The Principle of Spiritual Economy
GA 109
31 May 1909, Budapest
11. From Buddha to Christ
A Lecture Given at the International Congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society
I do not wish to offer you here an observation about the philosophy of religion or a treatise on literary history, nor do I wish to give you a scientific lecture about the subject matter. I simply want to tell you what Spiritual Science or occultism have to say about such great individualities as Buddha and Christ, more precisely what knowledge they can offer from the vantage point of Rosicrucian occultism.
In a lecture intended for more advanced theosophists, I presume you will permit me to speak more intimately of such truths. I shall present to you broad outlines, and I will incorporate certain details into them. Rosicrucian occultism presents one of the great principles of occult theosophical investigation from which spiritual life should flow into our hearts. Even though the goals and ideals of theosophy can also be found outside the Theosophical Society, there is nevertheless a difference in the means employed by anyone seriously trying to struggle for the attainment and right application of knowledge and truth, for occult investigation can and must flow directly into life.
Allow me to illustrate this point with a trivial example. The human soul is like a stove that does not need to be persuaded to heat a room because heating is its function. The stove does this on its own, provided we put wood into it and light it. It could be objected that the appearance of the wood does not suggest to us that it can generate heat, and yet it does precisely that. By putting some firewood, the appearance of which is so different from the stove, into it and lighting it, we bring warmth into our house. Similarly, by getting used to spiritual scientific concepts, we also become accustomed to our ability to make judgments and to orient ourselves freely in this world. It is not our task to preach ideals but rather to provide human souls with the fuel that can generate spiritual wisdom, genuine brotherliness, and true humanity. To realize this is our goal.
What we designate as the Rosicrucian stream arose in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when the spiritual stream of Christianity was already obscured since it had taken on an external form. At a time when Christianity in the outer world increasingly was taking on an external form and when its true original meaning had faded, Rosicrucianism, received the task to cultivate ancient wisdom and to preserve the treasures of primordial wisdom. In the outside world, wherever people deemed only external forms and hardened dogmas to be important, they abjured and cursed anything that was venerated in the mysteries as the highest and holiest truths. One frequently heard the words: “I curse Skythianos; I curse Boddha; I curse Zarathas.” These are the three names that were venerated in greatest secrecy in the mysteries and in the Rosicrucian mystery schools as sacred names of the masters.
Zarathas is the same individual as Zarathustra—not the Zarathustra known to history, but the exalted individual who founded ancient Persian culture and who was the teacher in the occult schools of that time. Skythianos was a highly developed individual of ancient times. In one of his subsequent incarnations he led the occult schools of Central Asia, and later he also became the teacher of esoteric schools in Europe. Boddha and Buddha are one and the same person.
In order to understand what an initiate felt when he heard these three names and in order to gain some idea of what they could give him, we have to go back in human evolution and examine the character of Rosicrucian occultism more closely. Let us gain an understanding through listening and through looking back into the past. There have always been highly advanced personalities who stood out from the masses and to whom average people looked up in reverence as one would to high ideals. To look up to the individuals who had reached such a lofty stage of wisdom and intellectual power had the effect of animating the average person's moral sense and vital energies. Even today the forces of these lofty spirits flow into our finer bodies.
Let us look back into the past to all the spiritual individualities of whom I want to speak to you, all the way back to the ancient Indian culture. If we went further back in human evolution to the remote age of Atlantis and its end, this would lead us to the event that separates us from an even more ancient epoch of humanity where our souls led lives greatly different from the ones they lead in our present physical bodies. However, rather than dealing in detail with a description of life and culture in those ancient times, let us today be content to illuminate the answer to the question: How was humanity guided in ancient times, and where did the forces that influenced it come from?
When a seer whose spiritual eye is opened so that he knows how to read the fine script of the Akasha Chronicle looks back into the spiritual worlds, he discovers the sites from which the culture and all spiritual life of those times emanated. Our souls can discover the sites where the masters and their disciples assembled in the mystery schools of that time. There were many such Mystery Centers on the ancient Atlantean continent, and they differed from those of today and were given a different name. They were not just churches and not just schools, but rather a combination of both. Those who searched for truth could find both religion and wisdom in the mystery schools; here, religion and wisdom were one. Using a modern word, we can characterize the concept of those cultic centers, the mystery schools, by the term “Atlantean Oracles.” This is the name given to them by the European mystery schools, but originally they were called something entirely different.
In the Atlantean Oracles and their centers of wisdom, spiritual life was differentiated in the same way that external knowledge and the areas of trade and professions are subdivided in external life today. There were various branches of spiritual investigation and occult wisdom in ancient Atlantis, but everything in those times depended on different conditions. Wisdom varied from one oracle to another according to the capacities of the human beings and their external environment. A connection existed between certain human capacities and certain planets, that is, certain mystical occult capacities were connected with special planets. Therefore, on the Atlantean continent we should distinguish between oracles of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
Our present capacities, too, developed out of the cosmos, as did our earth, and they are in each case tied to different planets and their influences. On Atlantis, people who were suited to develop this or that cognitive capacity were chosen from the population and assigned to one of the seven oracles. Of the seven oracles, which were named after the seven planets in ancient Atlantis, the Sun Oracle stood out from all the others, but next to it the Vulcan Oracle prepared itself in secrecy for its future task.
Each of these oracles had emanated from the cosmos according to its capacity, but there was one center in which the capacities of all seven oracles flowed together, and it was here that the wisdom of the seven oracles in Atlantis coalesced. The adepts of this center, of the Holy Sun Oracle, had been initiated into the mystery and service of what we today know as the Sun. We should not forget that the physical sun is only the external expression or physiognomy—the body and garment—of the spiritual life of the exalted Sun-Being.
All of you have heard of the time when the sun separated from the earth, and along with the physical sun those beings abandoned the earthly arena who had advanced through the human state and, therefore, could no longer use the earth for their development. After the moon too had left, the earth was able to realize its destination of becoming the abode of humanity. If the sun alone had influenced the earth, the latter would have gone through such a rapid development that human beings would have become old soon after birth. By contrast, if our earth had been only under the influence of the moon, human beings would have been stiffened and become mummies Development would have been too slow, and their bodies would have reached a state of rigidity and lignification. However, through a wise guiding force, sun and moon maintained a balance in the external influence they exert on the earth; and this enabled earth and human beings to develop at a speed suitable to them. The beings of Mars, Mercury, Venus, and so on, who did not need the forces that had left with the moon and earth for their development, departed with the sun to take up their own abode. Yet they continued to be connected with the earth and sent their beneficial forces down to it in the sunlight.
During the ancient Atlantean epoch, the adepts of the Sun Oracle had been initiated into the deeds of this lofty Sun-Being. The Great Initiate who was the leader of this highest oracle had been initiated in the most comprehensive ways into these mysteries. The entire ancient Atlantean and, as we shall see, also the post-Atlantean culture proceeded from him. The “Manu,” as this leader of the Sun Oracle was called—although the name doesn't really matter all that much—did not choose the main representatives of the post-Atlantean culture from among the so-called scholars and scientists, nor from the clairvoyants and Magi of that time. The people who were endowed with spiritual and psychic knowledge and who in those days were approximately comparable to the scientists and scholars of our time were not considered suitable by him; rather plain people who had begun gradually to lose the clairvoyant faculty were chosen. Our present state of consciousness began to develop only at the end of the Atlantean epoch. That was the time when the old clairvoyant consciousness was waning, gradually giving way to a full consciousness of self, to the ability to address the “I” in oneself. The great Manu gathered about him those who were able to function intellectually, not the clairvoyants and Magi but those who absorbed and developed the rudiments of arithmetic. They were the despised who knew nothing in the opinion of the leading people, and in this they were not unlike the theosophists today. Yet it was they with whom the great Manu journeyed to the sanctuary in Asia from which the postAtlantean culture was to emanate.
Disregarding America for this purpose, let us say that Europe, Asia, and Africa have all been populated by the descendants of the ancient Atlanteans who had moved to these continents under Manu's leadership. This initiate of the Sun Oracle now had to take care that the founding of this post-Atlantean culture and the evolution of its human beings would proceed under the proper influence. From the very beginning he had to take care that everything that was valuable for a future development should be carried forward. This preservation of values from the past is a law of occultism, of spiritual economy, but it is also a law that can only be known through spiritual wisdom.
Now the Great Initiate took something very valuable with him when he journeyed from ancient Atlantis to Europe. To accomplish this, he had—let me put it this way—traveled to and inspected the other oracles. You all know that in the case of ordinary people the etheric body separates from the astral body and the ego soon after death and gradually dissolves in the universal ether. The same happens with the astral body after a certain time, but this law is sometimes broken in the interest of spiritual economy. This is what happened in the case of the etheric bodies of the seven greatest initiates who were the leaders of the ancient Atlantean oracles.
What does it mean when we say we work on ourselves? It means that we purify the etheric body and the astral body. Now, once purified, the spiritualized etheric and astral bodies do not dissolve after death but are preserved in accordance with the law of spiritual economy. In short, it was known in the mysteries how to preserve the valuable etheric and astral bodies developed by the great initiates, but it would lead me too far afield to speak about this in detail. Suffice it to say that these bodies were kept by the preservers of the mystery schools.
It is for this reason that the Great Initiate of the Sun Oracle journeyed to the other Atlantean oracles to collect and take with him the seven etheric bodies of the greatest Atlantean initiates. And then he attracted through his wisdom a number of human beings who were to become fit for their coming culture. He taught these humans who were gathered around him so that they became increasingly more capable and pure. What followed may be called an art. After some time had elapsed, it became possible to incorporate the seven more important etheric bodies of the seven greatest initiates of the ancient Atlantean oracles into seven human beings. In regard to their egos, their power of judgment, and so on, they were simple people whose existence had no significance from an external point of view. However, they carried within them the seven most highly developed etheric bodies of the seven most significant initiates. These etheric bodies had streamed into these people, thereby enabling them to exude the great, powerful visions and truths of evolution through inspiration from above. Thus, they were able to speak of all this exalted wisdom.
The Great Initiate sent these seven bearers of wisdom to India where people still had a sense and an understanding of the spiritual and of spiritual worlds. In India human beings still had the feeling and the consciousness of having at one time emanated from a primordial spiritual world and of having been born from the womb of the Godhead. Therefore, the whole physical world appeared to them as maya, as illusion, and they longed to return to this world of the gods, to those divine-spiritual beings with whom they had once lived. To such people the seven bearers of wisdom could speak. They were called the Holy Rishis, and it was they who inaugurated the dawn of our post-Atlantean culture. The people who had preserved for themselves the consciousness of and the longing for the spiritual world with its divine-spiritual beings were thus given the opportunity to learn more about this world and to find the way back to it.
