The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] Only those for whom the things set forth in the Bhagavad Gita or in similar works of world literature are not mere theory but a destiny—and worldviews can indeed be a destiny for humanity—will be able to truly appreciate the full significance of such philosophical poetry as is presented to us in the Bhagavad Gita.

[ 2 ] In the discussions of the past few days, we have encountered two worldviews in addition to the third, the Vedic tradition, namely Sankhya philosophy and Yoga—two worldviews that, if we consider them properly, can show us in the most eminent sense how worldviews can indeed become a destiny for the human soul. With the concept of Sankhya philosophy, we can connect everything that can become part of the human being in terms of knowledge, insight into ideas, and an overview of the phenomena of the world in which spiritual life expresses itself. And if we take what has, so to speak, remained for the ordinary person of our time of such insight, of such a worldview expressible in ideas in scientific form—even though it stands spiritually far lower than Sankhya philosophy—and designate it as a nuance of such insight, then we can say: Even in our time, one can still feel, as a matter of destiny, the same thing that can be felt as a matter of destiny in relation to Sankhya philosophy. — However, only those who devote themselves in a one-sided manner to such a nuance of worldview will feel this as a matter of destiny; of them we can say, in a certain sense: They are, in a one-sided way, scientists or Sankhya philosophers. — How does such a person relate to the world? How can they feel in their soul? This is a question that, fundamentally, can only be answered through experience. One must know what happens to a soul when it devotes itself in such a one-sided way to a particular nuance of worldview, when it applies all its powers to holding a worldview in the sense described. Such a soul can then penetrate into the very details of the forms of worldly phenomena; it can, so to speak, have the most comprehensive understanding of everything that expresses itself as forces in the world, of everything that transforms itself into forms in the world. If a soul were to devote itself to the world in this way alone—say, if in a single incarnation it found the opportunity, through its abilities and karma, to become so attuned to worldly phenomena that, above all else, whether illuminated by clairvoyant power or not, it possesses rational knowledge—then such an orientation of the soul leads, under all circumstances, to a certain kind of coldness in the soul’s entire life. And depending on the nature of the soul’s temperament, we will find that this soul either more or less assumes the character of dissatisfied irony toward worldly phenomena or of disinterest, of general dissatisfaction with such knowledge that proceeds from phenomenon to phenomenon. All that which so many souls in our time may also feel when confronted with knowledge that is merely of a scholarly nature—the coldness, the desolation that befalls a soul, the dissatisfaction in the mind—all of this can present itself to our soul when we consider such a disposition of the soul as has been described. Desolate, uncertain of itself, such a soul will feel. “What would I have if I gained the whole world yet knew nothing of my own soul, felt nothing, sensed nothing, experienced nothing, if it remained empty within!”—so such a soul might say. To be stuffed full of all the knowledge in the world and yet be empty within oneself—that can become a bitter fate; it can become like being lost to the phenomena of the world, like a loss of everything that can become valuable within oneself.

[ 3 ] What has just been described, we find in many people who confront us with some kind of erudition, with an abstract philosophy. We encounter it either when these souls, feeling unsatisfied and aware of their emptiness, indifferent to their vast knowledge, confront us with a sense of misery; or we encounter it when someone approaches us with an abstract philosophy and can provide us with information in abstract terms about the nature of the divine, cosmology, and the human soul, yet we still feel: That rests in the head; the heart is not involved, the mind is empty!—It strikes us as cold when we encounter such a soul. Sankhya philosophy can thus become a fate, a fate that makes man realize he is a being lost to himself, a being who possesses nothing of his own and whose individuality offers nothing to the world.

[ 4 ] And again: let us consider a soul that seeks development solely through yoga, that is, so to speak, lost to the world, and spurns any attempt to understand the outside world. It says: What good does it do me to learn how the world came into being? I want to seek everything from within myself; I want to advance on my own through the development of my powers.”—It may feel warm within itself, and will often present itself to us in such a way that it appears to be self-contained and self-satisfied. Perhaps. In the long run, it will not remain that way for such a soul; rather, in the long run, such a soul is exposed to loneliness. When such a soul, having withdrawn into hermitage in search of the heights of spiritual life, then steps out into the world and encounters worldly phenomena everywhere, yet perhaps says to itself: “What do all these worldly phenomena matter to me?”—and then, because it stands alien to the glory of the revelations and does not understand them, feels isolated—then this one-sidedness in turn becomes a fateful destiny. And how often such a soul confronts us! How can one get to know these human beings who devote all their energy to the evolution of their own being, who pass by their fellow human beings coldly and indifferently, as if they wanted nothing in common with them! Such a soul may feel lost in the world, and to other souls it may appear selfish to the extreme.

