BUDDHA AND CHRIST
The Sphere of
the Bodhisattvas
In this lecture I want to
speak of certain facts which belong essentially to the ethical and moral
domain and help us to understand the mission of Spiritual Science in
our time.
We are all deeply convinced
of the great truth of reincarnation, of repeated earthly lives, and we must
realise that this repetition has its own good purpose in the Earth's
evolution. To the question, ‘Why do we
reincarnate?’ — occult research gives the answer
that our experiences differ in each of the epochs during which we are
reborn on the Earth. In incarnations immediately following the
Atlantean catastrophe the experiences of the human soul were entirely
different from those undergone in later pre-Christian epochs and in
our own age.
I need only briefly mention
that in the times directly after the Atlantean catastrophe, souls were
endowed with a certain elementary clairvoyance in the bodies
they then inhabited. This clairvoyance, once a natural faculty in
man, was gradually lost, mainly as a result of the conditions
prevailing during the Græco-Roman epoch of culture. Since then,
man has developed in such a way that great progress has been achieved
on the physical plane and during the course of the present
post-Atlantean epoch clairvoyance will gradually be
reacquired.
We are living in the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch of culture, the ancient Indian being the first,
the ancient Persian the second, the Babylonian-Chaldean the third,
the Græco-Roman the fourth; the sixth and seventh epochs will
follow our own. And then another great catastrophe will befall the
Earth and humanity, as was the case at the end of the Atlantean
epoch.
Occult research is able to
indicate the characteristic trend of human evolution in each of these
post-Atlantean epochs of civilisation — including the fifth,
sixth and seventh. The essential characteristic of our present fifth
epoch is the development of intellect, of reason. The main
characteristic of the sixth epoch will be that very definite feelings
regarding what is moral and what is immoral will arise in the
souls of men. Delicate feelings of sympathy will be aroused by
compassionate, kindly deeds and feelings of antipathy by malicious
actions. Nobody living at the present time can have the faintest
conception of the intensity of these feelings.
The sixth epoch will be
followed by the seventh, when the moral life will be still further deepened.
Whereas in the sixth epoch man will take pleasure in good and noble
actions, in the seventh epoch the natural outcome of such
pleasure will be a moral impulse, that is to say there will be
a firm resolve to do what is moral. There is a great difference
between taking pleasure in a moral action and the doing of it.
We can therefore say: our own epoch is the epoch of intellectualism;
the essential characteristic of the following epoch will be aesthetic
pleasure in the good, aesthetic displeasure in the evil; and the
seventh will be characterised by an active moral life.
At the present time only
the seeds of what will become part of mankind in future epochs are contained
in the human soul and it can be said that all these aptitudes or
predispositions in man — intellectual aptitudes,
predispositions leading to feelings of sympathy or antipathy aroused
by certain actions, to moral impulses — all these are related
to the higher worlds. Every moral action has a definite connection
with the higher worlds. Our intellectual aptitudes have a
super-sensible connection with the astral plane. Our sympathies and
antipathies for the good or the evil are connected with the
sphere of Lower Devachan; and the domain of moral impulses in the
soul is connected with Higher Devachan. Hence we can also say:
In our present age it is mainly the forces of the astral world that
penetrate into and take effect in the human soul; in the sixth epoch
it will be the forces of Lower Devachan that penetrate more deeply
into the soul; and in the seventh, the forces of Higher Devachan will
work with special strength into humanity.
From this it is understandable
that in the preceding fourth post-Atlantean epoch (the Græco-Roman)
it was the forces of the physical plane that exercised the strongest
influence upon the soul of man. That is why Greek culture was able to
produce such wonderful sculptures, in which the human form was given
such magnificent expression on the physical plane. Conditions in that
epoch were therefore especially suitable for men to experience the
Christ on the physical plane in a physical body. In our own, fifth
epoch which will last until the fourth millennium, souls will
gradually become able, from the twentieth century onwards, to
experience the Christ Being in an etheric form on the astral plane,
just as in the fourth epoch Christ was visible on the physical plane
in a physical form.
