The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] The great spiritual currents of humanity, which make their way through the world, all have their special mission. They do not pass through the world in isolation, but only pass through certain epochs separately; then they cross each other in the most diverse ways and fertilize each other. We see such a great and powerful confluence of human intellectual currents in the events in Palestine. It is our task to bring this event before our minds with ever greater clarity. But world views do not take the path that one might imagine in the abstract, as if they were walking in the air and converging on a single point. Rather, world views take paths through beings, through individualities. Where a world view first appears, it must be carried by an individuality. Where spiritual currents flow together and cross-fertilize each other, something very special must also take place in those who are the bearers of these world views.

[ 2 ] Some may have found it very complicated in yesterday's lecture to see how the two great spiritual currents of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism meet in the concrete in the event of Palestine. If we were to speak only in the abstract and not go directly to the events, we would only have to show how these two world views combine. But as anthroposophists, we have the task of pointing out both the individuals who were the bearers of the two worldviews and what is present in them; for the anthroposophist should move more and more from the abstract to the concrete. So you must not be surprised that where something great and powerful was to happen, there was also a great external complication of facts, that Zoroastrianism and Buddhism could not easily flow together. This had to be prepared slowly and gradually.

[ 3 ] Thus we see how Buddhism flowed in and took effect in the personality of him who was born to Joseph and Mary of the Nathanic line of the house of David, the child of whom we are told in the Gospel according to St. Luke. On the other hand, we have, descending from the Solomonic line of the Davidic race, Joseph and Mary with the child Jesus, who originally lived in Bethlehem and who is described to us by the writer of the Gospel according to Matthew. This child Jesus from the Solomonic line is the bearer of that individuality which once founded the ancient Persian culture as Zarathustra. Thus we have at the starting point of our era, as actual individuals standing side by side, the two currents of Buddhism on the one hand, as it is first described to us in the Gospel of Luke, and Zoroastrianism on the other, as it is described to us by Matthew in the Jesus from the Solomon line of the Davidic dynasty. The dates of the births of these two boys do not exactly coincide.

[ 4 ] Of course, today I have to say something that is not in the Gospels; but you will understand the Gospels more precisely when you learn something from the Akasha Chronicle, the effects and consequences of which the Gospels hint at, but which they could not tell themselves. It must be firmly held that what is stated at the end of the Gospel of John applies to all the Gospels: “It is not enough that books should be written about the things that have been done.” (John 21:25). And the revelations that have come to humanity through Christianity are not of the kind that are once concluded and written in books and thus given to the world as a whole in book form. The words, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20), are true. The Christ is present, not as one dead, but as one alive. Those whose spiritual eyes are open can learn from him again and again what he has to give us. Christianity is a living spiritual current, and its revelations will continue as long as people are able to receive the revelations. Thus, today some facts will be mentioned that are found in the Gospels in their consequences, but which are not in them themselves. However, you can thoroughly examine them on the basis of the external facts, and you will then find them to be true.

[ 5 ] Thus the births of the two Jesus boys were separated by a few months. But both the Jesus of Luke's Gospel and that of John were born so much later that the so-called Bethlehem infanticide could not affect them. Have you ever considered that anyone reading about the Bethlehem Massacre should ask: Why then could there have been another John? But the facts are such that you can find them to be true in spite of everything. Imagine that the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew is taken to Egypt by his parents and that John is born shortly before or at the same time. According to the usual view, he remains in Palestine, where he should actually have been affected by what Herod had decreed. He should actually have died as a result of Herod's murder and could not have been there. You see that one really has to think about all these things. Because if all children in their first two years of life were really killed at that time, John should have been killed as well. But you will find it understandable if you take the facts from the Akasha Chronicle and realize that the events of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke do not fall in the same period, so that the birth of Jesus of Nazareth does not fall in the time of the Betlehhemite infanticide. And it is the same with John. Although there are only months in between, they are enough to make these facts possible.

