The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] Today, on the occasion of the General Meeting, it falls to me to speak about a matter of great importance for humanity. Whereas in our lectures on anthroposophy we usually strive to lay a foundation that is rooted more in the physical plane, today we may speak of matters belonging to higher worlds. Let me mention once again as a preliminary remark that we should accustom ourselves to speaking about the higher matters of humanity in such a way that we are not satisfied with a one-sided presentation of data from the higher world, so that, for example, the concept of bodhisattvas, which we are going to discuss today, is defined in general terms and then their mission is described. Instead, we should also accustom ourselves here to move from the abstract to the concrete. Let us try to permeate even such lofty matters as those of the bodhisattvas with the ideas and feelings that are our own, gained from a thorough and loving observation of life, whereby we not only receive the facts as a communication, but can also understand them to a certain degree. That is why I would like to start from the bottom in this reflection and set myself the goal of characterizing the concept of the bodhisattva and his journey through the world a little more than in a schematic presentation.

[ 2 ] We cannot really understand what a bodhisattva is unless we delve a little deeper into the course of human development and allow ourselves to consider some of the things we have heard over the years. Just consider the fact that humanity is progressing. After the great Atlantean catastrophe, humanity went through a period of ancient Indian culture, where the great rishis were the teachers of humanity, then a period of ancient Persian culture, a period of Egyptian-Chaldean culture, then the Greek-Latin cultural period, up to our time, which is the fifth cultural period of the post-Atlantean era. These cultural epochs have meaning in that they represent the progression of humanity from one form of life to another.

[ 3 ] It is not only what is usually described in external history that progresses, but when we consider longer periods of time, all sensations and feelings, all concepts and ideas also change and renew themselves in the course of human development. What would be the point of advocating the idea of reincarnation or reincarnation if we did not know that this is the case in the world? Why should our soul enter an earthly body again and again if it did not have something new to experience, to feel and to sense each time? Because the abilities of human beings, including the intimacies of the soul life, are constantly becoming new and changing, it is possible for our soul not only to ascend from step to step as if on a staircase, but also to have the opportunity each time to take in something new from outside, through the transformation of the conditions of life on our earth. It is not merely through its transgressions, through its karmic sins, that our soul is led from incarnation to incarnation; but because our earth changes in all its living conditions, it is possible for our soul to take in something new from outside again and again. Therefore, the soul progresses from incarnation to incarnation, but also from cultural cycle to cultural cycle.

[ 4 ] Now, however, this soul would not be able to progress, to develop, if those beings who have already attained a higher level of development and thus, to some degree, surpass the average development of humanity, were not able to ensure that new things can continually flow into our earthly culture. In other words, if there were no great teachers who, through their higher development, are able to take in experiences from the higher worlds and carry them down to the stage of earthly cultural life. Throughout the period of Earth's development — and we are speaking here only of post-Atlantean development — there have always been beings who were the teachers of other human beings, beings to whom higher sources of feeling and possibilities of will are open. We can only understand the nature of such teachers of humanity if we realize how humanity itself progresses.

[ 5 ] Yesterday and today, in two excellent lectures, you heard our dear Dr. Unger speak in a philosophical and epistemological manner about the I and the I in its relationship to the not-I. Do you now believe that what you heard yesterday and today through human lips, out of human thinking, could have been heard in this form about 2,500 years ago? Nowhere on earth would it have been possible to speak about the “I,” for example, in the form of pure thought. Let us assume that 2,500 years ago, some individuality wanted to incarnate into our earthly existence and had decided before its incarnation to speak about the I in the peculiar form you have heard. It would not have been able to do so. For anyone who believes that something like this could have been said in this form by human lips 2,500 years ago misunderstands the real progress and transformations within cultural evolution. For this to be possible, it requires not only an individuality that decides to incarnate itself in a human body, but also that our Earth, in its development, produces a human body with a brain that is so structured that the truths that exist in the higher worlds in a completely different form can form within this brain into what we call “pure thoughts.” For we call the form in which Dr. Unger spoke yesterday and today about the I the form of pure thoughts. 2,500 years ago, there would have been no human brain — that would have been completely impossible — that could have been a tool for bringing such truths down into such thoughts.