Subsequent ages gave birth to not only peoples who were destined to look into the spiritual worlds, but also to those who wanted to contribute to the founding of a new culture. They were meant to become fond of the physical world and to see it not only as maya or illusion. Rather, they began to understand that this physical world is but the expression or physiognomy of the spiritual world that lies behind it. This was the second epoch, the ancient Persian or Zarathustran culture. Ordinary history records only a relatively late Zarathustra because historians are unaware that it was customary in ancient times for a successor to receive the name of a great leader from the past. I am here referring to the greatest of all Zarathustras, who was one of the most intimate disciples of the Initiate of the Sun Oracle. His task was to find the connection between the physical and the spiritual world. He had to teach his disciples that the physical sphere of the sun is the body of spiritual beings who have their abode on the sun and that this whole physical world should be viewed as the members and limbs of the physical body of divine-spiritual beings. Just as the sun is surrounded by a great aura, so the human being is surrounded by his or her own small aura, which is a microcosmic expression of the sun's great aura. The sun is the body of the Sun Spirit who revealed himself in the Sun Oracle of the ancient Atlantean epoch. Zarathustra beheld this spirit in clairvoyant vision. He also designated the aura of the sun as Sun Spirit, and this is the same being whom he also called Ahura Mazdao. Occultists of later ages called it Ormuzd.
Zarathustra taught his disciples to see Ahura Mazdao in the physical sun and not to be led astray by Ahriman. Ahriman has lived in the physical world since the last third of the Atlantean epoch and attacks the human soul through sense perception, that is to say from the outside. By contrast, Lucifer attacks the soul from within. Zarathustra had to kindle in the hearts of humans the love for the great Sun Spirit, and he did this in powerful words that cannot be adequately rendered in our modern languages. All the magnificent words that you find in the Vedas and Gathas, no matter how beautiful, are but a feeble superficial expression of the great and lofty words originally uttered by Zarathustra. In our language, they can be approximated by the following:
“I wish to speak, now hearken and listen to me, you from near and from afar, who are filled with longing for these words. I want to speak about that which is the highest truth to me in this world and what was revealed to me by the great and mighty Ahura Mazdao. Hearken and listen to me now and mark my words carefully: No longer shall the teacher of falsehoods, the evil one whose lips bore witness to an evil faith, lead you astray for He—the mighty Ahura Mazdao—has manifested himself! Those who do not want to listen to the words as I say them and to the meaning that I give to them will experience evil things when the course of time reaches its end.”
And at other times Zarathustra said this: “So great and mighty is He who revealed Himself to me in the sun that I surrender everything for him. I rejoice in sacrificing to Him the life of my body, the etheric existence of my senses, and the expression of my deeds”—the astral body. Such was the vow that Zarathustra made a long time ago.
Zarathustra had two disciples. To one of them he revealed through spiritual means everything that one can perceive with clairvoyant astral organs. This disciple was reincarnated under the name Hermes, the Egyptian Hermes. To the second disciple he imparted truths that one can know through the clairvoyant etheric body: the wisdom of the Akasha Chronicle. This second disciple was Moses, and you can find the wisdom imparted to him in the Book of Moses of the Old Testament.
When the first disciple was reincarnated as Hermes, he bore within him the astral body of Zarathustra, who had revealed to him not only his teachings, but also his own nature. Such a transfer is possible for what Hermes had received was nothing else but the astral body Zarathustra had sacrificed for him. Hence it was Zarathustra's wisdom that Hermes, the founder of the third post-Atlantean epoch, proclaimed.
The other disciple, to whom Zarathustra had given wisdom through the etheric body, was also born again. When he reincarnated, the etheric body that Zarathustra had sacrificed was woven into him. This disciple was Moses. You can find such facts recorded in religious documents, but in a veiled manner only. Read the story of the birth of Moses. What happened then? The child was placed into an ark of bulrushes which was then put into the water. What does that mean? It means that he was completely cut off from the world. His ego and astral body were not to become manifest until they were permeated by the principle of the etheric body. How can this take place? During the time when Moses lay isolated in the ark on the water, the etheric body that had been woven into him became illuminated. Only then could the astral body and the ego begin to work in him. Are not the powerful images of Genesis, which will occupy humanity for a long time to come, images taken from the Akasha Chronicle? These things cannot be understood without the aid of occultism.
We now come to the fourth epoch of the post-Atlantean culture, to the Graeco-Roman epoch. Up to this point, human beings were developed in such a way that they should learn to love the earth. Yet there were also those who had been the companions of the gods in the Atlantean age, and it is therefore justified to ask what had become of the egos of the great initiates of that time. Atlantean egos had dwelled in a softer and finer body, and for them existence on earth was such that individualities had to go through an incarnation only for the time necessary to maintain the connection between the world's primordial spiritual wisdom and humanity.
The great Buddha is one of the individualities who was actually able to imbue the oriental writings with that deep wisdom and spiritual force that we find in them now. As occultists, we are able to understand the communications relating to him, and we may even take them literally. For example, it is true when we read about him: “At his birth he shone like the bright light of the sun.” We can also take it literally when Buddha says: “I have entered my last incarnation and need not return to earth unless I do it on my own free will.” During the post-Atlantean epoch he also toiled to pass through stages of intellectual insights, and we can understand him when he says that the lines of incarnations and different stages of initiations through which he had passed flashed up before him:
Before me stood the splendor of the forms,
But my intuition was not yet pure!
I saw the Spirits of Insight,
But my intuition was not yet pure!
I saw the site of initiation,
But my intuition was not yet pure!
I was the companion among them:
Now my intuition was pure!
This is Buddha's illumination. He was one of those with whom we live in Rosicrucian theosophy.
We have already named three of the Masters: Zarathas, Skythianos, and Boddha or Buddha, and we can see how the lives of these leading personalities extend into our present time. An occultist can test these findings. In the realm of spiritual economy we not only find what these exalted men left behind; everything else that is of value to humanity is preserved. Take, for example, an individual such as Galileo, who in the sixteenth century achieved such significant results in physics. Galileo had an etheric body that was not allowed to die with him. Far away from the place where Galileo had worked, there lived a man in the middle of the eighteenth century who prepared himself for a great task after two decades of a devotional childhood. Deep in Russia, at the White Sea, lived a man in the plainest circumstances. His name was Michael Lomonosov. Unknown and without means, he hiked to Moscow and subsequently laid the foundations for Russian grammar. Lomonosov bore within him the etheric body of Galileo. And now it happened that a personality, who knew that the etheric body of Galileo had been preserved and who, in fact, had been present when this connection was being investigated occultly, knew nothing about Michael Lomonosov. This is no disgrace since on the physical plane one cannot know everything. But here we see that valuable elements are preserved and the past is connected with the future through the law of spiritual economy. In the Rosicrucian mysteries, too, we encounter the individuality who lived in the body of Buddha on the physical plane. During the Atlantean age, he had lived only as a bodhisattva, but later on he descended into the physical body of Buddha.
Let us now look at the times of Buddha and Zarathustra and observe what souls had to do in the ages between these two spiritual leaders. On the one hand, we have the teachings of Ahura Mazdao, on the other, that side of humanity that increasingly became fond of the earth. Let us envision once again the Indian, Persian, and Chaldean-AssyrianBabylonian times during which the soul gradually lost its connection with the spiritual world. Then, in ancient Greece the soul came to love the earth so deeply that the statement of a famous Greek, “Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the world of shadows,” was accepted as truth. During this fourth post-Atlantean, the Graeco-Roman epoch, everything in the external world appeared to be beautiful and charming. The seer may, for example, observe the ruins of the Temple of Paestrum with his physical eye and revel admiringly in the beauty of the temple's form and in the intriguing charm of its lines. However, when he takes his eyes off the temple and looks for a similar substance in the spiritual world, he finds nothing. Everything seems to be blotted out. This is what these souls experienced between death and rebirth. They were isolated within the cold circumference of their individuality, cut off from all spiritual things and longing only for the physical world and all its beauty.
Ahura Mazdao himself, the Leader of the Sun, had to descend to earth to bring light into this icy separateness. He had to become a human being in the physical world in order to help both the living and the dead. He had to be a human among humans! The high and the magnificent that lives in the sun descended to earth and revealed itself in and to humanity. Previously, it had revealed itself in the elements, for example to Moses in the fire of the burning bush and in the lightning on Sinai. The Israelites were to make no graven image of their God. Why? Because no external name can be given to “Me,” the Divine Being; only an entirely different name can express the “I am the I am!” The only possibility of discovering the spirit of the sun's name is to seek it in the human being. That which lives as “I” in human beings is the Christ-Being.
The Jehova revelation precedes the Christ. That was at the time when the Christ-Being could gradually descend to the earth. What had Zarathustra once vowed to the high Sun-Being? What sacrifice did he want to make to him? His body, senses, life, and speech. Zarathustra was reincarnated as a contemporary of the great Buddha. He could then build up the etheric and astral bodies that he had sacrificed. He was reborn as Zarathas or Nazarathos, and he became the teacher of Pythagoras, who himself was reincarnated as one of the three Wise Men of the East and became one of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. Zarathustra, who had once sacrificed his etheric and astral bodies, was also able to give up his external sheath to Him whose coming he had once announced. As the Jesus of Nazareth of Western occultism, he could place his physical body at the disposal of the Sun Spirit and was then able to say, “I am the Light of the World!”
The Christ-Being was known in all the mysteries. In ancient India, at the time of the Seven Rishis, the being who represented Christ was called Vishva Karman. Zarathustra named him Ahura Mazdao, and in Egypt he was known as Osiris. The Jewish people called him Jahve or Jehova, and then in the fourth cultural epoch this very same being lived for three years on our physical earth. This is the being who will in the future reunite the sun with the earth. Mystically, the Christ united Himself with the earth when the blood streamed from His wounds at Golgotha. At that time He appears in the aura of the earth, and He has been in it ever since.
Who was the first man to see Christ in the aura of the earth? It was St. Paul, who did more than anyone else for the dissemination of Christianity. What caused Saul to become Paul? Neither the teachings nor the events that took place in Palestine, but the event at Damascus, which was of a super-sensible nature. Before that experience, Paul could not believe that the one who had died so disgracefully on the cross had been the Christ, but as an initiate of the cabala he knew that the Christ would be visible in the aura of the earth once He had appeared on earth. That was the experience of Paul, which transformed him from Saul to Paul. Paul said of himself that he was born prematurely, and the same is also said of the Buddha. This means that such an individuality does not descend too deeply into the physical realm. When Paul became clairvoyant before he came to Damascus, he saw and knew who Christ was.
