LECTURE NINE
The
Law given on Mount Sinai: the last prophetic Announcement of the Ego.
Buddha's Teaching of Compassion and Love. The Wheel of the Law. Christ
the Bringer of the living Power of Love.
You will have
gathered from the lecture yesterday that a record such as the Gospel
of St. Luke cannot be understood unless the evolution of humanity is
pictured from the higher vantage-point of spiritual science — in
other words unless the transformations that have taken place in the
whole nature and constitution of man during the process of evolution
are kept in mind. In order to understand the radical change that came
about in humanity at the time of Christ Jesus — and this it
necessary for elucidation of the Gospel of St. Luke it will be well
to make a comparison with what is happening in our own age
— admittedly less rapidly and more gradually but for all that
clearly perceptible to those possessed of insight.
To begin with we must
entirely discard a frequently expressed idea to which mental laziness
gives ready assent, namely, that Nature, or Evolution, makes no
‘jumps’. In its ordinarily accepted sense, no statement could
be more erroneous than this. Nature is perpetually making jumps! This
very fact is essential and fundamental. Think, for example, of how
the plant develops from the seed. The appearance of the first leaflet
is evidence of an important jump. Another is made when the plant
advances from leaf to flower; another when its life passes from the
outer to the inner part of the blossom; and yet another, very
important jump has been made when the fruit appears. Anyone who
ignores the fact that such jumps occur very frequently will entirely
fail to understand Nature. When such a man turns his attention to
humanity and observes that development in some particular century
proceeded at a snail's pace, he will believe that the same will be
the case during other periods. It may very well be that in a
particular period development is slow, as it is in the plant from the
first green leaf to the last. But just as in the plant a jump occurs
when the last leaf has developed and the blossom appears, so do jumps
continually occur in the evolution of humanity. The jump made when
Christ Jesus appeared on Earth was so decisive that within a
comparatively short time the old clairvoyance and the mastery of the
spiritual over the bodily nature were transformed to such an extent
that only remnants of clairvoyance and of the former power of the
soul-and-spirit over the physical continued to exist. Hence before
that drastic change took place it was essential that whatever of the
ancient heritage survived should once again be gathered together. It
was in this milieu that Christ Jesus was to work. The new impulse
could then be received into mankind and develop by slow degrees.
In another domain a
jump is also taking place in our own epoch, but not so rapidly.
Although a longer period of time is involved, the parallel will be
quite comprehensible to those who understand the character of the
present age. We can most easily form an idea of this jump by
listening to people who approach spiritual science from one sphere or
another of cultural life. It may happen that the representative of
some religious body comes to a lecture on spiritual science ...
what I am saying is quite understandable and is not meant as censure.
He listens to a lecture let us say on the nature of Christianity,
and says afterwards: ‘It all sounds very beautiful and fundamentally
speaking is not at variance with what we ourselves preach. But we put
it in a way that is intelligible to everyone, whereas only a few
individuals can understand what is being said here.’ This statement
is frequently made. But whoever says or believes that his is the only
right way of presenting Christianity overlooks one essential, namely
that he must judge according to facts, not according to his personal
inclinations. I once had occasion to reply: ‘No doubt you believe
that you are presenting the truths of Christianity in a form suitable
for everyone. But beliefs prove nothing; only facts decide. Does
everybody go to your Church? Thus facts prove the contrary. Spiritual
Science is not there for people whose spiritual needs you are able to
satisfy; it is there for people who demand something else.’
We are living in an
age when it is becoming impossible for human hearts to accept the
Bible as it has been accepted during the last four or five centuries
of European civilization. Either mankind will receive spiritual
science and through it learn to understand the Bible in a new way,
or, as is now happening to many who are unacquainted with
Anthroposophy, men will cease to listen to the Bible. In that case
they would lose the Bible altogether and with it untold spiritual
treasures — actually the greatest and most significant spiritual
treasures of our Earth evolution! This must be realized. We are now
at the point where a jump is to take place in evolution; the human
heart is demanding the spiritual-scientific elucidation of the Bible.
Given such elucidation, the Bible will be preserved, to the
infinite blessing of mankind; without it the Bible will be lost. This
should be taken earnestly by those who believe that they must at all
costs adhere to their personal inclinations and the traditional
attitude towards the Bible. Such, therefore, is the jump now being
taken in evolution. Nothing will divert a man who is aware of this
from cultivating Antroposophy, because he recognizes it as a necessity
for the evolution of humanity.
