There are in fact really only two possibilities for the future

 

Rudolf Steiner:  "There are in fact really only two possibilities for the future. One is that things will turn out to be in harmony with the evolution planned by the gods for humanity. And the other is the opposite."

Source: September 22, 1924. GA 346

Cosmic New Year

 

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland, December 31, 1921

Automated Translation

I think that on a day marking the turn of the year, it is appropriate to speak about a turning point in the developmental history of humanity. Today, I will speak about the transformation of human knowledge in general in the time between the oldest period that humanity can look back on historically and our time. In the most ancient times, people were well aware that knowledge of the actual deeper essence of man can only be attained when hidden powers of knowledge in man are brought to the surface. People have always spoken of the fact that outer experience of the world can only bring the outer aspects of the human being to realization. Within the special processes of the mysteries, those people who sought such were offered the opportunity to attain such higher knowledge about the actual human being through powers otherwise hidden in the depths of the human being. It was perfectly clear, especially in those times when a certain instinctive primeval wisdom prevailed, that man's true nature is different from that which can be found within the sphere experienced by man in ordinary everyday life. Therefore, one has always spoken of an initiation or an initiation through which the deeper secrets of life, with which the human being is connected, can only become accessible to man.

Today, too, anthroposophical spiritual science shows that one must speak of such an initiation or initiation. But one can say: Today's human consciousness, which has been formed under very specific, strongly egoistic conditions, resists the fact that real human and world knowledge can only be found through such special preparations and developments within the human soul. Modern man wants to decide the highest questions of existence without applying such developmental principles, through what is given to him in ordinary life. And when he gets the feeling that he cannot decide such highest questions of existence with the ordinary powers of knowledge, then he asserts that human cognitive ability is limited in general, and that it would be absurd to go beyond the ordinary human limits of knowledge. There is also the prejudice against the principle of initiation or initiation that one says: Does what is to be said from the science of initiation have any value for those who cannot yet achieve such initiation in their present incarnation? How can such people be convinced of the truth of what comes from a specially prepared knowledge?

But this is not the case. And this last objection is as unjustified as possible. For how does that which approaches man through the science of initiation or initiation actually behave?

Imagine that the human being first goes into a dark room. He distinguishes, walking around, the objects by their forms through his feeling. Now suppose that this room is suddenly illuminated by a lamp, which is placed somewhere so that it is not noticeable in the room itself. All objects will appear different to the ordinary faculties of the person who has previously walked around in the dark room, touching everything, and thus gaining an insight into the forms of the objects in the dark room. All objects are now, under the influence of the light, without anything having been added, without anything now being inaccessible to the person standing in the illuminated room, different, will reveal their essence and at the same time the essence of light. When the science of initiation approaches man, he needs nothing more than to accept in a critical spirit what this science gives, and to consider it in such a way that he allows the science to throw light on what he knows, on the world that is accessible to him. This initiatory science does not want to bring anything other than what this world already is. But just as one cannot recognize what is in a dark room in the darkness, but can immediately recognize it in the light, so what is spread around man for the ordinary consciousness cannot reveal its own nature if it is not illuminated by what comes from the science of initiation. Man himself stands before man in the ordinary world. Man carries an immortal soul within him, just as the picture hanging on the wall in the dark room perhaps represents something that cannot be seen in the dark room. If the room is illuminated, it can be seen immediately. The initiate does not add the immortal soul to the human being; when the human being is illuminated by the science of initiation, it becomes visible to everyone. And only a prejudiced science can deny that the world in which man is continually in the earth-consciousness between birth and death, that this world itself, which can be reached by the ordinary healthy human understanding, verifies everything that the science of initiation says.

But the Science of Initiation itself has undergone a transformation. It was different in the early days of humanity, and now it appears before man in a transformed form. Between these two periods, however, there is a world development for man that begins around the 15th century, which is now coming to an end, and which, in relation to the spiritual light that the science of initiation seeks to be, was dark, was gloomy, but whose darkness is also deeply rooted in the nature of the whole evolution of the earth and of mankind. When we look back into ancient times, of which traditions still survived into the post-Christian era, but which also faded away in the 15th century, having become incomprehensible in this period, when we look back back into ancient times, we find that when man looked out into the world with his instinctive powers of knowledge, he saw not only what can be seen today by man with his senses and with his mind. Man saw spiritual things everywhere in the things of sense, and not abstract spiritual things, he saw concrete spiritual things, he saw real spiritual beings. Even in ancient Greece, man saw such concrete spiritual entities. And one can follow it right up to the transformation of sensory perception itself, how it was that man could see such spiritual entities. Today one thinks that the tapestry of the senses that spreads out before us has always been as it is today. But external science can show man that this is not the case.

The Greeks, for example, did not see the blue sky as blue as we see it today. They had no concept of the blueness of the sky. For them, it was shaded. Instead, they saw the so-called bright colors even more vividly, even more brightly, than we see them. This can already be gathered from literature. But for a sensory perception, for which it is so, the spiritual is spread out directly over the sensory carpet itself. First, I would like to say, the blue coloration of the world, the blue tinge, makes the outer spiritual recede. And at the same time that the instinctive consciousness of people outside perceived something elementary everywhere, man also perceived something elementary in his inner soul.

Today we speak of conscience, which tells us this or that. The Greeks spoke of the Furies. It was only in a particularly blatant case that the Greeks became aware that something like spiritual elemental powers approached them as something objective. But in ancient times, everything that we today assume simply comes from the human being was felt to be caused by an alien spiritual power approaching man. What is quite normal in one period of human development may not occur in the same way in another period. If a person today became aware of the moral voice in the same way as it was in the older days of Greek development, in the time when Aeschylus was still writing poetry, it would mean a mental illness today, and one would say, perhaps with an expression that is no longer felt to be quite right today: This person is possessed by an alien power. In ancient Greece, this kind of possession was quite normal. Today, we must feel that what was then perceived as coming from an alien power comes from within ourselves, from our conscience.

When the person who, from his instinctive consciousness, had the intuition that spiritual-elemental beings were at work in the outer world, and who also had the intuition that spiritual-elemental beings were at work within him, was accepted as a disciple in the mysteries, then these elemental spiritual beings were, as it were, illuminated by higher spiritual beings through a new insight. With instinctive awareness, one perceived nature spirits and certain demonic powers at work in human nature. Through initiation, one descended deeper into nature, one descended deeper into one's own human being. And the particularly significant, the highly important thing about someone who underwent the first stage of initiation in ancient times was that it was precisely through initiation that he ceased to perceive the elemental spirits within external nature and the demonic within his own being. We can say that what is ordinary for us today, what we carry around with us as our natural view of the outer and inner world, was something that the ancient mystery school student first had to acquire. This is how humanity advances: certain things that are natural later had to be acquired in earlier times through the science of initiation. And then, when through initiation man had come to an outlook on nature and man, which at that time was only there for the mystery school student, then in his own way he penetrated to the spiritual beings that direct both the inner being of man and the nature of outer nature. That is why the older principle of initiation was expressed in such a way that one said: one ascended from the ordinary view of life to the elements of earth, water, fire, air. In the ordinary view, one actually had elemental-air-spiritual, elemental-fire-spiritual, elemental-water-spiritual, elemental-earth-spiritual. Earth, water, fire and air were only perceived in their pure form through the first step of the science of initiation.

What is essential now is that in the progress of humanity, what we can call the soulless nature today, what we can call, if I may use the expression, the human being who is transparent to introspection, has taken the place of this vision of spiritual-soul elemental beings in the external world and also within the human being. When we look within today, we see only reminiscences of the outer world in the form of memory images. Everything else remains as invisible to man as a completely transparent body remains invisible. When the ancient man looked within, it was not so spiritually transparent to him. He saw spiritual and soul entities within himself.

