The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] Throughout the various periods of the development of Christianity, the Gospel of John was the document that always made the deepest impression on all those who sought a special deepening, an inner immersion in the Christian world currents. Therefore, this Gospel of John was the charter of all Christian mystics who tried to live according to what is presented in the Gospel of John in the personality and being of Christ Jesus.

[ 2 ] In a somewhat different way, Christian humanity has related to the Gospel of Luke throughout the centuries. Seen from a different point of view, this is basically in line with what we were able to hint at yesterday regarding the difference between the Gospels of John and Luke. If the Gospel of John was in some respects a document for mystics, the Gospel of Luke was always a kind of devotional book for the general public, for those who, one could say in a certain way, out of the simplicity and simplicity of their hearts, could rise to the sphere of Christian feeling. The Gospel of Luke is a book of edification that has stood the test of time. For all those who were burdened with suffering and pain, it was always a source of inner comfort. For in this Gospel so much is proclaimed about the great Comforter, the great benefactor of mankind, the Savior of the burdened and the oppressed. The Gospel of Luke was a book to which those who wanted to imbue themselves with Christian love turned in particular, for more than in any other Christian document, the power and urgency of love is unfolded in this Gospel of Luke. And those who in some way were aware – and basically this can apply to all people – that they had loaded any kind of error onto their hearts, they have always found edification and consolation and upliftment of the burdened soul when they looked to the Gospel of Luke and his proclamation and were able to say to themselves: Christ Jesus did not appear only for the righteous, but also for sinners; he sat at table with sinners and tax collectors. If a high level of preparation is needed to fully appreciate the Gospel of John, it can be said of the Gospel of Luke that no mind is so low, so immature, that it cannot fully absorb all the warmth that flows from it.

[ 3 ] Thus the Gospel of Luke has always been a book for the general public, in which even the most childlike mind could find edification. Everything in the human soul that remains childlike from the earliest age to the highest old age has always been drawn to the Gospel of Luke. And above all, the pictorial representation of Christian truths, the way in which art has taken these truths and made them its own – much of this has also been taken from the other Gospels – but what has most powerfully spoken to human hearts from the world of art and painting since time immemorial is found in the Gospel of Luke, and from there it flows into art. All the profound relationships between Christ Jesus and John the Baptist, which have found artistic expression in so many ways, have their source in this immortal book, in the Gospel of Luke.

[ 4 ] Those who allow this document to take effect on them from this point of view will find that it is immersed from beginning to end, as it were, in the principle of love, compassion, simplicity, and even to a certain degree, childlikeness. And where else is this childlikeness expressed in such a warm way as in the childhood story of Jesus of Nazareth, which is given to us by the writer of the Gospel of Luke! Why this was so will also become clear to us as we gradually penetrate deeper and deeper into this remarkable book.

[ 5 ] It will be necessary today to say many things that may initially appear contradictory to those who have heard other lectures of mine on this subject or other cycles. But just wait for the remarks of the next few days, and it will all seem in harmony with what you have heard from me so far about the Christ Jesus and about Jesus of Nazareth. It is impossible to give the whole complicated scope of the truth at once, and today it will be necessary to point out one side of the Christian truths, which will seem to contradict that part of the truth which I have been able to express to you here and there so far. The way should be chosen so that the individual streams of truth are developed and then shown to be completely in harmony and agreement. Of course, in the various cycles, especially since the starting point was taken from the Gospel of John, and deliberately so, I could only point to part of the truth. That part remains truth, however; we will see that in the next few days. Today it falls to us to consider a part of Christian truths that is unfamiliar to most of you.

[ 6 ]In the Gospel of Luke, there is a wonderful passage that tells us that the shepherds in the field are told by an angel, who becomes visible to them, that the “Savior of the world” has been born to them. And then it is mentioned that after this angel has said the proclamation, “heavenly hosts” (Luke 2:13) approach him. Imagine the image that these shepherds look up and see something like “heaven open” and the entities of the spiritual world unfolding before them in powerful images. What is proclaimed to the shepherds?

[ 7 ] What is proclaimed to them is clothed in monumental words, in words that have been spoken throughout the development of humanity and that have become the Christmas saying of the Christian development. The words resound to the shepherds, who, translated correctly, would sound something like this:

“The Divine Entities reveal themselves from on high, so that peace may reign on earth among men who are imbued with goodwill.” (Luke 2:14.)

