The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad-Gita by Rudolf Steiner.pdf

The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad Gita

By Rudolf Steiner

GA 146

Steiner reveals the results of his spiritual scientific research into the Bhagavad Gita. With

extensive details and insights he shows how the inner path inspired by the lofty Krishna

was balanced and completed by what Christ brought to humanity.

This lecture series was translated from shorthand reports unrevised by the lecturer, from

the German edition published with the title, Die okkidten Grundlagen der Bhagavad Gita

(Vol. 146 in the Bibliographical Survey , 1961).

This translation has been authorized for the western hemisphere by agreement with the

Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland. Translated by George and

Mary Adams, with emendations by Doris M. Bugby.

This e.Text edition is provided with the cooperation of:

The Anthroposophic Press

S e a r c h f o r r e l a t e d t i t l e s a v a i l a b l e f o r

purchase at Amazon.com !

Thanks to an anonymous donation, this lecture series is now available.

Open a new window with the Bhagavad Gita in it!

CONTENTS

! Cover Sheet

Contents

Lecture I of IX

May 28, 1913

Lecture II of IX

May 29, 1913

Lecture III of IX

May 30, 1913

Lecture IV of IX

May 31, 1913

Lecture V of IX

June 01, 1913

Lecture VI of IX

June 02, 1913

Lecture VII of IX

June 03, 1913

Lecture VIII of IX

June 04, 1913

Lecture IX of IX

June 05, 1913

THE OCCULT SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BHAGAVAD GITA

Nine Lectures

RUDOLF STEINER

Helsingfors, May 28"June 5, 1913

ANTHROPOSOPHIC PRESS, INC.

NEW YORK

Translated from shorthand reports unrevised by the lecturer, from the German edition

published with the title, Die okkidten Grundlagen der Bhagavad Gita (Vol. 146 in the

Bibliographical Survey , 1961). Translated by George and Mary Adams with further

emendations by Doris M. Bugby.

by Anthroposophic Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Catalog No. 68-2 6 7 0 3

This translation has been authorized for the western hemisphere by agreement

with the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland.

Printed in the United States of America

The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad Gita

T IS MORE than a year since I was able to speak here about those things that lie so deeply on our hearts, those things that we

believe must enter more and more into human knowledge because, from our time onward, the human soul will feel

increasingly that these things belong to its requirements, to its deepest longings. And it is with great pleasure that I greet

you here in this place for the second time, along with all those who have traveled here in order to show in your midst how their

hearts and souls are dedicated to our sacred work the whole world over.

When I was able to speak to you here last time we let our spiritual gaze journey far into the wide regions of the universe. This

time it will be our task to stay more in the regions of earthly evolution. Our thoughts, however, will penetrate to regions that will

lead us nonetheless to the portals of the eternal manifestation of the spiritual in the world. We shall speak about a subject that

will apparently lead us far away in time and in space from the here and now. It will not on that account lead us less to what lives

in the here and now, but rather to what lives just as much in all times and in all the places of the earth because it will bring us

near to the secrets of the eternal in all existence. It will lead us to the ceaseless search of man for the wells of eternity where he

may drink for the healing and refreshment of something in him which, ever since they gained understanding of it, men have

considered all-powerful in life, namely, love . For wherever we are gathered together we are gathered in the name of the search

for wisdom and the search for love. What we seek is extended out into space and can be observed in the far horizon of the Cosmic

All, but it can also be observed in the wrestling soul of man wherever he may be. It meets us especially when we turn our gaze to

one of those mighty manifestations of the wrestling spirit of man such as are given us in some great work like the one that is to

form the basis of our present studies.

We are going to speak of one of the greatest and most penetrating manifestations of the human spirit " the Bhagavad

Gita , which, ancient as it is, yet in its foundations comes before us with renewed significance at the present time. A short time

ago the peoples of Europe and those of the West generally, knew little of the Bhagavad Gita . Only during the last century has

the fame of this wonderful poem extended to the West. Only lately have Western peoples become familiar with this marvelous

song. But these lectures of ours will show that a real and deep knowledge of this poem, as against mere familiarity with it, can

only come when its occult foundations are more and more revealed. For what meets us in the Bhagavad Gita sprang from an

age of which we have often spoken in connection with our anthroposophical studies. The mighty sentiments, feelings and ideas it

contains had their origin in an age that was still illumined by what was communicated through the old human clairvoyance. One

who tries to feel what this poem breathes forth page by page as it speaks to us, will experence, page by page, something like a

breath of the ancient clairvoyance humanity possessed.

