The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] Anyone who allows the Gospel of Luke to take hold of them will, at first, be able to do nothing more than feel and sense everything contained within it. But they will then begin to sense that truly vast, powerful spiritual worlds are flowing toward them from this Gospel of Luke. And in light of what we heard yesterday, it will seem understandable to us that this is so. For we have seen that spiritual research shows us how the Buddhist worldview, with all it had to offer humanity, has flowed into the Gospel of Luke. One might well say: It is Buddhism that flows out from the Gospel of Luke to humanity. But this Buddhism flows out of this text in a very peculiar form. It flows out in such a way that, as we have already indicated, in the form in which it is contained therein, it is comprehensible even to the simplest, most naive mind. |

[ 2 ] As we were already able to gather from yesterday’s discussions, and as will become particularly clear to us today, Buddhism as such—as it entered the world as the teaching of the great Buddha—is a worldview that can be understood only by those who raise themselves up to certain lofty ideas, to the pure etheric heights of the spirit. And to understand Buddhism itself requires a great deal of preparation. In the Gospel of Luke, the actual spiritual substance is contained in such a way that it can, in a certain sense, affect any mind that has learned to allow the most essential human ideas and concepts to flow into its heart. Why this is so will become clear to us when we fathom the mystery of the Gospel of Luke . But not only do the spiritual achievements of Buddhism flow toward us from the Gospel of Luke; they flow toward us in an even more exalted form, as if raised to a higher level than they had at the time they were bestowed upon humanity in distant India nearly six hundred years before our era. Let us consider just a few examples to bring before our souls what this elevation of Buddhism consists of.

[ 3 ] Yesterday we called Buddhism the purest teaching of compassion and love. And indeed, from the corner of the world where Buddha worked, a gospel of love and compassion flows out to all beings on earth. The gospel of love, the gospel of compassion—it appears to us as alive in the genuine, true Buddhist when his warm heart feels in sympathy with all the suffering he encounters in the outer world in all that lives. Here we first encounter Buddhist love, Buddhist compassion, in the fullest sense of the word. But we see that something flows toward us from the Gospel of Luke that is even more than this all-encompassing compassion, than this all-encompassing love. We might describe what flows toward us there as the translation of compassion and love into the action necessary for the soul. The Buddhist seeks compassion in the most eminent sense of the word; the one who lives in the spirit of the Gospel of Luke seeks to unfold active love. The Buddhist can empathize with the sick person’s pain; the call to take active measures and do whatever he can to bring about healing is found by the person in the Gospel of Luke. To understand everything that animates the human soul, this is what one finds in Buddhism; not to judge, to do more than is done to us—this emerges as a remarkable demand from the Gospel of Luke. To give more than one receives! Love transformed into action—this is something that must still appear to us as an elevation, even though we have the purest, the most authentic Buddhism in the Gospel of Luke.

[ 4 ] To describe this aspect of Christianity—Buddhism elevated even higher through Christianity—it required precisely the heart of the writer of the Gospel of Luke. Understanding Christ Jesus as the physician of body and soul was most possible for the writer of the Gospel of Luke. To this end, he found the tones that speak deeply to the heart, because he himself had worked as a physician and, from the standpoint of a physician of body and soul, recorded and emphasized what he had to say about Christ Jesus. This will become increasingly apparent to us as we delve into the depths of the Gospel of Luke.

[ 5 ] But something else strikes us when we focus in particular on how this Gospel of Luke, according to the view already presented, affects even the most childlike mind. We notice that the lofty Buddhist teaching, which only a mature intellect and a mature human soul can comprehend, appears to us in the Gospel of Luke as if rejuvenated, as if newly born from a spring of youth. Buddhism appears to us like a fruit on the tree of humanity. When we view it anew in the Gospel of Luke, it appears to us as the youthful blossom, as a rejuvenation of what was there before. Therefore, we must ask: How did this rejuvenation of Buddhism come about? But we will only understand this when we turn our attention to the teachings of the great Buddha himself and, drawing on our anthroposophical preparation, first bring before our spiritual eye what moved the Buddha’s soul.

