ANTHROPOSOPHY
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No. 3 [New Series].
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MICHAELMAS 1926.
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Vol. 1
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BUDDHA AND CHRIST
Public lecture delivered by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Berlin,
December, 1909. Authorized translation published by kind permission
of Frau Marie Steiner.
By Rudolf Steiner
THE Spiritual Science Movement has often, since its
inception, been confused with various other tendencies in existence
at the present time. It has been accused, in particular, of desiring
to implant one or another of the Oriental spiritual influences —
for example the Buddhistic — into western culture. For this
reason, the subject of to-day's lecture should have a special
interest for spiritual research, for it will present certain
observations concerning the respective significance of Buddhism
and Christianity from the standpoint of Spiritual Science.
Anyone who has made himself in some degree acquainted
with the nature of Buddhism, will be aware how its Founder, Gautama
Buddha, evaded all questions concerning the evolution of the world,
and the foundations of human existence. He would not speak of these.
He would speak only of the means by which mankind could enter into a
form of existence that was satisfying in itself. Therefore, one
cannot, to begin with, regard Spiritual Science, which never
avoids these questions concerning the source and origin of existence
and the great facts of evolution, as being similar to Buddhism. But
since it is the case that a certain trend of thought which exists
within this sphere of Spiritual Science, is being more and more
identified with Buddhism, namely, the conception of repeated lives on
earth for the whole of humanity, and also the conception concerning
that which passes onward from life to life as spiritual cause and
effect, — one may as well say at once that it is really
astonishing that this idea of Reincarnation should be designated as
‘Buddhism.’
The function of Anthroposophy, or of Spiritual Science
is not to acknowledge allegiance to any particular name, but only to
what is capable of investigation as a Truth, unconnected in our day
with any names whatsoever. The fact that the teaching of
Reincarnation, or repeated lives on earth, is also to be found in the
teaching of Gautama Buddha, although in an entirely different form,
is analogous, where present day Spiritual Science is concerned, to
the fact that elementary geometry is also to be found in Euclid; and
just as little as it is justifiable to accuse every teacher of
geometry of perpetrating ‘Euclidism,’ so is it
equally unjustifiable to accuse Spiritual Science, when it makes the
teaching of Reincarnation its own, of being ‘Buddhism’
just because similar concepts were also taught by Buddha.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to point out that
Spiritual Science is the instrument which we must use in order to
penetrate into and to test the source of every religion, whether it
be the religion which is at the foundation of the whole of our
European culture — Christianity, or whether it be Buddhism.
If we would now, in the sense of Spiritual Science,
enter thoughtfully and deeply into the spirit of Buddhism, so as to
be able to compare it with the spirit of Christianity, we shall do
better if we do not at once turn to the great doctrines — which
can so easily be interpreted in different ways — but rather try
to construct a picture of the immense significance and far-reaching
results of Buddhism from various symptomatic facts which concern its
whole disposition and presentment. This can best be done if we
consider first of all a Buddhist scripture which is held in high
esteem; and that is the questions which were put by King Milinda to
the sage Nagasena.
Here we are given a conversation which draws out the
very spirit of the whole trend of Buddhistic thinking. The powerful,
spiritually-minded King Milinda desires to question Nagasena, the
sage. The King, who has never been at a loss in the presence of any
sage because he always knew how to evade anything that was said in
opposition to his own ideas, comes to Nagasena to speak with him
about the meaning of the ‘Eternal,’ — the meaning
of the immortal part of human nature which passes onwards from
incarnation to incarnation.
Nagasena asks the King: — ‘How dids't thou
come hither? on foot, or in a carriage?’ ‘In a carriage.’
‘Well,’ said Nagasena, ‘let us now consider what a
carriage, is. Are the shafts the carriage? No. Is the seat you sat
upon the carriage? No. Are the wheels the carriage? No. Is the yoke
the carriage? No. And thus,’ said Nagasena, ‘one can
enumerate all the parts of the carriage, but all the parts are not
the carriage. And yet, all that is there enumerated is the carriage,
only the carriage consists of all the parts put together; it is no
more than a name for that of which all the parts make one
whole. If we consider it apart from its separate constituents, it is
nothing but a name!’
The sense — and the object — of what
Nagasena said is this: that one must turn one's gaze away from
everything that the eye can behold in the physical world.
Nagasena wished to point out that actually nothing exists in the
physical world which in itself constitutes what is collectively
designated by a name, in order that he may thus reveal the
worthlessness and meaninglessness of all the physical-material
constituents of things. And, so as to make his use of this example
clear, Nagasena says: ‘It is thus also with all that
constitutes Man, and which passes onward from one earth-life to
another. Are the hands, and the legs, and the head that which goes
from life to life? No! What thou doest to-day, what thou doest
tomorrow, is it these things which go from life to life? No! What is
it then, which collectively is Man? It is Name and Form. But
then, it is even so with the name and form of a wagon. If we gather
the different parts together, we have only a Name. There is nothing
there in particular except the parts!’