[ 5 ] Only when we take these life contexts into account do we truly sense the fateful nature of worldviews. And in the background of such great manifestations, such great worldviews as we find in the Gita and also in the Epistles of Paul, this fateful quality confronts us. One might say: Behind both the Gita and the Epistles of Paul, if we only look a little beyond them, we see what immediately becomes fateful for us. How can fate look upon us even from the Epistles of Paul?

[ 6 ] There we find so many references to how the true salvation of the soul’s development lies in what is called righteousness by faith, in contrast to the worthlessness of external works—through what the soul can become when it finds union with the Christ impulse, when it can take within itself the great power that flows from the correctly understood Resurrection of Christ. When we encounter this in the Epistles of Paul, we feel, on the other hand, how the human soul is, so to speak, turned inward upon itself, how the human soul can become estranged from external works and rely entirely on grace and righteousness by faith. Then there are the external works. They exist in the world; we cannot do away with them simply by decreeing it. We collide with it in the world. And fate, in turn, resounds toward us in all its gigantic grandeur. Only when one grasps things in this way does the power of such expressions of humanity become clear.

[ 7 ] Now, these two expressions of humanity—the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of Paul—are quite different from one another on the surface. And this outward difference, I would say, has an effect on the soul in every part of these works.

[ 8 ] We stand before the Bhagavad Gita in admiration not only for the reasons we have briefly mentioned, but we stand in admiration also because it strikes us as so grand and mighty in its poetry, because the nobility of the human soul shines forth from every verse, because in all that is spoken there from the mouth of Krishna or his disciple Arjuna, we feel something like being lifted above everyday human experiences, above all that is passionate, above everything that has to do with emotion, everything that disturbs the soul. We are transported into a sphere of peace of mind, serenity, composure, dispassion, and detachment, into an atmosphere of wisdom, even if we allow just a small part of the Gita to take effect upon us. And we feel our entire humanity, simply through reading the Gita, as if lifted to a higher level. We feel everywhere: we must have freed ourselves from certain all-too-human traits if we wish to allow the sublime divine in the Gita to take its proper effect upon us.

[ 9 ] The situation is entirely different with Paul’s epistles. The sublimity of poetic language is absent; even the detachment of the Gita is missing. We pick up these Epistles of Paul, let them sink in, and we often feel how a passionately indignant spirit blows toward us from them, from the mouth of Paul, regarding what has happened. At times the tone is thunderous, one might say. This or that is frequently condemned and denounced in the Epistles of Paul; rebukes are issued. And the things that are brought up there regarding the great concepts of Christianity—grace, the law, the difference between Mosaic law and Christianity, the resurrection—all of this is presented in a tone that is meant to be philosophical, that aims to be a philosophical definition, yet is not, because a note of Paul resonates in every sentence. In every sentence, we cannot forget that we are hearing a man who is either agitated or speaking out of righteous anger against others who have done this or that; or who speaks of the highest concepts of Christianity in such a way that we sense he is personally committed, that he feels he is a propagandist for these ideas.

[ 10 ] How might we encounter, while reading the Gita, a similar sentiment of a personal nature to that expressed by Paul when we read in his letters that he writes to this or that congregation: “How we ourselves have stood up for Christ Jesus!” Remember how we were a burden to no one, how we worked day and night so that we might be a burden to no one. — How personal it all is! A touch of the personal runs through Paul’s letters. A wonderfully pure sphere, an ethereal sphere that borders on the superhuman everywhere and at times extends into the superhuman, we find in the sublime Gita.

[ 11 ] Externally, then, there are enormous differences, and we can say: It would be the blindest prejudice not to admit that through the great song, through the confluence of world views that once shaped Hinduism, that through this Gita the Hindus were given something sublime and pure, something impersonal, serene, and free from passion and emotion, whereas what confronts us as the original document of Christianity—the Epistles of Paul—bears a wholly personal character, often filled with passion and devoid of all serenity. One does not come to the realization that one is closing oneself off from the truth and does not acknowledge such things, but rather by comprehending them and grasping them in the proper sense. Let us therefore allow this contrast to stand before our subsequent consideration like a bronze tablet. |

[ 12 ] We already pointed out yesterday that the Gita presents us with Krishna’s significant instruction to Arjuna. Who, then, is Krishna? This question interests us above all else. One cannot understand who Krishna is without becoming familiar with a point I have occasionally discussed here and there—namely, that the entire system of naming and designation in earlier times was different from what it is today. Nowadays, the way a person is named is, in essence, a matter of little consequence. After all, in our time, one does not learn much about a person simply by knowing that they bear this or that common surname, that their name is Müller or Schulze. Nor does one learn much about a person—and everyone will admit this—by knowing that they are a court councilor or a privy councilor or something of that sort. So one does not know much about this person even if one knows such a designation of their social rank. And likewise, one does not know much about a person today if one knows that one must address them as “Your Excellency” or “Reverend” or even just as “esteemed sir”; in short, all these titles do not say much about the person. And you will easily be able to see that other titles we use today do not mean very much either. It was different in earlier times. Whether we take the terms of Sankhya philosophy or our own anthroposophical terms, we can start from both and make the following observation.

