The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Buddha and Christ. The Realm of the Bodhisattvas

My dear Theosophical friends!

[ 1 ] In this lecture, I would like to speak to you about matters that pertain specifically to the moral and ethical realm and that are capable of bringing home to us the mission of Theosophy in our time.

[ 2 ] We are all imbued with the great truth of the doctrine of reincarnation, the repetition of earthly lives, and we must realize that this repetition of our earthly lives serves a good purpose in the evolution of our Earth. When we ask ourselves: Why do we repeat this earthly life?, occult research provides us with the answer that, in the successive epochs of the Earth, we always experience different things on the earthly plane when we reappear on this plane. Our souls experienced something different in those incarnations that immediately followed the great Atlantean catastrophe, something different in pre-Christian times, and they experience something different in our time.

[ 3 ] I would just like to briefly mention that in the times following the great Atlantean catastrophe, our souls in the bodies of that era possessed a certain elemental clairvoyance. This clairvoyance, which was natural to human beings in earlier times, has gradually been lost. And the era that deprived humanity most of the powers of ancient clairvoyance is the Greco-Roman cultural epoch, the fourth cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean era. Since that time, humanity has developed in such a way that it makes its great progress outwardly on the physical plane and, toward the end of the present post-Atlantean era, is gradually regaining the power of clairvoyance.

[ 4 ] We are now living in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. We count the ancient Indian epoch as the first post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the Proto-Persian as the second, the Chaldean-Babylonian as the third, and the Roman-Greek as the fourth. We ourselves are in the fifth cultural epoch. Ours will be followed by a sixth and a seventh cultural epoch. Then another great catastrophe will strike the Earth, similar to the catastrophe of the Atlantean epoch.

[ 5 ] Based on occult research, we can now identify a defining characteristic of human development for each of these cultural epochs—the fifth, sixth, and seventh post-Atlantean cultural epochs. In our fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the main characteristic of human evolution is intellectual development, the development of the intellect. In the sixth, which will follow ours, the main characteristic of human development will be that people’s souls will have very specific feelings toward what is moral and what is immoral. Feelings of sympathy toward compassionate, benevolent actions and antipathy toward those with ill will will manifest themselves with particular subtlety and on a scale that we cannot yet even imagine.

[ 6 ] This sixth cultural epoch will be followed by the seventh, in which moral life will be even more deeply rooted. While in the sixth cultural epoch people will take pleasure in good and noble deeds, in the seventh cultural epoch such pleasure will also be accompanied by a moral impulse, that is, the desire to do what is morally right. There is still a great difference between taking pleasure in a moral deed and doing what is morally right. So that we can say: Our cultural epoch is the cultural epoch of intelligence, of reason; this will be followed by the cultural epoch that can be called the cultural epoch of aesthetic delight in the good and aesthetic displeasure in the evil, and the seventh will be the epoch of active moral life.

[ 7 ] The seeds of everything that will now enter into humanity in future cultural epochs are already contained within the human soul, and we can say that all these capacities that human beings possess—intellectual capacities, capacities for sympathies and antipathies toward moral actions, capacities for moral impulses—are related to the higher worlds. Every moral action stands in a certain relationship to the higher worlds. Our intellectual capacities stand in a supersensible relationship to what we call the astral plane. Our sympathies and antipathies toward good and evil stand in relationship to what we call the lower Devachan plane. And the world of moral impulses in the soul stands in a relationship to the higher Devachan plane. So that we can also say: In our time, the forces of the astral world intervene in the human soul; in the sixth cultural epoch, the forces of the lower Devachan plane will intervene more in the human soul; and in the seventh cultural epoch, the forces of the higher Devachan plane will intervene particularly in our humanity.