So that we may observe this still better, there is yet
another analogy which the sage Nagasena showed to King Milinda. The
King said: — ‘Thou sayest, O wise Nagasena, that of that
which stands before me as Man, Name and Form pass from life to life.
Is it then the Name and Form of the self-same Being that appears
again in a new embodiment upon the earth?’
And Nagasena replied: ‘See now, — the
mango-tree bears a fruit. A thief comes and steals the fruit. The
owner of the mango-tree says: “Thou hast robbed me of my
fruit,” but the thief answers: “It is not thy fruit. Thy
fruit was that which thou didst plant in the ground! it has
transformed itself. That which was growing upon the mango-tree simply
bears the same name — it is not thy fruit!”’ And
then Nagasena continued: ‘It is true that it bears the same
name and form; but it is not the same fruit. Still, one can punish
the thief in spite of that! And so,’ said the sage, ‘it
is even thus with what reappears in a later life on earth in relation
to what was there in earlier lives. It is like the fruit of the
mango-tree which was planted in the earth. But only because the owner
had first planted the fruit in the earth was it possible for a fruit
to grow upon a tree. Therefore we must say that the fruit belongs to
him who buried the first fruit in the earth. Thus it is with man; his
deeds and his destiny are the fruit and the effects of his earlier
lives. But what appears is new, as the fruit of the mango-tree is
new.’
So Nagasena showed how what is once there in any one
earth-life strives to reappear transformed, as effects, in later
lives.
It is easier to gain a sensitiveness towards the whole
spirit of Buddhistic teaching by such examples as this, than by a
study of the main principles, for the latter can be interpreted in
various ways. If we let the spirit of these analogies work upon us,
we see clearly enough that the Buddhist desires to wean his adherents
from the idea of what may be regarded as the separate individuality,
the definite personality, and to point out above all things, that
that which reappears in a new embodiment, is — it is true —
the result of this personality, but that one has no right to
speak of an uninterrupted ‘I,’ in the true sense of the
word, as extending from one incarnation to another.
Now if we turn from Buddhism to Christianity, we can —
though such a comparison has never been selected before — use
this instance of Nagasena in the Christian sense, and represent it
somewhat as follows.
Suppose we imagine that King Milinda and the Sage are
reborn, and that the conversation takes place now. Were it fully
dominated by the spirit of Christianity it would necessarily have to
proceed as follows. Nagasena would say: — ‘Behold the
hand! Is this hand a man? No, the hand is not the man. For if there
were only a hand, there would be no man. But if you cut the hand off
a man's body, it dries up, and in three weeks' time there would be no
hand left. Whence then is a hand a hand? By reason of a man! Is the
head a man? No! Is the heart anything by itself? No! Because if we
remove the heart from a man in a very short time it ceases to be a
heart, and the man ceases to be a man. Therefore the heart is a heart
by reason of the man; the man is a man by reason of his heart. And
moreover, man is only man upon the earth because he possesses the
heart as an instrument. So the living organism has parts, which in
themselves are nothing, but are only something by reason of their
co-existence within us. And when we consider what the separate parts
are not, we find we have to fall back upon something which is
invisible behind them, which rules them, holds them together and uses
them as its instruments. And even when we behold all the separate
parts together, still we have not found the Man himself, if we only
look for him as the sum of the separate parts.’
And then Nagasena could look back upon the old analogy
of the carriage, and could now say, speaking of course, out of the
spirit of Christianity: — ‘True it is that the shafts are
not the carriage, for with the shafts alone thou coulds't not be
conveyed. True it is that the wheels are not the carriage, for the
wheels could not carry thee. True it is that the yoke is not the
carriage, for the yoke could not carry thee. True it is that the seat
is not the carriage, for that also could not carry thee! Though it is
true that the carriage is only a name for the assembled parts, yet
thou art not conveyed by the parts, but thou art conveyed by
something that is not the parts, for by their means thou canst
not travel.’
But by the ‘Name’ something particular is
denoted. And thus we are led to something which is non-existent in
any of the parts!
Hence arises the striving of the Buddhistic spirit away,
so to speak, from what is perceived, in order to surmount it and to
deny the possibility that anything particular attaches to what is
seen. The spirit which imbues the Christian way of thinking —
and this it is that concerns us — perceives the separate parts
of a carriage, or of any other object, in such a way that the
tendency is to turn from the parts to a recognition of the whole.
And because of this difference between the Buddhistic and the
Christian conception of things, remarkable consequences arise
out of each of them.
Out of the Buddhistic, and this is the conclusion we are
naturally led to from the foregoing indications, the following
arises: —
A man stands before us. He is constructed out of several
parts. This man busies himself in the world, and performs various
actions. And while he appears thus before us, his Buddhistic attitude
of thought causes him to feel the worthlessness and unreality of
everything around him. But he is led to free himself from his
attachment to nothingness, so that he may rise to a higher existence
in reality; to turn away from all that his eyes behold, and from
everything that he can gain. by means of all possible human
knowledge. Away from this world of the sense-perceptions! For
everything that it offers, when it is conceived only as Name and
Form, reveals itself in all its emptiness! There is no truth in
anything belonging to the physical world!