[ 13 ] We have heard that, according to Sankhya philosophy, the human being consists of the gross physical body, the subtle elemental body or etheric body, the body containing the lawful powers of the senses, that which is called the Manas, Ahamkara, and so on. We need not consider the other higher members, because they are generally not yet developed. But if we now take human beings as they appear to us in this or that incarnation, we can say: Human beings differ from one another, so that in one person only what is expressed in the etheric body stands out strongly, in another more of what lies in the regularity of the senses stands out, in a third more of the inner sense, and in a fourth more of Ahamkara. Or to put it in our own terms: We find people in whom the powers of the feeling soul are particularly active; we find others in whom the powers of the intellectual or emotional soul are particularly active; others in whom the powers of the conscious soul stand out; and still others in whom something else comes into play because they are inspired by Manas, and so on. These are differences that are determined by the entire way a person lives their life. These differences point to the very nature of human beings themselves.

[ 14 ] In our present time, for reasons that are easy to understand, it is not possible to choose terms for human beings based on the essence expressed in this sense. For if, given the widespread mindset of humanity today, one were to say, for example, that the highest a human being can attain in the present cycle of humanity is a hint of ahamkara, everyone would be convinced that they most clearly express ahamkara in their nature, and it would be hurtful to him if one were to suggest that this is not yet the case, that a lower aspect predominates in him. It was not so in ancient times. Back then, when describing a person—especially when it came to distinguishing them from the rest of humanity, or perhaps even assigning them a leadership role—one would describe them in a way that took into account the very nature just characterized.

[ 15 ] Let us suppose that in ancient times a human being had appeared who, in the most comprehensive, truly comprehensive sense, would have expressed the Manas; who, while having experienced the Ahamkara within himself, would have allowed this to recede as an individual element and, for the sake of its outward effectiveness, would have brought the inner sense, the Manas, to the fore. According to the laws of older, smaller cycles of humanity, such a person—and only very rare individuals could have embodied such a being—would have had to be a great lawgiver, a leader of vast masses of people. And one would not have been content to designate him as one does other people, but according to his most striking characteristic, one would have designated him as a Manas-bearer, while another would have been designated merely as a sense-bearer. One would have said: He is a Manas-bearer, he is a Manu. And when we encounter such designations from those older times, we must see in them that which characterizes the human being according to the most outstanding element of the human organization, which is expressed in him precisely in his corresponding incarnation.

[ 16 ] Let us suppose that a person would have particularly expressed that he felt within himself the divine inspiration, that he would have refused to base his decisions regarding his insights and actions solely on what the external world conveys through his senses and what his brain-bound intellect tells him, but that he would have listened everywhere to the divine Word, which spoke to him, and that he had made himself a herald of the divine substance that spoke through him. Such a person would have been called a Son of God. And even in the Gospel of John, those who were once like this are presented as the Sons of God right at the beginning of the first chapter.

[ 17 ] But the essential point was that, when one expressed this significance, everything else was overlooked. Everything else was insignificant. So let us suppose one were to encounter two people: one would have been an ordinary sensory being who would have allowed the world to affect him through his senses and would have reflected on it with his intellect, which is bound to the brain; the other would have been a person into whom the word of divine wisdom had shone. Then, in the spirit of the old way of thinking, one would have expressed oneself by saying: This one person is a human being; he was born of a father and mother, conceived according to the flesh. In the case of the other person, who would have been the herald of the divine substance, what is included in an ordinary biography would not apply, as it does to the first, who views the world through the senses and the intellect bound to the brain. To write such a biography of him would have been folly. For the fact that he bore a physical body was merely incidental, not the essential point that was taken into account; it was, so to speak, merely the means by which he expressed himself to other people. And that is why it is said: The Son of God was not born of the flesh; he was born of a virgin, directly from the Spirit. — That is to say: what mattered in his case, what gave him value for humanity, came from the Spirit. And that alone was emphasized in ancient times. For certain disciples of initiates, it would have been the greatest sin to write a biography in the conventional sense—one that takes into account only the ordinary, everyday circumstances—about a personality whom they recognized as significant through higher aspects of human nature. Anyone who has retained even a little of the spirit of those old times finds it highly absurd what is written today in the name of Goethe biographies.

