The Rudolf Steiner Archive

20. Buddha and Christ

[ 1 ] These days, questions often arise within the Theosophical Society—and particularly among its younger members—that are certainly worth examining more closely. One of these questions, which is asked very often, is this: Why, exactly, should we devote so much time to the in-depth study of Theosophy? Why do we burden ourselves with all these theories about the origin of the cosmos—from the very beginning to the constitution of the human being with his various bodies and principles?—And then again: the doctrine of the many incarnations that a human being must undergo, and the doctrine of the law of cause and effect—why do we need all of this? Wouldn’t we get much further if we simply absorbed the ethical aspect of theosophical teaching in order to develop ourselves better and become good people? Isn’t that, after all, the main thing? So why all this study?

[ 2 ] Yes, that is indeed the most important thing—that our soul develops! But in order to achieve this most important goal, it is first necessary to make the lofty teachings of Theosophy our own. We can develop more quickly and effectively and work on ourselves if we understand the structure of the human being, how it relates to the cosmos, and if we come to know how the entire evolution of the worlds—just like our own—is influenced and guided by higher beings. Now, however, one might ask: Where do all these sciences and theories come from? Isn’t Theosophy just as much a worldview, a philosophy, as any other—say, those of Haeckel, Kant, and Schopenhauer?—No, Theosophy is not that. Those are structured and cast into certain forms—let’s call them dogmas—and they embody a specific system. But the situation is entirely different with the theosophical worldview: it is a flowing life that penetrates humanity from higher worlds, and its wisdom is revealed to us by enlightened beings, initiates, who, through their clairvoyant power, see the spiritual world as clearly—indeed, even much more clearly—than we see the world of objects around us. The Initiates have a duty to instruct humanity; for the past thirty years they have repeatedly received this message from the higher beings who have already transcended human evolution—from the Masters of the Harmony of Feelings, from these sublime beings who indeed influence every spiritual current on our Earth and gradually allow more and more of their wisdom to flow into the world, as humanity rises higher and higher in its evolution. Now one might ask again: Is it really enough for us ordinary people to simply learn to understand these teachings? Must we not all become initiates in order to understand theosophy?

[ 3 ] Yes, all people at a certain stage of development should strive to become initiates using the methods provided; however, these methods can only lead to the successful development of the dormant powers within the soul through moral strength. Yet even those who are not yet ready to develop these powers—who can absorb and come to understand the sublime teachings of Theosophy only through study and with the help of their teacher—also enjoy a great privilege. When they find themselves in the astral realm after death, they stand on the same level as their teacher in their perception; he has no advantage; he has given back to his students everything he had attained for himself; he sees no more than his students; he did not give out of selfishness in order to rise higher himself. There is no selfishness in the higher worlds or among the truly initiated; they give only to help humanity.

[ 4 ] Another question likely arises among Theosophists when they ask themselves: If I must go through so many incarnations anyway, then I might as well wait until my next incarnation to begin my studies; right now I have so many other things to do, and I’m too lazy to start anyway. — That would be just like if the lily of the valley were to say: “I’m too lazy to bloom now; I want to sleep a little longer in the ground; I’d rather wait until October.” - But in October, it would no longer find the conditions necessary for its blooming. And the same will be true for human beings: if, in this life, they reject the opportunity to receive the spiritual truths offered to them—whether out of laziness or for other reasons—they can be certain that they are already creating, in this very life, the conditions that will prevent them from being able to accept them at all in the next life.

[ 5 ] The impulse that enabled humanity to assimilate these truths at all was given by the event at Golgotha. In it lies the seed for the spiritual understanding of human evolution.

[ 6 ] Let us consider the stages of human development, going back six hundred years before the appearance of Jesus Christ on our Earth and continuing until six hundred years after that event. Six hundred years before Christ, the exalted being of the Buddha incarnated in the person of Siddhartha Gautama, who, through his wisdom, brought a magnificent teaching to millions of people. He was a prince, sheltered and protected from early youth onward from all misery, vice, and every form of suffering that the world entails. When he had grown into a young man and managed to cross the boundaries of his palace garden, he encountered life in all its reality for the first time. He encountered a beggar clad in rags and a sick person, and finally he saw a corpse; from this he concluded that everything on earth is nothing but suffering. Birth is suffering, death is suffering, separation from loved ones is suffering, being united with those one does not love is suffering, not obtaining what one desires is suffering, and obtaining what one does not desire is suffering. He therefore says: All earthly things are vain; therefore, one should renounce life and detach oneself from all that is earthly; one should quench the thirst for existence, for everything is Maya. — He did not return to his royal palace, but went into the desert.

[ 7 ] How, then, had human development progressed in Palestine six hundred years after the event? The Buddha had said: “All is suffering; life is suffering; death is suffering; therefore, quench the thirst for existence.” — Christ, on the other hand, showed us how, precisely by immersing ourselves deeply in life, we can overcome all suffering through love; how, by overcoming materialism through the spirit, we can also carry the spirit over into a higher world and thereby overcome death as well. Six hundred years before Jesus Christ, Buddha had attained the certainty through the sight of a corpse and taught the world that death is suffering; six hundred years later, Christ showed the world through his own body on the cross that death is not suffering, but the conqueror of the world’s suffering—that it brings forth not destruction, but new life. After his death, Christ brought light into the astral world. And ever since blood was shed on Golgotha, the Earth’s aura has also changed, and it is this new principle in the Earth’s aura that instilled the Christ impulse in humanity. Let us examine more closely the inflow of this exalted Individuality, which brought the Christ impulse to Earth.