Considered from a
higher point of view, what is happening at the present time is
relatively unimportant compared with what took place when Christ
Jesus came to the Earth. In those days the stage reached in the
evolution of humanity was such that the last examples were still in
existence of its development since primeval times, actually since the
previous embodiment of the Earth. Man was developing primarily in his
physical, etheric and astral bodies; the Ego had long since been
membered into him but at that time was still playing a subordinate
rôle. Until the coming of Christ Jesus the fully self-conscious Ego
was still obscured by the three sheaths: physical body, etheric body
and astral body.
Let us suppose that
Christ Jesus had not come to the Earth. What would have happened? As
evolution progressed the Ego would have fully emerged; but to the
same extent as it emerged, all earlier outstanding faculties of the
astral, etheric and physical bodies, all the old clairvoyance, all
the old mastery of the soul and spirit over the body would have
vanished. That would have been the inevitable course of evolution.
Man would have become a self-conscious Ego, but an Ego that would have
led him more and more to egoism and to the disappearance and extinction
of love on the Earth. Men would have become ‘Egos’, but
utterly egotistical beings. That is the point of importance.
When Christ Jesus
came to the Earth man was ready for the development of the Self, the
Ego; for this very reason, however, he was beyond the stage where it
would have been permissible to work upon him in the old way. In the ancient
Hebrew period, for example, the ‘Law’, the proclamation from
Sinai, was able to take effect because the Ego had not fully emerged
and what the astral body — the highest part of man's constitution
at that time — should do and feel in order to act rightly in the
outer world was instilled, impressed into it. The Law of Sinai came
to men as a last prophetic announcement in the epoch preceding the
full emergence of the Ego. Had the Ego emerged and nothing else
intervened, man would have heeded nothing except his own Ego.
Humanity was ready for the development of the Ego but it would have
been an empty Ego, concerned with itself alone and having no wish to
do anything for others or for the world.
To give this Ego a
real content, so to stimulate its development that the power of love
should stream from it — that was the Deed of Christ Jesus on the
Earth. Without Him the Ego would have become an empty vessel; through
His coming it can become a vessel filled more and more completely
with love. To those around Him Christ could speak to the following
effect: ‘When you see clouds gathering, you say: there will be this or
that weather; you judge what the weather will be by the outer signs,
but the signs of the times you do not understand! If you were able to
understand and assess what is going on around you, you would know
that the Godhead must penetrate into the Ego. Then you would not say:
We can be satisfied with traditions handed down from earlier times.
It is what comes from earlier times that is presented to you by the
Scribes and Pharisees who wish to preserve the old and will allow
nothing to be added to what was once given to man. But that is a
leaven which will have no further effect in evolution. Whoever says
that he will believe only in Moses and the Prophets does not
understand the signs of the times, nor does he know what a transition
is taking place in humanity!’
(Cp. Luke XII, 54–57).
In memorable words Christ Jesus said to those around Him that whether or
not an individual will become Christian does not depend upon his personal
inclination but upon the inevitable progress of evolution. By the
words recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke concerning the ‘signs of the
time’, Christ Jesus wished to make it understood that the old leaven
represented by the Scribes and Pharisees who preserve only what is
antiquated, was no longer sufficient and that belief to the contrary
could be entertained only by those who felt no obligation to put
aside personal inclinations and judge according to the necessity of
the times. Hence Christ Jesus called what the Scribes and Pharisees
desired, ‘Untruth’ — something that does not tally with
reality in the outer world. That would have been the real meaning of the
expression.
We can best realize
the forcefulness of these words by thinking of analogous happenings
in our own day. How should we have to speak if we wished to apply to
the present age what Christ Jesus said of the Scribes and Pharisees?
Are there, in our own times, any who resemble the Scribes? Yes
indeed! They are the people who will not accept the deeper
explanation of the Gospels and refuse to listen to anything that is
beyond the range of their own faculties of
comprehension — faculties that have been unaffected by spiritual
science; these people refuse to keep pace with the strides in
knowledge of the foundations of the Gospels made through spiritual
science. This is really everywhere the case when efforts — no
matter whether of a more progressive or more reactionary character
— are made to interpret the Gospels, for the fact is that the
capacity for such interpretation can develop only on the soil of
spiritual science — there and there alone. Spiritual science is
the only source from which truth about the Gospels can be derived.
