VI
T
REALLY is exceedingly difficult in our Western civilization to
speak intelligently and intelligibly about such a work as the
Bhagavad Gita.
This is so because at present there is a
dominating tendency to interpret any spiritual work of this kind as a
kind of doctrine, an abstract teaching, or a philosophy, that makes
it hard for people to come to a sound judgment in such matters. They
like to approach such spiritual creations from the ideal or
conceptual point of view. Here we touch upon something that makes it
most difficult in our time to gain a true judgment about the great
historical impulses in mankind's evolution. How often, for instance,
it is pointed out that this or that saying occurring in the Gospels
as the teaching of Christ Jesus is to be found in some earlier work
no less profoundly expressed. Then it is said, “You see, it is
the same teaching after all.” Certainly, that is not incorrect
because in countless instances it can be shown that the teachings of
the Gospels occur in earlier spiritual works. Yet, though such a
statement is not incorrect, it may be nonsense from the standpoint of
a truly fundamental knowledge of human evolution. People's thinking
will have to get accustomed to this and realize that a statement can
be perfectly correct and yet nonsense. Not until this is no longer
regarded as a contradiction will it be possible to judge certain
matters in a really unbiased way.
Suppose, for instance,
someone says that he sees in the
Bhagavad Gita
one of the greatest creations of the human spirit, a creation that has never
been surpassed in later times. Suppose further, having said this, he
adds, “Nevertheless, what entered the world with the revelation
inherent in the Christ Impulse, is something altogether different,
something to which the
Bhagavad Gita
could not attain even if
its beauty and greatness were increased a hundred times.” These
two statements do not contradict each other. According to the habits
of modern abstract thinking, however, we may have a contradiction
here. Yet, in no sense is it in truth a contradiction. Indeed one
might go further, and ask, “When was that mightiest word spoken
that may be regarded as giving the impulse to the human ego, so that
it may take its place in the evolution of man?” That
significant word was uttered at the moment Krishna spoke to Ar-juna;
when he poured into Arjuna’s ears the most powerful, incisive,
burning words to quicken the consciousness of self in man. In the
whole range of the world’s life there is nothing to be found
that kindled the self of man more mightily than the living force of
Krishna’s words to Arjuna. Of course, we must not take those
words in the way words are so often taken in Western countries where
the noblest words are given merely an abstract, philosophic
interpretation. In any such we would certainly miss the essence of the
Bhagavad Gita.
In this way Western scholars today have so
outrageously misused and tortured the
Bhagavad Gita.
They have even gone so far as to dispute whether it is more representative of
the Sankhya philosophy or of some other school of thought. In fact, a
distinguished scholar, in his edition of this poem, has actually
printed certain lines in small type because in his view they ought to
be expunged altogether, having crept in by mistake. He thinks nothing
is really a part of the Gita except what accords with the
Sankhya, or at the most with the Yoga philosophy.
It may be said though
that no trace is to be found in this great poem of philosophy as we
speak of it today. At most one could say that in ancient India
certain basic dispositions of soul developed into certain philosophic
tendencies. These really have nothing to do with the
Bhagavad Gita,
at least not in the sense of being an interpretation or
exposition of it. It is altogether unfair to the intellectual and
spiritual life of the East to set it side by side with what the West
knows as philosophy because there was no philosophy in the East in
the same sense there is philosophy in the West. In this respect the
spirit of our age, just beginning, is as yet imperfectly understood.
In the last lecture we
spoke of things that men still have to learn. Above all we must
firmly realize how the human soul, under certain conditions, can
actually meet the Being whom we tried to describe from a certain
aspect, calling him Krishna. We must realize how Arjuna meets that
Spirit who prepared the age of self-consciousness. This knowledge is
far more important than any dispute as to whether it is Sankhya or
Vedic philosophy that is contained in the
Bhagavad Gita.
To understand it as a real description of world history — of
history and of the color and temper of a particular age in which
living, individual beings are placed before us — is the
important point. We have tried to describe their natures, speaking of
Arjuna’s thoughts and feelings as characteristic of that time,
trying to throw light on the new age of self-consciousness, and
showing how a creative Spiritual Being preparing for a new age
appeared before Arjuna. Now, if we seek a living picture of Spiritual
Beings in their relation to each other, we need an all-around point
of view to know this Krishna Being more exactly. The following may
therefore help us complete our picture of him.