The Western world's first acquaintance with this poem came in an age in which there was little understanding for the original

clairvoyant sources from which it sprang. Nevertheless, this lofty song of the Divine struck like a wonderful flash of lightning into

the Western world, so that a man of Central Europe, when he first became acquainted with this Eastern song, said that he must

frankly consider himself happy to have lived in a time when he could become acquainted with the wondrous things expressed in

it. This man was not one who was unacquainted with the spiritual life of humanity through the centuries, indeed through

thousands of years. He was one who looked deeply into spiritual life " Wilhelm von Humboldt, the brother of the celebrated

astronomer. Other members of Western civilization, men of widely different tongues, have felt the same. What a wonderful

feeling it produces in us when we let this Bhagavad Gita work upon us, even in its opening verses!

It seems that in our circle, my dear friends, perhaps particularly in our circle, we often have to begin by working our way

through to a fully unprejudiced position. For in spite of the fact that the Bhagavad Gita has been known for so short a time in

the West, yet its holiness has so taken our hearts by storm, so to say, that we are inclined to approach it from the start with this

feeling of holiness without making it clear to ourselves what the starting-point of the poem really is. Let us for once place this

before us quite dispassionately, perhaps even a little grotesquely.

A poem is here before us that from the very first sets us in the midst of a wild and stormy battle. We are introduced to a

scene of action that is hardly less wild than that into which Homer straightway places us in the Iliad . We go further and are

confronted in this scene with something which Arjuna " one of the foremost, perhaps the foremost of the personalities in the

Song " feels from the start to be a fratricidal conflict. He comes before us as one who is horror-stricken by the battle, for he sees

there among the enemy his own blood relations. His bow falls from his grasp when it becomes clear to him that he is to enter a

murderous strife with men who are descended from the same ancestors as himself, men in whose veins flows the same blood as

his own. We almost begin to sympathize with him when he drops his bow and recoils before the awful battle between brothers.

Then before our gaze arises Krishna, the great spiritual teacher of Arjuna, and a wonderful, sublime teaching is brought

before us in vivid colors in such a way that it appears as a teaching given to his pupil. But to what is all this leading? That is the

question we must first of all set before us, because it is not enough just to give ourselves up to the holy teaching in the words of

Krishna to Arjuna. The circumstances of its giving must also be studied. We must visualize the situation in which Krishna exhorts

Arjuna not to quail before this battle with his brothers but take up his bow and hurl himself with all his might into the

devastating conflict. Krishna's teachings emerge amid the battle like a cloud of spiritual light that at first is incomprehensible, and

they require Arjuna not to recoil but to stand firm and do his duty in it. When we bring this picture before our eyes it is almost as

though the teaching becomes transformed by its setting. Then again this setting leads us further into the, whole weaving of the

Song of the Mahabharata , the mighty song of which the Bhagavad Gita is only a part.

The teaching of Krishna leads us out into the storms of everyday life, into the wild confusion of human battles, errors and

earthly strife. His teaching appears almost like a justification of these human conflicts. If we bring this picture before us quite

dispassionately, perhaps the Bhagavad Gita will suggest to us altogether different questions from those that arise when "

imagining we can understand them " we alight upon something similar to what we are accustomed to find in ordinary works of

literature. So it is perhaps necessary to point first to this setting of the Gita in order to realize its world-historic significance, and

then be able to see how it can be of increasing and special significance in our own time.

I have already said that this majestic song came into the Western world as something completely new, and almost equally

new were the feelings, perceptions and thoughts that lie behind it. For what did Western civilization really know of Eastern

culture before it became acquainted with the Bhagavad Gita ? Apart from various things that have only become known in this

last century, very little indeed! If we accept certain movements that remained secret, Western civilization has had no direct

knowledge of what is actually the central nerve impulse of the whole of this great poem. When we approach such a thing we feel

how little human language, philosophy, ideas, serving for everyday life, are sufficient for it; how little they suffice for describing

such heights of the spiritual life of man upon earth. We need something quite different from ordinary descriptions to give

expression to what shines out to us from such a revelation of the spirit of man.

I should like first to place two pictures before you so you may have a foundation for further descriptions. The one is taken

from the book itself, the other from the spiritual life of the West. This can be comparatively easily understood, whereas the one

from the book appears for the moment quite remote. Beginning then with the latter, we are told how, in the midst of the battle,

Krishna appears and unveils before Arjuna cosmic secrets, great immense teachings. Then his pupil is overcome by the strong

desire to see the form, the spiritual form of this soul, to have knowledge of him who is speaking such sublime things. He begs

Krishna to show himself to him in such manner as he can in his true spirit form. Then Krishna appears to him (later we shall

return to this description) in his form " a form that embraces all things, a great, sublime, glorious beauty, a nobility that reveals

cosmic mysteries. We shall see there is little in the world to approach the glory of this description of how the sublime spirit form

of the teacher is revealed to the clairvoyant eye of his pupil.

