LECTURE FIVE
The
great Streams inspired by Buddha and by Zarathustra converge in
Jesus of Nazareth. The Nathan Jesus and the Solomon Jesus.
Every great spiritual
stream in the world has its particular mission. These streams are not
isolated and are separated only during certain epochs; then they
merge and mutually fructify each other. The Event of Palestine is an
illustration of one most significant fusion of the spiritual streams
in humanity.
We have set ourselves
the task of understanding the Event of Palestine with increasing clarity.
But conceptions of the world and of life do not, as some people seem to
imagine, move through the air as pure abstractions and ultimately unite.
They are borne by Beings, by Individualities. When
a system of thought comes into existence for the first time it must
be presented by an Individuality, and when these spiritual streams
unite and fertilize each other, something quite definite must also
happen in the Individualities who are the bearers of the
world-conceptions in question. The concrete facts connected with the
fusion of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism in the Event of Palestine as
described in yesterday's lecture, may have seemed very complicated.
But if we were content to speak of the happenings in an abstract way
and not in concrete detail, it would only be necessary to show how
these two streams united. As anthroposophists, however, it is our
task to give accounts of the two Individualities who were the actual
bearers of these world-conceptions as well as to call attention to
the contents of the teachings. Anthroposophists must always endeavour
to get away from abstractions and arrive at concrete realities, so
you should not be surprised to find such complicated facts connected
with a happening as momentous as the fusion of Buddhism and
Zoroastrianism.
This fusion
necessarily entailed slow and gradual preparation. We have heard how
Buddhism streamed into and worked in the personality born as the
child of Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line of the House of David, as
related in the Gospel of St. Luke. Joseph and Mary of the Solomon
line of the House of David resided originally in Bethlehem with their
child Jesus, as recorded in the Gospel of St. Matthew. This child of
the Solomon line bore within him the Individuality who, as
Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, had inaugurated the ancient Persian
civilization. Thus at the beginning of our era, side by side and
represented by actual Individualities, we have the stream of Buddhism
on the one hand (as described in the Gospel of St. Luke), and on the
other the stream of Zoroastrianism in the Jesus of the Solomon line
(as described in the Gospel of St. Matthew). The births of the two
boys did not occur at exactly the same time.
I shall have to say
things to-day that are not found in the Gospels; but you will
understand the Bible all the better if you learn from investigations
of the Akashic Chronicle something about the consequences and
effects of facts indicated in the Gospels. It must never be forgotten
that the words at the end of the Gospel of St. John hold good for all
the Gospels — that the world itself could not contain the books
that would have to be written if all the facts were presented. The
revelations vouchsafed to humanity through Christianity are not of a
kind that could have been written down and presented to the world
once and for ever as a complete record. Christ's words are true: ‘I
am with you always, until the end of the world!’ He is there not as a
dead but as a living Being, and what He has to reveal can always be
perceived by those whose spiritual eyes are opened. Christianity is a
living stream and its revelations will endure as long as human beings
are able to receive them. Thus certain facts will be presented
to-day, the consequences of which are indicated in the Gospels,
though not the facts themselves. Nevertheless you can put them to the
test and you will find them substantiated.
The births of the two
Jesus children were separated by a period of a few months. But Jesus
of the Gospel of St. Luke and John the Baptist were both born too
late to have been victims of the so-called ‘massacre of the
innocents’. Has the thought never struck you that those who read
about the Bethlehem massacre must ask themselves: How could there
have been a John? But the facts can be substantiated in all respects.
The Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel was taken to Egypt by his parents,
and John, supposedly, was born shortly before or about the same time.
According to the usual view, John remained in Palestine, but in that
case he would certainly have been a victim of Herod's murderous deed.
You see how necessary it is to devote serious thought to these
things; for if all the children of two years old and younger were
actually put to death at that time, John would have been one of them.
But this riddle will become intelligible if, in the light of the
facts disclosed by the Akashic Chronicle, you realize that the events
related in the Gospels of St. Luke and St. Matthew did not take place
at the same time. The Nathan Jesus was born after the Bethlehem
massacre; so too was John. Although the interval was only a matter of
months, it was long enough to make these facts possible.
