Lecture II

If one wished today really to combine science with occult principles, one would, however, be obliged to support the colour theory of Goethe. For in that we find again, in the very centre of our scientific culture, the principle which once upon a time reigned as the spiritual principle of the Sankhya philosophy. You can understand, my dear friends, why many years ago I set myself the task of bringing Goethe's colour theory again into notice as a physical science, resting, however, upon occult principles; for one may quite relevantly say that Goethe so divides the colour phenomena that he represents them according to the three states of Sattva, Rajas, Tamas. So gradually, there emerges into the new spiritual history discovered by the modern methods, that which mankind attained to once upon a time by quite other means. The Sankhya philosophy is pre-Buddhistic, as the legend of Buddha brings very clearly before our eyes; for it relates, and rightly, the Indian doctrine that Kapila was the founder of the Sankhya philosophy. Buddha was born in the dwelling place of Kapila, in Kapila Vastu, whereby it is indicated that Buddha grew up under the Sankhya teaching. Even by his very birth he was placed where once worked the one who first gathered together this great Sankhya philosophy. We have to picture to ourselves this Sankhya doctrine in its relation to the other spiritual currents of which we have spoken, not as many Orientalists of the present day represent it, nor as does the Jesuit, Joseph Dahlmann; but that in different parts of ancient India there lived men who were differentiated, for at the time when these three spiritual currents were developing, the very first primeval state of human evolution was no longer there. For instance, in the North Eastern part of India human nature was such that it inclined to the conceptions given in the Sankhya philosophy; more towards the West, human nature was of that kind that it inclined to conceive of the world according to the Veda doctrine. The different spiritual “nuances” come, therefore, from, the differently gifted human nature in the different parts of India; and only because of the Vedantists later on having worked on further and made many things familiar, do we find in the Vedas at the present time much of Sankhya philosophy bound up with them. Yoga, the third spiritual current, arose as we have often pointed out, because the old clairvoyance had gradually diminished, and one had to seek new ways to the spiritual worlds. Yoga is distinguished from Sankhya in that the latter is a real science, a science of external forms, which really only grasps these forms and the different relations of the human soul to these forms. Yoga shows how souls can develop so as to reach the spiritual worlds.