From Buddha to Christ II

GA 109 — 14 June 1909, Vienna

Nowadays, questions often arise in the theosophical association, and especially among its young members, that are worth exploring in more detail. One of these questions, which is asked very often, is this: why should we actually devote so much time to the in-depth study of theosophy? Why burden ourselves with the whole ballast of theories about the origin of the cosmos, from the very beginning to the structure of the human being with his various bodies and principles? Then again: the doctrine of the many incarnations that a person must live through, and the doctrine of the law of cause and effect, why do we need all this? Don't we get much further if we absorb the ethical side of the theosophical teachings in order to develop better and become good people? Isn't that ultimately the main thing? So why all the studying?

Yes, the main thing is for our soul to develop! But to get to this main thing, it is first necessary to embrace the high teachings of Theosophy. We can develop faster and better and work on ourselves if we know how the human being is put together, how it is related to the cosmos, if we get to know how the whole evolution of the world, like ours, is influenced and guided by higher beings. But now one can ask again: Where do all these sciences and theories come from? Is not Theosophy just as much a world view, a philosophy as any other, say that of Haeckel, Kant and Schopenhauer? No, that is not Theosophy. Those are incorporated, poured into certain forms, say dogmas; they represent a certain system. But the theosophical world view is quite different: it is a flowing life that penetrates from higher worlds into humanity, and its wisdom is proclaimed to us by enlightened, initiated beings who, through their clairvoyant power, see the spiritual world so clearly, even much more clearly than we see the world of objects around us. The initiates have the duty to teach humanity; they have received this message over the last thirty years from the higher beings who have already risen above the development of man, from the Masters of the harmony of sentiments, of these exalted entities, who actually influence every spiritual current on our earth and gradually allow more and more of their wisdom to flow into the world, depending on how man rises higher and higher in his development. Now the question could arise again: Is it enough for us ordinary people to just learn to understand these teachings? Do we not all have to become initiates in order to understand theosophy?

Yes, all human beings at a certain stage of development should strive to become initiates by means of the given methods, which, however, can only lead to a successful development of the slumbering powers in the soul through moral strength. But even those who are not yet ready to develop these powers, who can only absorb and understand the lofty teachings of Theosophy through study and with the help of their teacher, also enjoy a great privilege. When they find themselves in the astral region after death, they are on the same level as their teacher in their vision; he has nothing ahead of them, he has given everything he had gained to his students, he no longer sees more than his students, he did not give out of selfishness in order to rise higher himself. There is no selfishness in the higher worlds or among the truly initiated; they give only to help humanity.

Another question also arises for Theosophists when they say to themselves: 'Do I now have to go through so many embodiments after all? Then I can also wait until the next incarnation to study; now I still have so many other things to do, and I'm too lazy to do it. This would be just as if the lily of the valley said: I am too lazy to bloom now, I still want to sleep a little in the earth, I prefer to wait until October. But in October it would no longer find the conditions for flowering. And it will be the same with people: if they reject the opportunity to receive spiritual truths in this life, whether out of laziness or for some other reason, they can be sure that they will create the conditions in this life that will prevent them from accepting them in the next life.

The impulse to accept these truths within himself was given to man at the event of Golgotha. In this event lies the seed for the spiritual comprehension of human evolution.

Let us consider the developmental phases of humanity by going back six hundred years before the appearance of Christ Jesus on our earth, to six hundred years after this event. Six hundred years before Christ, the high being of Buddha embodied himself in the personality of Siddhartha Gautama, who, through his wisdom, brought a glorious teaching to millions of people. He was a prince, sheltered from early youth and protected from all the misery, vice and suffering that the world brings with it. When he had matured into a young man and managed to cross the boundaries of his palace garden, life confronted him for the first time in all its reality. He encountered a beggar clothed in rags and a sick man, and finally he saw a corpse; he drew from this the conclusion that everything on earth is suffering. Birth is suffering, death is suffering, being separated from loved ones is suffering, being united with those you do not love is suffering, not getting what you want is suffering, and getting what you do not desire is suffering. He therefore says: All earthly things are vain, therefore man should deny life, detach himself from all that is earthly; one should quench the thirst for existence, for all is Maya. — He did not return to his royal palace, but went into the wilderness.

How far had human evolution progressed in Palestine six hundred years after the event? The Buddha had said: All is suffering, life is suffering, death is suffering, therefore kill the thirst for existence. — Christ, on the other hand, showed us how we can overcome all suffering through love by delving deeply into life, how we can transcend materialism through the spirit and save the spirit into a higher world, and thereby also overcome death. Six hundred years before Christ Jesus, Buddha had attained certainty through the sight of the corpse and taught the world that death is suffering; six hundred years later, Christ showed the world through his own corpse on the cross that death is not suffering, but the conqueror of the suffering of the world, that it brings forth not annihilation but new life. After his death, Christ brought light into the astral world. And since the blood flowed at Golgotha, the aura of the Earth has also changed, and it is this new principle in the Earth's aura that inspired the Christ impulse in humanity. Let us take a closer look at the influence of this high individuality, which brought the Christ impulse to Earth.