[ 6 ] The beings who want to descend to our Earth must use the human bodies that this sphere itself produces. But throughout the various cultural periods, our Earth has always produced different bodies with different organizations; and only in our fifth post-Atlantean cultural period has it become possible to speak in the form of pure thought, because the human race itself produces bodies in which pure thoughts can form. Even in the Greek-Latin period, such an epistemological consideration would not yet have been possible, because there would have been no instrument, no tool, to form these thoughts into a language comprehensible to human beings. This is precisely the task of our fifth post-Atlantean cultural period: to gradually shape human beings, in relation to their physical organization, as instruments in such a way that truths which in other times were expressed in forms quite different from the form of pure thought can flow down in ever purer thoughts.

[ 7 ] Let us take another example. When people today approach the question of good and evil, when they should do this or that or not do this or that, they speak of a kind of inner voice that tells them, quite independently of any external law: You should do this, you should not do that! Those who listen to this inner voice hear in it a certain impulse, a suggestion to do one thing or another in a given situation. We call this inner voice “conscience.” Anyone who believes that the individual periods of human development are so similar to one another might think that conscience has always existed, as long as humans have been on Earth. But that would not be correct. It can be proven, historically speaking, that humans began to talk about conscience at a certain point in time. This time is tangible. It lies between the two Greek tragedians, Aeschylus, who was born in the 6th century BC, and Euripides, who was born in the 5th century BC. Before that, you will not find any mention of conscience. Even in Aeschylus, there is not yet what we call the inner voice, but rather what appears to humans as an astral image: phenomena occur that present themselves as vengeful beings, furies or Erinyes. There came a time when the astral perception of the furies was replaced by the inner voice of conscience.

[ 8 ] Even in Greek and Latin times, when a large part of humanity still possessed astral twilight perception, someone who had done something wrong could perceive how every wrongdoing created astral figures in their surroundings that filled them with fear and terror for the wrong they had done. These were the educators, the impulse at that time. And when people lost the last remnants of astral clairvoyance, this view was replaced by the invisible voice of conscience, that is, what was once outside went into the soul and became one of the forces that are now in the soul. This came about because humanity, because the external instrument into which the human being is embodied, has changed in the course of evolution. Five thousand years ago, a human soul could never have perceived the voice of conscience; when it did something wrong, it perceived the Furies. In this way, the soul learned to relate to good and evil. Then it was incarnated again and again and finally born into a body whose organization was such that the capacity for conscience could now arise in this soul. In a future cycle of humanity, other capacities and other forms of soul life will be available.

[ 9 ] I have often emphasized that anyone who truly understands anthroposophy and does not take a dogmatic stand will not believe that the form in which anthroposophy is expressed today is eternal and can remain so for all future humanity. That is not the case. After 2,500 years, the same truths will no longer be able to be proclaimed in these forms, but will be cast into other forms, depending on the instrument that will then be available. If you take this into account, you will realize that in every age it is necessary to speak to people in a different way, and that even the great teachers must take a different position depending on human abilities. This means, however, that these great teachers of humanity must themselves undergo development, from cycle to cycle, from age to age. Thus we find the cycles that humanity goes through, and we find, as it were, superimposed on them, a progressive development of the great teachers of humanity. And just as human beings go through certain stages in which they reach turning points, so these great teachers also go through certain stages of development in which they reach turning points.

[ 10 ] Just think of what has often been said: we are now living in the fifth period of our post-Atlantean cultural development. This fifth period is, in a certain sense, a repetition of the third period, the Egyptian-Chaldean period. The sixth period will be a repetition of the ancient Persian period, and the seventh a repetition of the ancient Indian period. Thus the cycles overlap. The fourth period will not be repeated; it stands in the middle, so to speak, on its own. What does this mean? It means that human beings experience what they went through in the Greek-Latin period only once in a cultural epoch; not as if they were embodied in it only once, but they experience it only in one form. What was experienced in the Egyptian-Chaldean era, on the other hand, is repeated in our time; it is thus experienced in a twofold form. So there are stages of development that represent a kind of crisis, while other periods are such that they appear similar in a certain respect, repeating themselves not in the same way, but in a different form. As human beings develop in the post-Atlantean era, they undergo a number of incarnations in the Indian era and another number in the seventh cultural epoch, which are similar to each other. The same is true of the second and sixth epochs, and of the third and fifth epochs. Between them lies the fourth epoch, which will not be repeated; it stands in the middle. What does this mean? It means that human beings only have to go through this period once. Not that they only incarnate once in the fourth period, but that there are a number of incarnations that are unlike any others. Human beings thus undergo a descent and an ascent. The great teachers of humanity also undergo their development in a descent and an ascent, and they are something completely different at one time than at another.