[ 18 ] And now let us imagine that the people of ancient times lived with such perceptions, with such feelings; then we can also understand how deeply imbued those ancient people must have been with the realization that such a Manu—in whom the Manas lives primarily—appears only rarely, and that he must wait through great epochs before he can emerge.

[ 19 ] If we now look at what can live as the deepest essence within the human being in our human cycle, if we look at what every human being can sense of their secret powers that can lift them up to spiritual heights, if we look at this and form the idea that what is present in others only as a potential in very rare cases becomes the essential link of a human being—a being who then appears from time to time to be a guide to others, who is higher than all the Manus that lie within every human being by virtue of their nature, but who appears as a real outer personality only once in a world age: when we form such a concept, then we approach the essence of Krishna.

[ 20 ] He is humanity in general; he is, one might almost say, humanity as such, conceived as a single entity. But he is not an abstraction. When people today speak of humanity in general, they speak of it as an abstraction. This abstract concept has become a common fate for us today, when we are, moreover, completely caught up in the sensory world. When one speaks of humanity in general, one has a vague concept that is not at all alive. Those who speak of Krishna as the human being in general do not say: “This is that abstract idea one has in mind today when speaking of it”—but rather they say: “Yes, this being does indeed live in potential within every human being, but it also appears once in every world age as an individual human being and speaks through a human mouth.” Only that for it, what matters is not the outer physical body, nor the subtle elemental body, nor the powers of the sense organs, nor Ahamkara and Manas, but rather that which in the Buddhi and Manas is directly connected with the great universal world substances, with the Divine that lives and weaves through the world.

[ 21 ] From time to time, beings appear to guide humanity, such as we see in Arjuna’s great teacher, Krishna. Krishna teaches the highest human wisdom, the highest humanity, and he teaches it as his own essence, yet in such a way that it strikes a chord in every human nature, because the potential for all that lies in Krishna’s words is found in every human soul. Thus, when a person looks up to Krishna, they simultaneously look up to their own highest Self; yet at the same time, they also look to another who may stand before them as another human being, and in whom they venerate—as in another—that which they are in potential and yet which is different from them, that which relates to them as a god relates to a human being. This is how we must imagine the relationship between Krishna and his disciple Arjuna. But then the fundamental tone is also set, the one that resounds toward us from the Gita—that fundamental tone which sounds as if it addressed every soul, as if it could resonate within every soul, which is entirely human, intimately human, so intimately human that every soul feels it must reproach itself if it did not feel a kinship with the longing to listen to the great teachings of Krishna.

[ 22 ] On the other hand, everything seems so serene, so dispassionate, so unemotional, so sublime and wise to us, because the Highest is speaking—that which is divine in every human nature and yet appears, as a divine-human being, to be embodied once in the evolution of humanity.

[ 23 ] And how sublime they are, these teachings! They are truly so sublime that this Gita rightly bears the name of the Sublime Song, the Bhagavad Gita. Here we are first confronted with the great teaching already mentioned in yesterday’s lecture, expressed in sublime words and arising from a sublime context: the teaching that everything that changes in the world—even if it changes in such a way that birth and death, birth and death, victory or defeat appear outwardly, that in all of this an imperishable, an eternal, a lasting, a being expresses itself, and that whoever wishes to view the world correctly must force themselves through the transitory to this imperishable. This is already presented to us through Sankhya, that is, through the rational consideration of the imperishable in all that is perishable, of the fact that the defeated soul and the victorious soul are equal before God when the gate of death closes behind both.

[ 24 ] But then Krishna goes on to tell his disciple Arjuna that there is another way in which the soul can be led away from the perspective of everyday life: through yoga. If the soul can become devout, that is the other side of the soul’s development. One aspect is that in which one moves from phenomenon to phenomenon, applying one’s faculty of thought—whether illuminated by clairvoyance or not—everywhere. The other aspect is that in which one turns all attention away from the external world, closes the gate of the senses, and shuts out everything that reason and intellect can say about the external world, where one closes all doors to what one can recall as having been experienced in ordinary life, where one goes within and, through appropriate exercises, brings forth what rests within one’s own soul, where one turns the soul toward what one can intuit as the highest and attempts to rise through the power of devotion. Where this happens, one ascends ever higher and higher through yoga, reaching the higher stages attainable by first making use of the physical instruments, and those higher stages in which one lives once freed from all physical instruments—when, so to speak, one lives outside one’s body in the higher members of the human organism. Thus one lives one’s way upward, into an entirely different form of life. The manifestations and activities of life become mental, spiritual. One draws ever closer to one’s own divine being and expands one’s own being into the being of the world, expands the human being into God, by losing the individual limitation to one’s own being and merging with the universe through yoga.