[ 8 ] You will see from this that it is understandable that, in the preceding fourth cultural epoch—the Greco-Roman one—it was primarily the forces of the physical plane that influenced the human soul. This is why, for example, Greek culture created such wonderful works of plastic art, through which it expressed the human form on the outer physical plane in the most exquisite way. But this is also why people in that era were particularly suited to experiencing the Being we call the Christ Being within a human body on the physical plane as well. In our cultural epoch, the fifth, which will last into the fourth millennium, souls will gradually become capable of experiencing the Christ-Being on the astral plane, and on the astral plane, the Christ-Essence will already become visible to humanity in our twentieth-century epoch in an etheric form, just as it was visible on the physical plane in a physical form during the fourth epoch.

[ 9 ] To understand the entire cultural development that lies ahead—toward which our souls are heading—it is helpful to examine more deeply the characteristics of our soul in the coming incarnations. Today, in our more intellectual era, intellectuality and morality stand quite side by side for all souls. Today, someone can be a very intelligent person and yet immoral; conversely, one can be very moral and not very intelligent at all.

[ 10 ] In the fourth cultural epoch, one people foresaw this juxtaposition of morality and intellectuality, and that people was the ancient Hebrew people. Therefore, the members of the ancient Hebrew people sought to create an artificial harmony between morality and intellectuality, whereas, for example, a more natural harmony existed among the Greeks at that time. Today, we can see from the documents of the Akashic Records how the leaders of the ancient Hebrew people sought to establish this harmony between morality and intellectuality. They had symbols that they knew so well that, when they looked at these symbols in a certain way and allowed their influence to take effect, a certain harmony could be established between what is good, what is moral, and what is wise. The priestly leaders of the ancient Hebrew people wore these symbols on their chests. The symbol for morality was called Urim, and the symbol for wisdom was called Tummim.

[ 11 ] Whenever the Hebrew priest sought guidance for any course of action—one that was both good and wise—he would invoke the Urim and Thummim in a significant manner; and depending on how these two responded, a certain artificial harmony could be evoked within him between morality and intellectuality. The fact was that these symbols actually exerted magical effects, establishing a magical connection with the spiritual world.

[ 12 ] Our task now is to gradually achieve, in later incarnations through the inner development of the soul, what was once evoked by these artificial symbols.

[ 13 ] And now let us consider the developmental phases of the fifth, sixth, and seventh post-Atlantean cultural epochs, to see how intellectuality, aestheticism, and morality will affect our souls.

[ 14 ] While in our time, the fifth cultural epoch, our intellectuality can be preserved even if we take no pleasure in moral action, things will be quite different in the sixth cultural epoch. In the sixth cultural epoch, that is, beginning around the third millennium, immorality will have a paralyzing effect on intellectuality. Anyone who is intellectual yet immoral will reduce their intellectuality to a twilight state as immorality develops. And this will become increasingly significant in the future evolution of humanity, so that the person who is not moral will not acquire intellectuality, because this will only be possible through moral actions. And in the seventh post-Atlantean cultural epoch, there will be no people who can be intelligent and yet not moral. It is now good to consider the forces of morality within individual human souls in their present incarnations. Why, indeed, can human beings become immoral at all in our development? Let us raise this question. It stems from the fact that, in their successive incarnations, human beings have descended ever more deeply into the physical world and have therefore received ever more impulses directed solely toward the physical sensory world.

[ 15 ] Today, the more influences from the descending cycle act upon a soul, the more immoral that soul becomes. This fact can be directly substantiated by a very interesting finding from occult research.

[ 16 ] You know that when a person passes through the gate of death, they shed their physical and etheric bodies, and that shortly after death they experience something like a retrospective view of their entire earthly life. Then follows a period of a kind of sleep. And after a few months or years, the person awakens on the astral plane, in the Kamaloka. This awakening is followed by life in the Kamaloka, which consists of reliving one’s earthly life at three times the speed. And at the beginning of life in the Kamaloka, a very significant event occurs for every person. For most people in our Europe, or indeed in the modern cultural epoch, this event takes the form of a spiritual individuality appearing at the beginning of the Kamaloka life and showing us everything we did selfishly in our last life, like a list of all our sins. The more vividly you picture this process, the more accurately you imagine it: as if, at the very beginning of life in Kamaloka, such a figure were to present itself with a record of our physical life.

