Part i: Contents

CHRISTIANITY AS MYSTICAI FACT
and the
Mysteries of Antiquity

CONTENTS

I. Bibliographical Note
II. Foreword
III. Introduction: Rudolf Steiner A Biographical Sketch
IV. Author's Preface to the Second Edition
V. Points of View
VI. Mysteries and Mystery Wisdom
VII. Greek Sages Before Plato in the Light of Mystery Wisdom
VIII. Plato as a Mystic
IX. Mystery Wisdom and Myth
X. Egyptian Mystery Wisdom
XI. The Gospels
XII. The Miracle of the Raising of Lazarus
XIII. The Apocalypse of John
XIV. Jesus and his Historical Background
X. The Essence of Christianity
XVI. Christianity and Pagan Wisdom
XVII. Augustine and the Church
XVIII. Comments by the Author

Part I: Bibliographical Note

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Rudolf Steiner's Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of
Antiquity (Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache) was first published
by C. A. Schwetschke and Son, Berlin, 1902. It was dedicated to Count
and Countess Brockdorf "and also to my dear Vienna Friends, Rosa
Mayreder and Moritz Zitter." An octavo volume, measuring approximately
6 by 9 inches, the book contained 141 pages of text plus 6 pages of
prefatory matter. The second edition, thoroughly revised and enlarged
(strictly speaking, this edition is the first to carry the sub-title,
the Mysteries of Antiquity), was published by the well-known Leipzig
publishing firm of Max Altmann. This edition, also an octavo volume
like the first, contained 192 pages of text plus 6 pages of
introductory material. The Foreword to this second edition was dated
May, 1910. The 3rd and 4th editions also appeared with the Altmann
imprint in 1910. The 5th edition was published by the
Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach,
Switzerland, 1925, as an octavo volume, containing 164 pages of text
and 8 pages of introductory material.

A specially licensed edition appeared in Dresden in 1936. In 1949
under a license agreement, a German edition -- the 6th edition of the
book -- appeared in Stuttgart. This was one of the Steiner titles
published in post-war Germany to meet a widespread demand for his
books, all of which had been confiscated and burned by the Gestapo
under orders from the Nazi government. The most recent edition -- the
7th -- of this book was published by the Rudolf
Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland, in 1959. It is from
this edition that the present translation has been made. In all,
thirty one thousand copies of Das Christentum ak mystische Tatsache
have been published since its first appearance in 1902. Not included
in this total is a pocket book edition which was published early in
1961 in Stuttgart.

The first "authorized English translation" of this book appeared in
London under the editorship of the late Harry Collison in 1914, and in
subsequent editions and reprintings in 1922, 1930 and 1938, through
the Rudolf Steiner Publishing Company. A "completely revised,
authorized English translation, copyright by Henry B. Monges" was
issued in 1947 by the Anthroposophic Press, New York. The present
translation of Christianity as Mystical Fact is entirely new having
been undertaken especially for the Centennial Edition of the Written
Works of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1961).

 

Part II: Foreword

FOREWORD

IN THIS BOOK Rudolf Steiner traces the path leading from the secret
rituals of ancient Mystery sanctuaries to their ultimate fulfillment
in the Mystery of Golgotha, accomplished by Christ "on the great stage
of world history as an external fact." Steiner shows how the currents
of spiritual experience forming the science, art and religion of the
ancient world, found their highest expression in the Passion, Death
and Resurrection of Christ -- the Mystery of Golgotha. In the latter
Steiner saw the central event in the evolution of cosmos, earth and
man, the culminating point of the prehistorical and historical
process, which began with the divine word, "Let there be light." In
Christ's Deed of Freedom he recognized the spiritual impulse in which
alone can be found the significance and the destiny of all created
things. Steiner considered "the Logos which became flesh" as the
foundation for all contemporary religious striving, stating plainly,
"Today it is no longer possible to find the spiritual unless we grasp
the Mystery of Golgotha." This book is a first step on the way to a
truly modern comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha, of the events
leading up to it, and of the consequences of it in the early years of
our era. It carries the reader from that time when men still
recognized as concrete, living reality the birth of all things out of
the divine Will, through the central moment of the Death on Golgotha,
to the awakening of new possibilities for creation in the dawning
light of the Spirit.

