The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] Today, on the occasion of the General Assembly, it falls to me to speak about a lofty matter concerning humanity. Since we usually strive in our lectures on anthroposophy to lay a foundation rooted more in the physical plane, today we may well speak of that which belongs to the higher worlds. Let me begin by mentioning once again that we should accustom ourselves to speaking about the higher concerns of humanity in such a way that we are not content with a one-sided presentation of facts from the higher world—for example, merely defining in general terms the concept of the Bodhisattvas, who are the subject of today’s discussion, and then state what their mission is; rather, we should also accustom ourselves here to moving from the abstract to the concrete. Let us try to permeate even such lofty matters as those of the Bodhisattvas with the ideas and feelings that are our own, arising from a thorough and loving contemplation of life, through which we not only receive the facts as information but can also understand them to a certain degree. That is why, in this reflection as well, I would like to proceed from the bottom up and set myself the goal of characterizing—beyond a mere schematic representation—the concept of the Bodhisattva and his journey through the world.

[ 2 ] We cannot truly understand what a Bodhisattva is unless we delve a bit deeper into the course of human evolution and set aside some of what we have heard over the years. Just consider the fact of how humanity continues to progress. After the great Atlantean catastrophe, humanity went through a period of ancient Indian culture, when the great Rishis were the teachers of humanity, then a period of ancient Persian culture, a period of Egyptian-Chaldean culture, followed by the Greek-Latin cultural period, right up to our own time, which is the fifth cultural period of the post-Atlantean era. These cultural epochs have meaning in that they signify humanity’s progression from one form of life to another.

[ 3 ] The fact is that it is not only what is usually described in external history that progresses; rather, when one considers longer periods of time, all sensations and feelings, all concepts and ideas, also change and are renewed in the course of human development. What would be the point of advocating the idea of reincarnation if one did not know that this is how the world works? Why would our soul keep entering an earthly body again and again if it did not have to not only experience something new each time, but also perceive and feel it? Because human abilities and the innermost aspects of soul life are constantly renewed and transformed, it is possible for our soul not only to ascend step by step, as if on a staircase, but also to have the opportunity each time to take in something new from the outside through the transformation of life conditions on our Earth. Our soul is not guided from incarnation to incarnation merely through its transgressions or karmic sins; rather, because our Earth changes in all its living conditions, it is possible for our soul to continually take in new experiences from the outside as well. Therefore, the soul progresses from incarnation to incarnation, but also from cultural cycle to cultural cycle.

[ 4 ] However, this soul would not be able to move forward or develop if it were not for those beings who have already attained a higher level of development—and thus, to some degree, transcend the average level of human development—who ensure that new elements can continually flow into our earthly culture; in other words: if it were not for the work of great teachers who, through their higher development, can absorb the experiences and insights from the higher worlds and bring them down to the arena of earthly cultural life. Throughout the course of Earth’s development—and today we are speaking only of post-Atlantean development—there have always been such beings who served as teachers to humanity, to whom higher sources of perception and greater capacities of will are open. We can only understand the nature of such teachers of humanity if we realize how this humanity itself progresses.

[ 5 ] Yesterday and today, in two excellent lectures, you heard our dear Dr. Unger speak about the “I” and about the “I” in its relationship to the “not-I,” from a philosophical and epistemological perspective. Do you now believe that what you heard yesterday and today—spoken by human lips and arising from human thought—could have been heard in this form some 2,500 years ago? Nowhere on our earth would there have been any possibility of speaking, for example, about the “I” in the form of pure thought. Let us suppose that some individuality had wanted to incarnate into our earthly existence 2,500 years ago, and that before its incarnation it had resolved to speak about the “I” in this peculiar form—as you have heard it—it would not have been able to do so. For anyone who believes that such a thing could have been spoken by human lips 2,500 years ago in this form fails to recognize the true progress and transformations within cultural development. For in order to make this possible, it requires not only an individuality that resolves to incarnate into a human body, but it also requires that our Earth, in its development, provide a human body with a brain structured in such a way that the truths—which exist in a completely different form in the higher worlds—can take shape within that brain into what we call “pure thoughts.” For this form, in which Dr. Unger has spoken about the “I” yesterday and today, is what we call the form of pure thoughts. 2,500 years ago, there would have been no human brain—that would have been entirely out of the question—that could have served as an instrument to distill such truths into such thoughts.