Now whither does the Christian conception lead us? It
does not regard the separate parts as separate, but regards them in
such a way that one indivisible unity and reality is perceived ruling
among them. It regards the hand in such a way that it is seen to be a
hand only because a man, using it as a hand, makes it a hand.
Therefore here is something (a man) which as it stands before us,
immediately and inevitably suggests that which stands behind it.
Hence, something quite different from the Buddhistic
arises from this way of thinking, so that we can say as follows: —
‘Here stands a man. That which he is by reason of his different
parts, and by means of his acts, can only be, because behind
it all there stands, as Man, a Spiritual Being, who not only brings
the parts into movement, but performs all the separate acts.
That which is revealed in the separate parts, and lives itself out in
them, has poured itself into all that is visible of the man; it is
that which, within what is seen, will reap the fruits of actions and
be able to draw out of the world of the senses something that we may
call an ‘event’ and carry it onward into a later
incarnation upon earth. There — behind the external appearance
— stands the Doer — a Doer who does not spurn the outer
world, but so handles it that its fruits are taken up and carried
into a future life.’
When we, as knowers of Spiritual Science, consider
Reincarnation from the Buddhistic standpoint, we must express it
thus: — that that of which man is the unified expression in his
earth-life, has no value, for his deeds alone have their
effects in the following incarnation; while in the light of
Christianity, that which makes man a unity in his earthly life is the
fullness of his Ego. That has value; and that it is which
carries the fruits of one incarnation onward into the next.
Thus we can see that a certain quite definite
configuration of thought, which is far more important than
theories and principles, cleaves these two great world-conceptions
most powerfully asunder. If we were less prone in these days to
depend so much upon theories, we should find that we could far more
easily arrive at an understanding of the main characteristics of
various spiritual tendencies by turning our attention especially to
their symptoms, to their methods of presentation. And that holds good
both for the Buddhistic and the Christian conceptions. In the
conversation described we have the very core of the Buddhistic
conception as expressed by the great Founder of Buddhism himself. The
theme of the present lecture is certainly not intended to develop a
line of opposition against the Founder of the Buddhistic
world-conception, but rather to portray his world-conception quite
objectively and in, accordance with its true characteristics.
The Buddha-legend describes clearly enough, even though
in pictorial fashion, what the Founder of Buddhism intended. We are
told that Gautama Buddha was born the son of King Suddhodana, and
that he was brought up in a royal palace where he was surrounded by
everything that could possibly serve to ennoble human life. During
his early years he was not allowed to know anything at all of human
sorrow and pain, but he lived in the midst of happiness, and joy, and
distractions of all kinds. Then we are told how one day, when he
was twenty-nine years of age, he left the palace, and for the first
time in his life was confronted by sorrow and pain and all the dark
shadows of existence. It is described how he met an old, old man
whose life was ebbing away, and above all how he saw a corpse. And it
dawned upon him that life must after all be utterly different from
all that he had experienced in the palace, where he had known nothing
but joy, where disease and death had never come near him, and where
he had learned to believe that life could never ebb away nor cease.
And now he discovered that life embraced both pain and sorrow.
Heavily indeed, did this discovery weigh upon the great soul of
Buddha! Life contained pain, sorrow and death. He had seen it for
himself in the sick man, the aged man, and the corpse. ‘What is
the value of life?’ he cried to himself, ‘if it bears
sickness, old age, and death within it!’ And out of that cry
there arose at last the monumental teaching of Buddha on the Sorrow
of Life, which he gathered together in these words: ‘Birth is
sorrow! Old age is sorrow! Sickness is sorrow! Death is sorrow! All
existence is filled with sorrow!’ And as he later elaborated
this theme still further: — ‘That we cannot always be
united with those we love, that is sorrow. That we must be joined to
that which we love not, is sorrow. That we cannot obtain, in every
circumstance of life, what we desire, is sorrow.’
Sorrow is everywhere, no matter whither we turn our
gaze. And if Buddha's use of the word ‘sorrow’ has not
quite the meaning that is imparted to it to-day, still it is intended
to express that man is everywhere, and at all times, a prey to
everything that comes against him, that assaults him from without,
and that he is unable to unfold any active forces to meet it. ‘Life
is sorrow,’ said Buddha, ‘therefore we must seek the
causes of sorrow.’
There then arose before his soul the picture of what he
called ‘the thirst for existence.’ Since we look out upon
the world and see that sorrow is everywhere, we are compelled to say:
Man is bound to have sorrow if he enters into this world of sorrow;
but what is the cause of his suffering? The cause is this:
that he desires, that he thirsts to be incarnated in this world. The
passionate longing to forsake the Spiritual World and enter into a
physical body, and in it to become aware of the outer material world
— that is the cause of this sorrow-filled human existence.
