The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] The Bhagavad Gita, the sublime song of the Indians, has—as I mentioned yesterday—been called by eminent figures the most significant philosophical work of poetry in human history. And anyone who immerses themselves in the sublime Gita will find this statement to be entirely justified. In the course of these lectures, we will also be able to point out the Gita’s great artistic merits, but above all, we must first bring home the significance of this work by taking a look at what underlies it—the powerful ideas and the profound understanding of the world from which it has sprung, and for the glorification and dissemination of which it was created.

[ 2 ] This insight into the foundations of the Gita’s philosophy is particularly important because it is certain that everything essential in this hymn—namely, everything pertaining to its philosophical and intellectual content—conveys to us a level of understanding that predates Buddhism; so that we can say: The spiritual horizon that surrounded the great Buddha, from which he emerged, is characterized for us by the content of the Gita. — We thus gain insight into the spiritual constitution of ancient Indian culture in the pre-Buddhist era when we allow the content of the Gita to take effect upon us.

[ 3 ] We have already emphasized that this body of thought is a convergence of three spiritual currents and that, like an organic, living entity, it not only fuses these three spiritual currents together but weaves them vividly into one another, so that these three spiritual currents emerge from the Gita as a unified whole. What confronts us there as a whole, as a spiritual outpouring of ancient Indian thought and knowledge, is a magnificent, glorious vantage point of knowledge; it is an immense body of spiritual knowledge—such a body of spiritual knowledge that modern man, who has not yet approached spiritual science, can only stand before this depth of knowledge and insight with doubt, because they have no way of gaining any perspective on this depth of knowledge and insight. For with ordinary modern means, one does not penetrate into those depths of knowledge that are conveyed here. At most, one can regard everything spoken of here as a beautiful dream that humanity once dreamed. From a purely modern standpoint, one might perhaps admire this dream, but one would not attribute any special value of insight to it. But once one has taken spiritual science to heart, one will stand in wonder before the depths of the Gita and will have to admit that in ancient times the human spirit penetrated into insights that we can only regain through the spiritual means of knowledge we must gradually acquire. This gives rise to admiration for these ancient insights, which were indeed present in those bygone times. We can admire them because we rediscover them from within the very fabric of the world itself and can thus recognize them as confirmed in their truth. As we rediscover them, as we recognize their truth, we then say to ourselves: How wonderful it is that in those ancient times, human beings were able to rise to such spiritual heights!

[ 4 ] Now, however, we know that in those ancient times humanity was particularly blessed by the fact that the remnants of primeval clairvoyance were still alive in human souls, and that not only did a special, through practice attained spiritual contemplation lead into the spiritual worlds, but that the science of those ancient times itself could still, in a certain way, be permeated by the ideas and and insights yielded by the remnants of ancient clairvoyance.

[ 5 ] We must tell ourselves: Today, for entirely different reasons, we recognize the truth of what is being conveyed to us. But we must understand how, in those ancient times, subtle distinctions regarding the human being were arrived at by other means; how subtle, incisive concepts were drawn from what human beings can know—concepts with sharp contours and with precise applicability to both spiritual and external sensory reality. Thus, if we merely adapt the expressions we use today to our changed perspective in certain respects, we find the possibility of understanding that ancient perspective as well.

[ 6 ] In our work with theosophical knowledge, we have sought to present things as they appear to present-day clairvoyant perception, so that our approach to spiritual science represents what the spiritual person can achieve today using the means available to them. In the early days of theosophical teaching, the work relied less on methods drawn directly from occult science and more on those that made use of the terms and conceptual nuances customary in the East—namely, those terms and nuances that had been passed down through a long tradition in the East, from the time of the Gita to the present day. This is why the earlier form of theosophical development, to which we have added contemporary occult research, worked more with the traditionally preserved ancient concepts, namely those of Sankhya philosophy. However, just as this Sankhya philosophy was gradually transformed in the East itself by the distinctively Eastern mode of thought, so too were the nature of the human being and other mysteries discussed at the outset of theosophical teaching. These concepts were presented particularly using the terms employed by the great reformer of Vedic and other Indian knowledge in the 8th century CE: Shankaracharya.

[ 7 ] We should pay less attention to the terminology used at the beginning of the Theosophical Movement; rather, in order to grasp the foundations of knowledge and insight in the Gita, we should now turn our attention more to the ancient Indian heritage of wisdom. And here we are first confronted with what has been gained, so to speak, through this ancient science itself—namely, what has been gained through Sankhya philosophy.

[ 8 ] The best way to gain an understanding of how Sankhya philosophy viewed the essence and nature of the human being is to first bear in mind the fact that the entire human being is based on a spiritual core, which we have always held before our souls, saying: There are dormant powers within the human soul that will emerge more and more in the course of humanity’s future development.

