The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] It will be relatively easy for us to understand the details of the Gospel of Luke if we have first done the necessary preparatory work in the appropriate way, so that the entities and individuals in question are, as it were, vividly present before us, and we know exactly who we are dealing with. Therefore, please do not be put off if we have, so to speak, a lot of “background” to cover. First, we must get to know the great figure who stands at the center of the Gospels in all the complexity of his being, as well as a few other things, without which we would never be able to grasp what then presents itself to us in all its simplicity in the Gospel of Luke.

[ 2 ] First, we must recall something we have already discussed in recent days: the great significance of that unique being we call the Buddha, whom we have described as having risen from the status of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha during the fifth to sixth centuries B.C. We have described what this meant for humanity, and we want to bring this image vividly to mind once again.

[ 3 ] The content of the Buddha’s teaching had to be, so to speak, handed down to humanity as its own. If we were to go back beyond the Buddha’s time, we would have to say of all previous epochs of humanity: There could not have been a single person on our Earth in those times who, on their own, could have discovered this teaching of compassion and love, as expressed in the Eightfold Path. Human development had not yet reached the point where any soul could have discovered these truths “through immersion in their own thoughts and feelings.” After all, everything first comes into being in the world; everything first arises, and for everything that is to arise, the causes must be present. How, for example, could people in earlier times follow the principles of the Eightfold Path? They could do so only because these principles were, in a certain sense, handed down to them—as if instilled in them—from the occult schools of the initiates and the seers. It was precisely within the mysteries, within the occult schools of the seers, that the Bodhisattva taught, because in such schools the possibility existed to elevate oneself to the higher worlds and to receive that which could not yet be given to the outer human intellect or the outer human soul. But in those ancient times, this had to be, so to speak, instilled in the rest of humanity by those who were able to partake of grace and come into direct contact with the teachers in the occult schools. Without people being able to arrive at the principles on their own, their lives had to be influenced in such a way that they unfolded in accordance with these principles. Thus, those people who lived outside the mysteries followed, in a certain sense unconsciously, what was also unconsciously imparted to them by those who, from within the occult schools, were able to provide it. There was not yet a human body on Earth that could have been organized in such a way—even if all that was spiritual had penetrated it—that a human being could have discovered the content of the eightfold path from within themselves. This had to be a revelation from above, conveyed through the appropriate channels. It follows, however, that a being such as the Bodhisattva was not at all capable of making full use of a human body before the age of the Buddha. He could find no body on Earth in which he could have embodied all the abilities through which he was to work upon humanity. No such human body existed. — What, then, was necessary? How did such a Bodhisattva incarnate? This is a question we must consider.

[ 4 ] He did not fully embody what he was as a spiritual being. If one had viewed such a body, animated by a Bodhisattva, through clairvoyance, one would have seen that it encompassed only part of the Bodhisattva’s spiritual essence, which, as an etheric body, extended far beyond the human shell and in this way maintained its connection with the spiritual realm, which it never entirely left. Thus, the Bodhisattva never completely left the spiritual world. He lived simultaneously in a spiritual body and a physical body. This was the transition from Bodhisattva to Buddha: for the first time, such a body existed into which the Bodhisattva could, so to speak, fully enter and develop his abilities within that body. In doing so, he had established that human form which people must strive to emulate in order to become like him, so that they, too, might find the teaching of the Eightfold Path from within themselves, just as the Bodhisattva had found it from within himself beneath the Bodhi tree. If, then, one were to examine the being embodied in the Buddha in its earlier incarnations, one would have had to say: It was such that it had to remain partly in the spiritual world and could send only a part of its being into the body. It was only now, in the fifth to sixth centuries B.C., that the first human organization existed into which the Bodhisattva could fully enter and thus set the example that humanity itself could find the Eightfold Path from within the moral disposition of the soul.

