Considering that great Teacher, let us ask what He was before He became the Buddha, and then passed away from earth, His teaching work being over. Before He took that last and greatest of the Initiations along the line He followed, He had manifested several times before on earth, and manifested in the same great Root Race, the Aryan Race, to which we all and so many others belong. For before that last step was taken there was another high office that He filled for thousands and tens of thousands of years. I do not want in any way to confuse you with unfamiliar names, and yet it is a little difficult to avoid them, because I want a name that stretches back to manifestation after manifestation; and our own fifth sub-race, the Teutonic, has been on earth so brief a time, living in the western world, that it has not yet created the general name which we can use with regard to these past manifestations. The eastern name is a word which translated means “the Wisdom-Truth,” the Bodhisattva; the name matters little provided that you take it for the moment that it signifies an office, and the office is that of the Supreme Teacher, not only teacher of men, but teacher, as they would say, of Gods, as you would say, of Angels and Archangels. For you must remember that the Shining Ones of the East are the same as those to whom over here you give the names of Angels and Archangels. The East calls them by a name which merely means “the shining”; and though it is often translated over here as “God,” much confusion of thought thereby is made as regards the great eastern faiths. For they, like Christianity, proclaim the unity of God, the one all-pervading life; and those whom they call the Shining Ones, the Devas, are but manifestations of that light, the Angels and Archangels of Christianity or of Islām. And He who is the Supreme Teacher has for His pupils Archangels and Angels as well as men; He is the one who is the Teacher of all, whether in the body of flesh or outside of it as spiritual intelligences; there is no other Teacher in earth or heaven above that mightiest One who fills this supreme office.