To really penetrate
into the region where we can perceive such a mighty being as Krishna
one must have progressed far enough to be able to have real
perceptions and real experiences in the spiritual world. That may
seem obvious. Yet when we consider what people generally expect of
the higher worlds the matter is by no means so self-evident. I have
often indicated that misunderstandings without number arise from the
fact that people wish to lift their lives into the super-sensible
world carrying a mass of prejudices with them. They desire to be led
along the path into the super-sensible toward something already
familiar to them in the sense world. In that higher realm one
perceives, for instance, forms, not indeed of gross matter, but forms
that appear as forms of light. One finds that he hears sounds like
the sounds of the physical world. He does not realize that by
expecting such things, by entering the higher world with such
preconceived ideas, he is wanting a spiritual world just like the
sense world though in a refined form. In our world here man is
accustomed to color and brightness, so he imagines he will only reach
the higher realities if the Beings there appear to him in the same
way. It ought not to be necessary to say all this since the
super-sensible beings are far above all attributes of the senses and
in their true form do not appear at all with sense qualities because
the latter presuppose eyes and ears, that is, sense organs. In the
higher worlds, however, we do not perceive by means of sense organs
but by soul organs.
What can happen in this
connection I can illustrate by a childish comparison. Suppose I am
describing something to you, verbally. Then I feel impelled to
represent it with a few strokes on the blackboard, thereby
materializing what I have expressed in words. No one would dream of
taking the diagram for the reality. It is the same when we express
what we have experienced supersensibly by giving it form and color
and stamping it in words borrowed from the sense world. Only that in
doing so we do not use our ordinary intellect, but a higher faculty
of feeling that thus translates the super-sensible into sense terms.
In such a way our soul lives into invisible worlds, for instance into
that of the Krishna Being. Then it feels the need of representing to
itself that Being. What it represents, however, is not the Being
himself but a kind of sketch, a super-sensible diagram. Such sketches,
super-sensible illustrations so to say, are Imaginations. The
misunderstanding that so often arises amounts to this, that we
sensualize what the higher forces of the soul sketch out before us.
By thus interpreting it sensually we lose its real essence. The
essence is not contained in these pictures, but through them it must
be dimly felt at first, until by slow degrees we actually begin to
see it.
I have mentioned among
other things the wonderful dramatic composition of the
Bhagavad Gita.
I tried to give an idea of the form of the first four
discourses. This same dramatic impulse increases from one discourse
to the next as we penetrate on and on into the realms of occult
vision. A sound idea of the artistic composition of this poem may be
suggested by looking to see if there is not a central point, a climax
to this increase of force and feeling. There are eighteen discourses,
therefore we might look for the climax in the ninth. In fact, in the
ninth one, that is in the very middle, we read these striking words,
“And now, having told thee everything, I will declare to thee
the profoundest secret for the human soul.” Here indeed is a
strange saying that seems to sound abstract yet has deep
significance. Then there follows this most profound mystery.
“Understand me well. I am in all beings, yet they are not in
me.”
How often men ask
today, “What is the judgment of true mystic wisdom about this
or that?” They want absolute truths, but actually there are no
such truths. There are only truths that hold good in certain
contexts, that are true in definite circumstances and under definite
conditions. Then they are true. This statement, “I am in
all beings but they are not in me,” cannot be taken as an
abstractly, absolutely true statement. Yet this was spoken out of the
deepest wisdom of Krishna at the time when he stood before Arjuna,
and its truth is real and immediate, referring to Him Who is the
creator of man’s inmost being, of his consciousness of self.
Thus, through a
wonderful approach we are carried on to the central point of the
Gita, to the ninth discourse where these words are poured out,
to Arjuna. Then, in the eleventh discourse, another element enters.
What may we expect here, realizing the artistic form of the poem and
the deep occult truths contained in it? When we take up the ninth and
tenth discourses, the very middle of the poem, we notice a remarkable
thing — a peculiar difficulty in imagining and bringing to life
in our souls the ideas presented to us in this part of the song.