[ 8 ] “Honor”, as it is usually rendered, is a completely wrong translation. As I have now said it, it should be. And the contrast should be sharply emphasized, that what the shepherds see is the revelation of the spiritual beings from on high and that it happens in this moment, so that peace may enter into human hearts, which are imbued with goodwill.

[ 9 ] Basically, as we shall see, much of the secrets of Christianity lies in these words, if they are properly understood. But it will take some effort to shed light on these paradigmatic words. What is most important is that we try to consider those reports that man's clairvoyant sense receives from the Akashic Records. What matters is to look first with the open eye of the spirit at the age in which Christ Jesus appeared for humanity, and then to ask ourselves: How does that present itself, which then entered spiritually into the evolution of the earth, when we follow it in its entire historical development, when we ask: Where did it come from?

[ 10 ] At that time something flowed into the development of mankind that appeared to be a confluence of spiritual currents from the most diverse directions. In the most diverse regions of the earth, the most diverse world views have emerged over time. Everything that has emerged in different parts of the world converged in Palestine at that time and found expression in some way in these events in Palestine, so that we can ask ourselves: Where do the currents that we see flowing together as if into a center in the Palestinian events go?

[ 11] We already indicated yesterday that the Gospel of Luke provides what we call imaginative knowledge, and that this imaginative knowledge is gained in images. In the above, an image is presented to us, an image of how the revelation of spiritual beings from above appears to the shepherds, the image of a spiritual being, an angel, and then a host of angels. This raises the question: how does a clairvoyant person, who is also initiated into the secrets of existence, see this image, which he can recreate at any time by looking back into the Akashic Records? What is it that presented itself to the shepherds? What is contained in this host of angels, and where does it come from?

[ 12 ] One of the great spiritual currents that have flowed through the development of mankind, that current that has gradually risen higher and higher, so that at the time of the Palestinian events it could only shine down from the spiritual heights onto the earth, that is what is shown in this picture. If we start from this host of angels that appeared to the shepherds, and decipher the Akasha Chronicle, we are led back to one of the greatest spiritual currents in the development of mankind. This current, which one might say spread several centuries before the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, as Buddhism, However strange it may sound to you, anyone who follows in the footsteps of that revelation, which becomes a shepherd, through the Akasha Chronicle back to the early days of humanity, will experience the same “enlightenment” as the great Buddha. What had flashed upon men in India, what there, as the religion of compassion and love, as a great world-view, had once stirred minds and hearts and what is still today spiritual nourishment for a great part of mankind, that appeared again in the shepherds' revelation. For this too was to flow into the Palestinian Revelation. We can only understand what we are first told in the Gospel of Luke if we take a look – again from the point of view of spiritual scientific research – at what the Buddha was to humanity and what the Buddha Revelation actually achieved in the course of human development. We must be clear about the following.

[ 13 ] When the Buddha arose in the Far East five or six centuries before the birth of Christ, there appeared in him an individuality that had often and often been re-embodied and that, through its many embodiments, had advanced to a high level of human development. The Buddha could only become who he was because in his previous incarnations he had already attained a high, high level of development in the highest sense of the word. The stage of development of an entity in the universe that the Buddha had attained is referred to by an oriental term as a “Bodhisattva”. The nature of the Bodhisattvas has already been discussed from various points of view, at least in front of some of you. In the cycle “Spiritual Hierarchies and their Reflection in the Physical World,” Düsseldorf, April 1909, I showed how the Bodhisattvas relate to the whole cosmic evolution; in Munich, in the cycle “The Orient in the Light of the Occident,” August 1909, I was able to point this out from a different point of view. Today, the nature of the bodhisattvas is to be considered from yet another side. You will gradually find the harmony between these individual truths.

[ 14 ] He who became a Buddha must first have been a bodhisattva. Bodhisattva is thus the preceding step in the individual development towards the Buddha. Now let us try to visualize the nature of the Bodhisattva from the standpoint of the evolution of humanity. We can only understand it if we look at the evolution of humanity from the penetrating standpoint of spiritual science.

