Dharmakaya

Dharmakaya (Sanskrit: धर्म काय "truth body, law body"; Tibetan chos sku) is, according to Rudolf Steiner, the name given to the body of a Bodhisattva through which he works on earth. The Bodhisattva, in whom an Archangel being is working, is not fully incarnated in this body (Lit.:GA 114, p. 80ff). He is at the same time transcendent and immanent, thus standing unborn and deathless beyond the duality of life and death, as it corresponds to the original enlightened nature of the spirit according to the Buddhist view. Buddhas representing the Dharmakaya have been called Adibuddhas or Dhyani Buddhas (sku lnga rgyal po) in Buddhism since the 6th/7th century.

An initiate who has a Dharma body has attained perfect mastery over his astral body and etheric body, and can now transfer this to others who have special future tasks, and form a new etheric body and a new astral body for himself. This was the case, for example, with Zarathustra, who handed over his etheric body to Moses and passed on his astral body to Hermes:

„But he who already has dominion over the astral and etheric body can now freely dispose of it. He can say to himself: 'Because I have gone through all the embodiments with my I, which have taught me to transform my astral body and my etheric body to such an extent, I have become able, when I am to go back to earth, to form a new astral body and etheric body out of etheric substance and astral substance, which are just as perfect. - And thus he is able to sacrifice his own astral and etheric body, as they say, to transfer it to others. You see from this that there are individualities who, having become masters of their astral and etheric bodies, are also able to sacrifice these bodies, because they have learned to build up these things. If they want to return to earth, they will build up an astral body and an etheric body from the existing material. But what they have achieved in perfection they hand over to other personalities who have certain tasks to accomplish in the world. Thus such astral and etheric bodies are interwoven, incorporated, into later personalities by personalities of the past. When this happens, you see that the personality of the past does not merely work where it stands, but that it still works into the future with what is in it.

Thus, for example, Zarathustra, who was able to treat his astral body and who later led it over into Hermes, could say to himself: I am alive, but I will not only work as I work now as an outer personality, but I also still weave through the astral body of the Egyptian Hermes, the one with whom the Egyptian cultural epoch begins. - Such a personality has a body, a Kaya, which not only works in the place where it is, but which works into the future, which gives the law for the future development. Law into the future is called Dharma. Such a body is called Dharmakaya. These are certain expressions that recur frequently in Eastern science.“ (Lit.:GA 110, p. 152)

It is in accordance with the principle of spiritual economy that highly developed etheric or astral bodies embraced by the Dharmakaya are not only preserved after death but can also be multiplied and interwoven into other people or have themselves already emerged from such multiplication (Lit.:GA 109, p. 287).

See also

• Trikaya

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Das Prinzip der spirituellen Ökonomie im Zusammenhang mit Wiederverkörperungsfragen, GA 109 (2000) English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Geistige Hierarchien und ihre Widerspiegelung in der physischen Welt, GA 110 (1991) English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Das Lukas-Evangelium, GA 114 (2001) English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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