Buddha and the Depth of Consciousness
“Buddha, according to one text, “is only the elder of men, differing from them no more than as the hatched chick differs from later chicks of the same hen.” Knowledge uplifted him to a different order of beings, because the principle of differentiation lies in the depth of consciousness.
“The humanness of Gotama Buddha is especially underlined in the most ancient writings, where the following expression is met: “Gotama Buddha, the most perfect of bipeds.” (Foundation of Buddhism, p. 26 Helena Roerich)
Commentary:
In my research, I found that the image of the hatched chick comes from the old Pali tradition. In the Vinaya, the Buddha tells a skeptical Brahmin that among chicks warming under the same hen, the one that first breaks its shell with claw or beak is rightly called the eldest. He does not say he is a different creature. He says he broke through first. I feel that Helena Roerich chose this passage carefully. The Blessed One is not described as a god who came down from outside humanity, and he is not a miraculous exception to it. He is the first of a common family, made of the same substance and warmed by the same Mother, and every other chick will one day break its own shell. That is why the text says knowledge lifted him “to a different order of beings.” The difference lies in the depth of consciousness, not in birth, body, caste or divine favor. The Teaching says this again and again: evolution is the growth of consciousness, and the distance between the Teacher and the disciple is measured by what has been realized, not by what has been given. The shell is ignorance, the beak is striving, and nobody can break the shell for another.
So, the ancient phrase “the most perfect of bipeds” (in Pali, dipadānaṃ seṭṭho, the best of two-footed beings) can seem almost jarring in its plainness, yet it keeps something the later devotional traditions often lost. By naming the Buddha by the most physical, even zoological, mark of our species, the early texts keep him firmly among us. That protects against two dangers the Agni Yoga books warn about. The first is idol worship, which turns the Teacher into an object to adore instead of a path to walk. The second is the quiet despair that thinks such heights are closed to ordinary people. If Gotama was a man, then I think that surely his achievement is a sign of where humanity is heading, a visible proof of what the human vessel can hold when the fire of consciousness is kindled through labor, discipline, and service. This is the meaning of the Elder Brother and of Hierarchy as Helena Roerich understood it: a living ladder of beings who differ in consciousness, not in kind, where those who went ahead turn back and call the later chicks toward the light they have already reached.