That is why all other contemporary research seems so barren, so
unsatisfactory, wherever there is a genuine desire to seek the
truth.
To-day, as well as the
‘Scribes and Pharisees’ there are the natural scientists —
a third type. We may therefore speak of three categories of men who
want to exclude everything that leads to the spiritual, everything in
the way of faculties attainable by man in order to penetrate to the
spiritual foundations of the phenomena of Nature. And those who,
among others, must be impugned at the present time, if one speaks
in the sense of true Christianity, are very often the holders of
professorships! They have every opportunity for comparing and
collating the phenomena of Nature, but they entirely reject the
spiritual explanations. It is they who hinder progress; for
humanity's progress is hindered wherever there is refusal to
recognize the signs of the times in the sense indicated.
In our days the only
kind of action consistent with discipleship of Christ Jesus would be
to find the courage to turn — as He turned against those who
wished to confine truth to Moses and the Prophets — against
people who retard progress by rejecting the anthroposophical
interpretation of the scriptures on the one side and the phenomena of
Nature on the other. Now and then there are really well-meaning
people who occasionally would like to bring about a kind of vague
reconciliation. But it would be well if in the hearts of all such
people there were some understanding of the words spoken by Christ
Jesus as related in the Gospel of St. Luke.
Among the most
beautiful and impressive parables in that Gospel is the one usually
known as the parable of the unjust steward.
(Luke XVI, 1–13.)
A rich man had a steward who was accused of wasting his goods. He therefore
decided to dismiss the steward. The latter asked himself in dismay:
‘What shall I do? I cannot support myself as a husbandman for I do
not understand such work, nor can I beg, for I should be ashamed.’
Then the thought occurred to him: In all my dealings with the people
with whom my stewardship brought me into contact, I had in mind only
the interests of my lord; therefore they will have no particular
liking for me. I have paid no attention to their interests. I must do
something in order to be received into their houses and so not be
utterly ruined; I will do something to show that I wish them well.
Thereupon he went to one of his lord's debtors and asked him: ‘How
much owest thou?’ — and allowed him to cancel half the debt. He
did the same with the others. In this way he tried to ingratiate
himself with the debtors, so that when his lord dismissed him he
might be received by these people and not die of starvation. That was
his object. The Gospel continues — possibly to the astonishment
of some readers: ‘And the lord commended the unjust steward because
he had done wisely.’ Those who set out to elucidate the Gospels
to-day have actually speculated about which ‘lord’ is meant,
although it is absolutely clear that Jesus was praising the steward for his
cleverness. Then the verse continues: ‘For the children of this world
are in their generation wiser than the children of light.’ This is
how the sentence has stood for centuries. But has anyone ever
reflected upon what is meant by ‘the children of this world are in
their generation wiser than the children of light?’ ‘In their
generation’ stands in all the different translations of the Bible.
But if someone with only scanty knowledge were to translate the Greek
text correctly, it would read: ‘for the children of this world in
their way are wiser than the children of light,’ that is to say,
in their way the children of this world are wiser than the children of
light, wiser according to their own understanding — that is what
Christ meant. Translators of this passage have for centuries confused
the expression ‘in their way’ with a word that actually has
a very similar sound in the Greek language; they have confused it —
and do so to this very day — with ‘generations’, because
the word was sometimes also used for the other concept. It hardly seems
possible that this kind of thing should have dragged on for centuries and
that modern, reputedly good translators, who, have endeavoured to convey
the exact meaning of the text, should make no change. Weizsacker, for
example, gives this actual rendering! Strangely enough, people seem
to forget the most elementary school-knowledge when they set about
investigating biblical records. Spiritual science will have to
restore the biblical records in their true form to the world, for
the world to-day does not, properly speaking, possess the Bible and can
have no real grasp of its contents. It might even be asked: Are
these the genuine texts of the Bible? No, in very important parts
they are not, as I will show you in still greater detail.
