Gautama Siddhartha

94:7.1Con­tem­po­rary with Lao-tse and Con­fu­cius in China, an­other great teacher of truth arose in In­dia. Gau­tama Sid­dhartha was born in the sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ in the north In­dian prov­ince of Nepal. His fol­low­ers later made it ap­pear that he was the son of a fab­u­lously wealthy ruler, but, in truth, he was the heir ap­par­ent to the throne of a petty chief­tain who ruled by suf­fer­ance over a small and se­cluded moun­tain val­ley in the south­ern Hi­malayas.

94:7.2Gau­tama for­mu­lated those the­o­ries which grew into the phi­los­o­phy of Bud­dhism af­ter six years of the fu­tile prac­tice of Yoga. Sid­dhartha made a de­ter­mined but un­avail­ing fight against the grow­ing caste sys­tem. There was a lofty sin­cer­ity and a unique un­selfish­ness about this young prophet prince that greatly ap­pealed to the men of those days. He de­tracted from the prac­tice of seek­ing in­di­vid­ual sal­va­tion through phys­i­cal af­flic­tion and per­sonal pain. And he ex­horted his fol­low­ers to carry his gospel to all the world.

94:7.3Amid the con­fu­sion and ex­treme cult prac­tices of In­dia, the saner and more mod­er­ate teach­ings of Gau­tama came as a re­fresh­ing re­lief. He de­nounced gods, priests, and their sac­ri­fices, but he too failed to per­ceive the per­son­al­ity of the One Uni­ver­sal. Not be­liev­ing in the ex­is­tence of in­di­vid­ual hu­man souls, Gau­tama, of course, made a valiant fight against the time-hon­ored be­lief in trans­mi­gra­tion of the soul. He made a no­ble ef­fort to de­liver men from fear, to make them feel at ease and at home in the great uni­verse, but he failed to show them the path­way to that real and su­per­nal home of as­cend­ing mor­tals—Par­a­dise—and to the ex­pand­ing ser­vice of eter­nal ex­is­tence.

94:7.4Gau­tama was a real prophet, and had he heeded the in­struc­tion of the her­mit Go­dad, he might have aroused all In­dia by the in­spi­ra­tion of the re­vival of the Salem gospel of sal­va­tion by faith. Go­dad was de­scended through a fam­ily that had never lost the tra­di­tions of the Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies.

94:7.5At Benares Gau­tama founded his school, and it was dur­ing its sec­ond year that a pupil, Bau­tan, im­parted to his teacher the tra­di­tions of the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies about the Mel­chiz­e­dek covenant with Abra­ham; and while Sid­dhartha did not have a very clear con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, he took an ad­vanced stand on sal­va­tion through faith—sim­ple be­lief. He so de­clared him­self be­fore his fol­low­ers and be­gan send­ing his stu­dents out in groups of sixty to pro­claim to the peo­ple of In­dia “the glad tid­ings of free sal­va­tion; that all men, high and low, can at­tain bliss by faith in righ­teous­ness and jus­tice.”

94:7.6Gau­tama’s wife be­lieved her hus­band’s gospel and was the founder of an or­der of nuns. His son be­came his suc­ces­sor and greatly ex­tended the cult; he grasped the new idea of sal­va­tion through faith but in his later years wa­vered re­gard­ing the Salem gospel of di­vine fa­vor through faith alone, and in his old age his dy­ing words were, “Work out your own sal­va­tion.”

94:7.7When pro­claimed at its best, Gau­tama’s gospel of uni­ver­sal sal­va­tion, free from sac­ri­fice, tor­ture, rit­ual, and priests, was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary and amaz­ing doc­trine for its time. And it came sur­pris­ingly near to be­ing a re­vival of the Salem gospel. It brought suc­cor to mil­lions of de­spair­ing souls, and not­with­stand­ing its grotesque per­ver­sion dur­ing later cen­turies, it still per­sists as the hope of mil­lions of hu­man be­ings.

94:7.8Sid­dhartha taught far more truth than has sur­vived in the mod­ern cults bear­ing his name. Mod­ern Bud­dhism is no more the teach­ings of Gau­tama Sid­dhartha than is Chris­tian­ity the teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

104:1.6The Bud­dhist faith de­vel­oped two doc­trines of a trini­tar­ian na­ture: The ear­lier was Teacher, Law, and Broth­er­hood; that was the pre­sen­ta­tion made by Gau­tama Sid­dhartha. The later idea, de­vel­op­ing among the north­ern branch of the fol­low­ers of Bud­dha, em­braced Su­preme Lord, Holy Spirit, and In­car­nate Sav­ior.

