II. The Path of Initiation

Let us take the opposite case: That an adherent of Buddhism should make his way to anthroposophical knowledge. Either out of a real knowledge of Christianity or out of the principle of initiation, he would allow it to become clear to him that in another region of the earth there is another form of religion, and that those who understand this religion are quite clear about the following: That there once lived a personality who really belonged to no nation, least of all to the Occident, and that from his thirtieth to his thirty-third year there lived in this personality that impulse, that force of the spiritual life, to which we pointed yesterday; to which, in their Vishvakarman, the seven holy Rishis also pointed; to which, in his Ahura-Mazdao, Zarathustra also pointed; to which, as their Osiris, the Egyptians also pointed; and which the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period named Christ. But that is not the point: The point is to recognize in Christ that which lived as an impulse for three years in the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, that which was not previously present on earth, that which descended from spiritual heights into the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, that which in this personality went through the Mystery of Golgotha, and that which as such a Christ-impulse is a once-appearing impulse for the earth and is not connected with any ordinary incarnation of mankind; that which was thus once present as Christ and can never return in any man, but will come, as the Bible says, in the clouds of heaven—meaning that as a spiritual revelation it will show itself to men. This is a Christian avowal.