Hence there is only one way to escape from sorrow, and that is by
conquering the thirst for life. And this thirst for existence can
actually be overcome when, according to the teaching of Buddha, men
can learn to unfold within themselves the so-called ‘Eight-fold
Path,’ which, so it is generally said, consists of right
judgment, right discrimination, right speech, right deed, right
living, right aspiration, right thinking, right contemplation.
Thus through the right attitude towards life, according
to the great Buddha, there arises by degrees within men's souls
something which destroys the passionate longing for existence,
something which brings them so far that at last they are no longer
compelled to descend into physical incarnation, but are liberated
from an existence which is overwhelmed by sorrow.
These things, according to Buddha, constitute the Four
Noble Truths: viz., the knowledge of sorrow; the knowledge of the
causes of sorrow; the knowledge of the necessity for liberation from
sorrow; and, lastly, the knowledge of the means of liberation from
sorrow.
These are the Four Holy Truths which Buddha, after his
enlightenment under the Bodhi-tree, gave out in the great sermon at
Benares, about the fifth or sixth century before Christ.
Liberation from the pain of existence! That is what
stands in the forefront of Buddhism, and it is that which makes it
possible to describe the religion of Buddha as a ‘religion of
redemption’ in the highest sense of the words; a religion of
redemption from suffering; and since all existence is bound up with
suffering, a redemption above all, from the continuance of rebirth.
That is entirely in accordance with the type of the presentation of
Buddhism which is embodied in the Nagasena conversations. For in
the moment that human thinking, which embraces the outer world of the
senses, beholds its worthlessness, when that which is a mere
gathering together of parts possesses for the thinker only Name and
Form; when nothing passes from incarnation to incarnation save the
results of existence, then it must be said that ‘true’
existence is only attained when man is able to overcome and transcend
everything that is to be found in the external world of the senses.
Now it is not correct — and this can be perceived
even by the simplest method of observation — to say that
Christianity is a ‘religion of redemption’ in the same
sense as Buddhism. If we place Christianity in its correct relation
to Buddhism, we can speak of it as a ‘religion of re-birth.’
For Christianity proceeds from the knowledge that everything which in
its totality represents man in a single life, is fruitful, and
these fruits have importance and value for the innermost being of
man, and are carried over by him into a new life and brought, in that
life, to a higher state of perfection than in the previous one.
Everything that we experience and absorb in a single life always
appears again and grows ever more and more perfect until it is
revealed at last in its true spiritual form. What is apparently
worthless in our existence, when it is taken hold of by the
spiritual, has its resurrection in a degree more perfect than before
; is spiritually embodied. Nothing in existence is worthless, because
it rises again if the spirit has entered into it rightly.
The thought-content of Christianity is a religion of
re-birth, a religion of the resurrection of the Best that we have
experienced; a religion wherein no single thing that is round about
us is a ‘nothingness,’ but wherein all things are
building stones for the completion of a great edifice that is to
arise through the gathering together of everything spiritual from out
of the world of the senses.
Buddhism is a religion of liberation from existence;
while Christianity is the opposite, a religion of Rebirth upon a more
spiritual level. This is revealed in the least as well as in the
greatest of the forms of its presentation, no less than in its
fundamental principles. And if we look for the actual reasons of this
difference between the two religions, we can say that they arise out
of the entirely opposite nature of the character of oriental and
western culture.
There is a very radical difference between the method of
presenting things that spring from the culture that gave birth to
Buddhism, and the method that springs from that culture into which
Christianity poured itself. It is possible to describe this
difference quite simply. It lies in the fact that all true oriental
culture, which has not been fertilised by the West, is
non-historical; whereas western culture is historical. That is the
ultimate root of the difference between the Christian and the
Buddhistic conceptions. The Christian conception recognises that not
only are there repeated lives on earth, but that history rules in
them; that is to say, that what to begin with, can be experienced at
a higher and more perfect stage, can continue to become more and more
perfect throughout the course of the succeeding incarnations.
Where Buddhism sees the liberation from earth-existence
in the ascent to Nirvana, Christianity sees, as the goal of its
evolution, that everything engendered, everything achieved, in each
single earth-life, ascends to ever higher and higher degrees of
perfection until, spiritualised and transfigured, it consummates its
resurrection at the end of the world.