[ 9 ] The highest state to which we can initially aspire, and to which the human soul will eventually lead us, will be what we call the spiritual human being. Once the human being has ascended as a being to the level of the spiritual human being, he will still have to distinguish between what lives within him as the soul and what the spiritual human being itself is; just as we must distinguish today in everyday life between what is our innermost soul core and what envelops this core: the astral body, the etheric or life body, and the physical body. And just as we regard the latter bodies as sheaths and distinguish them from the actual soul, which we indeed subdivide in three ways for the present human cycle—into the feeling soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul—just as we distinguish the soul from the system of sheaths, so in the future we will have to reckon with the actual soul, which will then have the appropriate division for the future stages corresponding to our soul of feeling, soul of understanding, and soul of consciousness, and with the nature of the sheaths, which will then be present at that stage of humanity referred to in our language as the spiritual human. But what will one day be the human sheath—in which, so to speak, the spiritual-soul core of the human being will be enveloped, the spiritual human—will, for the human being, only have significance, so to speak, in the future; yet in the great universe, that which a being is only just evolving toward is, in fact, always there. So to speak, the substance of the spiritual human being, in which we shall one day be clothed, has always been present in the great universe and is present even today. We can say: Other beings already have shells today that will one day form our spiritual human beings. Thus, the substance from which the human spiritual being will one day consist is present in the universe.

[ 10 ] What can be said entirely in accordance with our doctrine was already stated by the ancient Sankhya school. And that which exists in the universe in this way—not yet individually differentiated, but rather, like a spiritual flood of water, undifferentiated and filling space and time—that which existed in this way, which exists in this way, and which will exist in this way, and from which all other forms emerge—this is precisely what Sankhya philosophy called the highest form of substance. It is that form of substance which is assumed from eternity to eternity in Sankhya philosophy. And as we speak—recall that lecture series I once gave in Munich on the spiritual-scientific foundation of the story of creation—as we speak at the starting point of Earth’s development of the fact that everything that has become Earth’s development already existed in the spirit as a spiritual being in a substantial form, so Sankhya philosophy spoke of its primordial substance, of its primordial flood, we might say, from which all other forms, both physical and superphysical, subsequently developed. For people today, this highest form is not yet a consideration, but it will, as we have just explained, one day come into consideration.

[ 11 ] The next form to emerge from this primordial flood of substance is what we recognize from above as the second aspect of the human being—what we call the life spirit, or, to use an Eastern term, the buddhi. We also know from our teaching that humanity will only develop this Buddhi in normal life in the future. But as a spiritual formative principle, it has always been present in other beings in a superhuman sense, and because it has been present, it has been differentiated as the first form from the original primordial flood. In the sense of Sankhya philosophy, the Buddhi arises from the first form of substantial existence, of extra-soul existence.

[ 12 ] When we then consider the further evolution of this substantial principle, we encounter, as a third form, what is called Ahamkara in the context of Sankhya philosophy. While Buddhi stands, so to speak, at the threshold of the principle of differentiation, merely hinting at a certain individualization, the form of Ahamkara already appears fully differentiated, so that when we speak of Ahamkara, we must imagine, as it were, that Buddhi organizes itself downward into independent, essential, substantial forms, which then exist individually in the world. To gain a picture of this evolution, we must imagine, as it were, a uniformly distributed mass of water as a substantial primordial principle, then swelling so that individual forms detach themselves as drops not yet full—forms that emerge like small mountains of water from the common substance, yet remain rooted in the common primordial flood within: there we would have Buddhi. And as these water mountains detach themselves into drops, into independent spheres, there we have the form of Ahamkara. Through a certain condensation of this Ahamkara—that is, of the already individualized form, of each individual soul-form—what is designated as Manas then arises.

[ 13 ] Here we must note that a certain discrepancy—perhaps best described as an inconsistency—arises with regard to our terminology. When we proceed from top to bottom in human development according to our teaching, we place the Life Spirit or Buddhi after the Spiritual Self. This terminology is entirely justified for the current human cycle, and we shall see in the course of these lectures why it is justified. We do not insert Ahamkara between Buddhi and Manas, but rather, for our purposes, we unite Ahamkara with Manas and designate the two together as the spiritual self. In those ancient times, it was entirely justified to make this distinction for a reason that I will only hint at today but will elaborate on later. It was justified because one could not provide that significant characteristic back then that we must provide today if we wish to speak in a way that is comprehensible for our present time: the characteristic that arises, on the one hand, from the influence of the Luciferic principle and, on the other hand, from the influence of the Ahrimanic principle. This characteristic is entirely absent from Sankhya philosophy. And for that constitution, which had no reason to look toward these two principles because it could not yet feel their power, it was entirely justified to insert this differentiated form between the Buddhi and the Manas. So when we speak of Manas in the sense of Sankhya philosophy, we are not speaking of exactly the same thing that Shankaracharya refers to as Manas. In this sense, one can certainly identify Manas with the spiritual self, but not exactly in the sense of Sankhya philosophy. However, we can precisely characterize what Manas actually is in the sense of Sankhya philosophy.