[ 6 ] Likewise, you will learn to understand the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew from the more intimate facts. The individuality that we have come to know as the Zarathustra of the ancient Persian culture is re-embodied in this boy. We know of this Zarathustra that he once gave his Persian people the great teaching of Ahura Mazdao, the great sun being. We know that we have to imagine this sun being as the spiritual-soul part of what the outer physical sun represents to us as the physical part. Therefore, Zarathustra could say: “See not only the physical sun shining, but see the mighty Being who, spiritually, sends down His beneficent effects just as the physical sun sends down its beneficent effects in light and warmth.” — Ahura Mazdao, who was later called the Christ in other words, was proclaimed by Zarathustra to the Persian people. He did not yet proclaim him as a being who had walked on earth; he could only point to the sun and say: “Up there he dwells.” He is gradually approaching the earth and will one day dwell in a body on earth.

[ 7 ] Here we can also see the great, enormous difference between Zarathustrianism and Buddhism. There is a profound difference between the two as long as they were separate; and the profound differences even out at the moment when they flow together and are rejuvenated by the events in Palestine.

[ 8 ] Let us once more turn our attention to what the Buddha had to give to the world. We have enumerated the Buddha's teaching as the eight-fold path, as that which the human soul has to take up as its content if it wants to escape the dire effects of karma. What Buddha gave to the world was what people, over the course of time, have to develop out of their own attitude and morality as compassion and love. I have also told you that the moment the Bodhisattva essence appeared in Buddha was a unique moment. If the Bodhisattva had not fully appeared in the body of the great Gautama Buddha at that time, then what we call the law, the dharma, could not have been transferred into the human soul of all people. This law can only be developed by man out of himself when he releases his astral content in order to free himself from all the terrible effects of karma. This is also indicated to us in a magnificent way in the Buddha legend, where it is said that Buddha achieved 'the rolling of the wheel of the law'. This means that from the enlightenment of the Bodhisattva to the Buddha, a current wave really passed over all of humanity, and the consequence of this was that people could now develop Dharma out of their own souls and gradually rise to the full depth of the eight-limbed path. There lies the origin, when the Buddha first developed the teaching that was actually to underlie the moral character of earthlings.

[ 9 ] That was the task of this Bodhisattva. And how the individual tasks are distributed among the great personalities, we can see when we realize that in its original form, Buddhism contains everything that man can experience in his own soul as his great ideal. The ideal of the human soul, what man is and can be, that is the content of the Buddha's teaching. But that was enough for this individuality. Everything in Buddhism is inwardness, everything relates to the human being and his development. We find nothing in the original, real Buddhism that could be called cosmological teachings, even if they were later introduced. Everything must be integrated. But the actual mission of the Bodhisattva was this: to bring people the teaching of the inwardness of their own soul. Thus, in certain sermons, Buddha even declines to say anything special about cosmic interrelations. Everything is shaped in such a way that the human soul, when it allows the Buddha's teaching to take effect on it, can become better and better. Man is understood as a being in himself; apart from the great womb of the universe from which man has emerged. Because that was the special mission of the Bodhisattva, that is why the teaching of the Buddha, when truly recognized, has such a warm and inner effect on the human soul, and that is why it appears so emotionally imbued, so inwardly warm to the human soul that wants to deal with it, where it, again rejuvenated, appears in the Gospel of Luke.

