The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] Throughout the various stages of Christianity’s development, the Gospel of John has been the text that has consistently made the deepest impression on all those who sought a special deepening and an inner immersion in the currents of the Christian world. For this reason, the Gospel of John was the sacred text of all Christian mystics who sought to live out what is portrayed in the Gospel of John regarding the personality and essence of Christ Jesus.

[ 2 ] Throughout the centuries, the Christian world has approached the Gospel of Luke in a somewhat different way. Viewed from another perspective, this is essentially consistent with what we were able to suggest yesterday regarding the difference between the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Luke. If the Gospel of John was, in a certain sense, a text for mystics, the Gospel of Luke has always been a kind of devotional book for the general public—for those who, one might say in a certain way, were able to rise into the realm of Christian sentiment out of the simplicity and sincerity of their hearts. As a devotional book, the Gospel of Luke has stood the test of time. For all those who were weighed down by suffering and pain, it has always been a source of inner comfort. For in this Gospel, so much is proclaimed about the great Comforter, the great Benefactor of humanity, the Savior of the burdened and the afflicted. The Gospel of Luke was a book to which those who wished to imbue themselves with Christian love turned in particular, for more than in any other Christian text, the power and the intensity of love are unfolded in this Gospel of Luke. And those who were in any way aware—and, after all, this can apply to all people—that they had burdened their hearts with some fault or other have always found edification, comfort, and uplift for their burdened souls when they turned to the Gospel of Luke and its message and could say to themselves: Christ Jesus did not appear merely for the righteous, but also for sinners; he sat at table with sinners and tax collectors. - While the Gospel of John requires a high degree of preparation to allow it to take effect, it can be said of the Gospel of Luke that no mind is so lowly or so immature that it cannot fully receive all the warmth that flows from the Gospel of Luke.

[ 3 ] Thus, the Gospel of Luke has always been a book for the general public, one that even the most childlike mind could find edification in. Everything in the human soul that remains childlike—from the earliest stages of life all the way to the highest stages of old age—has always been drawn to the Gospel of Luke. And above all, what has been depicted pictorially from Christian truths—what art has taken as its subject matter from Christian truths—though much has also flowed from the other Gospels—what, however, has always spoken most powerfully to human hearts through art and painting, we find expressed in the Gospel of Luke and flowing from there into art. All the profound relationships between Christ Jesus and John the Baptist, which have so often found artistic expression, have their source in this imperishable book, the Gospel of Luke.

[ 4 ] Anyone who contemplates this document from this perspective will find that, from beginning to end, it is, as it were, steeped in the principles of love, compassion, simplicity, and even, to a certain degree, childlikeness. And where else is this childlikeness expressed in such a heartwarming way than in the story of the childhood of Jesus of Nazareth, as recounted to us by the author of the Gospel of Luke! Why this was so will also become clear to us as we gradually delve deeper and deeper into this remarkable book.

[ 5 ] Today it will be necessary to say certain things that may at first seem contradictory to those who have heard my other lectures on this subject or on other cycles. But just wait for the explanations in the coming days, and you will see that this is in harmony with what you have heard from me so far about Christ Jesus and Jesus of Nazareth. One cannot present the entire complex scope of the truth all at once, and today it will be necessary to point out one aspect of Christian truths that will appear to be in apparent contradiction to that part of the truth which I have been able to express to you here and there up to now. — The approach should be chosen in such a way that the individual streams of truth are developed and it is then shown how they are completely in harmony and in accord with one another. Of course, in the various cycles—especially since the starting point has so far been taken—and intentionally so—from the Gospel of John—I could only point to a part of the truth. This part nevertheless remains the truth; we will see that in the coming days. Today it falls to us to consider a part of Christian truths that is unfamiliar to most of you.

[ 6 ] In the Gospel of Luke, a wonderful passage tells us that an angel appeared to the shepherds in the fields and announced to them that the “Savior of the world” had been born. And then it is mentioned that, after the angel had delivered the message, “heavenly hosts” (Luke 2:13) appeared alongside him. So imagine the scene: these shepherds looking up, and something like “heaven opened” appearing to them, with beings from the spiritual world unfolding before them in majestic visions. What is announced to the shepherds?

[ 7 ] What is proclaimed to them is clothed in monumental words—words that have been spoken throughout the entire course of human development and have become the Christmas message of Christian development. The words resound to the shepherds; if translated correctly, they would read something like this:

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom He is well pleased.” (Luke 2:14.)