[ 14 ] We begin by considering how human beings live in the sensory world, in physical existence. In physical existence, human beings initially live in such a way that they perceive their surroundings through their senses and, in turn, interact with this physical environment through their tactile organs—their hands and feet—through grasping, walking, and also speaking. Human beings perceive the environment through their senses and interact with it in a physical sense through their tactile organs. Put this way, it is also entirely in line with Sankhya philosophy. But how does a human being perceive the environment through their senses? Well, with our eyes we see light and colors, light and dark, and also the forms of things; with our ears we perceive sounds, with our sense of smell we perceive odors, and with our sense of taste we perceive taste impressions. Each individual sense perceives a certain aspect of the external world: the sense of sight perceives colors and light, the sense of hearing perceives sounds, and so on. We relate to the environment, as it were, through these gateways of our being, which we call the senses; we open ourselves to the environment, but through each individual sense we approach a very specific aspect of the environment.

[ 15 ] Even our everyday language shows us that we carry within us something like a principle that unites these various realms to which our senses are drawn. We speak, for example, of warm and cold colors, even though we sense that, from our perspective, this is initially only relative—that we perceive cold and warmth through the sense of touch and colors, light, and dark through the sense of sight. We speak, then, of warm and cold colors; that is, based on a certain inner kinship that we feel, we apply what one sense perceives to the other. We express ourselves this way because within us a certain visual perception merges with what we perceive through our sense of warmth. People with a finer sensibility, sensitive people, can in turn feel certain color impressions inwardly stirred by certain ‘tones,’ so that they can speak of certain tones that evoke in them the color impression of red, and others that evoke in them the color impression of blue. So within us there lives something that unites the individual sensory spheres, forming a whole for the soul out of the individual sensory spheres.

[ 16 ] If you are sensitive, you can go even further. There are people who, for example, when they enter a city, feel so strongly that they say: This city gives me the impression of a yellow city—or when they enter another city: This one gives me the impression of a red city, another gives the impression of a white city, or a blue city. — We translate a whole sum of what affects us into an inner image of color; we synthesize the individual sensory impressions within us into a unified sense that is not directed toward a single sensory realm, but rather lives within us and fills us with a unified sense as we process the individual sensory impressions into it. We can call this the inner sense. We can call this the inner sense all the more so because everything we otherwise experience only inwardly—in terms of suffering and joy, passions and emotions—we can also bring together with what this inner sense gives us. We can describe certain passions as dark, cold passions, and others as warm, luminous, bright passions.

[ 17 ] We can also say: Thus, our inner self, in turn, influences what constitutes the inner sense. - In contrast to the many senses we direct toward the various realms of the external world, we can speak of a sense that fills our soul, one that we know is not connected to a single sense organ but rather engages our entire human being as its instrument. To designate this inner sense as Manas is entirely in keeping with Sankhya philosophy. That which substantially forms this inner sense is what, in the sense of Sankhya philosophy, develops as a later form emerging from Ahamkara. So that we can say: first the primordial flood, then Buddhi, then Ahamkara, then Manas—which we encounter within ourselves as our inner sense. If we wish to consider this inner sense, we can clarify this for ourselves today by taking the individual senses and, so to speak, examining how we can gain an understanding of how the perceptions of the individual senses come together in the inner sense.

[ 18 ] This is how we do it today because our understanding is following the wrong path. When we look at the development of our understanding, we must say: It starts from the differentiated aspects of the individual senses and seeks to ascend to the common sense. — Evolution proceeded in the opposite direction. First, Manas developed out of Ahamkara in the becoming of the world, and then the primordial substances—the forces that form the individual senses, which we carry within us as senses—differentiated themselves; however, this does not refer to the material sense organs—which belong to the physical body—but rather to the underlying forces, the formative forces, which are entirely supersensory. So when we descend the ladder of developmental forms, we move from Ahamkara to Manas, in the sense of Sankhya philosophy, and Manas, differentiated into individual forms, yields those supersensible forces that constitute our individual senses.