[ 5 ] All religions and worldviews were familiar with this phenomenon: that there are human beings who exist, in part, in the spiritual world. They knew that there are such beings for whom human existence is, as it were, too narrow to accommodate the full individuality of those beings who must work on Earth. Within the Near Eastern worldview, this kind of connection between the higher individualities of such beings and a physical body was called “being filled with the Holy Spirit.” This is a very specific technical term. And in the terminology of the Near Eastern languages, one would have said of such a being—such as a Bodhisattva incarnated on Earth—that it is “filled with the Holy Spirit,” meaning that the powers that constitute such a being are not entirely contained within that being; something spiritual must be working into it from the outside. One could therefore just as well say: The Buddha was filled with the Holy Spirit in his previous incarnations.

[ 6 ] Once we have understood this, we will also be able to make sense of what we read at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke and what we touched on yesterday. We know that within the etheric body of the infant Jesus, who physically descended from the Nathanic line of the House of David, dwelt the part of that etheric body that had remained untouched—the part that had been withdrawn from humanity during the event known as the Fall—so that, as it were, the etheric substance that had been taken from Adam before the Fall was preserved and infused into this Child. It had to be this way so that there would be such a young being, untouched by all the experiences of Earth’s evolution, who could receive everything that was meant for him to receive. Could an ordinary human being, who had undergone incarnations since the Lemurian era, have received the overshadowing by the Buddha’s Nirmanakaya? Never! And even less could such a person have absorbed what was later to enter into him. A human body of such refinement had to come into being—a body that could only come into being through the infusion of Adam’s etheric substance, untouched by all earthly experiences, into the etheric body of this very Child Jesus. As a result, however, this etheric substance was also connected to all the forces that had acted upon Earth’s evolution before the Fall, forces that therefore now manifested with tremendous power within this child. This made possible what we touched on just yesterday: that remarkable influence which the mother of the Nathanic Jesus exerted upon the mother of John the Baptist, and also upon John himself, before he was born.

[ 7 ] To do this, we must first understand what kind of being we are dealing with in John the Baptist. We can understand this nature of John only if we bring to mind the difference between that unique message that flowed down through the Buddha within India—which we have characterized sufficiently for our purposes—and the message that was given to the ancient Hebrew people through Moses and his successors, the ancient Hebrew prophets.

[ 8 ] Through the Buddha, humanity has come to possess what the soul can discover as its own law—what it can establish to purify itself and organize itself to attain the highest moral level possible on Earth. The law of the soul, Dharma, was proclaimed by the Buddha—proclaimed in the way that a human being at the highest stage of human development can discover it from within the human soul itself. And the Buddha was the one who first brought it to light. But human development does not follow a straight path. The most diverse cultural currents must enrich one another.

[ 9 ] What was to take place in the Near East as the Christ event required that, in a certain sense, this Near Eastern development lag behind the Indian one, so that it might later take up in a fresher way what had been given to the Indian development in a different manner. A people had to be created, so to speak, within the Near East—a people that developed in a completely different way and lagged further behind than the peoples further to the east. Just as, in accordance with the wisdom of the worlds, the peoples of the East had been brought to the point where they could perceive the Bodhisattva as the Buddha, so too, among the peoples of the Near East—especially the ancient Hebrew people—human beings had to be left at a childlike, lower stage. This was necessary. For in the grand scheme of human development, the same process had to be carried out as we might observe on a smaller scale, for example, in a person who has developed to a certain level of maturity by the age of twenty; in doing so, he has acquired certain abilities, but acquired abilities are, in a certain sense, also a kind of shackle, an obstacle.

[ 10 ] When a person has acquired certain skills at a certain stage of life, those skills have the peculiarity of wanting to remain at that level—of wanting to keep the person at that level. They hold him fast, and he cannot easily, later on—in his thirtieth year—move beyond the level he attained in his twentieth year. If, on the other hand, we have a second person who, by the age of twenty, has achieved little on his own and later learns these skills from the other, then the one who has remained childlike for longer can more easily advance to that level and, by the age of thirty, is more likely to be at a higher level than the first. Anyone who observes life will find that this is indeed the case. Abilities one has attained—which one has, so to speak, made one’s own—also become a constraint later on, whereas what one has not so closely linked to one’s soul—what one has acquired more externally—is less of a constraint.