[ 8 ] “Glory,” as it is usually rendered, is a completely incorrect translation. As I have just said, it should read as follows. And the contrast should be sharply emphasized: that what the shepherds see is the revelation of spiritual beings from on high, and that it occurs at this very moment so that peace may enter the hearts of humans who are imbued with good will.

[ 9 ] As we shall see, much of the mystery of Christianity lies, in essence, in these words—if they are understood correctly. But it will take quite a bit to shed light on these paradigmatic words. Above all, we must try to consider those reports that the human being’s clairvoyant sense receives from the Akashic Records. What matters is, first of all, to look with the open eye of the spirit at the age in which Christ Jesus appeared for humanity, and then to ask ourselves: How does that which entered into Earth’s development spiritually at that time present itself when we trace it through its entire historical unfolding, when we ask: Where did it come from?

[ 10 ] At that time, something flowed into the development of humanity that manifested itself as a convergence of spiritual currents from a wide variety of directions. In the most diverse regions of the earth, the most varied worldviews have emerged over the course of time. Everything that emerged in the various regions of the earth converged in Palestine at that time and found expression in one way or another in these events in Palestine, so that we may ask ourselves: Where are the currents heading that we see flowing together as if toward a focal point in the events in Palestine?

[ 11 ] We already pointed out yesterday that the Gospel of Luke provides what we call imaginative knowledge, and that this imaginative knowledge is gained through images. An image is presented to us in what has just been described—an image of the revelation of spiritual beings from on high appearing to the shepherd, the image of a spiritual being, an angel, and then a host of angels. We must therefore ask: How does the clairvoyant person—who is also initiated into the mysteries of existence—perceive this image, which he can recreate at any time when he looks back into the Akashic Records? What is it that appeared to the shepherds? What is contained in this host of angels, and where does it come from?

[ 12 ] One of the great spiritual currents that have flowed through human evolution—the current that gradually rose higher and higher, so that by the time of the events in Palestine it could only shine down upon the Earth from the spiritual heights—is the one depicted in this image. If we take as our starting point—specifically through the deciphering of the Akashic Records—this host of angels that appeared to the shepherds, we are led back to one of the greatest spiritual currents in human development, which, one might say, spread as Buddhism several centuries before the appearance of Christ Jesus on Earth. As strange as it may sound to you, anyone who traces the path back through the Akashic Records from that revelation to the shepherds to the earlier periods of human history is led to an understanding of what the “Enlightenment” of the great Buddha was. What dawned upon the people of India—what once moved minds and hearts there as the religion of compassion and love, as a great worldview, and what still serves as spiritual nourishment for a large part of humanity today—reappeared in the revelation of the shepherds. For this, too, was to flow into the Palestinian revelation. We can only understand what is first told to us in the Gospel of Luke if we—again from the perspective of spiritual scientific research—take a look at what the Buddha meant to humanity and what the Buddha’s revelation actually brought about in the course of human development. In this regard, we must make the following clear to ourselves.

[ 13 ] When the Buddha arose in the Far East five to six centuries before our era, an individuality emerged within him that had reincarnated time and again and, through its many incarnations, had advanced to a high stage of human development. The Buddha was able to become who he was only because, in his earlier incarnations, he had already attained—in the highest sense of the word—a very, very high stage of development. That stage of development attained by a being in the universe, which the Buddha had reached, is referred to by an Eastern term as a “Bodhisattva.” The nature of the Bodhisattvas has already been discussed from various angles—at least for some of you. In the lecture series “Spiritual Hierarchies and Their Reflection in the Physical World,” Düsseldorf, April 1909, I showed how the Bodhisattvas relate to the entire cosmic evolution; in Munich, in the lecture series “The Orient in the Light of the Occident,” August 1909, I was able to shed light on this from another perspective. Today, we shall once again consider the nature of the Bodhisattvas from yet another angle. You will gradually come to find the harmony between these individual truths.

[ 14 ] Anyone who became a Buddha must first have been a Bodhisattva. A Bodhisattva is thus the preceding stage of individual development on the path to Buddhahood. Now let us consider the nature of Bodhisattvas from the perspective of human evolution. We can only understand this if we view the development of humanity from the perspective of spiritual science.