[ 19 ] Thus, because when we consider the individual senses, the soul participates in these senses, we have the opportunity to draw a parallel between what Sankhya philosophy teaches and the content of our own doctrine. For Sankhya philosophy states the following: As the Manas has differentiated itself into the individual world forces of the senses, the soul immerses itself in these individual forms—we know that the soul is separate from these forms—; but as the soul immerses itself in these individual forms, just as it immerses itself in the Manas, the soul acts through these sensory forces, is intertwined and interwoven with them. Through this, however, the soul comes to connect, from its spiritual-soul nature, with an external world, in order to find pleasure in this external world, to be able to feel delight and sympathy with the external world.

[ 20 ] From the Manas, for example, the force-substance that constitutes the eye has thus differentiated itself. At an earlier stage, when the human physical body did not yet exist in its present form—as Sankhya philosophy conceives it—the soul was immersed in the very forces that constituted the eye. We know that although the modern human eye was already predisposed during the Saturn stage, it did not develop until after the decline of the heat organ—which today lies atrophied within the pineal gland—and thus developed relatively late. The forces from which it developed were already present in a supersensible form beforehand, and the soul lived within them. This is also how Sankhya philosophy conceived it: because the soul lives within these principles of differentiation, it is attached to the existence of the external world and develops a thirst for this existence. Through the sensory powers, the soul is connected to the external world. A tendency toward existence arises, the drive toward existence. The soul, as it were, sends out its sensory antennae through the sense organs and is connected to external existence by virtue of these forces. It is precisely this connection through forces—understood as a sum of forces, as a real sum of forces—that we summarize in the astral body of the human being. The Sankhya philosopher speaks of the interaction of the individual sensory powers, differentiated from the Manas, at this stage.

[ 21 ] From these sensory powers arise, in turn, the finer elements that we conceive of as comprising the human etheric body. It is a relatively late development. We find this etheric body in human beings.

[ 22 ] We must therefore imagine that the following have formed in the course of evolution: the Primordial Flood, Buddhi, Ahamkara, Manas, the sensory substances, and the finer elements. In the external world, the realm of nature, these finer elements also exist as the etheric body or life body, in plants for example. Here, in the spirit of Sankhya philosophy, we must imagine that underlying this entire evolution—from top to bottom in the plant—is a development that descends from the primordial flood. However, in the plant this all takes place in the supersensible realm and only becomes real in the physical world by condensing into the finer elements that live in the plant’s etheric or life body, whereas in the human being the higher forms and principles—beginning with Manas—already manifest physically in the current stage of development. The individual sense organs are manifested externally; in the plant, only that later product arises when the sensory substance condenses into the finer elements, into the etheric elements. And from the further condensation of the etheric elements arise the gross elements of which all physical things consist that we encounter in the physical world. So if we proceed from the bottom up, we can, in the sense of Sankhya philosophy, divide the human being into his gross physical body, into the finer etheric body, into an astral body—this term is not used in Sankhya philosophy; instead, the term “body of force” is used, which constitutes the senses—then into an inner sense, Manas, and finally in Ahamkara, the principle underlying human individuality, which causes the human being not only to have an inner sense through which they perceive the individual sensory realms, but also to feel themselves as a single entity, as an individuality. This is what Ahamkara brings about. And then come the higher principles, which are merely latent in human beings: Buddhi and what other Eastern philosophies have come to call Atman, which Sankhya philosophy conceives of cosmically as a spiritual primordial flood, as we have characterized it.

[ 23 ] Thus, in Sankhya philosophy, we have, so to speak, provided a complete account of the constitution of the human being, as this human being—in the past, present, and future—envelops the soul within the substantial external principle of nature, whereby “nature” is understood to include not only the external and visible, but all levels of nature up to the most invisible. Thus, Sankhya philosophy distinguishes the forms we have now outlined.

[ 24 ] And within the forms, or within Prakriti—which encompasses all forms, from the gross physical body up to the primordial flood—within this Prakriti lives Purusha, the spiritual-soul aspect, which, however, is conceived as monadic in individual souls, so that the individual soul-monads are conceived, so to speak, as being just as beginningless and endless as this material principle Prakriti—material not in our materialistic sense—is conceived as being beginningless and endless. This philosophy thus conceives of a pluralism of souls that have plunged into the Prakriti principle and evolved downward from the highest, undifferentiated form of the primordial flood with which they surrounded themselves, all the way down to incarnation in the gross physical body, only to then begin the return journey, developing upward again after overcoming the gross physical body, and then returning once more to the primordial flood, freeing themselves from it as well, in order to enter the pure Purusha as a free soul.