[ 11 ] Since people in the first post-Atlantean period had completely different abilities than later, they also had to be taught in a completely different way. To whom do we owe the fact that in our time wisdom can be clothed in the form of pure thought in a logically concise manner? We owe this to the fact that in the present period of Earth's evolution, the consciousness soul is developing as the average characteristic of humanity. In the Greek-Latin era, it was the intellectual or emotional soul, in the Egyptian-Chaldean period the sentient soul, in the ancient Persian culture the sentient body, and in ancient India the etheric body—mind you, as a factor in cultural development.

[ 12 ] What the consciousness soul is for us was the etheric body for the members of the ancient Indian culture. Therefore, they had a completely different way of perceiving and understanding. If you had come to the Indian with pure thinking, he would not have understood a trace of it. For him, these would have been sounds that made no sense. The great teachers could not teach the ancient Indians by handing down things to them in the form of pure thinking, by explaining them to them with their mouths. For example, a great teacher in ancient India spoke very little, because at the stage the etheric body had reached at that time, people were not receptive to words that encompassed thoughts. It is so difficult for people today to imagine what such teaching was like. Very little was spoken, and it was more through the coloring of the sound, more through the way a word was spoken, that the other soul recognized what was actually flowing out of the spiritual world. But that was not the main thing. The word was, so to speak, only the “striking,” the sign that a relationship between the teacher and the other was to exist. In the earliest Indian times, the word was not much more than when we ring a bell to signal that something is beginning. It was the crystallization point around which indefinable, subtle spiritual currents flowed from the teacher to the student. But what was particularly important was what the teacher was in his innermost personality. It was not what a teacher said that mattered, but the quality of his soul, for it was transferred to the student as a kind of inspiration. Because the etheric body had been specially trained, one had to behave in a manner appropriate to the etheric body, and one understood the unspoken, what a teacher was, much better than the spoken word. For in order to understand what was spoken, people first had to prepare themselves through the later cultural epochs. Therefore, it would not have been necessary for any of the great teachers of ancient India to have had a specially trained intellect or consciousness, for that would have been a completely useless instrument at that time.

[ 13 ] But something else was necessary for these great teachers: the teacher had to stand above the others in the development of his own etheric body. If he had been on the same stage of development as the others, he would not have been able to have any special effect on them, would not have been able to bring them knowledge and messages from a higher world, would not have been able to give them any impulse for progress. In a certain sense, what was to be brought to human beings was what they would only grow into in the future. The Indian teacher had to anticipate, as it were, what others would only be able to absorb during the Persian cultural epoch. What ordinary people were to take in through their sentient body in the Persian epoch, he had to bring down into the etheric body. This means that the etheric body of such a teacher could not work in the same way as the etheric bodies of other people; it had to work as the sentient body had worked in the Persian culture. If a clairvoyant in the modern sense had stood before a great Indian teacher, he would have said: What kind of etheric body is that? For such an etheric body would have looked like an astral body in the Persian epoch.

[ 14 ] But such an etheric body could not simply act like a later astral body. This could not have happened through any kind of advance development at that time. It was only possible because a being that was already one step higher than the others descended and embodied itself in a human organism that was not really suitable for it, that it only entered in order to be understood by the others. Outwardly, it certainly looked like the others, but inwardly it was something completely different. It was complete deception and illusion to judge such an individuality by its outward appearance. For while in an ordinary human being the outer corresponds to the inner, in such a teacher the outer contradicts the inner. So here we have the fact that you have the ancient Indian people, and in the midst of this ancient Indian people, an individuality that did not need to descend for its own sake, but descended to a corresponding level in order to be able to teach the others. It descended voluntarily, incarnated itself in human form, but was something completely different.

[ 15 ] As a result, it was once again an individuality that was not affected by the fates that humans experience as a result of being normal human beings. Such a teacher lived in a body with an outer destiny and had no part in this destiny; he merely dwelt in this body as in a house. And when the body died, death was a completely different event for him than for other human beings, as were birth and the experiences between birth and death. Therefore, such an individuality also worked in a completely different way in this human instrument.