If it had remained so, man would never have been able to gain full consciousness of freedom. For it is only since the old instinctive view of the spirit began to recede that full consciousness of freedom has begun to penetrate the sum of human spiritual and soul forces. Necessity rules in the world of the spirits. There is the activity of the spiritual beings, and that which arises from the activity of these spiritual beings determines the course of events. When one is in this world of spiritual beings, one's soul is interwoven in a realm of necessity. One only has the longing to explore the intentions and thoughts of the spiritual beings in whose realm one is interwoven, and to carry out that which is in line with the intentions and impulses of these spiritual beings. One has no intention of realizing one's own impulses. There is no cause for freedom at all. Only when one encounters inanimate nature, when one does not find the traces of spiritual entities in nature, then one comes to a realization about the outside world that no longer contains any reality, that only contains thought images. And thought images is everything that has been handed down to us since the 15th century by newer knowledge.

And just as mirror images have no compelling power over us, just as, for example, the mirror image of a person standing behind me, whom I then do not see, cannot get me into a fight, so too can thoughts show no real activity, no real forces. The thoughts that we carry within us – and humanity has only just begun to grasp such pure image-thoughts, which are reality-free, in the course of its development, and only from the 15th century onwards – these thought-images cannot therefore exert any compulsion or determination on a person. Even though they permeate human knowledge, people are not obliged to act in accordance with them. Just as a mirror image cannot offend me, so a thought cannot determine me. But just as I can determine myself through the sight of a mirror image, so too can pure mental images determine me. Therefore, thinking, which only since the 15th century has become a good of humanity, is the basis for the human experience of freedom. This is what I wanted to discuss in my “Philosophy of Freedom” in the early 1990s: that thinking is the basis of freedom. And spiritual science shows the position of this pure thinking in the overall development, in the overall being of the human being, how this pure thinking has entered into the historical becoming of humanity. This impulse of freedom entered humanity for the first time in the mid-15th century. It is here now. It had to be won through the contemplation of a soulless nature, of a human inwardness that is free of spirit. It had to be won at a time when the supersensible worlds were spoken of only in the traditional religious creeds and in the traditional philosophical world views, which no longer offered anything that could be directly experienced. If man had remained longer in this view of dead nature, of the spirit-free human self, he would have had to lose his connection with his own origin.

The time has been fulfilled and the days must come when people will again turn their attention to their spiritual and soul origin, that is to say that they will again become aware that in the world in which they find themselves there is not only soulless nature, and that man not only participates in soulless nature, but that man lives in a world that is filled with concrete spiritual beings. With the attained consciousness of freedom, man can again immerse himself in the world of necessity. For he will then be precisely the being within this world that is called to freedom, having once gone through the state in his physical embodiments in which he was left to himself with his physical body. But we can go back to exploring the divine origin of the voice of conscience after we have learned the sense of responsibility under the influence of the consciousness of freedom through that time when conscience appeared to man only as an inner voice, that is, in the image. The development of humanity was not intended, as many a haughty modern mind believes, for people to remain in a state of childlike comprehension of the external world for the longest time, and now they have finally come so far that all the knowledge that exists, even with its limitations, must remain as it is. No, it is not like that. The person who looks into the development of mankind with an unbiased mind finds that this development of mankind has progressed from stage to stage, that the kind of knowledge we have at present also represents a stage, and that in the future, man will face nature differently than he does today.

Just as we look back today to Thales, and if we are arrogant, say: Thales childishly sought the origin of everything in water; we know better today - and some people believe, precisely in this arrogance, that we know today from our results in the chemical laboratory, as one always must— if one stands on this haughty point of view, then one could actually be aware that one day people in future centuries, if they have the same attitudes, would look back on us and say: What childish ideas did these people of the 20th century still have from their laboratories, from their physics cabinets! But it is not so. These ideas, which seem so childish to today's arrogant man, and which he believes he has at most to take into account historically, represent important developmental impulses that humanity had to go through just as it had to go through the developmental impulse of today. And just as humanity has progressed beyond Thales, it will progress beyond Lavoisier, it will progress beyond Newton, it will progress beyond what is regarded as authoritative today, even beyond Einstein. The world must be thought of as a flowing entity in its spiritual and soul aspects as well, and the human being must be thought of as existing within this living river.

But it remains the case that in the outer world we do not find that which leads man to his own origin, but that at all times the awakening of hidden forces in man is necessary in order to find the way to the world of man's origin. If we simply look out into the external world with our ordinary consciousness and faculties, we do not automatically find elemental beings, and by looking into our own inner being, we do not automatically find demonic beings. Outside we find the laws of nature, and within we find something like conscience and the like. But if we really develop that which we can develop in our ability to comprehend and think in relation to the outside world, if we bring our thinking power to the point where it seems alive, as otherwise only sensory perceptions seem alive, then we find the possibility of perceiving spiritual essence in external nature again.

What was present in a kind of ancient, instinctive consciousness, which we can no longer use, becomes visible to us again, supersensibly visible, as we condense our thinking. With our thinking, which has become thin and pictorial, we no longer penetrate to the spirit of nature. But when we concentrate our thinking, when we make it strong, as the senses are otherwise, then we penetrate through the outer sensory carpet to what underlies the outer world as spirituality, and we go beyond the limits of knowledge rightly assumed for ordinary consciousness. And we must carry self-education so far that we learn, as it were, to look at ourselves in our will impulses as we look at another person. And if we not only learn to look at ourselves, but if we can shape will impulses out of consciousness in the way that these will impulses are otherwise only passively shaped in life, if we, in other words, not only out of an inner necessity, but out of insight into the world, which condenses into love , to love for this or that impulse, which is not only given to us by our freedom, but by the world order, the wisdom-filled world order, when we make ourselves the executors of the impulses necessary in the world for the orientation of the world. We attain a loving devotion to purely spiritual impulses. And when this has received the necessary training, then we also find the spiritual within, then we find harmony between the spiritual in outer nature and the spiritual within. For wherever the search for the spirit has been pursued far enough, the same results have been found. When the initiates of the ancient mysteries sought outwards and, as they said, found the upper gods, they then turned their gaze back into the human interior and there they found, as they said, the lower gods. But finally they arrived at a stage of development where the world of the upper gods and the world of the lower gods were one, where the above became the below and the below became the above, where it no longer mattered to them, since they only came from the spatial.

This is also the case for the newer initiation, for the newer initiation. We penetrate into the spiritual and soul life of nature. It is not a world of atoms with their pushing that reveals itself to us, but the spiritual powers of spiritual beings behind sense perception reveal themselves to us, and with introspection, beyond the limits of memory, the spiritual and soul beings within the human being reveal themselves to us. But the two worlds, the outer world of spirituality and the inner world of spirituality, ultimately flow into one another. We can already look pictorially at this one spiritual world. Take a person with his ordinary consciousness. He looks out into the outer nature. He perceives color, light, and directs the other senses out into the outer nature. He perceives sounds, differences in warmth, and other sensory qualities in external nature. He then looks at his own body. He perceives his own body in its sensory qualities. He looks at nature; it reveals itself to him in sensory qualities. He looks at his own body; it reveals itself in sense qualities. If the human being begins to set his will in motion, he walks through the world, then he becomes aware that this willpower influences the movements of his eye, that the same thing that guides the movements of his legs already flows into the being of his eye for sense perception. When a person immerses himself deeply enough in the sensory world, he becomes aware of the same thing that he relates to the external world through the expressions of his will. The world of the senses already flows together into a unified world for him. This unified confluence of the sensory world is superficial, but it is nevertheless a reflection of the confluence of the world of external spirituality and internal spirituality. By discovering these two worlds, which are one world, man becomes aware again of his spiritual and soul origin. And so today we stand as if at the end of an old era, which shows us for earlier epochs a looking into spiritual worlds by humanity, a looking in which man looks outwards into nature, a looking in when man looks within himself. Then came a period of time when it became dark, when the greatest triumphs were celebrated in the realm of darkness without the science of initiation.