In order to understand the
nature of development in the sixth epoch of culture, it is well to consider
what will be the characteristic qualities of the soul in future
incarnations. To-day, in our intellectual age, intellectuality and
morality are practically separate spheres in the life of soul. It is
quite possible nowadays for a man to be very clever and at the same
time immoral, or vice versa — to be deeply moral and anything
but clever.
In the fourth epoch the future
juxtaposition of morality and intellectuality was prophetically
foreseen by a certain people, namely the Hebrews. They endeavoured to
bring about on artificial harmony between morality and
intellectuality, whereas among the Greeks such harmony was more a
natural matter of course. To-day we can learn from the Akashic
Chronicle how the leaders of the ancient Hebrew people strove to
establish this harmony between intellectuality and morality. They
wore symbols, of which they had such profound understanding that if
they concentrated their gaze upon them and made themselves
receptive to their influences, a certain harmony could be established
between what was good in a moral sense and what was wise. The priests
of the ancient Hebrew people wore these symbols on their
breastplate. The symbol for morality was called Urim, the
symbol of wisdom, Thummim. [According to the footnote
in the German text of this lecture, Urim = Glanz (Radiance
or Lustre) and Thummim = Wahrheit (Truth). Most
English books of reference give “lights” and
“perfections” as the interpretations, while
acknowledging uncertainty. The Septuagint translates them as
“manifestation” and “truth”. There is no
unanimity as to whether the objects in question can be reliably
identified, but the biblical references suggest that they were
precious stones. Some scholars suppose that they were the twelve
stones of the breastplate of the High Priest. What seems to be
certain is that on these objects were engraved the names of the
twelve tribes and that the High Priest used them as an oracle in
order to ascertain the will of God. (See among other biblical
references:
Exodus 28, 9-30;
Leviticus 8, 8.)
Robertson Smith wrote in
The Old Testament in the Jewish Church:
“In ancient times the
priestly oracle of Urim and Thummim was a sacred lot; for in
I Sam. xiv:41
the true text, as we can still restore it from the LXX., makes
Saul pray, If the iniquity be in me or Jonathan, give Urim; but if in
Israel, give Thummim. This sacred lot was connected with the ephod,
which in the time of the Judges was something very like an
idol.” See in the Moffatt translation of the Bible
I Sam. xiv. 18-43.
— Note by D.S.O. and M.K.]
If a Hebrew priest wanted to
discover whether a certain action was both good and wise, he made
himself receptive to the forces of Urim and Thummim; the result was
that a certain harmony between morality and intellectuality was
induced. Magical effects were produced by means of these symbols and
a magical link established with the spiritual world.
Our task now is to achieve in
future incarnations through inner development of the soul the
effect that in earlier times was produced by means of these
symbols.
Let us think once again of the
phases of evolution through the fifth, sixth and seventh
post-Atlantean culture-epochs in order to grasp how intellectuality,
aestheticism and morality will come to expression in men's life of
soul.
Whereas in the present fifth
epoch, intellectuality can remain unimpaired even if no pleasure is
taken in moral actions, in the sixth epoch, it will be
quite different. In the sixth epoch, that is, from about the third
millennium onwards, immorality will have a paralysing effect upon
intellectuality. The mental powers of a man who is intellectual and
at the same time immoral will definitely deteriorate and this
condition will become more and more pronounced in the future
evolution of humanity. A man who has no morals will therefore have no
intellectual power for this will depend entirely upon moral actions;
and in the seventh epoch, cleverness without morality will be
non-existent.
At this point it will be
well to consider the nature of moral forces in individual souls in their
present incarnations. How is it that in our phase of evolution a
human being can become immoral? It is because in his successive
incarnations man has descended more and more deeply into the physical
world and has therefore been impelled more and more strongly towards
the world of the senses.
The more forcefully the
impulses belonging to the descending phase of evolution work upon a soul,
the more immoral it tends to become. This fact is confirmed by a very
interesting finding of occult research. You know that when a man
passes through the gate of death, he lays aside his physical and
etheric bodies and for a short time has a retrospective view of his
past life on earth. A kind of sleep then ensues and after a few
months, or perhaps years, he wakens on the astral plane, in Kamaloka.