[ 15 ] What people are capable of at any given time—the abilities they develop—did not always exist. It is merely a short-sighted perspective, one that cannot see beyond its own era, that believes the same abilities people possess today were already present in ancient times. Human abilities—what people can accomplish, know, and do—change from one era to the next. Today, human abilities are so developed that a person can, in a sense, recognize this or that through his or her own reason, and can rightly say: “I recognize this or that truth through my intellect, through my reason; I can discern what is moral and immoral, what is, in a certain sense, logical or illogical.” But one would be mistaken to believe that these abilities—to distinguish the logical from the illogical or the moral from the immoral—have always been inherent in human nature. They have only come into being and have developed gradually. What human beings are capable of today through their own faculties, they once had to be taught—like children—by their father and mother or by a teacher—that is, by beings who, although they too were incarnated among human beings, were more highly developed in their spiritual faculties and, within the mysteries, were able to commune with spiritual beings above them—with divine-spiritual beings.

[ 16 ] There have always been such individualities who, although incarnated in a physical body, were able to interact with higher individualities that are not physically incarnated. For example, before human beings acquired the gift of logical thinking—which enables them to think logically even today—they had to listen to certain teachers. These teachers, too, were not able to think logically through certain abilities developed in the physical body, but only because, within the mysteries, they had contact with divine-spiritual beings who dwell in higher regions. Such teachers, who taught logic and morality based on the revelations they received from higher worlds, existed before human beings themselves were capable, by their very nature on Earth, of thinking logically or discovering morality. A certain category of such beings—who, though incarnated in a physical body, associate with divine-spiritual beings so that they may bring down what they learn from them and communicate it to humankind—are the Bodhisattvas. They are, therefore, beings incarnated in a human body whose abilities extend to communion with divine-spiritual beings.

[ 17 ] And before the Buddha became a “Buddha,” he was a Bodhisattva—that is, an individual who, within the mysteries, was able to interact with the higher, divine-spiritual beings. Such a being as the Bodhisattva is once received a specific mission, a specific task in the higher world during the distant primordial times of Earth’s evolution, and he then remains faithful to this mission.

[ 18 ] If we apply this to the Buddha, we must say: As a Bodhisattva, he had a specific task. When the Earth was still in earlier stages of development, even before the Atlantean and Lemurian eras, the being who incarnated as the Buddha in the sixth century B.C. had been given a specific task. This task remained unchanged. Throughout the ages, from epoch to epoch, it had to work and impart as much of Earth’s evolution as humanity, by virtue of its nature, was able to absorb. For every such being—that is, for every Bodhisattva—there is therefore a time when, so to speak, he reaches a certain point with the mission he received in primeval times, where what he has been able to infuse into humanity from above has become part of humanity’s own capacity. For what is human capacity today was once the capacity of divine-spiritual beings, and the Bodhisattvas brought it down from the spiritual heights to humanity. Such a spiritual missionary thus reaches a point where he can say to himself: I have fulfilled my mission; humanity has now been given what it has been prepared for throughout many, many ages. Having reached such a point, the Bodhisattva can become a Buddha. That is to say, a time comes for him when, as the being with the mission we have just described, he no longer needs to incarnate in a physical human body—he incarnates in such a physical human body for the last time and then no longer needs to incarnate as such a missionary. Such a time had come for the Buddha. What he had to do in the past led him down to Earth again and again. But at the time when he had become enlightened as the Buddha, a final incarnation began for him as a Bodhisattva. He entered a human body that had developed to the highest degree the abilities that had previously had to be taught from above and that were now to gradually become his own human abilities.

[ 19 ] When such a Bodhisattva, through his previous spiritual development, has succeeded in perfecting a human body to the point where he can develop the abilities necessary for the qualities associated with the Bodhisattva’s mission, he no longer needs to incarnate. Then, while promoting and guiding human affairs, he soars through spiritual realms and works among humanity from there. And it is then the task of human beings to further develop what once flowed down to them from the heights of heaven and to say to themselves: We must now develop ourselves in such a way that we cultivate those abilities which we see realized to the fullest extent for the first time in that incarnation achieved through the Bodhisattva’s abilities and manifested in the Buddha. And just as the being who worked as a Bodhisattva through the ages appears as a human being—as a fully realized individual in whom everything that once flowed down from the heavenly heights has been incorporated into human nature—to demonstrate in a single human being what the Bodhisattva is capable of is to be a “Buddha.” This is what the Buddha demonstrated. Had the Bodhisattva withdrawn from his mission earlier, then human beings would no longer have been able to partake of the blessing of having these abilities flow to them from the heights. But once development had progressed so far that these abilities could be present in a single human being on Earth, the seed for them was also created so that human beings could develop them within themselves in the future. Thus the individuality that previously developed as a Bodhisattva—and which, as long as it was a Bodhisattva, did not fully enter the human form but extended into the heavenly realms—this individuality of the Bodhisattva eventually withdraws completely into a human being, so that it is fully encompassed by this incarnation. But then it withdraws again. For now—with this incarnation as the Buddha—a certain measure of revelations has been given to humanity, which are now to develop further within humanity itself. Therefore, after becoming the Buddha, the Bodhisattva being may withdraw from the earth to certain spiritual heights, may dwell there, and may continue to guide the affairs of humanity from there, where it is possible to see it only through a certain clairvoyant faculty.