[ 6 ] Let us first note that the Buddha emerged from the Bodhisattva, that is, from a high being who could look into the mysteries of existence. Because the Buddha was a Bodhisattva, he was a participant in everything that took place in the development of humanity throughout the ancient times. When humanity emerged in the post-Atlantean era to establish the first post-Atlantean cultural development and later to continue it, the Buddha was already present as a Bodhisattva, conveying to humanity from the spiritual worlds what was hinted at yesterday. He was also present during the Atlantean era, and even during the Lemurian era. And because he had reached such a high stage of development, he was able, even during his existence as a Bodhisattva in the twenty-nine years since his last birth, before he became the Buddha, to gradually recall everything—all the communities he had previously lived through before incarnating in India for the last time. He could look back on his involvement with humanity, on his existence in the divine-spiritual worlds, in order to bring down from their midst what he had to bring to humanity. It was already hinted at yesterday that even such a high individuality, albeit briefly, must go through once more what it has already learned. Thus the Buddha also describes to us how, during his time as a Bodhisattva, he gradually ascended until his spiritual vision, his spiritual enlightenment, took on an ever more perfect form.

[ 7 ] We are told how he described this to his followers. Thus he told them, to describe the path his soul had traversed in order to gradually recall what it had experienced throughout the ages: “There was a time for me, monks, when it appeared to me from the spiritual world like an all-encompassing radiance of light; but I could not yet distinguish anything within it—no figures, no images; my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then I began to see not only the light, but within the light individual images and individual figures, yet I could not yet discern what these figures and images signified; my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then I began to recognize that spiritual beings were expressing themselves in these images and figures, but I could not yet distinguish to which realms of the spiritual world these beings belonged; my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then I learned to recognize to which different realms of the spiritual world these individual spiritual beings belonged, but I could not yet distinguish through which deeds they had earned their place in the spiritual realms and what their states of mind were; for my enlightenment was not pure enough. Then came the time for me when I could discern which deeds had brought these spiritual beings into these realms and what their states of mind were; but I could not yet distinguish with which spiritual beings I myself had lived together in earlier times and how I myself had dealt with them, for my enlightenment was not yet pure enough. Then came the time when I could know I had been with these and those beings in this and that epoch and had had this or that to do with them; I knew what my past lives had been like: now my enlightenment was pure.

[ 8 ] With this, the Buddha had indicated to his followers how he had gradually worked his way up to a realization that he had indeed possessed before, but which must be newly acquired in every incarnation according to the conditions of the era, and which he had now had to acquire anew in a manner corresponding to his complete descent into a physical human body. If we try to imagine this, we gain a sense of the significance and greatness of that remarkable individuality which had incarnated at that time in the prince of the Sakya clan. But the Buddha also knew this about what he was able to recognize in this way and into which he could look: This is a world that human beings, with their ordinary perception of the immediate present and the near future, had to leave behind. Only initiates, to whom the Buddha himself belonged, can look into the spiritual world; but for ordinary humanity, the possibility of doing so had been lost. The remnants of the ancient clairvoyant vision had grown ever smaller. Since the Buddha had to speak not merely of what the initiate has to say, but since his mission was above all to tell people about the powers that are to flow forth from the human soul itself, he could not merely point to the results of his own enlightenment; rather, he said to himself: I must speak of what people can attain, albeit through a higher, yet still through a development of their own inner being, through the development of what is present in this epoch. Gradually, in the course of Earth’s evolution, people will recognize the content of the Buddha’s teaching from within their own souls, from their own hearts, as something their own reason and their own minds tell them. But much, much time will have to pass before all people become mature enough to bring forth, so to speak, from their own souls what the Buddha first expressed as a purely human insight. For it is one thing to develop certain abilities in later times, and quite another to first bring them forth from the deep recesses of the human mind.

[ 9 ] Take another example. Today, young people acquire the rules of logical thinking. Thinking logically is now one of the general human abilities that people develop from within themselves. But for this ability to have first emerged from a human breast, the great mind of the Greek thinker Aristotle was required. It is one thing to first draw something out from the depths of the human mind, and quite another to draw it out after it has developed within humanity for some time.

[ 10 ] Now, what the Buddha had to say to humanity belongs to the greatest teachings across long epochs. Therefore, the great spirit of a Bodhisattva—one so highly enlightened—is also required to first make it present in a human being. Only one who was enlightened in the highest sense could first bring into being within his soul what was to gradually become the common heritage of humanity: the lofty teaching of compassion and love and all that is connected with it. What the Buddha had to say, he had to clothe in words that were familiar to the people of his time, namely his fellow countrymen. We have already pointed out how the Sankhya and Yoga philosophies were taught in ancient India at the time of the Buddha. They had provided the common expressions and concepts; they were the accepted norm. One who had something new to offer had to use such common expressions; the Buddha had to clothe what lived in his soul in such common concepts. Admittedly, such ideas and concepts then took on a completely new form through him, but he had to make use of them, for all development must proceed in such a way that the future is founded upon the past. Thus the Buddha clothed his sublime wisdom in the common expressions of the Indian teachings in use at that time.