[ 25 ] Then the means are described by which the disciple of the great Krishna can ascend, in one way or another, to these spiritual heights. First, a distinction is made between what people in the ordinary world are called upon to do. For it is indeed a momentous situation that the Gita is discussing here. Arjuna must fight against his blood relatives. That is his outer destiny, that is his work, his karma; that is the sum of the deeds he must first perform directly in this situation. In these deeds, he lives first and foremost as an outer human being. But the great Krishna teaches him that a person only becomes wise, only connects with the Divine and Imperishable, when he performs his deeds—because these deeds arise as necessary in the outer course of the development of nature and humanity—yet the wise person must detach himself from these deeds. He performs the actions; yet there is something within him that is at the same time like a spectator to these actions, that takes no part in them, that says: I do the work, but I might just as well say, I let it happen.

[ 26 ] One becomes a sage by viewing one’s own actions as if they were being performed by another, and by remaining unaffected by the pleasure the action brings or the suffering it causes. As it were, the great Krishna says to his disciple Arjuna: Whether you stand in the ranks of the Pandava sons or over there in the ranks of the Kuru sons—whatever you do, as a sage you must detach yourself from the Pandava nature or the Kuru nature. If it does not affect you, if you could perform Pandu deeds as if you were a Pandu, or Kuru deeds as if you were a son of Kuru; if you stand above all this, if you are not affected by your own deeds, if you live within your own deeds like the flame that burns there, burning calmly in a place sheltered from the wind, is not affected by anything external, when the soul is so little affected by its own actions, lives inwardly calm beside its actions, then the soul becomes the wise one, then the soul frees itself from its actions, then it does not ask what results these actions may have. For how the actions turn out concerns only our narrowly limited soul. But when we perform these deeds because the course of humanity or the world demands them, then we perform them regardless of whether they lead us to the dreadful or the solemn, to suffering or to pleasure.

[ 27 ] This detachment from our actions, this standing firm—no matter what our hands do, no matter what — to speak from the perspective of the Gita — our sword does, whatever we say with our mouths, this standing firm of the inner self in the face of all that we say with our mouths and do with our hands—that is what the great Krishna instructs his disciple Arjuna to do.

[ 28 ] Thus the great Krishna points out to his disciple Arjuna an ideal of humanity that is expressed as follows: I perform my actions. But whether I perform them or another does—I observe my actions. What happens through my hand, what is spoken through my mouth—I view it as objectively as I would watch a rock break loose and roll down the mountain into the depths. This is how I face my actions. And when I am able to know or recognize this or that, and I form this or that concept of the world—I still stand there as something distinct from these concepts, and I can say: Within me lives something connected to me that recognizes, but I watch as another recognizes. There I become free even from my own cognition. I can become free from my actions; I can become free from my knowledge, from my cognition. A lofty ideal of the human sage is set before us.

[ 29 ] And finally, when I ascend into the spiritual realm: whether demons confront me or holy gods confront me, all of that is something I observe from the outside; I stand there, free from everything that is taking place around me, even in the spiritual worlds. I watch and go my own way, and in that in which I am involved, I am just as much not involved, because I have become a spectator. — That is the teaching of Krishna.

[ 30 ] And once we have heard that Krishna’s teachings are based on Sankhya philosophy, it will become clear to us that in many places Krishna’s teachings reveal that the great Krishna tells his disciple: The soul that lives within you is connected in various ways: connected to the gross physical body, connected to the senses, the manas, ahamkara, and buddhi. But you are distinct from all of that. If you regard all of this as external, as sheaths that surround you, and you are conscious that you are independent of all of this as a soul, then you have grasped something of what Krishna wishes to teach you. And if you are conscious that your relationship to the external world, to the world in general, is given to you through the gunas—through tamas, Rajas, and Sattva, then learn to recognize that in ordinary life, human beings are connected through Sattva to wisdom and goodness; that through Rajas, human beings are connected in ordinary life to passions, emotions, and the thirst for existence; and that through Tamas, human beings are connected in ordinary life to laziness, indolence, and drowsiness.