The Christ was working in Buddha as a bodhisattva, and it was He who was now the planetary spirit of the earth since the event of Golgotha and who could since be found in the physical aura of the earth. Through the Christ-Principle a new light has been kindled in this world and beyond. The body of Jesus of Nazareth—the etheric and astral bodies and the ego of Jesus of Nazareth—exist in many copies in the spiritual world. Such a statement expresses something of great significance, and for a better understanding of it we can draw on nature for a number of enlightening examples. Just think of a grain seed that grows into a stalk and multiplies itself many times in the process. This apparently simple natural process is a parable of the events in the super-sensible world that are governed by certain laws. Many copies of the etheric and astral bodies and of the ego of Jesus of Nazareth exist in order to be incorporated in the preliminary bearers of the Christ-Principle. Everything connected with the Christ-Principle is so momentous that humanity can grasp it only little by little.
St. Augustine, for example, bore within him a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth; and once you know that, you will be able to appreciate his life, his errors, and his accomplishments. His ego and his astral body were left to their own resources, and only in his etheric body did his great mystical gift come to life. St. Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas had copies of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth woven into their souls, and it is this fact that allowed them to be such dynamic teachers. They worked from a sphere in which Christ had once lived.
In some cases external events such as natural catastrophes or similar things enhance this weaving of spiritual bodies into the soul of the recipient. It is said of St. Thomas Aquinas that lightning struck and killed his little sister in the room where he happened to be standing, but spared him. He interpreted this lightning bolt next to him to the effect that elemental forces were necessary to help him take up the copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. Elisabeth of Thüringen also had an imprint of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth in her soul.
Zarathustra, or Jesus of Nazareth, is one of the three Masters of the Rosicrucians. Many copies of his ego, that is of the ego in which the Christ Spirit Himself had dwelled, can be found in the spiritual world. The copies of the ego of Jesus of Nazareth are waiting for us in the spiritual world to be utilized for the future evolution of humankind. People who endeavor to strive upward to the heights of spiritual wisdom and love are candidates for these copies of the ego of Jesus of Nazareth. They become bearers of Christ, true Christophori. On this earth they shall be heralds of His Second Coming.
We derive strength for our future work from the knowledge of which individualities are behind the missions of important human beings. It is possible to test these facts. Not everyone is able to investigate what goes on behind the curtains of the physical world, but everyone can examine the results of such investigations by looking at the Holy Scriptures written before and after Christ. These facts can illuminate the way to understanding; and if they do, they change within us and become spiritual life blood.
Von Buddha Zu Christus
gehalten beim Internationalen Kongreß der Föderation europäischer Sektionen der Theosophischen Gesellschaft
Keine religionsphilosophische Betrachtung, keine literarhistorische Abhandlung, keinen wissenschaftlichen Vortrag will ich Ihnen über dieses Thema halten, sondern nur das soll gesagt werden, was die Geisteswissenschaft und der Okkultismus darüber mitzuteilen haben, und zwar dasjenige, was sie aus dem Rosenkreuzerokkultismus heraus uns zu geben haben, was diese zu sagen haben über solche Größen wie Buddha, wie Christus.
In einem Kongreßvortrag, der für reifere Theosophen bestimmt sein soll, ist es mir wohl gestattet, in intimerer Weise über diese Wahrheiten zu sprechen. Es soll darüber in großen Linien gesprochen werden, denen auch Detailfragen sich eingliedern mögen. Der Rosenkreuzerokkultismus stellt eines der großen Prinzipien okkult-theosophischer Forschung dar, aus welchen spirituelles Leben einfließen soll in die Herzen. Die Ziele und Ideale der Theosophie finden wir auch draußen, außerhalb der Theosophischen Gesellschaft. Aber ein Unterschied der Mittel besteht, die angewendet werden, um okkulte Erkenntnis und Wahrheit zu erringen und sie richtig zu verwerten; denn okkultes Forschen kann und muß unmittelbar einfließen ins Leben. Lassen Sie mich das Ihnen an einem trivialen Beispiel klarmachen: Es ist mit der Menschenseele ähnlich wie mit einem Ofen, dem man nicht zuzureden braucht, das Zimmer warm zu machen, da dies seine Ofenaufgabe wäre. Er tut es von selbst, wenn wir Holz in ihn hineinbringen und anzünden. Vielleicht könnte jemand dazu sagen, dem Holz sieht man es ja gar nicht an, daß es Wärme gibt. Und doch gibt es Wärme. Indem wir das ganz anders ausschende Holz in den Ofen hineinbringen, es anzünden, bringen wir Wärme in unser Haus. Indem wir uns an die geisteswissenschaftlichen Begriffe gewöhnen, gewöhnen wir uns an eine freie Urteilsfähigkeit, an eine freie Orientierungsfähigkeit in der Welt.
Nicht Ideale vorzupredigen ist unsere Aufgabe, sondern Heizmaterial müssen wir den Menschenseelen geben, das Heizmaterial spiritueller Weisheit, echter Brüderlichkeit und wahren Menschentums. Dieses zu verwirklichen ist unser Ziel.
In der Zeit, während welcher in der spirituellen Strömung des Christentums eine Verdunkelung eintrat, weil das Christentum sich veräußerlichte, lebte im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert diejenige Strömung auf, die wir die rosenkreuzerische nennen. Ihr wurde die Aufgabe zuteil, die uralte Weisheit zu pflegen, die Schätze der Urweltweisheit zu behüten, während draußen in der Welt das Christentum immer mehr sich veräußerlichte und in seiner wahren Gestalt verblaßte. Da wo draußen nur äußere Formen und verknöcherte Dogmen galten, da gab es dann auch für das wirkliche spirituelle Leben nur Abschwur und Fluch; Abschwur und Fluch für das, was in den Mysterien als das Höchste und Heiligste galt und verehrt wurde. So konnte man damals oft hören die Worte: Ich fluche dem Skythianos, ich fuche dem Boddha, ich fluche dem Zarathas. - Das sind die drei Namen derjenigen, die ganz im Geheimen und im Inneren der Mysterien und Mysterienschulen der Rosenkreuzer als heilige Meisternamen verehrt wurden.
Zarathas ist dieselbe Persönlichkeit wie Zarathustra, nicht der Zarathustra, von dem die Geschichte spricht, sondern jene hohe Individualität, welche die uralt persische Kultur begründete und der Lehrer der damaligen Geheimschulen war. Skythianos, eine uralte, hochentwickelte Persönlichkeit, die in einer späteren Inkarnation in Innerasien die okkulten Schulen leitete und später auch der Lehrer der inneren Schulen Europas wurde. Boddha oder Buddha ist ein und dieselbe Persönlichkeit.
Um verstehen zu können, was der Eingeweihte bei diesen drei Namen empfand, und um das, was sie geben konnten, ahnen zu können, müssen wir zurückgehen in der Menschheitsevolution und müssen uns näher auf den Rosenkreuzerokkultismus und die Rosenkreuzerart einlassen. Verstehen im Hören wollen wir. Blicken wir zurück in die Vergangenheit. Vorgeschrittene Menschen, solche, die aus der Menge herausragten, gab es immer. Sie waren es, zu denen der Durchschnittsmensch in Verehrung aufblickte als zu hohen Idealen. Anfeuernd auf seine Moral und Lebensenergie wirkte es, wenn er aufblickte zu solchen Persönlichkeiten, die es in Weisheit und Intellektualität so hoch gebracht. Heute noch strömt die Kraft der hohen Geister in unsere feineren Leiber ein. Blicken wir zurück in die Vergangenheit zu all den spirituellen Individualitäten, von denen jetzt gesprochen werden soll, zurück bis in die Zeit der uralt indischen Kultur. Gehen wir noch weiter in der Menschheitsevolution zurück, bis in die Zeit der alten Atlantis und ihrem Untergang, dem Ereignis, das uns trennt von einer noch älteren Epoche der Menschheit, wo unsere Seelen anders gelebt haben als in den heutigen Leibern. Wir wollen uns auf die Beschreibung der damaligen Kultur und des Lebens dort jetzt nicht näher einlassen, sondern nur die Antwort auf die Frage heute zu beleuchten suchen: Wie war in alten Zeiten die Führung unserer Menschheit und woher kamen die Einflüsse?
Wenn der Seher, dessen Geistesauge eröffnet ist, und der da zu lesen versteht in jener feinen Schrift, die wir die Akasha-Chronik nennen, den Blick zurückschweifen läßt in den geistigen Welten, so findet er die Stätten, von denen damals die Kultur und alles geistige Leben ausgegangen sind. Die Stätten findet unsere Seele, in denen in den damaligen Mysterien die Meister mit ihren Schülern versammelt waren. Mannigfache Mysterien gab es in der alten Atlantis, anders waren sie als die heutigen, sie wurden auch anders benannt. Nicht Kirche und nicht Schule allein waren diese Stätten, sondern beides zugleich. In den Stätten, wo man die Wahrheit suchte, fand man Religion und Weisheit, eines waren beide im Mysterium. Wir können mit einem heutigen Wort den Begriff der damaligen Kultusstätten, der Mysterienstätten, charakterisieren, obwohl sie damals ganz anders benannt wurden: atlantische Orakel können wir sie nennen. So werden sie innerhalb der Mysterien Europas genannt.
So wie heute das äußere Wissen und die Erwerbs- und Berufsgebiete des äußeren Lebens unterschieden werden in einzelne Wissenszweige und Abteilungen, so war es in der alten Atlantis im geistigen Leben der atlantischen Orakel und ihrer Weisheitsstätten. Es gab verschiedene Zweige der Orakelerforschung, des okkulten Wissens in der alten Atlantis. Anders als heute war das damals, auch von andern Bedingungen abhängig. Die alte Orakelweisheit war in den einzelnen Orakelstätten verschieden, je nach der Fähigkeit der damaligen Menschen. Sie richtete sich nach dem, was äußerlich den Menschen umgab. Es bestanden Zusammenhänge zwischen bestimmten menschlichen Fähigkeiten und bestimmten Planeten; und so knüpften bestimmte mystisch-okkulte Fähigkeiten an bestimmte Planeten an. Wir haben daher in der alten Atlantis ein Monden-, Merkur-, Venus-, Sonnen-, Mars-, Jupiter-, Saturnorakel zu unterscheiden.