But the world year is complete, the world's New Year has arrived. A new world year must begin. We could say that at Christmas, we would also like to feel such a symbolic festival, as it approaches us at this moment, in the same way, we would like to feel symbolized by such a festival, the turn of an era, which we must already feel today as a world turning point. Times have become serious, so serious that today we must look up from the narrowly limited events within the horizon, which today the majority of humanity would like to recognize as the only legitimate one, to the world at large, and also to the world of human soul and spiritual experience. But there we experience a world turning point. When we become aware of this world turning point, we realize that a world new year of the spirit must begin for humanity. If we learn to recognize such a turning point, then we alone can experience true humanity in our present epoch. For true humanity is only felt when the human being, who goes through repeated lives on earth, finds the possibility in each individual life on earth not only to feel generally as a human being, but as a human being with specific tasks in the specific period of time in which one of his lives on earth falls.

A person can only live with eternity if they find the possibility to live in the right way in time. For the eternal should not only reveal itself to a person in time, but through time a person should be able to experience the eternal. The eternal reigns in timeless duration, and also reigns in timeless duration through the human being. But its pulsation is the events of the individual epochs, as they strike into human experience. Only by experiencing these pulsations and uniting them into a comprehensive rhythm do we experience the eternal through time. Duration belongs to our true human nature. We can only experience duration if we lovingly and with strength allow the individual pulsations of the eternal world-being to become our own experience.

This is what I wanted to place on your hearts, on your souls today at the turn of the year. May the coming time bring us all the opportunity to apply in this sense, in the smallest and, if we are granted it, also in the larger, those impulses in our thinking, feeling and willing, of which we can become capable in our inner being.

Source: December 31, 1921

"Less is more" —Lessing

 

If God held truth in one hand and the striving after truth in the other, I would choose striving after truth. —Lessing

Continued:

My dharma is penance

From Nature to Subnature: What the world needs now is Anthroposophy. Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts #183, #184, #185

 

Rudolf Steiner:  "The whole of the period since the middle of the nineteenth century has been a period of stupefaction through the impressions received by the senses. It is the great illusion of this age that the over-powerful life of the senses has been considered to be the right one — that life of the senses whose aim was to obliterate completely the life in the Cosmos beyond the Earth."

Rudolf Steiner:  The Age of Philosophy is often said to have been superseded, about the middle of the nineteenth century, by the rising Age of Natural Science. And it is said that the Age of Natural Science still continues in our day, although many people are at pains to emphasize at the same time that we have found our way once more to certain philosophic tendencies. All this is true of the paths of knowledge which the modern age has taken, but not of its paths of life. With his conceptions and ideas, man still lives in Nature, even if he carries the mechanical habit of thought into his Nature-theories. But with his life of Will he lives in the mechanical processes of technical science and industry to so far-reaching an extent that it has long imbued this Age of Science with an entirely new quality. To understand human life we must consider it to begin with from two distinct aspects. From his former lives on Earth, man brings with him the faculty to conceive the Cosmic — the Cosmic that works inward from the Earth's encircling spheres, and that which works within the Earth domain itself. Through his senses he perceives the Cosmic that is at work upon the Earth; through his thinking organization he conceives and thinks the Cosmic influences that work downward to the Earth from the encircling spheres. Thus man lives, through his physical body in Perception, through his etheric body in Thought. That which takes place in his astral body and his ego holds sway in the more hidden regions of the soul. It holds sway, for example, in his destiny. We must, however, look for it, to begin with, not in the complicated relationships of destiny, but in the simple and elementary processes of life. Man connects himself with certain earthly forces, in that he gives his body its right orientation within them. He learns to stand and walk upright; he learns to place himself with arms and hands into the equilibrium of earthly forces. Now, these are not forces working inward from the Cosmos. They are forces of a purely earthly nature. In reality, nothing that man experiences is an abstraction. He only fails to perceive whence it is that an experience comes to him; and thus he turns ideas about realities into abstractions. He speaks of the laws of mechanics. He thinks he has abstracted them from the connections and relationships of Nature. But this is not the case. All that man experiences in his soul by way of purely mechanical laws has been discovered inwardly through his relationship of orientation to the earthly world (in standing, walking, etc.). The Mechanical is thus characterized as that which is of a purely earthly nature. For the laws and processes of Nature as they hold sway in color, sound, etc., have entered into the earthly realm from the Cosmos. It is only within the earthly realm that they too become imbued with the mechanical element, just as is the case with man himself, who does not confront the mechanical in his conscious experience until he comes within the earthly realm. By far the greater part of that which works in modern civilization through technical Science and Industry — wherein the life of man is so intensely interwoven — is not Nature at all, but Subnature. It is a world which emancipates itself from Nature — emancipates itself in a downward direction. Look how the Oriental, when he strives towards the Spirit, seeks to get out of the conditions of equilibrium whose origin is merely in the earthly realm. He assumes an attitude of meditation which brings him again into the purely Cosmic balance. In this attitude the Earth no longer influences the inner orientation of his body. (I am not recommending this for imitation; it is mentioned merely to make our present subject clear. Anyone familiar with my writings will know how different is the Eastern from the Western spiritual life in this direction.) Man needed this relation to the purely earthly for the unfolding of his Spiritual Soul. Thus in the most recent times there has arisen a strong tendency to realize in all things, and even in the life of action, this element into which man must enter for his evolution. Entering the purely earthly element, he strikes upon the Ahrimanic realm. With his own being he must now acquire a right relation to the Ahrimanic. But in the age of Technical Science hitherto, the possibility of finding a true relationship to the Ahrimanic civilization has escaped man. He must find the strength, the inner force of knowledge, in order not to be overcome by Ahriman in this technical civilization. He must understand Subnature for what it really is. This he can only do if he rises, in spiritual knowledge, at least as far into extra-earthly Supernature as he has descended, in technical Sciences, into Subnature. The age requires a knowledge transcending Nature, because in its inner life it must come to grips with a life-content which has sunk far beneath Nature — a life-content whose influence is perilous. Needless to say, there can be no question here of advocating a return to earlier states of civilization. The point is that man shall find the way to bring the conditions of modern civilization into their true relationship — to himself and to the Cosmos. There are very few as yet who even feel the greatness of the spiritual tasks approaching man in this direction. Electricity, for instance, celebrated since its discovery as the very soul of Nature's existence, must be recognized in its true character — in its peculiar power of leading down from Nature to Subnature. Only, man himself must beware lest he slide downward with it. In the age when there was not yet a technical industry independent of true Nature, man found the Spirit within his view of Nature. But the technical processes, emancipating themselves from Nature, caused him to stare more and more fixedly at the mechanical-material, which now became for him the really scientific realm. In this mechanical-material domain, all the Divine-Spiritual Being connected with the origin of human evolution is completely absent. The purely Ahrimanic dominates this sphere. In the Science of the Spirit, we now create another sphere in which there is no Ahrimanic element. It is just by receiving in knowledge this spirituality, to which the Ahrimanic powers have no access, that man is strengthened to confront Ahriman within the world. (March, 1925) Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (with reference to the foregoing study: From Nature to Sub-Nature) 183. In the age of Natural Science, since about the middle of the nineteenth century, the civilized activities of mankind are gradually sliding downward, not only into the lowest regions of Nature, but even beneath Nature. Technical Science and Industry become Subnature. 184. This makes it urgent for man to find in conscious experience a knowledge of the Spirit, wherein he will rise as high above Nature as in his subnatural technical activities he sinks beneath her. He will thus create within him the inner strength not to go under. 185. A past conception of Nature still bore within it the Spirit with which the source of all human evolution is connected. By degrees, this Spirit vanished altogether from man's theory of Nature. The purely Ahrimanic spirit has entered in its place, and passed from theory of Nature into the technical civilization of mankind. Source: ALT

Related post:

https://martyrion.blogspot.com/2022/04/shantananda-bliss-of-peacefulness.html

Source: Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts. GA 26. March 1925. Rudolf Steiner Press, 2007 (page 193)

How Christ is superior to Krishna

     

"He must increase; I must decrease." — John 3:30

"I am the root and the offspring of David,

and the bright and morning star."