You will also learn
to understand the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Matthew in the light of
the more intimate facts. In this boy was reincarnated the
Zarathustra-Individuality, from whom the people of ancient Persia had
once received the teaching concerning Ahura Mazdao, the great Sun
Being. We know that this Sun Being must be regarded as the soul and
spirit of the external, physical sun. Hence Zarathustra was able to
say: ‘Behold not only the radiance of the physical sun; behold, too,
the mighty Being who sends down His spiritual blessings as the
physical sun sends down its beneficient light and warmth!’
— Ahura Mazdao, later called the Christ — it was
He whom Zarathustra proclaimed to the people of Persia, but not yet
as a Being who had sojourned on the Earth. Pointing to the sun,
Zarathustra could only say: ‘There is His habitation; He is
gradually drawing near and one day He will live in a body on the
Earth!’
The great differences
between Zoroastrianism and Buddhism are obvious as long as they were
separate; but the differences were resolved through their union and
rejuvenation in the events of Palestine.
Let us once again
consider what Buddha gave to the world. Buddha's teaching was
presented in the Eightfold Path — this being an enumeration of
the qualities needed by the human soul if it is to escape the harsh
effects of Karma. In course of time Buddha's teaching must be
developed as compassion and love by men individually, through their
own feelings and sense of morality. I also told you that when the
Bodhisattva became Buddha, this was a crucial turning-point in
evolution. Had the full revelation of the Bodhisattva in the body of
Gautama Buddha not taken place at that time, it would not have been
possible for the souls of all human beings to unfold what we call
‘law-abidingness’ — ‘Dharma’ — which
a man can only develop from his own being by expelling the content of his
astral nature in order to liberate himself from all harsh effects of
Karma. The Buddhist legend indicates this in a wonderful way by saying that
Buddha succeeded in ‘turning the Wheel of the Law’. This means
that the enlightenment of the Bodhisattva and his ascent to Buddhahood
enabled a force to stream through the whole of humanity as the result
of which men could now evolve ‘Dharma’ from their own souls and
gradually fathom the profundities of the Eightfold Path. This
possibility began when Buddha first evolved the teaching upon which
the moral sense of men on Earth was actually to be based. Such was
the task of the Bodhisattva who became Buddha. We see how individual
tasks are allotted to the great Individualities when we find in
Buddhism all that man can experience in his own soul as his great
ideal. The ideal of the human soul what man is and can become
— that is the essence of Buddha's teaching and it sufficed
as far as his particular mission was concerned.
Everything in
Buddhism has to do with inwardness, with human nature and its inner
development; genuine, original Buddhism contained no
‘cosmology’ — although it was introduced later on. The
essential mission of the Bodhisattva was to bring to men the teaching of
the deep inwardness of their own souls. Thus in certain sermons Buddha
avoids any definite reference to the Cosmos. Everything is expressed
in such a way that if the human soul allows itself to be influenced
by Buddha's teaching, it can become more and more perfect. Man is
regarded as a self-contained being apart from the great Universe
whence he proceeded. It is because this was connected with the
special mission of the Bodhisattva that Buddha's teaching, when truly
understood, has such a warming, deepening effect upon the soul; for
this reason too the teaching seems to those who concern themselves
with it to be permeated with such intensity of feeling and such inner
warmth when it appears again, rejuvenated, in the Gospel of St.
Luke.
The task of the
Individuality incarnated as Zarathustra in ancient Persia was
altogether different — in point of fact exactly the opposite.