[ 10 ] The individuality that had incarnated as Zarathustra among the ancient Persians had a quite different task, the opposite of the former. Zarathustra taught man to grasp and penetrate spiritually the great cosmos. Buddha directed attention inward and said: As man develops, the “six organs” gradually arise out of unknowingness. We have enumerated them as the five sense organs and the Manas. — But everything that is in man is born out of the great world. We would have no light-sensitive eye if the light had not born the eye out of the organism. “The eye is created for the light,” says Goethe. This is a profound truth. The eye has been formed out of indifferent organs that were once in the human body. Likewise, all spiritual forces in the world form in man. What is inward in him is first organized out of the divine-spiritual forces. Therefore, for everything internal there is an external counterpart. The forces flow into man from the outside and are then within him. And Zarathustra had the task of pointing out what is external, what is in man's environment. Therefore, he spoke, for example, of the Amshaspands, of the great geniuses, of whom he first enumerated six - actually there are twelve, but the other six are hidden. These Amshaspands work from the outside, organizing and forming the organs of the human being. Zarathustra showed how the creators of the human being stand behind the human sense organs. Zarathustra pointed to the great geniuses, to the forces that we find outside ourselves. What works as forces in man, what hidden forces are in man, that is what Buddha pointed out. But Zarathustra then pointed to those forces and entities that are subordinate to the Amshaspands, which he called the twenty-eight Izards or Izeds, and which in turn work from the outside into man in order to help work on his inner organization. So again Zarathustra pointed to the spiritual in the cosmos, to the outer connections. And while the Buddha pointed to the actual substance of thought, from which thoughts arise from the human soul, Zarathustra pointed to the Farohars or Feruers or Frawarschai, to the world-creative thoughts that surround us, that are scattered everywhere in the world. For whatever thoughts a person has are present everywhere in the world outside.

[ 11 ] Thus Zoroaster had to proclaim a world-view that was concerned with the deciphering and dissection of the outer world. He had to provide a world-view for a people who had to work with their hands in the outer world. Zarathustra's mission is entirely in keeping with the character peculiarities of the ancient Persian people. We could also say that it was Zarathustra's destiny to cultivate strength and efficiency in the external world, even if this was initially expressed in a way that may be repulsive to today's people. To create strength and efficiency and security for outer work by knowing that man is not only secure within himself, but also rests in the bosom of a divine spiritual world, that was the mission of Zarathustra. that man should say to himself: Wherever you stand in the universe, you do not stand alone, you stand in a spiritualized cosmos and are a part of the world gods and world spirits; you are born out of the spirit and rest in it. With every breath you draw in divine spirit; with every breath you may bring a sacrifice to the great spirit by breathing out. — Therefore, the initiation of Zarathustra, in keeping with his mission, had to be different from that of the other great missionaries of humanity.

[ 12 ] Let us now recall what the individuality who incarnated in Zarathustra was allowed to do. He stood at such a high level of development that he was able to provide for the next cultural current after the ancient Persian, for Egyptian culture. Zarathustra had two disciples: the one individuality who later reappeared as the Egyptian Hermes, and the other who later reappeared as Moses. And when the two individualities were incarnated again in humanity for their further work, Zarathustra's astral body, which he had given as a sacrifice, was incorporated into Hermes. In the Egyptian Hermes we see a re-embodiment of the astral body of Zarathustra. Hermes carried within himself the astral body of Zarathustra, which was given to him so that everything that Zarathustra had absorbed in the outer world of science could be resurrected in the outer world. And the etheric body of Zarathustra was given to Moses; and because everything that develops in time is connected with the etheric body, when Moses became aware of the secrets of his etheric body, he was able to evoke the processes in time in great, powerful images, as they appear to us in Genesis. Thus Zarathustra continued to work through the power of his individuality, inaugurating and influencing Egyptian culture and that which was formed from it as ancient Hebrew culture.

[ 13 ] An individuality of this kind is destined for great things, also through its ego. The ego of Zarathustra incarnated itself again and again in other personalities. For an individuality that has come so far can always sanctify an astral body and strengthen an etheric body, even if it has given up the original ones. Thus, Zarathustra was also reborn and reappeared six hundred years before our era in ancient Chaldea as Zarathas or Nazarathos, who became the teacher of the Chaldean secret school as well as the teacher of Pythagoras and was able to gain great, powerful insights into the external world. If we put ourselves in the position of the Chaldeans with true understanding of their wisdom, which is not given to us by anthropology but by anthroposophy, then we get an idea of what Zarathustra was able to teach as Zarathas in the secret schools of the ancient Chaldeans.