[ 31 ] Why does a person go through ordinary life filled with enthusiasm for wisdom and goodness? Because they have a connection to the natural foundation indicated by Sattva. Why does a person go through ordinary life with a joy and craving for the external world, taking pleasure in the outward appearances of life? Because they have a relationship with life indicated by Rajas. Why do people go about their ordinary lives feeling sleepy, lazy, and listless? Why do they feel weighed down by their physicality? Why do they not find the means to rouse themselves and overcome physicality in every moment? Because they have a relationship with the world of external forms that is understood in Sankhya philosophy as Tamas.

[ 32 ] But the soul of the wise must be freed from Tamas; its connection to the external world—which manifests as drowsiness, laziness, and indifference—must be severed. When all indifference, drowsiness, and all laziness have departed from the soul, then it has only a relationship of rajas and sattva to the external world. And when a person has eradicated passions and emotions, the thirst for existence, and has preserved enthusiasm for goodness, compassion, and knowledge, then he now has a relationship with the external world that Sankhya philosophy calls Sattva. But if a person has also become free from every inclination toward goodness and knowledge—even though he is a good and wise person— yet is not internally dependent on how they express themselves externally, not even toward their own goodness and knowledge—if goodness is a natural duty to them and wisdom is something that has been poured out upon them—then they have also shed the Sattva relationship. But when he has thus shed the three gunas, then he has detached himself from all relationships to all external forms; then he has triumphed in his soul; then he has grasped something of what the great Krishna wishes to make of him.

[ 33 ] And what does a person come to understand when he strives to become what the great Krishna holds up as an ideal? Does he then come to understand the forms of the external world more clearly? No, he had already understood them before; but he has risen above them. Does he then understand the relationship of the soul to these external forms more precisely? No, he has already understood that before, but he has risen above it. It is not what may confront him in the external world in the diversity of forms, nor his relationship to these forms, that he understands once he has shed the three gunas; for all that belongs to earlier stages. As long as one remains in Tamas, Rajas, and Sattva, one gains relationships to the natural foundation of being, one acquires social connections, one acquires knowledge, one gains the capacity for kindness and compassion. But once one has transcended all of that, one has, of course, shed all these relationships on the preceding stages. What does one then recognize, what then comes into view? One then recognizes, and it then comes into view, that which all of this is not. That which differs from all that one acquires along the way within the gunas—what can that possibly be? It is nothing other than that which one ultimately recognizes as one’s own essence, for everything else that could be the external world has been shed on the preceding stages.

[ 34 ] In light of the considerations just given, what is it? It is Krishna himself. For he himself is the expression of one’s own Supreme. This means: As one works one’s way up to the Supreme, one stands before Krishna—the disciple before the great Teacher, Arjuna before Krishna Himself, who lives in all that is, and who can truly say of Himself: I am not a single mountain; if I am among the mountains at all, I am the most gigantic of them; when I appear on earth, I am not a single human being, but the highest human manifestation, who appears only once in a world-age as the guide of humanity, and so on; the One in all forms—that is I, Krishna.

[ 35 ] Thus the teacher himself, manifesting his true nature, stands before his disciple. But at the same time, the Bhagavad Gita makes it clear that this is something immense, the highest that a human being can attain. Just as Arjuna stands before Krishna, this could happen through gradual initiation: then it would take place in the depths of a yoga training. But it can also be presented as something that flows from the evolution of humanity itself, as something given to humanity, as it were, through grace. This is how it is presented in the Gita. Just as if Arjuna were lifted up by a sudden jolt so that he has Krishna physically before him, so the Gita leads us to a certain point, to the point where Krishna stands before him. Now he does not stand before him as a human being of flesh and blood. A human being seen in this way, like other human beings, would present what is non-essential about Krishna. For what is essential is what is in all human beings. But since the other realms of the world are, as it were, merely the scattered human being, everything that is in the rest of the world is in Krishna. The rest of the world disappears, and Krishna is there as the One. The macrocosm in contrast to the microcosm, the human being as such in contrast to the small, everyday human being—thus does Krishna stand in contrast to the individual human being.