[ 16 ] Let us now imagine how such an individuality made use of the brain, for example. For even though perception took place through the astral body at that time, the brain, which was organized differently, was nevertheless used to perceive the images in which perception took place, as if with an instrument. There were therefore two types of human beings: one type that used its brain like an ordinary human being, and another type, the teacher, who did not use his brain in the same way, but left it unused in a certain respect. The great teacher did not need to use all the details of the brain. He knew, so to speak, things that the other could only know by using the tool of the brain. What constituted such a great teacher was therefore not a real, true incarnation on earth, not a real incarnation of a human being as was otherwise the case, but actually something that represented a kind of dual nature: a kind of spiritual being was present in this organization. Such beings also existed in the later Persian period, in the Egyptian period, and so on. It was always the case that they stood out with their individuality, as it were, above the level of this human organization; they did not merge into it. This enabled them to influence other people in those earlier times. And that was the case until the time when an important crisis in human development occurred in the Greek-Latin age.

[ 17 ] In the Greek-Latin period, it was especially the intellectual or emotional soul that gradually began to drive out the inner abilities. Whereas in the previous period the main thing flowed into human beings from outside, as you can see in the example of the Furies, where human beings had the avenging figures around them and not within themselves, in the Greek-Latin period something flowed out from within, as it were, to oppose the great teachers. This brought about entirely new conditions.

[ 18 ] In earlier times, beings had descended from the higher worlds and found themselves in such a situation that they could say to themselves: We do not need to enter completely into the human organization, for we can work as we should by bringing down from the higher worlds into human beings what they cannot yet do, and allowing it to flow into them. At that time, human beings did not oppose the teachers in any way. But if the great teachers had continued this policy, then from the fourth period onwards, it could have happened that such an individuality would have descended, appeared in some region, but now found something on Earth that did not exist up there. As long as people on Earth had seen the avengers, the Erinyes, they could foresee what existed on Earth. But now something completely new appeared below: conscience. This was unknown above; there was no way of observing it above. It was something new that came to meet those who were above.

[ 19 ] So in the fourth period of the post-Atlantean culture, in other words, it became necessary for these teachers to descend to the human stage and learn within the human stage itself what rises up from the human soul toward the spiritual world. Now began the time when it was no longer possible to have no part in human abilities. And now let us consider that peculiar being of whom we speak in his earthly incarnation as Gautama Buddha.

[ 20 ] Gautama Buddha was previously a being who could live in such a way that he could always incarnate in earthly bodies of the corresponding cultural periods without claiming to use everything in this human organization. This being did not need to go through actual human incarnations. But now an important turning point came for the Bodhisattva, namely the necessity of getting to know all the destinies of the human organization in an earthly body, into which he had to enter completely. There was something for him to experience that could only be experienced in an earthly body. And because he was a higher individuality, this one incarnation was sufficient to truly see everything that can develop out of this human body. For other people, the situation was such that they now have to gradually develop their inner abilities through the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh periods of post-Atlantean cultural development. Buddha, on the other hand, was able to experience everything that was possible in terms of development during this unique incarnation. What human beings will bring forth as “conscience,” and what will become greater and greater, he foresaw, as it were, in its first germ when he lived through his incarnation as Gautama Buddha. Therefore, immediately after this incarnation, he was able to ascend to the divine-spiritual worlds and did not need to undergo a second incarnation later on. What human beings will develop out of themselves in a certain area in future cycles, he was able to indicate in this one incarnation as a great guiding force. This happened through the event that is hinted at in the “sitting under the Bodhi tree.” At that time, according to his special mission, the teaching of compassion and love contained in the “eightfold path” dawned on him. This great human ethic, which people will conquer as their own through the following cultures, was laid down as a fundamental force in the mind of the Buddha who descended at that time and became a Buddha, that is, who passed through a real higher stage. For here he learned in descending.

[ 21 ] This is, to put it briefly, the great event that is referred to in Eastern culture as “the becoming of the Buddha from the Bodhisattva.” When this Bodhisattva, who had never truly incarnated before, was twenty-nine years old, the individuality of the Bodhisattva, which had not yet completely taken hold of him, suddenly seized the son of Suddhodana, and he experienced the great teaching of humanity about compassion and love. Why did this Bodhisattva, who then became the Buddha, incarnate in this particular people? Why not, for example, among the Greek-Latin people?