— Revelation 22:16

Krishna-Jesus: the root and the offspring of David.

Christ the Spirit of the Sun: the bright and morning star.

The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of Paul

[who, imho, is the reincarnated Arjuna]

Lecture 4 of 5

Rudolf Steiner, December 31, 1912

At the beginning of yesterday's lecture I pointed out how different are the impressions received by the soul when, on the one hand, it allows the well-balanced, calm, passionless, emotionless, truly wise nature of the Bhagavad Gita to work upon it, and on the other hand that which holds sway in the Epistles of St. Paul. In many respects these give the impression of being permeated by personal emotions, personal views and points of view, by a certain — for the whole collective evolution of man on Earth — agitating sense of propagandism; they are even choleric, sometimes stormy. If we allow the manner in which the spiritual content of both is expressed to work upon us, we have in the Gita something so perfect, expressed in such a wonderful, artistically rounded way, that one could not well imagine a greater perfection of expression, revealed poetically and yet so philosophically. In the Epistles of St. Paul, on the other hand, we often find what one might call an awkwardness of expression, so that on account of this, which sometimes approaches clumsiness, it is extremely difficult to extract their deep meaning.

Yet it is nevertheless true that that which relates to Christianity in the Epistles of St. Paul is the keynote for its development, just as the union of the world-conceptions of the East is the keynote of the Gita. In the Epistles of St. Paul we find the significant basic truths of Christianity as to the Resurrection, the significance of what is called Faith as compared with the Law, of the influence of grace, of the life of Christ in the soul or in the human consciousness, and many other things; we find all these presented in such a way that any presentation of Christianity must always be based on these Pauline Epistles. Everything in them refers to Christianity, as everything in the Gita refers to the great truths as to liberating oneself from works, to the freeing of oneself from the immediate life of action, in order to devote oneself to contemplation, to the meditation of the soul, to the upward penetration of the soul into spiritual heights, to the purification of the soul; in short, according to the meaning of the Gita, to the union with Krishna.

All that has just been described makes a comparison of these two spiritual revelations extremely difficult, and anyone who merely makes an external comparison will doubtless be compelled to place the Bhagavad Gita, in its purity, calm, and wisdom, higher than the Epistles of St. Paul. But what is a person who makes such an outward comparison actually doing? He is like a man who, having before him a fully grown plant, with a beautiful blossom, and beside it the seed of a plant, were to say: “When I look at the plant with its beautiful, fully developed blossom, I see that it is much more beautiful than the insignificant, invisible seed.” Yet it might be that out of that seed lying beside the plant with the beautiful blossom a still more beautiful plant with a still more beautiful blossom might some day spring forth. It is really no proper comparison to compare two things to be found side by side, such as a fully developed plant and a quite undeveloped seed; and thus it is if one compares the Bhagavad Gita with the Epistles of St. Paul. In the Bhagavad Gita we have before us something like the ripest fruit, the most wonderful and beautiful representation of a long human evolution, which had grown up during thousands of years, and in the Epistles of St. Paul we have before us the germ of something completely new which must grow greater and greater, and which we can only grasp in all its full significance if we look upon it as germinal, and hold prophetically before us what it will some day become, when thousands and thousands of years of evolution shall have flowed into the future and that which is planted as a germ in the Pauline Epistles shall have grown riper and riper. Only if we bear this in mind can we make a proper comparison.

It then also becomes clear that that which is someday to become great and which is first to be found in invisible form from the depths of Christianity in the Pauline Epistles had once to pour forth in chaotic fashion from the human soul. Thus things must be represented in a different way by one who is considering the significance on the one hand of the Bhagavad Gita and on the other of the Pauline Epistles for the whole collective evolution of man on Earth, from the way they can be depicted by another person who can only judge of the complete works as regards their beauty and wisdom and inner perfection of form.

If we wish to draw a comparison between the different views of life which appear in the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, we must first inquire: What is the chief point in question? The point in question is that in all we are able to survey historically of the two views of life, what we are chiefly concerned with is the drawing down of the ego into the evolution of mankind.

If we trace the ego through the evolution of mankind, we can say that in the pre-Christian times it was still dependent, it was still, as it were, rooted in concealed depths of the soul, it had not yet acquired the possibility of developing itself. Development of an individual character only became possible when into that ego was thrown, as it were, the impulse which we describe as the Christ-Impulse. That which since the Mystery of Golgotha may be within the human ego and which is expressed in the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but Christ in me,” that could not formerly be within it. But in the ages when there was already an approach to the Christ-Impulse — in the last thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha — that which was about to take place through the introduction of the Christ-Impulse into the human soul was slowly prepared, particularly in such a way as that expressed in the act of Krishna. That which, after the Mystery of Golgotha, a man had to look for as the Christ-Impulse in himself, which he had to find in the Pauline sense: “Not I, but Christ in me,” that he had, before the Mystery of Golgotha, to look for outside, he had to look for it coming to him as a revelation from cosmic distances.

The further we go back into the ages, the more brilliant, the more impulsive was the revelation from without. We may therefore say: In the ages before the Mystery of Golgotha a certain revelation came to mankind like sunshine falling upon an object from without. Just as the light falls upon this object, so did the light of the spiritual Sun fall from without upon the soul of man, and enlightened it.

After the Mystery of Golgotha we can speak of that which works in the soul as Christ-Impulse, as the spiritual sunlight, as though we saw a self-illumined body before us radiating its light from within. If we look at it thus, the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha becomes a significant boundary line in human evolution. We can represent the whole connection symbolically. If we take this circle (Diagram 1) as representing the human soul, we may say that the spiritual light streams in from without from all sides into this human soul. Then comes the Mystery of Golgotha, after which the soul possesses the Christ-Impulse in itself and radiates forth that which is contained in the Christ-Impulse (Diagram 2).

Just as a drop which is illumined from all sides radiates and reflects this illumination, so does the soul appear before the Christ-Impulse. As a flame which is alight within and radiates forth its light, thus does the soul appear after the Mystery of Golgotha, if it has been able to receive the Christ-Impulse.

Bearing this in mind we can express this whole relation by means of the terms we have learnt in Sankhya philosophy. We may say: If we direct our spiritual eye to a soul which, before the Mystery of Golgotha, is irradiated from all sides by the light of the spirit, and we see the whole connection of this spirit which pours in upon the soul from all sides radiating to us in its spirituality, the whole then appears to us in what the Sankhya philosophy describes as the Sattva condition. On the other hand, if we contemplate a soul after the Mystery of Golgotha had been accomplished, looking at it from outside as it were, with the spiritual eye, it seems as though the spiritual light were hidden away in its innermost depths and as if the soul-nature concealed it. The spiritual light appears to us as though veiled by the soul-substance, that spiritual light which, since the Mystery of Golgotha, is contained in the Christ-Impulse.

Do we not perceive this verified up to our own age, indeed especially in our own age, with regard to all that man experiences externally? Observe a man today, see what he has to occupy himself with as regards his external knowledge and his occupation; and try to compare with this how the Christ-Impulse lives in man, as if hidden in his inmost being, like a yet tiny, feeble flame, veiled by the rest of the soul's contents. That is Tamas as compared with the pre-Christian state, which latter, as regards the relation of soul and spirit, was the Sattva-state.

What part, therefore, in this sense does the Mystery of Golgotha play in the evolution of mankind? As regards the revelation of the spirit, it transforms the Sattva into the Tamas state. By means of it mankind moves forward, but it undergoes a deep fall, one may say, not through the Mystery of Golgotha, but through itself. The Mystery of Golgotha causes the flame to grow greater and greater: but the reason the flame appears in the soul as only a very small one — whereas before a mighty light poured in on it from all sides — is that progressing human nature is sinking deeper and deeper into darkness.

