Buddha and the Two Boys of Jesus

THE GOSPELS, BUDDHA AND THE TWO BOYS OF JESUS

Berlin, October 18, 1909 (Notes)

Last time, I spoke of the contents of the Basel lecture cycle, where it was about the Gospel of Luke. In doing so, we pointed out the question that someone might ask: Yes, if so much has already been said about the Gospel of John and subsequently about the image of the Christ Jesus, is it possible that there is also something to be said about the other Gospels, that in a certain sense one would get the same understanding as if one had let the deepest Gospel, the Gospel of John, work on him?

If this were so, then an explanation of the other three gospels would not be in the sense of spiritual research. For what we are looking for within the spiritual-scientific research should not be taken from any document; it should not approach us as something handed down, but as something that can be researched with the means of spiritual research.

The spiritual researcher sets himself the task of exploring how the event of Palestine presents itself, without drawing on any document. Without taking into account any document, he starts his research. Then, afterwards, he tries to show how the same truths and reports shine out to us from the documents.

We have chosen the way with the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John, that we have taken out of the enormous volume of the Akashic Chronicle what can be found again in the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John. By applying the research of the spiritual researchers to these gospels in this way, one gets to know them in a certain sense. I have shown that in the Gospel of Luke one has the opportunity to discuss something different than in the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John begins with the personality of Jesus of Nazareth at the time when he was thirty years old. In him we meet the high solar entity, the Christ entity. We are dealing here with the last three years of the life of the Christ Jesus.

The Gospel of Luke, on the other hand, allows us to become acquainted with those significant events which made it possible for this important essence of the Christ to flow into the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, to show the confluence of Zarathustrism and Buddhism, and we have seen how these two mighty spiritual currents meet and unite precisely in Jesus of Nazareth. He appeared to us for the last time as a human personality, born as a child with very special inner qualities, but at first not with those qualities which would have led man especially to the understanding of the outer, present physical world. Above this personality, which met us as a child in the Nathanian Jesus child, the actual Jesus of Nazareth, above it we see shining what we called the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha, what we see as the aura of this child. It is that form which the Buddha assumed after his last incarnation, in which he became Buddha. We could emphasize that what we call our occidental esoteric teaching fully justifies what is contained in the oriental scriptures: that the individuality before the embodiment of the Buddha, in which it appeared in the 6th century B.C., was a Bodhisattva.

Such a Bodhisattva becomes a Buddha in a very specific embodiment. Thus, that individuality had reached such a stage of development that it no longer needed to be embodied in a physical body on earth. This is a great achievement, that an individuality does not need to be embodied anymore. That this can be, however, depends not only on the height of the development of an individuality, but also on the kind of an individuality. After this embodiment, the Bodhisattva Buddha did not have to go through any more earthly-fleshly embodiment. He then no longer embodied himself in an earthly-fleshly body, but only in that, as the lowest physical-bodily entity, what we call the etheric or life body. Henceforth, such an individuality was embodied in it. He no longer descended to a fleshly embodiment, this Buddha, but only to such in the etheric body.

Such an etheric body, in which an individuality has developed forward, does not look — when it is seen — like another body, which exists as a physical body on earth. What we see as a physical body with an individuality that descends to the embodiment in the physical body, that is there a closed unity. There is no interruption anywhere. But such an etheric body, in which an individuality like the Buddha is embodied, is not a closed spatial unit. It is a multiplicity of non-contiguous members. Let us remember the so-called splitting of the personality, which occurs when man develops more and more upward. This process is described in, “How to gain knowledge of the higher worlds.†What is connected as a whole in the ordinary man, the powers which we call thinking, feeling and willing, then stands, so to speak, each for itself. Man will once become ruler over these; he is afterwards a trinity, one could even say a multiplicity, as it is explained in my “Occult Science an Outline.â€

In such a case, as in the embodiment of the Buddha in later times, we have such an etheric body consisting of non-coherent beings. In the case of ordinary people, it is also only the principle of the physical body that holds the etheric body together.

When such a Bodhisattva Buddha reappears embodied in the etheric body, he then appears, when he becomes visible, as a multiplicity, as a host of entities. It is of this multitude of entities that the writer of the Gospel of Luke tells us when he speaks of the angels who appeared to the shepherds in the field. This ethereal body, called the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha, hovered over the Nazarene child Jesus. It is he who becomes the inspirer, who instills all that was the Buddha into Christianity in this way. Thus we see how Buddhism flows into Christianity. You have to think of this in concrete terms, not just in the abstract. If you want to understand how this happens in reality, you have to be able to point to the concrete event where the Buddha, who has progressed to that next level, joins Christianity. This is described in the Gospel of Luke, in the angelic host that is the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha.