[ 22 ] If this Bodhisattva was really to become the Buddha of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period, then he had to bring something future. Now, through the development of their consciousness soul, human beings will gradually become ripe to recognize for themselves what the Buddha gave as a great impetus. At a time when human beings had only just developed their intellectual or emotional soul, the Buddha had to have already developed the consciousness soul. He therefore had to use the physical instrument of the brain in such a way that he overcame it, in a completely different way than a human being who had advanced to the Greco-Latin cultural period. The Greco-Latin brain would have been too hard for him. He could only have developed the intellectual soul in it, but he had to develop the consciousness soul. Therefore, he needed a brain that had remained softer. He used the soul that was to develop later in an instrument that had previously been customary among humanity and had been preserved among the Indian people.

[ 23 ] Here you also have a repetition: the Buddha repeats a human organization from before with a soul capacity from after. Up to this point, the things that happen in human evolution are necessary. And the Buddha had the task of immersing the consciousness soul into the human organization in the 5th to 6th centuries before our era. However, as an individual, he could not take on the full task; he could not do everything necessary for this consciousness soul to develop properly from the fifth period onwards. He had only part of this task as his special mission, namely, the task of bringing the teaching of compassion and love to humanity. Other tasks were assigned to other, similar teachers of humanity. The human ethics decided upon in this part, the ethics of love and compassion, were struck by the Buddha, and they continue to vibrate. But humanity must also develop a whole range of other abilities for the future, for example, to think in pure forms of thought, to engage in thought plasticity in crystallized thoughts, to place one thought as a pure thought alongside another. This ability was not part of the Buddha's mission. He was to develop what leads people to find the eightfold path on their own.

[ 24 ] Thus, another teacher of humanity had to be present who had completely different abilities and brought completely different streams of spiritual life down from the higher spiritual worlds into this world. This other individuality had the task of bringing down what is now gradually becoming apparent in humanity, namely the ability to think logically. A teacher also had to be found who could bring down what is necessary to express oneself in the forms of logical thinking, for logical thinking also developed only in the course of time.

[ 25 ] What the Buddha accomplished had to be carried into the intellectual or emotional soul. Because it stands in the middle between the sentient soul and the conscious soul, the intellectual soul has the very special characteristic that things do not repeat themselves crosswise. Just as the primordial Indian period will repeat itself in the seventh period, the primordial Persian period in the sixth, and the fourth stands alone, so too does the intellectual soul stand alone. The forces for our intellectual abilities, which first had to arise in the consciousness soul, could not be developed in the intellectual soul, but although they were to appear later, they had to be predisposed and stimulated earlier. In other words, the impulse for logical thinking had to be given earlier than the impulse for conscience was given by Buddha. The

[ 26 ] Conscience was to be organized into the fourth period; conscious pure thinking was to emerge in the fifth period in the consciousness soul, but it had to already be predisposed as a seed for what is emerging today in the third cultural period. Therefore, that other great teacher had the task of instilling into the sentient soul those forces that are emerging today as logical thinking. It is therefore easy to see that this teacher must have been even further removed from normal human beings than Buddha was. Something had to be stimulated in the sentient soul that was not really present in any human being at that time. Concepts, or what was to be developed, were of no use whatsoever. This individuality therefore had the task of planting the seed for certain forces, but it was not allowed or able to use these forces itself. That was not possible. It therefore had to use completely different forces.

[ 27 ] Now, this morning in the second lecture on anthroposophy, I discussed how, for example, forces are at work in the sentient soul in seeing, which actually only become conscious at a higher level and then appear as thinking forces. So if such a great teacher individuality was able to stimulate this sentient soul in such a way that the forces of thinking penetrated it in much the same way as the thinking life penetrates the act of seeing in a subconscious way, without the human being being aware of it, then this individuality was able to achieve that the forces could later be used on a higher level. This was only possible in one way. In order to stimulate the sentient soul, to instill thinking into it, so to speak, this individuality had to work in a very special way at that time: it had to teach not in concepts, but through music! Music gives forces that trigger something in the sentient soul which, when it rises into consciousness and is processed by the conscious soul, becomes logical thinking. This special music emanated from a being, a powerful being who taught in this way — through music.

