LECTURE TWO
The
Gospel of St. Luke: an Expression of the Principle of Love and
Compassion. The Missions of the Bodhisattvas and of the
Buddha.
Throughout the
Christian era the Gospel of St. John was the text that made the
strongest impression upon those who were trying to deepen their
understanding of the cosmic mysteries of Christianity. This was the
Gospel used by all the Christian mystics who were striving to mould
their lives in accordance with its presentation of the personality
and nature of Christ Jesus.
In the course of the
centuries a somewhat different attitude was adopted by Christian
humanity to the Gospel of St. Luke — an attitude altogether in
keeping with the indications given in the last lecture, from another
point of view, regarding the contrast between these two Gospels.
Whereas the Gospel of St. John was in a certain sense a text for
mystics, the Gospel of St. Luke was always a devotional book for
humble folk, for those whose simplicity and innocence of heart
enabled them to rise into the sphere of truly Christian feeling. The
Gospel of St. Luke has been a book of devotion throughout the
centuries. For all those who were bowed down with sorrow or suffering
it was a fount of consolation, speaking with such tenderness of the
great Comforter, the great Benefactor of mankind, the Saviour of the
heavy-laden and oppressed. It was a book to which especially those
who longed to be filled with Christian love turned their hearts and
minds, because the power of love is revealed more clearly in this
Gospel than in any other Christian document. Those who were in any
way conscious — and strictly speaking this applies to everyone
— of having the burden of some guilt upon their hearts, at all
times found consolation and edification when they turned to the
Gospel of St. Luke and understood its message.
They could say to themselves: Christ Jesus came not
only for the righteous but also for sinners; He sat with publicans
and transgressors. Whereas much preparation is necessary before the
full power of St. John's Gospel can be realized, it may be said of
St. Luke's Gospel that no nature is too immature to be aware of the
warmth streaming from it. From the earliest times this Gospel was an
inspiration to the most childlike of men. All that remains childlike
in the human soul from tenderest youth to ripest age has always felt
drawn to the Gospel of St. Luke. And as regards pictorial
representations of Christian truths and what art has acquired from
these truths, we find that although much is derived from the other
Gospels, the indications for the most intimate messages conveyed to
the human heart by forms of art, by paintings, are to be found
precisely in the Gospel of St. Luke. The portrayals of the deep
connection between Christ Jesus and John the Baptist have their
source in this imperishable Gospel. Anyone who allows it to work upon
his soul will find that from beginning to end it gives expression to
the principle of love, compassion and innocence — in a certain sense,
childlike innocence. Where else do we find such a tender portrayal of
the childlike nature as in what is said of the childhood of Jesus of
Nazareth in the Gospel of St. Luke? The reason will become clear as
we penetrate more deeply into the words of this wonderful text.
It will be necessary
now to say certain things that may seem paradoxical to those of you
who have heard other lectures or courses of lectures given by me on
the same subject. But if you will wait for the explanations to be
given in the next lectures, you will realize that what I shall say is
in harmony with what you have previously heard from me about Christ
Jesus and Jesus of Nazareth. The whole complicated range of truth
cannot be presented all at once, and today I shall have to indicate
an aspect of the Christian truths that may seem not to tally exactly
with what has been said on some previous occasion. Our procedure must
be, first to show how the separate currents of truth have developed
and then the mutual agreement and harmony that finally become
apparent. The Gospel of St. John was deliberately our starting-point,
and I was naturally unable to indicate more than part of the truth in
the various courses of lectures. What was said still holds good, as
we shall see, although our attention to-day must be turned to an
unusual aspect of Christian truths.
A wonderful passage
in the Gospel of St. Luke describes how an Angel appeared to the
shepherds in the fields and announced to them that the Saviour of the
world was born. Then come the words: ‘And suddenly there was with
the Angel a multitude of the heavenly host.’ Picture the scene to
yourselves: as the shepherds look upwards the heavens open and the
Beings of the spiritual world are revealed in sublime pictures.