[ 20 ] What, then, was the task of that wondrous, that mighty, great individuality whom we in everyday life call the Buddha? If we truly wish to understand the task, the mission of this Buddha in the sense of true esotericism, we must tell ourselves the following. Humanity’s entire capacity for knowledge has developed gradually. We have repeatedly pointed out how, during the Atlantean epoch, a large portion of humanity was able to look into the spiritual worlds through clairvoyance, and we have said that certain remnants of this ancient clairvoyance still existed in the post-Atlantean epoch. If we were to descend from the Atlantean era into the ancient Indian, the primordial Persian, the Egyptian-Chaldean eras, and even into the Greco-Latin era, we would find numerous people—far more than today’s humanity can even imagine—who possessed the legacy of this ancient clairvoyance, to whom the astral plane was open, and who looked into the hidden depths of existence. Even in the Greco-Roman era, seeing the human etheric body was something quite ordinary for a large portion of the population—particularly the head region, surrounded by that etheric cloud, which, of course, has gradually become completely hidden within the head itself. |

[ 21 ] But humanity had to rise to that level of knowledge which gradually became perfect sensory knowledge—that is, the knowledge acquired through the external senses and through those mental faculties directed toward the external senses. Humanity had to gradually, so to speak, step out completely from the spiritual world and enter into mere sensory observation, into rational, logical thinking. Gradually, human beings had to rise to this non-clairvoyant knowledge, because they had to pass through it in order to regain clairvoyant knowledge in the future—but then united with what they had acquired as sensory and intellectual knowledge.

[ 22 ] We are living in the present. We look back on a past in which humanity possessed clairvoyance, and we look forward to a future in which people will once again possess clairvoyance. In the meantime, however, the majority of people rely on what they perceive with their senses and comprehend with their intellect and reason. Admittedly, there is also a certain level of sensory perception and of intellectual and rational understanding. But everywhere there are varying degrees of understanding. One person goes through the current incarnation of his earthly existence in such a way that he understands very little of what morality is and shows little compassion toward his fellow human beings: we call him a person at a low moral level. Or another person goes through life in such a way that his intellectual powers are underdeveloped: we call him a person at a low intellectual level. We know, however, that these intellectual powers of cognition can rise to a high level. From the person who is morally and intellectually limited to the person whom we, in Fichte’s sense, call a “moral genius”—and who has developed to the highest level of moral imagination—we have all possible intermediate stages; and we know that we can develop ourselves to this height of human perfection in the present day—without possessing clairvoyant powers—simply by refining the faculties available to the ordinary human being. These stages had first to be attained by humanity in the course of Earth’s evolution. What human beings today already recognize to a certain degree through their own intelligence—and also what they achieve through their own moral strength, namely, that one should feel compassion for the suffering and pain of others—is something that prehistoric humans could not have attained on their own. Today we can say that humanity’s sound moral sense has already risen to this insight even without clairvoyance, and people will be able to rise ever more to the realization that compassion is the highest virtue and that humanity could not move forward without love. One can say: The human moral sense can recognize this today, and it will continue to develop more and more. But one must look back to times when the moral sense was such that it could not have come to this realization on its own.

