Buddha and the Two Boys of Jesus

BUDDHA AND THE TWO BOYS OF JESUS

Berlin, October 11, 1909 (Notes)

In the last Basel Course it was possible for the first time to speak about a subject which had not been touched upon within the German Section until then. Of course, the Christ event itself has already been discussed many times, especially in connection with the Gospel of John. By connecting to the Gospel of Luke, as was done in Basel, it was possible to touch especially on what can be called the prehistory of Christ. Here one has to do with very complicated circumstances. As is known, a high solar being moved into the body of Jesus of Nazareth and lived in it for three years, from the baptism of the Jordan to the Mystery of Golgotha. About this high Christ being has already been spoken many times. But about that which lives as the personality of Jesus of Nazareth before our soul and has taken up that being, can be said more exactly only in connection with a gospel, which covers the history of Jesus from his childhood. The development of Jesus from his birth to the baptism in the Jordan formed the main topic of the Basel lectures. Already in this prehistory we have very complicated relations before us. The greatest, one must always remember, is not easy to grasp and to present so simply. The world building cannot be drawn with a few strokes or grasped with a few convenient concepts.

That personality, which in the thirtieth year received the Christ entity into itself, is composed in a very complicated way. Only from the Akashic Chronicle the right clues can be gained, why in the different gospels the prehistory of Jesus is presented differently.

Today in short outlines some things about the Jesus of Nazareth shall be told, in order to have nevertheless an overview of what has been elaborated in the Basel lectures. It is also intended to speak about the Gospel of Matthew or possibly about the Gospel of Mark in the member lectures this winter. The Christ event will then come to us in a completely different light in such a new presentation. One does not yet know this event sufficiently in the mere connection to the Gospel of John. But for the time being only sketchy can be spoken about these things.

The chronicle of the clairvoyant, the Akashic Chronicle, reveals to us in living characters what has happened in the course of time. The course of spiritual communications is usually such that first facts of the Akashic Chronicle are made known, without connection to a particular document. Only afterwards it is shown that all these things can be found in certain documents, especially in the Gospels, which can be understood correctly only with the help of the facts of the Akashic Chronicle.

In Palestine at that time the spiritual currents flowed together, which had gone separately before in the world. Following the Gospel of Luke, one could speak of three spiritual currents that met in the Christ event. One is linked to Buddha, the other to Zarathustra, and the third was embodied in the ancient Hebrew culture. These three currents flowed together in a concrete event, precisely in that Christ event. One usually speaks of such spiritual currents much too abstractly. In fact, however, they are realized in special beings, which must be formed in such a way that the currents could flow together in them. It is necessary, therefore, to study such entities exactly in their inner composition.

The Buddhist current reached its climax in Gautama Buddha. He had gone through embodiments before. However, that embodiment in the 6th century before Christ was a significant climax in his existence. It was then that Gautama became what is called a Buddha. Before that, he was merely a bodhisattva, that is, a great teacher of humanity. This latter gradually takes on other capacities in the course of time. We ourselves may have once lived in ancient Egypt, but we were endowed with quite different abilities than we have today; old abilities have partly receded, new ones have been added.

Who does not take such a development into account, just does not do an unbiased stoop out into the world. Today, for example, man can recognize out of himself certain logical and moral laws, can apply his power of judgment, can recognize out of himself this or that. But it was not like that in the primeval times. At that time, for example, man would have found nothing about the moral in himself. He would not have understood such laws at all, if they had been taught to him in the words of today. An entirely different faculty had to be appealed to. Thus, today there are certain truths for man which would have been impossible to find three thousand years ago, for example, the doctrine of compassion and love. Today, an inner voice instructs us about the laws of compassion and love. At that time, man would have searched in vain for such a voice. There, to use an ugly word, compassion and love had to be suggested to man.

The entity whose task it was for thousands of years to infuse compassion and love into people from higher, spiritual regions was that Bodhisattva who then incarnated in India as the Buddha. As a human being in the physical world, he would have found nothing of compassion and love in himself. Through their initiation, however, the bodhisattvas rose to the spiritual regions where they could bring down such teachings as that of compassion and love. There comes a time, however, when humanity has become mature enough to find for itself what it had previously been instilled with. It was the same for compassion and love.

When that Bodhisattva ascended to Buddha, that is, in that particular incarnation in the 6th century before Christ — sitting of the Bodhisattva under the Bodhi tree — important things were going on not only in his own being, but on the whole earth in general. At that time, the teaching of compassion and love, or rather a paraphrase of it, arose in the Buddha who had become man, namely the eight-part path, which is a more precise version of the teaching of compassion and love. By the fact that the Buddha could recognize this teaching alive in himself, the possibility was created for mankind to experience the same in the future. Since then, certain people have been able to recognize this and, following the example of the great Buddha, to lead an appropriate life that crystallizes the teaching of the eight-limbed path in a living way.

Only then, however, when a larger number of people have matured so far as to experience what Buddha experienced at that time, has this matter become the own and proper concern of mankind. Thus, from higher spheres, mission after mission is transmitted to our world. By about three thousand years from now, enough people will have matured to walk the eight-limbed path, and then compassion and love will have become proper to humanity. Then a new event will come and bring a new mission down from the spiritual to the physical world.

So once the Buddha let that teaching of compassion and love flow into humanity. Now, however, it continues to live in them since the Buddha gave the impetus for it. When a Bodhisattva has administered his office after about three thousand years of activity, he becomes a Buddha, who then just fulfills a certain mission to mankind.