What was the
proclamation to the shepherds? It was clothed in momentous words,
words that resounded through the whole of evolution and have become
the Christmas message. Rightly rendered, these words would be as
follows: ‘The Divine Beings manifest themselves from on high, that
peace may reign on the Earth below among men who are filled with good
will!’ The usual expression, ‘glory’ is entirely out of
place here. The sentence is correct in the form I have now given, and
the contrast should be clearly emphasized. What the shepherds saw was
the manifestation of spiritual Beings from on high, and the
revelation occurred when it did in order that peace might pour into
human hearts that were filled with a good will. As we shall see, many
mysteries of Christianity are embodied in these words, provided only
they are rightly understood. But certain preliminaries are necessary
if light is to be thrown on this momentous proclamation. Above all we
must endeavour to study the accounts available to clairvoyant
faculties from the Akashic Chronicle. With opened eyes of spirit we
must contemplate the epoch when Christ Jesus came to humanity, and
ask ourselves: What was the historical background and the source of
the spiritual impulse poured into Earth evolution at that time?
Currents of spiritual
life from many different sides converged and flowed into the
evolution of humanity at that point. The very diverse
world-conceptions that had arisen in various regions of the Earth in
the course of the ages converged in Palestine as though into one
central point and came to expression in the events there. We may
therefore ask: What are the sources of these streams?
It was indicated
yesterday that in the Gospel of St. Luke we have the fruits of
Imaginative Cognition, and that this knowledge is gained in the form
of pictures. In the events just mentioned a picture is placed before
us of the manifestation to the shepherds of spiritual Beings from on
high: first, the picture is of a spiritual Being, an Angel, who is
followed by a ‘heavenly host’. Here we must ask: What does a
clairvoyant initiated into the mysteries of existence see in this
picture — which he can always evoke again at will — when
he gazes into the Akashic Chronicle? What was it that was revealed to
the shepherds? What was this angelic host, and whence did it
come?
This picture portrays
one of the great spiritual streams that flowed through the process of
evolution, gradually rising higher and higher, until at the time of
the events in Palestine its light could shine down upon the Earth
only from spiritual heights. From the angelic host revealed to the
shepherds, we are led back, in deciphering the Akashic Chronicle, to
one of the greatest streams of spiritual life in the evolution of
humanity, a stream which, several centuries before the coming of
Christ, spread far and wide in the form of Buddhism. An investigator
of the Akashic Chronicle who traces back into previous ages the
origin of the revelation to the shepherds, is led, strange as it will
seem to you, to the ‘Enlightenment’ of the great Buddha. The
light that shone out in India, setting men's hearts and minds astir as the
religion of love and compassion, as a great world-conception, and
even to-day is spiritual nourishment for a very large section of
humanity — that light appeared again in the revelation to the
shepherds! For it too was to stream into the revelation in Palestine.
The account given at the beginning of St. Luke's Gospel cannot be
understood unless we consider (again from the vantage-point of
spiritual-scientific research) the significance of Buddha and what
his revelation actually brought about in the course of human
evolution.
When Buddha was born
in the East, five to six centuries before our era, there appeared in
him an Individuality who had lived many times on Earth and in the
course of his previous incarnations had already reached the very
lofty stage of human development designated by an Oriental expression
as that of a ‘Bodhisattva’. Some of you have heard lectures on
different aspects of the nature of the Bodhisattvas. In the lecture-course
Spiritual Hierarchies and their Reflection in the physical World,
given in Düsseldorf some months ago, I spoke of how the Bodhisattvas
are related to the whole of cosmic evolution; in Munich, in the
lecture-course
The East in the Light of the West
[ 1 ]
they were referred to from a different
point of view. To-day we shall consider the nature of the
Bodhisattvas from still another side and you will gradually perceive
the harmony between the single truths.
He who became a
Buddha had first to be a Bodhisattva; individual development to the
rank of Buddhahood is preceded by the stage of ‘Bodhisattva’. We
will now think of the nature of the Bodhisattvas in relation to the
evolution of humanity considered from the viewpoint of spiritual
science.
The capacities and
faculties possessed and developed by human beings in any particular
epoch were not always in existence. To believe that the same
faculties possessed by man to-day were also present in primeval times
is due to incapacity and unwillingness to see beyond the present.