[ 23 ] There were times when people could never have realized on their own that compassion and love could be part of the highest development of the human soul. Therefore, spiritual beings—such as the Bodhisattvas—had to incarnate in human form to receive revelations from higher worlds regarding the active power of compassion and the active power of love, and who were able to tell people how to conduct themselves in compassion and love, because people were not yet mature enough to realize this on their own. What people today recognize on their own as the high virtue of compassion and love—to which the moral sense rises—had to be taught over epoch after epoch from the heights of heaven. And the teacher of love and compassion in those times, when people themselves did not yet have an understanding of the nature of compassion and love, was the Bodhisattva who then incarnated for the last time as the Gautama Buddha. Ä

[ 24 ] Thus, the Buddha was previously the Bodhisattva, who was the teacher of love and compassion and of all that is connected with them. He was so throughout those eras characterized by the fact that human beings were, by nature, still clairvoyant to a certain degree. As a Bodhisattva, he incarnated in such clairvoyant human bodies. And when he then incarnated as the Buddha and looked back with clairvoyance into these earlier incarnations—from one incarnation to the next—he was able to describe how the inner soul felt when it gazed into the depths of existence hidden behind the veil of the senses. He possessed this ability in his earlier incarnations, and with this ability he was born into the Sakya clan, from which Gautama’s father, Suddhodana, originated. At that time, when Gautama Buddha was born, he was still the Bodhisattva. That is to say, he appeared as the being to which he had evolved in his previous incarnations. Thus, the one commonly called the Buddha was born to his father Suddhodana and his mother Mayadevi as the Bodhisattva. But since he was born as the Bodhisattva, he possessed a high degree of clairvoyance even as a child. He was able to look into the depths of existence.

[ 25 ] Let us be clear that, in the course of human development, the act of looking into the depths of existence has gradually taken on very specific forms. The mission of human development on Earth was to gradually allow the gift of the old, dull form of clairvoyance to recede; and what remained as a legacy of that old clairvoyance were therefore not its best aspects. These best aspects were the first to be lost. What remained was, in many cases, a base gaze into the astral world—a glimpse precisely of those demonic forces that drag human beings down into a lower sphere through their drives and passions. Through initiation, we can indeed look into the spiritual world and see the forces and beings connected with humanity’s most beautiful thoughts and feelings; but we also see those spiritual powers that lie behind unbridled passion, wild sensuality, and consuming selfishness. What had been preserved for people at large—not among the initiated, but among the vast majority of people—was precisely the perception of these wild, demonic forces that lie behind the lower human passions. Anyone who looks into the spiritual world at all can, of course, see all this for themselves. This depends on the development of human faculties. A person cannot attain one without the other.

[ 26 ] As a bodhisattva, the Buddha naturally had to incarnate in a human body structured in the same way as human bodies were at that time—a body that gave him the ability to look deeply into the astral depths of existence. Even as a child, he was able to perceive all the astral forces that underlie wild, tempestuous passion and consuming, greedy sensuality. He had been shielded from seeing the outside world in all its physical depravity and in its torments and pains. Shut away in the palace, protected from everything, he was spoiled and pampered, because, based on prevailing prejudices, people believed this was what he was entitled to according to his station. But this seclusion served to bring his inner vision all the more to the fore. And while he was carefully shielded and everything reminiscent of illness and pain was kept from him, in his seclusion his spiritual eye remained open to astral images. There, he was bewitched by astral images of everything that can drag human beings down with wild passions.

[ 27 ] Anyone who is able to read the biography of the Buddha—which, though exoteric, has been preserved—with the inner eye or through true esotericism will intuit this for themselves when they are told what has just been said. For this must be emphasized: One cannot understand much of what is in the exoteric accounts unless one can penetrate the esoteric underpinnings. And what one can least understand from the exoteric accounts is the life of the Buddha. It must actually seem strange to one when Orientalists and others who study the Buddha’s life find it described that the Buddha was surrounded in his palace by “forty thousand dancers and eighty-four thousand women.” This is already recorded today in books that can be bought for a few pfennigs; but one notices that the writers are not particularly astonished by a harem of forty thousand dancers and eighty-four thousand women. What does this mean? People do not realize that this alludes to something the Buddha experienced to the fullest extent—as much as can be poured into a human heart—through astral vision: just as, from childhood onward, he did not experience the suffering and pain taking place in the physical human world—for he was initially shielded from that—but he beheld all of it as spiritual forces at work in the spiritual world. He beheld it because he had been born into a body such as could be born in that era, and from the very beginning he was immune, strengthened, and elevated above all the most terrible illusions that surrounded him, because in his earlier incarnations he had risen to the level of a Bodhisattva. But because he lived as the individuality of the Bodhisattva in this human incarnation, he felt compelled to go out and see what each individual image of this astral world—as it surrounded him in the palace—was pointing toward. Each individual image, as it were, urged him outward to see the world—to leave his prison, so to speak. That was the driving force in his soul. For within him, as a Bodhisattva, lived a high spiritual power. It was precisely that spiritual power that lived within him—the one connected to the mission of teaching humanity the full power of compassion and love and all that is associated with them. To do this, he himself had to get to know humanity in the world; he had to see it in the world where it can experience the teaching of compassion and love precisely out of a sense of morality. He had to get to know humanity in the physical world. He had to ascend from Bodhisattva to Buddha, a human being among human beings. He could do this only if he turned away from all the abilities that had remained to him from his earlier incarnations, if he stepped out onto the physical plane to live there among human beings in such a way that, within humanity itself, he would serve as a prime example, an ideal, and a model for the development of these distinctive qualities.