[ 15 ] What people are able to do at any given time, what abilities they develop, was not always there. It is only a short-sighted way of looking at things that cannot see beyond its own epoch that believes that the same abilities that people have today were already present in primeval times. Human abilities, what people can do, know, and achieve, change from era to era. Today, human abilities are so highly developed that man can, as it were, recognize this or that through his own reason, that he can rightly say: I see this or that truth through my intellect, through my reason; I can recognize what is moral and immoral, what is logical or illogical in a certain respect. But it would be a mistake to believe that these abilities to distinguish the logical from the illogical or the moral from the immoral have always been part of human nature. They have only come into existence and developed gradually. What man is capable of doing today through his own abilities, he once had to learn like a child from father and mother or from teachers - from beings who were also embodied among men, but who were more highly developed through their spiritual abilities and who, in the mysteries, could associate with spiritual beings that are above them, with divine-spiritual beings.

[ 16 ] There have always been individuals who, although embodied in the physical body, were able to associate with higher individuals who are not physically embodied. Before people acquired the gift of logical thinking, for example, which enables them to think logically even today, they had to listen to certain teachers. These teachers were also unable to think logically through certain abilities developed in the physical body, but only because they had dealings in the mysteries with divine spiritual entities that are in higher regions. Such teachers, who taught the logical and the moral from their revelations, which they received from higher worlds, existed before men themselves were able, through their nature on earth, to think logically or to find the moral. A certain category of such beings, who are embodied in physical bodies but associate with divine spiritual entities so that they can take what they learn from them and communicate it to people, are the bodhisattvas. They are therefore entities embodied in a human body that, with their abilities, can communicate with divine spiritual entities.

[ 17 ] And before the Buddha became a “Buddha”, he was just a Bodhisattva, that is, an individuality who could deal with the higher, divine spiritual beings in the mysteries. Such an entity, as the bodhisattva is, once received a specific mission, a specific task in the higher world in distant primeval times of the earth's development, and it then remains with this mission.

[ 18 ] If we apply this to the Buddha, we have to say: He had a specific task as a bodhisattva. When the earth was still in earlier stages of development, even before the Atlantean and Lemurian periods, the being that was embodied as the Buddha in the sixth century BC had been given a specific task. It remained with this task. Throughout the ages, it had to work from epoch to epoch and always impart as much of the earth's development as it could absorb by virtue of its essence. For each such entity – that is, for each Bodhisattva – there comes a time when it has, so to speak, come to a certain point in its mission, which it received in primeval times, and when it has been able to incorporate into humanity from above what it has been able to become in its own human capacity. For what is human ability today was once the ability of divine spiritual beings, and the bodhisattvas brought it down from the spiritual heights to mankind. Such a spiritual missionary thus comes to a point where he can say to himself: I have accomplished my mission; mankind has now been given what it has been prepared for through many, many times. Having reached such a point, the bodhisattva can become a Buddha. That is, there comes a time when, as the being with the mission we have just characterized, he no longer needs to incarnate in a physical human body, where he incarnates for the last time in such a physical human body and then no longer needs to incarnate as a missionary. Such a point in time had come for the Buddha. What he had to do earlier and earlier led him down to earth again and again. But in the time when he was enlightened as Buddha, a final incarnation occurred for him as a bodhisattva. He entered a human body that had developed the abilities to a very high degree, which had previously had to be taught from above and which were now gradually to become the person's own abilities.

[ 19 ] When a bodhisattva has, through his previous development, brought about a human body so perfectly that he can develop abilities for the qualities associated with the bodhisattva's mission, then he no longer needs to embody himself. Then he will hover in spiritual regions, promoting and guiding human affairs, and from there he will work into humanity. And then it is the task of human beings to further develop that which previously flowed down to them from the heights of heaven and to say to themselves: We must now develop in such a way that we cultivate those abilities which we see in their fullest measure for the first time in the incarnation that was achieved through the abilities of the bodhisattva and which appeared in the Buddha. And just as the entity that has worked as a bodhisattva throughout the ages appears as a human being, and as a complete individual human being, where everything that used to flow in from the heights of heaven is now incorporated into human nature, to show in a single person what the bodhisattva is capable of, that is to be 'Buddha'. That the Buddha still showed. If the Bodhisattva had withdrawn from his mission earlier, then people would no longer have been able to benefit from the fact that these abilities flow to them from on high. But after evolution had progressed so far that these abilities could be present in a single human specimen on earth, the germinal disposition for them was also created so that people could develop them within themselves in the future. Thus the individuality that had previously developed as a bodhisattva, and that, as long as it was a bodhisattva, had not fully entered into the human form but extended into the heights of heaven, thus the individuality of the bodhisattva once fully enters into a human being, so that it is fully grasped by this incarnation. But then it also withdraws again. For now, with this incarnation as Buddha, a certain amount of revelation has been given to humanity, which is to develop further within humanity itself. Therefore, after becoming Buddha, the Bodhisattva being may withdraw from Earth to certain spiritual heights, may dwell there and continue to guide the affairs of humanity from there, where only a certain clairvoyant ability is able to see it.