[ 25 ] If we allow this kind of insight to take effect upon us, we see how, so to speak, this ancient wisdom underlies what we are now regaining through the means that our spiritual contemplation can provide; and we see, in the spirit of Sankhya philosophy, how insight is also present into the manner in which the soul can now be connected to each of these form-principles. The soul can, for example, be connected to the buddhi in such a way that it preserves, as it were, its full independence as much as possible within the buddhi, so that it is not the buddhi but the soul-nature that comes to the fore to a predominant degree. The opposite can also be the case. The soul can, as it were, envelop its independence in a kind of sleep, in indolence and laziness, so that the enveloping nature comes to the fore. This can also be the case with the outer physical nature, which consists of gross matter. We need only observe human beings here. There may be a person who primarily expresses their soul-spiritual nature, so that every movement, every gesture, every glance conveyed through the gross physical body recedes, so to speak, in the face of the fact that the spiritual-soul nature is expressed therein. We have a human being before us; we do see him, of course, in that his gross physical body stands before us, but in the movement, in the gesture, in the glance, something presents itself to us that makes us say: This human being is entirely spiritual-soul, and he uses the physical principle only to live out this spiritual-soul. The physical principle does not overwhelm him; he is the victor over the physical principle in every respect.

[ 26 ] This state, in which the soul overcomes the external principle of the physical body, is the sattvic state. This sattvic state can be described both in terms of the soul’s relationship to buddhi and manas, as well as in terms of the soul’s relationship to the body, which consists of subtle and gross elements. For when one says that the soul lives in Sattva, this means nothing other than a certain relationship of the soul to its envelope, of the spiritual principle in the being in question to the natural principle, of the Purusha principle to the Prakriti principle.

[ 27 ] But we can also see in a person how his coarse physical body completely overwhelms him—these are not moral characteristics to be described here, but purely physical characteristics, as understood in the Sankhya philosophy, and as they certainly do not, as they appear before our mind’s eye, convey any moral characteristics whatsoever—a person may approach us who, so to speak, moves along under the very weight of their physical body, who has put on a lot of flesh, who in all their gestures is dependent on the physical heaviness of their body, who does not know how to help themselves when they wish to express the soul within their outer physical body.

[ 28 ] When we move our facial muscles in accordance with the soul’s expression, the sattva principle prevails; when the fatty tissues of our face impose a certain physiognomy upon us, the spiritual principle is overwhelmed by the external physical shell, and the soul lives in a relationship of tamas to the natural principles. And when a balance prevails between the two—when neither the soul, as in the Sattva state, nor the outer physical shell, as in the Tamas state, predominates, but rather when both maintain equilibrium—then we speak of the Rajas state. These are the three gunas that are particularly important.

[ 29 ] We must therefore distinguish the characteristics of the individual forms of Prakriti, from the supreme principle of undifferentiated primordial substance down to the gross physical body: this is one set of characteristics—the characteristics of the principle of the sheaths alone. We must distinguish this from what Sankhya philosophy employs to characterize the relationship of the soul to the sheaths, regardless of the form within the nature of the sheaths. This characterization is provided by the three modes: Sattva, Rajas, Tamas.

[ 30 ] Let us now, so to speak, truly bring to mind the profound nature of such insight; let us consider how deeply a particular field of knowledge or science in those ancient times penetrated the mysteries of existence, enabling it to provide such a comprehensive characterization of all that is essential. It is precisely this sense of wonder, of which we spoke earlier, that stirs our souls, and we say to ourselves: It is one of the most wondrous things in the history of human development that what is now emerging once again from the dark depths of the spirit in spiritual science was already present in those ancient times, when it was attained by other means. All of this was knowledge that once existed. We glimpse this knowledge when we turn our spiritual gaze to certain primeval times. And then we look at the times that followed. We look at what is usually presented to us as the spiritual content of the various periods: ancient Greece, the era following ancient Greece, the Roman era, and the Christian Middle Ages. We look at what the older culture has bequeathed to the modern era, up to the times when spiritual science once again presents something that has grown out of humanity’s primordial knowledge. We survey all of this and we can say: These times often lacked even a mere inkling of that primordial knowledge. More and more, the knowledge of those magnificent realms of existence—including the supersensible, comprehensive ancient knowledge—was replaced by a mere knowledge of external material existence. This was, in fact, the meaning of the development over the course of three millennia: that the external knowledge of the material physical plane was increasingly substituted for the ancient primordial knowledge.