It is not, therefore the fault of the Mystery of Golgotha that the human soul, as regards the spirit, is in the Tamas condition, for the Mystery of Golgotha will bring it to pass in the distant future that out of the Tamas condition a Sattva condition will again come about, which will then be set aflame from within. Between the Sattva and the Tamas condition there is, according to Sankhya philosophy, the Rajas condition; and this is described as being that time in human evolution in which falls the Mystery of Golgotha. Humanity itself, as regards the manifestation of the Spirit, went along the path from light into darkness, from the Sattva into the Tamas condition, just during the thousand years which surrounded the Mystery of Golgotha.

If we look more closely into this evolution, we may say: If we take the line A B as the time of the evolution of mankind, up to about the eighth or seventh century before the Mystery of Golgotha, all human civilization was then in the Sattva condition.


7th Century B.C. 15th, 16th Century A.D.

A-------------------------x------------------------x-----------------------B

Chald-Egypt. Graeco-Latin Period. Our own age.



Then began the age in which occurred the Mystery of Golgotha, followed by our own age some fifteen or sixteen centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha. Then quite definitely begins the Tamas age — but it is a period of transition. If we wish to use our customary designations, we have the first age — which, in a sense, as regards certain spiritual revelations, still belongs to the Sattva condition — occurring at the same epoch as that which we call the Chaldean-Egyptian, that which is the Rajas-condition is the Graeco-Latin, and that which is in the Tamas condition is our own age. We know, too, that what is called the Chaldean-Egyptian age is the third of the Post-Atlantean conditions, the Graeco-Latin the fourth, and our own the fifth. It was therefore necessary, one might say, in accordance with the plan of the evolution of mankind, that between the third and fourth Post-Atlantean epochs there should occur a deadening, as it were, of external revelation. How was mankind really prepared for the blazing up of the Christ-Impulse? How did this preparation really occur?

If we want to make quite clear to ourselves the difference between the spiritual conditions of mankind in the third epoch of humanity — the Chaldean-Egyptian — and the following epochs, we must say: In this third age in all these countries, in Egypt as well as in Chaldea, and also in India, there still was in humanity the remains of the old clairvoyant power: that is to say, man not only saw the worlds around him with the assistance of his senses and of the understanding connected with the brain, but he could also still see the surrounding world with the organs of his etheric body, at any rate, under certain conditions, between sleeping and waking.

If we wish to picture to ourselves a man of that epoch, we can only do so by saying: To those men a perception of nature and of the world such as we have through our senses and the understanding bound up with the brain was only one of the conditions which they experienced. In those conditions they gained as yet no knowledge, but merely, as it were, gazed at things and let them work, side by side in space and one after another in time. If these men wanted to acquire knowledge they had to enter a condition, not artificially produced as in our time, but occurring naturally, as if of itself, in which their deeper-lying forces, the forces of their etheric bodies, operated for producing knowledge. Out of knowledge such as this came forth all that appears as the wonderful knowledge of the Sankhya philosophy; from such a contemplation also went forth all that has come down to us in the Veda — although that belongs to a still earlier age.

Thus the man of that time acquired knowledge by putting himself or allowing himself to be put into another condition. He had so to say his everyday condition, in which he saw with his eyes, heard with his ears, and followed things with his ordinary understanding; but this seeing, hearing, and understanding he only made use of when occupied in external practical business. It would never have occurred to him to make use of these capacities for the acquiring of knowledge. In order to acquire knowledge and perception he made use of what came to him in that other condition in which he brought into activity the deepest forces of his being.

We can therefore think of man in those old times as having, so to say, an everyday body, and within that everyday body his finer spiritual body, his Sunday body, if I may use such a comparison. With his everyday body he did his everyday work, and with his Sunday body — which was woven of the etheric body alone — he perceived and perfected his science. One would be justified in saying that a man of that olden time would be astonished that we in our day hew out our knowledge by means of our everyday body, and never put on our Sunday body when we wish to learn something about the world.

Well, how did such a man experience all these conditions? The experiencing of these was such that when a man perceived by means of his deeper forces, when he was in that state of perception in which, for instance, he studied Sankhya philosophy, he did not then feel as does the man of today, who, when he wishes to acquire knowledge must exert his reason and think with his head. He, when he acquired knowledge, felt himself to be in his etheric body, which was certainly least developed in what today is the physical head, but was more pronounced in the other parts; man thought much more by means of the other parts of his etheric body. The etheric body of the head is the least perfect part of it. A man felt, so to say, that he thought with his etheric body; he felt himself, when thinking, lifted out of his physical body; but at such moments of learning, of creative knowledge, he felt something more besides; he felt that he was in reality one with the Earth. When he took off his everyday body and put on his Sunday body, he felt as though forces passed through his whole being; as though forces passed through his legs and feet and united him to the Earth, just as the forces which pass through our hands and arms unite them with our body. He began to feel himself a member of the Earth. On the one hand, he felt that he thought and knew in his etheric body, and on the other he felt himself no longer a separate man, but a member of the Earth. He felt his being growing into the Earth. Thus the whole inner manner of experiencing altered when a man drew on his Sunday body and prepared himself for knowledge. What, then, had to happen in order that this old age — the third — should so completely cease, and the new age — the fourth — should come in? If we wish to understand what had to happen then, it would be well to try to feel our way a little into the old method of description.

A man who in that olden time experienced what I have just described would say: “The serpent has become active within me.” His being lengthened out into the Earth; he no longer felt his physical body as the really active part of him; he felt as though he stretched out a serpent-like continuation of himself into the Earth and the head was that which projected out of the Earth. And he felt this serpent being to be the thinker. We might draw the man's being thus: his etheric body passing into the Earth, elongated into a serpent-body and, while outside the Earth as physical man, he was stretched down into the Earth during the time of perceiving and knowing, and thought with his etheric body.

“The serpent is active within me,” said he. To perceive was therefore in the olden time something like this: “I rouse the serpent within me to a state of activity; I feel my serpent-nature.” What had to happen so that the new age should come in, that the new method of perceiving should come about? It had to be no longer possible for those moments to occur in which man felt his being extended down into the Earth through his legs and feet; besides which, perception had to die out in his etheric body and pass over to the physical head. If you can rightly picture this passing over of the old perception into the new, you will say: a good expression for this transition would be: “I am wounded in the feet, but with my own body I tread under foot the head of the serpent,” that is to say, the serpent with its head ceases to be the instrument of thought. The physical body, and especially the physical brain, kills the serpent, and the serpent revenges itself by taking away from one the feeling of belonging to the Earth. It bites one in the heel.

At such times of transition from one form of human experience into another, that which comes, as it were, from the old epoch comes into conflict with that which is coming in the new epoch; for these things are still really contemporaneous. The father is still in existence long after the son's life has begun, although the son is descended from the father. The attributes of the fourth epoch, the Graeco-Latin, were there, but those of the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, still stirred and moved in men and in nations. These attributes naturally became intermingled in the course of evolution, but that which thus appears as the newly arisen, and that which comes, as it were, out of the olden times, continue to live contemporaneously, but can no longer understand each other properly. The old does not understand the new. The new must protect itself against the old, must defend its life against it; that is to say, the new is there, but the ancestors with their attributes belonging to the old epoch still work in their descendants, the ancestors who have taken no part in the new. Thus we may describe the transition from the third epoch of humanity to the fourth.

There had therefore to be a hero, as we might say — a leader of humanity who, in a significant manner, first represents this process of the killing of the serpent, of being wounded by it; while he had at the same time to struggle against that which was certainly related to him, but which with its attributes still shone into the new age from the old. In the advance of mankind, one person must first experience the whole greatness of that which later all generations experience.