Then follows the life in Kamaloka, when the earthly life is lived
over again in backward order, three times as quickly.
At the beginning of life in
Kamaloka a very significant experience comes to every
individual. In the case of most Europeans or, speaking
generally, of men belonging to modern civilisation, this experience
takes the following form. — At the beginning of life in
Kamaloka a spiritual Individuality shows us everything we have done
out of selfish motives in the last life, shows us a kind of register
of all our transgressions. The more concretely you picture this
experience, the better. At the beginning of the Kamaloka period it is
actually as though a figure were presenting us with the register of
our physical life. The important fact — for which, naturally,
there can be no further proof because it can be confirmed only by
occult experience — is that the majority of men
belonging to European civilisation recognise Moses in this figure.
This fact has always been known to Rosicrucian research since the
Middle Ages and in recent years it has been confirmed by very
delicate investigations.
You can gather from this
that at the beginning of his life in Kamaloka man feels a very great
responsibility towards the pre-Christian powers for having allowed
himself to be drawn downwards, and it is an actual fact in occult
life that it is the Moses-Individuality who demands reckoning for the
wrongs committed in our time.
The powers and forces which
draw man upwards again to the spiritual world fall into two categories:
those which draw him upwards on the path of Wisdom, and those which
draw him upwards on the path of Morality. The forces to which
intellectual progress is mainly due all proceed from the impulse
given by a great Individuality of the fourth post-Atlantean
epoch who is known to you all, namely Gautama Buddha. It is a
remarkable discovery of spiritual investigation that the most
penetrating, most significant, thoughts conceived in our present
epoch have proceeded from Gautama Buddha. This is all the more
remarkable inasmuch as until the days of Schopenhauer —
therefore by no means long ago — the name of Gautama Buddha was
almost unknown in the West. This is very understandable, for
when Gautama Buddha was born as the son of King Suddhodana, he rose
from the rank of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha, and to become a
Buddha means that the Individuality concerned does not incarnate
again on Earth in a body of flesh. The
Bodhisattva-Individuality who became Buddha five or six
centuries before the beginning of the Christian era has not since
incarnated, nor can he incarnate, in a physical body. But instead he
sends down his forces from the higher worlds, from the super-sensible
worlds, and inspires all bearers of culture who are not yet permeated
by the Christ Impulse. Consciousness of this truth was demonstrated
in a beautiful legend written down by John of Damascus in the eighth
century and well known throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. It is
the legend of Barlaam and Joshaphat, which relates how he who had
become the successor of Buddha (Joshaphat is a phonetic variation of
‘Bodhisattva’) received teaching from Barlaam about the
Christ Impulse. The legend, which was subsequently forgotten, tells
us that the Bodhisattva who succeeded Gautama Buddha was instructed
by Barlaam and his soul was fired by the Christian Impulse. This was
the second impulse which, in addition to that of Buddha, continues to
work in the evolution of humanity. It is the Christ Impulse and is
connected with the future ascent of humanity to Morality. Although
Buddha's teaching is in a particular sense moral teaching, the
Christ Impulse is not teaching but actual power which works as
such and to an increasing degree imbues mankind with moral
strength.
[I Corinthians IV, 20.]
In the fourth post-Atlantean
epoch the Christ Being who descended from cosmic heights had first to
appear in a physical body. In our fifth epoch the intense
consolidation of intellectual forces will make it possible for man to
behold the Christ as an etheric Figure. This is even now beginning in
our century. From the thirties to the forties of this century
onwards, individuals will appear who have developed in a way that
will enable them to see the etheric Form of Christ, as at the time of
Jesus of Nazareth they saw the physical Christ. And during the next
three thousand years the number of those able to behold the etheric
Christ will steadily increase, until in about three thousand years,
reckoning from the present time, there will be a sufficient number of
human beings on the Earth who will need no gospels or other such
records, because in their own life of soul they will have actual
vision of the Christ.