[ 6 ] The beings who wish to descend to our Earth must use the human bodies that this Earth itself brings forth. But throughout the various cultural periods, our Earth has always produced different bodies, with ever-changing physical structures; and it is only in our fifth post-Atlantean cultural period that it has become possible—because the human race itself produces such bodies in which pure thoughts can take shape—to speak in the form of pure thought. Even in the Greco-Roman era, such an epistemological consideration would not yet have been possible, because there would have been no instrument, no tool, to shape these thoughts into a language comprehensible to human beings. This is precisely the task of our fifth post-Atlantean cultural period: to gradually shape human beings—in terms of their physical organization—as instruments in such a way that even those truths which in other eras were expressed in forms entirely different from that of pure thought can now flow forth in ever purer thoughts.

[ 7 ] Let’s take another example. When people today approach the question of good and evil—when they are faced with whether to do this or that, or not to do it—they speak of a kind of inner voice that tells them, quite independently of any external law: “You should do this; you should not do that!” — Whoever listens to this inner voice perceives in it a certain impulse, a prompt, to do one thing or refrain from another in a given situation. We call this inner voice “conscience.” Anyone who believes that the various periods of human development are, after all, so similar might think that a conscience has always existed, ever since humans have been on Earth. But that would not be correct. It can be historically demonstrated, so to speak, that there was a specific time when people first began to speak of conscience. This period is clearly definable. It lies between the two Greek tragedians, Aeschylus, who was born in the 6th century B.C., and Euripides, who was born in the 5th century B.C. You will not find any mention of conscience before that time. Even in Aeschylus, what we call the inner voice does not yet exist; instead, what appears in his works is what constitutes an astral vision for human beings: phenomena arise in which avenging beings—the Furies or Erinyes—approach humans. There simply came a point in time when the astral perception of the Furies was replaced by the inner voice of conscience.

[ 8 ] Even in the Greco-Roman era, when a large portion of humanity still possessed a dim astral perception, anyone who had committed a wrong could perceive how every wrongdoing created astral figures in their surroundings that filled them with fear and dread for the wrong they had committed. These were the educators, the guiding forces of that time. And when people lost the last remnants of astral clairvoyance, this perception was replaced by the invisible voice of conscience—that is, what had previously been external entered the soul and became one of the forces now present within it. This came about because humanity—because the outer instrument into which the human being incarnates—had changed in the course of evolution. Five thousand years ago, a human soul could never have perceived the voice of conscience; if it did something wrong, it perceived the Furies. In this way, the soul learned back then to relate to good and evil. Then it was incarnated again and again and was finally born into a body whose constitution was such that the capacity for conscience could now emerge within that soul. In a future cycle of humanity, yet other capacities and other forms of the soul’s expression will be present.

[ 9 ] I have often emphasized: Anyone who truly understands anthroposophy and does not adopt a dogmatic standpoint will not believe that the form in which anthroposophy is expressed today is an eternal one that could remain so for all of future humanity. That is not the case. After 2,500 years, these same truths will no longer be able to be proclaimed in these forms, but will be cast into other forms, depending on the instrument that will be available at that time. If you take this into account, you will realize that in every age people must be addressed in a different way, and that even the great teachers must take a different approach depending on human capacities. But this means that these great teachers of humanity themselves must undergo developments, from cycle to cycle, from age to age. Thus we find the cycles that humanity goes through, and we find, as it were, standing above them, a progressive evolution of the great teachers of humanity. And just as human beings go through certain stages in which they reach turning points, so too do these great teachers go through certain stages of evolution in which they reach turning points.

[ 10 ] Just think of what has often been said: We are now living in the fifth period of our post-Atlantean cultural development. In a certain sense, this fifth period is a repetition of the third period, the Egyptian-Chaldean one. The sixth period will likewise be a repetition of the Proto-Persian period, and the seventh a repetition of the ancient Indian period. Thus the cycles overlap. The fourth period will have no repetition; it stands in the middle, standing on its own, so to speak. What does this mean? It means that human beings experience what they went through in the Greco-Latin period only once in a cultural epoch; not as though they were embodied in it only once, but rather they experience it in only one form. What, on the other hand, was experienced in the Egyptian-Chaldean era is repeated in our time; it is thus experienced in a twofold form. So there are stages of development that represent a kind of crisis, while other periods are such that they resemble one another in a certain respect—not in exactly the same way, but they do repeat themselves in a different form. As human beings develop in the post-Atlantean era, they undergo, as it were, a certain number of incarnations in the Indian epoch and another number in the seventh cultural epoch, which resemble one another. The same is true of the second and sixth epochs, and of the third and fifth epochs. The fourth epoch lies between them; it will have no repetition—it stands in the middle. What does this mean? It means that human beings must go through this period only once. Not that they incarnate only once during the fourth epoch, but that there is a series of incarnations within it that are unlike any others. In this way, human beings undergo a descent and an ascent. Likewise, the great teachers of humanity undergo their development through a descent and an ascent, and at certain times they are something entirely different from what they are at other times.