[ 17 ] This is the crucial fact—one that, of course, cannot be further proven, since it can only be demonstrated through occult experience—that most people of European education recognize Moses in this form. This is a fact that has been known specifically in Rosicrucian research since the Middle Ages and has been confirmed by very subtle investigations, particularly in recent years.

[ 18 ] You can see from this that, at the beginning of life in the Kamaloka, a person feels a very great sense of responsibility toward the pre-Christian powers for what has drawn them down. And in relation to occult life, the individuality of Moses does indeed appear as the one who demands accountability for the wrongs that are taking place in our time.

[ 19 ] Those powers, those forces that in turn draw human beings up into the spiritual world, fall into two categories: those that draw them up along the path of wisdom, and those that draw them up along the path of morality. Now, those forces that primarily bring about intellectual progress all originate from a significant individuality from the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, known to all of you. Namely, the impulse for the soul’s development through wisdom emanates from Gautama Buddha. It is remarkable that occult research teaches us that precisely the most penetrating and significant thoughts conceived in our cultural epoch originated with Gautama Buddha. This is all the more remarkable given that in the West, until not too long ago—up to Schopenhauer—the name of Gautama Buddha was virtually unknown. This, however, is quite understandable, for Gautama Buddha ascended from the rank of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha during the time when he was the prince Suddhodana, and becoming a Buddha means that the individual in question no longer incarnates in a physical body on Earth.

[ 20 ] In fact, it is also true that the individual who, five to six centuries before the beginning of our era, evolved from a Bodhisattva into a Buddha, has not incarnated in a physical body since then and can no longer incarnate in a physical body. Instead, however, it sends down forces from the higher worlds, from the supersensible worlds, and inspires all the bearers of culture who are not yet permeated by the Christ impulse. An awareness of this was present in a beautiful legend that John of Damascus wrote down in the eighth century and which became famous throughout all European countries in the Middle Ages. It is the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, which indeed shows us how the one who became the successor to the Buddha—Josaphat is the same name for Bodhisattva in phonetic transformation—was instructed by Barlaam in the Christian impulses. This legend, which was later forgotten, tells us that the successor to the Bodhisattva was taught by a representative of Christianity, Barlaam, and it aims to show that the Bodhisattva who succeeded Gautama Buddha did indeed incorporate the Christian impulses into his own soul life. And so it is. For the second impulse that now continues to work in human evolution alongside the Buddha impulse is the Christ impulse, and this impulse is the one that will correspond in the future to humanity’s ascent to morality. Therefore, one can say: Even though the Buddha-teaching is a moral teaching in a special sense, it is precisely a moral teaching, whereas the Christ impulse is not a teaching but a force. It acts as a moral force that increasingly takes shape in such a way that it truly permeates humanity with morality.

[ 21 ] In the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, this Christ-being, who had descended from cosmic heights, first had to manifest itself in a physical body. In our fifth cultural epoch, the intellectual powers will then become so concentrated that human beings will be able to see the Christ not as a physical being but as an etheric form. This event is already beginning in our own century, the twentieth century. From the thirtieth and fortieth years of this century onward, individual people will appear who have developed their individual lives in such a way that they will see the etheric form of the Christ, just as people saw the physical Christ at the time of Jesus of Nazareth. And in the next three millennia, more and more people will come who will behold this etheric Christ, until, about three millennia after our era, a sufficient number of people on Earth will no longer need the Gospels or other documents, because they will have seen the Christ in their souls.