[ 11 ] But we must nevertheless form a conception of what the Buddha experienced at that time under the Bodhi tree during the seven days of enlightenment as his teaching, which was to become the innermost teaching of humanity. Let us try, even if only with approximate thoughts, to picture before our soul what passed through the Buddha’s mind as the mental expression of the deepest soul experiences when he was enlightened under the Bodhi tree. There he might have said to himself something like the following: There were ancient times in human evolution when many people possessed a dim, twilight-like clairvoyance, and there were even earlier times when all people were clairvoyant. What does it mean to be dimly, twilight-like clairvoyant? What does it mean, in general, to be clairvoyant? To be clairvoyant means to be able to make use of the organs of one’s etheric body. If one can make use only of the organs of one’s astral body, then one can indeed feel and sense inwardly, inwardly experience the deepest mysteries, but one cannot see them. Only when what is experienced in the astral body leaves, so to speak, its imprint in the etheric body can clairvoyance occur. The ancient, dim clairvoyance of humanity had also come about because the etheric body—which had not yet fully penetrated the physical body—had organs that ancient humanity could still make use of. So what has humanity lost over the course of time? It has lost the ability to make use of the organs of the etheric body. It gradually had to content itself with using only the external organs of the physical body and then experiencing what the physical body conveys in the astral body as thoughts, sensations, feelings, and images. All of this passed through the Buddha’s great soul at that time as an expression of what he experienced. He said to himself: So humanity has lost the ability to make use of the organs of its etheric body. In their astral bodies, they experience what they perceive from the external world through the instruments of their physical body.

[ 12 ] Now the Buddha was able to ask himself a significant question: When the eye perceives the color red, when the ear hears a sound, when the sense of taste has a taste sensation, then under normal circumstances these sensations approach the human being and become his ideas, are experienced inwardly in the astral body. If they were experienced in this way alone, what we call pain and suffering would not be present as an accompaniment in the normal state. If a person simply surrendered to the impressions of the external world—how they affect his senses, how they appear to him in their colors and lights, in their sounds, and so on—he would walk through the world without being able to perceive pain and suffering from these impressions. Only under certain conditions can a person experience pain and suffering.

[ 13 ] The great Buddha therefore investigated these conditions under which a person experiences pain and suffering, worries, and sorrows. When do the impressions of the external world become painful? And why do they become so under certain circumstances?

[ 14 ] Then he said to himself: If we look back to ancient times, we find that, as human beings walked the earth in earlier incarnations, beings from two sides worked their way into the inner nature of the human being, into the astral body. Thus, in the course of incarnations through the Lemurian and Atlantean periods, those beings we call the Luciferic beings worked into human nature, so that over time, human beings absorbed the impressions and influences of the Luciferic beings into their astral bodies. From the Atlantean era onward, those beings who were under the leadership of Ahriman also began to influence humanity. Thus, in their earlier incarnations, human beings experienced the influences of the two forces we refer to as the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic beings. Had these beings not acted upon humanity, humanity would not have been able to acquire freedom, the gift of discerning between good and evil, or the exercise of free will. Viewed from a higher perspective, it is also good that these influences have acted upon human beings in this way; but in a certain sense, they have also led human beings further down from the divine-spiritual heights into the sensory realm than they would otherwise have descended. As a result, the great Buddha could say to himself, human beings have within them certain influences that are present in them today and that are the legacy of the influence of Lucifer on the one hand and Ahriman on the other. These have remained with them from earlier incarnations; they carry them within themselves.

[ 15 ] When human beings could still look into the spiritual world by virtue of their ancient, dim clairvoyance, they saw the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman and could distinguish precisely: here comes an influence of Lucifer, here comes an influence of Ahriman. And by looking into the astral world and perceiving the harmful influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, they could take stock of them and protect themselves from them. They also knew how they had come into contact with these beings. There was a time—Buddha told himself—when people knew where these influences came from, influences they have carried within themselves from incarnation to incarnation since ancient times. But with the loss of the old clairvoyance, knowledge of these powers was lost, and since human beings had lost their clairvoyance, ignorance also set in regarding what has been acting upon their souls from incarnation to incarnation. Ignorance has taken the place of the former clairvoyant knowledge. Darkness spreads over humanity. People cannot recognize where these influences from Lucifer and Ahriman come from, yet they carry them within themselves. They carry something within them about which they know nothing. It would, of course, be naive to deny the reality and effectiveness of what is there, even if one knows nothing about it. The influences that have entered into the human being work within him from incarnation to incarnation. They are there and work throughout his entire life; only the human being knows nothing of them. — So said the great Buddha.

