Rudolf Steiner opens the first of the five lectures on the Bhagavad Gita and the letters of Paul (given during the founding days of the Anthroposophical Society) by placing the Gita and the new Anthroposophical movement in the context of an evolution of consciousness that is divided into historical periods.

For Steiner, the present is a time of increasing opportunities for conscious spiritual knowledge, within a broader context of the rapidly growing obscurantism of consciousness. While his lectures generally describe - with some surprising deviations - the first and second historical periods after the disappearance of Atlantis, they focus more intensely on the three periods that have begun from the third millennium to the present day.

Steiner sees Krishna as a great spiritual teacher and the Bhagavad Gita as a preparation, (though abstract), for the coming of the Christ impulse as the living embodiment of the world, of the law, and of devotion, represented by the three Hindu streams: of the Veda, Sankhya, and Yoga.

For him, the epic poem of the Bhagavad Gita represents the fully ripened fruit of Hinduism. And while the letters of Paul are intertwined, they essentially represent the seed of something entirely new.