[ 20 ] What then was the task of that wonderful, that mighty, great individuality, which in ordinary life is called Buddha? If we really want to understand the task, the mission of this Buddha in the sense of true esotericism, we must tell ourselves the following. The whole cognitive faculty of humanity has developed gradually. We have repeatedly pointed out that during the Atlantean period a large part of humanity was able to see into the spiritual worlds clairvoyantly, and we have said that certain remnants of ancient clairvoyance were still present in the post-Atlantean period. If we descend from the Atlantean period to the ancient Indian, to the ancient Persian, to the Egyptian-Chaldean period, and even further into the Greco-Latin period, we would find numerous people, many more than today's humanity dares to dream of, who had the inherited gifts of this ancient clairvoyance, who had access to the astral plane, who saw into the hidden depths of existence. Even in the Greco-Latin period, it was still quite usual for a large proportion of people to see the etheric body of the human being, but especially the head part of the human being surrounded by that etheric cloud, which, however, gradually disappeared completely into the interior of the head part. |

[ 21 ] But humanity had to ascend to that knowledge, which gradually became perfect sensory knowledge, to that knowledge that is acquired through the external senses and through those spiritual abilities that are directed towards the external senses. Man had gradually to emerge, so to speak, entirely from the spiritual world and enter into mere sense observation, into rational, logical thinking. Gradually man had to soar to this non-clairvoyant knowledge because he had to pass through it in order to attain in the future again clairvoyant knowledge, but then united with what he had acquired as sense and intellectual knowledge.

[ 22 ] In this time we live in the present. We look back on a past in which humanity was clairvoyant, and we look into a future in which people will be clairvoyant again. But in our interim time, the majority of people have to rely on what they perceive with their senses and comprehend with their mind and reason. There is, to be sure, a certain height of sensory perception and of intellectual and rational knowledge. But everywhere there are degrees of knowledge. One person, in the incarnation of his earthly existence, walks in such a way that he sees little of what morality is, that he develops little compassion for his fellow human beings: we call him a person at a lower moral level. Or another walks through life in such a way that his intellectual powers are little developed: we call him a person at a lower intellectual level. But we know that these intellectual powers of knowledge can rise to a high level. From the person who is less moral and intellectual to the person whom we call a “moral genius” in Fichte's sense and who develops to the highest moral imagination, we have all possible intermediate stages; and we know that we can develop ourselves to this height of human perfection for the present, without having clairvoyant powers, only by ennobling the powers that are available to the ordinary person. These stages had to be attained by humanity in the course of the evolution of the earth. What man of today, through his own intelligence, recognizes to a certain degree, and also what he achieves through his own moral strength, namely, that one should have compassion for the sufferings and pains of another human being, could not have been attained by man of primitive times through his own efforts. Today we can say that man's healthy moral sense can already rise to this insight even without clairvoyance, and people will be able to rise more and more to the insight that compassion is the highest virtue and that humanity could not progress without love. We can say: This can be recognized today by man's moral sense, and it will continue to increase more and more. But one must look back to times when the moral sense was such that it could not see this for itself.

[ 23 ] There were times when people could never have realized that compassion and love could belong to the highest development of the human soul. Therefore, such spiritual entities had to embody themselves in human forms, to which, for example, the Bodhisattvas also belong, who received revelations from the higher worlds about the working power of compassion, about the working power of love, and who were able to tell people how to behave in compassion and love, because people were not yet mature enough to understand this from their own powers. What people today recognize through their own efforts as the high virtue of compassion and love, to which the moral sense rises, had to be taught through epochs and epochs from the heights of heaven. And the teacher of love and compassion in those times, when people themselves did not yet have insight into the nature of compassion and love, was the Bodhisattva who then embodied himself for the last time in Gautama Buddha.