Man's faculties, everything he is able to accomplish and know, vary
from epoch to epoch. His faculties to-day are developed to the point
where with his own power of reasoning he is justified in saying: ‘I
recognize this or that truth by means of my intelligence and my
reason; I can recognize what is moral or immoral, logical or
illogical in a certain respect. But it would be a mistake to believe
that these capacities for distinguishing the logical from the
illogical or the moral from the immoral, were always to be found in
human nature. They came into existence and developed gradually. What
man can accomplish to-day by means of his own capacities, he had at
one time to be taught — as a child is taught by its parents or
teachers — by Beings who though incarnated among men were more
highly developed by virtue of their spiritual faculties and could
hold converse in the Mysteries with divine-spiritual Beings even
loftier than themselves. Individualities who, though themselves
incarnated in physical bodies, could have intercourse with still
higher, non-incarnated Individualities, existed at all times. For
example, before men acquired the faculty of logical thinking by
means of which they themselves are able to think logically to-day,
they were obliged to learn from certain teachers. These teachers
themselves were not able to think logically through faculties
developed in the physical body itself, but only through their
intercourse in the Mysteries with divine-spiritual Beings in higher
realms. Such teachers proclaimed the principles of logic and morality
from revelations they received from higher worlds in times before men
themselves were able, out of their own earthly nature, to think
logically or discover the principles of morality. The Bodhisattvas
are one category of Beings who, though incarnated in physical bodies,
have inter-course with divine-spiritual Beings in order to bring down
and impart to men what they themselves learn from their divine
Teachers. The Bodhisattva is a Being incarnated in a human body,
whose faculties enable him to commune with divine-spiritual
Beings.
Before Gautama Buddha
became a ‘Buddha’, he was a Bodhisattva, that is to say, an
Individuality who, in the Mysteries, was able to commune with higher,
divine-spiritual Beings. In remote, primeval ages of Earth evolution,
a Being such as the Bodhisattva was entrusted in the higher world
with a definite task, a definite mission, which he continues to
discharge.
When the Earth was
still in early stages of development, even before the Atlantean and
Lemurian epochs, the Bodhisattva who was incarnated and became Buddha
six hundred years before our era, was assigned a task which he never
abandoned. From epoch to epoch, through every age, his work was to
impart to Earth evolution as much as the beings concerned enabled it
to receive. For each Bodhisattva there comes a time when, with the
mission entrusted to him in the primeval past, he reaches a definite
point — the point when what he has been able to let flow into
humanity ‘from above’ can become a faculty of man's own.
A human faculty to-day was once a faculty of divine-spiritual Beings
brought down to man from spiritual heights by the Bodhisattvas. Hence
there comes a time when a spiritual emissary such as a Bodhisattva can
say; ‘I have accomplished my mission. Humanity has now received that
for which it has been prepared through many, many epochs.’ Having
reached this point, the Bodhisattva can become ‘Buddha’. That
is to say, the time has come when he, as a Being with the particular
mission to which I have referred, need no longer incarnate in a human
physical body; he has incarnated for the last time in such a body and
need not incarnate again as a spiritual emissary in the above
sense.
This point of time
arrived for Gautama Buddha. The task assigned to him had led him
again and again down to the Earth; but he appeared in his final
incarnation as Bodhisattva when, after his Enlightenment, he became
Buddha. He incarnated in a human body that had developed to the
highest possible stage those faculties which hitherto had had to be
bestowed from above, but were now gradually to become human
faculties in the fullest sense. When a Bodhisattva has succeeded
through his foregoing development in making a human body so perfect
that it can itself evolve the faculties connected with his particular
mission, he need not incarnate again. He then hovers in spiritual
realms, sending his influence into humanity, furthering and guiding
human affairs. Henceforth it is the task of men to develop the gifts
formerly bestowed upon them from heavenly heights, saying to
themselves: ‘We must now ourselves develop in a way that will further
elaborate the faculties acquired in full measure for the first time
in the incarnation when the Bodhisattva became Buddha.’
