The Nativity, Page 4

The Nathan Jesus Child

Steiner has told us that the Incarnation of Christ represented the fulfillment (up to that point) of all true religions. But the process was reflected in the three main streams he identifies (GOSP) as having come to a point in the Incarnation, namely, those of Zarathustra, Abraham and Buddha. Traditional Biblical scholarship generally has recognized only Abraham, but Steiner shows us that these other streams were involved, as subsequent discoveries in this century of ancient documents (Qumran and Nag Hammadi)⁸ providentially hidden for millennia, have extensively corroborated. We have seen the Zarathustra stream in the Solomon Jesus child. Let us now look at the Buddha stream in the Nathan Jesus child.

In his descent from the highest heaven, the Christ Spirit became the leader of those spiritual beings (on the Sun) who previously had caused the Sun to separate from the Earth in the Hyperborean Epoch (see I-2). In the first post-Atlantean Cultural Era, that of (prehistoric) Ancient India, the seven holy rishis, as initiates, knew of this Spirit but he was beyond their earthly wisdom; they called him Vishva Karman.⁹ Zarathustra, as we have seen, saw him in the Sun’s aura, calling him the Great Aura, or Ahura Mazdao, or Ormuzd. As time went on and he approached ever nearer the Earth, Moses saw him in the Burning Bush and called him Yahweh-Eloha (a god dwelling on the Moon; see I-6) as a reflection of the sunlight. Even later the Christ Spirit brought the Bodhisattva Siddhartha Gautama to enlightenment under the bodhi tree (see “Under the Tree”).

Let us digress to look at who the Bodhisattvas are. A Bodhisattva is one whose Individuality never fully incarnates, a part remaining in the spiritual world (GSL, Lect. 6). Only when such Individuality fully incarnates into physical earthly life can it attain to Buddhahood. That stage was attained by Gautama in his twenty-ninth year, as a result of which he was no longer required to incarnate. He had moved from the Bodhisattva state to the Buddha state (see Nirmanakayas, I-23). In GSL, Lect. 7, at the end of the Nativity discussion, Steiner asks, “What is the relationship of Christ, of Vishva Karman, to Beings such as the Bodhisattvas . . . ?” And then, “This question brings us to the threshold of one of the greatest mysteries of Earth evolution,” one difficult for people today to have any inkling of. Here Steiner says, “the mission of the Bodhisattva who became Buddha was to incorporate into humanity the principle of compassion and love”; elsewhere he pointed out that nowhere prior to this did it exist in humanity. Love prior to that time was related to the blood. Even later on, Christ had to illustrate that the Levitical commandment to “love one’s neighbor as oneself” included persons of mixed Jewish blood, leaving aside for then those wholly Gentile (Lk 10,25-37; Lev 19,18). Conscience sprang from this very Buddhistic insight, and we find this corroborated by its Biblical usage also (see “Conscience”). Buddha’s Eightfold Path endowed humanity with something completely new in human relationships—but it was totally Christ inspired. Until then, morality was introduced through revelations given from without, as in the Ten Commandments. Such inwardness as the Buddha revealed had to be withheld from the Hebrew people until the right time (see “Right Time”). Until then, the external “law” had to prevail.

We are told in Lect. 7 that twelve Bodhisattvas are connected with the cosmos to which the Earth belongs, and that the Bodhisattva who became Buddha is one of these twelve, all of whom have specific missions. There is thus a Lodge of twelve great teachers who serve the Christ Spirit according to their own special missions in Earth evolution. In the midst of the twelve is a thirteenth, he who has been called Vishva Karman, Ahura Mazdao, and now Christ.

“The Baptism by John in the Jordan marked the point of time . . . . when this heavenly ‘Thirteenth’ . . . appeared on the Earth,” as all four Gospels relate. Here Steiner asks, “Why was the union of this Being with the evolution of humanity on the Earth so long postponed?” In the Fall (Gen 3), humanity commenced ever deeper entanglement in earthly matter. Had nothing else intervened, “the Luciferic forces anchored in the human astral body would have taken effect in the etheric body as well.” Realizing that humanity had to be protected against the effect of these forces upon its etheric body, the cosmic powers took special measures making it impossible for humanity to use the whole of its etheric body; part of it was removed from its arbitrary control to be preserved for later times. This is described in Gen 3,22-24 as the expulsion from Eden. Having tasted, with the astral body, of the “tree of knowledge,” a part of the etheric (life) body, called the “tree of life,” was withheld.

To explain this, Steiner reverts to a discussion of the four elements (fire, air, water and earth) and their related four ethers (fire, light, sound and life), taking fire and fire ether as the point of conjunction.¹⁰ He tells us that the human functions of thinking, feeling and willing (and the higher “meaning”) relate to the elements and the ethers as follows:

The line dividing the upper two functions from the lower two represents the action taken by the cosmic powers in Gen 3,22-24. How so?

Fire ether and light ether are perceived by the human being as fire and light. But sound ether is not revealed to the human in its original form; the sound a human being hears is only a reflection or shadow of sound ether, and the life a human being experiences is also only a reflection of life ether. Human willing expresses itself and so does human feeling. But thinking, and words, which serve as thinking’s mode of expression, are shadows of the sound ether. “Whereas each man’s feeling and willing are personal, we immediately come into something universal when we rise into the realm of words and the realm of thoughts.... Thought and “meaning” were withheld from the power of arbitrary human will and preserved for the time being in the world of the Gods, in order not to be given to man until a later time.”¹¹ Thus, sound and life (the “tree of life,” Gen 3,24) were withheld.

This relates, of course, to the “First and Second Adam,” which we will come to, but here another point is made. To quote Steiner, “Hence Zarathustra said: ‘Look upwards to Ahura Mazdao; see how he reveals Himself in the physical raiment of light and warmth. But behind all that is the Divine, Creative Word—and it is approaching the Earth!’” And then we are told (Jn 1,14), “The Word became flesh.” “The Divine-Spiritual Word which had been preserved since the Lemurian epoch came forth from ethereal heights at the Baptism by John and entered into the etheric body of the Nathan Jesus.” And Luke, recognizing that Zarathustra and those attuned to his knowledge had been seers (“eyewitnesses”) and “servants of the Word” (Lk 1,2), recorded what those “seers” and “servants” had proclaimed. He knew, as had his mentor, Paul, of the “First and Second Adam.”¹²

The Buddha, though no longer required to incarnate, continued to work with humanity from the spiritual world. He continued to work down as far as the astral and etheric worlds. Steiner tells us (GSL, Lect. 2) that it was the image of the glorified astral body (the Nirmanakaya) of Buddha, he who had first brought into humanity’s evolution the principle of peace and goodwill, that appeared, along with the angel, as the Heavenly Host, to the shepherds (Lk 2,13-14); likewise in the radiance that surrounded the Nathan Jesus child before the shepherds in the manger. But the Buddha played a far larger role in the Nativity of this child.