[ 24 ] So the Buddha was the Bodhisattva before, who was the teacher of love and compassion and all that is related to it. He was through those characterized epochs in which people were still naturally somewhat clairvoyant. He embodied himself as a Bodhisattva in such clairvoyant human bodies. And when he then embodied himself as the Buddha and looked clairvoyantly into these earlier embodiments – from incarnation to incarnation – he could say how the inside of the soul felt when it looked into the depths of existence hidden behind the appearance of meaning. He had this ability in his previous incarnations, and with this ability he was born within the Sakya family, from which the father of Gautama, Suddhodana, came. At the time Gautama Buddha was born, he was still the Bodhisattva. That is, he appeared as the being he had developed into in his previous incarnations. The one who is usually called the Buddha was born as the Bodhisattva through his father Suddhodana and his mother Mayadevi. But since he was born as a Bodhisattva, he had a highly developed ability for clairvoyance as a child. He was able to see into the depths of existence.

[ 25 ] Let us be clear about the fact that, in the course of human evolution, the ability to look into the depths of existence has gradually taken on very special forms. The mission of the evolution of man on earth was to gradually make the gift of the old dull clairvoyance recede; and what remained as an heirloom of the old clairvoyance was therefore not the best parts of this old clairvoyance. These best parts were lost first. What remained was often a lower looking into the astral world, it was just a glimpse of those demonic forces that draw man down into a lower sphere through his urges and passions. Through initiation we can indeed see into the spiritual world and see the forces and beings that are connected with the most beautiful thoughts and feelings of humanity; but we also see the spiritual powers that lie behind wild passion, behind wild sensuality and consuming selfishness. What had been preserved in the wide environment for people – not for the initiates, but for the great majority of people – was precisely the vision of these wild demonic forces that stand behind the lower human passions. Anyone who can see into the spiritual world at all can of course see all this for themselves. It depends on the development of human abilities. Man cannot achieve one without the other.

[ 26 ] Of course, as a Bodhisattva, Buddha had to incarnate in a human body organized in the way human bodies were organized at that time, a body that gave him the ability to look deeply into the astral depths of existence. Even as a child, he was able to see all the astral forces that underlie wild, stormy passion and consuming, greedy sensuality. He had been protected from seeing the outer world in its physical corruption and in its torments and pains. Locked up in the palace, protected above all, he was pampered and petted because, out of the prevailing prejudices, it was believed that he was owed this according to his station. But through this seclusion, his inner power of insight emerged all the more. And while he was carefully guarded and everything that reminded him of illness and pain was kept away from him, in his seclusion his spiritual eye was open to the astral images. He was surrounded by astral images of all the wild passions that can drag a person down.

[ 27 ] Those who, with the spiritual eye, are able to read the biography of Buddha, even if it is preserved in an esoteric form, will have a presentiment when they are told what has now been said. For it must be emphasized: Much of the exoteric accounts cannot be understood if one cannot penetrate the esoteric background. And what is least understood from the exoteric accounts is the Buddha's life. It must seem strange to us when orientalists and others who study the life of Buddha find it described that the Buddha was surrounded in his palace by “forty thousand dancing girls and eighty-four thousand women”. This is already recorded in the books that can be bought for a few pennies; but one notices that the writers are not particularly astonished at a harem of forty thousand dancers and eighty-four thousand women. What does that mean? People do not realize that this is a reference to something that the Buddha experienced to the full, as it can only be poured out on a human heart, through astral vision: how from childhood on, he did not experience what suffering and pain was going on in the physical world of men, because at first he was protected from it, but how he saw all this as spiritual activity in the spiritual world. He saw it because he was born into a body as he could be born at that time, and from the very beginning he was immune and strengthened and elevated above all the most terrible illusions that surrounded him because in his previous incarnations he had risen to the level of the Bodhisattva. But because he lived in this human incarnation as the individuality of the Bodhisattva, he was drawn outwards to see that which every single image of this astral world, as it surrounded him in the palace, pointed to. Every single image urged him, as it were, to see the world, to leave his prison, so to speak. That was the driving force in his soul. For a high spiritual power lived in him as a bodhisattva. It was precisely that spiritual power that lives in him that is connected with the mission to teach humanity the full power of compassion and love and all that is connected with it. To do that, he himself had to get to know this humanity in the world; he had to see it in the world in which it can experience the teaching of compassion and love from a moral point of view. He had to get to know humanity in the physical world. He had to ascend from Bodhisattva to Buddha, a human being among humans. He could only do that by turning away from all the abilities he had retained from his previous incarnations, by going out onto the physical plane and living there with people in such a way that he became a prime example, an ideal, a model for the development of these particular character traits within humanity.