When the Being who
works through successive epochs as Bodhisattva appears as one into
whose human nature every faculty that previously flowed down from
heavenly heights has been integrated and can now be expressed
through him as an individual — that Being is a
‘Buddha’. All
this is revealed by Gautama Buddha. Had he, as Bodhisattva, withdrawn
earlier from his mission, men could no longer have been blessed by
the bestowal of these faculties from on high. But when evolution had
progressed so far that these faculties could be present in a single
human being on Earth, the seed was laid that would enable men in the
future to develop them in their own natures. Thus the Individuality
who, as long as he was a Bodhisattva, did not enter fully into the
human form but towered upwards into heavenly heights — this
Individuality now for the first time drew completely into human
nature and was fully embodied in that one incarnation. But then he
again withdrew. For with this incarnation as Buddha a certain quotum
of revelations had been given to humanity, thereafter to be developed
further in men themselves. Hence the Bodhisattva, having become
Buddha, might withdraw from the Earth to spiritual heights, might
abide there and guide the affairs of humanity from regions where only
a certain power of clairvoyance is able to behold him.
What, then, was the
task of that supremely great Individuality usually called the
‘Buddha’?
If we want to
understand the task and mission of this Buddha in the sense of true
esoteriscism, we must realize the following. The cognitive faculty of
mankind has developed gradually. Attention has repeatedly been drawn
to the fact that in the Atlantean epoch a large proportion of
humanity was clairvoyant and able to gaze into the spiritual worlds,
and that certain remnants of this old clairvoyance were still
present in post-Atlantean times. After the Atlantean epoch, in the
periods of the civilizations of ancient India, Persia, Egypt and
Chaldea — even as late as the Graeco-Latin age — there were
numbers of human beings, many more than modern man would ever imagine,
who possessed the heritage of this old clairvoyance; the astral plane
was open to them and they could see into the hidden depths of
existence. Perception of man's etheric body was quite usual in the
Graeco-Latin age; numbers of people were able to see the human head
surrounded by an etheric cloud that has gradually become entirely
concealed within the head. But humanity was to advance to a form of
knowledge acquired through the outer senses and through the spiritual
faculties connected with the senses. Man was gradually to emerge
altogether from the spiritual world and to engage in pure
sense-observation, in intellectual, logical thinking. By degrees he
was to make his way to non-clairvoyant cognition, because he must
pass through this stage in order to regain clairvoyant knowledge in
the future. But such knowledge will then be united with the fruits of
cognition based upon the senses and the intellect.
At the present time
we are living in an intermediate period. We look back to a past when
man was clairvoyant, and to a future when this will again be the
case. In our present age the majority of human beings are dependent
upon what they perceive with their senses and grasp with their
intellect. There are, of course, certain heights even in sensory
perception and in knowledge yielded by the intellect and reasoning mind;
everywhere there are ‘degrees of knowledge’. One person in a
certain incarnation passes through his existence on Earth with little
insight into what is moral, and little compassion for his
fellow-men. We say of him that he is at a low stage of morality.
Another passes through life with very slightly developed intellectual
capacities; we call him a person of low intelligence. But these
powers of intellectual cognition are capable of rising to a very
lofty level. A man whom, in Fichte's sense, we call a ‘moral genius’
reaches the highest level of moral Imagination but there are many
intermediate stages. Without possessing clairvoyant faculties we can
reach this height only by ennobling powers that are at the disposal
of ordinary humanity. These stages had to be attained by man in the
course of Earth evolution. What man knows to-day to a certain extent
through his own intelligence and also what he attains through his own
moral strength, namely the consciousness that he must have compassion
with the sufferings and sorrows of others — this consciousness
could not have been acquired by a human being in primeval times
through his own efforts. It can be said to-day that such insight is
unfolded by a healthy moral sense, even without clairvoyance, and to
an increasing extent men will come to realize not only that
compassion is the very highest virtue but that without love humanity
can make no progress.
Man's moral sense
will grow steadily stronger. But there were epochs in the past when
he would never have understood by himself that compassion and love
belong to a very high stage of development. It was therefore
necessary for spiritual Beings such as the Bodhisattvas to incarnate
in human forms. Revelations of the power of compassion and love came
to such Beings from the higher worlds and they were able to teach men
how to act accordingly. What men have come to recognize to-day
through their own powers as the lofty virtues of compassion and
love — this had to be taught, through epoch after epoch, from heavenly
heights.