What is the meaning
of this parable of the unjust steward? The steward reflected: If I
must leave my post I must gain the affection of the people. He realized
that one cannot serve ‘two masters’. Christ said to those
around Him: ‘You too must realize that you cannot serve two masters;
the one who is now to enter the hearts of men as God, and the one
hitherto proclaimed by the Scribes and the interpreters of the books
of the Prophets. You cannot serve the God who is to draw into your
souls as the Christ-principle and give a mighty impetus to the
evolution of humanity, and the other God who would hinder this
evolution.’ Everything that was right and proper in a bygone age
becomes a hindrance if carried over into a later stage of evolution.
In a certain sense the process of evolution itself is based upon this
principle. The Powers which direct the ‘hindrances’ were
called at that time by a technical expression: Mammon. ‘You
cannot serve the God who will progress, and Mammon, the God of Hindrances.
Think of the steward who, as a child of the world, realized that one cannot
serve two masters, not even with the help of Mammon. So too should
you perceive, in striving to become children of light, that you
cannot serve two masters!’
(Cp. Luke XVI, 11–13.)
Those living in the
present age must also realize that no reconciliation is possible between
the God Mammon in our time — between the modern ‘scribes’
and scientific pundits — and the direction of thought that must
provide human beings to-day with the nourishment they need. This is
spoken in a truly Christian sense. Clothed in current language, what
Christ Jesus wished to bring home to those around Him in the parable
of the unjust steward was that no man can serve two masters.
The Gospels must be
understood in a really living way. Spiritual science itself must
become a living reality! Under its influence everything it touches
should be imbued with life. The Gospel itself should be something
that streams into our own spiritual faculties. We should not only
chatter about the Scribes and Pharisees having been repudiated in
the days of Christ Jesus, for then once again we should be thinking
only of an age that is past. We must know where the successor of the
Power described by Christ Jesus for His epoch as the ‘God
Mammon’ is to be found to-day. That is a living kind of
understanding — which is also such a very important factor in
what is related in the Gospel of St. Luke. For with the parable that
is found only in this Gospel there is connected one of the most
significant concepts in all the Gospels: it is a concept we can
engrave into our hearts and souls only if we are able once again, and
from a somewhat different angle, to make it clear how Buddha, and the
impulse he gave, were related to Christ Jesus.
We have heard that
Buddha brought to mankind the great teaching of compassion and love.
Here is one of the instances where what is said in occultism must be
taken exactly as it stands, for otherwise it might be objected that
at one time Christ is said to have brought love to the Earth, and at
another that Buddha brought the teaching of love. But is that the
same? On one occasion I said that Buddha brought the teaching of
love to the Earth and on another occasion that Christ brought love
itself as a living power to the Earth. That is the great difference.
Close attention is necessary when the deepest concerns of humanity
are being considered; for otherwise what happens is that information
given in one place is presented somewhere else in a quite different
form and then it is said that in order to be fair to everybody I have
proclaimed two messengers of love! The very closest attention is
essential in occultism. When this enables us really to understand
the words in which the momentous truths are clothed, they are seen in
the right light.
Knowing that the
great teaching of compassion and love brought by Buddha is given
expression in the Eightfold Path, we may ask ourselves: What is the
aim of this Eightfold Path? What does a man attain when from the
depths of his soul he adopts it as his life's ideal, never losing
sight of the goal and asking continually: How can I reach the
greatest perfection? How can I purify my Ego most completely? What
must I do to enable my Ego to fulfil its function in the world as
perfectly as possible? — Such a man will say to himself: If I
obey every precept of the Eightfold Path my Ego will reach the
greatest perfection that it is possible to conceive. Everything is a
matter of the purification and ennoblement of the Ego; everything
that can stream from this wonderful Eightfold Path must penetrate
into us. The point of importance is that it is work carried out by
the Ego, for its own perfecting. If, therefore, men were to develop
to further stages in themselves that which Buddha set in motion as the
‘Wheel of the Law’ (that is the technical term), their Egos
would gradually become possessed of wisdom at a high level — wisdom
in the form of thought — and they would recognize the signs
of perfection. Buddha brought to humanity the wisdom of love and
compassion, and when we succeed in making the whole astral body a
product of the Eightfold Path, we shall possess the requisite
knowledge of the laws expressed in its teachings.