Zarathustra taught of the God without; he taught men to apprehend
the great Cosmos spiritually. Buddha directed man's attention to his own
inner nature, saying that as the result of development there
gradually appear, out of the previous state of ignorance, the ‘six
organs’ of which we have spoken, namely, the five sense-organs and
Manas. But everything within man was originally born out of the
Cosmos. We should have no eye sensitive to light if the light itself
had not brought the eye to birth from out of the organism. Goethe
said: ‘The eye was created by the light for the light.’ This
is a profound truth. The light formed the eye out of neutral organs once
present in the human body. In the same way, all the spiritual forces
in the Universe work formatively upon man. Everything within him was
organized, to begin with, out of divine-spiritual forces. Hence for every
‘inner’ there is an ‘outer’. The forces that are
found within man stream into him from outside. And it was the task of
Zarathustra to point to the realities that are outside, in man's
environment. Hence, for example, he spoke of the
‘Amshaspands’, the great Genii,
of whom he enumerated six — in reality there are twelve, but the
other six are hidden. These Amshaspands work from outside as the
creators and moulders of the organs of the human being. Zarathustra
showed that behind the human sense-organs stand the Creators of man;
he pointed to the great Genii, to the powers and forces outside man.
Buddha pointed to the forces working within man. Zarathustra also
pointed to forces and beings below the Amshaspands, calling them the
‘Izards’ or ‘Izeds’. They too penetrate into
man from outside in
order to work at the inner organization of his bodily nature. Here
again Zarathustra was directing attention to spiritual realities in
the Cosmos, to external conditions. And whereas Buddha pointed to the
actual thought-substance out of which the thoughts arise from the
human soul, Zarathustra pointed to the ‘Ferruers’ or
‘Fravashars’, to the ‘world-creative thoughts’
pervading the Universe and surrounding us everywhere. For the thoughts
that arise in man are everywhere in existence in the world outside.
Thus it was the
mission of Zarathustra to inculcate into men an attitude of mind
particularly concerned with analysing the phenomena of the external
world, to present a view of the Universe to a people whose task was
to labour in the outer world. This mission was in keeping with the
special characteristics of the ancient Persians and the function of
Zarathustra was to promote energy and efficiency in this work,
although his methods may have taken a form that would be repellant to
modern man. Zarathustra's mission was to engender vigour, efficiency
and certainty of aim in outer activity through the knowledge that man
has not only shelter and support in his own inner being but rests in
the bosom of a divine-spiritual world and can therefore say to
himself: ‘Whatever your place in the world may be, you are not
alone. You live in a Cosmos permeated by Spirit, among cosmic Gods
and spiritual Beings; you are born of the Spirit and rest in the
Spirit; with every indrawn breath you inhale divine Spirit; with
every exhalation you may make an offering to the great Spirit!’
Because of his special mission, Zarathustra's own Initiation was
necessarily different from that of the other great missionaries of
humanity.
Let us consider what
the Individuality incarnated in Zarathustra was able to achieve. So
lofty was his stage of development that he could make provision in
advance for the next (Egyptian) stream of culture. Zarathustra had
two pupils: the Individualities who appeared again later on as the
Egyptian Hermes and as Moses respectively. When these two
Individualities were again incarnated in order to carry forward their
work for humanity, the astral body sacrificed by Zarathustra was
integrated into the Egyptian Hermes. Hermes bore within him the
astral body of Zarathustra which had been transmitted to him in order
that all the knowledge of the Universe possessed by Zarathustra might
again be made manifest and take effect in the outer world. The
etheric body of Zarathustra was transmitted to Moses. And because
whatever evolves in Time is connected with the etheric body, when
Moses became conscious of the secrets contained in his etheric body,
he was able to create the mighty pictures of happenings in Time
presented in Genesis. In this way Zarathustra worked on through
the power of his Individuality, inaugurating and influencing Egyptian
culture and the culture of the ancient Hebrews that issued from
it.
Through his Ego too,
such an Individuality is destined to fulfil a great mission. The Ego
of Zarathustra incarnated again and again in other personalities, for
an Individuality of such advanced development can always consecrate
an astral body and strengthen an etheric body for his own use, even
when he has relinquished his original bodies to others. Thus six
hundred years before our era, Zarathustra was born again in ancient
Chaldea as Zarathas or Nazarathos, who became the teacher of the
Chaldean Mystery-schools; he was also the teacher of Pythagoras and
again acquired profound insight into the phenomena of the outer
world.