[ 36 ] When this comes upon a person through grace, human comprehension is initially insufficient, because when one looks at Krishna’s essential nature—which is possible only through the highest clairvoyant power—Krishna appears entirely different from anything else a person is accustomed to seeing. As if the human gaze were lifted out of everything else—the gaze upon Krishna in his highest nature—so he appears to us for a moment in the Gita as the great being before whom everything else in the world is small, before whom Arjuna stood. There Arjuna’s composure fails him. He can only gaze, and he can only stammer out what he sees. This is understandable: for he has not learned, with his previous means, to look upon all this and to describe it in words. And the description Arjuna gives at this very moment, when Krishna stands before him, is fitting. For it is one of the greatest depictions ever given to humanity, in both artistic and philosophical terms, how Arjuna, with words he speaks for the first time, which he speaks unaccustomed, which he could never have spoken before because he had never beheld anything like this, how he draws forth from his depths with words what arises within him at the sight of the great Krishna: “I see all the gods in your body, O God; so too the multitudes of all beings: Brahman, the Lord, on his lotus throne, all the Rishis, and the celestial serpent. With many arms, bodies, mouths, and eyes I see you, everywhere, endlessly formed; I see no end, no middle, nor 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 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 Primordial 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—all that I can sense between the earth’s surface and the vastness of the heavens—your power fills all this. With you alone I stand here, and every heavenly realm, where the three worlds dwell, is also within you when your wondrous, awe-inspiring form reveals itself to my gaze. I see how whole hosts of gods approach you, singing your praises, and I stand there in awe, folding my hands. All the seers and all the blessed ones cry out “Hail” before you. They praise you with all their songs of praise. The Rudras, Adityas, Vasus, and Sadhyas, the All-Gods, Ashvins, Maruts, and Manes, the Gandharvas, Yakshas, Asuras, and all the blessed ones praise you. They gaze up at you in wonder: a body so colossal 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. I behold you, the Heaven-shaking, Radiant, Many-armed One, with a mouth that appears like great flaming eyes. There my soul trembles. I find no steadfastness, 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, how it acts, how existence acts, like the end of all time. I behold you in a way I cannot fathom before anything. O be gracious to me, Lord of the gods, the dwelling place of the worlds.” He turns, pointing, to the sons of the Kuru clan: “And these sons of Kuru, together with the hosts of royal heroes, together with Bhishma and Drona, together with our own, the best of warriors—they all lie before you in prayer, marveling at your glory. You, the very beginning of being, I wish to know. I cannot comprehend what appears to me, what is revealed to me.”

[ 37 ] Thus speaks Arjuna when he is alone with that which is his own essence, when this essence appears to him objectively. We stand before a great mystery of the world, mysterious not because of its theoretical content, but because of the overwhelming sensation it is meant to evoke in us when we are able to grasp it correctly. It is mysterious, so mysterious that it must speak to all human sensibilities in a way that nothing else in the world has ever spoken to human sensibilities.

[ 38 ] When Krishna himself speaks into Arjuna’s ear, what Krishna says sounds like this: “I am Time, who destroys the entire world. I have appeared to carry off mankind. And whether you bring them death in battle or not, all the warriors standing there in ranks are doomed to die. Therefore, rise up fearlessly. You shall gain glory by defeating the enemy. Rejoice at the victory that beckons and at the dominion. It is not you who will have 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 the 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, slain by me. Kill them. And what I have done will appear to have been done by you. Do not tremble! You cannot do anything that I have not already done. Fight! They will fall by your sword, those whom I have killed.”

[ 39 ] We know that everything happening over there—the instruction given by Krishna to Arjuna among the Pandava brothers—is recounted as if the charioteer were telling it to Dhritarashtra. A poet does not narrate directly: “Thus spoke Krishna to Arjuna,” but rather the poet relates that Dhritarashtra’s charioteer, Sanjaya, tells this to his blind hero, the king of the Kuru clan. After Sanjaya has told all this, he continues: “And when Arjuna had heard these words of Krishna, folding his hands, trembling, in reverent speech, Arjuna spoke again to Krishna, stammering, bowing deeply in great fear of Krishna: ‘Rightly does the world rejoice in your glory and is devoted to you in awe. The Rakshasas”—these are spirits—“flee in terror in all directions. The holy hosts, all bow down before you. Why should they not bow down before the first Creator, who is more worthy even than Brahma.”