As you begin with the
first discourse your soul is borne along by the continually
increasing current of feeling and idea. First, immortality is the
subject. Then you are uplifted and inspired by the concepts awakened
through Yoga. All the time your feeling is being borne along by
something in which it can feel at home, one may say. We go still
further and the poem works up in a wonderful way to the concept of
Him Who inspired the age of self-consciousness. Our enthusiasm is
kindled as we approach this Being. All this time we are living in
definite, familiar feelings. Then comes a still greater climax. We
are told how the soul can become ever more free of the outer bodily
life. We are led on to the idea, so familiar to the man of India, of
how the soul can retire into itself, realizing inaction in the
actions the body experiences. The soul can become a complete whole,
independent of outer things as it gradually attains Yoga and becomes
one with Brahma. In the succeeding discourses we see how our
certainty of feeling — the feeling that can still gain
nourishment from daily life — gradually vanishes. Then as we
approach the ninth discourse our soul seems to rise into giddy
heights of unknown experience. If now in these ninth and tenth
discourses we try to make the ideas borrowed from ordinary life
suffice, we fail, As we reach this part of the song we feel as if we
were standing on a summit of mankind’s attainment, born
directly out of the occult depths of life. If we are to understand
it, we must bring to it something our soul in its development has
first to attain by its own effort.
It is remarkable how
fine and unerring the composition of the
Bhagavad Gita
is in this respect. We can get as far as the fifth, sixth, or seventh
discourse by developing the concepts given us at the very beginning,
in the first discourse. In the second our soul is awakened to realize
the presence of the eternal in the ever-changing flow of appearance.
Then follows all that passes into the depths of Yoga, from the third
song onward. After that an altogether new mood begins to appear.
Whereas the first discourses still have an intellectual quality,
reminding us at times of the Western philosophic mode of thinking,
something enters now that requires Yoga, the devotional mood, for its
understanding. As we continue purifying more and more this mood of
devotion, our soul rises higher in reverence. The Yoga of the first
discourses no longer carries us. It ceases, and an altogether new
mood of soul bears us up into the ninth and tenth discourses because
the words here spoken are no more than a dry, empty sound echoing in
our ear if we approach them intellectually. But they radiate warmth
to us if we approach them devotionally. One who would understand this
sublime poem may start with intellectual understanding and so follow
the opening discourses, but as the song proceeds toward the ninth a
deep devotional mood must be awakened in him. Then the words of the
mighty Krishna will be like wonderful music echoing and re-echoing in
his soul. Whoever reaches this ninth song may feel this devotional
mood as if he must take off his shoes before treading on holy ground;
there he feels he must walk with reverence. Then follows the eleventh
discourse. What can come next, now that we have reached the climax of
this devotional mood?
When man has risen to
the summit where Krishna has led Arjuna — a height that cannot
be attained except in occult vision or in reverent devotion —
it can only be the holy and formless, the super-sensible, that appears
before him. Then the super-sensible can be poured out into
Imagination. Then the uplifted and strengthened soul-force that
belongs not to the realm of the intellect but to imaginative
perception, can cast into living pictures what in its essential being
is without form or likeness. This is what happens at the beginning of
the second half of the sublime song — that is to say, about the
eleventh discourse. Here, after due preparation, the Krishna Being to
whom Arjuna has been led step by step, is conjured up before his soul
in Imaginations. This is where the majesty of description in this
Eastern poem appears in its fullness, where Krishna finally appears
in a picture, in an Imagination.
We may truly say that
experiences such as this, which only the innermost power of the human
soul can undergo, have almost nowhere else been described in such a
wonderful way, so filled with meaning. For those who are able to
realize it the Imagination of Krishna as Arjuna now describes it will
always be of most profound significance. Up to the tenth discourse we
are led on by Krishna as by an inspiring Being. Now the radiant bliss
of Arjuna’s opened vision comes before us. Arjuna becomes the
narrator, and describes his Imagination in words so wonderful that
one fears to reproduce them.