If we steep ourselves
in the wisdom of the Chaldeans with the help, not of Anthropology but
of Anthroposophy, an inkling will dawn in us of what Zarathustra, as
Zarathas or Nazarathos, taught in
the Mystery-schools of ancient Chaldea. The whole of his teaching, as
we have heard, was given with the aim of bringing about concord and
harmony in the outer world. His mission also included the art of
organizing empires and institutions in keeping with the progress of
humanity and with order in the social life. Hence those who were his
pupils might rightly be called, not only great ‘Magi’, great
‘Initiates’, but also ‘Kings’, that is to say,
men versed in the art of establishing social order in the external
world.
Deep and fervent
attachment to the Individuality (not the personality) of Zarathustra
prevailed in the Mystery-schools of Chaldea. These Wise Men of the East
felt that they were intimately connected with their great leader. They
saw in him the ‘Star of Humanity’, for ‘Zoroaster’
(Zarathustra) means ‘Golden Star’, or ‘Star of
Splendour’. They saw in him a reflection of the Sun itself.
And with their profound wisdom they could not fail to know when their
Master was born again in Bethlehem. Led by their ‘Star’,
they brought as offerings to him the
outer symbols for the most precious gift he had been able to bestow
upon men. This most precious gift was knowledge of the outer world,
of the mysteries of the Cosmos received into the human astral body in
thinking, feeling and willing; hence the pupils of Zarathustra strove
to impregnate these soul-forces with the wisdom that can be drawn
from the deep foundations of the divine-spiritual world. Symbols for
this knowledge — which can be acquired by mastering the secrets
of the outer world — were gold, frankincense and myrrh: gold the
symbol of thinking, frankincense — the symbol of the piety which
pervades man as feeling, and myrrh — the symbol of the power of
will. Thus by appearing before their Master when he was born again in
Bethlehem the Magi gave evidence of their union with him. The writer
of the Gospel of St. Matthew relates what is literally true when he
describes how the Wise Men among whom Zarathustra had once worked
knew that he had reappeared among men, and how they expressed their
connection with him through the three symbols of gold, frankincense
and myrrh — the symbols for the precious gift he had bestowed
upon them.
The need now was that
Zarathustra, as Jesus of the Solomon line of the House of David,
should be able to work with all possible power in order to give again
to men, in a rejuvenated form, everything he had already given in
earlier times. For this purpose he had to gather together and
concentrate all the power he had ever possessed. Hence he could not
be born in a body from the priestly line of the House of David but
only in one from the kingly line. In this way the Gospel of St.
Matthew indicates the connection of the kingly name in ancient Persia
with the ancestry of the child in whom Zarathustra was incarnated.
Indications of these
happenings are also contained in ancient Books of Wisdom originating
in the Near East. Whoever really understands these Books of Wisdom
reads them differently from those who are ignorant of the facts and
therefore confuse everything. In the Old Testament there are, for
instance, two prophecies: one in the apocryphal Books of Enoch
pointing more to the Nathan Messiah of the priestly line, and the
other in the Psalms referring to the Messiah of the kingly line.
Every detail in the scriptures harmonizes with the facts that can be
ascertained from the Akashic Chronicle.
It was necessary for
Zarathustra to gather together all the forces he had formerly
possessed. He had surrendered his astral and etheric bodies to Hermes
and Moses respectively, and through them to Egyptian and Hebraic
culture. It was necessary for him to re-unite with these forces, as
it were to fetch back from Egypt the forces of his etheric body. A
profound mystery is here revealed to us: Jesus of the Solomon line
of the House of David, the reincarnated Zarathustra, was led to
Egypt, for in Egypt were the forces that had streamed from his astral
body and his etheric body when the former had been bestowed upon
Hermes and the latter upon Moses. Because he had influenced the
culture and civilization of Egypt, he had to gather to himself the
forces he had once relinquished. Hence the ‘Flight into Egypt’
and its spiritual consequences: the absorption of all the forces he now
needed in order to give again to men in full strength and in a
rejuvenated form, what he had bestowed upon them in past ages.