[ 28 ] To become a Buddha from a Bodhisattva in this sense, of course, various intermediate stages of development are necessary. It does not happen overnight. It was this that drove him out of the royal palace. And the account tells us that once outside—once he had, as it were, “broken out” of his palatial prison—he encountered an old man, a venerable elder. Until then, he had been surrounded only by images of youth; he had been led to believe that only the brimming vitality of youth existed. Now, in the old man, he had encountered what manifests as old age on the physical plane. And furthermore, he now encountered a sick person, and then he encountered a corpse—that is to say, death on the physical plane. All of this now appeared before his soul, now that he could truly take in the physical plane.

[ 29 ] This legend—which, once again, is truer than any external science—now reveals something very characteristic of what the Buddha truly is: As he rode out of the royal palace, he was being led by a horse that was so grieved by the fact that he now wished to leave behind everything into which he had been born that it died of grief and was then transported as a spiritual being into the spiritual world. — This image expresses a profound truth. It would take us too far afield today if I were to explain in detail why the horse, of all things, is used to symbolize a human spiritual power. I will merely recall Plato, who speaks of a horse that he holds by the reins when he wishes to use an image for certain human abilities that are still bestowed from above, which have not been developed from within the human being himself. When the Buddha steps out of the royal palace, he leaves behind the abilities that have not developed from within the soul itself. He leaves them in the spiritual worlds from which they have always guided him. This is symbolized by the horse, which dies of grief when he leaves it and is then transported into the spiritual world.

[ 30 ] But only gradually can the Buddha become what he was destined to become in his final incarnation on Earth. After all, he must first come to know on the physical plane what he, as a Bodhisattva, had previously known only through spiritual insight. There he first meets two teachers. One is a representative of that ancient Indian worldview known as the Sankhya philosophy, and the other is a representative of the yoga philosophy. The Buddha comes to know both of them and immerses himself in what they have to offer him. He lives within it. For no matter how exalted a being one may be, one must first find one’s way into the external world that humanity has conquered. Even though a Bodhisattva may learn more quickly, he must still learn it first. The Bodhisattva, who lived about five or six centuries before our era, would, if he were born today—just as children learn in school—first have to catch up on what has happened on Earth in the meantime, while he was living in the heavenly realms. In the same way, the Buddha also had to become acquainted with what had transpired since his last incarnation.

[ 31 ] And he learned the Sankhya philosophy from one of his teachers and the yoga philosophy from another. This allowed him to gain an initial insight into the worldviews that, for many at that time, solved life’s mysteries, and to learn what it was like for a soul to allow these worldviews to take hold.

[ 32 ] In Sankhya philosophy, he had been able to adopt a subtly logical philosophical view of the world. But the more he immersed himself in it, the less it satisfied him. In the end, it was like a web, devoid of living life. He sensed that he had to draw the sources for what he was meant to do in this incarnation from somewhere other than this traditional Sankhya philosophy.

[ 33 ] The other was Patanjali’s philosophy of yoga, which sought union with the Divine through certain inner spiritual processes. Thus he also immersed himself in the philosophy of yoga, absorbed it, and made it a part of his very being. But even that left him unsatisfied, for he realized that it was something that had been passed down from ancient times; yet people had to develop other abilities—they had to achieve moral development within themselves. After Buddha had examined the philosophy of yoga within his own soul, he saw that it could not be the source of his mission at that time,

[ 34 ] He then came upon a group of five hermits. Through a path of the strictest self-discipline, marked by mortification and deprivation, they had sought to penetrate the mysteries of existence. The Buddha also tried this path, but he told himself that it could not be the source of his mission at that time. For a time, he endured all the privations and mortifications just as the monks did. He fasted as they did, in order to rid himself of the greed inherent in human life and thereby summon deeper forces—forces that emerge precisely when the body is weakened by fasting and that can then swiftly lead one from the depths of the human physical realm into the spiritual world. But precisely because the Buddha had attained his stage of development, he recognized the futility of this self-mortification, fasting, and starvation. After all, because he was the Bodhisattva, he had been able—through his development in earlier incarnations—to bring this human body of that time to the highest level of development attainable by a human being at that time. That is why the Buddha was also able to experience what a human being must experience when undergoing this very path to the spiritual heights.