[ 16 ] How do these influences work within a person? Even if a person cannot recognize them, they feel them, they sense them; there is a force within them that is the expression of what has thus lived on from incarnation to incarnation and ascended to the present existence. What these forces represent—whose very nature human beings cannot perceive—is the craving for external life, the craving to perceive the world, the thirst for life, the longing for life. Thus the ancient Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences work within the human being as the thirst for existence, as the desire for existence. And this thirst for existence continues from incarnation to incarnation. — This is what the great Buddha said; only, for his more intimate disciples, he described more precisely what was at stake.

[ 17 ] How he described what he felt in this way can only be understood if one has already undergone a certain preparation through theosophy. We know, after all: When a person dies, at the very moment death occurs, their I, their astral body, and their etheric body leave the physical body. Then, for a time, the person experiences that great tableau of memories from the last life, which confronts them as if in a vast image. Then we know that the main part of the etheric body is cast off like a second corpse and that something remains like an extract, like an essence of the etheric body. The human being takes this extract with them through the Kamaloka and Devachan periods and brings it back into the next existence. But while the human being is in Kamaloka, everything the person has experienced in terms of deeds, everything that affects human karma and for which they must create a balance, is inscribed into this life extract. All of this connects in a certain way with this extract from the etheric body, which extends from one incarnation to the next. Everything that the human being carries from one incarnation into the next is contained within this extract of the etheric body, and the human being brings this with them again when they enter existence through birth. — Oriental literature has come to refer to what we call the etheric body as Linga sharira. Thus, it is an extract from the Linga sharira that the human being carries with them from incarnation to incarnation.

[ 18 ] Now Buddha could say: Look upon the human being who has been born. They bring with them in their Linga sharira that which has been accumulated from previous incarnations; it is inscribed there. In this Linga sharira lies everything of which the human being knows nothing in the present cycle of humanity, over which the darkness of ignorance spreads, but which asserts itself as the human being enters into existence—as the thirst for existence, as the desire for life. In what is called the desire for life, the Buddha saw all that which originates from past incarnations and which drives the human being to the craving to enjoy the world—not merely to wander through the world of colors and sounds and through the world of other impressions, but to desire this world. This is what remains from past incarnations as a tendency, as a force within the human being. The Buddha’s disciples refer to this force as samskara. Thus the Buddha said to his inner circle of disciples: What is characteristic of the present-day human being is ignorance of something important that is present within him. This ignorance transforms what would otherwise confront the human being as originating from the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings—and to which he could otherwise relate—into a thirst for existence, into all the forces slumbering within them, which darkly stir within the human being from past incarnations. Under the influence of the great Buddha, this was called samskara. And out of this samskara arises what is now the human being’s present thinking, and what causes the human being in the present cycle of humanity to be unable to think objectively without further ado.

[ 19 ] Note well the subtle distinction the Buddha made clear to his disciples: the difference between objective thinking, which focuses solely on the matter at hand, and that thinking which is under the influence of the forces originating from the linga sharira. Think about how much of what you take on as your opinions about things; but ask yourself how much of these opinions you adopt because they please you, and how much because you view things objectively! Everything one takes on as truth, not because one thinks objectively about a matter, but because one has brought along old inclinations from previous incarnations—all of this constitutes, for the Buddha, an “inner thinking organ.” This thinking organ is the totality of what a person thinks because in past incarnations they had this or that experience, which has remained as residues in their linga sharira. Thus, the Buddha saw within the human being a kind of inner thinking organ formed by the totality of samskara. And now he said: It is this very substance of thought that forms, out of the present human being, what is called his present individuality—in Buddhism, “name and form” or namarupa. It is the same thing that is called Ahamkara in another philosophical tradition.