But there is a
difference between wisdom in the form of thought and wisdom as
living power; there is a difference between knowing what the Ego
must become and allowing the living power to flow into our very being so
that it may stream forth again from the Ego into all the world as it
streamed from Christ, working upon the astral, etheric and physical
bodies of those around Him. The impulse given by the great Buddha
enabled humanity to have knowledge of the teaching of compassion and
love. What Christ brought is first and foremost a living power,
not a teaching. He sacrificed His very Self, He descended in order to
flow not merely into the astral bodies of men but into the Ego, so
that the Ego itself should have the power to ray out love as
substantiality. Christ brought to the Earth the substantiality, the
living essence of love, not merely the wisdom-filled content of love.
That is the all-important point.
Nineteen
centuries and roughly five more have now elapsed since the
great Buddha lived on the Earth; in about three thousand years from
now — this we learn from occultism — a considerable number of
human beings will have reached the stage of being able to evolve the
wisdom of the Buddha, the Eightfold Path, out of their own moral
nature, out of their own heart and soul. Buddha had once to be on
Earth, and the power that mankind will develop little by little as
the wisdom of the Eightfold Path proceeded from him; after about
three thousand years from now men will be able to unfold its teaching
from within themselves; it will then be their own possession and they
will no longer be obliged to receive it from outside. Then they will
be able to say: This Eightfold Path springs from our very selves as
the wisdom of compassion and love.
Even if nothing else
had happened than the setting in motion of the Wheel of the Law by
the great Buddha, in three thousand years from now humanity would
have become capable of knowing the doctrine of compassion and love.
But it is a different matter also to have acquired the faculty to
embody it in very life. Not only to know about compassion and love,
but under the influence of an Individuality to unfold it as living
power — there lies the difference. This faculty proceeded from
Christ. He poured love itself into men and it will grow from strength
to strength. When men have reached the end of their evolution, wisdom
will have revealed to them the content of the doctrine of compassion
and love; this they will owe to Buddha. But at the same time they
will possess the faculty of letting the love stream out from the Ego
over mankind; this they will owe to Christ.
Thus Buddha and
Christ worked in co-operation, and the exposition given has been
necessary in order that the Gospel of St. Luke may be properly
understood. We realize this at once when we know how to interpret
correctly the words used in the Gospel.
(Luke II, 13–14.)
The great proclamation is to be made to the shepherds. Above them is the
‘heavenly host’ — this is the spiritual, imaginative
expression for the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha. What is it that is proclaimed
to the shepherds from on high? The ‘manifestation (or revelation) of
the wisdom-filled God from the Heights!’ This is the proclamation
made to the shepherds by the Nirmanakaya of Buddha, pictured as the
‘heavenly host’ hovering over the Nathan Jesus-child. But
something else is added: ‘And peace be to men on the Earth below
who are filled with a good will’ — that is, men in whom the
living power of love is germinating. It is this that must gradually become
reality on Earth through the new impulse given by Christ. To the
‘revelation from the Heights’ He added the living
power, bringing into every human heart
and into every human soul something that can fill the soul to
overflowing. He gave the soul not merely a teaching that could be
received in the form of thought and idea, but a power that can stream
forth from it. The Christ-bestowed power that can fill the human
soul to overflowing is called in the Gospel of St. Luke, and in the
other Gospels too, the power of Faith. This is what the Gospels mean
by Faith. A man who receives Christ into himself so that Christ lives
in him, a man whose Ego is not an empty vessel but is filled to
overflowing with love — such a man has Faith.
Why could Christ be the
supreme illustration of the power of ‘healing through the
word?’ Because He was the first to set in motion the
‘Wheel of Love’
(not the ‘Wheel of the Law’)
as a freely working faculty and power of the human soul; because love
in the very highest measure was within him — love brimming over
in such abundance that it could pour into those around Him who needed
to be healed; because the words He spoke, no matter whether
‘Stand up and walk!’ or ‘Thy sins are forgiven
thee’, or other words — issued from over-flowing love.
His words were uttered from overflowing love — love transcending
the limits of the Ego. And those who were able to some extent to
experience this were called by Christ ‘the faithful’.
This is the only true interpretation of the concept of Faith —
one of the most fundamental concepts in the New Testament. Faith is
the capacity to transcend the self, to transcend what the Ego can
— for the time being — achieve. Therefore when he had
passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus and had there united with
the power of the Buddha, Christ's teaching was not concerned with the
question: ‘How shall the Ego achieve the greatest possible
perfection?’ but rather with the question ‘How shall the Ego
overflow? How can the Ego transcend its own limits?’