‚Auch unsere heutigen Fähigkeiten haben sich aus dem Kosmos heraus entwickelt wie unsere Erde, und hängen je nachdem mit andern Planeten und deren Einflüssen zusammen. Man sammelte also jeweilen aus der damaligen Bevölkerung Menschen, die dazu geeignet waren, die eine oder andere Erkenntnisfähigkeit auszubilden; dadurch wurden sie der einen oder andern Orakelstätte zugehörig. Sieben solche Orakelstätten gab es in der alten Atlantis, nach den sieben Planeten der alten Atlantis genannt. Das Sonnenorakel erhob sich über sie alle. Im Verborgenen bereitete sich noch das Vulkanorakel zu seiner künftigen Aufgabe vor.
Dem Kosmos entsprungen seiner Fähigkeit nach war jedes dieser Orakel; aber in einem bestimmten Territorium, da flossen die Fähigkeiten aller sieben Orakelstätten zusammen. Dort vereinigte sich das gesamte Wissen aller sieben Orakel der Atlantis. Eine Stätte gab es, das heilige Sonnenorakel, dessen Eingeweihte initiiert waren in das Mysterium und den Dienst dessen, was wir heute die Sonne nennen. Die physische Sonne ist ja nur der äußere Ausdruck, die äußere Physiognomie des geistigen Lebens der hohen Wesenheit, die zu ihrem Leibe, zu ihrem Kleide die physische Sonne hat.
In jener Zeit, von der Sie alle ja gehört haben, als sich die Sonne von der Erde getrennt hat, verließen zugleich mit der physischen Sonne diejenigen Wesenheiten den Schauplatz der Erde, die so weit waren, daß sie für ihre Entwickelung die Erde nicht mehr gebrauchen konnten, die also ihre Menschheitsstufe schon absolviert hatten. Nachdem auch noch der Mond herausgegangen war, konnte die Erde ihre Bestimmung erfüllen, Wohnsitz der Menschheit zu werden. Hätte nur die Sonne auf die Erde eingewirkt, so hätte diese eine solch rasche Entwickelung durchgemacht, daß die Menschen, kaum geboren, schon alt gewesen wären. Hätte aber nur der Mond auf unsere Erde gewirkt, so wären die Menschen zu Mumien erstarrt. Eine Erstarrung, eine Verholzung der Körper wäre eingetreten; zu langsam wäre die Entwickelung vor sich gegangen. Dadurch aber, daß Sonne und Mond von außen in weiser Führung in ihrer Einwirkung auf die Erde das Gleichgewicht halten, dadurch ist es möglich, daß Erde und Menschen nun das für sie geeignete Tempo gefunden haben. Die Wesenheiten, die nicht mehr zu ihrer Entwickelung das brauchten, was sich außer Mond und Erde abspaltete - Mars, Merkur, Venus und so weiter -, die gingen mit der Sonne heraus und hatten nun dort ihren Wohnplatz. Doch blieben sie mit der Erde verbunden und sandten im Licht ihre wohltätigen Kräfte auf sie herab.
Mit Sonne und Erde verbunden ist nun ein Wesen, das ein sehr verborgenes und geheimnisvolles ist; doch von diesem wollen wir jetzt nicht reden, sondern von dem Wesen, das vorangegangen ist der Schar jener hohen Sonnenwesen, die so weit waren, daß sie sich abtrennen konnten von der Erde. Ein führender Sonnengeist ist es, der von der Sonne seine geistige Kraft so auf unsere Erde heruntersendet, wie physisches Licht von der Sonne auf die Erde strahlt. Sonnenwärme und Sonnenlicht strahlt er herab, diese locken das Leben aus der Erde heraus, das Blühen und Gedeihen. Aber mit dem physischen Sonnenlicht zugleich strömten die Werke, die Taten eines geistigen Sonnenwesens auf unsere Erde herunter.
Eingeweiht nun in die Taten dieses hehren Sonnenwesens waren die Initiierten des Sonnenorakels der alten atlantischen Zeit. Der Führer dieses höchsten Orakels, er, der große Eingeweihte, war in der umfassendsten Weise in diese Mysterien eingeweiht. Die ganze alte atlantische Kultur und, wie wir sehen werden, nachatlantische Kultur, ging von ihm aus. Der «Manu», so wurde der Führer des Sonnenorakels genannt - aber auf den Namen kommt es ja nicht an -, er suchte sich die Träger der nachatlantischen Kultur nicht unter den sogenannten Gelehrten und Wissenschaftern, unter den großen Hellsehern und Magiern der damaligen Zeit. Nicht die, welche spirituelle, psychische Erkenntnisse hatten und damals etwa dasselbe darstellten wie heute die Wissenschafter und Gelehrten, taugten dazu, sondern die schlichten Leute, die das Hellsehen allmählich zu verlieren begannen. Das Gegenwartsbewußtsein, das arbeitet sich erst in den letzten Zeiten der Atlantis heraus, als das alte Hellseherbewußtsein allmählich abdämmert und dafür die volle Selbsterkenntnis, das Ich-zu-sichSagen, auftritt. Diejenigen, die intellektuell denken konnten, die sammelte der große Manu; nicht die Hellseher, nicht die Magier, aber die, welche die ersten Elemente des Rechnens, des Zählens in sich aufnahmen und ausbildeten, welche die Verachteten waren, gar nichts konnten nach Ansicht der maßgebenden Kreise - so etwa wie heute die Theosophen -, die sammelte er und zog mit ihnen hinüber zu der heiligen Stätte Asiens, dem Punkte, von dem aus die nachatlantische Kultur kommen sollte. Europa, Asien und Afrika - Amerika wollen wir hier beiseite lassen - sind besiedelt worden von den Nachkömmlingen der alten Atlantier, die unter der Führung des Manu dahin herübergegangen waren. Der Eingeweihte des Sonnenorakels hatte nun dafür zu sorgen, daß die Begründung dieser nachatlantischen Kulturen sowie die Entwickelung der nachatlantischen Menschheit, mit den rechten Einflüssen versehen, vor sich ging. Er hatte schon früh zu sorgen, daß hinübergetragen werde alles das, was wertvoll für die künftige Entwickelung war. Es ist ein Gesetz des Okkultismus, diese Aufbewahrung, ein Gesetz der spirituellen Ökonomie. Nur aus der Kenntnis des Okkultismus, aus der spirituellen Weisheit heraus kann man das wissen.
Der große Eingeweihte nahm nun etwas Wertvolles aus der alten Atlantis mit sich hinüber nach Europa. Er hatte zu diesem Zweck vorher sozusagen die andern Orakelstätten bereist, inspiziert, wenn Sie es so ausdrücken wollen. Sie wissen, daß beim gewöhnlichen Menschen bald nach dem Tode sich der Ätherleib vom Astralleib und Ich loslöst und allmählich im allgemeinen Weltenäther sich auflöst; ebenso nach gegebener Zeit der Astralleib. Eine Durchbrechung dieses Gesetzes findet im Interesse der spirituellen Ökonomie statt. So geschah es auch bei den Ätherleibern der sieben größten Eingeweihten der Orakelstätten der alten Atlantis.
Was heißt arbeiten an sich? Das heißt reinigen den Ätherleib und den Astralleib. Nun, der Äther- und Astralleib, der durchgereinigt, spiritualisiert ist, der löst sich nicht auf nach dem Tode, sondern bleibt erhalten nach dem Gesetz der spirituellen Ökonomie. Kurz, in den Mysterien gibt es die Mittel der Aufbewahrung — darüber Näheres zu sagen, würde jetzt zu weit führen - dessen, was an wertvollen Ätherleibern und Astralleibern von großen Initiierten errungen ist. Das wird von den Bewahrern in den Mysterienschulen erhalten. Darum zog der Eingeweihte des Sonnenorakels aus nach den andern atlantischen Orakelstätten und sammelte die sieben Ätherleiber der größten atlantischen Initiierten und nahm sie mit sich. Und nunmehr zog er durch seine Weisheit eine Anzahl Menschen heran, die tüchtig werden sollten für die kommende Kultur. So zog er sie heran, die Menschen, die um diese große Individualität vereinigt waren, daß sie immer fähiger und reiner wurden. Eine Kunst darf genannt werden, was nun folgte. Nach einiger Zeit nämlich konnten die sieben bedeutendsten Ätherleiber der sieben größten Eingeweihten der alten atlantischen Orakel einverleibt werden sieben Menschen, die ihrem Ich, ihrer Urteilskraft nach und so weiter in diesem Sinne schlichte Leute waren, die gar nichts bedeuteten äußerlich. Aber in sich trugen sie die sieben zuhöchst entwickelten Ätherleiber der sieben bedeutendsten Eingeweihten. Diese hatten sie in sich einströmen lassen, und dadurch konnten sie ausströmen lassen zu bestimmten Zeiten durch Inspiration von oben die großen, gewaltigen Schauungen und Wahrheiten der Evolution. Über all dieses hohe Wissen konnten sie sprechen.
Diese sieben schickte der große Eingeweihte dahin, wo noch am meisten Sinn und Verständnis für Geistiges, für die geistigen Welten war. Diese sieben Weisheitsträger sandte er ins alte Indien. Dort hatten die Menschen noch das Gefühl und das Bewußtsein, daß sie dereinst aus geistiger Urwelt entsprungen, aus dem Schoße der Gottheit herausgeboren waren. Maja, Illusion, dünkte ihnen daher diese ganze physische Welt. Sie sehnten sich zurück nach dieser Welt der Götter, der göttlich-geistigen Wesenheiten, mit denen sie dereinst gelebt hatten. Zu diesen Menschen konnten nun die sieben Weisheitsträger sprechen. Die heiligen Rishis werden sie genannt. Sie sind es, welche die erste Morgenröte unserer nachatlantischen Kultur heraufführen. Damit ist die Möglichkeit gegeben worden für alle diese Völker, die aus der Atlantis herübergewandert sind und sich das Bewußtsein und die Sehnsucht für die geistige Welt mit ihren göttlich-geistigen Wesenheiten bewahrt hatten, Kunde über diese Welt zu erhalten und den Weg dahin wieder hinauf zu finden.
