28. Theosophy, Buddhism and Christianity

Even more powerful are the impulses that affect the student in the secret schools who is undergoing spiritual training. It becomes completely clear to the person undergoing this spiritual training that there is what is called a spiritual core of being. When man in the secret training is made a seer, then he works even deeper into his etheric body, he develops an ever greater core of wisdom that lives in him and is able to conquer death. When the disciple then received this Budhi, when he developed the life body more and more into the life spirit, then he was called an initiate, and the greatest initiates are the founders of religions. This great wisdom was given by them in images, so that the people who were taught by them could absorb this original wisdom. Thus Hermes gave the Egyptian people an image of the original wisdom, and the Rishis taught in a way that the ancient Indians could understand. This original wisdom was made understandable by Zarathustra for the Persian people, and it was Pythagoras who did the same for the Greeks. So it was with the greatest religious teacher, who was no ordinary initiate but carried a divine spirit within him, with Christ Jesus, to whom it was reserved to found the greatest and purest religion, which, when it is understood by all, will be the universal religion of mankind. We also understand a word of Christ Jesus: “If you do not leave father and mother” (Luke 14:26; Matt. 19:29) and so on. This is not spoken in order to destroy the sacred bonds of the family, but to found a brotherhood of all mankind, where people shall live together fraternally, although they are not physically brothers and sisters and bound by family ties. Thus Christ has cast the original wisdom of the world into this form.