We must therefore clearly
understand that in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch men were only
capable of beholding the physical Christ; He therefore came in a
physical body. In our own epoch and on into the third millennium,
they will gradually grow capable of beholding the etheric Christ. He
will never come again in a physical body.
If we bear in mind the fact
that when a man of the present age who unites himself more and more deeply
with the Christ Impulse passes into Kamaloka and is called to account
by a figure personifying a moral force — by Moses — we
shall understand how a transformation of the Moses-figure can be
brought about. For what does Moses show us when he confronts us with
the register of our sins and transgressions? He shows us what
stands on the debit side of our Karma. For a soul of our epoch it is
of great significance that through the inspiration of Buddha the
doctrine of Karma can be comprehended, but that the reality of the
working of Karma after death is revealed to us by the Old Testament
figure of Moses.
As the influences of the
super-sensible Christ pervade the souls of men to an ever-increasing
extent, the figure of Moses will be transformed after death into that
of Christ Jesus. This means that our Karma is linked with Christ,
that Christ unites with our Karma.
It is interesting to realise
that in the teachings of Buddha, Karma is an abstract matter, having
an impersonal character. In the future incarnations of men, as Christ
comes into ever closer connection with Karma, it will acquire the
quality of being, of potential life.
Our earlier stages of
evolution, our lives in the past, may be related to the words: Ex Deo
nascimur. If we direct our development in such a way that after
death, instead of Moses we meet Christ with whom our Karma is then
united, this is expressed in the Rosicrucian Christianity that has
existed since the 13th century, by the words: In Christo
morimur.
Just as Buddha-hood can be
attained only on the physical plane, the qualification for meeting
Christ in death can likewise be acquired by the human soul only on
the physical plane. A Buddha is first a Bodhisattva, but he rises to
the rank of Buddha during a physical incarnation and it is then
no longer necessary for him to return to the Earth. Understanding of
Christ in the sense just explained can be acquired only on the
physical plane. Hence during the next three thousand years men will
have to acquire in the physical world the power to behold the
super-sensible Christ, and it is the mission of the Anthroposophical
Movement to create, first of all, the conditions which make
understanding of Christ possible on the physical plane, and then the
power to behold Him.
In the age when Christ works
in the world of men as the etheric Christ it matters not whether we are
living in a physical body or between death and a new birth, if on the
physical plane we have acquired the power to behold Him. Let us
suppose, for example, that because of his earlier death a man had no
opportunity of beholding Christ in his present etheric Form.
Nevertheless, if during his life in the physical world such a man had
acquired the necessary understanding, vision of the Christ would be
possible for him between death and rebirth. A man who keeps aloof
from spiritual life and acquires no understanding of Christ will
remain without such knowledge until he can acquire it in his next
incarnation.
What has just been said will
indicate to you that as humanity lives on through the fifth, sixth
and seventh epochs of civilisation the Christ Impulse will gain
increasing power on the Earth. We have heard that in the sixth epoch,
intellectuality will be impaired through immorality. The other aspect
is that a man who has paralysed his intellectual faculty as a result
of immorality must turn to Christ with all the greater strength in
order that Christ may lead him to morality and imbue him with moral
strength.
What I have told you has been
investigated particularly closely by Rosicrucians since the 13th
century but it is a truth that has at all times been known to many
occultists.
If it were to be asserted that
there could be a second appearance of Christ on Earth in a
physical body, according to occultism that would be equivalent to
stating that a balance works more efficiently if it is supported at
two points instead of at one. In very truth the three years' duration
of Christ's life on Earth in the body of Jesus of Nazareth
constitutes the fulcrum of Earth evolution; and just as there can be
only one point at which the beam of a balance is attached, so too
there can be only one fulcrum of Earth evolution.
The teaching of moral
development is not the same as the impulse for such
development.
