to the light. Sattva is a superordinate concept to light, just as predator is a superordinate concept to lion. A similar principle does not apply to darkness for the sole reason that, in the state of Tamas, what is otherwise specified in the other states—in the Rajas and Sattva states—evens out into something more general. After all, a lamb and a lion are two very different beings, and if I wish to characterize them in terms of their Sattva qualities—since the naturally powerful spiritual force exists vividly in both the lamb and the lion—I must characterize these two animals very differently. But if I wish to characterize the Tamas state, the difference does not come into play, for the Tamas state is simply present when the sheep or the lion lies there lazily. In the Sattva state, the lamb and the lion are quite different, but for the understanding of the world, lion laziness and lamb laziness are ultimately the same. The way of truly looking at these concepts will have to be quite different. Indeed, these three concepts, with the emotional tones they contain, belong to the most luminous aspects of Sankhya. And in everything Krishna presents to Arjuna, so that he presents himself as the founder of the self-aware age, in all of this he must speak in words that are completely imbued with the emotional tones derived from the concepts of Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas. These three concepts, and what ultimately leads to a culmination in the Bhagavad Gita, will be discussed in greater detail in the final lecture of this series.