[ 22 ] We must therefore be clear that in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, people were only capable of seeing the physical Christ; that is why he came in a physical body. In our epoch, extending into the third millennium, people are gradually becoming capable of seeing the etheric Christ; that is why he will never again come in a physical body. If we now bear in mind that today, when a human being enters the Kamaloka and is called to account by a morally active figure—Moses—who is increasingly connecting with the Christ impulse, we will understand how what I can describe as a transformation of the Moses figure will take place. What, then, does Moses show us when he stands before us with our record of sins? He shows us what stands on one side—the side of wrongdoing—of our karma. It is indeed important for a soul of our time that the doctrine of karma can be understood through the inspiration of Buddhism, but that the reality of karma after death is shown to us through the Old Testament figure of Moses. As souls now become increasingly permeated by the supersensible Christ, the transformation of the figure of Moses into that of Christ Jesus will take place after death. But this means nothing other than: Our karma comes into connection with Christ; Christ grows together with our own karma.

[ 23 ] It is very interesting to observe that karma, in the sense of the Buddha’s teachings, is an abstract concept. There is something impersonal about this Buddhist concept of karma. In the future of human incarnations, Christ becomes increasingly intertwined with karma: our karma takes on something essential, something vital.

[ 24 ] Our earlier stages of development, our past lives, can be well summarized in the words: Ex deo nascimur. If we shape our development so that after death we encounter Christ instead of Moses, with whom our karma then merges, this is expressed by the Christian Rosicrucian movement, which has existed since the thirteenth century, with the words: In Christo morimur.

[ 25 ] Just as one can become a Buddha only on the physical plane, so too can the human soul acquire the ability to encounter the Christ at death only on the physical plane. A Buddha is first a Bodhisattva, but he ascends to Buddhahood in physical incarnation, and then he no longer needs to come to Earth. The understanding of the Christ, as we have now discussed it, can only be acquired on the physical plane. To make this possible, over the next three millennia, people will have to acquire the ability to perceive the supersensible Christ in the physical world, and that is the purpose of the theosophical life. That is its mission: to perceive the conditions that bring about an understanding of the Christ on the physical plane, so that one may then perceive the Christ.

[ 26 ] Whether we are in a physical body or between death and rebirth during the time when the Christ intervenes in humanity as the etheric Christ makes no difference if we have acquired the ability to behold him here. Let us suppose, for example, that a person, because he dies prematurely, is unable to see Christ in his present etheric incarnation; nevertheless, if he has acquired the understanding for this here, he will be able to see Christ later, between death and rebirth. Those who remain distant from the spiritual life and do not acquire an understanding of Christ will remain distant from the knowledge of Christ until the next life, in order to acquire it then.

[ 27 ] What has just been said shows you that, as humanity progresses through the three cultural epochs—the fifth, sixth, and seventh—the Christ impulse will increasingly come to dominate the Earth. If it has been said that in the sixth cultural epoch intellectuality is hindered by immorality, we must also recognize, on the other hand, that those who have thus paralyzed their intellectuality through immorality must turn with all their strength to the Christ, so that through him they may be raised to morality. Moral strength can provide this.

[ 28 ] What I have told you has been studied in great detail since the thirteenth century, when the Rosicrucians first appeared, but it is also a truth that some occultists have known throughout the ages.

[ 29 ] If one were to claim that the physical Christ event—the appearance of the Christ in a physical body—could take place twice on Earth, one would be making the same claim in occult terms as if one were to say that a scale works better when supported at two points rather than one. In truth, the three-year lifetime of the Christ, who walked the earth for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, is indeed the same as the center of gravity of Earth’s evolution. And just as a balance can have a beam suspended at only one point, so too can Earth’s evolution have only one center of gravity.

[ 30 ] Teaching moral evolution is one thing; the impetus for this moral evolution itself is quite another.

[ 31 ] Even before the events at Golgotha took place, the Buddha’s successor—who would later become the Bodhisattva—was already there to prepare for those events and to teach within his circle. The Bodhisattva who succeeded the Buddha was, for example, incarnated in the personality of Jeshu ben Pandira a century before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. We must therefore distinguish between the Jeshu ben Pandira incarnation of the Bodhisattva who succeeded Gautama Buddha, which occurred one century before our era, and that of Jesus of Nazareth at the beginning of our era, whose three years of life were permeated by the cosmic being we call the Christ.