[ 28 ] You will find this strange and perhaps believe that such a thing is not possible. But it was so. Especially in the regions of Europe before the Greek-Latin period, there was an ancient culture among peoples who were backward in relation to such qualities, which were strongly developed in the East. In these European regions, because they were to develop in a completely different way, people were unable to think very much; they had little of what we call the powers of the intellectual or emotional soul. But their sentient soul was particularly receptive to what emerged from the impulses of a special kind of music that was not quite like our music today. This brings us back to a time in Europe when an ancient “musical culture” existed, where not only the “bards” were teachers, as in times when this culture was already in decline, but where enchanting music pervaded the whole of Europe. During the third cultural period, there was a deeply musical culture in Europe, and the minds of those peoples, who waited in silence for what they were destined for in later times, were particularly receptive to musical influences. These influences affected the sentient soul in a similar way to how the thinking substance affects the sentient soul. The sentient soul was being worked on, and consciousness was to arise in it, which at a higher level would manifest itself in the conscious soul as logical thinking. But all consciousness comes from the regions of light, as do music and song. That is why, through music acting on the physical plane, the sentient soul had the subconscious feeling: this comes from regions where light comes from, music and song from the realms of light!

[ 29 ] There was an ancient teacher within the European cultural regions—an ancient teacher who was, in this sense, an ancient bard, the leader of all ancient bards. He taught on the physical plane through music, and he taught in such a way that through his influence something was communicated to the sentient soul, as when a sun rose and shone. What has been preserved about this great teacher in the outer tradition was later summarized by the Greeks, who were still influenced by him from the West, just as they were influenced in other ways by the East, in their views about Apollo, who is a sun god and at the same time the god of music. This figure of Apollo, however, leads back to this great teacher of ancient times, who placed in the human soul the ability that today emerges as logical thinking.

[ 30 ] And a disciple of this great teacher of humanity is also mentioned by the Greeks; a disciple who, however, became a disciple in a very peculiar way. How could anyone become a disciple of this being? — In the following way.

[ 31 ] In those times when this being was to work in the manner described, it was naturally such that it did not merge with the physical organization of the human being, that it was more than what walked around on earth as a physical human being. A human being with an ordinary sentient soul could have perceived the musical effects, but could not have produced them. A higher individuality had descended, and what lived on the outside was like an appearance.

[ 32 ] But in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period, in the Greco-Latin age, it was necessary for this individuality to descend again, so to speak, to the level of humanity, and to use all the abilities that are in human beings. But although it used all these abilities, so to speak, it could not descend completely. For in order to bring about what I have just described, to bring these effects together in a cross-fertilizing way, it needed abilities that went beyond the capacity of the human organization in the fourth post-Atlantean period. The musical effects already contained everything that is in the consciousness soul. However, this could not yet be present in an individuality that was only just coming into being for the soul of the mind. Therefore, after being embodied in that form, this individuality had to hold something back. It had to embody itself in the fourth period in such a way that it filled the whole human being, but the human being who lived there had, as it were, something within himself that went beyond him. He knew something of a spiritual world that he could not use. He had a soul that transcended this body.

[ 33 ] From a human point of view, it was tragic that the individuality that had worked as a great teacher in the third cultural period should re-embody itself in a form that transcended itself in its soul and yet had no use for soul capacities that went beyond the ordinary measure. This type of embodiment is called a “son of Apollo” because what was there before did not embody itself directly, but in a very complicated way — a son who carried within himself as his soul what is usually referred to in mysticism as the symbol of the feminine. But it was so present in him that he could not have it completely, since it was in another world. He carried his own soul-feminine within himself in another world to which he had no access, but into which he longed to enter because a part of his own self was there. The Greek myth captured this wonderful inner tragedy of the reincarnated great teacher individuality of earlier times in a wonderful way in the name it gave to the reincarnated Apollo or the “son of Apollo”: Orpheus.

[ 34 ] The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice depicts this tragedy of the soul in a wonderful way. Eurydice is snatched from Orpheus at an early age. She is in another world. Orpheus descends into the realm of shadows. He still has the ability to move the beings in the underworld with his music. He is given permission to take Eurydice back with him. But he must not look back, for the sight would be inwardly devastating for him, or at least cause him loss, if he looked back at what he had been before and what he could not now take in.