Then we have described how there is a second boy Jesus, whom we can call the Bethlehemite boy Jesus, and have said how that is nothing other than the re-embodied Zarathustra. It is an extraordinarily precocious child. In that child the Zarathustra is re-embodied. This is expressed in the Gospel of Matthew. For in the gospel of Matthew the individuality is to be described, which was especially understandable for the writer of the gospel of Matthew, who added the stream of Zarathustrism to Christianity. Therefore it is also described that this boy descended from the Solomonic-royal line of the house of David, while the Jesus of Luke's gospel descended from the Nathanian line of the house of David, the priestly line.

If we want to understand Christianity in all its deep meaning, we have to realize that the most important currents from the world had to flow together. We see that the Davidic line of kings splits into a Solomonic and a Nathanic line. In the lineage of Solomon the royal qualities are propagated, in the lineage of Nathan the priestly qualities. The royal qualities emerge especially in the first two periods of human life; the qualities which, above all, go out, so to speak, to an understanding mastery of world conditions, to everything that brings man into harmony with world conditions. This can only happen when the powers of the physical and the etheric body are properly developed. Since Zarathustra had preferably developed these qualities to perfection in an inner way, he had to make use of all the abilities that came out in the physical and etheric body up to the age of twelve. Such abilities could be given to him in particular by the qualities inherited in the house of Solomon. For the task he had, however, he also needed the great endowments of the ego carrier, the great endowments of the astral body. They could be given to him only by a lineage which inherited from generations just these dispositions. If Zarathustra had remained until his thirtieth year in the body where the etheric body and the physical body were especially developed, he would not have been able to deepen his beingness so much. Therefore, in the twelfth year he moved over into the Nazarene Jesus, so that in the same child, in which the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha dwelt, the individuality of Zarathustra was received from the twelfth year on. Thus these two currents flowed together in this Nazarene Jesus in his twelfth year.

As a third current the old Hebrew current should be added. Only by this meeting could that individuality appear which received the Christ in itself.

We ask ourselves now, how did this flow into it, what the old Hebrew spiritual current was? We want to see how we have to understand the most original of the ancient Hebrew spiritual current. Let us also think about what we have regarded as the essence of the Buddha development. What happened when the Bodhisattva became a Buddha?

This individuality, which was embodied in the Bodhisattva Buddha, had the task of transmitting from epoch to epoch what can be called the teaching of compassion and love. If we want to understand this, we must tell ourselves that man was in a completely different state of consciousness in the past. We must not be short-sighted like today's science, which believes that the same faculties were always there, which gradually developed from primitive beginnings, and that man was previously on the level of animalism. It was just not so. What we today call human thinking, feeling and willing was not always there. The further we go back in the development of mankind, the more this present state of consciousness becomes a dreamlike, twilight clairvoyance. That is why everything that was to be given as teaching in ancient times had to be given differently than today. Today one can pronounce certain moral principles; man then understands them. When he hears such principles, he can say today: Certainly, my own reason tells me so. — But for that reason and conscience had to be developed first. It is tangible to prove from external history that conscience has once begun. Aeschylus does not speak of it yet. This special soul power appeared only in a certain time, before it was not there.

Before there was a conscience in man, before there was a logical thinking, if one had appealed to his conscience, to his thinking, it would have been like speaking to a stone or to a plant.

At that time the soul needed strength, impulses, and these had to be instilled into the soul. For example, what relates to love was instilled as if suggestively by the individuality called the Bodhisattva, when that individuality called the Bodhisattva was there as the Buddha. The time had come when people could gradually gain from within themselves the teaching of compassion and love, the teaching of the so-called eight-limbed path. This teaching, which previously had to be given to him from above, could only be given to him as a teaching when the Buddha was there. Therefore, the Bodhisattva had to become Buddha.

Anything that happens in human evolution must happen in a certain place and in a certain people, from whom a number of people are picked who have understanding for the teaching. Perhaps one will find a contradiction between this and what was said earlier, because earlier it was said that it was the mission of the Christ to spread love. But when something like this is said, it is necessary to listen very carefully. It was in the mission of the Buddha to bring the teaching of compassion and love; but Christ is the power of love. He brought love itself. It is different to bring the teaching of something than to bring the thing itself.