[ 20 ] The Buddha said something like this to his disciples: In ancient times, when human beings still possessed clairvoyance and looked into the world that lies beyond physical existence, they all saw the same thing in a certain sense, for the objective world is the same for everyone. But when ignorance spread over the world like darkness, each individual brought with them innate dispositions that distinguished them from one another. This made them beings best described as beings with this or that “form” of soul; each had a specific “name” that distinguished them from the others, an Ahamkara. |

[ 21 ] That which is thus generated within the human being under the influence of what he has brought with him from previous incarnations—that which is “name and form,” that which has formed individuality—now forms within him, from within, the manas and the five sense organs, the so-called six organs. — Note well, the Buddha did not say: “The eye is merely formed from within”—but rather he said: “Something is incorporated into the eye that was in the linga sharira and has been brought along from earlier stages of existence.” Therefore, the eye does not see purely; it would perceive the world of external existence differently if it were not internally permeated by what has remained from earlier stages of existence. Therefore, the ear does not hear purely, but rather with a clouded, tinted perception due to what has remained from earlier stages of existence. And this causes the desire to see this or that, to hear this or that, to taste or perceive in this or that way to mingle into everything. Thus, into everything that meets the human being in the present cycle, that which has remained from earlier incarnations as “desire” creeps in.

[ 22 ] If this desire from past incarnations did not creep in—as the Buddha put it—then a person would look out into the world as it were like a divine being, would allow the world to act upon them, and would never again desire, never again crave anything other than what is given to them. With their knowledge, they would no longer go beyond what is bestowed upon them by the divine powers; they would make no distinction between himself and the external world and would feel himself to be a part of the external world. For it is only through this that a human being perceives himself as something separate from the rest of the world, because he wants more, wants something other than what the rest of the world voluntarily offers him in terms of pleasures. Through this, the awareness enters his soul that he is something other than the world. If he were content with what is in the world, he would not differ from it. He would feel his own existence continuing in the external world. He would never know what is called contact with the external world; he would not be separated from it, and thus could not come into contact with it either. Through the formation of these “six organs,” “contact with the external world” gradually arose, and through this contact came what we call sensation in our lives, and through sensation, “attachment to the external world.” But because human beings seek to cling to the external world, pain, suffering, worry, and grief arise.

[ 23 ] This was what the Buddha told his disciples about the inner human being—an inner human being who is the cause of the pain, suffering, grief, and worry that exist in the human world. It was a subtle, lofty theory, yet one that sprang directly from life, for an “Enlightened One” had perceived it as the deepest truth regarding present-day humanity. To the one who, for millennia upon millennia as a Bodhisattva, had guided humanity according to the teachings of compassion and love—to him, now that he had become the Buddha, the true nature of suffering in present-day humanity had become clear through its causes. Therefore, he could see why people suffer, and so he explained it to his closest disciples.

[ 24 ] And when he had reached the point of experiencing the essence of human existence for the present cycle of humanity, he summarized all of this in that famous sermon with which he inaugurated his ministry as a Buddha, the Sermon at Benares. There he taught in a popular manner what he had previously communicated to his disciples in a more intimate way: Whoever recognizes the causes of this human existence knows that life, as it is, must contain suffering, must contain pain. The first teaching I have to give you is the teaching of suffering in the world. The second teaching is that of the causes of suffering. Where do these causes of suffering lie? They lie in the fact that the desire, the thirst for existence, creeps into human beings from what has remained to them from their previous incarnations. Thirst for existence is the cause of suffering. The third teaching is this: How is suffering eradicated from the world? Naturally, it is eradicated from the world by removing its cause, by extinguishing the thirst for existence, as it arises from ignorance. For people have passed from their former clairvoyant knowledge into a state of ignorance, and this ignorance veils the spiritual world from them. Ignorance is to blame for the thirst for existence. And the thirst for existence is, in turn, the cause of suffering and pain, of worries and sorrows. The thirst for existence must vanish from the world if pain and suffering, sorrow and worry are to vanish from the world. The old knowledge has vanished from the world; people can no longer make use of the organs of their etheric body. But a new knowledge is possible for human beings—the knowledge that a person acquires when they immerse themselves completely in what their astral body can offer through its deepest powers, with the help of what the external sense organs allow them to observe in the external physical world. But what is stimulated through this observation in the astral body within its deepest powers—that is, what develops through the use of the physical body, yet not from this use alone—that alone can initially help humanity and impart knowledge to it; for this knowledge is initially bestowed upon it. —This is roughly what the Buddha said in his great inaugural address.

[ 25 ] So, he meant to say, I must impart to humanity the knowledge that is attainable through the highest unfolding of the powers of the astral body. Therefore, the Buddha had to teach what a human being can attain through the profound deepening and immersion in the powers of the astral body. Through this, he attains a knowledge that is now appropriate for him, that is now possible for him, but at the same time a knowledge that has nothing to do with the influences from past incarnations. The Buddha wished to give humanity such knowledge, which has nothing to do with what lies dormant in the human soul as samskara—dark and abandoned to ignorance—a knowledge that can be acquired by awakening all the powers within the astral body in a single incarnation.