“The Gods do I
behold in all thy Frame, O God. Also the hosts of creatures; Brahma
the Lord upon His lotus throne; the Rishis all; the Serpent of
Heaven. With many arms and with many bodies, with many mouths and
many eyes I see Thee, on every side endless in Thy Form. No end, no
center, no beginning see I in Thee, O Lord of All! Thou, Whom I
behold in every form, I see Thee with diadem, with club and sword, a
mountain flaming fire, streaming forth on every side — thus do
I behold Thee. Dazzled is my vision. As fire streaming from the
radiance of the Sun, immeasurably great art Thou! Lost beyond all
thought, unperishing, greatest of all Good, thus dost Thou appear to
me in the Heaven’s expanse. Eternal Dharma’s changeless
guardian, Thou! Spirit primeval and Eternal, Thou standest before my
soul. Neither source, nor midst, nor end; in-. finite in power,
infinite in realms of space. Great are Thine eyes like to the Moon;
yea, like to the Sun itself. And what streams forth from Thy mouth is
as the Fire of Sacrifice. I look upon Thee in Thy glowing Fire; Thy
splendor, warming all worlds. All that I can dream of between floor
of earth and fields of Heaven, Thy power fills it all. Alone with
Thee I stand. And that heavenly universe wherein the three worlds
live, that too doth in Thee dwell, when to my gaze is shown Thy
wondrous, awesome Form. I see whole hosts of Gods approaching Thee,
hymning Thy praise. Stricken with fear I stand before Thee, folding
my hands in prayer. ‘Hail to Thee!’ cry all the companies
of holy seers and Saints, chanting Thy praises with resounding songs.
Filled with wonder stand multitudes beholding Thee. Thy Form
stupendous with many mouths, arms, limbs, feet, many bodies, many
jaws full of teeth — before it all the universe doth quake, and
I with dread am filled. Radiant, Thou shakest Heaven. With many arms
I see Thee, and mouth like to vast-flaming eyes. My soul trembles.
Nothing firm I find, nor rest, O Mighty Krishna, Who art as Vishnu
unto me. I see within Thine awful form, like unto fire itself. I see
how Being works, the end of all the ages. Nought know I anywhere; no
shelter I find. O, be Thou merciful to me, Thou Lord of all the Gods,
refuge of all the worlds!”
Such is the Imagination
that Arjuna beholds when his soul has been raised to that height
where an Imagination of Krishna is possible. Then we hear what
Krishna is echoing across to Arjuna once more as a mighty
inspiration. In reality it is as if it were not merely sounding for
the spiritual ear of Arjuna, but echoing down through all the ages
that followed. At this point we begin dimly to perceive what it
really means when a new impulse is given for a new epoch in the
world’s history, and when the author of this impulse appears to
the clairvoyant gaze of Arjuna. We feel with Arjuna. We remind
ourselves that he is in the midst of the turmoil of battle where
brother-blood is pitted against its like. We know that what Krishna
has to give depends above all upon the old clairvoyant epoch ceasing,
together with all that was holy in it, and a new epoch to begin. When
we reflect on the impulse of this new epoch that was to begin with
fratricide; when we rightly understand the impulse that forced its
way in through all the swaying concepts and institutions of the
preceding epoch; then we get a correct concept of what Krishna lets
Arjuna hear.
“I am time
primeval, bringing all worlds to naught, made manifest on earth to
slay mankind! And even though thou wilt bring them unto death in
battle, without thee hath death taken all the warriors who stand
there in their ranks. Therefore arise; arise without fear. Renown
shalt thou win, and shalt conquer the foe. Rejoice in thy mastery,
and in the victory awaiting thee. It is not thou who wilt have slain
them when they fall in battle. By Me already are they slain, e’er
thou lay them low. The instrument art thou, nought else than he who
fighteth with his arm. The Drona, the Jayandana, the Bhishma, the
Karna and the other heroes of the strife I have slain. Already they
are slain, now do thou slay, that My work burst forth externally
apparent. When they fall dead in Maya, slain by Me, do thou slay
them. And what I have done will through thee become perceptible.
Tremble not! Thou canst not do what I have not already done. Fight!
They whom I have slain will fall beneath thy sword!”
It was not in order to
bring to mankind’s ears the voice that should speak of slaying
that these words were uttered, but to make them hear the voice that
tells that there is a center in man’s being that has to develop
in the age to come; that into this center there were focused the
highest impulses realizable by man at that time, and that there is
nothing in human evolution with which the human ego is not connected.
Here we find in the
Bhagavad Gita
something that lifts us up
and sets us on the horizon of the whole of human evolution.