Just with this, the possibility was given that the power of love flowed down and manifested itself through this high solar being on earth, that this teaching was brought through the Buddha. But again it was necessary that this power of love manifested itself earthly within a people that had gone through a different development than the one in which the Buddha lived.

What is the difference between what was brought to the world by the Buddha and what was brought by the individuality of Moses? What the Buddha brought is rightly called the great law, Dharma. The Buddha brought the law in such a way, in a certain form, so that it could be recognized by the soul in that form, so that people could find it within their own souls. Moses brought a law in a completely different way; he brought it as a commandment. It could not be regarded by this people to whom he brought it as a law rooted in the soul itself, but as a divine law given from the heights. Buddha said: You will find in the deepest power of the soul itself the law that I tell you. — But Moses said: There is the law of the God who will come.

A law had to be given to a people, so to speak, on the condition that one reckoned that this people is on a younger level than the other. It has not yet developed certain powers. This is the basis of all development, that things do not go on in a straight line.

One usually understands as development that the following always emerges from the earlier. But this is not how development proceeds. Development comes about through completely different preconditions. If we observe the plant in its growth, we see first the germ, then the stem growing up, and how it then begins to grow leaf by leaf and finally the blossom. Now comes a point where the later no longer simply develops from the earlier, but fertilization occurs. Something else must flow in, a speck of dust from another plant. Especially in spiritual life the most manifold circumstances and currents must now flow together.

In Palestine Zarathustrism, Buddhism and then a completely different current had to unite. Under certain circumstances this current could bring in younger life forces. For a long, long time the commandments of Yahweh had worked within this people. If this people had also stood on the level that Buddha six hundred years before Christ could also have appealed to the own soul of these people, then the people would not have had the youthful forces later. Therefore, it had to receive from its lawgiver commandments in which one did not appeal to one's own soul. These people in the Near East had to be held back at an earlier stage.

We can hypothetically state something similar for the individual human life. Imagine that someone wants to artificially make a human being develop especially creative abilities at a certain age. But one would not like to try that! Then a child would have to be developed completely differently than it otherwise happens. For if I try to teach him in the seventh year what the school teaches him today, then I have thereby made the soul incapable of certain powers coming out later. I therefore want to wait until the tenth year. Then this child comes with quite different powers. Then it has preserved something of youthful strength. Then forces come out which are creative forces, which otherwise would have been killed.

You see how this has been carried out in the Near East. The Hebrew people were held back. They could not yet absorb the Buddha's teachings of compassion and love. That has been given to them as a commandment. They had not received the Buddha's appeal to develop from within themselves the teaching of compassion and love. Only at one point of the earth's development, where people were most advanced, the Bodhisattva Buddha could bring this teaching. Then, when completely different forces had been developed, at another place this current was united with the other.

In what do we have to look for that which flows down through the generations of a people? What is it connected with? With what does man absorb that which is attached to the whole people?

From the first to the seventh year, man is still wrapped in an etheric shell, which he then strips off. Then he is still surrounded by the astral sheath, which he throws off with sexual maturity. The astral body is then born. When the astral body is born in man in the time from the twelfth to the fifteenth year, then this is the one in which all the powers are, which man has in common with the people. This astral cover, which the human being now strips off, contains all the qualities that the human being could have had in his inner being until then. It is therefore this cover that makes man belong to a certain people. What happens now with this cover, if it is stripped off ? This cover, which is stripped off, contains everything that man has in common with his nationality. It then unites with all the covers that the ancestors have also shed. We have, as it were, such a chain.

While man has this in himself up to his fourteenth year, there he hangs on a chain that goes up to the ancestors. Up to which link of the ancestors does it go? It goes up to the forty-second link, the six times seventh link! Man is so connected with his ancestors. This was known in ancient times. This is also known today within spiritual science. Because man is connected with his ancestors in this way, the ancient Egyptians in their Book of the Dead had man appear before forty-two judges of the dead after death.

If a certain quality of man is to come out so that it belongs to the people, then these ancestors must lie in such a way that all these individual members express these certain qualities of the people. If the Zarathustra should embody himself, it had to be in a shell which had the essential qualities of his people.

Therefore Matthew lets the Zarathustra be born into the forty-second member after Abraham, which had all the characteristics of the people. Through this, these influences have come into the third current.