[ 11 ] Since people in the early post-Atlantean period possessed abilities quite different from those of later times, they also had to be taught in a completely different way. To whom do we owe the fact that, in our time, wisdom can be clothed in the form of pure thought in a logically concise manner? This is due to the fact that, in the current stage of Earth’s evolution, the consciousness soul is the characteristic trait of humanity as a whole. In the Greco-Latin era, it was the intellectual or emotional soul; in the Egyptian-Chaldean period, the feeling soul; in ancient Persian culture, the feeling body; and in ancient Indian civilization, the etheric body—notably as a factor in cultural development.

[ 12 ] What the soul of consciousness is to us was the etheric body to the followers of the Primordial Indian tradition. Therefore, they had a completely different way of perceiving and understanding it. If you had approached the Indian with pure thought, he would not have understood a single thing. To him, those would have been sounds that made no sense. The great teachers could not instruct the ancient Indians by conveying things to them in the form of pure thought or by explaining them verbally. For example, a great teacher in ancient India spoke extremely little, for at the stage at which the etheric body stood at that time, people lacked the receptivity for the word that encompasses the thought. It is so difficult for people today to imagine what such teaching was like. Very little was spoken, and the other soul recognized what was actually flowing forth from the spiritual world more through the timbre of the sound, more through the manner in which a word was spoken. But that was not the main point. The word was, so to speak, merely the “trigger,” the signal that a connection was to be established between the teacher and the other person. In the earliest Indian times, the word was not much more than when we ring a bell to signal that something is about to begin. It was the focal point around which indefinable, subtle spiritual currents—flowing from the teacher to the student—wove themselves. What mattered most, however, was what the teacher was in his innermost being. What mattered was not what a teacher said, but the quality of his soul; for this was transmitted to the student like a kind of inspiration. Because the etheric body had been specifically developed, one also had to relate to the etheric body in a corresponding manner, and one understood the unspoken—what a teacher truly was—much better than the spoken word. For in order to understand the spoken word, people first had to prepare themselves through later cultural epochs. Therefore, it would not have been necessary for any of the great teachers of ancient India to have had a particularly developed intellectual or conscious soul, for that would have been a completely useless instrument at that time.

[ 13 ] But something else was necessary for these great teachers: the teacher had to be superior to the other in the development of his own etheric body. If he had been at the same stage of development as the other, he would not have been able to exert any particular influence on him at all; he would not have been able to bring him knowledge and a message from a higher world, nor give him an impulse toward progress. In a certain sense, what was to be brought to humanity was that into which they would only grow in the future. The Indian teacher had to, as it were, anticipate what the others would only be able to take in during the Persian cultural epoch. What ordinary people were to take in through the feeling body during the Persian epoch, he had to bring down into the etheric body. That is to say, the etheric body of such a teacher was not allowed to function at all like the etheric bodies of other people; it had to function as the feeling body would not have functioned until the Persian cultural epoch. If a clairvoyant in the modern sense had stood before a great Indian teacher, he would have said: “What kind of etheric body is that?”—for such an etheric body would have looked like what later became the astral body in the Persian era.

[ 14 ] But such an etheric body could not simply function like a later astral body. That could not have happened through any kind of progressive development at that time. This was possible only because a being who was already one level higher than the others actually descended and incarnated into a human organism that was not really suited to her, not fit for her—one into which she entered only to be understood by the others. Outwardly, she certainly looked like the others, but inwardly she was something entirely different. It was a complete illusion and deception to judge such an individual by outward appearances. For while in an ordinary person the exterior corresponds to the interior, in such a teacher the exterior contradicts the interior. So here we have the fact that there was the ancient Indian people, and in the midst of this ancient Indian people, an individual who, in and of themselves, would not have needed to descend, but who descended to an appropriate level in order to be able to teach the others. They descended voluntarily, incarnated in human form, but were something entirely different.

[ 15 ] As a result, she was once again the kind of individual whom the fates—which people experience simply by being normal human beings—did not concern. Such a teacher lived in a body with an external destiny and had no part in that destiny; he merely dwelt within that body as in a house. And when the body died, death was a completely different event for him than it was for other people; the same was true of birth and the experiences between birth and death. Therefore, such an individual also worked in a completely different way within this human instrument.