Now, what became of that Buddha whose mission was to bring compassion and love to humanity after he left the physical body? Buddha always means a final incarnation. He only needed the Gautama incarnation to fulfill a mission. Since that time, that Bodhisattva individuality, because it has become Buddha, is no longer able to descend into a physical body. It can only incarnate down to the etheric body. That Buddha can be seen today only by the clairvoyant. Such a form, which assumes an individuality without containing the physical body, is called Nirmanakaya. In it, the entity passes on the mission that was given to it as a bodhisattva. In this way The great Christ event was also prepared by the Buddha in the Nirmanakaya.

A couple of parents, namely Joseph and Mary of Nazareth, received a child, Jesus by name. This child was peculiarly predisposed in such a way that the Nirmanakaya Buddha could say to himself that this child would have the possibility in his physical corporeality to bring humanity a great step forward by means of it, if he would make his contribution as Buddha. He therefore lowered himself into that child in his Nirmanakaya. Under the Nirmanakaya one does not have to imagine a closed body as we have it, but what otherwise were mere forces have become here special entities. This system of entities is held together in the higher worlds by the ego of the respective underlying individuality, similarly as in us the faculties of thinking, feeling and willing. The clairvoyant perceives this host of related entities of the Nirmanakaya Buddha.

There are analogies to this in natural life as well: for example, in the gall wasp, the front body is connected to the back body only by a thin stalk. If one thinks of this as invisible, one has two unconnected, but still belonging together parts. Similar relationships prevail in the beehive and anthill.

Such relations were well known to the writer of Luke's gospel. He also knew that the Nirmanakaya Buddha descended into the infant Jesus. He expresses it in such a way that he says: When the child was born in Bethlehem, a host of angels descended from the spiritual worlds and announced to the shepherds what had happened. They became clairvoyant for certain reasons at that moment.

The child Jesus developed slowly at first. Outwardly it showed no particularly outstanding characteristics, which would have pointed to a giant spirit. But for it a deep inwardness and soulfulness soon became noticeable, a lively mental life. The clairvoyant would have seen the Nirmanakaya Buddha hovering over this child. In the Indian legend we are told that an old sage came to the Buddha child and recognized that here a Bodhisattva was maturing into a Buddha. The old man burst into tears because he was not allowed to experience the great Buddha himself. Asita, that was the name of the sage, was reborn and was again an old man when Jesus was young, namely the Simeon of the Gospel of Luke. He now saw the Bodhisattva as the real Buddha before him at the presentation of Jesus in the temple and could therefore say, “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen your Savior.†— Thus, after five hundred years, the sage saw what he had not been able to see before.

If one studies the origin of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke and compares it with the one presented in the Gospel of Matthew, a certain difference appears which has not been noticed at all in science. From the Akashic Chronicle, however, one can get the right information why the two genealogies are and must be different.

Approximately in the same time when Jesus was born, another set of parents, who were also named Joseph and Mary, were also given a child in Palestine, with the same name Jesus. So, at that time there were two Jesus children from two sets of parents with the same name. The one Jesus is the Bethlehemite. He lived with his parents in Bethlehem; the other had his parents living in Nazareth. The former Jesus came from the line of the Davidic house, which passed through Solomon. The Nazarene Jesus, on the other hand, came from the Nathan line of the Davidic house. Luke tells more about the one, Matthew about the other child. The Bethlehemite child showed quite different abilities in his early youth than the Nazarene one. The former showed himself well developed in all the qualities that can be outwardly prominent. For example, this child was also able to talk right from birth, even if at first more or less incomprehensible to those around him. The other child Jesus showed a more inward disposition.

In the Bethlehemite child the great Zarathustra of the past was incarnated. That Zarathustra, as is known, had his astral body to Hermes and his etheric body to Moses. His ‘I’ was reborn six hundred years before Christ in Chaldea as Nazarathos or Zarathos and finally again as Jesus. This Jesus child had to be led to Egypt in order to live there for some time in the environment suitable for him and to revive the impressions of the same in himself. One must not believe that it is the same Jesus of whom Luke speaks, as the one of whom Matthew tells. By Herod's decree all children up to two years of age were killed. John the Baptist would also have been affected, if there had not been enough time between his birth and the birth of Jesus.

In the twelfth year of life the egoity of the Bethlehemite Jesus child, thus the Zarathustra ego, passes over into the other Jesus boy. From the twelfth year on, the former ego no longer lived in the Nazarene Jesus, but now the Zarathustra ego. The Bethlehemite child died soon after that ‘I’ had left him. This transfer of the Zarathustra ego to the Nazarene Jesus is described by Luke in the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. It was inexplicable to his parents why their child suddenly spoke so wisely. These parents had no other child besides this one. The other parents, however, had other children, four boys and two girls. Both families, however, later became neighboring families in Nazareth, indeed, eventually merging into a single family. The father of the Bethlehemite Jesus was already an old man when the Jesus was born. He also died soon after, and the mother moved with her children to Nazareth to the other family.

Thus, the Buddha in his Nirmanakaya worked with the ‘I’ of Zarathustra in the Jesus of Nazareth. Buddha and Zarathustra worked together in this child.

In the gospel of Matthew there is at first more the speech of the Bethlehemite Jesus. There appeared at the birth the wise magicians of the Orient, who were led by the star to the place where Zarathustra was reborn.