[ 28 ] In order to become a Buddha from a Bodhisattva in this sense, various intermediate stages of development are of course necessary. This does not happen overnight. He was driven out of the royal palace. And the report tells us that outside, when he once “broke out” of his palace prison, as it were, he found an old man, an old man. Until now he had only been surrounded by images of youth; he had been made to believe that there is only the bursting power of youth. Now he had become acquainted with what on the physical plane is represented as old age, in the form of an old man. And further on he became acquainted with a sick person, and then with a corpse, that is, with death on the physical plane. All this now occurred to his soul, when he could really take it in.

[ 29 ] Very significant of what the Buddha actually is, is now said in this legend, which is again more true than any external science: When he left the royal palace, he was driven by a horse that was so distressed that he now wanted to leave everything he had been born into, that it died of grief over it and was then transferred as a spiritual being into the spiritual world. — This image expresses a profound truth. It would be going too far today if I wanted to explain in detail why the horse is used for a human spiritual power. I would only remind you of Plato, who speaks of a horse that he holds by the bridle when he wants to use an image for certain human abilities that are still given from above and that have not been developed from within the human being. When the Buddha leaves the royal palace, he leaves behind the abilities that have not developed from within the soul itself. He leaves them in the spiritual worlds from which they have always guided him. This is indicated by the horse, which dies of grief when he leaves it and is then transported to the spiritual world.

[ 30 ] But only little by little can the Buddha become what he was destined to become in his last incarnation on earth. He must first become acquainted on the physical plane with what he, as a Bodhisattva, has only become acquainted with from the spiritual point of view. There he first meets two teachers. One is a representative of that ancient Indian world-view known as the Sankhya philosophy, and the other is a representative of the Yoga philosophy. The Buddha gets to know these two and immerses himself in what they are able to offer him. He lives in it. Because no matter how high a being you are, you still have to find your way into the external world that humanity has conquered. Even if a bodhisattva can learn faster, he still has to learn it first. The Bodhisattva, who lived about five or six centuries before our era, would have to catch up on what has happened on earth since he lived in the heights of heaven, if he were born today and learned as children learn at school. So the Buddha also had to learn about what had happened since his last incarnation.

[ 31 ] And he studied the Sankhya philosophy with one of the teachers, and the Yoga philosophy with the other teacher. There he was able to gain an insight into the world views that solved the riddles of life for many at that time, and was able to learn what it was like for a soul to let these world views take effect on it.

[ 32 ] In the Sankhya philosophy, he had been able to absorb a subtle and logical philosophical view of the world. But the more he immersed himself in it, the less it satisfied him. In the end it was like a web, lacking in living life. He sensed that he would have to take the sources for what he had to do in this incarnation from somewhere other than the traditional Sankhya philosophy.

[ 33 ] The other was the yoga philosophy of Patanjali, which sought to connect with the divine through certain inner soul processes. So he also immersed himself in the yoga philosophy, absorbed it, made it part of his being. But this too left him unsatisfied, for he saw that it is something that has been handed down from ancient times; but people had to come to other abilities, they had to come to a moral development within themselves. After Buddha had examined the yoga philosophy in his own soul, he saw that it could not be the source for his mission at that time,

[ 34 ] Then he came to the surroundings of five hermits. They had sought to penetrate to the secrets of existence by the most rigorous self-discipline, by mortifications and privations. Buddha also tried this way, but he also said to himself that it could not be the source for his mission at this time. For a time he underwent all the privations and mortifications that the monks practiced. He starved as they did, in order to remove greed from human life and thereby evoke deeper forces that arise precisely when the body is weakened by fasting and that can then quickly lead from the depths of the human physical to the spiritual world. But precisely because Buddha had attained his level of development, he saw the futility of this self-torture, of fasting and starvation. Because he was the Bodhisattva, through his development in previous incarnations, he had been able to bring this human body of that time to the highest level of development that a human being could achieve at that time. Therefore, the Buddha was also able to experience what a person must experience when he goes through this path to spiritual heights.

