To understand Steiner's story , we need to first understand the spiritual picture of man according to spiritual science.
Man as we know him today is a complex being with 4 bodies. The physical, etheric , and astral bodies and the Ego or the I, the eternal Spirit within every individual that represents his essential core.
In our traditional paradigm , we speak of man as composed of simply body and the eternal soul .
The notion of 4 bodies does not oppose this but is merely an elaboration and refinement of our commonly -held view of man as a composite of matter and spirit.
When we die , the material in us decomposes back to the basic elements it was made of , almost instantly , the way all plant and animal bodies decay .
The form of our etheric body disappears too but dissolves to rejoin the world of etheric substances.
Similarly , the astral body , disassembles and reunites with like -astral substances permeating the cosmos.
When a new person is conceived and born , etheric and astral elements are re-assembled to form the etheric and astral body of a new human being .
The ego or the I is the eternal part of Man . It returns back to the spirit- world and its Creator after death.
In many spiritual traditions, notably Hinduism and Buddhism , not only is there belief in life after death like the Christian, but in re-incarnation ie a rebirth, again and again , into an earthly life after a period of renewal in the spirit-world , until we perfect our true and eternal Self.
(The doctrine of karma is tied up with the belief in re-incarnation and refers to the perpetual return and harvest of the fruit of our previous life in our present and future lives.)
From this notion of Man's 4 bodies , Rudolf Steiner traces the amazing process of preparation of the human vessel, called Jesus , for the reception of the divine Being of Christ which historically took place 2000 years ago.
The greatest event in mankind's history lies in the story of Jesus who became the Christ .
Essentially , it is the story of a human life lived till the age of 30 ,
and who then illuminate for 3 years
the great miracle of Spirit- incarnation of " the divine" in a human being.
Jesus 's body and soul, bearing the Christ within himself
became the true perfect Christophorus -
the sheath and bearer of a DIVINE Ego from the spiritual heights ,
come down to earth , to become Man.
Christ in Jesus ( from the Baptism to the Crucifixion)
reflect the path of life of every Man
who unites with the Christ - the divine spiritual seed in himself.
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Jesus of Nazareth as known in esoteric traditions
SpiritualOnly the Gospels of St Luke and St Matthew give an account , albeit a very short one , of the life of Jesus of Nazareth before the Baptism at the river Jordan , when he transformed into a vehicle/vessel/bearer of Christ. This is the story of Je...