[ 11 ] If humanity is to move forward, arrangements must always be made to ensure that there is a cultural current that internally absorbs and processes a certain set of abilities, while another current must run alongside it, so to speak, one that is, in a sense, held back somewhat in its development. Then we have a cultural current that develops certain abilities up to a corresponding level; these abilities are now intertwined with the innermost essence of this current and of human nature. It goes on: something new emerges. But this current would not be able to rise to a higher level on its own. Therefore, arrangements had to be made so that another current runs alongside the first. This second current remains, in a certain sense, undeveloped; it has by no means reached the level of the first. It now moves forward and receives from the other what the latter has achieved, and because it has remained youthful in the meantime, it can then ascend to a higher level later on. Thus, one has enriched the other. In this way, spiritual currents must run side by side in the development of humanity. And provision must be made by the spiritual leadership of the worlds to ensure that this is so.

[ 12 ] How could provisions have been made in the spiritual governance of the world so that, alongside the current that found its expression in the great Buddha, another current would run that would only later take up what Buddhism had brought to humanity? This could only be achieved by denying that current—which for us is the ancient Hebrew one—the ability to produce people who, out of their own moral disposition, would develop the Dharma, that is, who would follow the Eightfold Path. This current was not allowed to have a Buddha. What the Buddha brought as the inner essence of his spiritual current had to be given to this other spiritual current from the outside. Therefore—and specifically so that the matter might proceed with particular wisdom—long before the Buddha’s appearance, the law was not given to this Near Eastern people from within, but from without through the revelation in the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2–17). What was to become the inner possession of another stream of humanity was given to the ancient Hebrew people in the Law of the Ten Commandments as a collection of external laws—something received from without, something not yet fused with the soul. Therefore, members of the ancient Hebrew people perceive the commandments as something that was given to them from heaven because of the childlike nature of their stage of development.

[ 13 ] The Indian people had been taught to recognize that human beings generate Dharma—the law of the soul—from within themselves, while the ancient Hebrew people had been taught to obey the law that had been given to them from outside. Thus, the Hebrew people form a wonderful complement to what Zarathustra accomplished for his culture and for all the cultures that have emerged from it.

[ 14 ] We had to emphasize, of course, that Zarathustra directed his gaze toward the external world. While Buddha’s teachings deal profoundly with the refinement of the human inner self, in Zarathustra we find the great, powerful teaching about the cosmos—that which is meant to shed light on the world from whose womb we have emerged. While the Buddha’s gaze was directed inward, the gaze of the followers of Zarathustra was directed toward the external world in order to penetrate it spiritually.

[ 15 ] Let us try to delve into what Zarathustra taught, from his first appearance—when he proclaimed the message of Ahura Mazdao—through to the subsequent period when he appeared as Nazarathos. He imparted increasingly profound teachings on the great spiritual laws and on the beings of the cosmos. At first, they were, so to speak, mere hints that Zarathustra gave to Persian culture regarding the Spirit of the Sun; but then he developed them, and they present themselves to us as the wondrous Chaldean teaching—so little understood today—about the cosmos and the spiritual causes from which we are born. If we examine these teachings about the cosmos, they reveal an important characteristic.

[ 16 ] When Zarathustra spoke to the ancient Persian people about the external spiritual causes of the sensory world, he presented to them the two powers, Ormuzd and Ahriman—or Angramainyu—which work in opposition to one another throughout the entire universe. But what they would not have found in this teaching is what we might call the moral warmth that permeates the soul. According to the ancient Persian view, human beings are, so to speak, woven into the entire cosmic process. It is a matter of Ormuzd and Ahriman, who work against one another, that is played out within the human soul. Because these two are in conflict with one another, passions rage within the human soul. What the inner human soul is has not yet been recognized. What was presented was a cosmic teaching. When people spoke of good and evil, they meant the excellent, the beneficial, and the harmful effects that stand in opposition to one another in the cosmos and that also manifest themselves in human beings. The “moral worldview” had, in a sense, not yet been incorporated into this teaching of looking outward. In this teaching, one came to know all the entities that govern the sensory world—everything that rules the world as excellent and luminous, and everything that rules it as dark and harmful. One felt ensnared within it. But what is truly moral—in which the human being participates with his or her soul—was not yet felt in the soul in the same way as it was later. For example, when one encountered a “wicked” person, one sensed that forces from the evil entities of the world were flowing through that person; one felt him or her to be “possessed” by these evil entities of the world. Nor could one say that the person was to blame for this. One sensed the human being as being ensnared by a world system not yet permeated by moral qualities. That was the distinctive feature of a teaching that initially directed its gaze outward, even if it was a spiritual gaze.