Buddhism is non-historical, precisely in accordance with
the character of its cultural origin. It is non-historical for the
simple reason that it merely places the external world in opposition
to mankind, who acts within it. The Buddhist says: — ‘We
look back at past incarnations, or forward to future ones, but
we stand opposed to the outer world!’ He does not ask: ‘Is
it possible that man, in earlier days, was differently placed as
regards the world? or may be perhaps differently placed in the
future?’ Christianity does ask that question. But the
Buddhist arrives at the conception that the relationship of man to
the world in which he is incarnated is an unchanging one; that driven
as he is by the thirst for existence into a physical embodiment, he
enters a world of sorrow no matter whether he had been compelled to
an embodiment in the past, or whether he is so compelled in the
present. Always it is sorrow that the world brings to him. Thus the
incarnations succeed each other, and there is no idea of evolution
being brought under its true aspect as an historical conception. Thus
the conception is clear that fundamentally the Buddhist finds his
Nirvana, his state of bliss, solely in the relinquishing of repeated
lives on earth; and thus also he sees that the source of misery
itself is the external world. He says: ‘It is inevitable that
if thou abandonest thyself to the physical world, suffering must be
thy lot; for suffering comes from thence.’
That is not Christian. The Christian conception is
through and through an historical, sequential one. It does not
concern itself with the non-historical relationship of opposition to
the physical world. But it says: — ‘As man passes from
incarnation to incarnation he is indeed placed in opposition to a
physical world. But if this world brings him sorrow, if it offers him
what does not satisfy him, what does not fill him with an inwardly
harmonious life, that does not arise from the fact that earthly
existence as a whole is such that suffering is inevitable, but it
comes because man himself has brought with him a false relation to
the external world, and does not place himself rightly within it.’
Christianity, and the Old Testament also, point to a
definite occurrence whereby Man evolved something within
himself that causes him, through his inner life, to make the world
his source of sorrow. Hence it is not the external world in which we
are ‘made flesh,’ not that which enters through our eyes,
and echoes in our ears which brings us sorrow; it is that which the
human race once unfolded within itself which placed it in a wrong
relation to this external world. And this was an inheritance
which passed from age to age, so that mankind to-day still suffers
pain. Thus Christianity points out that this state of things arose
when humanity itself was at the beginning of its earthly existence.
We can enlarge upon these two aspects of the foundations of both
religions. Buddhism for ever emphasises that the ‘world is
Maya, is Illusion!’ Christianity asserts: ‘It is true
that, to begin with, what man beholds of the world is illusion; but
that arises from man himself, who has so formed his organs of
perception that his vision cannot penetrate to the Spiritual World.
The outer world is not the illusion, but the human outlook is the
source of the illusion.’ Buddhism says: ‘Gaze upon all
the events that surround you! They are illusion. Behold what flashes
in the lightning, it is illusion I What roars as thunder — it
is Maya, it is the Great Deception!’ ‘Not so,’
would the Christian spirit reply: ‘But until now the human race
has not found it possible to open — (in Goethe's words) —
the “spiritual eyes and ears,” for these would reveal the
outer world in its true form!’
No; it is not that we are surrounded by Maya, but that
man is so imperfect a being that he cannot perceive the true form of
the world. And so Christianity seeks, in pre-historic ages, the event
that made the human heart become incapable of creating the true
conception of the physical world. Therefore, through many
incarnations of development, we have — in the Christian
sense — to re-attain the state of spiritual sight and hearing
before the true form of the outer world can be perceived. Repeated
incarnations are, therefore, not meaningless, but they are the way
towards the perception, in the light of the Spirit, of that from
which the Buddhist would escape: i.e. the way to the finding
of the spiritual within the physical. To overcome this world, which
appears to us now as a physical one, to overcome it with something
which man does not yet possess, but which he can attain as a
spiritual reality; to overcome human Error which sees the world as
Maya — that is the inner impulse of Christianity.
And so the Teacher of Christianity is not One Who says:
‘The world is the well-spring of sorrow! Escape from it to
another that is utterly different — attain Nirvana!’ But
Christianity sets before us as the mighty Impulse for the forward
evolution of the earth, the Christ, Who pointed, in the strongest
possible way, to the inner being of man, where from he could unfold
the power to use every incarnation that he has upon earth in such a
way that he can carry the fruits of it forward to his future
incarnations through his own strength. Not to bring the
course of his incarnations to a close and enter Nirvana, but to use
all he can of them, to work further upon their results, so that he
can spiritually experience Resurrection.
There we have the great distinction which makes Buddhism
on the one hand a non-historical, and Christianity on the other hand,
an historical conception. The Christian idea seeks in the ‘fall’
the origin and source of man's pain and sorrow; and in a
‘resurrection’ the healing of them. ‘You will not
be freed from pain and sorrow by departing from earth-existence; but
you will be set free when you correct the Error which gives you a
false relation to the world. The source of sorrow is in yourselves!
If you perceive aright, you will know that the outer world indeed and
in truth melts away like mist in the sun, but all the deeds that you
have done in the world, all your experiences, it will bring to a
resurrection in the Spirit!’ This is Christianity as a
‘religion of Re-birth,’ a religion of Resurrection. And
only thus can it be placed beside Buddhism. That is to say,
only in the sense of spiritual-scientific thought can these two be
compared, and their deepest impulses understood.