[ 35 ] Those who have penetrated to a certain degree of the Sankhya or Yoga philosophy without having developed what the Buddha had gone through before, those who want to penetrate to the pure heights of the divine mind by logical thinking, without first having attained the moral sense in the sense of the Buddha, then he stands before that temptation which the Buddha has undergone in a trial temptation and which is indicated to us as the temptation by the demon Mara. There the human being comes to the point where all the devils of pride, vanity, and ambition take hold of him. That is what the Buddha learned. The figure of Mara, of vanity and ambition, stood before him. But because he was at this high level of a bodhisattva, he recognized him and was immune to him. And he knew how to say: If people continue to develop in the old way, without the new impact in the teaching of love and compassion, without this self-acting moral sense, then, since they are not all bodhisattvas, they must fall prey to this demon Mara, who lowers all the forces of pride and vanity into the souls. This is what the Buddha experienced in himself when he went through the Sankhya and Yoga philosophies to their ultimate consequences.

[ 36 ] But then, when he was with the monks, he had a different experience. There he experienced that the demon took on a different form, which is characterized by showing man all external physical possessions, so to speak, the “kingdoms of the world and their glories,” in order to distract man from what the spiritual world is. It is precisely by way of mortification that one falls prey to this temptation, as the Buddha experienced when the demon Mara confronted him and said: “Do not let yourself be tempted to leave everything you have had as a king's son, go back to the royal palace!” Another would have succumbed to what was presented to him, but the Buddha was so far advanced that he could see through the tempter. He could experience what would happen to humanity if it continued to live as before and only wanted to ascend to the spiritual through the path of fasting and starvation. He himself was immune to this and could therefore now also present the great danger that would come if people wanted to penetrate into the spiritual world only through fasting and external means, without the great foundation of the self-acting moral sense.

[ 37 ] Thus, as a Bodhisattva, the Buddha had penetrated as far as those two limits of human development, which, precisely because man is not a Bodhisattva, he had best avoid altogether. If we translate this into an everyday language, we can say: the highest knowledge is glorious, the highest knowledge is beautiful, but approach this knowledge with a pure heart, with a noble mind, with a purified soul, otherwise the devil of pride, vanity and ambition will take hold of you. And the other teaching is: Do not seek to enter the spiritual world by any external means, by mortifying the flesh or fasting, before you have purified your moral sense in the appropriate way, otherwise the tempter will approach you from the other side. These are the two teachings that shine for us from the Buddha into our time. Thus, the Buddha, when he was still the Bodhisattva, tells us that which belongs to his mission in the eminent sense. For to bring this moral sense to mankind, when people were not yet able to develop it from their hearts, that was always his mission. Therefore, when he realized the danger of asceticism for humanity, he left the five hermits and went to where, in an inner contemplation appropriate for our time, he was able to achieve the highest that humanity can ever achieve through these abilities, in those abilities of human nature that can be developed without the old clairvoyance, without what has been handed down as an heirloom from the past.

[ 38 ] Under the bodhi tree, in the twenty-ninth year of his life, after the Buddha had left the path of one-sided asceticism, the great truths opened up to him in seven-day contemplation, which open up to man when he seeks to find in quiet, inner contemplation that which the present human abilities can give him. Then the great teachings that he taught in the so-called four truths, and that great teaching of compassion and love that he taught in the eightfold path, became clear to him. We will have to deal with these teachings of Buddha again. Today, let us content ourselves with the fact that these teachings are a paraphrase of the moral sense of the purest teaching of compassion and love. They emerged at the time when, under the bodhi tree, the Bodhisattva of India was transformed from a Bodhisattva into a Buddha. At that time, the teachings of compassion and love were absorbed into humanity for the first time as a uniquely human capacity, and since that time, people have been able to develop the teaching of compassion and love from within themselves. That is the essential point. That is why the Buddha said to his intimate disciples shortly before his death: “Do not grieve that the master is leaving you. I am leaving you something behind. I am leaving you the law of wisdom and the law of discipline; they shall replace the master for you in the future. This means nothing other than: Up to now, the Bodhisattva has taught you what is expressed in it; now, having achieved his incarnation on earth, he may withdraw. For humanity will have absorbed what was previously taught to it by a Bodhisattva into its own heart and will be able to develop it from its own heart as the religion of compassion and love. This is what happened when, in seven days of inner contemplation, the bodhisattva became the Buddha in ancient India. This was also what he was able to teach in the most diverse forms to his disciples around him. We will deal with the forms into which he poured this later.