[ 17 ] This is why Hebrew teaching forms such a wonderful complement to this cosmological doctrine: because it incorporates into what has been revealed from without the moral element, which made it possible to attach meaning to the concepts of guilt and human culpability. Before the Hebrew element, one could only say of an evil person: “He is possessed by evil forces.” The proclamation of the Ten Commandments made it necessary to distinguish between people who observed this law and those who did not. The concept of guilt—of human culpability—emerges. And one can sense how it enters the course of human development by contemplating a passage that clearly illustrates how people are still unclear about what the concept of guilt actually means—a situation in which the lack of clarity regarding the concept of guilt becomes tragic. Let the Book of Job sink in, and you will notice the confusion surrounding the concept of guilt—the lack of clear understanding of how one is actually supposed to respond when misfortune strikes—and yet you will already find the new concept of guilt beginning to shine through in it.

[ 18 ] Thus, as a revelation from without—like the other revelations concerning the other realms of nature—the moral was given specifically to this ancient Hebrew people. This could only have happened because Zarathustra ensured the continuation of his work, as I have told you, by transferring his etheric body to Moses and his astral body to Hermes. This enabled Moses to perceive what is at work in the outer world in the same way that Zarathustra could, but now not only to sense indifferent, neutral forces, but also that which governs the world morally—that which can become a commandment. That is why this ancient Hebrew people lived in such a way that their culture embodied what we might call obedience—submission to the law—while the spiritual current of the Buddha embodied the ideal of finding the direction for human life in the Eightfold Path.

[ 19 ] But this ancient Hebrew people was also to be preserved until the right moment, which we are just about to describe: until the emergence of the Christ principle. It was to be, so to speak, carried over beyond the revelation of the Buddha and preserved at a—if we may call it that—less mature stage of cultural development. Therefore, within the ancient Hebrew people, there had to be individuals who, as human beings, were not capable of fully embodying the essence of an individuality that was, so to speak, meant to represent the “Law.” No figure could have emerged within the ancient Hebrew people who would have been anything like the Buddha. It was also only possible to arrive at the Law through enlightenment from outside—because Moses possessed the etheric body of Zarathustra and was thus able to receive what is not born of one’s own soul. It was not possible for the Hebrew people to bring the Law into being from their own hearts. But the work of Moses had to be continued—continued just as every other work must be continued—so that it might bear the right fruit at the right time. Therefore, individuals had to emerge among the ancient Hebrew people who appear to us as prophets and seers. And one of the most significant of these seers is the one we know as Elijah.

[ 20 ] How should we picture such a personality? Elias was to be, within the Hebrew people, one of the stewards of what Moses had initiated. But from the very substance of the people themselves, no human beings could be born who were fully interwoven with what the Law of Moses contained—for this could only be received as a revelation from above. What we have characterized as necessary for the Indian era—and also as the distinctive nature of the Bodhisattva—therefore had to occur again and again within the Hebrew people as well. There had to be individualities who were not entirely absorbed into the human personality—who were present with one part of their being in the earthly personality and with the other part in the spiritual world. Elijah was such a being. What we find on the physical plane as the personality of Elijah contains only a part of Elijah’s true being. Elijah’s “I” cannot fully penetrate Elijah’s physical body. He must be called a personality who is “filled with the Spirit.” And it would be impossible to bring about a phenomenon such as Elijah through the merely normal forces in the world by which a human being is otherwise brought into the world.

[ 21 ] When, under normal circumstances, a human being is to enter the world, the human being develops within the mother’s womb through physical processes in such a way that, at a specific time, the individuality that was previously incarnated simply unites with the physical being. For the ordinary person, everything proceeds, so to speak, along a straight path, without the intervention of special forces that lie outside the normal course. This could not be the case with an individual such as Elias. Other forces had to intervene—forces that deal with that part of the individuality which extends into the spiritual world. External forces must act upon the developing human being. Therefore, when such individualities incarnate in the world, they appear to be inspired, driven by the spirit. They appear as ecstatic personalities who go far beyond what their ordinary intelligence can tell them. This is how all the Old Testament prophets appear. The spirit drives them; the “I” cannot always account for what it does. The spirit lives within the personality, and it is sustained from outside.