Aber es kamen andere Zeiten. Es gab Völker, die nicht nur dazu bestimmt waren, in den geistigen Welten zu schauen, sondern solche, die mitbegründen wollten eine neue Kultur und lieb gewinnen sollten die physische Welt; die nicht nur Maja oder Illusion in dieser physischen Welt sehen sollten, sondern die anfingen zu verstehen, daß diese physische Welt nur der Ausdruck, die Physiognomie für die dahinterstehende geistige Welt ist. Diese zweite Periode ist die urpersische Kultur, die Zarathustra-Kultur. Die äußere Geschichte, die kennt nur einen verhältnismäßig späten Zarathustra, sie ahnt nicht, daß es in diesen alten Zeiten üblich war, die Namen der großen Führer auch den Nachfolgern beizulegen. Hier ist gemeint der größte Zarathustra, einer der intimsten Schüler des Eingeweihten des Sonnenorakels. Er hatte den Zusammenhang zu finden zwischen der Sinneswelt und der geistigen Welt; das war seine Aufgabe. Für ihn galt es, seinen Schülern klarzumachen, daß dieser physische Sonnenball der Leib der geistigen Wesenheiten ist, die ihren Wohnsitz in der Sonne haben, und daß diese ganze physische Welt wie Glieder und Teile des physischen Leibes göttlich-geistiger Wesenheiten anzusehen ist. Wie die Sonne eine große Aura um sich hat, so hat der Mensch seine kleine Aura, den mikrokosmischen Ausdruck jener großen Aura. Die Sonne ist der Leib des Sonnengeistes, der sich geoffenbart hat im Sonnenorakel der alten atlantischen Zeit. Sichtbar wurde dieser Sonnengeist dem Zarathustra im Hellsehen. Die große Sonnenaura nannte er den Sonnengeist - Ormuzd nennt ihn die spätere Geheimlehre, es ist dieselbe Wesenheit, die Zarathustra auch Ahura Mazdao nannte. Sehen sollten die Menschen in der physischen Sonne den Ahura Mazdao und sich nicht verführen lassen von Ahriman, von ihm, der seit dem letzten Drittel der atlantischen Zeit im Physischen lebt, und der dem Menschen die Seele angreift mit der Sinnenwahrnehmung, also von außen her. Luzifer dagegen ist derjenige, der von innen die Seele des Menschen angreift. Zarathustra hatte in den Menschen zu entzünden das Gefühl, die Herzensneigung für den großen Sonnengeist. In gewaltigen Worten tat er das, in Worten, die nicht in unsere Sprache zu übertragen sind. Alles, was Sie Herrliches in dem Avesta, in den Gathas finden, so schön diese Schriften auch sind, sie sind doch nur der schwache äußere Ausdruck der großen, erhabenen, ursprünglichen Zarathustra-Worte. Etwa wiedergeben kann man in unserer Sprache die Worte mit Folgendem:
«Ich will reden, nun höret und horchet mir zu, ihr, die ihr von nah, ihr, die ihr von fern Verlangen danach traget - ich will reden von dem, was auf der Welt mir das Höchste, was Er mir geoffenbart hat, der große, der mächtige Ahura Mazdao. Nun höret und horchet mir zu und merket alles genau: Nicht mehr soll der Irrlehrer, der Böse, der schlechten Glauben mit seinem Munde bekannt hat, verführen die Menschheit - denn Er wird offenbar, Ahura Mazdao, der Mächtige! Wer nicht hören will meine Worte, wie ich sie sage, wie ich sie meine, der wird Übles erfahren, wenn der Zeitenlauf zu Ende geht.» Und zu andern Zeiten sprach der Zarathustra: «So groß und so mächtig ist Er, der sich mir in der Sonne geoflenbart hat, daß ich alles für Ihn dahingebe. Gerne opfere ich Ihm meines Leibes Leben, meiner Sinne ätherisches Sein, den Ausdruck meiner Taten» - den Astralleib. Das war das Gelöbnis, das einstens der große Zarathustra getan.
Zwei Schüler hatte der Zarathustra. Dem einen derselben, dem teilte er durch spirituelle Mittel alles das mit, was man mit hellseherischen Astralorganen sehen kann. Dieser eine wurde wiedergeboren unter dem Namen Hermes, der ägyptische Hermes. Dem zweiten teilte er mit, was man mit hellseherischem Ätherleib wissen kann, die Weisheit der Akasha-Chronik: Moses war es. Sie finden sie wieder in den Büchern des Moses.
Hermes, der bei seiner Wiedergeburt den Astralleib des Zarathustra trug, dem teilte er mit nicht nur die Lehre, sondern das Wesen des Lehrers, solches kann geschehen: den hingeopferten Astralleib des Zarathustra. Zarathustra-Weisheit war es also, die Hermes, der Träger der dritten Kulturepoche, verkündete.
Wiedergeboren wurde auch der andere Schüler, dem er die Weisheit im Ätherleibe gegeben hatte. Ihm war bei seiner Wiedergeburt einverwoben der eigene Ätherleib des Zarathustra, den er hingeopfert hatte: Moses war dieser Schüler. Finden können Sie solche Tatsachen immer in den religiösen Urkunden, doch nur verhüllt wird solches angedeutet in den heiligen Schriften. Lesen Sie die Erzählung von der Geburt des Moses. Was geschah da? Das Kind wurde in ein Kästchen von Schilfpappe gelegt und ins Wasser gebracht. Was heißt das? Er wurde abgeschlossen von aller Welt. Ich und Astralleib durften nicht vorher zum Ausdruck kommen, ehe nicht das Prinzip des Ätherleibes durchgedrungen ist. Wie geschieht dieses? Während der Zeit, die Moses abgeschlossen im Korbe im Wasser ruhte, leuchtet in ihm der einverwobene Ätherleib auf. Danach erst konnten dann der Astralleib und das Ich arbeiten. Die gewaltigen Bilder der Genesis, die noch lange die Menschheit beschäftigen werden, was sind sie anderes als Bilder aus der Akasha-Chronik? - Ohne Okkultismus ist das nicht zu verstehen.
Nun stehen wir in der vierten Epoche der nachatlantischen Kultur, der griechisch-römischen. Bis jetzt wurden die Menschen nur immer so ausgebildet, daß sie die Erde lieb gewinnen sollten. Aber es waren auch solche da, die in der atlantischen Zeit Genossen der Götter gewesen waren. Die Frage ist daher wohl berechtigt: Wo sind sie, die Iche der großen Eingeweihten jener Zeit? Bei einem solchen Ich der atlantischen Zeit, das dazumal in jener weicheren, feineren Körperlichkeit war, ist das Dasein auf der Erde so zu verstehen, daß diese Individualitäten sich nur so lange zu verkörpern hatten, als es notwendig war, um den Zusammenhang der Urweltweisheit und der Urweltspiritualität mit den Menschen aufrechtzuerhalten.
Eine solche Individualität ist der große Buddha, der wirklich erfüllen konnte die morgenländischen Schriften mit jener tiefen Weisheit und spirituellen Kraft, die wir in ihnen finden. Die Mitteilungen über ihn, wir begreifen sie als Okkultisten und wissen sie wörtlich zu nehmen. Wenn es zum Beispiel heißt: «Er leuchtete bei seiner Geburt wie das helle Sonnenlicht», so ist das wahr; oder wenn er sagt: «Die letzte der Inkarnationen habe ich beschritten, fürderhin brauche ich nicht mehr auf diese Erde zu kommen, es sei denn freiwillig.» In der nachatlantischen Zeit hat er sich auch durch intellektuelle Erkenntnis hindurchgearbeitet, und wir verstehen ihn, wenn er sagt, wie in ihm aufleuchtete die Reihe der Inkarnationen und Einweihungsstufen, die er hinter sich hatte:
Vor mir stand der Lichtglanz der Gestalten
aber meine Intuition war noch nicht rein!Ich sah die Geister der Erkenntnis —
aber meine Intuition war noch nicht rein!Ich sah den Ort der Einweihung —<
aber meine Intuition war noch nicht rein!Ich war der Genosse unter denen:
Jetzt war meine Intuition rein!
Hier haben wir die Erleuchtung des Buddha.
Er war einer derjenigen, mit denen wir leben in der Rosenkreuzertheosophie. Drei der Meister haben wir genannt: Zarathas, Skythianos, Boddha oder Buddha.
So sehen wir, wie sich diese großen führenden Persönlichkeiten in die Gegenwart hineinstellen. Der Okkultist kann alle diese Dinge nachprüfen. Doch nicht nur, was solche Größen hinterlassen, sondern alles, was für die Menschheit wertvoll ist, wird im Haushalte der spirituellen Ökonomie aufbewahrt. Nehmen wir zum Beispiel eine Persönlichkeit wie Galilei, der in der Physik des 16. Jahrhunderts Großes, Bedeutungsvolles geleistet hat. In Galilei lebte ein Ätherleib, der nach seinem Tode nicht verlorengehen darf. Weit weg von dem Orte, wo einst Galilei gewirkt, in der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts, da lebte eine Persönlichkeit, die nach Jahrzehnten einer devotionellen Kindheit sich vorbereitet hat zu Großem. Tief in Rußland, am Weißen Meer, in einfachsten Verhältnissen lebte eine Persönlichkeit, die sich Michail Lomonossow nannte. Unbekannt, ohne Mittel, wanderte er nach Moskau, studierte dort, begründete die russische Grammatik. Lomonossow, er trug den Ätherleib des Galilei in sich. Und da begab es sich nun, daß eine Persönlichkeit, die das wußte, daß der Ätherleib des Galilei erhalten geblieben und dabei war, als gerade diese Tatsache im Okkultismus erforscht wurde, diesen Zusammenhang fand: diese Persönlichkeit, die wußte gar nichts von Michail Lomonossow. Das ist keine Schande, man kann nicht alles wissen auf dem physischen Plan [siehe S. 290].
So sehen wir, daß durch das Gesetz der spirituellen Ökonomie das Wertvolle erhalten bleibt und die Vergangenheit mit der Zukunft verknüpft wird. So trifft man in den Rosenkreuzermysterien auch auf die Individualität, die in Buddha verkörpert auf dem physischen Plan lebte, die in der Atlantis als Bodhisattva im Ätherleib nur lebte, und dann als Buddha bis in den physischen Leib herunterstieg.
Unseren Blick wollen wir nun richten auf die Zeit des Buddha, auf die des Zarathustra, und auf das, was die Seelen in der Zwischenzeit zu tun hatten.
Da haben wir auf der einen Seite die Lehre von dem Ahura Mazdao und auf der andern Seite das im Menschen, was die Erde immer lieber gewinnt. Vergegenwärtigen wir uns noch einmal die indische, die persische, die chaldäisch-assyrisch-babylonische Zeit. In dieser Zeit verlor die Seele immer mehr den Zusammenhang mit der geistigen Welt. Sie gewann in der Griechenzeit die Erde so lieb, daß der Ausspruch jenes großen Griechen Wahrheit ward, der da sagte: Lieber ein Bettler sein in der Oberwelt, als ein König im Reiche der Schatten!