[ 14 ] Everything Zarathustra could teach and bring to the world was aimed, as we have seen, at the outer world in order to bring order and harmony to it. Therefore, the art of forming and organizing empires, as befits the progress of humanity and what makes social order possible, was also the mission of Zarathustra. And that is why those who were among the disciples of Zarathustra can rightly be called not only great magicians, great initiates, but also always kings, that is, those who know the art of creating external social organization and order.

[ 15 ] An enormous attachment developed in the schools of the Chaldeans to the individuality — not to the personality — of Zarathustra. These wise men of the Orient felt akin to their great leader. They saw in him the Star of Humanity, for “Zoroaster” is a paraphrase of the word “gold star” or “star of splendor.” They saw in him a reflection of the sun itself. And from their deep wisdom it could not remain hidden from them when their master reappeared in Bethlehem. Then they were led by their star and brought him the outer signs of the best he had to give to mankind. The best that could be given to a person from the Zarathustra current was the knowledge of the external world, of the secrets of the cosmos, absorbed into the human astral body, into thinking, feeling and so that the Zarathustra disciples wanted to permeate their thinking, feeling and willing, the powers of their soul, with the wisdom that can be absorbed from the deep foundations of the divine spiritual world. For this knowledge, which can be acquired by absorbing the outer mysteries, they had as symbols gold, incense and myrrh: gold as a symbol of thinking, incense for piety, for that which permeates us as feeling, and myrrh for the power of will. Thus they showed their kinship with their Master when they appeared before him, as he was reborn in Bethlehem. Therefore the writer of the Gospel of Matthew actually tells us correctly how the wise men, among whom the Zarathustra had worked, knew that he had reappeared among men, and how they expressed their kinship to him by the three symbols—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—the symbols for the best that he had given them (Matthew 2,11).

[ 16 ] It was now a matter of the Zarathustra in the form of Jesus being able to work powerfully out of the Solomonic line of the Davidic family, in order to give everything back to humanity in a rejuvenated form that he had given to it earlier. To do this, he had to combine all the power that he had possessed before. Therefore, He could not be born at first into a body that came from the priestly line of the house of David, but only into one from the royal line. This expresses in the Gospel of Matthew the relationship of the name of the king in ancient Persia with the descent of that child in whom Zarathustra was incarnated. The ancient wisdom books of the Near East have always pointed to these events. Those who really understand these wisdom books read them differently than those who do not know the facts and therefore mix everything up. For example, in the Old Testament we have two prophecies, one in the Apocrypha of Enoch, which points more to the Nathanian Messiah from the priestly line, and one in the Psalms, which points to the Messiah from the royal line. Every single thing that is meant in the scriptures corresponds to the facts that we can obtain from the Akasha Chronicle. But Zarathustra now had to gather together all the individual forces that had once been within him. He had given up to Egyptian and ancient Hebrew culture - to Hermes and to Moses - what was in his astral body and in his etheric body. He had to reunite with this. He had to, as it were, retrieve the forces of his etheric body from Egypt. A deep secret is revealed to us here: Jesus, the Zarathustra in the flesh, of the Solomonic line of the House of David, must be led to Egypt, and he is led there. There he finds the forces that had gone out from his astral and etheric bodies, and which he had first given to Hermes and then to Moses. Because he had an influence on Egyptian culture, he had to bring back, as it were, the powers he had given there. That is why there was the “flight into Egypt” and what happened spiritually, the absorption of all the powers that he now needed to give back to humanity in a rejuvenated form, with renewed strength, what he had given it in the past.

[ 17 ] Thus we see how the Jesus of Bethlehem, whose parents were therefore formerly resident in Bethlehem, is correctly described by Matthew. Only Luke tells us that the parents of his Jesus were resident in Nazareth, that they went to Bethlehem for the census and that in this short time Luke's Jesus was born there, after which the parents returned to Nazareth. In the Gospel of Matthew, it is only indicated that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and that he had to be taken to Egypt. It was only after their return from Egypt that his parents settled in Nazareth, in order to be close to Jesus, who is the reincarnated Zarathustra, the one who represents the other current, Buddhism. This is how the two worldviews are brought together in concrete terms.