[ 22 ] Such personalities sometimes withdraw into solitude; but this is then a stepping back of that part of the “I” which the personality needs, and an intercession of the Spirit from without. In certain ecstatic, unconscious states, such a being listens to the inspirations from above. This was particularly true of Elijah. What lived within him as Elijah during his lifetime—what his mouth spoke, what his hand indicated—did not originate solely from the part that lived within him, but were revelations from divine-spiritual beings who stood behind him.

[ 23 ] When this being was reborn, it was to unite with the body of the child born to Zechariah and Elizabeth. We know from the Gospel itself that we are to regard John the Baptist as the reincarnated Elijah (Matthew 17:10–13). But we are dealing here with an individuality that, from its earlier incarnations, was not accustomed to developing—through the forces inherent in the normal course of life—all that was meant to emerge. In the normal course of life, as the human physical body develops within the mother’s womb, the inner power of the “I” begins to stir. What is inwardly connected to this, the individuality of Elijah had not yet experienced in earlier times; it had not yet descended that far. The “I” had not been set in motion by its own powers, as in normal circumstances, but from without. This had to happen again now. The “I” of this being is more rooted in the spiritual world, yet already closer to the Earth; it is now much more connected to the Earth than the beings who had previously guided Elijah. For the transition was now to be established between the Buddha stream and the Zarathustra stream. Everything was to be rejuvenated. Now the very being who had become so closely linked to the Earth and its affairs—just as the Buddha had, who was now united in his Nirmanakaya with the Nathanic Jesus—had to exert an influence from outside. This being, who was connected to the Earth on the one hand, yet on the other hand was once again detached because it acted only in the Nirmanakaya, lived “beyond” the Earth because it had ascended once more, and now hovered above the head of the Nathanean Jesus—this being now had to act from the outside and unfold the “I”-force of John the Baptist.

[ 24 ] Thus it was the Buddha’s Nirmanakaya that influenced the unfolding of John’s “I”-power in the same way that spiritual forces had previously influenced Elijah. At that time, the being of Elijah was, at certain moments, transported into ecstatic states; then God spoke, filling his “I” with a real power that it could then communicate to the outside world. Now there was once again a spiritual being present who, as the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha, hovered over the Nathanic Jesus; which now acted upon Elizabeth as John was about to be born, stimulating the seed of John within Elizabeth’s womb in the sixth month of pregnancy and awakening the “I” there. But because this power was now closer to the earth, it brought about not merely inspiration, but the actual formation of John’s “I.” Under the influence of the visit by the one who is called Mary, the “I” of John the Baptist stirred to life. Thus the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha acts to awaken and, penetrating even into the physical substance, to redeem the “I” of the former Elijah—the present “I” of John the Baptist. What can we now hope for?

[ 25 ] Just as Elijah had once spoken his powerful words in the ninth century B.C., just as those words were in fact the words of God, and just as what his hand pointed to was a gesture of God, so it had to be similar now with John the Baptist, as what was present in Elijah was revived. What was present in the Buddha’s Nirmanakaya worked as inspiration into the “I” of John the Baptist. What was revealed to the shepherds, what hovered over the Nathanic Jesus, extended its power into John the Baptist. And the sermon of John the Baptist is, first and foremost, the reawakened Buddha-sermon. In this context, something highly peculiar emerges that must have a profound effect on our soul when we recall the sermon at Benares, in which the Buddha spoke of the suffering of life and of liberation from that suffering through the Eightfold Path that the soul is to seek. At that time, the Buddha proclaimed what he had recognized as the Eightfold Path; at that time, he also frequently continued his sermon by saying: “Until now, you have followed the teachings of the Brahmins; they trace their lineage back to Brahma himself. They say they are superior to other people because they descend from this noble origin.” These Brahmins say that a person’s worth lies in his lineage. But I also say: A person’s worth lies in what he achieves through his own efforts, and not in what is bestowed upon him through his lineage. He is worthy of the world’s great wisdom through what he achieves as an individual human being. - In this way, the Buddha aroused the wrath of the Brahmin world by pointing to individual quality and saying: “Truly, I say to you: no matter how much one may call oneself a Brahmin, that is not what matters; what matters is that you become a purified human being through your own personal efforts.” — That was, if not the exact wording, at least the meaning of many of the Buddha’s discourses. And then he usually continued this teaching by showing how a person, upon understanding the world of suffering, can feel compassion, become a comforter and helper, and truly share in the fate of others, because he knows that he feels the same suffering and pain as they do.