In dieser vierten nachatlantischen Kultur, der griechisch-lateinischen, da war alles entzückend in der äußeren Welt. Der Seher betrachtet zum Beispiel mit dem physischen Auge die Ruinen des Tempels von Paestum. Bewundernd schwelgen kann er in der Schönheit der Formen, in dem Reiz der Linien. Wendet er aber dann den Blick ab und sucht das in der geistigen Welt, so findet er dort nichts von dem: wie ausgelöscht ist da alles. Und so erging es den Seelen zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt. Eisig abgeschlossen in ihrer Individualität, fanden sie sich abgeschnitten von allem Geistigen und sehnten sich nur nach dem Physischen, nach all der Schönheit zurück. Da hinein, in diese eisige Abgeschlossenheit, da mußte nun Ahura Mazdao leuchten. Der Führer der Sonne selbst, er mußte heruntersteigen. Mensch mußte er werden in der physischen Welt, um Hilfe zu bringen den Toten und den Lebendigen: Mensch unter Menschen mußte er sein! Das was in der Sonne lebt, das Hohe und Herrliche, das steigt herunter auf die Erde und kündigt sich jetzt im Menschen selbst an. Zuvor hat es sich in den Elementen angekündigt. Im Feuer des brennenden Dornbusches und im Feuer auf dem Sinai kündigte es sich dem Mose an. Das israelitische Volk sollte sich kein Bild von seinem Gotte machen - warum das? Kein äußerer Name kann «mich», dieses Wesen, benennen; ein ganz anderer Name nur kann das ausdrücken: «Ich bin der Ich-bin!» Es gibt keine Möglichkeit, woanders den Namen zu finden des Sonnengeistes als in dem Menschen. Das, was als Ich im Menschen lebt, das ist das Christus-Wesen.
Die Jehova-Verkündigung ging voran dem Christus. Das war die Zeit, in der das Christus-Wesen immer mehr heruntersteigen konnte. Wie hatte Zarathustra sich einst dem hohen Sonnenwesen angelobt? Was wollte er ihm opfern? Leib, Sinn, Leben und Rede. Zarathustra wurde wiedergeboren als ein Zeitgenosse des großen Buddha. Er kann sich seinen Äther- und seinen Astralleib, die er hingeopfert hat, nun selber aufbauen. Als Zarathas oder Nazarathos wird er wiedergeboren und wird da der Lehrer des Pythagoras, der selbst wiedergeboren wird als einer der drei Weisen aus dem Morgenlande und dann ein Schüler des Jesus von Nazareth wird. Der Zarathustra, der geopfert hat einmal seinen Astralleib und einmal seinen Ätherleib, der ist nun fähig, die äußere Hülle auch dem abzugeben, den er dereinst verkündigt hat: jetzt als der Jesus von Nazareth des westlichen Okkultismus. Jesus von Nazareth konnte dem Sonnengeist selber seinen Körper zur Verfügung stellen, er konnte sagen: «Ich bin das Licht der Welt!»
In den Mysterien war sie immer bekannt, die Christus-Wesenheit: im alten Indien der sieben Rishis nannte man sie, die stellvertretend für den Christus dastand: Vishva-Karman; Ahura Mazdao nannte sie der Zarathustra; Osiris hieß sie in Ägypten; Jahve oder Jehova nannte sie das jüdische Volk. Und jetzt, in der vierten Kulturepoche, lebte dieselbe Wesenheit drei Jahre auf unserer physischen Erde. Und sie ist es, die in der Zukunft wieder verbinden wird die Sonne mit der Erde. Als das Blut auf Golgatha aus den Wunden des Erlösers floß, da hat sich der Christus mystisch mit der Erde verbunden; da erscheint die Christus-Wesenheit selber in der Aura der Erde. Seither ist sie dort zu sehen. Und der erste, der sie dort gesehen hat, wer war es? Paulus, der am meisten zur Ausbreitung des Christentums beigetragen hat. Was hat aus Saulus einen Paulus gemacht? Nicht die Lehren, nicht die Ereignisse in Palästina, sondern das Ereignis von Damaskus, ein übersinnliches Ereignis. Er konnte vorher nicht glauben, daß derjenige, der so schimpflich am Kreuze gestorben war, der Christus sei; aber er wußte als Eingeweihter der Kabbala, daß der Christus, wenn er auf Erden erschienen sein wird, in der Erdenaura sichtbar wird. Und das war das Erlebnis des Paulus. So wurde aus dem Saulus ein Paulus. Eine Frühgeburt nennt er sich - auch von Buddha wird das gesagt. Es bedeutet, daß ein solcher nicht zu tief in die Materie herabgestiegen ist. Er sah und wußte, wer der Christus ist, als er vor Damaskus hellsehend wurde.
Der Christus hat als Bodhisattva in Buddha gewirkt. Seit dem Ereignis von Golgatha ist er der planetarische Geist der Erde, und seither ist er zu finden in der physischen Erdenaura. Ein neues Licht ist in dieser und in jener Welt durch den Einschlag des Christus-Prinzips entzündet worden. Der Leib des Jesus von Nazareth, der Ätherleib, Astralleib und das Ich des Jesus von Nazareth, sie sind in großer Vervielfältigung in der geistigen Welt vorhanden. Das ist etwas höchst Bedeutungsvolles, was damit gesagt wird. Um dies zu verstehen, gibt uns die Natur zahlreiche aufklärende Beispiele. Denken wir nur an das Samenkorn, das zum Getreidehalm wird und sich dabei so stark vervielfältigt. Ein Gleichnis ist dieser scheinbar einfache Vorgang in der Natur für die gesetzmäßig verlaufenden Geschehnisse in der übersinnlichen Welt. Viele Kopien vom Äther- und Astralleibe und vom Ich des Jesus von Nazareth sind da, um einverleibt zu werden den vorläufigen Trägern des Christus-Prinzips. So bedeutungsvoll ist dasjenige, was mit dem Christus-Prinzip zusammenhängt, daß es erst nach und nach von der Menschheit begriffen werden kann.
Eine Kopie des Ätherleibes des Jesus von Nazareth trug zum Beispiel Augustinus. Sie werden nun sein Leben, seine Irrtümer und seine Leistungen besser verstehen können. Sein Ich und sein Astralleib blieben sich selbst überlassen, und nur im Ätherleib lebte sich seine große mystische Begabung dar. Bei Franz von Assisi, bei Thomas von Agnino ist es der Astralleib des Jesus von Nazareth, dessen Kopie ihnen einverwoben ist, und die sie als Lehrer so gewaltig wirken läßt. Sie wirken aus dem heraus, worinnen einst der Christus war.
Manchmal müssen bei diesem Einverweben auch äußere Geschehnisse, es müssen zum Beispiel Naturkatastrophen oder ähnliches mithelfen. So wird von Thomas von Aquino erzählt, daß der Blitz einschlägt in den Raum, in dem er sich befindet, und das Schwesterchen in der Wiege neben ihm tötet, ihn aber verschont. Für ihn bedeutet dieses Einschlagen des Blitzes neben ihm, daß die Kraft, die aus den Elementen stammt, mithilft, um ihn aufnehmen zu lassen die Kopie des Astralleibes des Jesus von Nazareth. Auch eine Zlisabeth von Thüringen, sie hatte einen Abdruck des Astralleibes des Jesus von Nazareth. "
Zarathustra oder Jesus von Nazareth ist einer der drei Meister der Rosenkreuzer. Abbilder seines Ich, das heißt eines Ich, in dem gewohnt hat der Christus-Geist selbst, sind in Vervielfältigung in der geistigen Welt zu finden. Es warten im Hinblick auf die künftige Menschheitsentwickelung in der geistigen Welt auf uns die Kopien des Ich des Jesus von Nazareth. Solche Menschen, die sich hinaufringen können zu den Höhen der spirituellen Weisheit und Liebe, sie sind Kandidaten für die Kopien des Ich des Jesus von Nazareth, sie sind dann die Christus-Träger, die wahren Christophoren. Sie sollen auf dieser Erde die Vorbereiter sein für sein Wiedererscheinen.
Kraft gibt uns das für unser Wirken in die Zukunft hinein, wenn wir wissen, welche Individualitäten hinter der Mission bedeutsamer Menschen stehen. Es gibt eine Möglichkeit der Prüfung dieser Tatsachen. Erforschen kann nicht jeder das, was hinter den Kulissen der physischen Welt vor sich geht, prüfen aber das Erforschte, das kann jeder an den heiligen Schriften vor und nach der christlichen Zeit. Und es können diese Tatsachen dem Verständnis aufleuchten. Sie werden uns dann zu spirituellem Lebensblut.
From Buddha to Christ
Presented at the International Congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society.
I do not intend to give you a religious-philosophical consideration, a literary-historical treatise, or a scientific lecture on this subject, but only to say what spiritual science and occultism have to say about it, namely, what they have to give us from Rosicrucian occultism, what they have to say about such great figures as Buddha and Christ.
In a lecture intended for more mature theosophists, I am sure I am permitted to speak more intimately about these truths. I will speak about them in broad terms, into which detailed questions may also be incorporated. Rosicrucian occultism represents one of the great principles of occult-theosophical research, from which spiritual life is to flow into the hearts. We also find the goals and ideals of theosophy outside the Theosophical Society. But there is a difference in the means used to attain occult knowledge and truth and to utilize them correctly, for occult research can and must flow directly into life. Let me illustrate this with a trivial example: The human soul is similar to a stove, which does not need to be told to warm the room, as this is its job. It does so automatically when we put wood in it and light it. Someone might say that you cannot see from the wood that it gives off heat. And yet there is warmth. By putting the completely different wood into the stove and lighting it, we bring warmth into our house. By becoming accustomed to the concepts of spiritual science, we become accustomed to free judgment and free orientation in the world.
It is not our task to preach ideals, but to give the human soul fuel, the fuel of spiritual wisdom, genuine brotherhood, and true humanity. This is our goal.
During the period when the spiritual current of Christianity was darkening because Christianity had become externalized, the current we call Rosicrucianism arose in the 13th and 14th centuries. It was given the task of cultivating ancient wisdom and safeguarding the treasures of primordial wisdom, while outside in the world Christianity became increasingly externalized and faded in its true form. Where only external forms and ossified dogmas prevailed, there was only renunciation and condemnation for real spiritual life; renunciation and condemnation for what was revered in the mysteries as the highest and most sacred. Thus, at that time, one often heard the words: I curse the Skythianos, I curse the Boddha, I curse the Zarathas. These are the three names of those who were revered in secret and within the mysteries and mystery schools of the Rosicrucians as holy master names.