He often used simple
words, and indeed the Gospel of St. Luke as a whole speaks to the
hearts of the simplest men. Christ said, in effect: It is not enough
to give something only to those of whom you know for certain that
they will give it back to you again, for sinners also do that. If you
know that it will come back to you, your action has not been prompted
by overflowing love. But if you give something knowing that it will
not come back to you, then you have acted out of pure love; for that
is pure love which the Ego does not keep enclosed but releases as a
power that flows forth from a man.
(Luke VI, 33–34.)
In many and various ways Christ speaks of how the Ego must overflow
and how the power overflowing from the Ego, and from feeling emancipated
from self-interest, must work in the world.
The words of greatest
warmth in the Gospel of St. Luke are those which tell of this
overflowing love. The Gospel itself will be found to contain this
overflowing love if we let its words work upon us in such a way that
the love pervades all our own words, enabling them to make their
effect in the outer world. Another Evangelist, who because of his
different antecedents lays less emphasis upon this particular secret
of Christianity, has for all that summarized it in a short sentence.
In the Latin translation of the Gospel of St. Matthew we still have
the genuine, original words which epitomise the many beautiful
passages about love contained in the Gospel of St. Luke:
Ex abundantia cordis os loquitur.
‘Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.’
(Matt. XII, 34.)
This expresses one of the very
highest Christian ideals! The mouth speaks from the overflowing
heart, from that which the heart does not confine within itself. The
heart is set in motion by the blood and the blood is the expression
of the Ego. The meaning is therefore this: ‘Speak from an Ego which
overflows and rays forth power (the power of faith). Then do thy words
contain the Christ-power!’ — ‘Out of the abundance of
the heart the mouth speaketh!’ this is a cardinal principle of
Christianity.
In the modern German
Bible this passage is rendered: ‘His mouth overflows whose heart is
full!’
[ 1 ]
These words have for centuries succeeded in obscuring a
cardinal principle of Christianity. The absurdity of saying that the
heart overflows when it is ‘full’ has not dawned upon people,
although things do not generally overflow unless they are more than
full! Humanity — this is not meant as criticism — has inevitably
become entangled in an idea which obscures an essential principle of
Christianity and has never noticed that the sentence as it stands
here is meaningless. If it is contended that the German language does
not allow of a literal translation of
Ex abundantia cordis os loquitur
into
‘Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh’
on the ground that one cannot say
‘The abundance of the stove makes the room warm’ —
that too is senseless. For if the stove is
heated only to the extent that the warmth just reaches its sides,
the room will not be heated, it will be heated only when a
superabundance of warmth comes out of the stove. Here we light upon a
point of great significance: a cardinal principle of Christianity,
one upon which part of the Gospel of St. Luke is based, has been
entirely obscured, with the result that the meaning of one of the
most important passages in the Gospel has remained hidden from
humanity.
The power that can overflow
from the human heart is the Christ-power. ‘Heart’ and
‘Ego’ are here synonymous. What the Ego is able to create when
transcending its own limits flows forth through the word. Not until the
end of Earth evolution will the Ego be fit to enshrine the nature of Christ
in its fullness. In the present age Christ is a power that brims over
from the heart. A man who is content that his heart shall merely be
‘full’ does not possess the Christ. Hence an essential
principle of Christianity is obscured if the weight and significance of
this sentence are not realized. Things of infinite importance, belonging
to the very essence of Christianity, will come to light through what
spiritual science is able to say in elucidation of the sacred records
of Christianity. By reading the Akashic Chronicle, spiritual science
is able to discover the original meanings and thus to read the
records in their true form.
We shall now
understand how humanity advances into the future. The Bodhisattva who
became Buddha five or six centuries before our era, ascended into the
spiritual world and now works in his Nirmanakaya. He has risen to a
higher stage and need not again descend into a physical body. The
powers that were his as Bodhisattva are again present — but in a
different form. When he became Buddha at that time, he passed over
the office of Bodhisattva to another who became his successor;
another became Bodhisattava. A Buddhist legend speaks of this in
words which give expression to a deep truth of Christianity. It is
narrated that the Bodhisattva, before descending to the incarnation
when he became Buddha, removed his heavenly tiara and placed it upon
the Bodhisattva who was to be his successor. The latter, with his
somewhat different mission, works on. He too is to become a Buddha.