[ 26 ] Now the Buddha, in his Nirmanakaya, outshone the Nathanite infant Jesus and then continued his sermon by having the words resound from the mouth of John the Baptist. What John’s mouth spoke came about under the inspiration of the Buddha. And it sounds to us like a continuation of the speech the Buddha once gave, for example, when John says: “You who place so much stock in claiming descent from those who, in the service of the spiritual powers, are called the ‘children of the serpent,’ and who invoke the ‘wisdom of the serpent’—who, then, has led you to this?” Only in this way do you believe you are bearing worthy fruits of repentance, by saying, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ But now John continued the Buddha’s sermon: Do not say that you have Abraham as your father, but become true human beings wherever you stand in the world. A true human being can be awakened in the very spot where your foot stands. Truly, God can raise up children for Abraham from stones (Luke 3:7–8). And then he said, continuing the Buddha’s teaching just as it should be: “Whoever has two tunics must share with the one who has none” (Luke 3:11). They came to him and asked, “Master, what should we do?” (Luke 3:12), just as the monks had once come to the Buddha and asked, “What should we do?” These are all words that sound like the words of the Buddha or like a continuation of them.

[ 27 ] Thus do these entities appear on the physical plane through the turning of the ages, and thus do we come to understand the unity of the religions and spiritual teachings of humanity. We do not come to know what the Buddha was by clinging to tradition, but by listening to what the Buddha truly says. Five to six centuries before our era, the Buddha spoke as we hear in the Sermon at Benares. But the Buddha’s voice has not fallen silent. He speaks even where he is no longer incarnated, where he is inspired by the Nirmanakaya. From the mouth of John the Baptist we hear what the Buddha had to say six centuries later, after he had lived in a physical body. Such is the “unity of religions.” We must seek out each religion at the right point in the course of human development and look for what is alive within it, not what is dead; for everything continues to evolve. We must learn to understand and grasp this. But anyone who does not want to hear the Buddha’s saying from the mouth of John the Baptist seems like a person who has seen the seed of a rosebush and, some time later, after the rosebush has sprouted and is bearing blossoms, refuses to believe that this rosebush arose from that rose seed, and who would now say: “That is something else.” — What was alive in the seed is now blooming in the rosebush. And what was alive in the _ Sermon at Benares _ bloomed in the sermon of John the Baptist at the Jordan.

[ 28 ] In this way, we have come to know another kind of individuality in its very essence—one that confronts us in that era and of which the Gospel of Luke speaks so powerfully. We come to know these Gospels only by gradually rising to the level of truly understanding every word exactly as it is meant. And Luke tells us in the introduction that he wishes to retell the message of those who acted as “seers.” But these seers saw the true circumstances as they were gradually revealed through the ages; they did not merely see what was happening on the physical plane. Anyone who sees only that might say: Five to six centuries before our era, there once lived a man in India who was the son of King Suddhodana and whose name was the Buddha, and then there once lived a John the Baptist. But they do not find what winds its way from one to the other. For that can only be seen in the spiritual world. Luke, however, says that he is recounting the accounts of those who “have seen”—who were seers. It is not enough for us to simply accept the words of the religious texts; we must also learn to read these words in their proper sense. For this, however, the individualities that appear in them must stand before our soul in a truly vivid way. But they can only stand before our soul in a vivid way if we know everything that has gone into them.