The Teacher of love
and compassion in times when men themselves did not yet realize the
nature of those virtues was the Bodhisattva who incarnated for the
last time as Gautama Buddha. Buddha was formerly the Bodhisattva, the
Teacher of love and compassion. He was the Teacher throughout the
epochs just referred to, when men still possessed a certain natural
clairvoyance. As Bodhisattva he incarnated in bodies endowed with
powers of clairvoyance. Then, when he became Buddha and looked back
into these previous incarnations, he could describe the experiences
of his inmost soul when it gazed into the depths of existence hidden
behind sense-phenomena. He possessed this faculty in previous
embodiments and was born with it into the family of Sakya from which
his father, Suddhodana, descended. When Gautama was born he was still
a Bodhisattva, that is to say he came at the stage of development
reached in his previous incarnations. He who is usually called the
‘Buddha’ was born to his father Suddhodana and his mother
Mayadevi as a Bodhisattva and possessed the faculty of clairvoyance in a
high degree even as a child. He was always able to gaze into the depths
of existence.
Let us realize that
in the course of human evolution this capacity to gaze into the
depths of existence has assumed very definite forms. It was the
mission of humanity in earthly evolution to allow the old, dim
clairvoyance gradually to die away; vestiges that persisted did not,
therefore, retain the best elements of that ancient faculty. The best
elements were the first to be lost. What remained was often a lower
form of vision of the astral world, a vision of those demonic forces
which drag man's instincts and passions to a lower level. Through
Initiation we can look into the spiritual world and perceive forces
and beings that are connected with the finest thoughts and sentiments
of men, but we also perceive the spiritual powers behind unbridled
passions, sensuality, consuming egoism. The vestiges of clairvoyance
in the majority of human beings — it was different, of course, in the
Initiates — led to vision of these wild, demonic powers behind the
lower human passions. Whoever is able to see into the spiritual
world can of course perceive all this himself; true vision depends
upon the development of human faculties. But the one vision cannot be
attained without the other.
As a Bodhisattva the
Buddha had been obliged to incarnate in a body constituted as other
human bodies were at that time. The body in which he incarnated
provided him with the power to look deeply into the astral substrata
of existence and even as a child he was able to perceive all the
astral forces underlying the unbridled passions of men, their
consuming lusts and sensuality. He had been protected from witnessing
physical depravity in the outer world, with its accompanying
sufferings and sorrows. Confined to his father's palace, shielded
from every unpleasant experience, he was indulged and pampered in a
way considered fitting for his rank. But this seclusion only enhanced
his power of vision, and while he was carefully protected and
everything indicative of pain and sickness hidden from him, his eyes
of spirit were able to gaze at the astral pictures hovering around
him of all the wild, degrading passions of men. Whoever can read the
external biography of Buddha with genuine esoteric insight will
surmise this. It must be emphasized that in exoteric accounts there
is often a great deal that cannot be understood without knowledge of
the esoteric foundations — and this applies very particularly to the
life of Buddha.
It must seem strange
to Orientalists and others who study the life of Buddha to read that
he was surrounded in the palace by ‘forty thousand dancing-girls and
eighty-four thousand women’. That statement is to be found in books
sold to-day for a few shillings and the writers are obviously not
particularly astonished at the existence of such a harem! What is the
explanation? It is not realized that this points to the intensity of
the experiences that arose in Buddha through his astral visions.
Guarded from childhood against all knowledge of sorrow and suffering
in the world of physical humanity, he perceived everything as
spiritual forces in the spiritual world. He saw all this because he
was born into a body such as could be produced at that time; but from
the outset he was proof against the delusive pictures around him,
having in his previous incarnations risen to the height of a
Bodhisattva. Because in this incarnation he was living as the
Bodhisattva he felt impelled to go out into the world in order to
see the things indicated by the pictures appearing in the astral
world around him in the palace. Every picture kindled within him an
urge to go out and see the world, to leave his prison. That was the
impelling urge in his soul, for as Bodhisattva there was in him the
lofty spiritual power connected with the mission of imparting to
mankind the teaching of compassion and love, with all its
implications. Hence it was necessary for him to become acquainted
with humanity in the world in which man can assimilate this teaching
through moral insight. Buddha was to acquire knowledge of the life of
humanity in the physical world. From Bodhisattva he was to become
Buddha — as a man among men. The only possibility of achieving this
was to abandon all the faculties that had remained to him from his former
incarnations and to turn outwards to the physical plane in order to
live there among men as a model, an ideal, an example to humanity of
the development of these qualities.