[ 35 ] Anyone who ascends to a certain level of Sankhya or Yoga philosophy without having developed what the Buddha had previously undergone, who seeks to ascend to the pure heights of the divine spirit through logical thinking without first having attained moral sense in the Buddha’s sense—such a person then faces the very temptation that the Buddha underwent in a trial-like ordeal and which is indicated to us as the temptation by the demon Mara. There, a person arrives at a place where all the demons of pride, vanity, and ambition take hold of him. The Buddha came to know this. The figure of Mara—embodying vanity and ambition—stood before him. But because he was at this high stage of a Bodhisattva, he recognized him and was immune to him. And he knew how to say to himself: If human beings continue to develop along the old path, without embracing the new direction in the teaching of love and compassion, without acquiring this self-driven moral sense, then—since they are not all Bodhisattvas—they must fall prey to this demon Mara, who pours all the forces of pride and vanity into their souls. This is what the Buddha experienced within himself when he pursued the Sankhya and Yoga philosophies to their ultimate conclusions.

[ 36 ] But then, while he was with the monks, he had a different experience. There he witnessed the demon taking on another form, characterized by the fact that it shows people all their external physical possessions—the “riches of the world and their glories,” so to speak—in order to distract them from the spiritual world. The Buddha experienced precisely how one, on the path of self-mortification, succumbs to this temptation when the demon Mara confronted him and said: “Do not let yourself be tempted to abandon everything you had as a prince; return to the royal palace!” Another might have succumbed to what was presented to him there, but the Buddha had reached a stage where he could see through the tempter. He could perceive what would befall humanity if it continued to live as before and sought to ascend to the spiritual realm solely through fasting and starvation. He himself was immune to this and could therefore now point out to humanity the great danger that would arise if people, without the solid foundation of an autonomous moral sense, sought to enter the spiritual world solely through fasting and external means.

[ 37 ] Thus, as a Bodhisattva, the Buddha had already advanced to those two extremes of human development which a person—precisely because he is not a Bodhisattva—would do best to avoid entirely. If we translate this into ordinary human language, we can say: The highest knowledge is glorious, the highest knowledge is beautiful, but approach this knowledge with a pure heart, a noble mind, and a purified spirit; otherwise, the devil of pride, vanity, and ambition will take hold of you. — And the other teaching is: Do not seek to enter the spiritual world by any external means, such as self-mortification or fasting, before you have purified your moral character in the appropriate way; otherwise, the tempter from the other side will approach you. — These are the two teachings that shine down to us from the Buddha in our time. Thus, when he was still a Bodhisattva, the Buddha told us what, in the highest sense, is part of his mission. For it has always been his mission to bring this moral sense to humanity, at a time when people were not yet capable of developing it from within their own hearts. Therefore, once he had recognized the danger of asceticism for humanity, he left the five hermits and went to a place where, through a form of inner contemplation appropriate to our present age, he could cultivate those abilities of human nature that can be developed without the old clairvoyance—without what has been handed down as a legacy from the past— achieve the highest that humanity will ever be able to achieve precisely through these abilities.

[ 38 ] Under the Bodhi tree, in the twenty-ninth year of his life, after the Buddha had abandoned the path of one-sided asceticism, the great truths dawned upon him during seven days of contemplation—truths that dawn upon a person when, in quiet, inner contemplation, they seek to find what their present human capacities can offer. It was then that the great teachings he expounded—the so-called Four Noble Truths—and that great teaching of compassion and love, which he expounded in the Noble Eightfold Path, dawned upon him. We will have to deal with these teachings of the Buddha later. For today, let us be content with the fact that these teachings are a description of the moral essence of the purest teaching of compassion and love. They emerged at the time when, beneath the Bodhi tree, the Bodhisattva of India became a Buddha. It was then that the teachings of compassion and love first blossomed within humanity as a distinct human capacity, and since that time, human beings have been able to develop the teaching of compassion and love from within themselves. That is the essence. That is why the Buddha said to his closest disciples shortly before his death: “Do not grieve that the Master is leaving you. I am leaving you something behind. I am leaving you the Law of Wisdom and the Law of Discipline; these shall replace the Master for you in the future.” — This means nothing other than: Until now, the Bodhisattva has taught you what is expressed therein; now, having fulfilled his incarnation on Earth, he may withdraw. For humanity will have internalized what was once taught to it by a Bodhisattva and will be able to develop it from within its own heart as the religion of compassion and love. — This is what took place when, during seven days of inner contemplation, the Bodhisattva became the Buddha in ancient India. This was also what he was able to teach in various forms to his disciples who were gathered around him. The forms into which he cast this teaching will be the subject of our further discussion.