[ 32 ] That Bodhisattva, who was Jeshu ben Pandira and who has also been reincarnated in other personalities, will keep returning until, in three thousand years, he ascends to Buddhahood and experiences his final incarnation as the Maitreya Buddha. That individuality, which was the Christ individuality, was on Earth for only three years, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and will not return in a physical body; only in the fifth cultural epoch in the etheric body, in the sixth cultural epoch in the astral body, and again in the seventh cultural epoch in a great cosmic I, which is like a great group soul of humanity. When a human being dies, their physical body, their etheric body, and their astral body fall away from them, and their I passes on to the next incarnation. But it is exactly the same with our planet Earth. That which is physical in our Earth falls away at the end of the Earth period, and the totality of all human beings, of human souls, passes over into Jupiter, into the next planetary state of the Earth. From the stages of development it has reached, it passes over to the next stage of Earth’s development, the Jupiter existence. And just as the human ego is the center of the individual human being’s further development, so too will the Christ-Ego—the Ego descended into the astral and etheric bodies of all humanity—be that which carries on to animate the Jupiter existence in the subsequent planetary development.

[ 33 ] We see, then, how Christ, having descended to Earth, begins as a physical, earthly human being and gradually develops into an etheric, astral, and I-Christ, so that as the I-Christ he may be the Spirit of the Earth, who then rises with all humanity to higher levels.

[ 34 ] What are we doing, then, by teaching Theosophy today? We are doing precisely what the Eastern teachings so clearly proclaimed when the Bodhisattva—who was the prince Suddhodana—ascended to become the Buddha. The Eastern teachings were clear at that time that the next Bodhisattva, who would become the Buddha, had to spread the teachings across the earth that would show the Christ to humanity in the right way. Thus, the next Bodhisattva, who continually incarnated in Jeshu ben Pandira and others, became the teacher of the Christ impulse. And the legend hints at this very well in the story of Barlaam and Josaphat, in which Barlaam, the Christian teacher, instructs Josaphat—that is, the Bodhisattva. The Eastern occult teachings therefore call this Bodhisattva the Bringer of Good: Maitreya Buddha. And we know from occult research that this Maitreya Buddha will possess the power of the word in such a way that people today cannot even begin to imagine it. Today, through clairvoyance, we can see in the higher worlds how the Maitreya Buddha will teach after three thousand years. We could also illustrate much of his teachings in symbolic drawings. However, we do not yet have the opportunity to do so, because humanity is not yet ready to utter such words as those the Maitreya Buddha will speak.

[ 35 ] Gautama Buddha expounded great intellectual teachings—on right speech, right teaching, right thought, and so on—in the Eightfold Path; the Maitreya Buddha will have words that, through their magical power, will immediately become moral impulses in the hearts of those who hear them. And if there were to be a John the Evangelist for him, he would have to speak differently than the John the Evangelist spoke of Christ. There it is written: “And the Word became flesh”; the John the Evangelist of the Maitreya Buddha would have to say: And the flesh became the Word.

[ 36 ] In a wondrous way, what will come from the lips of the Maitreya Buddha will be permeated by the powerful force of the Christ. Our occult research shows us today that, in a certain sense, the Maitreya Buddha will also reenact the life of the Christ outwardly. In ancient times, when a great individual appeared as a teacher of humanity, this was already evident in early youth in the child’s special aptitudes and psychical nature. However, there has always been another type of development as well, in which a complete transformation of the personality in question becomes apparent at a certain age. It happens then, when a person grows to a certain age, that their ego is taken out of their physical body and another ego enters their body. The greatest example of this kind is none other than Christ Jesus himself, in whom the Christ individuality was able to take possession at the age of thirty.