[ 31 ] And it is interesting to see how, even in the purely material realm—I do not wish to withhold this observation from you—there remains, even into the era of the Greek philosophers, a certain echo of the ancient Sankhya tradition. As for the actual spiritual realm, Aristotle does indeed have some echoes of it, but they are no longer such that we can truly reconcile them in their full clarity with the ancient Sankhya knowledge. We still find in Aristotle the division of the human being into the gross physical body, which he does not mention all that much, but then the division in which he believes he is describing the soul, whereas Sankhya philosophy knows that these are merely the sheaths. We find the vegetative soul, which would correspond to the finer elemental body in the sense of Sankhya philosophy. Aristotle thus believes there is something soulful, but he merely characterizes the relationships between the soulful and the physical, the gunas, and in what is given as a characteristic, he provides only the form of the sheaths. Then, for what already extends into the sphere of the senses—what we call the astral body—Aristotle distinguishes something he regards as a soulful principle. Thus, he no longer clearly distinguishes the soul from the body, because for him it has already become submerged in the bodily form; he distinguishes the Aisthetikon, and further distinguishes within the soul the Orektikon, Kinetikon, and Dianoetikon. These are soul-levels in Aristotle’s sense, but in Aristotle we no longer encounter a clear distinction between the soul and the physical form. He believes he is providing a classification of the soul, whereas Sankhya philosophy conceived of the soul in its own essence as entirely monadic and, as it were, transferred everything that differentiates the soul outward into the principle of the shell, into the principle of prakriti.

[ 32 ] So, in the realm of the soul, even Aristotle himself no longer speaks in terms of a remnant of that ancient science we find in Sankhya philosophy. But in one area—one might say, in the material realm—Aristotle still has something to say that resonates with the principle of the three states: this is when he speaks of light and darkness in colors. There he says: There are colors that contain more darkness, colors that contain more light, and colors that lie in between. - In Aristotle’s sense, it is as follows: In the case of colors tending toward blue and violet, darkness predominates over light, and a color is blue or violet because darkness predominates over light; a color is green or yellowish-green because the two are in equilibrium, and a color is reddish or orange when the principle of light predominates over darkness.

[ 33 ] In Sankhya philosophy, we find this principle of the three states applied to the entire scope of worldly phenomena; there we have Sattva, where the spiritual prevails over the natural. Aristotle still has this same characterization where he speaks of colors. He does not use the word, but one could say: Red and red-yellow represent the Sattva state of light—the exact phrasing is no longer there in Aristotle, but the old Sankhya principle is still present in his thought—green represents the Rajas state in relation to light and darkness, and blue and violet, where darkness predominates, represent the Tamas state in relation to light and darkness. Even though Aristotle does not use these terms, the mode of thinking that confronts us from a spiritual conception of the states of the world in Sankhya philosophy still seems to be present.

[ 34 ] Thus, in Aristotle’s theory of colors, we find an echo of the ancient Sankhya philosophy. But this echo, too, was lost. And we first witness a glimmer of these three states—Sattva, Rajas, Tamas—in this outer realm of the world of colors, in a fierce struggle waged by Goethe. For after the ancient Aristotelian division of the world of colors into Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas had, so to speak, been completely buried, it reappears in Goethe. It is still ridiculed today by modern physicists, but Goethe’s theory of colors is precisely drawn from the principles of spiritual wisdom. Modern physics is right from its own standpoint when it does not agree with Goethe on this matter; but it only shows that it has been forsaken by all the good gods in these matters; that is only to be expected of modern physics, which is why it can rail against Goethe’s theory of colors.

[ 35 ] But if one were to seek to combine modern, genuine science with occult principles, then one would have to advocate for Goethe’s theory of colors, especially today. For there, emerging once again from the very heart of our scientific culture, is the principle that once reigned as a spiritual principle in Sankhya philosophy. You will be able to understand, my dear friends, why, for example, many years ago I set myself the task of bringing Goethe’s theory of colors to the fore once again as a physical science, yet one grounded in occult principles; for one can quite rightly say: Goethe structures color phenomena in such a way that he presents them according to the three states of Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas. Thus, little by little, as if emerging from a spiritual darkness, what was once achieved by humanity through entirely different means is now being explored in the new history of the spirit using new methods.

[ 36 ] This Sankhya philosophy is pre-Buddhist, a fact that the legend of the Buddha, I would say, makes abundantly clear to us. For the Indian tradition rightly teaches that Kapila is the founder of Sankhya philosophy. However, the Buddha was born in Kapila’s hometown of Kapilavastu, which points to how the Buddha emerged from the Sankhya doctrine. He himself is transported by his birth to the very place where the one who first synthesized this great Sankhya philosophy once worked.

[ 37 ] We must not conceive of the relationship between this Sankhya doctrine and the other intellectual currents we have discussed either as many of today’s secular Orientalists portray it, nor as the Jesuit Joseph Dahlmann portrays it, but rather that in various regions of ancient India there lived people who were differentiated, because at that time, when these three spiritual currents had developed, the very earliest primal state of human evolution no longer existed.