Thus the history of
the Jesus whose parents resided originally in Bethlehem is correctly
related by St. Matthew. St. Luke relates only that the parents of the
Jesus of whom he is writing resided in Nazareth, that they went to
Bethlehem to be ‘taxed’ and that Jesus was born during that
short period. The parents then returned to Nazareth with the child. In
the Gospel of St. Matthew we are told that Jesus was born in Bethlehem
and that he had to be taken to Egypt. It was after their return from
Egypt that the parents settled in Nazareth, for the child who was the
reincarnation of Zarathustra was destined to grow up near the child
who represented the other stream — the stream of Buddhism. Thus
the two streams were brought together in actual reality.
The Gospels become
especially profound when they are indicating essential facts. The
quality in the human being that is connected more with will and power,
with the ‘kingly’ nature (speaking in the technical sense),
is known by those cognisant of the mysteries of existence to be
transmitted by the paternal element in heredity. On the other hand,
the inner nature that is connected with wisdom and inner mobility of
spirit, is transmitted by the maternal element. With his profound
insight into the mysteries of existence, Goethe hints at this in the
words:
From
my father I have my stature
And life's serious conduct;
From my mother a happy nature
And delight in telling fables.
You can find this
truth substantiated again and again in the world. Stature, the outer
form, whatever expresses itself directly in the outer structure, and
in ‘life's serious conduct’ — this is connected with the
character of the Ego and is inherited from the paternal element. For
this reason the Solomon Jesus had to inherit power from the father,
because it was his mission to transmit to the world the divine forces
radiating through the world in Space. This is expressed by the writer
of the Gospel of St. Matthew in the most wonderful way. The
incarnation of an Individuality was announced from the spiritual
world as an event of great significance and it was announced, not to
Mary, but to Joseph, the father. Truths of immense profundity lie
behind all this; such things must never be regarded as fortuitous.
Inner traits and qualities such as are inherited from the mother,
were transmitted to the Jesus of the Nathan line. Hence the birth of
the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke was announced to the mother.
Such is the profundity of the facts narrated in the scriptures! —
But let us continue.
The other facts
described are also full of significance. A forerunner of Jesus of
Nazareth was to arise in John the Baptist. To say more about the
Individuality of the Baptist will only be possible as time goes on.
But to begin with we will consider the picture presented to us —
John as the herald of the Being who was to come in Jesus. John proclaimed
this by gathering together and summarizing with infinite power
everything contained in the old Law. What the Baptist wished to
bring home to men was that there must be observance of what was
written in the old Law but had grown old in civilization and had been
forgotten; it was mature, but was no longer heeded. Therefore what
John required above all was the power possessed by a soul born as a
mature — even overmature — soul into the world. He was born
of old parents; from the very beginning his astral body was pure
and cleansed of all the forces which degrade man, because the aged
parents were unaffected by passion and desire. There again, profound
wisdom is expressed in the Gospel of St. Luke. For such an
Individuality, too, provision is made in the Mother-Lodge of
humanity. Where the great Manu guides and directs the processes of
evolution in the spiritual realm, from thence the streams are sent
whithersoever they are needed. An Ego such as that of John the
Baptist was born into a body under the immediate guidance and
direction of the great Mother-Lodge of humanity in the central
sanctuary of earthly spiritual life. The John-Ego descended from the
same holy region (Stätte) as that from which the soul-being
of the Jesus-child of the Gospel of St. Luke descended, save that upon
Jesus there were chiefly bestowed qualities not yet permeated by an Ego
in which egoistic traits had developed: that is to say, a young soul
was guided to the place where the reborn Adam was to incarnate.
It will seem strange
to you that a soul without a really developed Ego could be guided
from the great Mother-Lodge to a certain place. But the same Ego that
was withheld from the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke was bestowed
upon the body of John the Baptist; thus the soul-being in Jesus of
the Gospel of St. Luke and the Ego-being in John the Baptist were
inwardly related from the beginning. Now when the human embryo
develops in the body of the mother, the Ego unites with the other
members of the human organism in the third week, but does not come
into operation until the last months before birth and then only
gradually. Not until then does the Ego become active as an inner
force; in a normal case, when an Ego quickens an embryo, we have to
do with an Ego that has come from earlier incarnations. In the case
of John, however, the Ego in question was inwardly related to the
soul-being of the Nathan Jesus. Hence according to the Gospel of St.
