Lecture I

The teaching of Krishna leads us out into the storms of everyday life, into the wild confusion of human battles, errors and earthly strife. His teaching appears almost like a justification of these human conflicts. If we bring this picture before us quite dispassionately, perhaps the Bhagavad Gita will suggest to us altogether different questions from those that arise when—imagining we can understand them—we alight upon something similar to what we are accustomed to find in ordinary works of literature. So it is perhaps necessary to point first to this setting of the Gita in order to realize its world-historic significance, and then be able to see how it can be of increasing and special significance in our own time.