[ 39 ] Today we had to look back at what happened six centuries before our era because, if we did not follow the Akasha Chronicle's would not understand the path of Christianity, especially not the one who described this path so eminently: the writer of the Gospel of Luke. Since becoming a Buddha, the Bodhisattva no longer needed to return to Earth. From that time on, he was a spiritual being that floated in the spiritual worlds and from there had to intervene in everything that happened on Earth. And when the most important event on earth was being prepared and the shepherds were in the field, an individuality from the spiritual heights appeared to them and announced to them what is described in the Gospel of Luke: And “heavenly hosts” joined the angel. Who was that?

[ 40 ] What appeared to the shepherds in the picture was the glorified Buddha, the Bodhisattva of ancient times, the being in his spiritual form who had brought the message of love and compassion to people for thousands and thousands of years. Now, after his last incarnation on earth, he soared in spiritual heights and appeared to the shepherds in heavenly heights, alongside the angel who foretold them the event in Palestine.

[ 41 ] So spiritual research teaches us. It shows us hovering over the shepherds the glorified Bodhisattva from ancient times. Yes, it had come about – this is what Akasha research teaches us – that in Palestine, in the “City of David”, a child was born to a couple who came from the priestly line of the House of David. This child—I mention this explicitly—who was born of parents who, at least on the father's side, came from the priestly line of the House of David, this child was destined to be illuminated and empowered from his birth by whatever could radiate from the Buddha after he had been raised to spiritual heights. So we look with the shepherds at the manger where Jesus of Nazareth, as he is usually called, was born; we look and see the glory of the beginning above the child and know that this image expresses the power of the Bodhisattva, who has become the Buddha , the power that previously flowed to mankind and which now, from the spiritual heights, worked on humanity and unfolded the greatest deed when it radiated over the Betlehemite child, so that it could join the human evolution in an appropriate way.

[ 42 ] At the time when this individuality, who now radiated his power from spiritual heights down to this child of the Davidic parents, was born in ancient India, that is, when the Buddha was born as a bodhisattva, a wise man saw the full force of what we have described today. And what he first saw in the spiritual worlds caused the sage – his name was Asita – to enter the king's palace and seek out the Bodhisattva child. When he saw the child, he predicted his mighty mission as Buddha. At that time, to the dismay of the father, Asita predicted that the child would not rule over his father's kingdom, but that he would become a Buddha. But then he began to weep; and when he was asked whether the child was destined to suffer some misfortune, Asita replied: “No! I weep because I am so old that I shall not live to see the day when this Savior, the Bodhisattva, will walk the earth as a Buddha!” Asita did not live to see the Bodhisattva become a Buddha, so from his point of view his weeping was fully justified. That Asita, who had only seen the Bodhisattva as a child in the palace of Suddhodana, was reborn as the personality described in the Gospel of Luke as Simeon at the Presentation at the Temple (Luke 2:25-35). Luke's Gospel says that Simeon was “inspired by the Spirit” when the child was brought to him. He was the same one who, as Asita, had once wept because, in his former incarnation, he was no longer able to experience the bodhisattva's becoming a Buddha. Now it was his destiny to experience the further stage of development of this individuality. And since he had been 'gifted with spiritual insight' at the time, he was able to see the halo of the transfigured Bodhisattva above the Christ Child of Davidic descent during the presentation at the temple. He said to himself: “Now you no longer need to weep; what you did not see then, you now see, you now see your Savior transfigured above this Child: ‘Lord, let your servant die in peace’.”