[ 16 ] Let us now imagine how such an individual would make use of the brain, for example. For even though perception at that time took place through the astral body, the brain—which, though organized differently—was still used to register the images through which perception occurred, as if it were an instrument. There were thus two types of people: one type who used his brain like an ordinary human being, and one type—the teacher—who did not use his brain in the same way at all, but rather left it unused in a certain respect. The great teacher had no need to make use of all the details of the brain. He knew, so to speak, things that the other could only know by applying the tool of the brain. What such a great teacher represented, then, was not a true, proper incarnation on Earth—not a truly proper incarnation of a human being as was otherwise the case—but rather something that constituted a kind of dual nature: a kind of spiritual being was present within this physical form. Such beings also existed in later Persian times, in Egyptian times, and so on. It was always the case that, with their individuality, they stood out, as it were, above the level of this human organization; they did not merge into it. As a result, they were able to influence other people in those earlier times. And this was the case until the time when, in the Greco-Roman era, a significant crisis arose in human development.

[ 17 ] During the Greco-Roman period, it was particularly the intellectual or emotional soul that gradually began to drive out the inner faculties. Whereas in the preceding era the main influence flowed into human beings, so to speak, from the outside—as you can see from the example of the Furies, where human beings had the avenging figures around them, not within them—in the Greco-Roman era, something began to flow toward the great teachers, as it were, from within. As a result, entirely new conditions had now come into being.

[ 18 ] In the past, beings had descended from the higher worlds and found themselves in a situation where they could say to themselves: “We do not need to fully enter into the human organization, for we can work as we should by bringing down from the higher worlds into human beings what they are not yet capable of, and simply allowing it to flow into them.” — At that time, people had nothing to offer the teachers in return. But if the great teachers had continued to pursue this approach, then starting in the fourth epoch it could have happened that such an individuality would have descended, appeared in some region, but would have found something on Earth that does not exist at all up there. As long as people on Earth had seen the avengers, the Erinyes, they could make do with what existed on Earth. But now something entirely new appeared down below: conscience. This was unknown up above; there was no way to observe it there. It was something new that appealed to those who were up there.

[ 19 ] Thus, during the fourth period of post-Atlantean culture—in other words, the necessity arose—for these teachers to actually descend to the human level and, within the human level itself, to come to know what emanates from the human soul itself upward toward the spiritual world. Thus began the time when it was no longer possible to remain uninvolved in human capacities. And now let us consider that unique being whom we refer to in his earthly incarnation as Gautama Buddha.

[ 20 ] Gautama Buddha was previously a being who could live in such a way that he was always able to incarnate into earthly bodies corresponding to the respective cultural periods, without claiming the right to make use of everything within this human organization. This being had no need to undergo actual human incarnations. Now, however, an important turning point arises for the Bodhisattva: namely, the necessity of coming to know all the destinies of the human organization within an earthly body, into which he had to enter completely. There was something for him to experience that could only be experienced in an earthly body. And because he was a higher individuality, this single incarnation sufficed for him to truly see all that can develop from this human body. For other human beings, the situation was such that they now have to gradually unfold their inner capacities through the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh periods of post-Atlantean cultural development. Buddha, on the other hand, was able to experience everything that lay within this single incarnation as a possibility for development. What human beings will bring forth as “conscience”—and what will grow ever larger and larger—he foresaw, as it were, in its earliest germ when he lived through his incarnation as Gautama Buddha. Therefore, immediately after this incarnation, he was able to ascend into the divine-spiritual worlds and did not need to undergo a second incarnation later on. What human beings will develop from within themselves in a certain area during future cycles, he was able to indicate in this single incarnation as a great guiding force. This came about through the event hinted at in the “Sitting under the Bodhi Tree.” At that time—in accordance with his special mission—the teaching of compassion and love, contained in the “Eightfold Path,” dawned upon him. This great ethics of humanity, which people will make their own through the cultures that follow, was imbued as a fundamental force into the mind of the Buddha, who descended at that time and became a Buddha from a Bodhisattva—that is, who underwent a true ascent to a higher stage. For it was here, during his descent, that he learned.

[ 21 ] To put it somewhat more broadly, this is the great event that is referred to in Eastern culture as “the Bodhisattva’s attainment of Buddhahood.” When this Bodhisattva—who had never truly incarnated before—was twenty-nine years old, the individuality of the Bodhisattva, which had not yet fully taken hold of him, suddenly entered the son of Suddhodana and completely took possession of him, and he experienced the great human teaching of compassion and love. Why did this Bodhisattva, who later became the Buddha, incarnate among this particular people? Why not, for example, among the Greco-Latin peoples?