How Steiner came to this profound insight into the nature and
significance of Christ, how he prepared for it by long and arduous
schooling in natural science, philosophy, and, above all, in the
development of his own inner life is shown in the introduction to this
book. The Rev. Dr. Alfred Heidenreich met Rudolf Steiner personally
and attended a number of his lecture courses. His impressions of this
outstanding thinker of our time are a valuable contribution to this
volume of the Centennial Edition of the Written Works of Rudolf
Steiner.

The present translation of Christianity as Mystical Fact is the fruit
of the joint effort of three students of Steiner's writings-one of
them an active clergyman. The translation, together with their
explanatory and reference notes, bear the marks of careful
scholarship, and will be valued by the serious student.

In his use of the word "mystical" in the title of this volume, Steiner
refers indirectly to a modern spiritual training, leading to what he
termed "exact cognition of the spirit." Although he cited numerous
writers of the late classical and early Christian centuries, he
depended first of all upon this "exact cognition" rather than
traditional or historical sources From the vantage-point of his
conscious perception of spiritual reality, he saw in Christianity a
"Mystical Fact" of a scope and significance beyond the powers of
ordinary human conception.

In addition to sharing with others the fruits of his own spiritual
perception by means of books such as this, Steiner outlined a science
of the spirit, involving a method of training suited to the capacities
of men and women of today. He indicated how a person can awaken
dormant faculties within himself, can learn to open his spiritual
eyes, thus attaining a clear, conscious grasp of higher reality.

The first step on this path of spiritual training is to be found in
the injunction of the ancient world: "Know thyself." From early times,
self-knowledge has been recognized as the indispensable first goal of
spiritual achievement. In an early Christian century one of the Desert
Fathers wrote: "Great is one who can raise the dead; great is one who
can see angels with his physical eyes; but really great is one who is
able to see himself.-Such a one has his spiritual eyes open." Rudolf
Steiner sets self-knowledge as the sine qua non for those today who
would begin the pilgrimage out of the darkness, who would strive
toward an opening of their spiritual eyes to a conscious perception of
The Light of the World.

PAUL MARSHALL ALLEN
Alvastra,
South Egremont, Massachusetts
September 1961

 

Part III: Introduction Rudolf Steiner -- A Biographical Sketch

INTRODUCTION
RUDOLF STEINER -- A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

One spring day in 1860, an autocratic Hungarian magnate, a certain
Count Hoyos, who owned several large estates in Austria, dismissed his
game-keeper, because this game-keeper, Johannes Steiner wanted to
marry Franziska Blie, one of the Count's innumerable housemaids.
Perhaps the old Count had a foreboding as to what a great spiritual
revolution would be born of this marriage. (The baroque palace of Hom,
where it happened, is still in the possession of the Hoyos family, and
stands today just as it was one hundred years ago.) So Johannes
Steiner had to look for another occupation, and got himself accepted
as a trainee telegraphist and signalman by the recently opened
Austrian Southern Railway. He was given his first job in an
out-of-the-way request stop called Kraljevic (today in Yugoslavia),
and there his first child, Rudolf, arrived on February 27, 1861. On
the same day the child was taken for an emergency baptism to the
parish Church of St. Michael in the neighboring village of Draskovec.
The baptismal register was written in Serbo-Croat and Latin, and the
entry still can be read today as of one Rudolfus Josephus Laurentius
Steiner. "Thus it happened," Rudolf Steiner writes in his
autobiography, "that the place of my birth is far removed from the
region where I come from."

In later life, particularly in his lectures on education, Steiner
frequently made the point that the most prodigious feat any man
achieves at any time is accomplished by him in the first two or three
years of his life, when he lifts his body into the upright position
and learns to move it in perfect balance through space, when he forms
a vital part of his organism into an instrument of speech and when he
begins to handle and indeed to fashion his brain as a vehicle for
thought. In other words, when the child asserts his human qualities
which set him dramatically apart from the animals.