[ 37 ] In all the incarnations of the Bodhisattva who is to become the Maitreya Buddha, it has become evident that he will live in the spirit of Christ, particularly in this regard. In all incarnations of the Bodhisattva, it is not yet known—even as the child grows up, or even as the young man grows up—that he will become a Bodhisattva. Every time the Bodhisattva is born, it turns out that by the age of thirty to thirty-one, a different personality has taken possession of his body. There will never be a Bodhisattva who reveals himself in his capacity as a Bodhisattva even in his earliest youth. Between the ages of thirty and thirty-one, however, he will reveal himself in entirely different capacities, precisely because another personality has taken possession of his body. The individualities that will thus take possession of another person’s personality are individualities who lived in ancient times and will not appear as children—individualities such as Moses, Abraham, and Ezekiel. So it is also in our century with the Bodhisattva who will later, in three thousand years, become the Maitreya Buddha. It would be mere occult dilettantism to claim that this Maitreya would be recognizable as such even in his youth. Only between the ages of thirty and thirty-three will he reveal himself through his own power, without others first pointing him out; he will convince through his own power. And one would best recognize that something is amiss if one were to say of a younger person, less than thirty years old, that the Bodhisattva is manifesting in him. That is precisely where one would recognize the error. Such claims have, after all, been made time and again. One need only recall that in the seventeenth century an individual appeared who claimed to be an incarnation of the Messiah, of Christ. It is the figure of Sabbatai Zevi, who appeared in the seventeenth century, who claimed to be the Christ, and to whom a great multitude of people from all over Europe—from Spain, Italy, and France as far as Smyrna—made pilgrimages.

[ 38 ] It is certainly true that in our time there is a great reluctance to recognize human genius. But conversely, there is also a great tendency toward complacency, such that people are all too willing to accept this or that individual as a great figure simply on the basis of authority. It is important that Theosophy be presented today in such a way that it relies as little as possible on a mere belief in authority.

[ 39 ] Many of the things I have said today can only be verified through occult research. But I urge you not to take my word for these things, but to test them against everything you know from history, indeed against everything you can learn, and I am completely confident that the more closely you examine them, the more you will find them to be true. In this age of intellectualism, I appeal not to your belief in authority, but to your intellectual scrutiny. And the Bodhisattva of the twentieth century will not appeal to any heralds who proclaim him as the Maitreya Buddha, but to the power of his own word, and will stand alone in the world as a human being.

[ 40 ] These might be the words with which to summarize what has been said today: Two currents are at work in the development of humanity. One is the current of wisdom, or the Buddha current—the highest teaching of wisdom, kindness of heart, and peace on earth. For this teaching of the Buddha to take root effectively in all hearts, the Christ impulse is indispensable.

[ 41 ] The second is the Christ Current, which will lead humanity from intellectualism through aestheticism to morality. And the greatest teacher of the Christ impulse will always be the successor to the Buddha, that Bodhisattva who incarnates again and again and who will become the Maitreya Buddha after three thousand years. For true is what the Eastern scriptures say: that exactly five thousand years after Gautama Buddha attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, the Maitreya Buddha will incarnate on Earth for the last time.

[ 42 ] The lineage of Bodhisattvas and Buddhas has nothing to do with the cosmic being of Christ, and it was not Christ who was incarnated in the body of Jeshu ben Pandira, but a Bodhisattva. Christ was embodied in a physical body only once, and for only three years; the Bodhisattva, however, appears again in every century until his existence as the Maitreya Buddha.

[ 43 ] Thus we see that theosophy today has the task of serving as a synthesis of the religions. We can summarize one form of religion in Buddhism and another form of religion in Christianity. And the further we progress in the future development of humanity, the more the religions will unite, just as the Buddha and Christ themselves unite in our hearts.

[ 44 ] This has given us insight into the spiritual development of humanity and helped us recognize the necessity of the theosophical life, which is intended to serve as a preparation for understanding what is unfolding in our advancing culture, so that we may gain insight into what is happening in the evolution of humanity.