[ 35 ] Thus, in Apollo's becoming Orpheus, we again have a kind of descent of a bodhisattva, if we want to use an Eastern name, who becomes a Buddha. And so we could list a series of such beings who stand from age to age as the great teachers of humanity and who, in their deepest descent, when they become Buddhas, experience something very special. The Buddha experiences the bliss of inspiring all of humanity. That bodhisattva, who is preserved outwardly under the name “Apollo,” experiences something individual; he was supposed to prepare precisely the individuality, the I-quality. He experiences the tragedy of the I, he experiences that this I is not entirely itself, as human beings are today in relation to this human quality. Human beings strive upward toward the higher self. This is prefigured in what the Buddha or Bodhisattva is for Greece in a corresponding way in Orpheus.

[ 36 ] From details, we have arrived at a characteristic feature of those great teachers of humanity and can now imagine something when we hear such terms. If you now summarize what I have said, you will see that I have always spoken of beings who have developed, for example, the sentient soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul in a certain way as inner abilities — as abilities that must enter into human beings from within. Because we can only look back over this period of time, we initially have only these two before us: the trainers of the sentient soul. But there are many such beings, because the inner life of the human being develops gradually, step by step.

[ 37 ] Let us now compare this with what, so to speak, takes hold of the inner life of the human being, another being, for the reason that we must say to ourselves: Whenever teachers come who provide the increasingly developing inner abilities with spiritual nourishment from the higher regions, there must be other individualities who perform a different task, who above all lend a hand to the transformation of the earth itself and to what develops there from age to age. When the Buddha, in the fourth cultural epoch, took hold of the intellectual soul from within through the consciousness soul, this intellectual soul also had to be taken hold of from outside. Something had to come to it from outside. This entity had to come from another side and work in a completely different way.

[ 38 ] Such a teacher, as we have just characterized him, had to stand before human beings and pour into their inner being what he had to bring from higher regions. He was a teacher. What did the other entity have to do, which, so to speak, carried the earth forward so that it developed from generation to generation? It did not merely have to grasp something inner, not merely approach human beings in order to develop this or that ability in them, but it had to descend to earth itself as such an entity, as an entity. Not only did a teacher for the intellectual soul have to descend, but also a shaper for the intellectual soul. Someone who formed it himself had to appear, who was, so to speak, the immediate expression of this soul of the fourth period, this distinguished period that stands in the middle. This being had to come from a completely different source. It had to enter human nature itself and embody itself there. While the Bodhisattvas transformed the human inner being, this being transformed the whole of human nature. It was this being that made it possible for teachers to find suitable ground in the future. It transformed the whole human being.

[ 39 ] Let us remember how the various souls build themselves into the individual bodies of the human being: the feeling soul into the feeling body, the mind or soul into the etheric body, and the consciousness soul into the physical body. Where the consciousness soul builds itself into the physical body, there is the effect of the Bodhisattvas, there they seized human beings from one side. Where the intellectual soul or mind soul works up to the etheric body, there another being seized human beings from the other side in the fourth period. When did it do this?

[ 40 ] This happened at the time when the etheric body of the human being could be grasped directly, when that being whom we have described more precisely as Jesus of Nazareth left the physical body at the moment of John's baptism. When this entire body was submerged, whereby what we have described as a “shock” occurred, the Christ being descended into the etheric body of this individuality. This is the individuality that comes from the other side, but which is now of a completely different nature. While in the case of other great leader-individualities we are dealing in a certain sense with more highly developed human beings, with people who have at least once gone through all the destinies of humanity, we cannot say this of the Christ-individuality. What is the lowest element in this Christ Being? From below, it is the etheric body. This means that once human beings have transformed their entire astral body through their spiritual self and are able to work into the etheric body, they will be working in this etheric body in an element in which Christ already worked in the same way. Christ gives a most powerful impulse that continues to work into the future, which human beings only reach when they consciously begin to work on their etheric body.