[ 22 ] If this Bodhisattva was truly to become the Buddha of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, then he had to bring something of the future. Now, as the human being’s consciousness soul develops, he will gradually mature to the point of recognizing within himself what the Buddha has presented as a great revelation. The Buddha must have already developed the consciousness soul at a time when human beings had only just developed the intellectual soul or the soul of feeling. He therefore had to use the physical instrument of the brain in such a way that he overcame it—overcame it in a completely different way than a human being who had advanced as far as the Greco-Latin cultural period. The Greco-Latin brain would have been too rigid for him. He would have been able to develop only the intellectual soul within it; but he had to develop the consciousness soul. Therefore, he needed a brain that had remained more malleable. He employed the soul that was to develop later within an instrument that had previously been in common use among humanity and that had been preserved among the Indian people.

[ 23 ] Here, too, you have a repetition: The Buddha repeats a previous stage of human organization with a later stage of soul development. To this extent, the events that take place in human evolution are necessary. And the Buddha had the task, in the 5th to 6th centuries B.C., of immersing the consciousness soul into the human organization. But as a single individual, he could not take on the full task; he could not do everything necessary to ensure that this consciousness soul would develop properly from the fifth epoch onward. He had only a part of this task as his special mission—namely, the task of bringing the teaching of compassion and love to humanity. Other tasks fell to other, similar teachers of humanity. The ethics of humanity established in this part—the ethics of love and compassion—were set forth by the Buddha, and they continue to resonate. Humanity, however, must also develop a whole range of other abilities for the future—for example, the ability to think in pure forms of thought, to shape thoughts from crystallized ideas, and to link one thought to another as a pure thought. This ability was not part of the Buddha’s mission. His task was to cultivate what leads people to find the Eightfold Path on their own.

[ 24 ] Thus, another teacher of humanity had to come along, one who possessed entirely different abilities and channeled entirely different currents of spiritual life from the higher spiritual worlds into this world. This other individual had the task of bringing down what is now gradually manifesting itself in humanity primarily as the ability to think logically. A teacher also had to be found who would bring down what is necessary to express oneself through the forms of logical thinking; for logical thinking, too, has developed only over the course of time.

[ 25 ] What the Buddha accomplished had to be carried into the intellectual soul or the soul of the mind. Because this intellectual soul stands in the middle between the soul of sensation and the soul of consciousness, it has the very special characteristic that things do not repeat themselves in a crisscross pattern. Just as the primordial Indian epoch will be repeated in the seventh epoch, the primordial Persian in the sixth, and the fourth stands alone, so too does the intellectual soul stand alone. The powers underlying our intellectual faculties—which had to arise first in the soul of consciousness—could not be developed in the soul of understanding; yet, even though they were to appear later, they had to be predisposed and stimulated earlier. In other words: The impulse for logical thinking had to be given earlier than the impulse for conscience was given by Buddha. The

[ 26 ] Conscience was to be integrated into the fourth epoch; conscious, pure thinking was to emerge in the fifth epoch within the conscious soul, but it had to be predisposed—as a seed—to what is now blossoming in the third cultural epoch. Therefore, that other great teacher had the task of instilling in the feeling soul those forces that today manifest as logical thinking. That is why it is easy to imagine that this teacher’s distance from the average person must have been even greater than that of the Buddha from the ordinary person. Something was to be stirred within the feeling soul that, in essence, did not exist at all in any human being at that time. Concepts—that which was to be developed—were of no use whatsoever. That individual therefore had the task of planting the seed for certain forces, but was not permitted or able to use these forces themselves. That was not possible. They therefore had to use entirely different forces.

[ 27 ] This morning, in the second lecture on “Anthroposophy,” I discussed how, for example, forces are at work in the sensory soul during the act of seeing—forces that actually become conscious only on a higher level and emerge there as thought-related forces. If, therefore, such a great teacher-individuality was able to stimulate the sensative soul in such a way that the forces of thinking penetrated it in much the same way as the thinking life does subconsciously in the act of seeing—without the person being aware of it—then this individuality was able to ensure that these forces could later be utilized on a higher level. This was possible only through one thing. In order to stimulate the feeling soul—to instill, so to speak, the power of thought into it—this individual truly had to work in a very special way at that time: he had to teach not through concepts, but through music! Music imparts forces that trigger within the feeling soul that which, when it rises into consciousness and is processed by the conscious soul, becomes logical thinking. This particular music emanated from a being—a mighty being—who taught in this way—through music.