[ 8 ] If we go back to ancient times, when the holy Rishis proclaimed the high wisdom of Vishva-Karman, the great Sun God, we find that they speak of the very same Individuality that Zarathustra later proclaimed—whom he calls Ormuzd and whose physical form he sees in Ahura Mazdao, the great solar aura. And it is this same great Being who appeared to Moses in the burning bush on Mount Sinai—the same spiritual solar individuality that descended ever lower from the sun, drawing ever closer and closer to the earth, and who, when Moses asked, “What shall I tell the people when they ask me who you are?”—replied: “I am who I am, who I was, and who I will be!” and who announced to him that, when the time came when the Earth could receive Him, He would dwell among us in the flesh. When had this time come? This time had come when a pure body was born that could serve as the vessel for this exalted Being. And this vessel was the body of Jesus of Nazareth, in which she dwelt for three years. This great mystery—the life of the divine Being in an earthly body, His death on Golgotha—lies at the foundation of the development that now follows, as its substance and driving force.

[ 9 ] It was not Christ’s teachings alone that brought about the spread of Christianity; other religious founders had already proclaimed the same teachings. During Christ’s lifetime, the small group of Christians was so little known that there were even many countries where people knew nothing at all of Christ’s existence. What, then, was it that later spread Christianity? It was the act of Christ Jesus in taking on a physical form on earth. Only through this was the Christian impulse implanted within us. Paul became the true propagator and founder of Christianity, and only after the event at Damascus. Even he, who had received and internalized the teachings of Christ Jesus, could not come to faith in or to the confession of Christ Jesus, for he could not believe that a deity would have to take upon Himself the shame of death on the cross. What, then, was it that led him to faith in Him? It was nothing other than that he suddenly became a clairvoyant and beheld the image of the living Christ in the astral world, in the Earth’s aura. Then he recognized that Christ Jesus had not died, but had remained connected to the world. Humanity will only come to understand what Christ is in times far in the future. Christ is the planetary spirit of our Earth, the spirit who, from the very beginning, descended from the Sun to us, and who, having left the higher realms, descended deeper and deeper into the spheres until He incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, in order to awaken within us, through this great sacrifice, the Christ impulse, whose highest unfolding is the goal of our earthly evolution—an evolution that will have fulfilled its purpose only when all people have become like the Teacher was.

[ 10 ] The words spoken by Christ: “Whoever eats my bread tramples me underfoot,” are to be taken literally, for Christ is the Spirit of our Earth, and the Earth is his physical body. Through the event at Golgotha, when the Spirit of the great divine Solar Individuality left the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and at the very moment the blood flowed from the wounds, something significant occurred for humanity. Suppose a clairvoyant had observed the aura of our Earth from another planet at that momentous moment; he would have perceived a great change in it: he would have discovered a different, new color in the aura—something like a different element that had not been there before and which, from that time onward, enriched humanity so that it might absorb the Christian principle of love and self-sacrifice. If we now seek to make these truths our own through a thorough study of the theosophical teachings—by learning to understand that the entire cosmic and human evolution, in all its details, is connected with the intervention of higher powers, with the workings of the spiritual hierarchies, and that our entire spiritual development is guided by them—only when this has become a certainty for us, only then will the high and sublime wisdom affect us in such a way that the ethics of the theosophical teachings receive their true consecration, which warms our soul from within through our own recognition of the truths, so that it may also bear the true fruits of theosophy—or spiritual science—into practical life. Only when we learn to understand Christ—and with that, his full significance for our earthly evolution, as taught to us by the ancient wisdom of Theosophy, which leads us into the mysteries of the Thought of Creation and reveals to us the purpose of our existence—only then can we grasp the wondrous ethics of theosophical teaching with our whole soul, just as they are meant to be grasped. The most beautiful moral sermons and ethical reflections are of very little help to people. We often see in the world that they become nothing more than a pious habit, but they do very little to help. It is just as if one were to say to that stove: “Dear stove, do your moral duty as a good stove and warm my room.” - You’ll wait a while—but it won’t get warm. If, however, you give this stove fuel, it will soon radiate a soothing warmth. It is the same with human beings. Preach morality and ethics to them as much as you like; it will do you little good. But if you give them fuel for their spirit, their inner being will warm up, and they will fulfill their duty in the world from the depths of their soul—not because, as a moral person, they must, but because their inner nature leaves them no other choice. When we bring spiritual science into our lives—whatever profession we may hold—it will bring about a transformation everywhere. Just think: what a different way of thinking would it foster, for example, in the field of legal scholarship—especially in this day and age, when lawyers often find themselves at a loss in the face of the jumble of legal provisions and statutes! Every case is treated and viewed merely as a number, placed into a certain category. If the lawyer were a devotee of spiritual science, he would view the entire natural world around him, all of humanity, and every single person through entirely different eyes; he would come to understand his clients better because he would feel at one with them. His thinking—which, like all thinking that forces itself into certain forms, schemas, and dogmas without spiritual science, becomes rigid—would, through spiritual science, become more flexible, more fluid, and expand; and therefore, if he possessed spiritual thinking, he would contribute to the healing of humanity. And take the physician: a completely different, much broader field would open up to him. We are already well on our way here, for there are already many physicians who, enlightened by spiritual science, are working in this direction. — For all these reasons, once we have diligently studied and understood the teachings of spiritual science, we must carry their fruits into practical life for the benefit and healing of humanity.