[ 38 ] In, say, the northeastern regions of India, human nature was such that it inclined people to conceive of the world as it is presented in Sankhya philosophy. Further west, human nature was such that it inclined people to conceive of the world in accordance with Vedic teachings. The various spiritual nuances thus stem from the differently disposed human natures in the various regions of India, and it was only later, as the Vedantists continued their work, that certain elements were incorporated, so that we now find much from Sankhya philosophy woven into the Vedas as they appear to us. And the third spiritual tradition, Yoga—as we have already said—Yoga emerged because, little by little, the original clairvoyance was lost and new paths to the spiritual heights had to be sought. Yoga differs from the Sankhya perspective in that the latter is actually a true science, a science that focuses on external forms, grasping only these forms and the relationship of the human soul to them. Yoga, on the other hand, provides instructions on how the soul should develop in order to reach the spiritual heights.

[ 39 ] And if we ask ourselves: How should an Indian soul have behaved in a relatively later age—one that did not wish to develop one-sidedly, did not wish to advance merely by observing external forms, but also sought to elevate the spiritual being itself in order to develop anew what had originally been given in the Vedas as if through gracious enlightenment— then we find the answer in what Krishna gives his disciple Arjuna in the sublime Gita.

[ 40 ] Such a soul would have had to develop in a way that can be expressed in words: Yes, you see the world in external forms, and when you imbue yourself with the knowledge of Sankhya, you see how individual forms develop from the primordial flood. But you also see how form after form transforms. Your gaze follows the arising and passing away of forms; your gaze follows the births and deaths of forms. But when you reflect deeply on how form after form transforms, how form after form arises and passes away, then your contemplation points you to what is expressed in all these forms, your thorough contemplation points you to the spiritual principle that lives within these forms, that transforms within these forms, that is linked to the forms sometimes more in accordance with the sattvic state, sometimes more in accordance with the other gunas, but that also, in turn, frees itself from these forms. Such thorough contemplation points you to something that is enduring, that is imperishable in relation to the forms. The material principle, too, is enduring, but the forms you see are not enduring; they come into being, arise, and pass away; they go through birth and death. Enduring, however, is the soul-spiritual element. Turn your gaze toward this! But in order for you to experience this soul-spiritual aspect yourself, so that you may sense and experience this soul-spiritual aspect within you, around you, and united with you, you must develop the dormant powers in your soul; you must devote yourself to yoga, which begins with the devout gazing upward toward the soul-spiritual element of existence and, through the practice of certain exercises, leads to the development of the dormant powers, so that the student ascends from stage to stage through yoga. Devout veneration of the spiritual-soul aspect—this is the other path that guides the soul itself forward; it leads to that which lives as the spiritual in unity behind the changing forms, that which the Veda once proclaimed through gracious enlightenment, that which the soul will rediscover through yoga as that which is to be sought behind all change in forms.

[ 41 ] Go thus—a supreme teacher might have said to the disciple—go through the knowledge of Sankhya philosophy, of forms, of the gunas, through the contemplation of sattva, rajas, and tamas, through the forms from the highest to the coarsest materiality; go through them rationally and say that there must be something enduring and unified; then, through thought, you will penetrate to the Eternal. But you can also proceed from devotion within your soul; there you advance through yoga from stage to stage, thus penetrating to the spiritual that underlies all forms. You can approach the Eternal from two sides: through thoughtful contemplation of the world and through yoga, and both lead you to what the great Vedic teachers have called the unified Atman-Brahman, which lives both outside and within the soul, and which underlies the world as a unified whole. You advance toward this by, on the one hand, thinking through Sankhya philosophy, and on the other, devoutly practicing yoga.

[ 42 ] Thus we look back to ancient times when clairvoyant powers were, so to speak, still connected to human nature through the blood, as we have described in the treatise “Blood Is a Very Special Fluid.” But humanity gradually advanced in its development from that clairvoyant principle bound to the blood toward a more soul-spiritual one.

[ 43 ] But so that the connection with the soul-spiritual realm—which had been attained in a naive way in the ancient times of kinship among tribes and peoples—might not be lost, so that this connection might not be lost, new methods and new teachings had to emerge during the transition from kinship to the period when kinship no longer prevailed. The Sublime Song, the Bhagavad Gita, leads us to this transition to the new methods. And it tells us how the descendants of the royal brothers from the Kuru and Pandu lineages lie in conflict with one another. On the one hand, we look back to a time that has passed, as the Gita begins, when the ancient Indian understanding of humanity and the conduct of people in accordance with that understanding still existed. We see, so to speak, the single line that extends from the old times into the new, in the blind King Dhritarashtra of the Kuru clan. And we see him in conversation with his charioteer. He stands on one side of the combatants; on the other side stand those who are his blood relatives, but who are engaged in battle because they are in the transition from old to new times—the sons of Pandu. And the charioteer tells his king—who is characteristically presented to us as blind, because the spiritual is not to be perpetuated in this clan, but rather the physical—the charioteer tells his blind king what is happening over there among the Pandava sons, to whom is to pass that which, more than the spiritual-soul aspect, is to come down to posterity. And he tells how, over there, the representative of the combatants, Arjuna, is instructed by the great Krishna, the teacher of mankind, he tells how Krishna instructs his disciple Arjuna in all that we have now mentioned, where humanity can arrive if it applies Sankhya and Yoga, if it develops thought and devotion to ascend to what the former great teachers of humanity laid down in the Vedas. And magnificently, in words as philosophical as they are poetic, we are told of the instruction given by Krishna, the great teacher of humanity in the new age that has emerged from blood kinship.