What has been indicated here can be verified in the
minutest particulars. For instance, one can find in Buddhism
something like the Sermon on the Mount. He that hears the Law —
i.e. what Buddhism communicates as the Law — is
blessed. He that can live with all creatures and does no evil towards
them, is blessed. We can regard the Buddhistic beatitudes side by
side with the Sermon on the Mount as it is given in the Matthew
Gospel; but we must understand them aright. Let us compare them for a
moment with what we find in St. Matthew. First we hear the mighty
words: ‘Blessed are the poor in Spirit, [(Dr.
Steiner gives this sentence as ‘Blessed are those who are
beggars for the Spirit.’)] for theirs is
the Kingdom of Heaven.’ Here it is not only said ‘blessed
are those who hear the Law,’ but another sentence is added: It
is said, ‘Blessed are they who are poor in the Spirit, so that
they must beg for the Spirit, — for theirs is the Kingdom of
Heaven.’ What does that mean?
Now one can only correctly understand such a sentence
when one brings the whole of the historically conceived teaching
of Christianity before the mind's eye, and then one recognises
that all human soul-capacities have passed through a ‘history,’
— that they have all evolved. Spiritual Science clearly and
truly understands the word ‘evolution’ in the sense
that what is present to-day, was not always present. It tells us that
what we possess to-day as our reason, our scientific thought, was not
in existence in primeval times; but instead, there was present in
humanity what might be called a dark, dim clairvoyance. Men did not
come to their knowledge of external things in the way they do to-day,
but something arose within them like an archetypal wisdom, far
surpassing what we ourselves can achieve. Whoever knows history,
knows that such a primeval wisdom existed. Though men did not know
how to construct machines and railways, and rule the surrounding
world by means of the forces of Nature, yet they had a knowledge of
the divine-spiritual foundations of the world infinitely transcending
our own. But it would be quite wrong to suppose that their knowledge
was gained by thinking. On the contrary, it rose up in their souls as
though bestowed upon them, as revelation, as dim inspirations rising
within them without their co-operation, but so that they were there
as real images of the Spiritual World, a really present archetypal
wisdom.
Human progress, however, consisted in the fact that from
incarnation to incarnation this shadowy clairvoyance, this wisdom,
had to grow less and less, for it was necessary that it should be
lost in order that man might learn at last to grasp the things of the
world by his reason. In the future, man will be able to see
clairvoyantly into the Spiritual World, and at the same time will
possess the forms of his present knowledge.
To-day we are in an intermediate state. The old
clairvoyance is lost, and what we now possess has been developed
through long ages.
How has mankind arrived at a knowledge of the world
through his reason, and from out of his own innermost
self-consciousness? And when, more especially did self-consciousness
appear?
It was at the time (though as a rule the evolution of
humanity is not observed with such exactitude as this) in which
Christ-Jesus came to the earth. At that time, humanity stood at a
turning-point in evolution when the old clairvoyance had gone, and
which was the starting-point of that which has brought about our
greatest achievements. The entrance of Christ into the
world-evolution was the turning point from the Old age to the New,
from the old to the new world-conception! And there is, moreover, a
technical expression for that stage of achievement which it was then
possible for mankind to experience, when men had begun to know the
outer world through their own self-consciousness; an expression which
is used by John the Baptist when he proclaims that ‘The Kingdom
of Heaven is at hand!’ That means: ‘The knowledge of the
world in ideas and concepts is at hand.’ In other words: ‘Man
is no longer directed to the old clairvoyance, but he must, from out
of his own being, learn to know and investigate the world.’ The
tremendous impulse for that which man had to gain by means of his own
Ego, and not through the Grace of Bestowal, that was given by
Christ-Jesus.
Thus, there are great depths of meaning hidden even in
the first words of the Sermon on the Mount, which might well be
expressed as follows. Humanity stands to-day at that stage when it is
a ‘beggar for the Spirit.’ Previously, men possessed
clairvoyant vision and could behold the Spiritual World. That is now
lost. But a time is coming, through the power of the Ego, through the
inner revelation of the Word, when men will find a substitute for the
old clairvoyance. Therefore — ‘blessed’ are not
only those who in ancient times attained to the Spirit through dim
inspirations, but also those are ‘blessed’ who have no
clairvoyance, because to lose it is the course of their evolution.
Oh! — they are not unblest, they who are beggars for the
Spirit, because they are ‘poor in the Spirit’! Blessed
are they, for theirs is that which is revealed to them by their own
Ego, is that which they can attain through their own
Self-consciousness!
And further: ‘Blessed are they that mourn’;
for even though the outer world causes suffering by reason of man's
wrong attitude towards it, yet the time has now come when man, if he
takes hold of his Self-consciousness, and unfolds the forces
inherent in his Ego, will know the remedy for his pain. He will find
within himself the possibility of comfort. The time has come
when external means of comfort have lost their individual
significance, because the ‘ I ’ is now to find the
healing balm within. Blessed are they who can now no longer find in
the external world what was once to be found there. And in this sense
also, the fourth beatitude is to be understood: ‘Blessed are
they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be
filled.’
