Lecture IV

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 some day 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.