[ 28 ] You may find this strange and perhaps believe that such a thing would not be possible. But that is indeed how it was. Precisely in those regions of Europe, before the Greco-Roman era, there existed an ancient culture among peoples who had lagged behind in terms of those qualities that were highly developed in the East. In these European regions, because their development was to take a very different course, people were not very capable of thinking; they possessed little of what constitutes the powers of the intellectual or emotional soul. But their feeling soul was particularly receptive to what arose from the impulses of a particular kind of music, which was not quite like the music we have today. This takes us back to a time in Europe when an ancient—we might call it “musical culture”—existed, a time when not only the “bards” were the teachers, as in later periods when this tradition had already fallen into decline, but when enchanting music permeated all of Europe. During the third cultural epoch, there was a profoundly musical culture in Europe, and the minds of those peoples who waited in silence for what was destined for them in later times were receptive to musical influences in a special way. These were influences on the feeling soul in a manner similar to how the substance of thought, which acts upon the eye, also acts upon the feeling soul. The feeling soul was being shaped; within it, consciousness was to arise, which would reveal itself at a higher level in the conscious soul as logical thinking. But all consciousness comes from the regions of light, as do music and song. That is why, through the music that acted on the physical plane, the feeling soul had the subconscious sense: “This comes from regions where light originates—music and song from the realms of light!”

[ 29 ] He was an ancient teacher within the cultural regions of Europe—an ancient teacher who, in this sense, was an ancient bard, the leader of all the ancient bards. He taught on the physical plane through music, and he taught in such a way that, through his influence, something was communicated to the sentient soul, as if a sun were rising and shining. What has been preserved about this great teacher in the outer tradition was later summarized by the Greeks—who were still influenced by him from the West, just as they were influenced in other ways by the East—in their conceptions of Apollo, who is a sun god and at the same time the god of music. This figure of Apollo, however, traces back to this great teacher of antiquity, who implanted in the human soul the capacity that today manifests as logical thinking.

[ 30 ] And a disciple of this great teacher of humanity is also mentioned by the Greeks—a disciple who, however, became a disciple in a most peculiar way. How could anyone become a disciple of this being? — In the following way.

[ 31 ] Of course, in those times when this being was to work in the manner described, it was such that it did not merge with the physical organization of the human being; it was more than what walked the earth as a physical human being. A person with an ordinary sensory soul could have perceived the musical effects, but could not have evoked them. A higher individuality had descended, and what lived out there was like an illusion.

[ 32 ] But in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the Greco-Latin era, it was necessary for this individuality to descend once more, so to speak, to the level of humanity, and to make use of all the faculties inherent in human beings. But although it utilized, so to speak, all these faculties, it was still unable to descend completely. For in order to bring about what I have just described—to bring these effects together in a crosswise manner—it required faculties that went beyond the capacity of a human organism in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. After all, everything that is in the consciousness soul was already contained within the musical effects. But this could not yet be present at that time in an individuality that was only just beginning to be considered for the feeling soul. Therefore, after this individuality had incarnated in that form, it still had to hold something back. It had to incarnate in the fourth epoch in such a way that, while it filled the entire human being, the person living there nevertheless had, as it were, something within them that extended beyond them. They knew something of a spiritual world that they could not make use of. They had a soul that transcended this body.

[ 33 ] From a human perspective, it was somewhat tragic that the individual who had acted as a great teacher during the third cultural epoch was to be reincarnated in a form whose soul transcended itself, yet had no use for a soul capacity that went beyond the ordinary. This type of incarnation is called a “Son of Apollo” because what had existed before did not incarnate directly, but in a very complicated way—a “Son of Apollo,” a son who carried within himself, as a soul, what is usually designated in mysticism by the symbol of the feminine. But it was present within him in such a way that he could not fully possess it, since it resided in another world. He carried his own feminine soul within himself in another world to which he had no access, but into which he yearned to enter because a part of his own self was there. Greek mythology has captured this wondrous inner tragedy of the reincarnated great teacher-individuality of old in a marvelous way through the name it gave to the reincarnated Apollo or the “Son of Apollo”: Orpheus.

[ 34 ] In the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, this tragedy of the soul is portrayed in a wonderful way. Eurydice is taken from Orpheus at an early age. She is in another world. Orpheus descends into the realm of the shadows. He still has the ability to move the beings of the underworld through his music. He is granted permission to bring Eurydice back with him. But he must not look back, for the sight of what he once was—and what he can no longer embrace within himself—would be inwardly devastating, or at the very least, a source of loss.