Luke, the mother of Jesus went to the mother of John the Baptist when
the latter was in the sixth month of her pregnancy, and the embryo
that in other cases is quickened by its own Ego was here quickened
through the medium of the other embryo. The child in the body
of Elisabeth begins to move when the mother bearing the Nathan
Jesus-child approaches; and it is the Ego through which the child in
the other mother (Elisabeth) is quickened.
[ 1 ]
(Luke I, 39–44).
Such was the deep connection between the Being who
was to bring about the fusion of the two spiritual streams and the
other who was to announce His coming!
Events of great
sublimity take place at the beginning of our era. When, as so often
happens, people say that truth should be simple, this is due to
indolence and a dislike of having to wrestle with many concepts; but
the greatest truths can be apprehended only when the spiritual
faculties are exerted to their utmost capacity. If considerable
efforts are needed to describe a machine, it is surely unreasonable
to demand that the greatest truths should also be the simplest!
Truth is inevitably complicated, and the most strenuous efforts must
be made if it is desired to acquire some understanding of the truths
relating to the Events of Palestine. Nobody should lend himself to
the objection that the facts are unduly complicated; they are
complicated because here we have to do with the greatest of all
happenings in the evolution of the Earth.
Thus we see two
Jesus-children growing up. The son of Joseph and Mary of the Nathan line
was born of a young mother (in Hebrew the word ‘Alma’
would have been used), for a soul of such a nature must necessarily be born
of a very young mother. After their return from Bethlehem this couple
continued to live in Nazareth with their son. They had no other
children; the mother was to be the mother of this Jesus only. When
Joseph and Mary of the Solomon line returned with their son from
Egypt, they settled in Nazareth and, as related in the Gospel of St.
Mark, had several more children: Simon, Judas, Joseph, James and two
sisters.
(Mark VI, 3).
The Jesus-child who
bore within him the Individuality of Zarathustra unfolded with
extraordinary rapidity powers that will inevitably be present when
such a mighty Ego is working in a body. The nature of the
Individuality in the body of the Nathan Jesus was altogether
different, the most important factor there being the Nirmanakaya of
Buddha overshadowing this child. Hence when the parents had returned
from Bethlehem, the child is said to have been full of wisdom —
that is, in his etheric body; he was
“filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon him.”
(Luke II, 40).
But he grew up in such a way that the ordinary human qualities
connected with understanding and knowledge of the external world developed
in him exceedingly slowly. A superficial observer would have called this
child comparatively backward — if account had been taken only of
his intellectual capacities. But instead there developed in him the
power streaming from the overshadowing Nirmanakaya of Buddha. He
unfolded a depth of inwardness comparable with nothing of the kind in
the world, a power of feeling that had an extraordinary effect upon
everyone around him. Thus in the Nathan Jesus we see a Being with
infinite depths of feeling, and in the Solomon Jesus an Individuality
of exceptional maturity, having profound understanding of the
world.
Words of great
significance had been spoken to the mother of the Nathan Jesus, the
child of deep feeling. When Simeon stood before the newborn child
and beheld above him the radiance of the Being he had been unable to
see in India as the Buddha, he foretold the momentous events that
were now to take place; but he spoke also of the ‘sword that would
pierce the mother's heart’. These words too refer to something we
shall endeavour to understand.
The parents were in
friendly relationship and the children grew up as near neighbours
until they were about twelve years old. When the Nathan Jesus reached
this age his parents went to Jerusalem ‘after the custom’, to take
part in the Feast of the Passover, and the child went with them, as
was usual. We now find in the Gospel of St. Luke the mysterious
narrative of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. As the parents
were returning from the Feast they suddenly missed the boy; failing
to find him among the company of travellers they turned back again
and found him in the temple conversing with the learned doctors, all
of whom were astonished at his wisdom.
What had happened? We
will enquire of the imperishable Akashic Chronicle.
The facts of
existence are by no means simple. What had happened on this occasion
may also happen in a different way elsewhere in the world. At a
certain stage of development some individuality may need conditions
differing from those that were present at the beginning of his life.