When we go back to the distant times when the holy Rishis proclaimed the high wisdom of Vishva-Karman, the great Sun God, we find that they speak of the same individuality that was later proclaimed by Zarathustra, whom he calls Ormuzd and whose physical form he sees in Ahura Mazdao, the great solar aura. And it is the same great Being that appears to Moses in the burning bush on Mount Sinai, the same spiritual solar individuality that bent down more and more from the sun, coming ever closer and closer to the earth, and that, when Moses asked, “What shall I say to the people when they ask me who you are?” replied: “I am that I am, that I was and that I will be,” and announced to him that when the time had come that the earth could receive him, he would dwell among us in the flesh. When did this time come? This time had come when a pure body was born that could serve as a vehicle for this exalted Being. And this vehicle was the body of Jesus of Nazareth, in which it dwelt for three years. This great mystery – the life of the divine Being in an earthly body, and His death on Golgotha – is the basis of the following development as substance and as a force impulse.

It was not only the teachings of Christ that led to the spread of Christianity; other religious founders had already proclaimed the same teachings. During the lifetime of Christ, the small group of Christians was so little known that there were even many countries where people knew nothing at all about the existence of Christ. What was it then that later spread Christianity? It was the deed of Christ Jesus that he had materialized on earth. Only through this was the Christian impulse laid in us. Paul became the actual propagator and founder of Christianity, and only after the event at Damascus. He too, who had received and absorbed the teachings of Christ Jesus, could not come to believe in and profess Christ Jesus, because he could not believe that a deity had to undergo the ignominy of death on the cross. What then was it that led him to believe in him? It was nothing less than that he suddenly became clairvoyant and beheld the image of the living Christ in the astral world, in the earth aura. Then he recognized that Christ Jesus did not die, but remained connected to the world. Humanity will only understand in distant times what the Christ is. The Christ is the planetary spirit of our Earth, the spirit that has descended from the beginning from the sun to us, which, by leaving the high realms, came deeper and deeper into the spheres until it materialized in Jesus of Nazareth, in order to awaken in us, through this great sacrifice, the Christ impulse, the highest development of which is the goal of our evolution on earth, which will only then have fulfilled its purpose when all men have become as the teacher was. The words spoken by Christ: “He who eats my bread has trampled me under his feet,” are to be taken literally, for Christ is the spirit of our Earth, the Earth is his physical body. Through the event of Golgotha, when the spirit of the great divine solar individuality left the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and at the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds, something significant for humanity happened. If a clairvoyant from another planet had observed the aura of our Earth at this momentous moment, he would have perceived a great change in it: he would have detected a different, a new color in the aura, something like another element that had not been in it before and which from that time on fertilized humanity so that it could absorb the Christian principle of love and self-sacrifice. When we now seek to make these truths our own by thoroughly studying the theosophical teachings, by learning to understand that the entire cosmic and human evolution in all its details is connected with the intervention of higher powers, with the work of the spiritual hierarchies, and that our entire spiritual development is guided by them, only when this we have become certain of this, only then will the exalted wisdom have such an effect on us that the ethics of the theosophical teachings receive their true consecration, warming our soul from within through its own realization of the truths, so that it is also able to bear the true fruits of theosophy or spiritual science into practical life. Only when we learn to understand Christ and thus His full significance for our development on earth, as taught by the ancient wisdom of Theosophy, which leads us into the secrets of the creative thought and reveals to us the purpose of our existence, only then can we grasp the wonderful ethics of the theosophical teaching with our whole soul, as it is meant to be grasped. The most beautiful moral sermons and ethical considerations are of little help to man. We often see in the world that they only become a pious habit, but they do very little to help. It is just as if you said to that stove: “Dear stove, do your moral duty as a good stove and warm my room.” You will wait a while, but it won't get warm. However, if you give this stove fuel, it will spread a pleasant warmth in no time. It is the same with people. You can preach morals and ethics to them as much as you like, but it will be of little help. However, if you give them something to warm their minds with, it will become warm inside them and they will fulfill their duty in the world from their soul, not because they have to as a moral person, but because their inner being cannot help it. If we bring spiritual science into our lives, no matter what our occupation, it will bring about a change everywhere. Just think: what a different way of thinking it would create in the legal profession, for example, especially in the present day, when the lawyer is often at a loss in the jumble of paragraphs and articles of law! Each case is treated and considered only as a number, and placed in a certain category. If the lawyer were a student of spiritual science, he would look at all of nature around him, at all of humanity, at every single person with completely different eyes. He would learn to understand his clients better because he would feel at one with them. His thinking, which like all thinking that is forced into certain forms, schemata, dogmas without spiritual science, would become more flexible, fluid, and expand through spiritual science, and therefore, if he had spiritual thinking, he would work towards the good of humanity. And if we take the physician: a completely different, much broader field would open up to him. Here we are already on the right path, for there are already many physicians who, enlightened by spiritual science, are working in this direction. — For all these reasons, we must, after first diligently studying and understanding the teachings of spiritual science, carry their fruits over into practical life for the benefit and salvation of humanity.