The Nativity, Page 6

This brings us then to the point of Steiner’s remarks in GSL, Lect. 5, about the Lk 1,41-44 passage above:

But the same Ego that was withheld from the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke [i.e., the “First Adam”] was bestowed upon the body of John the Baptist; thus the soul-being in Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke [i.e., the “Second Adam”] and the Ego-being in John the Baptist were inwardly related from the beginning. Now when the human embryo develops in the body of the mother, the Ego unites with the other members of the human organism in the third week, but does not come into operation until the last months before birth and then only gradually. Not until then does the Ego become active as an inner force; in a normal case, when an Ego quickens an embryo, we have to do with an Ego that has come from earlier incarnations. In the case of John, however, the Ego in question was inwardly related to the soul-being of the Nathan Jesus. Hence according to the Gospel of St. Luke, the mother of Jesus went to the mother of John the Baptist when the latter was in the sixth month of her pregnancy [Lk 1,26,36,39], and the embryo that in other cases is quickened by its own Ego was here quickened through the medium of the other embryo.

To understand what is going on here, we need to look at Lect. 6,where we are told that Elijah was “inspired,” “impelled by the Spirit,” because he, like the Bodhisattvas, was one of those special Individualities “who were not wholly contained in the human personality; one part of their being was in the earthly personality and the other in the spiritual world.”

When this Individuality was born again he was to unite with the body of the child born to Zacharias and Elizabeth. We know from the Gospel itself that John the Baptist is to be regarded as the reborn Elijah. But in him we have to do with an Individuality who in his earlier incarnations had not habitually developed or brought fully into operation all the forces present in the normal course of life. In the normal course of life the inner power or force of the Ego becomes active while the physical body of the human being is developing in the mother’s womb. The Elijah-Individuality in earlier times had not descended deeply enough to be involved in the inner processes operating here. The Ego had not, as in normal circumstances, been stirred into activity by its own forces, but from outside. This was now to happen again. But the Ego was now farther from the spiritual world and nearer to the Earth, much more closely connected with the Earth than the Beings who had formerly guided Elijah. The transition leading to the amalgamation of the Buddha-stream with the Zarathustra-stream was now to be brought about.

Everything was to be rejuvenated. It was now the Buddha who had to work from outside—the Being who had linked himself with the Earth and its affairs and now, in his Nirmanakaya, was united with the Nathan Jesus. This Being who on the one side was united with the Earth but on the other withdrawn from it because he was working only in his Nirmanakaya which had soared to realms “beyond” the Earth and hovered above the head of the Nathan Jesus— this Being had now to work from outside and stimulate the Ego-force of John the Baptist.

Thus it was the Nirmanakaya of Buddha which now stirred the Ego-force of John into activity, having the same effect as spiritual forces that had formerly worked upon Elijah. . . . But being nearer to the Earth this force [which had worked upon Elijah¹⁵] now worked as more than an inspiration; it had an actual formative effect upon the Ego of John. . . .

What may we now expect?

Even as the words of power once spoken by Elijah in the ninth century before our era were in truth “God’s words,” and the actions performed by his hand “God’s actions,” it was now to be the same in the case of John the Baptist, inasmuch as what had been present in Elijah had come to life again. The Nirmanakaya of Buddha worked as an inspiration into the Ego of John the Baptist. That which manifested itself to the shepherds and hovered above the head of the Nathan Jesus extended its power into John the Baptist, whose preaching was primarily the re-awakened preaching of Buddha. This fact is in the highest degree noteworthy and cannot fail to make a deep impression upon us when we recall the sermon at Benares wherein Buddha spoke of the suffering in life and the release from it through the Eightfold Path. He often expanded a sermon by saying in effect: “Hitherto you have had the teaching of the Brahmans; they ascribe their origin to Brahma himself and claim to be superior to other men because of this noble descent. These Brahmans claim that a man’s worth is determined by his descent, but I say to you: Man’s worth is determined by what he makes of himself, not by what is in him by virtue of his descent. Judged by the great wisdom of the world, man’s worth lies in whatever he makes of himself as an individual!”— Buddha aroused the wrath of the Brahmans because heemphasized the individual quality in men, saying: “Verily it is of no avail to call yourselves Brahmans; what matters is that each one of you, through his own personal qualities and efforts should make of himself a purified individual.” Although not word for word, such was the gist of many of Buddha’s sermons. And he would often expand this teaching by showing how, when a man understands the world of suffering, he can feel compassion, can become a comforter and a helper, how he shares the lot of others because he knows that he is feeling the same suffering and the same pain.