Naturally, many
intermediate stages are necessary before an advance from the stage of
Bodhisattva to that of Buddha can be accomplished in this sense. Such
an advance does not take place from one day to the next.
Buddha felt impelled
to leave the palace. The story is that on one occasion he escaped
from his royal prison and came across an aged man. Hitherto he had
been surrounded only by the spectacle of exuberant youth, in order to
induce him to believe that nothing else existed. Now, in the old man,
he encountered the phenomenon of advanced age on the physical plane.
Then he came across a sick man; then he saw a corpse — the
manifestation of death on the physical plane. All this came before
him. The legend — here once again truer than any external account
— goes on to relate something very indicative of Buddha's essential
nature: that when he left the palace, the horse by which he was drawn was
so saddened by his decision to forsake everything that had surrounded
him since his birth that it died of grief and was transported as a
spiritual being into the spiritual world.
[ 2 ]
— A profound truth is expressed here. It would lead too far for
me to explain why a horse is taken as a symbol for a spiritual power of
man. I will only remind you of Plato, who speaks of a horse led by a
bridle when he is using a symbol for certain human capacities that
are still bestowed from above and have not been developed by man from
his own inmost self. When Buddha departed from the palace he
relinquished these faculties, left them in the spiritual world whence
they had always guided him. This is indicated in the picture of the
horse which dies of grief and is transported into the spiritual
world. But it was only gradually that Buddha could attain the rank he
was destined to reach in his final incarnation on the Earth. He had
first to learn on the physical plane everything that as Bodhisattva
he had known only through spiritual vision.
To begin with he
encountered two teachers, the one an exponent of the ancient Indian
world-conception known as the Sankhya philosophy, the other an
exponent of the Yoga philosophy. Buddha steeped himself in what they
expounded to him. No matter how exalted a being may be, he has to
become acquainted with the external achievements of humanity and
although a Bodhisattva may learn more quickly, he must learn none the
less. If the Bodhisattva who lived six hundred years before our era
were born to-day, he would still, like a child at school, first have
to learn about happenings on Earth while he was still in spiritual
heights. It was essential that Buddha too, should have knowledge of
what had been accomplished since his previous incarnation.
He learnt the
principles of the Sankhya philosophy from the one teacher and of the
Yoga philosophy from the other, thereby acquiring a certain insight
into world-conceptions which solved the riddles of life for many in
those days, and into their effect upon the souls of men. In the
Sankhya philosophy he was able to assimilate an intricate system of
logical thought, but the more he familiarized himself with it, the
less did it satisfy him, until finally it seemed to him to be utterly
devoid of life. He realized that he must seek elsewhere than in the
traditional Sankhya philosophy for the sources of what it was his
task to achieve in this incarnation.
The second system was
the Yoga philosophy of Patanjali, which sought to establish
connection with the Divine through certain processes in the life of
the soul. Buddha devoted deep study to the Yoga philosophy as well;
he assimilated it, made it part of his very being. But it too left
him unsatisfied, for he perceived that it was something that had
simply been handed down from ancient time. Human beings were meant,
however, to acquire different faculties, to achieve moral development
themselves. Having put the Yoga philosophy to the test in
his own soul, Buddha realized that it could not satisfy the needs of
his mission.
He then came into the
neighbourhood of five ascetics who had striven to approach the
mysteries of existence by the path of severest self-discipline,
mortification and privation. Having tested this path too, Buddha was
again obliged to admit that it would not satisfy the needs of his
mission at that time. For a certain period he underwent all the
privations and mortifications practised by the monks. He starved as
they did, in order to eliminate greed and thereby evoke deeper
forces which come into action when the body is weakened and then,
rising up from the depths of the bodily nature, can lead a man
rapidly into the spiritual world. But the stage of development he had
reached enabled Buddha to perceive the futility of this
mortification, fasting and starvation. Because he was a Bodhisattva,
his development in previous incarnations had enabled him to bring the
physical body to the highest pitch of perfection possible in that
age. Hence he could experience what any man must experience when he
takes this particular path into the spiritual world. Whoever pursues
the Sankhya or Yoga philosophy to a certain point without having
developed in himself what Buddha had previously acquired, whoever
aspires to scale the pure heights of Divine Spirit through logical
thinking without having first gained the requisite moral strength,
will be subjected to temptation by the demon Mara. This ordeal was
undergone by Buddha as a test. At this point the human being is beset
by all the devils of pride, vanity and ambition, as was Buddha when
Mara stood before him. But having previously reached the lofty stage
of Bodhisattva, he recognized the demon and was proof against him.
