(From the forward) This book has a twofold purpose. First, it is intended to provide a new insight for those gentele people who are still anamoured of the retiring compassion of Buddhism. Anyone, however, who feels the Eastern way to be more comforting than that of the West will benefit form a careful reading of what Rudolf Steiner has to say here. Westerners, for their part, will discover a bridge to Eastern throught that they probably did not know exists. Second, it should provide an introduciton to Rudolf Steiner's gradual unfoldment, over a period of ten years, of the exalted relationship between Buddha and Christ, of Buddhism and Christianity. Beginning with Christianity as Mystical Fact, which was published in 1902, until the final lectures on Buddha in 1912, he forms the pieces and puts them together witht he solidity of building blocks. The final structure stands as one of the most impressive esoteric denouements of the twentieth century.