[ 26 ] “This is the cause of suffering in the world,” said the Buddha, “that something has remained from past incarnations of which the human being knows nothing. What he has from past incarnations is the cause of why ignorance about the world spreads within him; this is the cause in human beings of suffering and pain, of grief and worry. But when he becomes aware of the powers lying within his astral body, into which he can penetrate, then, if he wishes, he can acquire a knowledge that has remained independent of all that came before—a knowledge of his own.

[ 27 ] This is the knowledge the great Buddha wished to impart to humanity. And he imparted it to them through the so-called Eightfold Path. In it, he seeks to indicate the powers that human beings must develop so that, within the present cycle of humanity, they may attain a knowledge that is unaffected by the ever-recurring process of rebirth. Thus, through the power he attained, the Buddha himself raised his soul to the highest level attainable through the most intense powers of the astral body; and in the Eightfold Path, he sought to chart a course for humanity, showing how it might attain a knowledge unaffected by samskara. He defined it thus:

[ 28 ] A person attains such knowledge of the world when they form a correct opinion about things—an opinion that has nothing to do with sympathy or antipathy or being taken with them, but rather by striving—based purely on what presents itself to them externally—to form the correct opinion about every single thing to the best of their ability. That is the first, the “correct opinion” about a thing.

[ 29 ] Secondly, it is necessary to become independent of what remains from previous incarnations; we must strive to judge according to our correct opinion, not according to any other influences, but solely according to what our correct opinion of a matter is. Thus, “correct judgment” is the second point at issue.

[ 30 ] The third is that, when we communicate with the world, we strive to express correctly what we wish to convey—what we truly mean and have correctly judged—so that we put nothing into our words other than our own opinion, and not only into our words, but into all expressions of the human being. This is the “right speech” in the sense of the Buddha.

[ 31 ] Fourthly, it is necessary that we strive not to carry out our actions based on our likes and dislikes, nor on what stirs darkly within us as samskara, but rather that we put into action what we have grasped as our correct opinion, as our correct judgment, and as the right word. This, then, is the right action, the “right conduct.”

[ 32 ] The fifth thing a person needs to free themselves from what lives within them is to attain the right standing, the right position in the world. We can best understand what the Buddha meant by this when we say to ourselves: There are so many people who are dissatisfied with their role in the world, who think they would be better off in this or that position. But a person should gain the ability to make the best of the situation into which they were born or into which fate has placed them—that is, to gain the best possible position. Whoever does not feel satisfaction in the situation they are in will also be unable to draw from that situation the strength that leads them to act correctly in the world. This is what the Buddha calls gaining the “right position.”

[ 33 ] The sixth is that we must increasingly ensure that what we acquire through right view, right judgment, and so on, becomes a habit within us. When we are born into the world, we have certain habits. The child displays this or that inclination or habit. But human beings should strive not to retain the habits that come to them from samskara, but rather to acquire those habits that, through “right view, right judgment, right speech, and so on,” gradually become entirely their own. These are the “right habits” that we should acquire.

[ 34 ] The seventh is that we bring order to our lives by not always forgetting yesterday when we are to act today. If we had to relearn all our skills anew every time, we would never accomplish anything. A person must try to develop a remembrance, a memory, of all the things in their existence. They must always make use of what they have already learned; they must link the present to the past. Thus, the “right memory”—as it is called in the Buddhist sense—is what a person must acquire on the Eightfold Path.

[ 35 ] And the eighth is what a person gains by devoting themselves purely to things, immersing themselves in them, and letting only the things speak to them—without a preference for this or that opinion, and without allowing what remains from earlier incarnations to have a say. This is “right contemplation.”