• spiritual awakening of G.S. did not persist in India

79:4.8The spir­i­tual awak­en­ing of the sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ did not per­sist in In­dia, hav­ing died out even be­fore the Mo­hammedan in­va­sion. But some­day a greater Gau­tama may arise to lead all In­dia in the search for the liv­ing God, and then the world will ob­serve the fruition of the cul­tural po­ten­tial­i­ties of a ver­sa­tile peo­ple so long co­matose un­der the be­numb­ing in­flu­ence of an un­pro­gress­ing spir­i­tual vi­sion.

• perverted cult to make him divine

92:5.124. The sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ. Many men arose to pro­claim truth in this, one of the great­est cen­turies of re­li­gious awak­en­ing ever wit­nessed on Uran­tia. Among these should be re­corded Gau­tama, Con­fu­cius, Lao-tse, Zoroaster, and the Jain­ist teach­ers. The teach­ings of Gau­tama have be­come wide­spread in Asia, and he is revered as the Bud­dha by mil­lions. Con­fu­cius was to Chi­nese moral­ity what Plato was to Greek phi­los­o­phy, and while there were re­li­gious reper­cus­sions to the teach­ings of both, strictly speak­ing, nei­ther was a re­li­gious teacher; Lao-tse en­vi­sioned more of God in Tao than did Con­fu­cius in hu­man­ity or Plato in ide­al­ism. Zoroaster, while much af­fected by the preva­lent con­cept of dual spiritism, the good and the bad, at the same time def­i­nitely ex­alted the idea of one eter­nal De­ity and of the ul­ti­mate vic­tory of light over dark­ness.

• Gautama forbade to receive money

94:8.19The great weak­ness in the orig­i­nal gospel of Bud­dhism was that it did not pro­duce a re­li­gion of un­selfish so­cial ser­vice. The Bud­dhis­tic broth­er­hood was, for a long time, not a fra­ter­nity of be­liev­ers but rather a com­mu­nity of stu­dent teach­ers. Gau­tama for­bade their re­ceiv­ing money and thereby sought to pre­vent the growth of hi­er­ar­chal ten­den­cies. Gau­tama him­self was highly so­cial; in­deed, his life was much greater than his preach­ment.

• perverted cult to make him divine

94:11.2While in some re­spects it is un­for­tu­nate that Bud­dhism was not car­ried to the world un­til af­ter Gau­tama’s fol­low­ers had so per­verted the tra­di­tions and teach­ings of the cult as to make of him a di­vine be­ing, nonethe­less this myth of his hu­man life, em­bel­lished as it was with a mul­ti­tude of mir­a­cles, proved very ap­peal­ing to the au­di­tors of the north­ern or Ma­hayana gospel of Bud­dhism.

• perverted cult to make him divine

94:11.91. The Gau­tama leg­end. At the base of the con­cept was the his­toric fact of the life and teach­ings of Sid­dhartha, the prophet prince of In­dia. This leg­end grew in myth as it trav­eled through the cen­turies and across the broad lands of Asia un­til it sur­passed the sta­tus of the idea of Gau­tama as the en­light­ened one and be­gan to take on ad­di­tional at­tri­butes.

• taught best godless philosophy ever invented

94:8.18The great truth of Sid­dhartha’s teach­ing was his procla­ma­tion of a uni­verse of ab­so­lute jus­tice. He taught the best god­less phi­los­o­phy ever in­vented by mor­tal man; it was the ideal hu­man­ism and most ef­fec­tively re­moved all grounds for su­per­sti­tion, mag­i­cal rit­u­als, and fear of ghosts or demons.

• outstanding religious teacher

121:6.4Philo was a great teacher; not since Moses had there lived a man who ex­erted such a pro­found in­flu­ence on the eth­i­cal and re­li­gious thought of the Oc­ci­den­tal world. In the mat­ter of the com­bi­na­tion of the bet­ter el­e­ments in con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous sys­tems of eth­i­cal and re­li­gious teach­ings, there have been seven out­stand­ing hu­man teach­ers: Sethard, Moses, Zoroaster, Lao-tse, Bud­dha, Philo, and Paul.

100:5.3It should be made clear that pro­fes­sions of loy­alty to the su­preme ide­als—the psy­chic, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual aware­ness of God-con­scious­ness—may be a nat­u­ral and grad­ual growth or may some­times be ex­pe­ri­enced at cer­tain junc­tures, as in a cri­sis. The Apos­tle Paul ex­pe­ri­enced just such a sud­den and spec­tac­u­lar con­ver­sion that event­ful day on the Da­mas­cus road. Gau­tama Sid­dhartha had a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence the night he sat alone and sought to pen­e­trate the mys­tery of fi­nal truth. Many oth­ers have had like ex­pe­ri­ences, and many true be­liev­ers have pro­gressed in the spirit with­out sud­den con­ver­sion.

• hardly believed in immortality

94:8.16Sid­dhartha hardly be­lieved in the im­mor­tal­ity of the hu­man per­son­al­ity; his phi­los­o­phy only pro­vided for a sort of func­tional con­ti­nu­ity. He never clearly de­fined what he meant to in­clude in the doc­trine of Nir­vana. The fact that it could the­o­ret­i­cally be ex­pe­ri­enced dur­ing mor­tal ex­is­tence would in­di­cate that it was not viewed as a state of com­plete an­ni­hi­la­tion. It im­plied a con­di­tion of su­preme en­light­en­ment and su­per­nal bliss wherein all fet­ters bind­ing man to the ma­te­rial world had been bro­ken; there was free­dom from the de­sires of mor­tal life and de­liv­er­ance from all dan­ger of ever again ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­car­na­tion.

• orphan prophet; knew God in spirit, not mind

132:7.3It was on the visit to Switzer­land, up in the moun­tains, that Je­sus had an all-day talk with both fa­ther and son about Bud­dhism. Many times Ga­nid had asked Je­sus di­rect ques­tions about Bud­dha, but he had al­ways re­ceived more or less eva­sive replies. Now, in the pres­ence of the son, the fa­ther asked Je­sus a di­rect ques­tion about Bud­dha, and he re­ceived a di­rect re­ply. Said Gonod: “I would re­ally like to know what you think of Bud­dha.” And Je­sus an­swered:

• faulty navigation charts ran aground

132:7.4“Your Bud­dha was much bet­ter than your Bud­dhism. Bud­dha was a great man, even a prophet to his peo­ple, but he was an or­phan prophet; by that I mean that he early lost sight of his spir­i­tual Fa­ther, the Fa­ther in heaven. His ex­pe­ri­ence was tragic. He tried to live and teach as a mes­sen­ger of God, but with­out God. Bud­dha guided his ship of sal­va­tion right up to the safe har­bor, right up to the en­trance to the haven of mor­tal sal­va­tion, and there, be­cause of faulty charts of nav­i­ga­tion, the good ship ran aground. There it has rested these many gen­er­a­tions, mo­tion­less and al­most hope­lessly stranded. And thereon have many of your peo­ple re­mained all these years. They live within hail­ing dis­tance of the safe wa­ters of rest, but they refuse to en­ter be­cause the no­ble craft of the good Bud­dha met the mis­for­tune of ground­ing just out­side the har­bor. And the Bud­dhist peo­ples never will en­ter this har­bor un­less they aban­don the philo­sophic craft of their prophet and seize upon his no­ble spirit. Had your peo­ple re­mained true to the spirit of Bud­dha, you would have long since en­tered your haven of spirit tran­quil­lity, soul rest, and as­sur­ance of sal­va­tion.

132:7.5“You see, Gonod, Bud­dha knew God in spirit but failed clearly to dis­cover him in mind; the Jews dis­cov­ered God in mind but largely failed to know him in spirit. To­day, the Bud­dhists floun­der about in a phi­los­o­phy with­out God, while my peo­ple are piteously en­slaved to the fear of a God with­out a sav­ing phi­los­o­phy of life and lib­erty. You have a phi­los­o­phy with­out a God; the Jews have a God but are largely with­out a phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing as re­lated thereto. Bud­dha, fail­ing to en­vi­sion God as a spirit and as a Fa­ther, failed to pro­vide in his teach­ing the moral en­ergy and the spir­i­tual driv­ing power which a re­li­gion must pos­sess if it is to change a race and ex­alt a na­tion.”