[ 35 ] Thus, in Apollo’s transformation into Orpheus, we again see a kind of descent of a bodhisattva—if we wish to use an Eastern term—who becomes a Buddha. And so we could cite a series of such beings who, from age to age, stand as the great teachers of humanity, and who, in the depths of their descent—when they become Buddhas—experience something quite special. The Buddha experiences the bliss of inspiring all of humanity. That Bodhisattva, who is known externally by the name “Apollo,” experiences something individual; for he was precisely meant to prepare the way for individuality, the “I”-quality. He experiences the tragedy of the “I”; he experiences that this “I” is not fully at one with itself, just as human beings are today with regard to this human quality. Humanity strives upward toward the higher “I.” This is prefigured in what the Buddha or Bodhisattva is to Greece, in a corresponding way, in Orpheus.

[ 36 ] Based on these details, we have arrived at a characterization of those great teachers of humanity and can now begin to grasp the meaning of such concepts. If you now summarize what I have just said, you will see that I have consistently spoken of such beings who have developed, for example, the feeling soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul in a specific way as inner faculties—as faculties that must flow into the human being from within. Since we can only survey this particular period, we initially have only these two before us: the formers of the feeling soul. But there are many such beings, because the inner life of the human being develops gradually, step by step.

[ 37 ] Let us now compare this with another entity that, so to speak, takes hold of the inner being of the human being—and this is because we must admit to ourselves: Whenever teachers come who provide spiritual nourishment from the higher regions to the inner capacities that are continually developing, there must be other individualities who perform a different kind of work—one that, above all, sets to work on the transformation of the Earth itself and on what evolves there from age to age. If, in the fourth cultural epoch, the Buddha, so to speak, grasped the intellectual soul from within through the consciousness soul, then this intellectual soul also had to be grasped from without. Something had to approach it from the outside. This being had to come from another direction and work in a completely different way.

[ 38 ] A teacher such as the one we have just described had to, as he stood before people, pour into the human soul what he had to bring from higher realms. He was a teacher. What did the other being have to do—the one who, so to speak, carried the Earth forward so that it could develop from generation to generation? It had to do more than merely take hold of an inner life; it had to do more than merely approach human beings in order to develop this or that ability within them; rather, it had to descend to Earth itself as such a being, as a being in its own right. It was not merely a teacher for the intellectual soul who had to descend, but a shaper of the intellectual soul. One who shaped it himself had to appear—one who was, so to speak, the direct expression of this soul of the fourth epoch, this exceptional epoch that stands at the center. This being had to come from an entirely different direction. It had to enter human nature itself, to incarnate there. While the Bodhisattvas transformed the inner human being, this one transformed the entire human nature. It was he who first made it possible for the teachers to find suitable ground in the future. He transformed the entire human being.

[ 39 ] Let us recall how, in the human being, the various souls integrate themselves into the individual bodies: the sensory soul into the sensory body, the intellectual or emotional soul into the etheric body, and the conscious soul into the physical body. Where the soul of consciousness integrates itself into the physical body, there is the influence of the Bodhisattvas; there they took hold of the human being from one side. Where the soul of understanding or the soul of feeling acts up to the etheric body, there another being took hold of the human being in the fourth epoch from the other side. When did it do so?

[ 40 ] This took place at a time when a human etheric body could be directly perceived, when that being whom we have described in greater detail as Jesus of Nazareth left the physical body at the moment of John’s baptism. When this entire body was immersed—a process that would normally have triggered what we have described as a “shock”—the Christ-beings descended into the etheric body of this individuality. This is the individuality that comes from the other side, but which is now of a completely different nature. While, in a certain sense, we are dealing with the other great guiding individualities as highly developed human beings—those who have at least once undergone all the destinies of humanity—we cannot say the same of the Christ individuality. What is the lowest aspect of this Christ-Being? From the bottom up, it is the etheric body. This means that once a human being has transformed his entire astral body through the spiritual self and begins to work into the etheric body, he will then be working within this etheric body in an element in which the Christ had already worked in the same way back then. Christ imparts an impulse of the most powerful kind, one that extends into the future, which a human being will only come to experience when he consciously begins to transform his etheric body.