[ 44 ] Here we find something else that still shines through from ancient times. In the essay that forms the basis of the text “Blood Is a Very Special Juice,” and in some similar essays, we pointed out how human development proceeded from the era of blood kinship to later differentiations, and how spiritual striving has thereby changed. And in the Sublime Song, the Bhagavad Gita, we are directly led to this transition, led in such a way that, in Krishna’s instruction of Arjuna, we are shown how the human being, who no longer possesses the old, blood-bound clairvoyance, must ascend to the Imperishable. In this teaching, we encounter what we have often regarded as an important transition in human evolution. Thus, the Sublime Song becomes for us an illustration of what we have considered from the matter itself.

[ 45 ] And what particularly draws us to this Bhagavad Gita is the way it speaks so forcefully about the human path, so vividly about the human journey toward the eternal in contrast to the transitory. There stands Arjuna before us, at first full of anguish—we hear this from the charioteer’s account, for what is told comes from the mouth of the charioteer of the blind King Dhritarashtra—there stands Arjuna before us with his anguish. He sees himself fighting against the Kuru clan, his blood relatives, and he now says to himself: Here I am to fight against those who are my blood relatives, against those who are the sons of my fathers’ brothers. Here are some of the heroes among us who are to wield their weapons against their relatives, and over there are equally worthy heroes who are to wield their weapons against us. — Then he feels the heavy anguish of the soul: Can I win this battle, may I win this battle? May brothers raise the sword against brothers? — Then Krishna, the great teacher, steps before him and says to him: First, through thoughtful contemplation, turn your gaze toward human life and look upon the situation in which you yourself now find yourself. Within the bodies of those from the Kuru clan whom you will fight—that is, within perishable forms—live the spiritual beings that are imperishable, who merely express themselves through these forms; within those who are your comrades-in-arms live the eternal souls, who merely express themselves through the forms of the external world. You will have to fight, for such is the will of your law, such is the will of the law of work, the law of humanity’s external evolution. You will have to fight, for such is the will of the moment that marks a transition from one period to another. But may you grieve because forms fight against forms, changing forms against changing forms? Whichever of these forms may lead the others to death—what is death, what is life? The change of form is death, is life. And the souls who will now be victorious are similar, and the souls who will now go to their death are similar. And what is this victory and what is this death compared to what the contemplative reflection of Sankhya leads you to, compared to the eternal souls that stand opposite one another, remaining untouched by all struggle? In a magnificent way, arising from the situation itself, we are shown how Arjuna is not to endure the torments of the soul in the innermost depths of his being, but to serve duty alone, which now calls him to battle, because he is to look beyond the transitory, which is entangled in the battle, to the Eternal, which will live on, whether he is victor or vanquished. And so, in a unique way, the great theme is struck in the sublime song, the Bhagavad Gita—the theme of the transitory and the eternal in the face of a pivotal event in human evolution. And it is not by grasping abstract ideas, but by allowing the emotional depth of the matter to take hold of us, that we are on the right path. Then we are on the right path when we view Krishna’s teaching in such a way that he wishes to lift Arjuna’s soul from the level on which it stands—and through which it is entangled in the web of the transitory—to a higher level, where it feels exalted above all that is transitory, even when this transitory realm presents itself to the immediate human soul in such a tormenting manner as in victory or defeat, in killing or being killed.

[ 46 ] We see confirmed what someone once said about this Eastern philosophy, as it is presented to us in the sublime song of the Bhagavad Gita: This Eastern philosophy was so deeply intertwined with religion in those ancient times that those who adhered to it—even if they were the most eminent sages—did not lack the deepest religious fervor, and even the simplest person, who lived solely in the religion of their feelings, did not lack a certain measure of wisdom. We sense this when we see how the great teacher Krishna not only grasps his disciple’s ideas but also works directly upon his mind, so that the disciple stands before us in the face of transience and the torments of transience, and his soul, in such a momentous situation, rises to a height that allows it to transcend all transience, all torments, pain, and all the suffering of transience.