Buddha could say to himself: If men continue to develop along the
old path, without the new impulse contained in the teaching of
compassion and love, they are bound, not being Bodhisattvas, to fall
prey to the demon Mara, who pours all the forces of pride and vanity
into their souls.
This was what Buddha
experienced when he had worked through the Sankhya and Yoga
philosophies, following them to their final conclusions. While he was
with the monks, however, he had had an experience in which the demon
assumed a different form, one in which he arrays before the human being
an abundance of external, physical possessions — ‘the kingdoms
of the world and the glory of them’ — in order to divert
him from the spiritual world. Buddha found that this temptation comes
precisely on the path of mortification, for the demon Mara approached
him, saying: ‘Be not misled into abandoning everything that was
yours as a king's son; return to the royal palace!’ Another man would
have yielded to what was then presented to him, but Buddha's
development was such that he could see through the tempter and his
aim, could perceive what would befall humanity if men lived on as
hitherto and chose the path of hunger and mortification as the only
means of ascent into the spiritual world. Being himself proof against
this temptation he could disclose to men the great danger that would
threaten them if they chose to penetrate into the spiritual world
simply by means of fasting and external measures of the kind, without
the foundation of an active moral sense.
Thus while still a
Bodhisattva, Buddha had advanced to those two boundary-points in
development which a man who is not a Bodhisattva had better avoid
altogether. Translating this into words of ordinary parlance, we may
say: ‘The highest knowledge is full of glory and of beauty. But see
that you approach this knowledge with a clean heart, noble purpose
and purified soul — otherwise the devil of pride, vanity and
ambition will seize you!’ The second teaching is this: ‘Strive
not to enter the spiritual world by any external path, through
mortification or fasting, until you have purified your moral
sense — otherwise the tempter will approach you from the other
side!’ — These are the two teachings whose light shines from
Buddha into our own age. While still a Bodhisattva he revealed the
essential purpose of his mission — which was to impart the moral
sense to humanity in an age when men were not yet capable of
unfolding it out of their own hearts. Thus when he realized the
dangers of asceticism for mankind he left the five monks and went to
a place where, by an intense deepening of those faculties of human
nature which can be developed without the old clairvoyance, without
any capacity inherited from earlier times, he achieved the highest
perfection that it will ever be possible for mankind to achieve by
means of these faculties.
In the twenty-ninth
year of his life, after having abandoned the path of asceticism,
there dawned upon Buddha during his seven days of meditation under the
‘Bodhi-tree’ the great Truths that can flash up in a man when,
in deep contemplation, he strives to discover what his own faculties can
impart to him. There dawned upon Buddha the great teachings he then
proclaimed as the Four Truths and the doctrine of compassion and
love presented as the Eightfold Path. We shall be considering these
teachings of Buddha later on. At the moment it will be sufficient to
say that they are a kind of portrayal of the moral sense and of the
purest doctrine of compassion and love. They arose when, under the
‘Bodhi-tree’, the Bodhisattva of India became Buddha. The
teaching of compassion and love came into existence then for the first
time in the history of mankind in the form of human faculties which
man has since been able to develop from his own very self. That is the
essential point. Therefore shortly before his death Buddha said to
his disciples: ‘Grieve not that the Master is departing. I am
leaving with you the Law of Wisdom and the Law of Discipline. For the
future they will serve as substitutes for the Master.’ These words
mean simply: Hitherto the Bodhisattva has taught you what is
expressed in the Law; now, having fulfilled his incarnation on Earth,
he may withdraw. For men will absorb into their own hearts the
teaching of the Bodhisattva and from their own hearts will be able to
develop this teaching as the religion of compassion and love. That
was what came to pass in India when, after seven days of inner
contemplation, the Bodhisattva became Buddha; and that was what he
taught in diverse forms to the pupils who were around him. The actual
forms in which he gave his teaching will still have to be
considered.