[ 39 ] Today we had to look back at what took place six centuries before our era, because if we did not trace the course of events from Palestine back to the sermon at Benares with the help of the Akashic Records, we would not understand the path of Christianity—and above all, we would not understand the one who so eminently described this path: the author of the Gospel of Luke. Ever since the Bodhisattva became the Buddha, he no longer needed to return to Earth; from that time on, he was a spiritual being who soared through the spiritual worlds and, from there, had to intervene in everything that happened on Earth. And as the most important event on Earth was being prepared and the shepherds were in the fields, an individuality appeared to them from the spiritual heights and proclaimed to them what is described in the Gospel of Luke: “And with the angel there were ‘heavenly hosts.’” Who was that?

[ 40 ] What appeared before the shepherds in the vision was the Transfigured Buddha, the Bodhisattva of ancient times—that being in his spiritual form who, for millennia upon millennia, had brought the message of love and compassion to humanity. Now, having completed its final incarnation on Earth, it soared in spiritual heights and appeared in the heavens to the shepherds alongside the angel who had foretold the event in Palestine to them.

[ 41 ] This is what spiritual research teaches us. It shows us the transfigured Bodhisattva from ancient times hovering above the shepherd. Yes, it came to pass—as Akashic research teaches us—that in Palestine, in the “City of David,” a child was born to a couple who descended from the priestly line of the House of David. This child—and I mention this expressly—who was born to parents who, at least on the father’s side, descended from the priestly line of the House of David, was destined to be illuminated and empowered from the moment of his birth by what the Buddha could radiate after he had been raised to spiritual heights. So, together with the shepherds, we gaze upon the manger where Jesus of Nazareth—as he is commonly called—was born; we gaze upon it and see the halo of glory above the little child from the very beginning, and we know that this image expresses the power of the Bodhisattva who became the Buddha, the power that had previously flowed to humanity and that now, from the spiritual heights, acted upon humanity and unfolded its greatest deed when it outshone the infant of Bethlehem, so that he might take his rightful place in the development of humanity.

[ 42 ] Back then, when this individuality—which now radiated its power from spiritual heights down upon this child of Davidic parents—was born in ancient India, that is, when the Buddha was born as a Bodhisattva, a sage perceived the full power of what we have described today. And what he had first beheld in the spiritual worlds prompted the sage—whose name was Asita—to enter the king’s palace and seek out the Bodhisattva child. When he saw the child, he foretold his momentous mission as the Buddha. To the father’s dismay, Asita predicted at that time that the child would not rule over his father’s kingdom, but would instead become a Buddha. But then he began to weep; and when asked whether some misfortune awaited the child, Asita replied: “No! I weep because I am so old that I will not live to see the day when this Savior, the Bodhisattva, walks the earth as a Buddha!” Asita did not live to see the Bodhisattva’s enlightenment at that time; from his perspective at the time, his weeping was therefore entirely justified. — That same Asita, who had once seen the Bodhisattva only as a child in Suddhodana’s palace, was reborn as the figure described to us in the Gospel of Luke in the account of the “Presentation in the Temple” as Simeon (Luke 2:25–35). Simeon, as the Gospel of Luke states, was “filled with the Spirit” when the infant was brought to him. He was the same one who, as Asita, had once wept because, in his previous incarnation, he could no longer witness the Bodhisattva’s attainment of Buddhahood. Now he was destined to witness the next stage in the development of this individual. And since he had been “filled with the Spirit” back then, when the infant was presented in the temple, he could see the halo of the transfigured Bodhisattva above the infant Jesus of the House of David. Then he said to himself: Now you no longer need to weep; what you did not see back then, you now see; now you see your Savior transfigured above this little child: “Lord, let your servant die in peace.”