Zarathas is the same personality as Zarathustra, not the Zarathustra of history, but that high individuality who founded the ancient Persian culture and was the teacher of the secret schools of that time. Skythianos, an ancient, highly developed personality who, in a later incarnation in Inner Asia, led the occult schools and later also became the teacher of the inner schools of Europe. Boddha or Buddha is one and the same personality.
In order to understand what the initiate felt when he heard these three names, and to be able to guess what they could give, we must go back in human evolution and take a closer look at Rosicrucian occultism and the Rosicrucian way of life. We want to understand by listening. Let us look back into the past. There have always been advanced human beings, those who stood out from the crowd. They were the ones whom the average person looked up to with admiration as high ideals. Looking up to such personalities, who had attained such heights of wisdom and intellectuality, had an inspiring effect on their morals and life energy. Even today, the power of these high spirits still flows into our finer bodies. Let us look back to the past, to all the spiritual individuals we are about to discuss, back to the time of ancient Indian culture. Let us go even further back in human evolution, to the time of ancient Atlantis and its downfall, the event that separates us from an even older epoch of humanity, when our souls lived differently than they do in our present bodies. We do not want to go into detail here about the culture and life of that time, but only seek to shed light on the answer to the question: How was humanity guided in ancient times, and where did the influences come from?
When the seer, whose spiritual eye is open and who knows how to read the subtle writing we call the Akashic Records, casts his gaze back into the spiritual worlds, he finds the places from which culture and all spiritual life originated at that time. Our soul finds the places where the masters gathered with their disciples in the mysteries of that time. There were many mysteries in ancient Atlantis, but they were different from those of today and were also called by different names. These places were not churches or schools alone, but both at the same time. In the places where people sought the truth, they found religion and wisdom, which were one and the same in the mysteries. We can use a modern term to describe the cult sites and mystery sites of that time, although they were called something completely different back then: we can call them Atlantean oracles. That is what they are called within the mysteries of Europe.
Just as today, external knowledge and the fields of work and professions of external life are divided into individual branches of knowledge and departments, so it was in ancient Atlantis in the spiritual life of the Atlantean oracles and their places of wisdom. There were different branches of oracle research, of occult knowledge in ancient Atlantis. It was different then, also depending on other conditions. The ancient wisdom of the oracles varied from one oracle site to another, depending on the abilities of the people at that time. It was based on what surrounded people externally. There were connections between certain human abilities and certain planets, and thus certain mystical-occult abilities were linked to certain planets. We can therefore distinguish between a moon, Mercury, Venus, sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn oracle in ancient Atlantis.
Our present abilities have also developed out of the cosmos, just like our earth, and are connected with other planets and their influences. People who were suited to developing one or another faculty of knowledge were gathered from the population of that time and assigned to one or another oracle site. There were seven such oracle sites in ancient Atlantis, named after the seven planets of ancient Atlantis. The Sun Oracle rose above them all. In secret, the Volcano Oracle was still preparing for its future task.
Each of these oracles sprang from the cosmos according to its ability, but in a certain territory, the abilities of all seven oracle sites flowed together. There, the entire knowledge of all seven oracles of Atlantis was united. There was one place, the sacred Sun Oracle, whose initiates were initiated into the mystery and service of what we today call the sun. The physical sun is only the outer expression, the outer physiognomy of the spiritual life of the high being who has the physical sun as its body, its garment.
In that time, of which you have all heard, when the sun separated from the earth, those beings who were so far advanced that they no longer needed the earth for their development, who had already completed their human stage, left the earth at the same time as the physical sun. After the moon had also departed, the earth was able to fulfill its destiny of becoming the dwelling place of humanity. If only the sun had acted upon the earth, it would have undergone such rapid development that human beings would have been old as soon as they were born. But if only the moon had acted upon our Earth, human beings would have frozen into mummies. A freezing, a lignification of the bodies would have occurred; development would have proceeded too slowly. However, because the sun and moon, guided by wisdom, maintain a balance in their influence on the Earth from outside, it is possible for the Earth and human beings to have now found the pace that is right for them. The beings who no longer needed what separated from the moon and Earth for their development—Mars, Mercury, Venus, and so on—left with the sun and now have their home there. But they remained connected to Earth and sent their beneficial forces down to it in the light.
Connected to the sun and the earth is now a being that is very hidden and mysterious; but we will not speak of this now, but rather of the being that preceded the host of those high sun beings who were ready to separate themselves from the earth. It is a leading sun spirit who sends his spiritual power down to our earth from the sun, just as physical light shines from the sun onto the earth. He radiates down sun warmth and sunlight, which draw life out of the earth, causing it to blossom and flourish. But at the same time as the physical sunlight, the works, the deeds of a spiritual sun being, streamed down onto our earth.
The initiates of the Sun Oracle of ancient Atlantean times were now initiated into the deeds of this noble solar being. The leader of this highest oracle, he, the great initiate, was initiated into these mysteries in the most comprehensive way. The entire ancient Atlantean culture and, as we shall see, post-Atlantean culture, emanated from him. The “Manu,” as the leader of the Sun Oracle was called—but the name is not important—did not seek the bearers of post-Atlantean culture among the so-called scholars and scientists, among the great clairvoyants and magicians of that time. It was not those who had spiritual, psychic knowledge and represented at that time what scientists and scholars represent today who were suitable for this task, but rather the simple people who were gradually beginning to lose their clairvoyance. Contemporary consciousness only emerged in the final days of Atlantis, when the ancient clairvoyant consciousness gradually faded and was replaced by full self-awareness, the ability to say “I.” The great Manu gathered those who were capable of intellectual thought; not the clairvoyants, not the magicians, but those who absorbed and developed the first elements of arithmetic and counting, who were despised and considered incapable of anything by the ruling circles – much like theosophists today – he gathered them and led them to the sacred place in Asia, the point from which the post-Atlantean culture was to emerge. Europe, Asia, and Africa—let us leave America aside for now—were settled by the descendants of the ancient Atlanteans who had crossed over there under the leadership of Manu. The initiate of the Sun Oracle now had to ensure that the establishment of these post-Atlantean cultures and the development of post-Atlantean humanity proceeded with the right influences. He had to ensure early on that everything that was valuable for future development was carried over. This preservation is a law of occultism, a law of spiritual economy. Only through knowledge of occultism, through spiritual wisdom, can one know this.
The great initiate took something valuable from ancient Atlantis with him to Europe. To this end, he had previously traveled to the other oracle sites, inspected them, if you will. You know that in ordinary human beings, soon after death, the etheric body separates from the astral body and the ego and gradually dissolves into the general world ether; the astral body follows in due course. An exception to this law occurs in the interests of spiritual economy. This is what happened to the etheric bodies of the seven greatest initiates of the oracle sites of ancient Atlantis.
What does it mean to work on oneself? It means to purify the etheric body and the astral body. Now, the etheric and astral bodies that have been thoroughly purified and spiritualized do not dissolve after death, but remain preserved according to the law of spiritual economy. In short, in the mysteries there are means of preservation — to say more about this would go too far here — of what has been achieved in the valuable etheric and astral bodies of great initiates. This is preserved by the keepers in the mystery schools. That is why the initiate of the Sun Oracle set out for the other Atlantean oracle sites and gathered the seven etheric bodies of the greatest Atlantean initiates and took them with him. And now, through his wisdom, he drew to himself a number of people who were to become capable for the coming culture. He gathered them together, these people who were united around this great individuality, so that they became ever more capable and pure. What followed can be called an art. After some time, the seven most significant etheric bodies of the seven greatest initiates of the ancient Atlantean oracles could be incorporated into seven people who, according to their ego, their power of judgment, and so on, were simple people who meant nothing outwardly. But within themselves they carried the seven most highly developed etheric bodies of the seven most significant initiates. They had allowed these to flow into themselves, and through this they were able to let flow out at certain times, through inspiration from above, the great, powerful visions and truths of evolution. They were able to speak about all this high knowledge.
The great initiate sent these seven to where there was still the most sense and understanding of the spiritual, of the spiritual worlds. He sent these seven bearers of wisdom to ancient India. There, people still had the feeling and awareness that they had once sprung from the spiritual primordial world, that they had been born from the bosom of the deity. Therefore, the entire physical world seemed to them to be Maya, illusion. They longed to return to this world of gods, of divine-spiritual beings with whom they had once lived. The seven bearers of wisdom were now able to speak to these people. They are called the holy Rishis. They are the ones who ushered in the first dawn of our post-Atlantean culture. This gave all those peoples who had migrated from Atlantis and preserved their consciousness and longing for the spiritual world with its divine-spiritual beings the opportunity to learn about this world and find their way back to it.
But other times came. There were peoples who were not only destined to look into the spiritual worlds, but also those who wanted to help found a new culture and learn to love the physical world; who were not only to see Maya or illusion in this physical world, but who began to understand that this physical world is only the expression, the physiognomy of the spiritual world behind it. This second period is the ancient Persian culture, the Zarathustra culture. Outer history knows only a relatively late Zarathustra; it has no idea that in those ancient times it was customary to give the names of great leaders to their successors. Here we mean the greatest Zarathustra, one of the most intimate disciples of the initiate of the Sun Oracle. His task was to find the connection between the sensory world and the spiritual world. It was important for him to make it clear to his disciples that this physical sun is the body of the spiritual beings who dwell in the sun, and that this entire physical world is to be regarded as the limbs and parts of the physical body of divine-spiritual beings. Just as the sun has a large aura around it, so man has his small aura, the microcosmic expression of that large aura. The sun is the body of the sun spirit, which revealed itself in the sun oracle of ancient Atlantean times. This sun spirit became visible to Zarathustra in clairvoyance. He called the great solar aura the Sun Spirit—Ormuzd calls it the later secret doctrine; it is the same entity that Zarathustra also called Ahura Mazdao. People should see Ahura Mazdao in the physical sun and not allow themselves to be seduced by Ahriman, who has lived in the physical realm since the last third of the Atlantean era and who attacks the human soul through the senses, that is, from outside. Lucifer, on the other hand, is the one who attacks the human soul from within. Zarathustra wanted to ignite in people the feeling of heartfelt devotion to the great spirit of the sun. He did this with powerful words that can't be translated into our language. Everything wonderful you find in the Avesta, in the Gathas, as beautiful as these writings are, is only a weak outer expression of the great, sublime, original words of Zarathustra. The words can be rendered in our language as follows:
“I will speak, now hear and listen to me, you who are near, you who are far away and long for it—I will speak of what is highest in the world, what He has revealed to me, the great, the mighty Ahura Mazdao. Now listen and hear me, and mark well: No longer shall the false teacher, the evil one, who professed false beliefs with his mouth, lead mankind astray—for He will be revealed, Ahura Mazdao, the Mighty One! Whoever does not hear my words as I speak them, as I mean them, will suffer evil when the course of time comes to an end.” And at other times Zarathustra said: “So great and so powerful is He who has revealed Himself to me in the sun that I give everything for Him. I gladly sacrifice to Him the life of my body, the ethereal being of my senses, the expression of my deeds” - the astral body. That was the vow once made by the great Zarathustra.