It was necessary for
us to-day to look back to what happened six hundred years before our
era because we shall neither understand the path of Christianity nor
what is indicated about that path, above all by the writer of the
Gospel of St. Luke, unless we follow evolution backwards from the
events in Palestine to the Sermon at Benares. Since Buddha attained
that rank there was no need for him to return to the Earth; since
then he has been a spiritual Being, living in the spiritual world and
participating in everything that has transpired on Earth. When the
greatest of all happenings on the Earth was about to come to pass,
there appeared to the shepherds in the fields a Being from spiritual
heights who made the proclamation recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke.
Then, together with the Angel, there suddenly appeared a ‘heavenly
host’. The ‘heavenly host’ was the picture of the
glorified Buddha, seen by the shepherds in vision; he was
the Bodhisattva of ancient
times, the Being in his spiritual form who for thousands and
thousands of years had brought to men the message of compassion and
love. Now, after his last incarnation on the Earth, he soared in
spiritual heights and appeared to the shepherds together with the
Angel who had announced to them the Event of Palestine.
These are the
findings of spiritual investigation. It was the Bodhisattva of old
who now, in the glory of Buddhahood, appeared to the shepherds. From
the Akashic Chronicle we learn that in Palestine, in the ‘City of
David’, a child was born to parents descended from the priestly line
of the House of David. This child — I say it with emphasis —
born of parents of whom the father at any rate was descended from the
priestly line of the House of David, was to be shone upon from the
very day of birth by the power radiating from Buddha in the spiritual
world. We look with the shepherds into the manger where ‘Jesus of
Nazareth’, as he is usually called, was born, and see the radiance
above the little child; we know that in this picture is expressed the
power of the Bodhisattva who became Buddha — the power that had
formerly streamed to men and, working now upon humanity from the
spiritual world, accomplished its greatest deed by shedding its
lustre upon the child born at Bethlehem.
When the
Individuality whose power now rayed down from spiritual heights upon
the child of parents belonging to David's line was born in India long
ago — when the Buddha to be was born as Bodhisattva — the
whole momentous significance of the events described to-day was revealed
to a sage living at that time, and what he beheld in the spiritual world
caused that sage — Asita was his name — to go to the royal
palace to look for the little Bodhisattva-child. When he saw the babe he
foretold his mighty mission as Buddha, predicting, to the father's dismay,
that the child would not rule over his kingdom, but would become a Buddha.
Then Asita began to weep, and when asked whether misfortune
threatened the child, he answered: ‘No, I am weeping because I am so
old that I shall not live to see the day when this Saviour, the
Bodhisattva, will walk the Earth as Buddha!’ Asita did not live to
see the Bodhisattva become Buddha and there was good reason for his
grief at that time. But the same Asita who had seen the Bodhisattva
as a babe in the palace of King Suddhodana, was born again as the
personality who, in the Gospel of St. Luke, is referred to as Simeon
in the scene of the presentation in the temple. We are told that
Simeon was inspired by the Spirit to go into the temple where the
child was brought to him
(Luke II, 25–32).
Simeon was the same being
who, as Asita, had wept because in that incarnation he would not be
able to see the Bodhisattva attaining Buddhahood. But it was granted
to him to witness the further stage in the development of this
Individuality, and having ‘the Holy Spirit upon him’ he was
able to perceive, at the presentation in the temple, the radiance of the
glorified Bodhisattva above the head of the Jesus-child of the House
of David. Then he could say to himself: ‘Now you need no longer
grieve, for what you did not live to see at that earlier time, you
now behold: the glory of the Saviour shining above this babe. Lord,
now let thy servant die in peace!’
Notes:
1.
These lectures-courses were given in
April 1909,
and
August 1909,
respectively. Both have been translated into English.
2.
See
Buddhism in Translation,
by Henry Clarke Warren (Harvard Oriental Series, Vol. III, second
issue). This legend is given in great detail in the chapter entitled
The Great Retirement,
pp. 56–67. Difficult passages referring to "Kanthaka the king
of horses" become intelligible in the light of what Dr. Steiner says
here. According to the legend, Kanthaka came into existence “at
the very time that the future Buddha was born” and died of a
broken heart at the final parting from his master, thereupon to be
reborn in heaven as the "God Kanthaka".
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