[ 36 ] This is the Eightfold Path, of which the Buddha told his followers that observing it leads to gradually quenching that suffering thirst for existence and bringing the soul something that frees it from all that comes from past lives and makes it a slave. In this way, we have also been able to grasp something of the whole spirit and origin of Buddhism. But with this, we also know what significance it held that the ancient Bodhisattva became a Buddha. We know that the ancient Bodhisattva always allowed everything connected with his mission to flow into humanity. In ancient times, before the Buddha entered the world, humanity was not capable of using even its inner forces in such a way that a true word or a true judgment would arise of its own accord. For this to happen, influences from the spiritual worlds had to flow down to humanity. It was the ancient Bodhisattva who allowed these influences to flow down. Therefore, it was an event of a unique kind when this Bodhisattva became the Buddha, who now taught what he had previously allowed to flow into humanity—that is, that he now placed a body into the world capable of developing within itself the very forces that had previously only been able to flow down from above. As the first body of this kind, the Buddha placed this body into the world as Gautama Buddha. Thus, everything he had previously allowed to flow down has now been present in the world. But this has a great and far-reaching significance for the entire development of the Earth, for when that which has flowed down into the Earth from epoch to epoch has once been present in a human being, has once walked in bodily form as a human being upon the Earth, it now forms a power that can pass on to all human beings. And within the body of Gautama Buddha lie the causes for all time, so that human beings may develop the forces of the Eightfold Path within themselves into the future, so that the Eightfold Path may become the property of every human being. The fact that the Buddha was there gave human beings the possibility to think correctly, and what will happen in this direction until all of humanity has made the Eightfold Path its own is owed to the Buddha’s existence. What the Buddha had within himself, he gave to humanity as spiritual nourishment.

[ 37 ] Such things are generally not yet perceived by external science today. But such great things from the course of human development are often told to us by the simplest of fairy tales and legends. I have had to emphasize this on various occasions: that fairy tales and legends are often wiser and more scientific than our objective science. The depths of the human soul have always sensed something very special as truth in a being such as a Bodhisattva. That something first flows down, which then gradually becomes the property of the human soul and which then, as it were, radiates out from the human soul into the space of the universe—this is what people sensed as something very special. And those who could sense this, however dimly, said to themselves: Just as the rays of the sun shine into the heavens, so once the power of the Bodhisattva shone down upon the earth the forces of the teaching of compassion and love, the forces of the Eightfold Path; but then the Bodhisattva took up residence in a human body and gave to humanity what was once his own. This now lives within humanity and radiates back into the cosmos, just as the moonlight reflects the sun’s rays back into the cosmos. This was always felt as something particularly significant wherever such a truth was expressed through fairy tales and legends. Therefore, to express this truth regarding the Bodhisattva, a remarkable fairy tale was formed in the regions where he appeared. This great event was clothed in the following simple narrative.

[ 38 ] Once upon a time, the Buddha lived as a hare, and it was a time when all manner of other beings were searching for food, but all food had been consumed. What the hare himself could eat—vegetables—was, however, unsuitable for the beings who were carnivores. So the hare, who was actually the Buddha, decided, when a Brahmin came by, to sacrifice himself and offer himself as food. At that moment, the god Shakra arrived; he witnessed the hare’s mighty deed. And a crevice in the mountain opened up and took the hare in. Then the god took a tincture and painted the image of this hare on the moon. And ever since that time, the image of the Buddha as a hare has been visible on the moon. —- In the West, people do not speak of the hare in the moon, but of the “man in the moon.”

[ 39 ] But a Kalmyk fairy tale states it even more clearly: A hare lives in the moon, having ascended there because the Buddha sacrificed himself and the Earth Spirit himself drew the image of the hare on the moon. - This expresses the great truth of how the Bodhisattva became the Buddha and how the Buddha gave himself up, how he offered what was his very essence as nourishment to humanity, so that it can now radiate out from the hearts of people into the world.

[ 40 ] Regarding a being such as the Bodhisattva who became a Buddha, we have said—and this is the teaching of all who know—that when such a being passes through a stage like that of the Bodhisattva becoming a Buddha, this is a final incarnation on Earth, where the entire being of the individual is absorbed into a human body. Such a being then undergoes no further incarnations of this kind. That is why the Buddha could say, when he sensed the significance of his present existence: “This is the last of the incarnations; there will be no further incarnation on Earth.”—Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to believe that such a being then withdraws entirely from earthly existence. It continues to work into earthly existence. Although it does not enter directly into a physical body, it assumes another body—whether formed of astral or etheric substance—and thus works into the world. And the manner in which it works into the world, after having undergone its own final incarnation, may be as follows.