Zarathustra had two disciples. To one of them he imparted, through spiritual means, everything that can be seen with clairvoyant astral organs. This one was reborn under the name Hermes, the Egyptian Hermes. To the second he imparted what can be known with clairvoyant etheric body, the wisdom of the Akashic Records: it was Moses. You will find it again in the books of Moses.
Hermes, who in his rebirth wore the astral body of Zarathustra, was told not only the teachings, but also the essence of the teacher, that such a thing can happen: the sacrificed astral body of Zarathustra. It was therefore the wisdom of Zarathustra that Hermes, the bearer of the third cultural epoch, proclaimed.
The other disciple, to whom he had given wisdom in the etheric body, was also reborn. At his rebirth, Zarathustra's own etheric body, which he had sacrificed, was woven into him: Moses was this disciple. You can always find such facts in religious documents, but they are only hinted at in the sacred scriptures. Read the story of the birth of Moses. What happened there? The child was placed in a box made of reeds and put into the water. What does that mean? He was cut off from the world. I and the astral body were not allowed to express ourselves until the principle of the etheric body had penetrated. How does this happen? During the time that Moses lay enclosed in the basket in the water, the etheric body woven into him shone forth. Only then could the astral body and the I begin to work. The powerful images of Genesis, which will occupy humanity for a long time to come, what are they if not images from the Akashic Records? Without occultism, this cannot be understood.
We now stand in the fourth epoch of post-Atlantean culture, the Greco-Roman epoch. Until now, human beings have only been educated in such a way that they should learn to love the earth. But there were also those who had been companions of the gods in the Atlantean epoch. The question is therefore justified: Where are they, the I's of the great initiates of that time? For such an ego from the Atlantean era, which at that time was in a softer, more refined physical form, existence on earth must be understood in such a way that these individualities only had to incarnate for as long as was necessary to maintain the connection between the wisdom and spirituality of the primordial world and human beings.
One such individuality is the great Buddha, who was truly able to fill the Eastern scriptures with the profound wisdom and spiritual power that we find in them. As occultists, we understand the messages about him and know how to take them literally. For example, when it says, “At his birth he shone like bright sunlight,” this is true; or when he says, “I have entered the last of the incarnations; henceforth I need not come to this earth unless I do so voluntarily.” In the post-Atlantean period, he also worked his way through intellectual knowledge, and we understand him when he says how the series of incarnations and stages of initiation he had gone through shone up within him:
Before me stood the light of the figures
but my intuition was not yet pure!I saw the spirits of knowledge —
but my intuition was not yet pure!I saw the place of initiation —
but my intuition was not yet pure!I was the comrade among them:
Now my intuition was pure!
Here we have the enlightenment of the Buddha.
He was one of those with whom we live in Rosicrucian theosophy. We have named three of the masters: Zarathas, Skythianos, Boddha or Buddha.
Thus we see how these great leading personalities place themselves in the present. The occultist can verify all these things. But it is not only what such great figures leave behind that is preserved in the household of spiritual economy, but everything that is valuable to humanity. Take, for example, a personality such as Galileo, who achieved great and significant things in 16th-century physics. Galileo had an etheric body that must not be lost after his death. Far away from the place where Galileo once worked, in the middle of the 18th century, there lived a personality who, after decades of a devout childhood, prepared himself for greatness. Deep in Russia, on the White Sea, in the simplest of circumstances, there lived a personality who called himself Mikhail Lomonosov. Unknown and without means, he wandered to Moscow, studied there, and founded Russian grammar. Lomonosov carried Galileo's etheric body within him. And then it happened that a personality who knew that Galileo's etheric body had been preserved and was being researched in occultism discovered this connection: this personality knew nothing about Mikhail Lomonosov. That is no disgrace; one cannot know everything on the physical plane [see p. 290].
Thus we see that through the law of spiritual economy, what is valuable is preserved and the past is linked to the future. Thus, in the Rosicrucian mysteries, we also encounter the individuality that lived embodied in Buddha on the physical plane, that lived only in the etheric body as a bodhisattva in Atlantis, and then descended into the physical body as Buddha.
Let us now turn our gaze to the time of Buddha, to that of Zarathustra, and to what the souls had to do in the meantime.
On the one hand, we have the teaching of Ahura Mazdao, and on the other, that which in human beings the earth is increasingly gaining. Let us recall once more the Indian, Persian, and Chaldean-Assyrian-Babylonian periods. During this time, the soul increasingly lost its connection with the spiritual world. In the Greek period, it grew so fond of the earth that the saying of that great Greek became true who said: Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows!
In this fourth post-Atlantean culture, the Greek-Latin culture, everything in the outer world was delightful. The seer, for example, looks with his physical eyes at the ruins of the temple of Paestum. He can revel in admiration at the beauty of the forms, at the charm of the lines. But when he turns his gaze away and seeks the same in the spiritual world, he finds nothing of the sort: everything there is as if wiped out. And so it was with the souls between death and a new birth. Frozen in their individuality, they found themselves cut off from everything spiritual and longed only for the physical, for all the beauty they had left behind. It was into this icy isolation that Ahura Mazdao had to shine. The leader of the sun himself had to descend. He had to become human in the physical world in order to bring help to the dead and the living: he had to be a human being among humans! That which lives in the sun, the high and glorious, descends to earth and now announces itself in human beings themselves. It had previously announced itself in the elements. In the fire of the burning bush and in the fire on Mount Sinai, it announced itself to Moses. The Israelite people were not to make an image of their God—why? No external name can name “me,” this being; only a completely different name can express this: “I am who I am!” There is no possibility of finding the name of the Sun Spirit anywhere else than in human beings. That which lives as the I in human beings is the Christ Being.
The proclamation of Jehovah preceded Christ. That was the time when the Christ Being was able to descend more and more. How had Zarathustra once pledged himself to the high Sun Being? What did he want to sacrifice to him? Body, senses, life, and speech. Zarathustra was reborn as a contemporary of the great Buddha. He can now rebuild his etheric and astral bodies, which he sacrificed. He is reborn as Zarathas or Nazarathos and becomes the teacher of Pythagoras, who himself is reborn as one of the three wise men from the East and then becomes a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth. Zarathustra, who once sacrificed his astral body and once his etheric body, is now able to give up his outer shell to the one he once proclaimed: now as Jesus of Nazareth of Western occultism. Jesus of Nazareth was able to make his body available to the Sun Spirit himself; he was able to say, “I am the light of the world!”
The Christ being was always known in the mysteries: in ancient India, the seven Rishis called it Vishva-Karman, who stood in for Christ; Ahura Mazdao called it Zarathustra; in Egypt it was called Osiris; the Jewish people called it Yahweh or Jehovah. And now, in the fourth cultural epoch, the same being lived on our physical earth for three years. And it is this being who will reconnect the sun with the earth in the future. When the blood flowed from the wounds of the Savior on Golgotha, Christ mystically connected himself with the earth; the Christ being itself appeared in the aura of the earth. Since then, it has been visible there. And who was the first to see it there? Paul, who contributed most to the spread of Christianity. What turned Saul into Paul? Not the teachings, not the events in Palestine, but the event in Damascus, a supernatural event. He could not believe beforehand that the one who had died so shamefully on the cross was the Christ; but as an initiate of the Kabbalah, he knew that when the Christ appeared on earth, he would become visible in the earth's aura. And that was Paul's experience. Thus Saul became Paul. He calls himself a premature birth—the same is said of Buddha. It means that such a person has not descended too deeply into matter. He saw and knew who Christ was when he became clairvoyant before Damascus.
Christ worked as a bodhisattva in Buddha. Since the event at Golgotha, he has been the planetary spirit of the Earth, and since then he can be found in the physical Earth aura. A new light has been kindled in this world and in the other world through the impact of the Christ principle. The body of Jesus of Nazareth, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I of Jesus of Nazareth exist in great multiplicity in the spiritual world. This is something highly significant. Nature gives us numerous examples that explain this. Just think of the seed that becomes a grain of corn and multiplies so greatly in the process. This seemingly simple process in nature is a parable for the lawful events in the supersensible world. Many copies of the etheric and astral bodies and of the I of Jesus of Nazareth are there to be incorporated into the provisional carriers of the Christ principle. That which is connected with the Christ principle is so significant that it can only be understood by humanity little by little.
For example, Augustine carried a copy of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth. You will now be able to understand his life, his errors, and his achievements better. His ego and his astral body were left to themselves, and only in the etheric body did his great mystical gift manifest itself. In Francis of Assisi and Thomas of Aquino, it is the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth, a copy of which is woven into them, that makes them so powerful as teachers. They work out of that in which Christ once was.
Sometimes external events, such as natural disasters or similar phenomena, must also contribute to this interweaving. It is said of Thomas Aquinas, for example, that lightning struck the room in which he was sitting, killing his little sister in the cradle next to him but sparing him. For him, this strike of lightning next to him meant that the power that comes from the elements was helping him to receive the copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. Elizabeth of Thuringia also had an imprint of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. ”
Zarathustra or Jesus of Nazareth is one of the three masters of the Rosicrucians. Images of his ego, that is, of an ego in which the Christ spirit itself has dwelt, can be found in reproduction in the spiritual world. With regard to the future development of humanity in the spiritual world, copies of the I of Jesus of Nazareth await us. Those people who can raise themselves to the heights of spiritual wisdom and love are candidates for the copies of the I of Jesus of Nazareth; they are then the Christ bearers, the true Christophori. They are to be the preparers on this earth for his reappearance.
Knowing which individualities stand behind the mission of significant people gives us strength for our work in the future. There is a way to verify these facts. Not everyone can research what goes on behind the scenes of the physical world, but everyone can verify what has been researched in the sacred scriptures before and after the Christian era. And these facts can then become clear to our understanding. They then become the spiritual lifeblood for us.