Who was the hero who crushed the head of the serpent, who struggled against that which was important in the third epoch? Who was he who guided mankind out of the old Sattva-time into the new Tamas-time? That was Krishna — and how could this be more clearly shown than by the Eastern legend in which Krishna is represented as being a son of the Gods, a son of Mahadeva and Devaki, who entered the world surrounded by miracles (that betokens that he brings in something new), and who, if I may carry my example further, leads men to look for wisdom in their everyday body, and who crushes their Sunday body — the serpent; who has to defend himself against that which projects into the new age from his kindred. Such a one is something new, something miraculous.

Hence the legend relates how the child Krishna, even at his birth, was surrounded by miracles, and that Kansa, the brother of his mother, wished to take the life of the child. In the uncle of the child Krishna we see the continuance of the old, and Krishna has to defend himself against him; for Krishna had to bring in the new, that which kills the third epoch and does away with the old conditions for the external evolution of mankind. He had to defend himself against Kansa, the inhabitant of the old Sattva age; and among the most remarkable of the miracles with which Krishna is surrounded, the legend relates that the mighty serpent Kali twined round him, but that he was able to tread the head of the serpent under foot, though it wounded his heel. Here we have something of which we may say the legend directly reproduces an occult fact. That is what legends do; only we ought not to seek an external explanation, but should grasp the legend aright, in the true light of knowledge, in order to understand it.

Krishna is the hero of the setting third post-Atlantean epoch of humanity. The legend relates further that Krishna appeared at the end of the third cosmic epoch. It all corresponds when rightly understood. Krishna is therefore he who kills out the old perception, who drives it into the darkness. This he does in his external phenomena; he reduces to a state of darkness that which as Sattva-knowledge was formerly possessed by mankind. Now, how is he represented in the Bhagavad Gita? He is there represented as giving to a single individual, as if in compensation for what he has taken away from him, guidance as to how through Yoga he can rise to that which was then lost to normal mankind. Thus to the world Krishna appears as the killer of the old Sattva-knowledge, while at the same time we see him at the end of the Gita as the Lord of Yoga, who is again to lead us up to the knowledge which had been abandoned; the knowledge belonging to the old ages, which we can only attain when we have overcome and conquered that which we now put on externally as an everyday dress; when we return once more to the old spiritual condition. That was the twofold deed of Krishna, He acted as a world-historical hero, in that he crushed the head of the serpent of the old knowledge and compelled man to re-enter the physical body, in which alone the ego could be won as free and independent ego, whereas formerly all that made man an ego streamed in from outside. Thus he was a worldwide historical hero. Then to the individual he was the one who for the times of devotion, of meditation, of inner finding, gave back that which had at one time been lost. That it is which we meet with in such a grand form in the Gita, which at the end of our last lecture we allowed to work upon our souls, and which Arjuna meets as his own being seen externally; seen without beginning and without end — outspread over all space.

If we observe this condition more clearly we come to a place in the Gita which, if we have already been amazed at the great and mighty contents of the Gita, must infinitely extend our admiration. We come to a passage which, to the man of the present day, must certainly appear incomprehensible; wherein Krishna reveals to Arjuna the nature of the Avayata-tree, of the Fig-tree, by telling him that in this tree the roots grow upwards and the branches downwards; where Krishna further says that the single leaves of this tree are the leaves of the Veda book, which, put together, yield the Veda knowledge. That is a singular passage in the Gita. What does it signify, this pointing to the great Tree of Life, whose roots have an upward direction, and the branches a downward direction, and whose leaves give the contents of the Veda? We must just transport ourselves back into the old knowledge, and try and understand how it worked. The man of today only has, so to say, his present knowledge, communicated to him through his physical organs. The old knowledge was acquired as we have just described, in the body which was still etheric — not that the whole man was etheric, but knowledge was acquired through the part of the etheric body which was within the physical body. Through this organism, through the organization of the etheric body, the old knowledge was acquired.

Just imagine vividly that you, when in the etheric body, could perceive by means of the serpent. There was something then present in the world which to the man of the present day is no longer there. Certainly the man of today can realize much of what surrounds him when he puts himself into relation with nature; but just think of him when he is observing the world: there is one thing he does not perceive, and that is his brain. No man can see his own brain when he is observing; neither can any man see his own spine. This impossibility ceases as soon as one observes with the etheric body. A new object then appears which one does not otherwise see — one perceives one's own nervous system. Certainly it does not appear as the present-day anatomist sees it. It does not appear as it does to such a man; it appears in such a way that one feels: “Yes! There thou art, in thy etheric nature.” One then looks upwards and sees how the nerves, which go through all the organs, are collected together up there in the brain. That produces the feeling: “That is a tree of which the roots go upwards, and the branches stretch down into all the members.” That in reality is not felt as being of the same small size as we are inside our skin: it is felt as being a mighty cosmic tree. The roots stretch far out into the distances of space and the branches extend downwards. One feels oneself to be a serpent, and one sees one's nervous system objectified, one feels that it is like a tree which sends its roots far out into the distance of space and the branches of which go downwards. Remember what I have said in former lectures, that man is, in a sense, an inverted plant. All that you have learnt must be recalled and put together, in order to understand such a thing as this wonderful passage in the Bhagavad Gita. We are then astonished at the old wisdom, which must today, by means of new methods, be called forth from the depths of occultism. We then experience what this tree brings to light. We experience in its leaves that which grows upon it: the Veda knowledge, which streams in on us from without.

The wonderful picture of the Gita stands out clearly before us: the tree with its roots going upwards, and its branches going downwards, with its leaves full of knowledge, and man himself as the serpent round the tree. You may perhaps have seen this picture, or have come across the picture of the Tree of Life with the serpent; everything is of significance when one considers these old things. Here we have the tree with the upward-growing roots, and the downward-turning branches; one feels that it goes in an opposite direction to the Paradise-tree. That has its deep meaning: for the tree of Paradise is placed at the beginning of the other evolution, that which through the old Hebrew antiquity passes on into Christianity. Thus in this place we are given an indication of the whole nature of that old knowledge, and when Krishna distinctly says to his pupil Arjuna: “Renunciation is the power which makes this tree visible to mankind,” we are shown how man returns to that old knowledge when he renounces everything acquired by him in the further course of evolution, which we described yesterday. That it is which is given as something grand and glorious by Krishna to his only individual pupil Arjuna as a payment on account, while he has to take it from the whole of humanity for the everyday use of civilization. That is the being of Krishna.

What then must that become which Krishna gives to his single individual pupil? It must become Sattva wisdom; and the better he is able to give him this Sattva wisdom, the wiser, clearer, calmer, and more passionless will it be, but it will be an old revealed wisdom, something which approaches mankind from without in such a wonderful way in the words which the Sublime One, that is to say, Krishna Himself, speaks, and in those in which the single individual pupil makes reply. Thus Krishna becomes the Lord of Yoga, who leads us back to the ancient wisdom of mankind, and who always endeavors to overcome that which, even in the age of the Sattva, concealed the spirit from the soul, who wishes to bring before his pupil the spirit in its ancient purity, as it was before it descended into substance. Thus in the spirit only does Krishna appear to us in that mutual conversation between Krishna and his pupil to which we referred yesterday.

Thus we have brought before our souls the end of that epoch which was the last one of the ages of the old spirituality, that spirituality that we can so follow that we see its full and complete spiritual light at its beginning, and then its descent into matter in order that man should find his ego, his independence. And when the spiritual light had descended as far as the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, there was then a sort of reciprocal relationship, a Rajas relationship, between the spirit and the more external soul-part. In this epoch occurred the Mystery of Golgotha.