[ 41 ] An ordinary human being, consisting of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an I, can, so to speak, be permeated by such a being. Such a being, which no longer descends into a physical body but still possesses an astral body, can integrate itself into the astral body of another human being. It then works within such an earthly human being. Then this person can become an important figure, for the forces of such a being—which has already undergone its final incarnation on Earth—are now at work within him. Thus, such an astral being connects with the astral being of some human being on Earth. This connection can occur in the most complex ways. When the Buddha appeared to the shepherd in the form of the “heavenly hosts,” he was not in a physical body, but he was in an astral body. He had taken on a body through which he could still work upon the Earth. One therefore distinguishes, in such a being who has now become a Buddha, a threefold body:

[ 42 ] First, the body it possessed before Buddhahood, when it worked down from above as a Bodhisattva—a body that does not contain everything through which this being can act; it still stands in the heights above and is linked to its former mission, just as the former Bodhisattva was in the Buddha before he transformed this mission into the Buddha mission. As long as such a being is in such a body, its body is called a Dharmakaya.

[ 43 ] Second, the body that such a being forms, which it possesses, and in which it expresses everything it contains within itself through the physical body; this body is called the “Body of Fulfilment,” Sambhogakaya.

[ 44 ] Third, the body that such a being assumes after having passed through perfection and can now work downwards in the manner described; this is called a Nirmanakaya.

[ 45 ] We can therefore say: The Buddha’s Nirmanakaya appeared to the shepherds in the form of the angelic hosts. There the Buddha shone forth in his Nirmanakaya and revealed himself in this way to the shepherds. But he was to continue seeking the path to work into the events in Palestine during this important time. This happened in the following manner.

[ 46 ] To understand this, we must briefly recall what we know from the anthroposophical lectures on the nature of the human being. We know that in spiritual science we distinguish between several “births.” In what is called physical birth, the human being, as it were, sheds the physical maternal sheath. By the age of seven, he sheds the etheric sheath, which until then—until the change of teeth—surrounds him just as the physical maternal sheath does until physical birth; and upon reaching sexual maturity—which in our time occurs around the age of fourteen or fifteen—the human being sheds what has until then functioned as an astral sheath. Thus, the human etheric body is actually only born outwardly as a free body at the age of seven, and the human astral body is born with sexual maturity; the outer astral sheath is then shed.

[ 47 ] Let us now consider what is shed at the onset of sexual maturity. In the regions where the Palestinian events took place, this point occurred somewhat earlier, under normal circumstances at the age of twelve; thus, the astral maternal sheath was shed. In ordinary life, this sheath is shed and handed over to the outer astral world. In the case of the child who came from the priestly line of the House of David, something else occurred. The astral sheath was shed at the age of twelve; but it did not dissolve into the general astral world; rather, just as it had been the young boy’s protective astral sheath—containing all the vitalizing forces that had flowed into him between the time of tooth change and sexual maturity—it now merged with that which had descended as the Buddha’s Nirmanakaya. That which appeared to descend in the host of angels united with what detached itself from the twelve-year-old Jesus as an astral sheath, united with all the youthful forces that keep one youthful in the time between the change of teeth and sexual maturity. The Nirmanakaya of the Buddha, which outshone the infant Jesus from birth, became one with what detached from this child at puberty as his youthful astral mother-sheath; he absorbed it, united with it, and thereby rejuvenated himself. And through this rejuvenation, it became possible for what he had previously given to the world to reappear now in the child Jesus as in childlike simplicity. Thus this child took up the ability to speak in a childlike manner about the high teachings of compassion and love that we have described today in this context. At that time, during the scene of Jesus in the temple, the boy spoke in such a way that those around him were surprised, because the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha hovered around him, refreshed as if from a fountain of youth by the boy’s astral mother-sheath. | This is something the spiritual researcher can know, and which the writer of the Gospel of Luke has woven into the remarkable scene of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, where he suddenly becomes someone else. That is why, in the Gospel of Luke, Buddhism is taught in a way comprehensible to the most childlike simplicity. We must understand this. Then we will know why the boy no longer speaks as he did before. Just as he spoke before, so now, at this time, speaks the one who, as King Kanishka in ancient India, convenes a synod there and has the old Buddhism as orthodox doctrine. But the Buddha himself had advanced in the meantime. He had absorbed the forces of the astral mother-sheath of the infant Jesus, and through this he became capable of speaking in a new way to the minds of human beings.

[ 48 ] Thus the Gospel of Luke contains Buddhism in a new form, as if from a fountain of youth, and therefore it expresses the religion of compassion and love to the simplest minds in a natural way. We can read it. The writer of the Gospel of Luke has woven this mystery into it. But there is even more to it. Only a part of what is contained in this scene of the presentation in the temple could be described today, and we will have to shine a light even deeper into the depths of this mystery; then light will also fall upon both the earlier and later periods of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.