Let us first consider Jesus of Nazareth: His conditions of existence were quite exceptional. At the beginning of our era _two_ boys were born and named Jesus. The one came through the Nathan line of the house of David, and the other through the Solomon line of the same house. These two children were not born quite at the same time, but nearly so. In the Jesus descended from Solomon, Who is described in the Gospel of St. Matthew, there was incarnated the same individuality who had formerly lived on the earth as Zarathustra, so that in this Child Jesus there appears the reincarnated Zarathustra or Zoroaster. The individuality of Zarathustra grew up in this Child until, as St. Matthew says, His twelfth year. In that year, Zarathustra left the body of this Child and passed over into that of the other Child Jesus Whom the Gospel of St. Luke describes. In consequence of this the latter child became suddenly quite different. The parents were astonished when they found Him in Jerusalem in the temple after the spirit of Zarathustra had entered into Him. This is intimated when it is said that the Child after having been lost and found again in the temple, so spake that his parents did not recognize Him. They only knew Him--the Child descended from Nathan as He had been before up to this time. But when He began to reason with the doctors in the temple, it was possible for Him to speak as He did because the spirit of Zarathustra had come into Him. Until the thirtieth year did the spirit of Zarathustra live in the Jesus who was descended from the Nathan line of the house of David. In this body He ripened to a still higher perfection. The remark must here be added that as regards this personality in which the spirit of Zarathustra _now_ lived, an extraordinary feature was, that from the spiritual worlds the Buddha rayed forth his impulses into its astral body. The oriental tradition is correct which says that the Buddha was born as a “Bodhisatva,” and only during his time on earth, in his twenty-ninth year, rose to the dignity of a Buddha. When the Gautama Buddha was a little child, the Indian sage Asita came weeping into the royal palace of his father, Suddhodana. He wept because, as a seer, he knew that this King’s son would become the Buddha, and because as an old man, he felt that he would no longer be living to see that event take place. Now this sage was born again in the time of Jesus of Nazareth. It is he who is brought before us in the Gospel of St. Luke as the priest of the temple who saw the revelation of the Buddha in the Child Jesus descended from Nathan. And seeing this he was able to say: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace for I have seen my Master.” What he had not been able to see previously in India, he saw through the astral body of the Boy Jesus, Who comes before us in St. Luke’s Gospel, the Bodhisatva become a Buddha.