This initial achievement the boy Rudolf performed in Kraljevic.
Kraljevic (meaning King's Village) is situated in the western
outskirts of the vast Hungarian plain, the Puszta. Even today endless
fields of maize and potatoes extend in every direction, and the solemn
monotony of the country is more enhanced than relieved by the lines of
tall poplars flanking the primitive, dead straight roads. It is basic
three-dimensional space at its severest, domed over by the sky, which
local people say is nowhere else so high nor so blue as over the
Puszta. One might almost say that nature provided laboratory
conditions in which the boy learned to stand, to walk, to speak and to
think. One could justifiably say of Rudolf Steiner what the
biographer, Hermann Grimm, said of Goethe: "It seems as if Providence
had placed him in the simplest circumstances in order that nothing
should impede his perfect unfolding."

From the severity of the Puszta the family moved, when the boy was two
years old, into one of the most idyllic parts of Austria, called "the
Burgenland" since 1921. Comprising the foothills of the eastern Alps,
it is of great natural beauty, very fertile, and drenched in history.
It takes its name from the many Burgen, i.e. castles which at
different times of history were erected on nearly every hill. During
recent excavations coins bearing the head of Philip of Macedonia, the
father of Alexander the Great, have been found near Neudorff, where
the Steiners now settled, and where a daughter and a younger son were
added to the family.

The management of the Austrian Southern Railway seems to have taken a
sympathetic view toward the promising boy, and agreed to move father
Steiner as stationmaster to several small stations south of Vienna, so
that the eldest son was able to attend good schools as a day student,
and finally in 1879 could matriculate at the Technical University of
Vienna, then one of the most advanced scientific institutions of the
world. Until then Rudolf Steiner's school life had been fairly
uneventful, except that some of his masters were rather disturbed by
the fact that this teen-ager was a voracious reader of Kant and other
philosophers, and privately was engrossed in advanced mathematics.

In his first year at the University Rudolf Steiner studied chemistry
and physics, mathematics, geometry, theoretical mechanics, geology,
biology, botany, and zoology; and while still an undergraduate two
events occurred which were of far-reaching consequence for his further
development.

In the train in which the young student travelled daily to Vienna he
frequently met a curious personality, an herb-gatherer, who turned out
to be a latter-day Jacob Boehme. He was filled with the most profound
nature lore to which he had first-hand access. He understood the
language of plants, which told him what sicknesses they could heal; he
was able to listen to the speech of the minerals, which told him of
the natural history of our planet and of the Universe. In the last
winter of his public life, in December 1923, Steiner provided
something of a historic background for this wisdom, notably in his
lectures on the Mysteries of Eleusis. Steiner immortalized the
herb-gatherer in his Mystery Dramas, in the figure of "Father Felix."
But "Father Felix" was instrumental in bringing Steiner together with
a still more important and mysterious personality.

"Felix was only the intermediary for another personality," Steiner
tells us in his autobiography, "who used means to stimulate in the
soul of the young man the regular systematic things with which one has
to be familiar in the spiritual world. This personality used the works
of Fichte in order to develop certain observations from which results
ensued which provided the seeds for my (later) work.... This excellent
man was as undistinguished in his daily job as was Felix."

While these fateful meetings occurred on the inward field of life, a
very consequential relationship developed on the outward field. The
Technical University of Vienna provided a chair for German literature,
which was held by Karl Julius Schroer, a great Goethe enthusiast and
one of the most congenial interpreters of Goethe. Schroer recognized
Steiner's unusual gifts, and anticipated that he might be capable of
doing some original research in the most puzzling part of Goethe's
works, i.e. his scientific writings.