Before Arjuna's gaze lies the wild battlefield where much blood will have to flow and where the fratricidal struggle is to

develop. The soul of Krishna's disciple is to be wafted away from this battlefield of devastation. It is to perceive and plunge into a

world where Krishna lives in his true form. That is a world of holiest blessedness, withdrawn from all strife and conflict, a world

where the secrets of existence are unveiled, far removed from everyday affairs. Yet to that world man's soul belongs in its most

inward, most essential being. The soul is now to have knowledge of it. Then it will have the possibility of descending again and re-

entering the confused and devastating battles of this our world. In truth, as we follow the description of this picture we may ask

ourselves what is really taking place in Arjuna's soul? It is as though the raging battle in which it stands were forced upon it

because this soul feels itself related to a heavenly world in which there is no human suffering, no battle, no death. It longs to rise

into a world of the eternal, but with the inevitable force that can come only from the impulse of so sublime a being as Krishna,

this soul must be forced downward into the chaotic confusion of the battle. Arjuna would gladly turn away from all this chaos, for

the life of earth around him appears as something strange and far away, altogether unrelated to his soul. We can distinctly feel

this soul is still one of those who long for the higher worlds, who would live with the Gods, and who feel human life as something

foreign and incomprehensible to them. In truth a wondrous picture, containing things of sublime import!

A hero, Arjuna, surrounded by other heroes and by the warrior hosts " a hero who feels all that is spread before him as

unfamiliar and remote " and a God, Krishna, who is needed to direct him to this world. He does not understand this world until

Krishna makes it comprehensible to him. It may sound paradoxical, but I know that those who can enter into the matter more

deeply will understand me when I say that Arjuna stands there like a human soul to whom the earthly side of the world has first

to be made comprehensible.

Now this Bhagavad Gita comes to men of the West who undoubtedly have an understanding for earthly things! It comes

to men who have attained such a high degree of materialistic civilization that they have a very good understanding for all that is

earthly. It has to be understood by souls who are separated by a deep gulf from all that a genuine observation shows Arjuna's

soul to be. All that to which Arjuna shows no inclination, needing Krishna to tame him down to earthly things, seems to the

Westerner quite intelligible and obvious. The difficulty for him lies rather in being able to lift himself up to Arjuna, to whom has

to be imparted an understanding of what is well understood in the West, the sense matters of earthly life. A God, Krishna, must

make our civilization and culture intelligible to Arjuna. How easy it is in our time for a person to understand what surrounds him!

He needs no Krishna. It is well for once to see clearly the mighty gulfs that can lie between different human natures, and not to

think it too easy for a Western soul to understand a nature like that of Krishna or Arjuna. Arjuna is a man, but utterly different

from those who have slowly and gradually evolved in Western civilization.

That is one picture I wanted to bring you, for words cannot lead us more than a very little way into these things. Pictures that

we can grasp with our souls can do better because they speak not only to understanding but to that in us which on earth will

always be deeper than our understanding " to our power of perception and to our feeling. Now I would like to place another

picture before you, one not less sublime than that from the Bhagavad Gita but that stands infinitely nearer to Western

culture. Here in the West we have a beautiful, poetic picture that Western man knows and that means much for him. But first let

us ask, to what extent does Western mankind really believe that this being of Krishna once appeared before Arjuna and spoke

those words? We are now at the starting-point of a concept of the world that will lead us on until this is no mere matter of belief,

but of knowledge. We are however only at the beginning of this anthroposophical concept of the world that will lead us to

knowledge. The second picture is much nearer to us. It contains something to which Western civilization can respond.

We look back some five centuries before the founding of Christianity to a soul whom one of the greatest spirits of Western

lands made the central figure of all his thought and writing. We look back to Socrates. We look to him in the spirit in the hour of

his death, even as Plato describes him in the circle of his disciples in the famous discourse on the immortality of the soul. In this

picture there are but slight indications of the beyond, represented in the #daimon$ who speaks to Socrates.