Hence it repeatedly happens that someone lives to a certain age and
then suddenly falls into a state of deathlike unconsciousness. A
transformation takes place: his own Ego leaves him and another Ego
passes into his bodily constitution. Such a change occurs in other
cases too; it is a phenomenon known to every occultist. In the case
of the twelve-year-old Jesus, the following happened. The
Zarathustra-Ego which had lived hitherto in the body of the Jesus
belonging to the kingly or Solomon line of the House of David in
order to reach the highest level of his epoch, left that body and
passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus who then appeared as one
transformed. His parents did not recognize him; nor did they
understand his words, for now the Zarathustra-Ego was speaking out of
the Nathan Jesus. This was the time when the Nirmanakaya of Buddha
united with the cast-off astral sheath and when the Zarathustra-Ego
passed into him. This child, now so changed that his parents did not
know what to make of him, was taken home with them.
Not long afterwards
the mother of the Nathan Jesus died, so that the child into whom the
Zarathustra-Ego had now passed was orphaned on the mother's side. As
we shall see, the fact that the mother died and the child was left an
orphan is especially significant. Nor could the child of the Solomon
line continue to live under ordinary conditions when the
Zarathustra-Ego had gone out of him. Joseph of the Solomon line had
already died, and the mother of the child who had once been the
Solomon Jesus, together with her children James, Joseph, Simon, Judas
and the two daughters, were taken into the house of the Nathan
Joseph; so that Zarathustra (now in the body of the Nathan
Jesus-child) was again living in the family (with the exception of
the father) in which he had incarnated. In this way the two families
were combined into one, and the mother of the brothers and
sisters — as we may call them, for in respect of the Ego they
were brothers and sisters — lived in the house of Joseph of the
Nathan line with the Jesus whose native town — in the bodily
sense — was Nazareth.
Here we see the
actual fusion of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. For the body now
harbouring the mature Ego-soul of Zarathustra had been able to
assimilate everything that resulted from the union of the Nirmanakaya
of Buddha with the discarded astral sheath. Thus the Individuality
now growing up as ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ bore within him the
Ego of Zarathustra irradiated and pervaded by the spiritual power of
the rejuvenated Nirmanakaya of Buddha. In this sense Buddhism and
Zoroastrianism united in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth.
When Joseph of the
Nathan line also died, comparatively soon, the Zarathustra-child was
in very fact an orphan and felt himself as such; he was not the being
he appeared to be according to his bodily descent; in respect of the
spirit he was the reborn Zarathustra; in respect of bodily descent
the father was Joseph of the Nathan line and the external world could
have no other view. St. Luke relates it and we must take his words
exactly:
‘Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus
also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened and the Holy Ghost
descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him and a voice came from
heaven which said, Thou art my beloved Son, this day have I begotten
Thee. And Jesus himself, when he began to teach, was about thirty years
of age ...’
and now it is
not said simply that he was a ‘son’ of Joseph, but:
‘being as was supposed the son of Joseph’
(Luke III, 21–23)
— for the Ego had originally incarnated in the Solomon Jesus
and was therefore not connected fundamentally with the Nathan Joseph.
‘Jesus of
Nazareth’ was now a Being, whose inmost nature comprised all the
blessings of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. A momentous destiny awaited him
— a destiny altogether different from that of any others baptized by
John in the Jordan. And we shall see that later on, when the Baptism took
place, the Christ was received into the inmost nature of this Being.
Then, too, the immortal part of the original mother of the Nathan
Jesus descended from the spiritual world and transformed the mother
who had been taken into the house of the Nathan Joseph, making her
again virginal.
[ 2 ]
Thus the soul of the mother whom the Nathan Jesus
had lost was restored to him at the time of the Baptism in the
Jordan. The mother who had remained to him harboured within her the
soul of his original mother, called in the Bible the ‘Blessed
Mary’.
Notes:
1.
There is a slight ambiguity in the German text and the reader will
do well to turn to the passage in the next
lecture (p. 119)
where Dr. Steiner speaks again of the mysterious process connected with
the birth of John the Baptist and of the influence of the Nirmanakaya
of Buddha hovering above the Nathan Jesus.
2.
The German words are:
und machte sie wieder jungfräulich.
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