The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. From Buddha to Christ

Presented at the International Congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society.

[ 1 ] 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.

[ 2 ] 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.

[ 3 ] 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.

[ 4 ] 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.

[ 5 ] 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.

[ 6 ] 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?

[ 7 ] 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.

[ 8 ] 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.

[ 9 ] 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.

[ 10 ] 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.

[ 11 ] 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.

[ 12 ] 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.

[ 13 ] 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.

[ 14 ] 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.

[ 15 ] 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.

[ 16 ] 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.

[ 17 ] 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:

[ 18 ] “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.

[ 19 ] 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.

[ 20 ] 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.

[ 21 ] 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.

[ 22 ] 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.

[ 23 ] 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!

[ 24 ] Here we have the enlightenment of the Buddha.

[ 25 ] He was one of those with whom we live in Rosicrucian theosophy. We have named three of the masters: Zarathas, Skythianos, Boddha or Buddha.

[ 26 ] 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].

[ 27 ] 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.

[ 28 ] 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.

[ 29 ] 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!

[ 30 ] 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.

[ 31 ] 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!”

[ 32 ] 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.

[ 33 ] 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.

[ 34 ] 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.

[ 35 ] 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. ”

[ 36 ] 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.

[ 37 ] 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.