[ 18 ] Where the Gospels go to great depths, they show us in all depth what it is all about. What is more closely connected with will and power in human beings, with the royal element, if we may use the term technically, was known by those who knew the secrets of existence to be transmitted in the paternal element in the outward inheritance. But what is connected with the inner element, with wisdom and inner mobility of mind, is transmitted through the maternal element. Goethe, who looked so deeply into the secrets of existence, indicates this connection in the words:

From my father I have the stature,
The serious conduct of life,
From my mother the cheerful nature
And the desire to tell stories

[ 19 ] — a truth that you can find confirmed so often in the world. The stature, the outer form, what is directly expressed in the outer form, and “the serious conduct of life,” which is connected with the character of the ego, that man inherits from the paternal element. Therefore, the Jesus of Solomon inherited strength above all from the paternal element, because it was always His mission to bring into the world that which is surrounded by the radiance of the divine powers in space. The author of the Gospel of Matthew expresses this as magnificently as it can be expressed. That a special individuality will embody, that is proclaimed from the spiritual world as a momentous event, and it is not proclaimed to Mary, but to the father, Joseph (Matthew 1, 20-21). The deepest truths are hidden behind all this; one should not take it as something random. The Jesus of the Nathanic line inherited the inner qualities that were inherited from the mother. Therefore, the Jesus of Luke's Gospel had to be proclaimed to the mother, and we also see the proclamation to the mother taking place in Luke's Gospel (Luke 1:26-38). This is how deeply the facts are expressed in the religious scriptures. But let us continue.

[ 20 ] All the other facts that are described also express something significant. First of all, the forerunner of Jesus of Nazareth in the person of John the Baptist is to arise for humanity. Only in the course of time can we become more closely involved with the Baptist's individuality. Let us first accept him as he appears in the picture, as he has to proclaim what is to come in Jesus. He proclaims it by combining with an infinitely strong power everything that lay in the outer law, everything that lay in the old proclamation. The Baptist wanted to remind people of what was written in the law, what had become old in culture, what people had forgotten, but what was ripe and what people no longer paid attention to. Above all, he had to have the strength of a soul that is born ripe into the world. He is born of an old couple, is born in such a way that his astral body is pure and purified from the very beginning in the face of all the forces that pull man down, because passion and desire do not play a part in the old couple. This, in turn, is a profound wisdom that is hinted at in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 1:18). The great Mother Lodge of Humanity also takes care of such individuality. Where the great Manu directs and guides the processes in the spiritual, the currents are sent where they are needed. Such an ego as that of John the Baptist is born into a body directly under the guidance and direction of the great Mother Lodge of Humanity, the center of earthly spiritual life. The I of John the Baptist came from the same place as the being of soul for the child Jesus in St. Luke's Gospel. The only difference is that more of those qualities were given to Jesus that had not yet been penetrated by the ego, that is, a young soul is directed to where the reborn Adam is to be incarnated.

[ 21 ] It will seem strange to you that a soul could be directed from the great Mother Lodge to a place without an actual developed ego. For the same self, which is basically withheld from the Jesus of Luke's Gospel, is bestowed upon the body of John the Baptist, and these two, what lives as a soul being in the Jesus of Luke's Gospel and what lives as a self in John the Baptist, are in an inner relationship from the very beginning. When the human germ develops in the mother's womb, the I unites with the other limbs of the human organization in the third week, but it only gradually comes into effect in the last months before birth. Only then does the I become an inward, moving force. For in a normal case, where the I works in the usual way to bring the human germ to movement, we are dealing with an I that comes from earlier incarnations and brings the human germ to movement. But here, with John, we are dealing with an I that is connected with the soul being of Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore, in the Gospel of Luke, the mother of Jesus must go to the mother of John the Baptist when she is in her sixth month of pregnancy, and what is otherwise stimulated by one's own ego in one's own personality is stimulated here by the other fruit of the womb. The child of Elizabeth begins to move when the woman who carries the child Jesus approaches her, for it is the I through which the child is stimulated in the other mother (Luke 1:39-44). So deep is the connection between the one who was to work to bring about the confluence of the two spiritual currents and the one who was to announce him.