Only two years ago, Dr. Emil Bock, of Stuttgart, Germany, one of the
most eminent Steiner scholars, discovered the correspondence between
Professor Schroer, Steiner, and the German Professor Joseph Kurschner,
who was engaged in producing a monumental edition of representative
works of German literature from the 7th to the 19th century. In the
first letter of this correspondence, dated June 4, 1882, Schroer
refers to Steiner as an "undergraduate of several terms standing." He
says that he has asked him to write an essay on Goethe and Newton, and
if this essay is a success, as he thinks it will be, "we have found
the editor of Goethe's scientific works." Steiner was then twenty-one
years of age. Schroer's letter is reminiscent of the letter Robert
Schumann wrote to the great violinist Joachim, after he had received
the first visit of the then twenty-one year old Brahms: "It is he who
was to come."

The introductions and explanatory notes to the many volumes of
Goethe's scientific works which Steiner was now commissioned to write
were much ahead of their time. They blazed a trail into the less
familiar regions of Goethe's universal genius which only today begins
to be followed up by other scholars.

The young Steiner wrote these, his first works, in outward conditions
of great poverty. The family lived in two rooms, which are still shown
today. The larger one of the two was kitchen, dining, sitting and
bedroom for the parents and his younger brother and sister, and off
this larger room a few steps led into a narrow, white-washed, unheated
cubicle where the young Steiner worked as in a monk's cell. No wonder
that a Viennese celebrity of the time refers to him in his memoirs as
one "who looked like a half-starved student of theology."

However, this first literary success led to Steiner's call to the
central Goethe Archives at Weimar, where despite his youth he now
became one of the editors of the great Standard Edition (Sophien
Ausgabe) of Goethe's Complete Works. This concentrated occupation with
Goethe, continued for seven years in Weimar, from 1889 to 1896, had a
profound effect upon the unfolding of Steiner's own mind and
philosophical consciousness. Goethe was the catalyst which released
new mental and spiritual energies in Steiner s own personality. It was
during these years that Steiner's fundamental philosophical works were
conceived and written.

In 1886 he published An Epistemology of Goethe's World Conception. In
1891 his small concentrated thesis on Truth and Science earned him his
Ph.D. In 1896 his comprehensive Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
opened a completely new approach to the understanding of the human
mind and the nature of thought. It represents the first really fresh
step in philosophic thought and in the philosophic interpretation of
the human consciousness since Kant. It is no wonder that in those years
Steiner began to be looked upon in Germany as "the coming philosopher"
upon whom before long the mantle of the dying Nietzsche would fall.
But his genius led him a different way.

In his thirty-sixth year - "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita," as
Dante calls it, Steiner moved to Berlin, and the next seven years were
perhaps the most dramatic period in his life. His new position in
Berlin was that of editor of the weekly, Das Magazin fur Litteratur,
founded in 1832 (something equivalent to the London Saturday Review).
He wrote the leading article and the dramatic reviews, occupying in
Berlin a position somewhat similar to that of Bernard Shaw (who was
five years his senior), with his weekly dramatic criticism in the
Saturday Review. This assignment brought Steiner into close social
contact with the intellectual and artistic elite of Berlin at the
time, and for some years he pitched his tent among them. In the last
years of his life, during rare moments of relaxation, he would at
times tell stories of this exciting and often amusing period.

Side by side with these literary circles, or perhaps in polarity to
them, Steiner was also drawn by objective interest and personal
attraction into the camp of Haeckel and the militant monists. To move
in this manner abreast of the spirit of the time would be a most
interesting experience for anyone. For Steiner it was more. And I must
now touch upon that side of his life about which I shall have to speak
presently in greater detail. From childhood while for others such
"being involved in this or that fashion of thought would be no more
than an ideology," for anyone standing in the spiritual world it
means, as Steiner says in his autobiography, that "he is brought close
to the spirit-beings who desire to invest a particular ideology with a
totalitarian claim." Steiner refers to his experience as a "Soul's
Probation" which he had to undergo. (He later chose The Soul's
Probation as the title of one of his Mystery Dramas.) He speaks of the
"tempests" which during those years in Berlin raged in his soul, a
rare expression in the otherwise very even and dispassionate style of
his autobiography. At the end of those "forty days in the wilderness"
- -which were in fact four years -- the thunderclouds lifted, the mist
cleared, and he stood, to use his own phrase. "in solemn festival of
knowledge before the Mystery of Golgotha." He had come to a first-hand
experience of Christ and His active presence in the evolution of the
world.