The source of that righteousness which shall
counterbalance the unrighteousness of the world, is now to be
found in the Ego itself.
Thus Christ appears as the Guide to the human Self. The
Guide who points directly to the Divine in Man, and therewith gives
the indication — ‘Take that which lives in Christ into
your own inner self; then shall ye find the force necessary for
carrying the fruits of earthly existence from incarnation to
incarnation.’
To this also belongs an event which at first appears as
a wholly painful one in the Christian doctrine, namely, the death of
Christ-Jesus, the Mystery of Golgotha. This death has not the usual
significance of other deaths. On the contrary, Christ reveals the
truth that this death is to be the starting point for an immortal and
unconquerable Life. It is not merely an event which releases
Christ-Jesus from life, but it is an event passed through because it
leads to an ascending process, and an eternal and infinite ‘living’
flows from it. This is something (and it was so accepted by those who
lived in the first centuries after Christ) that will become more and
more recognised when the understanding of the Christ Impulse will
have grown greater than it is to-day. When that time comes, men will
understand that, six hundred years before the Christian era, one of
the greatest of human beings, leaving his palace and finding a
corpse-finding Death — could conceive of it thus: ‘Death
is sorrow!’ ‘Liberation from death is Redemption,’
and that he could have nothing to do with what lay under the dominion
of Death.
Six hundred years pass, and we come to the time of
Christ. And when yet another six hundred years have passed, a symbol
is raised up for that which only the humanity of the future will
understand. What is this symbol?
It is not a Buddha; it is not any ‘Chosen One.’
No — simple men passing by saw the symbol of the Cross, and
upon the Cross, a dead body; and they did not say, ‘Death is
sorrow!’ They did not turn away from it, but they saw in this
dead body what became for them a bulwark of the eternal in life; they
saw what conquers all Death, and points to the transcendence of
earthly things.
The noble Buddha saw a corpse — and he turned from
the material world with the judgment that all death is sorrow; while
those men of simple nature who beheld the Cross and its dead burden
did not turn away, but gazed upon it because they found in it a
witness of the everlasting life that streams from the earthly death!
And so six hundred years before the Christian era,
Buddha stands before the corpse; and six hundred years after the
death of Christ, the simple man of the world beholds that symbol
which expressed what had happened with the founding of
Christianity.
Never in the whole history of human evolution has such a
transformation taken place as this! And the more objectively these
things are grasped, the more clearly will the great significance of
Buddhism emerge.
We have shown how mankind once possessed a primeval
wisdom, and how in the course of many incarnations, this wisdom
gradually declined. The appearance of Buddha marked the close of the
old development; it was a mighty world-historical indication that the
ancient archetypal wisdom was lost. In the historical sense this
explains the ‘turning away’ from life. Whereas Christ
marks the commencement of a new development which sees this life as
the source of the eternal. Hitherto, there has been no explanation of
these immensely important facts of human evolution.
Therefore, and because these things are not yet
understood, it sometimes happens that in our time there can be such
beautiful and noble natures (as for instance, Theodor Schulze, who
died at Potsdam in 1889) who, because they cannot find in any
external concepts what truly fills their rich inner life, try to find
satisfaction in Buddhism. And Buddhism reveals to them how, in a
certain sense, the human being when he raises himself by developing
his own inner forces above the world of the senses, can transcend his
own nature. That, however, is only possible because the greatest
impulse, the very essence of Christianity, is still so little
understood.
Spiritual Science must some day become the means by
which the core of the whole presentation of the Christ-Impulse can be
more and more deeply penetrated. It is just the evolution-idea which
Spiritual Science approaches so honestly that will lead humanity to
an exact and intimate grasp of Christianity, so that Spiritual
Science may rest in the hope that the rightly comprehended Christian
teaching will be unfolded more and more as against that form of it
which is incorrectly apprehended, and moreover, without any
transplanting of Buddhism into our modern times. It would, in fact,
be a very shortsighted policy that would seek to establish
Buddhism in Europe! For anyone who knows the conditions of the
spiritual life of Europe, knows that even those tendencies which
are apparently ranged against Christianity, have borrowed from it its
whole arsenal of weapons.
A Darwin, a Haeckel, would never have been possible —
strange though this may sound — if it had not been for the
educational systems of Christendom which alone made it possible for
them to think the thoughts they did; if those particular forms of
thought had not already been there which they, nourished in the
Christian world, could then use, so to say, as weapons of offence
against their own Mother. For what they and others, have to say, is
often apparently directed against Christianity — that is, in
the manner of its utterance. But the thoughts could never have
been there without the Christian education. For this reason, a
grafting of any oriental system upon our own culture would be of no
avail; for it would oppose every condition of the spiritual life of
the West. It is only necessary to think clearly about the fundamental
teachings of the two religions.