Now let him stand before us in the hours that preceded his entrance into the spiritual worlds. There he is, surrounded by his

disciples, and in the face of death he speaks to them of the immortality of the soul. Many people read this wonderful discourse

that Plato has given us in order to describe the scene of his dying teacher. But people in these days read only words, only

concepts and ideas. There are even those " I do not mean to censure them " in whom this wonderful scene of Plato arouses

questions as to the logical justification of what the dying Socrates sets forth to his disciples. They cannot feel there is something

more for the human soul, that something more important lives there, of far greater significance than logical proofs and scientific

arguments. Let us imagine all that Socrates says on immortality to be spoken by a man of great culture, depth and refinement, in

the circle of his pupils, but in a different situation from that of Socrates, under different circumstances. Even if the words of this

man were a hundred times more logically sound than those of Socrates, in spite of all they will perhaps have a hundred times less

value. This will only be fully grasped when people begin to understand that there is something for the human soul of more value,

even if less plausible, than the most strictly correct logical demonstrations. If any highly educated and cultured man speaks to his

pupils on the immortality of the soul, it can indeed have significance. But its significance is not revealed in what he says " I know

I am now saying something paradoxical but it is true " its significance depends also on the fact that the teacher, having spoken

these words to his pupils, passes on to look after the ordinary affairs of life, and his pupils do the same. But Socrates speaks in the

hour that immediately precedes his passage through the gates of death. He gives out his teaching in a moment when in the next

instant his soul is to be severed from his bodily form.

It is one thing to speak about immortality to the pupils he is leaving behind in the hour of his own death " which does not

meet him unexpectedly but as an event predetermined by destiny " and another thing to return after such a discourse to the

ordinary business of living. It is not the words of Socrates that should work on us as much as the situation under which he speaks

them. Let us take all the power of this scene, all that we receive from Socrates' conversation with his pupils on immortality, the

full immediate force of this picture. What do we have before us? It is the world of everyday life in Greek times; the world whose

conflicts and struggles led to the result that the best of the country's sons was condemned to drink the hemlock. This noble

Greek spoke these last words with the sole intention of bringing the souls of the men around him to believe in what they could no

longer have knowledge; believe in what was for them #a beyond,$ a spiritual world. That it needs a Socrates to lead the earthly

souls until they gain an outlook into the spiritual worlds, that it needs him to do this by means of the strongest proofs, that is, by

his deed , is something that is indeed comprehensible to Western souls. They can gain an understanding for the Socratic culture.

We only grasp Western civilization in a right sense when we recognize that in this respect it has been a Socratic civilization

throughout the centuries.

Now let us think of one of the pupils of Socrates who could certainly have no doubt of the reality of all that surrounded him,

being a Greek, and compare him with Krishna's disciple Arjuna. Think how the Greek has to be introduced to the supersensible

world, and then think of Arjuna who can have no doubt whatever about it but becomes confused instead with the sense-world,

almost doubting the possibility of its existence. I know that history, philosophy and other branches of knowledge may say with

apparently good reason, #Yes, but if you will only look at what is written in the Bhagavad Gita , and in Plato's works, it is just

as easy to prove the opposite of what you have just said.$ I know too that those who speak like this do not want to feel the deeper

impulses, the mighty impulses that arise on the one hand from that picture out of the Bhagavad Gita , and on the other from

that of the dying Socrates as described by Plato. A deep gulf yawns between these two worlds In spite of all the similarity that

can be discovered. This is because the Bhagavad Gita marks the end of the age of the ancient clairvoyance. There we can

catch the last echo of it; while in the dying Socrates we meet one of the first of those who through thousands of years have

wrestled with another kind of human knowledge, with those ideas, thoughts and feelings that, so to say, were thrown off by the

old clairvoyance and have continued to evolve in the intervening time, because they have to prepare the way for a new

clairvoyance. Today we are striving toward this new clairvoyance by giving out and receiving what we call the anthroposophical

conception of the world. From a certain aspect we may say that no gulf is deeper than the one that opens between Arjuna and a

disciple of Socrates.

Now we are living in a time when the souls of men, having gone through manifold transformations and incarnations in the

search for life in external knowledge, are now once more seeking to make connection with the spiritual worlds. The fact that you

are sitting here is most living proof that your own souls are seeking this reunion. You are seeking the connection that will lead

you up in a new way to those worlds so wondrously revealed to us in the words of Krishna to his disciple Arjuna. So there is much

in the occult wisdom on which the Bhagavad Gita is founded that resounds to us as something responding to our deepest

longings. In ancient times the soul was well aware of the bond that unites it with the spiritual. It was at home in the

supersensible. We now are at the beginning of an age wherein men's souls will once more seek access in a new way to the spiritual

worlds. We must feel ourselves stimulated to this search when we think of how we once had this access that it once was there for

man. Indeed, we shall find it to an unusual degree in the revelations of the holy song of the East.

As is generally the case with the great works of man, we find the opening words of the Bhagavad Gita full of meaning. (Are

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: