The Maitreya Buddha: The Bringer of the Good

Rudolf Steiner, in a lecture given October 14, 1911:

He who was incorporated in Jeschu Ben Pandira — the Bodhisattva who has repeatedly reincarnated, and who succeeded Gautama Buddha — has prepared himself for his Bodhisattva-incarnation so that he can reappear and rise to the Buddha dignity exactly five thousand years after the illumination of Gautama Buddha under the bodhi-tree. Here again occult investigation fully agrees with Oriental tradition. So, three thousand years from now, this Bodhisattva, looking back on all that has happened in the new epoch, and looking back on the Christ-Impulse and all that is connected with it, will speak in such a way that his speech will make into a reality what has just been characterized: intellectuality will become directly moral. The future Bodhisattva, who will place all that he has at the service of the Christ-Impulse, will be a Bringer of the Good through the Word, through the Logos. He will speak in a language as yet possessed by no man, but a language which is so holy that he who speaks it can be called a Bringer of the Good. This also will not show itself in his youth, but approximately in his thirty-first year he will appear as a new man, and will yield himself up as the one who can be filled with a higher individuality. The experience of one single incarnation in the flesh holds good only for Christ Jesus. All Bodhisattvas go through various successive incarnations on the physical plane. This Bodhisattva, three thousand years hence, will have advanced so far that he will be a Bringer of the Good, a Maitreya Buddha, who will place his words of Goodness at the service of the Christ-Impulse, which a sufficient number of persons will by then have made part of their lives.