Could we describe this epoch as belonging to the Sattva-condition? No! For then we should not be describing just what belonged to that epoch! If anyone describes it correctly, as belonging to the Rajas-age — making use of that expression of Sankhya philosophy — he must describe it according to Rajas, not in terms of purity and clearness, but in a personal sense, as aroused to anger about this, or that, and so on. Thus would one have to describe it, and thus did St. Paul portray it, in the sense of its relation to Rajas. If you feel the throbbing of many a saying in the Epistles to the Thessalonians, to the Corinthians, or to the Romans, you will become aware of something akin to rage, something often like a personal characteristic pulsating in the Epistles of St. Paul, wrenching itself away from the Rajas-condition — that is the style and character of these Epistles. They had to appear thus; whereas the Bhagavad Gita had to come forth clear and free from the personal because it was the finest blossom of the dying epoch, which, however, gave one individual a compensation for that which was going under, and led him back into the heights of spiritual life. Krishna had to give the finest spiritual blossoms to his own pupil, because he was to kill out the old knowledge of mankind, to crush the head of the serpent. This Sattva-condition went under of itself, it was no longer there; and anyone in the Rajas age who spoke of the Sattva-condition spoke only of that which was old. He who placed himself at the beginning of the newer age had to speak in accordance with what was decisive for that time. Personality had drawn into human nature because human nature had found the way to seek knowledge through the organs and instruments of the physical body. In the Pauline Epistles the personal element speaks; that is why a personality thunders against all that draws in as the darkness of the material; with words of wrath he thunders forth, for words of wrath often thunder forth in the Epistles of St. Paul. That is why the Epistles of St. Paul cannot be given in the strictly limited lines, in the sharply defined, wise clearness of the Bhagavad Gita.

The Bhagavad Gita can speak in words full of wisdom because it describes how man may free himself from external activity, and raise himself in triumph to the spirit, how he may become one with Krishna. It could also describe in words full of wisdom the path of Yoga, which leads to the greatest heights of the soul. But that which came into the world as something new, the victory of the spirit over that which merely pertains to the soul within, that could at first only be described out of the Rajas-condition; and he who first described it in a manner significant for the history of mankind does so full of enthusiasm, in such a way that one knows he took part in it himself, that he himself trembled before the revelation of the Christ-Impulse. The personal had then come to him, he was confronted for the first time with that which was to work on for thousands of years into the future, it came to him in such a way that all the forces of his soul had to take a personal part in it. Therefore he does not describe in philosophic concepts, full of wisdom, such as occur in the Bhagavad Gita, but describes what he has to describe as the resurrection of Christ as something in which man is directly and personally concerned.

Was it not to become personal experience? Was not Christianity to draw into what is most intimately personal, warm it through and through, and fill it with life? Truly he who described the Christ-Event for the first time could only do so as a personal experience. We can see how in the Gita the chief emphasis is laid upon the ascent through Yoga into spiritual heights; the rest is only touched upon in passing. Why is this? Because Krishna only gives his instructions to one particular pupil and does not concern himself with what other people outside in the world feel as to their connection with the spiritual. Therefore Krishna describes what his pupil must become, that he must grow higher and higher, and become more and more spiritual. That description leads to riper and riper conditions of the soul, and hence to more and more impressive pictures of beauty. Hence also it is the case that only at the end do we meet with the antagonism between the demoniacal and the spiritual, and it confirms the beauty of the ascent into the soul-life; only at the conclusion do we see the contrast between those who are demoniacal and those who are spiritual. All those people out of whom only the material speaks, who live in the material, who believe that all comes to an end with death, are demoniacal. But that is only mentioned by way of enlightenment, it is nothing with which the great teacher is really concerned: he is before all concerned with the spiritualizing of the human soul. Yoga may only speak of that which is opposed to Yoga as a side-issue.

St. Paul is, above all, concerned with the whole of humanity, that humanity which is in fact in the oncoming age of darkness. He has to turn his attention to all that this age of darkness brings about in human life; he must contrast the dark life, common to all, with that which is the Christ-Impulse, and which is first to spring up as a tiny plant in the human soul. We can see it appearing in St. Paul as he points over and over again to all sorts of vice, all sorts of materialism, which must be combated through what he has to give. What he is able to give is at first a mere flickering in the human soul, which can only acquire power through the enthusiasm which lies behind his words, and which appears in triumphant words as the manifestation of feeling through personality.

Thus the presentations of the Gita and of the Pauline Epistles are far removed from each other; in the clearness of the Gita the descriptions are impersonal, while St. Paul had to work the personal into his words. It is that which on the one hand gives the style and tone to the Gita, and on the other to the Pauline Epistles; we meet it in both works — almost, one might, say in every line. Something can only attain artistic perfection when it has acquired the necessary ripeness; at the beginning of its development it always appears as more or less chaotic.

Why is all this so? This question is answered if we turn to the wonderful beginning of the Gita. We have already described it; we have seen the hosts of the kindred facing each other in battle, one warrior facing another, yet both conqueror and conquered are related to one another by blood. The time we are considering is that of the transition from the old blood-relationship, to which belongs the power of clairvoyance, to that of the differentiation and mingling of blood, which is the characteristic of our modern times. We are confronted with a transformation of the outer bodily nature of man and of the perception which necessarily accompanies this.

Another kind of mingling of blood, a new significance of blood, now enters into the evolution of mankind. If we wish to study the transition from that old epoch to the new — I would remind you of my little pamphlet The Occult Significance of Blood — we must say that the clairvoyance of olden times depended upon the fact that the blood was, so to say, kept in the tribe, whereas the new age proceeded from the mixing of blood, by which clairvoyance was killed, and the new perception arose which is connected with the physical body. The beginning of the Gita points to something external, to something connected with man's bodily form. It is with these external changes of form that Sankhya philosophy is mostly concerned; in a sense it leaves in the background that which belongs to the soul, as we have pointed out. The souls in their multiplicity are simply behind the forms. In Sankhya philosophy we have found a kind of plurality; we have compared it with the Leibnitz philosophy of more modern times.

If we can think ourselves into the soul of a Sankhya philosopher, we can imagine his saying: “My soul expresses itself in the Sattva or in the Rajas or in the Tamas condition with respect to the forms of the external body.” But this philosopher studies the forms. These forms alter, and one of the most remarkable changes is that which expresses itself in the different use made of the etheric body, or through the transition as regards blood-relationship we have just described. We have then an external change of form. The soul itself is not in the least affected by that with which Sankhya philosophy concerns itself. The external changes of form are quite sufficient to enable us to consider what takes place in the transition from the old Sattva age to that of the new Rajas, on the borders of which stands Krishna. It is the external changes of form which come into consideration there.

Outer changes of form always come into consideration at the time of the change of the ages. But the changes of form took place in a different way during the transition from the Persian to the Egyptian epoch from what they did in that from the Egyptian to the Graeco-Latin; still an external change of form did take place. In yet another manner took place the transition from the Ancient Indian to the Persian, but there too there was an external change of form. Indeed it was simply a change of form which occurred when the passing-over from the old Atlantis itself into the post-Atlantean ages took place. A change of form — and we could follow this by holding fast to the designations of the Sankhya philosophy: we can follow it simply by saying: The soul goes through its experiences within these forms, but the soul itself is not altered thereby; Purusha remains undisturbed. Thus we have a particular sort of transformation which can be described by Sankhya philosophy according to its own conceptions.

But behind this transforming there is Purusha, the individual part of the soul of every man. The Sankhya philosophy only says of this that there is an individual soul-part which is related through the three Gunas — Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas — with external form. But this soul-part is not itself affected by the external forms: Purusha is behind them all and we are directed to the soul itself; a continual indication of the soul itself is what meets us in the teaching of Krishna, in what he as Lord of Yoga teaches. Yes, certainly — but the nature of this soul is not given us in the way of knowledge. Directions as to how to develop the soul is the highest we are shown: alteration of the external forms; no change in the soul itself, only an introductory note.