If the spiritual life is sufficiently closely observed
it will certainly be seen that because of the unclearness that exists
about these things, there are souls who, feeling sympathy with
Buddhism, and who stand even on the highest of philosophical
watch-towers, would like to teach the ‘renunciation of
existence.’
Such an one was Schopenhauer. The whole tenour of his
life might be described as ‘Buddhistic.’ Thus when he
says, for instance, ‘The image of the highest type of mankind
stands before us in one whom we call a “saint” ... one
who has overcome everything in life that the outer world can give;
one who stands there merely as a physical body, who conceals nothing
of the Ideal of the World-environment within him; who desires naught,
who merely waits until the body itself is destroyed, so that every
trace may be wiped out of all that connected him with this physical
world; so that, renouncing what is of the earth, he annihilates
earth-existence; so that at last, nothing remains that in life leads
from desire to pain, from fear to terror, from enjoyment to
grief.’
That is an interpolation of Buddhism into our western
world. Such a thing happens because of our misapprehensions;
because we do not understand clearly enough what the deepest impulses
of Christianity are, and what its content and its form denote. What
have we achieved through Christianity? If we regard the impulse
alone, we have achieved just that which shows what intensity of
cleavage can exist between Schopenhauer and one of the most
significant personalities of our time. While Schopenhauer sees his
ideal in some one who has overcome all enjoyment and pain that
proceeds from the outer life, who merely exists waiting until the
last threads that bind his physical body together are severed —
we find the very opposite in Goethe's picture of the struggling
Faust, who strides from desire to enjoyment, and from enjoyment to
desire, who at length purges himself so that all his passions are
transformed, and that which was to him the highest and holiest that
can irradiate human life, became itself a passion. Such was Faust —
who did not say ‘I wait until the last traces of my
earth-existence are obliterated,’ but who proclaims the
stupendous words: ‘The relics of my earthly sojourn are
indestructible throughout the Æons of Time.’
That was how Goethe expressed in his “Faust”
the meaning and spirit of what, in his old age, he once described to
his secretary Eckermann: ‘At least you will admit, that the
conclusion of “Faust,” where the redeemed soul ascends,
was very hard to portray; so that in dealing with a subject so far
above the earthly, and so transcending conception, I might easily
have succumbed to mere vagueness, if I had not confined my poetical
intentions within the sharp outlines of Christian and ecclesiastical
figure and imagery, and so given them a healthy form and solidity.’
And so Faust is made to ascend a rung of the ladder of
existence which has its origin in Christian symbolism — the
step from the mortal to the immortal, from death to life.
In Schopenhauer we see unmistakable interpolations of
the Buddhistic element into western thought-culture: ‘I wait
till I have attained such perfection that with the death of my body
the last traces of my earth-existence are obliterated!’ And he
believed, also, that this world-conception would enable him to
interpret the pictorial creations of Raphael and Correggio. Goethe,
on the other hand, portrayed the upward-striving Individuality, that
knew the sum-total of earthly achievements was permanent, was
interwoven with Eternity: ‘The relics of my earthly sojourn are
indestructible throughout the Æons of Time!’
That, indeed, is the true, the realistic, Christian
impulse; for it leads to a re-awakening of earthly deeds as spiritual
accomplishment. It is the re-awakening of the Best that can be
achieved on earth. It is the Religion of Resurrection! It is in very
truth a ‘realistic’ world-conception, which brings down
out of spiritual heights, the loftiest content for existence into the
world of the senses. Thus we can say that something like the light of
a dawn shines out in Goethe — a self-comprehending Christianity
of the Future, which, while acknowledging all the greatness and
significance of Buddhism, yet negates its renunciation of earthly
embodiments, and points upwards to a great acknowledgment of every
single incarnation in the whole great sequence.
And so Goethe, in the sense of the true Christian of
modern times, looks out over a past world from whose womb all have
been born, and upon a present world wherein, if its true results are
grasped, we achieve something which time cannot annihilate.
Thus, in linking mankind in true theosophical fashion
with the Universe, he cannot do otherwise than forge the links on the
other side which bind it to the true content of Christianity. He says
therefore —
‘Wie an dem Tag, der dich der Welt verliehen,
Die Sonne stand zum Grusse der Planeten,
Bist also bald und fort und fort gediehen,
Nach dem Gesetz, wonach du angetreten.
So musst du sein, dir kannst du nicht entfliehen,
So sagten schon Sybillen, so Propheten.’
By expressing in this way man's connection with the
outer world, he is inevitably pointing to this: that as man is born
out of the constellations of existence, he becomes, in the world,
what is not only indestructible but what must ultimately consummate
his resurrection in a form that is spiritual. And so he had to add
these words to the rest —
‘Und keine Zeit und keine Macht zerstuckelt
Gepraegte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt!’
And we can also add. — There is neither any Power
nor any Time that can annihilate what is achieved in Time itself and
which ripens as Fruit for Eternity.
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