[ 41 ] As a person passes through life, they journey from birth—or even from conception—to death, and then from death to a new birth. On the path to a new birth, after death they first pass through the astral world, then what we call the lower part of the Devachanic world, and thereafter the upper part of the Devachanic world. If we use European terms, we call the physical plane the “small world” or the “world of the intellect,” the astral plane the “world of the elementals,” the lower Devachan the “heavenly world,” and the upper Devachan the “world of reason.” And because the European mind only gradually works its way up to having the corresponding true expressions in its language, that which lies above the Devachanic world has been given a religiously tinged name and is thus called the “world of Providence,” which is the same as the Buddha-plane. Ancient clairvoyants could indeed perceive what lies beyond, and ancient traditions were able to convey this to humanity; however, no name could be given for it in European languages, because only now are clairvoyants once again working their way up to that level. Thus, above the World of Providence lies a world for which, in all honesty and accuracy, a name cannot yet be given in the European languages. It truly exists, but human thought has not yet advanced far enough to characterize it; for no arbitrary name can be found for what is otherwise called “Nirvana” in Eastern traditions and which lies above the “World of Providence.”

[ 42 ] I said that between death and a new birth, a human being ascends to the upper Devachan, or the world of reason. There, he looks into higher worlds in which he himself is not present and sees those beings above him at work in these higher worlds. While human beings spend their lives in worlds ranging from the physical plane to the Devachan plane, it is normal for a Bodhisattva being to ascend all the way to the Buddha plane, which we in Europe call the world of Providence. This is an apt term, for it is their task to guide the world from age to age with providence. What happens, then, when the Bodhisattva has passed through incarnation—as was the case with Gautama Buddha?

[ 43 ] Once he has reached a certain level, he ascends to the next plane, the plane of Nirvana. There he finds his next sphere. This is how we have characterized the Bodhisattvas, who then become Buddhas in order to enter the plane of Nirvana. Everything that works within the human being, inwardly, lives in a sphere that extends upward to the plane of Nirvana. From the other side, a being like the Christ works into human nature. From the other side, he also works into those worlds into which the Bodhisattvas ascend when they leave the region of humanity in order to learn for themselves, so that they may then become teachers among humanity. There, from above, from the other side, a being such as the Christ meets them. Then they are the disciples of the Christ. Twelve Bodhisattvas surround a being such as Christ, and we cannot speak of more than twelve at all, for when the twelve Bodhisattvas have fulfilled their mission, we will have exhausted the time of earthly existence.

[ 44 ] Christ was physically present only once and thereby underwent the process of descent, arrival on Earth, and ascent. He comes from the other side and is the Being who stands in the midst of the twelve Bodhisattvas, who come there to receive what they must bring down to Earth. Thus, between two incarnations, the Bodhisattva beings ascend to the Buddha-plane, and it is on the Buddha-plane that they encounter, with full awareness, the being who stands before them as their teacher: the Christ. On the plane of Buddhahood, the Bodhisattvas and the Christ meet. And as human beings continue to progress and develop the qualities instilled in them by the Bodhisattvas, they will also become increasingly mature, enabling them to ascend into that same sphere. For the time being, however, the task at hand is for humanity to come to recognize that the Christ essence was incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth—that is, it appeared in human form—and that it is only through this human form that one can penetrate to reach the true essence of the Christ individuality.

[ 45 ] Thus, the Christ is accompanied by twelve Bodhisattvas, whose task is to prepare and further develop what he has brought forth as the greatest impetus for our cultural development. There we behold the Twelve, and in their midst, the Thirteenth. Thus we have ascended into the sphere of the Bodhisattvas and entered a circle of twelve stars, with the Sun at their center—the Sun that illuminates and warms them, from which they draw that source of life which they must then carry back down to Earth. How does the image of what is happening up there appear on Earth?

[ 46 ] When projected down onto Earth, it appears as follows: We can say that Christ, who lived on Earth, imparted such an impulse to Earth’s evolution that the Bodhisattvas had to prepare humanity for this impulse—and must also continue to build upon what Christ has given to Earth’s evolution. This presents itself as a picture on Earth: Christ at the center of Earth’s evolution, the Bodhisattvas as his harbingers and successors, who in turn must bring his work back to humanity.

[ 47 ] Thus, a number of Bodhisattvas had to lay the groundwork among humanity so that humanity might become ready to receive the Christ. But now that humanity has become ready to have the Christ among them, it is still far from ready to recognize, feel, and will all that the Christ is. And just as many Bodhisattvas were needed to prepare humanity for the Christ, so many are needed to bring forth into humanity what is to flow into it through the Christ. For there is so much in the Christ that the powers and abilities of human beings must continually grow greater in order to fully understand him. With today’s abilities, only the smallest part of him can be understood. Higher capacities will arise within humanity, and with each new capacity we will see the Christ in a new light. And only when the last Bodhisattva belonging to the Christ has completed his work will humanity perceive what the Christ is; then it will be animated by a will in which the Christ himself lives. The Christ will enter into human beings through their thinking, feeling, and willing, and humanity will be the outward manifestation of the Christ on Earth.