[ 29 ] One more thing was said: Whatever individuality descends to Earth must develop in accordance with the abilities that can emerge from the body into which it incarnates. This being must take that into account. Let us suppose that a high being wished to descend today; it could then only reckon with the laws that a human body is capable of today. Only the seer, who observes how the innermost threads are woven into the being’s innermost core, can recognize what this individuality actually is. Such a being at a high level of wisdom, however, must prepare the body through childhood so that, at a specific point in time, what this being once was in earlier incarnations can emerge. If such a being is to evoke very special feelings in people, then the earthly incarnation must be accordingly suited so that the body, too, can endure what is to be the object of the mission. In the spiritual worlds, things truly do not look the same as they do in the physical world. If a being wishes to proclaim healing from pain and deliverance from suffering, it must experience the full depth of suffering so that it can find the right words applicable to it in the human sense.

[ 30 ] What that Being—who was hidden within the body of Jesus of Nathan—later had to say was a message addressed to all of humanity. It was something meant to lift humanity beyond all previous, narrower bonds of blood kinship. It was not to take away kinship, nor to abolish what exists between father and son, between brother and sister, but rather to add to the love bound to kinship that which is called universal love for humanity—a love that flows from soul to soul and is exalted above all blood ties. This was what the Being who later manifested as the Nathanic Jesus was to bring. It was to bring something of love, of a deepening of love, which has nothing to do with what is tied to kinship by blood. To do this, however, this being, who lived in the body of the Nathanic Jesus, first had to experience on Earth itself what it means to feel no connections, to be unbound from others by blood. Only then could it perceive purely what takes place solely from human to human. First, it had to feel free from all blood ties—indeed, from the very possibility of blood ties. The individuality of the Nathanic Jesus had to stand before the world not merely as a “homeless” human being, like the Buddha who left his homeland for foreign lands, but as one who had stepped out of all family connections, out of everything related to any kind of blood ties. It had to feel all the deep pain one can feel when one must bid farewell to what is otherwise close to a person, when one must stand alone; out of the great loneliness, out of being abandoned by one’s family, the individuality that lived within the Nathanic Jesus had to speak. Who was this being?

[ 31 ] We know that it is that being who lived within the Solomonic Jesus until about the age of twelve; it is the individuality, the spirit of Zarathustra, who lived within the Solomonic Jesus, whose parents were the Solomonic father and the Solomonic mother. But the father had died early, and the boy was fatherless. Besides him, there were brothers and sisters in this family. He remains within this family as long as he—Zarathustra—is in the body of the Solomonic Jesus. He then leaves this family at the age of twelve, parting from his mother and his brothers and sisters, in order to pass into the body of the Nathanic Jesus. There, too, his [Nathanic] mother dies, and later his [Nathanic] father dies. And when he had to step out into the world to carry out his work, he had taken leave of everything connected with blood ties. Not only was he completely orphaned—having had to leave his brothers and sisters behind—but as the Zarathustra entity, he also had to renounce ever having offspring or ever starting a family. For the Zarathustra-being had not only left his father and mother, brothers and sisters, but also his own body; he had entered into another body—the body of the Nathanic Jesus. This being was able to lay the groundwork for an even higher being, who could then, in the body of the Nathanic Jesus, prepare himself for the great calling of proclaiming universal love for humanity. And when the mother and brothers of this being arrived and were told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside and want to see you,” this being was able to speak these words to all the people from the depths of his soul—so that there could be no misunderstanding—without offending anyone’s sensibilities: “Those are not them!” — For even the body that had been connected to this family had been left behind by Zarathustra. And pointing to those who were in free spiritual communion with him, he was able to say: “These are my mother and my brothers, who hear the word of God and do it!” (Luke 8:20–21). This is how far the religious texts are to be taken literally.

[ 32 ] In order for someone to be able to proclaim universal love for humanity, he truly had to be incarnated in a form in which he could experience being cut off from everything that could establish blood ties. Our feelings are drawn to this form, so that we draw near to it just as we would to a human being—a form that descends from lofty spiritual heights and gives expression to human experience and suffering. That is why our hearts beat for it. And the more spiritually we understand it, the better we will understand it, and the more our hearts will beat in response to it and our souls will rejoice in it.