[ 22 ] Thus we see how, at the beginning of our era, something truly extraordinary is indeed taking place. If people usually like to have the truth simple, it is because of human laziness, which does not like to have to grasp many concepts; but the greatest truths can only be grasped through the greatest efforts of the mind. If a person must make the greatest efforts to describe a machine, then he should not demand that the greatest truths should also be the simplest. Truth is great and therefore complicated, and we must exert our mental powers if we want to gradually understand the truths related to the event of Palestine. Let no one indulge in the objection that things are presented in too complicated a way; they are presented as they are, and they are as they are because we are dealing with the greatest fact in the evolution of the earth.

[ 23 ] Thus we see two children of Jesus growing up, once the son of the Nathan parents Joseph and Mary, and we see this son being born of a young mother - in Hebrew the word Alma would have been used for this -; because that which was to work as a young soul had to be born of a very young mother. With this son, the parents lived again in Nazareth after returning from Bethlehem. They had no other children. It was reserved for the mother to be the only mother of this Jesus. Then we have the Jesus of the parents Joseph and Mary from the Solomonic line. After these parents had returned from Egypt and moved to Nazareth, they had a number of children, who you will find listed in the Gospel of Mark: Simon, Judas, Joses, James and also two sisters (Mark 6, 3). — The two children of Jesus grow up. The child who carries the Zarathustra individuality within him gradually develops, with an enormously rapid maturing, those powers that must develop when such a mighty individuality is active in the body. The individuality that is active in the body of the other Jesus is of a different kind. The most important thing about it is the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha. This is something that rests in this child. That is why we are told when the parents return from Jerusalem: “The child is full of wisdom” — that is, in his etheric body it is permeated with wisdom — “and the grace of God is upon him” (Luke 2:40). But he grew up in such a way that he developed the ordinary human qualities, which relate to understanding and recognizing the outer world, extremely slowly. A trivial person would have called this child Jesus a “relatively retarded child” if he had only looked at the powers of understanding and comprehending the outer world. But in this child, precisely, there developed that which streamed down from the Nirmanakaya of Buddha, which overshadowed him. A depth of inwardness developed that cannot be compared with any other inwardness in the world. A depth of feeling developed in the boy that had an extraordinary effect on his entire environment. Thus we see a being of deep feeling growing up in the Jesus of Nazareth, and we see an individuality of tremendous maturity, with a deep understanding of the world, growing up in the Jesus of Solomon.

[ 24 ] Now the mother of the Jesus of Nazareth, that child of deep feeling, had been told something significant. Already when Simeon stood before the newborn child and saw him radiant with the glory of him whom he had once been unable to see in India as Buddha, he foretold the great and mighty deed that was now to be accomplished; but he also spoke the great, significant words of the “sword that should pierce the mother's heart” (Luke 2:35). This word also refers to something we want to understand today.

[ 25 ] In the immediate neighborhood and under the friendly relations of the parents, the two children grew up and developed both approximately up to their twelfth year. When the twelfth year of Jesus of Nazareth approached, his parents went to Jerusalem, as was said, according to custom, to attend the Easter festival, and they took the child with them, as was the custom when children reached maturity. Now, in the Gospel of Luke, there is an extraordinarily mysterious account of Jesus at twelve years old in the temple. It says: When the parents returned from the festival, they suddenly missed the boy, and when they could not find him among the traveling company, they went back and found him in the temple, in the midst of the great teachers, astonishing everyone with his wisdom (Luke 2:41-50).