Before the Event of Golgotha
the Bodhisattva who was the successor of Buddha was present on the
Earth in order to prepare for that Event and give teaching to those
around him. He incarnated in the personality of Jeshu ben Pandira
[See Jeshu ben Pandira, two lectures given by Rudolf
Steiner at Leipzig on November 4th and 5th, 1911, and references in
his later cycle, The Gospel of St. Matthew.],
one century before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus we must
distinguish between the Jeshu ben Pandira-incarnation of the
Bodhisattva who was the successor of
Gautama Buddha, and the incarnation at the beginning of our era of
Jesus of Nazareth who for three years of his life was permeated by
the cosmic Being we call the Christ.
The Bodhisattva who incarnated
in Jeshu ben Pandira and in other personalities too, returns again and
again, until in about three thousand years from now, he
will attain Buddha-hood and as Maitreya Buddha live through his final
incarnation. The Christ-Individuality was on the Earth in the body of
Jesus of Nazareth for three years only and does not come again in a
physical body; in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch He comes in an
etheric body, in the sixth epoch in an astral body, and in the
seventh in a mighty Cosmic Ego that is like a great
Group-Soul of humanity.
When a human being dies, his
physical, etheric and astral bodies fall away from him and his ego
passes over to the next incarnation. It is exactly the same with the
planet Earth. What is physical in our Earth falls away at the end of
the Earth-period and human souls in their totality pass over into the
Jupiter condition, the next planetary embodiment of the Earth.
And just as in the case of an individual human being the ego is the
centre of his further evolution, so for the whole of future humanity
the Christ-Ego in the astral and etheric bodies of men goes on to
ensoul the Jupiter-existence. We therefore see how starting
from a physical man -on Earth the Christ gradually evolves as Etheric
Christ, as Astral Christ, as Ego-Christ, in order, as Ego-Christ, to
be the Spirit of the Earth who then rises to even higher stages
together with all mankind.
What are we doing when we teach
Spiritual Science to-day? We are teaching what Oriental wisdom so
clearly proclaimed when the Bodhisattva who was then the son of King
Suddhodana, attained Buddha-hood. In those Oriental teachings was
expressed the realisation that it was the task of the next
Bodhisattva — who would eventually become a Buddha
— to spread over the Earth the knowledge that would reveal
Christ to men in the true light. Thus the Bodhisattva who incarnated
in Jeshu ben Pandira and again and again in others, became the great
Teacher of the Christ Impulse. This is indicated very clearly in the
legend of Barlaam and Joshaphat, which tells how Joshaphat (i.e. the
Bodhisattva) is instructed by Barlaam, the Christian teacher.
The Oriental occult teachings call this Bodhisattva the
‘Bringer of the Good’ — Maitreya Buddha. And we know from
occult investigations that in this Maitreya Buddha the power of
the Word will be present in a degree of which men of the present time
can as yet have no conception. It is possible to-day through higher
clairvoyant perception of the process of world-evolution to discover
how the, Maitreya Buddha will teach after three thousand years have
passed. Much of his teaching can also be expressed in symbolic forms.
But to-day — because mankind is insufficiently mature
— it is not yet possible to utter words such as those that will
come from the lips of the Maitreya Buddha.
In the Eightfold Path, Gautama
Buddha gave the great intellectual teachings of right speech, right
thinking, right action, and so on. The words uttered by the Maitreya
Buddha will contain a magic power that will become moral
impulses in the men who hear them. And if there should be a
gospel telling of the Maitreya Buddha, the writer of it would have to
use words differing from those used of Christ in the Gospel of St.
John: “And the Word was made Flesh.” The
evangelist of the Maitreya Buddha would have to testify: “And
the Flesh was made Word.”
The utterances of the Maitreya
Buddha will be permeated in a miraculous way with the power of
Christ. Occult investigations show us to-day that in a certain
respect even the external life of the Maitreya Buddha will be
patterned on the life of Christ. In ancient times, when a great
Individuality appeared and was to become a Teacher of humanity, signs
indicating this showed themselves in the early youth of the child in
question, in special talents and qualities of soul. There is however
a different kind of development in the course of which a complete
change in the personality becomes apparent at a certain point in his
life. What happens is that when this human being has reached a
certain age, his ego is taken out of his bodily sheaths and a
different ego passes into his body. The greatest example of this is
Christ Jesus Himself, of whom in his thirtieth year the
Christ-Individuality had taken possession. All the incarnations
of the Bodhisattva who will become the Maitreya Buddha have shown
that in this sense his life will resemble that of Christ.