When — in about three thousand years — a number of human
beings have evolved from within themselves the teachings of the
Eightfold Path, the present Bodhisattva will become Buddha, as did
his predecessor. Entrusted with his mission five or six centuries
before our era, he will become Buddha in about three thousand years,
reckoning from our present time. Oriental wisdom knows him as the
Maitreya Buddha.
[ 2 ]
Before the present
Bodhisattva can become the Maitreya Buddha a considerable number of
human beings must have developed the precepts of the Eightfold Path
out of their own hearts and by that time many will have become
capable of this. Then he who is now the Bodhisattva will bring a new
power into the world.
If nothing further
were to have happened by then, the future Buddha would, it is true,
find human beings capable of thinking out the teachings of the
Eightfold Path through deep meditation, but not such as have within
their inmost soul the living, overflowing power of love. This living
power of love must stream into mankind in the intervening time in
order that the Maitreya Buddha may find not only human beings who
understand what love is, but those who have within them the power
of love. It was for this purpose that Christ descended to the Earth.
He descended for three years only, never having been embodied on the
Earth before, as you will have gathered from everything that has been
said. The presence of Christ on the Earth for three years — from
the Baptism by John until the Mystery of Golgotha — meant that
love will flow in ever-increasing measure into the human heart, into
the human soul in other words, into the human Ego; so that at the end
of Earth evolution the Ego will be filled with the power of Christ.
Just as the teaching of compassion and love had first to be kindled
to life through the Bodhisattva, the substance of love had to
be brought down from heavenly heights to the Earth by the Being who
allows it gradually to become the possession of the human Ego itself.
We may not say that love was not previously in existence. What was
not present before the coming of Christ was the love that could be
the direct possession of the human Ego; it was love that was inspired
that Christ enabled to stream down from cosmic Heights; it streamed
into men unconsciously, just as previously the Bodhisattva had
enabled the teaching of the Eightfold Path to stream into them
unconsciously. Buddha's relation to the Eightfold Path was analogous
to the status of the Christ-Being before it was possible for Him to
descend in order to take human form. The taking of human form
signified progress for Christ. That is the all-important point.
Buddha's
successor — now a Bodhisattva — is well known to those versed
in spiritual science and the time will come when these
facts — including the name of the Bodhisattva who will then
become the Maitreya Buddha — will be spoken of explicitly. For
the present, however, when so many factors unknown to the external world
have been presented, indications must suffice. When this Bodhisattva
appears on Earth and becomes Maitreya Buddha, he will find on Earth
the seed of Christ, embodied in those human beings who say: ‘Not
only is my head filled with the wisdom of the Eightfold Path; I have
not only the teaching, the wisdom of love, but my heart is filled
with the living substance of love which overflows and streams into
the world.’ And then, together with such human beings, the Maitreya
Buddha will be able to carry out his further mission in the world's
evolution.
All these truths are
interrelated and only by realizing this are we able to understand the
profundities of the Gospel of St. Luke. This Gospel does not speak to
us of a ‘teaching’, but of Him who flowed as very substance
into the beings of the Earth and into the constitution of man. This is
a truth expressed in occultism by saying: The Bodhisattvas who become
Buddhas can, through wisdom, redeem earthly man in respect of his
spirit, but they can never redeem the whole man. For the whole man
can be redeemed only when the warm power of love — not wisdom
alone — flows through his whole being. The redemption of souls
through the outpouring of love which He brought to the
Earth — that was the mission of Christ. To bring the wisdom of
love was the mission of the Bodhisattvas and of the Buddha; to bring
to mankind the power of love was the mission of Christ. This
distinction must be made.
Notes:
1.
In the English versions of the New Testament the correct meaning
has been preserved.
(See
Matt. XII, 34,
also
Luke VI, 43.)
2.
Among countless references to Maitreya Buddha in the vast literature
of Buddhism, special attention may be called to the chapter entitled
‘Maitreya, the future Buddha’, in Buddhist
Scriptures, translated by Edward Conze (Penguin Classics).
Dr. Steiner spoke
of Maitreya Buddha in many lecture-courses and in considerable
detail in the following lectures:
Buddha and Christ. The Sphere of the Bodhisattvas,
given in Milan, 21st September 1911;
Jeshu ben Pandira, Lecture 1,
4th November 1911, and
Jeschu ben Pandira, Lecture 2,
5th November 1911, both lectures given in Leipzig.
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