[ 26 ] What had happened there? Let us ask the imperishable Akasha Chronicle about it. The facts of the world are not that simple. What happened here also happens in the world in a different way. It happens that an individuality at a certain stage of development needs different conditions than those given to it from the beginning. Therefore it happens again and again that a person grows up to a certain age – and then suddenly faints and is as dead. Then a transformation takes place: his own ego leaves him, and another ego takes its place in his corporeality. Such a rearrangement of the ego also takes place in other cases; this is a phenomenon known to every occultist. Here, with the twelve-year-old Jesus, the following had happened: the ego entity, which until then had used the body of Jesus from the royal line of David's family as a Zarathustra ego entity to rise to the height of its time, emerged from the body of the Solomonic Jesus-child and transferred itself to the Nathanic Jesus, who therefore appeared as if transformed. His parents did not recognize him, they did not understand his words. For now the Zarathustra ego spoke through the Nathanian Jesus, which had been transferred to him. That was the moment when the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha united with the excreted astral womb, and that was also the moment when the Zarathustra ego united with the Nathanian Jesus. Now the Zarathustra ego lived in the Nathanian Jesus. And this child, who was so transformed that his parents could not understand him, they now took home.

[ 27 ] In the not too distant future, the mother of this child Jesus died, so that this child, in whom the Zarathustra ego now dwelled, was orphaned on the mother's side. We shall see that the fact that this mother died and left the child orphaned points to an especially profound connection. — The other child could not live on under ordinary circumstances after the Zarathustra ego had left him. Joseph of the Solomonic line had already died earlier, and the mother of the Solomonic child Jesus, with her children James, Joses, Judas, Simon and the two daughters, was taken in by the Nathanian Joseph, so that now Zarathustra was living again with the family into which he had incarnated himself, except for the father. In this way the two families have merged into one, and so the mother of the brothers and sisters—we can call them brothers and sisters, because in terms of the I they are brothers and sisters—lives in the house of Joseph of Nazareth with Jesus, who, however, was physically at home in Nazareth, according to his hometown. So he lived with them.

[ 28 ] Thus we see in concrete form the confluence of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. For that body in which the mature ego-soul of Zarathustra was, could absorb and unite with itself what had been accomplished by the Nirmanakaya of the Buddha absorbing the astral mother-shell of the Nathanic Jesus. Thus we see an individuality growing up in Jesus of Nazareth, which bears within itself the I-ness of Zarathustra, which is irradiated and spiritualized by the rejuvenated Nirmanakaya of Buddha. What the confluence of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism is, we see living in this way in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. Since Joseph of the Nathanic line also died, and relatively early at that, the Zarathustra child is actually an orphan; it feels orphaned. It is not what it is according to its physical descent. In spirit, it is the resurrected Zarathustra. According to its physical descent, its father is Joseph of the Nathanic line, and according to outward appearance, the world had to take it for that. Luke tells us exactly, and we must take his words exactly:

"And it came to pass, that, when all the people were baptized, that Jesus also was baptized, and prayed that heaven might be opened. And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove, and a voice came out of heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, this day have I begotten thee. And Jesus himself began to work when he was about thirty years old...

[ 29 ] and now it is not just said that he is a son of Joseph, but it says:

[ 30 ] “...and was thought to be the son of Joseph” (Luke 3:21-23), because the I had originally incarnated in the Solomon-like Jesus and therefore had basically nothing to do with the Nathan-like Joseph.

[ 31 ] Now we have before us a unified being in Jesus of Nazareth, who had a great and powerful inner life in which everything we recognize as the blessings of Buddhism and everything we recognize as the blessings of Zarathustrianism was united. This inwardness was destined for greater and mightier things. Something quite different had to happen to it than to those whom John baptized in the Jordan. And we shall see that later on this inwardness had to receive the individuality of the Christ in the Jordan. Then the immortal part of the original mother of the Nathanian Jesus descended again and transformed the mother who had been taken into the house of the ° Nathanian Joseph, making her a virgin again, so that the soul of that mother, which Jesus had lost, was given back to him at the baptism of John. This mother, who remained with him, thus contains within herself the soul of his original mother, who is called Mary, the blessed, in the Bible (Luke 1:28).