This first suggestion we discover in the following way: If man is to rise through Yoga from the ordinary stages of the soul to the higher, he must free himself from external works, he must emancipate himself more and more from outer works, from what he does and perceives externally; he must become a “looker-on” at himself. His soul then assumes an inner freedom and raises itself triumphantly over what is external. That is the case with the ordinary man, but with one who is initiated and becomes clairvoyant the case does not remain thus; he is not confronted with external substance, for that in itself is maya. It only becomes a reality to him who makes use of his own inner instruments. What takes the place of substance? If we observe the old initiation we meet with the following: Whereas man in everyday life is confronted with substance, with Prakriti — the soul which through Yoga has developed itself by initiation has to fight against the world of the Asuras, the world of the demoniacal. Substance is what offers resistance; the Asuras, the powers of darkness, become enemies. But all that is as yet a mere suggestion; we perceive it as something peeping out of the soul, so to say; we begin to feel that which pertains to the soul. For the soul will only begin to realize itself as spiritual when it begins to fight the battle against the demons, the Asuras.

In our language we should describe this battle — which, however, we only meet with in miniature — as something which becomes perceptible in the form of spirits, when substance appears in spirituality. We thus perceive in miniature that which we know as the battle of the soul when it enters upon initiation, the battle with Ahriman. But when we look upon it as a battle of this kind, we are then in the innermost part of the soul, and what were formerly material spirits grow into something gigantic; the soul is then confronted with the mighty foe. Soul then stands up against soul: the individual soul in universal space is confronted with the realm of Ahriman. It is the lowest stage of Ahriman's kingdom with which one fights in Yoga; but now when we look at this as the battle of the soul with the powers of Ahriman, with Ahriman's kingdom, he himself stands before us. Sankhya philosophy recognizes this relationship of the soul to external substance, in which the latter has the upper hand, as the condition of Tamas. The initiate who has entered initiation by means of Yoga is not only in this Tamas state, but also in battle with certain demoniacal powers, into which substance transforms itself before his sight. In this same sense the soul, when it is in the condition not only of being confronted with the spiritual in substance but with the purely spiritual, is face to face with Ahriman. According to Sankhya philosophy, spirit and matter are in balance in the Rajas condition: they sway to and fro, first matter is above, then spirit; at one time matter weighs down the scales, then spirit. If this condition is to lead to initiation it must lead in the sense of the old Yoga to a direct overcoming of Rajas, and lead into Sattva. To us it does not yet lead into Sattva, but to the commencement of another battle: the battle with what is Luciferic.

And now the course of our considerations leads us to Purusha, which is only hinted at in Sankhya philosophy. Not only do we hint at it, we place it right in the midst of the field of the battle against Ahriman and Lucifer: one soul-nature wars against another. In Sankhya philosophy Purusha is seen in immense perspective; but if we enter more deeply into that which plays its part in the nature of the soul, not as yet distinguished between Ahriman and Lucifer, then in Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas we only find the relation of the soul to material substance. But considering the matter in our own sense, we have the soul in its full activity, fighting and struggling between Ahriman and Lucifer.

That is something which in its full greatness can only be considered through Christianity. According to the old Sankhya teaching Purusha remains still undisturbed: it describes the condition which arises when Purusha clothes itself in Prakriti. We enter the Christian age and in that which underlies esoteric Christianity we penetrate into Purusha itself, and describe this by taking the trinity into consideration: the soul, the Ahrimanic, and the Luciferic. We now grasp the inner relationship of the soul itself in its struggles. That which had to come was to be found in the transition in the fourth epoch, that transition which is marked through the Mystery of Golgotha. For what took place then? That which occurred in the transition from the third to the fourth epoch was something which can be described as a mere change of form; but now it is something which can only be described by the transition from Prakriti into Purusha itself, which must be so characterized that we say: “We feel how completely Purusha has emancipated itself from Prakriti; we feel that in our innermost being.”

Man is not only torn away from the ties of blood but also from Prakriti, from everything external, and must inwardly have done with it. Then comes the Christ-Impulse. That is, however, the greatest transition which could take place in the whole evolution of the Earth. It is then no longer merely a question of what might be the conditions of the soul in relation to matter — in Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas — for the soul no longer has merely to overcome Tamas and Rajas to raise itself above them in Yoga, but has to fight against Ahriman and Lucifer, for it is now left to itself. Hence the necessity to confront that which is presented to us in that mighty poem the Bhagavad Gita — that which was necessary for the old times — with that which is necessary for the new.

That sublime Song, the Bhagavad Gita, shows us this conflict. There we are shown the human soul. It dwells in its bodily part, in its sheaths. These sheaths can be described. They are that which is in a constant state of changing form. The soul in its ordinary life lives in a state of entanglement, in Prakriti. In Yoga it frees itself from that which envelops it, it overcomes that in which it is enwrapped, and enters the spiritual sphere, when it is quite free from its coverings.

Let us compare with this that which Christianity, the Mystery of Golgotha, first brought. It is not here sufficient that the soul should merely make itself free. For if the soul should free itself through Yoga, it would attain to the vision of Krishna. He would appear in all his might before it — but as he was before Ahriman and Lucifer obtained their full power. Therefore a kind divinity still conceals the fact that beside Krishna — who then becomes visible in the sublime way described in our last lecture — on his left and on his right there stand Ahriman and Lucifer. With the old clairvoyance that was still possible, because man had not yet descended into matter; but now it can no longer be the case. If the soul were now only to go through Yoga it would meet Ahriman and Lucifer and would have to enter into battle with them. It can only take its place beside Krishna when it has that ally Who fights Ahriman and Lucifer; Tamas and Rajas would not suffice. That ally, however, is Christ. Thus we see how that which is of a bodily nature freed itself from the body— or one might also say, that which is bodily darkened itself within the body, at the time when Krishna, the Hero, appeared. But, on the other hand, we see that which is still more stupendous: the soul abandoned to itself and face to face with something which is only visible in its own domain in the age in which the Mystery of Golgotha occurred.

I can well imagine, my dear friends, someone saying: “Well, what could be more wonderful than when the highest ideal of man, the perfection of mankind, is placed before our eyes in the form of Krishna!” There can be something higher — and that it is which must stand by our side and permeate us when we have to gain this humanity not merely against Tamas and Rajas but against the powers of the spirit. That is the Christ. So it is the want of capacity to see something greater still, if one is determined to see in Krishna the highest of all.

The preponderating force of the Christ-Impulse as compared with the Krishna-Impulse is expressed in the fact that in the latter we have incarnated in the whole human nature of Krishna the Being which was incarnated in him. Krishna was born, and grew up, as the son of Vasudeva; but in his whole manhood was incorporated, incarnated, that highest human impulse which we recognize as Krishna. That other Impulse, which must stand by our side when we have to confront Lucifer and Ahriman (which confrontation is only now beginning, for all such things, for instance, as are represented in our Mystery Dramas will be understood psychically by future generations), that other Impulse must be one for which mankind as such is at first too small, an Impulse which cannot immediately dwell even in a body such as one which Zarathustra can inhabit, but can only dwell in it when that body itself has attained the height of its development, when it has reached its thirtieth year. Thus the Christ-Impulse does not fill a whole life, but only the ripest period of a human life. That is why the Christ-Impulse lived only for three years in the body of Jesus. The more exalted height of the Christ-Impulse is expressed in the fact that it could not live immediately in a human body, as did Krishna from his birth up.

We shall have to speak further of the overwhelming greatness of the Christ-Impulse as compared with the Krishna-Impulse and how this is to be seen. But from what has already been characterized you can both see and feel that, as a matter of fact, the relation between the great Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul could be none other; that the whole presentation of the Gita being the ripe fruit of much, much earlier times may therefore be complete in itself; while the Epistles of St. Paul, being the first seeds of a future — certainly more perfect, more all-embracing — world-epoch, must necessarily be far more incomplete.

Thus one who represents how the world runs its course must recognize, it is true, the great imperfections of the Pauline Epistles as compared with the Gita — the very, very significant imperfections — they must not be disguised — but he must also understand the reason those imperfections have to be there.

Source: December 31, 1912