[ 40 ] Truly, we are faced with a cosmic mystery. For what does Arjuna say when he beholds his own essence in the flesh before him? He says that he addresses this very essence, that it appears to him to be higher even than Brahma himself. We are faced with a mystery. For when a person addresses his own being in this way, such a statement must be understood in such a way that none of the feelings, none of the sensations, none of the ideas, and none of the thoughts that can be found in ordinary life are brought into the understanding. For there is nothing that could put a person in greater danger than if he were to apply to these words of Arjuna a feeling such as he might otherwise have in life. If he were to bring any such feeling from everyday life to what he is uttering there, if that were not something quite peculiar, if he did not perceive it as the greatest mystery of the world, then madness and megalomania would be a trifle compared to the illness into which he would fall by applying ordinary sensations to Krishna—that is, to his own higher being. “You, Lord of the gods, you are without end, you are the Eternal One, you are the Supreme, you are both Being and Non-being, you are the highest of the gods, you are the oldest of the spirits, you are the greatest treasure of the entire universe, you are the one who knows, and you are the highest that can be known; you encompass the universe; you contain within yourself every form that can exist; you are wind, you are fire, you are death, you are the eternally surging ocean of worlds, you are the moon, you are the highest of the gods, the Name itself; you are the progenitor of the highest of the gods. Worship must be yours, worship a thousand, a thousand times over. And even more than all this worship is due to you. Worship must be yours from all sides. You are everything a human being can ever be. You are as powerful as only the sum of all powers can be; you perfect all things, and you yourself are at the same time the universe. If, in my impatience, regarding you as my friend, I—Krishna, I—Yadara, I—called you “friend,” ignorant of your wondrous greatness, thoughtlessly and familiarly calling you thus, and if in my weakness I did not honor you properly, if I did not honor you properly in walking or in resting, in the highest divine or in the most mundane, whether you were alone or together with other beings, if in all this I did not honor you properly, then I ask your immeasurability for forgiveness. You, Father of the world, who moves the world, who moves within it, who is the Teacher, who is more than any other teacher, to whom no one is equal, who is superior to all, to whom everything is incomparable in all three worlds—prostrating myself before you, I seek your grace, O Lord, who reveals yourself in all worlds. I behold in you what has never been seen; in awe I must tremble. Show me the form that you are, O God! O be merciful, you Lord of the gods, you source of all worlds.”

[ 41 ] Truly, we are faced with a mystery when one human being speaks thus to another. And once again, Krishna speaks to his disciple: “I have revealed myself to you in mercy. Before you stands my supreme being, conjured before you by my omnipotence, radiant, immeasurable, primordial. As you see me, so has no other ever seen me. As you now see me with the powers that have been given to you through my grace, as you now see me with these powers, so has what is written in the Vedas never revealed me. Thus, no sacrifice has ever reached me, no offering to the gods has ever reached me, no study has ever reached me; thus, no ceremony has ever reached me. No terrible penance can make one see me in my form as I am now, as you now behold me in human form, O great hero. Yet let there be no fear in you, nor confusion at the sight of my dreadful form. Free from fear, full of noble purpose, you shall behold me again, just as I am now revealed to you in my present form.”

[ 42 ] Sanjaya then continues his account to the blind Dhritarashtra: “When Krishna had thus spoken to Arjuna, the Immeasurable One, the Beginningless and Endless One, the One exalted above all powers, vanished; and once again Krishna appeared in his human form, as if to calm the one who was so terrified with his friendly appearance.

[ 43 ] Arjuna said: Now I see you again in your human form; my knowledge and awareness are returning to me, and I am once more the man I used to be.

[ 44 ] And Krishna spoke: "The form that is so difficult to behold, which you have now seen in me, is the form that even the gods long to see without end. The Vedas do not describe this form; it is not attained through penance, nor through almsgiving, nor through sacrifice, nor through any ceremony. Through all these means, I cannot be seen in this form that you have now seen. Only one who knows how to transcend, free from all the Vedas, free from all penance, free from all almsgiving and sacrifices, free from all ceremonies, and who, worshiping me alone, can keep me in mind—only such a one can see me in this form, can recognize me thus, and can also become completely one with me. Whoever acts as I instruct him, whoever honors and loves me, whoever does not regard the world and is loving toward all beings—he comes to me, O my son of the Pandu clan.”

[ 45 ] We stand before a cosmic mystery, of which the Gita tells us that it was proclaimed at a momentous hour in the history of humanity—that momentous hour when the ancient clairvoyance bound to blood ceased, and the human soul had to seek new paths to the infinite, to the imperishable. Thus this mystery is presented to us, so that in this presentation we simultaneously perceive all that can become dangerous to a human being when he has, through inner vision, brought forth his own being from within himself. If we grasp this deepest human and cosmic mystery, which speaks of our own being through true self-knowledge, then we have before us the greatest cosmic enigma. But we may only set it before us if we can revere it in humility. And no capacity of understanding is sufficient to approach the mystery of the world. For this, the right feeling is necessary. No one may approach the mystery of the world, which speaks thus from the Gita, who cannot approach it with reverence. Only then have we fully grasped it, when we can feel it in this way. And how it is to be viewed in the Gita from these starting points at a certain stage of human development, and how, precisely through what it shows us in the Gita, it in turn sheds light on the other way in which it confronts us in the Epistles of Paul—this is what we shall explore in the course of these lectures.