If we let the changing
moods of this great poem work upon us we shall gain much more than
those who try to read into it pedantic doctrines of Sankhya or Yoga
philosophies. If we can only dimly feel the dazzling heights that can
be reached through Yoga, we shall begin to lay hold on the meaning
and spirit of such a mighty Imagination as that of Arjuna presented
to us here. Even as an image it is so sublime and forceful that we
are able to form some lofty conception of the creative spirit, which
in Krishna is grafted onto the world. The highest impulse that can
speak to the individual man speaks through Krishna to Arjuna. The
highest to which the individual man can lift himself by raising to
their full pitch all the powers that reside within his being —
that is Krishna. The highest to which he can soar by training himself
and working on himself with wisdom — that is Krishna.
When we think of the
evolution of humanity all over the earth, and trace it through as we
are able to do by means of what is given, for example, in our occult
science; when in this sense we see the earth as the place where man
has first been brought to the ego through many different stages
following one another and developing from age to age; when we thus
follow the course of evolution through the epochs of time; then we
may say to ourselves that here then on earth these souls have been
planted; the highest they can attain is to become free souls.
Free — that is what men will become if they bring to full
development all the forces latent within them as individual souls. In
order to make this possible Krishna was active, indirectly and almost
imperceptibly at first, then ever more definitely, and at last quite
directly in the period we have been describing. In all of earthly
evolution there is no Being who could give the individual human
soul so much as Krishna.
I say expressly the
individual soul because — and I say this deliberately —
on earth there exists not only the individual human soul but also
mankind. Consider this in connection with all I have tried to
give about Krishna, because on earth there are all those concerns
that do not belong to the individual alone. Imagine a person feeling
the inner impulse to perfect himself as far as ever a human soul can.
Such might be. Then, each person separately and by himself might go
on developing indefinitely. But there is mankind. For this earthly
planet there are matters that bring it into connection with the whole
universe. With the Krishna Impulse coming into each individual soul,
let us assume every soul would have developed in itself a higher
impulse; not immediately, nor even up to the present time, but
sometime in the future. So that from the age of self-consciousness
onward the stream of mankind’s collective evolution would have
split up. Individual souls would have progressed and unfolded to the
highest point, but separately, dispersed, broken apart from each
other. Their paths would have gone further and further apart as the
Krishna Impulse worked in each one. Human existence would have been
uplifted in the sense that souls individualized themselves and so
lifted themselves out of the common current, developing their
self-life to the utmost. In this way the ancient time would have
shone into the future like many, many rays from a single star. Every
one of these rays would have proclaimed the glory of Krishna far into
future cosmic eras. This is the path on which mankind was traveling
in the sixth or eighth centuries before the foundation of
Christianity.
Then from the opposite side something
else came in. The Krishna Impulse comes into man’s soul when
from the depths of his own inner being he works, creates, and draws
forth his powers more and more until he may rise into those realms
where he may reach Krishna. But something came toward humanity from
outside, which men could never have reached through the forces
that lived within themselves; something bending down to each
individual one. Thus the souls that were separating and isolating
themselves encountered the same Being who came down out of the Cosmic
Universe into the age of self-consciousness from outside. It came in
such a way that it belonged to the whole of humanity, to all the
earth. This other impulse came from the opposite side. It was the
Christ.
Though put rather
abstractly for the present, we see how a continually increasing
individualization was prepared and brought about in mankind, and how
then those souls who had the impulse to individualize themselves more
and more were met by the Christ Impulse, leading them once more
together into a common humanity. What I have tried to indicate has
been a rather preliminary description of the two impulses from the
Christ and Krishna. I have tried to show how closely the two impulses
come together in the age of the mid-point of evolution, even though
they come from diametrically opposite directions. We can make very
great mistakes by confusing these two revelations. What I have
developed today in a rather general way we will make more concrete in
the succeeding lectures. But I would close today with a few words
that may simply and clearly summarize what these two impulses are —
truly the most important in human evolution.
If we look back to all
that happened between the tenth century before Christ and the tenth
century afterward, we may say that into the universe the Krishna
Impulse flowed for every individual human soul, and into the earth
the Christ Impulse came for all mankind.
Observe that for those
who can think specifically, “all mankind” by no means
signifies the same as the mere sum total of all individual human
souls.
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