In none of the incarnations
of the Bodhisattva is it known, either in his childhood or youth, that
he will become a Bodhisattva. Whenever the Bodhisattva becomes Buddha
there is evidence that at the age of 30 or 31, another individuality
takes possession of his body. The Bodhisattva will never reveal
himself as such in his early youth, but in his thirtieth or
thirty-first year he will manifest quite different qualities, because
another Being takes possession of his body. Individualities who will
take possession of the personality of some human being in this way
and will not incarnate as children, are, for example, individualities
such as Moses, Abraham, Ezekiel.
So too is it in our present
century in the case of the Bodhisattva who later on, in three thousand
years time, will become the Maitreya Buddha. It would be so much occult
dilettantism to assert that this Being would be
recognisable in his early years as the Bodhisattva. It is
between his thirtieth and thirty-first years that he first reveals
Himself through his own power, without having to be proclaimed by
others. He will convince the world through his own power and it would
be well to realise that if the Bodhisattva were alleged in some
quarters to be revealing himself in a human being under the age of
thirty, that very fact would be evidence of the fallacy of such a
statement. Claims of the kind have frequently been made. For example,
in the 17th century a certain individual proclaimed himself to be an
incarnation of the Messiah, of Christ. His name was Sabbati Zewi and
hosts of people from all over Europe, from Spain, Italy and France,
made pilgrimages to him in Smyrna.
It is certainly true that
in our time there is a rooted disinclination to recognise genius in human
beings. But on the other hand, mental laziness is very prevalent,
with the result that people are only too ready to acknowledge some
individual as a great soul, merely on authority. It is important
to-day for Anthroposophy to be presented in such a way as to be based
to the smallest possible extent on belief in authority.
Much that I have said today
can be substantiated only by means of occult investigation. Yet
I beg you not to give credence to these things because I say them,
but to test them by everything known to you from history —
above all by what you can learn from your own experience — and
I am absolutely certain that the more closely you examine them, the
more confirmation you will find. In this age of intellectualism, I do
not appeal to your belief in authority but to your capacity for
intelligent examination. The Bodhisattva of the 20th century will not
rely upon any herald to announce him as the Maitreya Buddha, but upon
the power of his own words; he will stand on his own feet in the
world.
What has been said in this
lecture may perhaps be summed up as follows. —
In our period of evolution, two
streams of spiritual life are at work; one of them is the stream of
Wisdom, or the Buddha-stream, containing the most sublime
teaching of wisdom, goodness of heart and peace on Earth. To enable
this teaching of Buddha to permeate the hearts of all men, the Christ
Impulse is indispensable. The second stream is the Christ-stream
itself which will lead humanity from intellectuality, by way of
aesthetic feeling and insight, to morality. And the greatest Teacher
of the Christ Impulse will in all ages be the successor of that
Bodhisattva who incarnates again and again and who, in three thousand
years from now, will become the Maitreya Buddha. For the statement
contained in Oriental chronicles is true: that exactly five thousand
years after Gautama Buddha attained Enlightenment under the Bodhi
tree, the Maitreya Buddha will incarnate on Earth for the last
time.
The succession of Bodhisattvas
and Buddhas has no relation as such to the cosmic Being we call Christ;
it was a Bodhisattva — not the Christ — who incarnated in
the body of Jeshu ben Pandira. Christ incarnated in a physical body
once, and once only, for a period of three years. The Bodhisattva
appears in every century until his existence as Maitreya
Buddha.
The mission of Anthroposophy
to-day is to be a synthesis of religions. We can conceive of one form of
religion being comprised in Buddhism, another form in Christianity,
and as evolution proceeds the more closely do the different religions
unite — in the way that Buddha and Christ themselves are united
in our hearts.
This vista of the spiritual
development of humanity brings home to us the necessity of the
impulse of Anthroposophy as a preparation for understanding the
progress of culture and happenings in the great process of evolution
itself.
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