Christianity as Mystical Fact, and the Mysteries of AntiquitySteiner, Rudolf
Religion
Christianity as Mystical Fact, and the Mysteries of Antiquity
Steiner, Rudolf
Anthroposophy; Christianity and other religions; Mysteries, Religious; Mysticism
But the life of Jesus contains more than that of Buddha. Buddha's ends
with the Transfiguration; the most momentous part of the life of Jesus
begins after the Transfiguration. In the language of initiates this
means that Buddha reached the point at which divine light begins to
shine in men. He faces mortal death. He becomes the light of the
world. Jesus goes farther. He does not physically die at the moment
when the light of the world shines through him. At that moment he is a
Buddha. But at that very moment he enters upon a stage which finds
expression in a higher degree of initiation. He suffers and dies. What
is earthly disappears. But the spiritual element, the light of the
world, does not. His resurrection follows. He is revealed to his
followers as Christ. Buddha, at the moment of his Transfiguration,
flows into the blissful life of the Universal Spirit. Christ Jesus
awakens the Universal Spirit once more, but in a human form, in
present existence. Such an event had formerly taken place at the
higher stages of initiation. Those initiated in the spirit of the
Osiris myth attained to such a resurrection. In the life of Jesus,
this "great" initiation was added to the Buddha initiation. Buddha
demonstrated by his life that man is the Logos, and that he returns to
the Logos, to the light, when his earthly part dies. In Jesus, the
Logos himself became a person. In him, the Word was made flesh.
Therefore, what was enacted in the innermost recesses of the temples
by the guardians of the ancient Mysteries has been apprehended,
through Christianity, as a historical fact. The followers of Christ
Jesus confessed their belief in Him, the initiate, of unique and
supreme greatness. He proved to them that the world is divine. In the
Christian community, the wisdom of the Mysteries was indissolubly
bound up with the personality of Christ Jesus. That which man
previously had sought to attain through the Mysteries was now replaced
by the belief that Christ had lived on earth, and that the faithful
belonged to him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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