[ 41 ] As human beings pass through life, they go from birth or even from conception to death, and then from death to a new birth. On the path to the new birth, after death they first pass through the astral world, then what we call the lower part of the devachanic world, and then the upper part of the devachanic world. Using European terms, we call the physical plane the small world or the world of the intellect, the astral world the world of the elemental, the lower devachan the heavenly world, and the upper devachan the world of reason. And because the European spirit only gradually works its way up to having the appropriate real expressions in its language, that which lies above the devachanic world has acquired a religiously colored expression and is called the “world of providence,” which is the same as the buddhi plane. What lies above this could be seen by ancient clairvoyants and passed on to humanity through ancient traditions, but no name could be given to it in European languages because only today are seers working their way up to it again. Thus, above the world of providence lies a world for which there cannot yet be a name in European languages that is entirely honest and correct. It really is there, but thinking is not yet advanced enough to be able to characterize it; for no arbitrary name can be found for what is otherwise called “nirvana” in the East and which lies above the “world of providence.”

[ 42 ] I said that between death and a new birth, man ascends to the higher Devachan or world of reason. There he looks into higher worlds in which he himself is not yet, and sees those beings standing above him working in these higher worlds. While human beings spend their lives in worlds ranging from the physical plane to the Devachan plane, it is normal for a Bodhisattva being to ascend to the Buddhi plane, which we in Europe call the world of providence. This is a good word, for it is their task to guide the world from age to age with providence. What happens when the Bodhisattva has passed through incarnation, as Gautama Buddha did?

[ 43 ] When he has reached a certain stage, he ascends to the next plane, the Nirvana plane. There he has his next sphere. This characterizes the Bodhisattvas who then become Buddhas in order to enter the Nirvana plane. Everything that works within the human being, inwardly, lives in a sphere that reaches up to the Nirvana plane. From the other side, a being like Christ works into human nature. From the other side, he also works into those worlds into which the bodhisattvas ascend when they leave the region of humanity in order to learn themselves, so that they can then become teachers in humanity. There, from above, from the other side, a being like Christ comes to meet them. Then they are the disciples of Christ. Twelve bodhisattvas surround such a being as Christ, and we cannot speak of more than twelve, for when the twelve bodhisattvas have fulfilled their mission, we have exhausted our time on earth.

[ 44 ] Christ was physically present only once and thus went through what is descent, arrival on earth, and ascent. He comes from the other side and is the being who is in the middle of the twelve Bodhisattvas, who go there to obtain what they have to bring down to earth. Thus, between two incarnations, the Bodhisattva beings ascend to the Buddhi plane, and what confronts them as their fully conscious teacher reaches as far as the Buddhi plane: the being of Christ. On the Buddhi plane, the Bodhisattvas and Christ meet. And when human beings continue on their path and develop the qualities instilled in them by the Bodhisattvas, they will also become increasingly mature to ascend to the same sphere. For the time being, however, it is important that humanity learns to recognize that the Christ essence was incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, that is, that it appeared in human form, and that it is only through this human form that we can penetrate to the true essence of the Christ individuality.

[ 45 ] Thus, twelve bodhisattvas belong to Christ, whose task it is to prepare and further develop what he brought as the greatest impulse for our cultural evolution. There we see the Twelve and, in their midst, the Thirteenth. With that, we have ascended into the sphere of the Bodhisattvas and entered a circle of twelve stars, with the sun in their midst, illuminating and warming them, from which they draw the source of life that they must then carry back down to earth. How does the image of what is happening above appear on earth?

[ 46 ] Projected down onto the earth, it appears as follows: the Christ who lived on earth gave such an impulse to the earth's development that the Bodhisattvas had to prepare humanity for this impulse and also have to build up again what Christ gives to the earth's development. This appears on Earth like a picture: Christ in the middle of Earth's development, the Bodhisattvas as his forerunners and successors, who in turn have to bring his work closer to humanity.

[ 47 ] Thus, a number of Bodhisattvas had to do preparatory work in humanity so that humanity would become ripe to receive Christ. But now that humanity is ready to have Christ among them, they are still far from ready to recognize, feel, and want everything that Christ is. And just as many bodhisattvas as were needed to prepare people for Christ are needed to bring out into humanity what is to flow into humanity through Christ. For there is so much in Christ that human powers and abilities must become ever greater in order to understand him completely. With today's abilities, he can only be understood to a very small extent. Higher abilities will arise in humanity, and with each new ability we will see Christ in a new light. And only when the last Bodhisattva belonging to Christ has done his work will humanity feel what Christ is; then it will be animated by a will in which Christ himself lives. Christ will enter into human beings through their thinking, feeling, and willing, and humanity will be the outer expression of Christ on earth.