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RUDOLF STEINER Rudolf Steiner on
The Bhagavad Gita
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Take care: NOTE: An original Steiner text it is reshaped below, and parts of it may be abbreviated, according to system [DETAILS]. A link to the complete text is found at bottom of the page.
      Supporting and healthful "well medleys" are presupposed throughout too:

On the Bhagavad Gita

The Preface

"Writings like these . . . appear as wild phantasy." - Marie Steiner (1867-1948)

Dr Steiner: "Let us take the case of a soul seeking development in a one-sided way through Yoga [and] disdaining to know anything about the external world. "What good is it to me," says such a person, "to learn how the world came into existence? I want to [. . .] advance myself by developing my own powers." Such a person may perhaps feel an inward glow, may often appear to us somewhat self-contained, and self-satisfied. That may be; but [. . .] in time, such a soul will be liable to loneliness. [. . .] He may perhaps say: "What do all these things matter to me?" and [. . .] the exclusiveness leads to a fateful destiny!"

Therefore one had better study too in the hopefully long school of life.

A NOTE: The text - above and in many other places - is abbreviated. - TK

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The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul

A - Savoury development

Lo DECENT yoga development depends on favourable ways at large, and one "needs" to come to terms with expressions like existence and non-existence to think interesting thoughts too.

To dao

LoFormer developments influence artists, and artists influence others in turn - its' often like that

Howdy THE WESTERN world owes much to Greek developments in ages gone by. We find the Greek influence in works by many artists, including Raphael, Micelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. ¤


LoEvolution should be understood in very favourable ways to be made useful

Old English Sheepdog YOU MAY read of Steiner's views of Heraclitus in his book, Christianity as Mystical Fact, how entirely he [and Steiner's exegesis] depended upon the mysteries.
       Yoga is expressed to suit our own age and is also fit for helping human evolution, Steiner holds:
Our age must in an organised way unite that which radiates across to us in three so sharply-defined spiritual streams from old India in the Veda-philosophy, the Sankhya philosophy, and Yoga. For that reason our age must study the wonderful poem of the Bhagavad Gita . . . Just as Krishna made clear to his pupil that behind all existence is the creative cosmic Word, so also he made clear to him that human knowledge can recognise the separate forms, and therefore can grasp the cosmic.
"In accepting the Veda-Word the best part of the all-mighty "Self" is taken in," he also tells.
       Steiner cites that Will is the first seed of Thought, and "the connection between the Existent and the Non-existent . . . this connection was found in the Will." The non-existent refers to old Asiatic modes of expressing what is not yet in time and place, like flowers from not yet sprouted seeds during winter. In spring and summer they tend to appear and gain existence. That's one way of looking at the teachings of non-existence in a favourable way.
       Steiner: "Outside us we have the universal, all-embracing, all-pervading Self that lives and moves in all things, and this we breathe in when we yield ourselves to the contemplation of the spiritual Self of the World."
       It is thought of by Steiner as a "creative principle which lives and weaves throughout the world". ¤
       He also argues, "We see there how blood relations, separate on account of their spiritual tendencies how that which … would formerly have given them the same points of view, now takes different paths; and how, therefore, the conflict then arises". Thus the war of the Gita sets in.
       In this way and many others Steiner keeps tracking things which may lie even further back than the Greek age.


LoThe appeal behind the stuff is of spiritual life

3 IN THOSE old times, Vedic Age, many ideas were formed in tight, poetic ways that fairly often give the wrong impression to those who are not insiders. Steiner holds that many insights from the hoary Vedas were no longer able to come down, and that "Yoga had to be made use of" for that reason. It could be the other way round, though.
       As Steiner tells, "Yoga … appeals directly to the soul-element itself and seeks ways and means of grasping the human soul in direct spiritual life."

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Miscellaneous

SOURCE:
Rudolf Steiner: The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul. 5 lectures given in Cologne: 28th December 1912 to 1st January, 1913. GA 142. The Rudolf Steiner Archive. [Online work]

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