We have now reached the point where we must venture into the great
unknown: Steiner the seer, the Initiate.

It is a plain fact that in some form or other spiritual knowledge has
existed throughout the ages. Secret wisdom has never been absent from
human history. But in Steiner it assumed a totally new form. In order
to appreciate this revolutionary novelty, we must first have a picture
of the old form.

The faculty of spiritual perception and secret wisdom is obtained
through certain organs in the "subtle body" of man, to borrow a
convenient term from Eastern Indian medicine. In Sanscrit these organs
are called "chakrams" generally translated into English as "lotus
flowers." They fulfill a function in the "subtle body" similar to our
senses in the physical body. They are usually dormant today, but can
be awakened. We can disregard for the moment the rites of Initiation
which were employed in the Mystery Temples of the ancient world, and
confine ourselves to the survival of more general methods which today
are still practiced in many parts of the world. They all have one
thing in common: they operate through the vegetative system in man,
through bodily posture, through the control of breathing, through
physical or mental exercises which work upon the solar plexus and the
sympathetic nervous system. I realize that I am presenting a somewhat
crude simplification. But nevertheless I am giving the essentials.

Steiner broke with all this. He began to operate from the opposite
pole of the human organism, from pure thought. Thought, ordinary human
thought, even if it is brilliant and positive, is at first something
very weak. It does not possess the life, say, of our breathing, let
alone the powerful life of our pulsating blood. It is, shall we say,
flat, without substance; it is really lifeless. It is "pale thought,"
as Shakespeare called it.

This relative lifelessness of our thoughts is providential, however.
If the living thoughts filling the Universe were to enter our
consciousness just as they are, we would faint. If the living idea in
every created thing simply jumped into our consciousness with all its
native force, it would blot us out. Fortunately, our cerebro-spinal
system exerts a kind of resistance in the process; it functions like a
resistor in an electric circuit; it is a sort of transformer, reducing
the violence of reality to such a degree that our mind can tolerate it
and register it. However, as a result, we see only the shadows of
reality on the back wall of our Platonic cave, not reality itself.

Now one of the magic words in Steiner's philosophy with which he
attempts to break this spell, is "Erkraftung des Denkens." It means
putting force, life into thinking, through thinking, within thinking.
All his basic philosophic works, notably the Philosophy of Spiritual
Activity, and many of his exercises, are directed to this purpose. If
they are followed, sooner or later the moment arrives when thinking
becomes leibfrei, i.e. independent of the bodily instrument, when it
works itself free from the cerebrospinal system.

This is at first a most disturbing experience. One feels like a man
who has pushed off from the shore and who must now strive with might
and main to maintain himself in the raging sea. The sheer power of
cosmic thought is such that at first one loses one's identity. And
perhaps one would lose it for good, if it were not for a fact which
now emerges from the hidden mysteries of Christianity. One does not
finally lose one's identity because He Himself has walked the waves
and extended a helping hand to Peter who ventured out prematurely.
Gradually the waves seem to calm down, and a condition ensues which
Steiner expresses in a wonderful phrase: "Thinking itself becomes a
body which draws into itself as its soul the Spirit of the Universe.''

This is a stage which, broadly speaking, Steiner had attained at the
point of his biography which we have reached. Now he made a discovery
which was not known to him before. He discovered that this "living
thinking" could awaken the chakrams from "above," just as in the old
way they could be stimulated from "below." Thought which at first in
the normal and natural psychosomatic process "died" on the place of
the skull, but which through systematic exercises had risen again to
the level of cosmic reality, could now impart life to the dormant
organs of spiritual perception which have been implanted into man by
Him who created him in His image. From about the turn of the century
Steiner began to pursue this path with ever greater determination, and
gradually developed the three forms of Higher Knowledge which he
called Imagination: a higher seeing of the spiritual world in
revealing images; Inspiration: a higher hearing of the spiritual
world, through which it reveals its creative forces and its creative
order; Intuition: the stage at which an intuitive penetration into the
sphere of Spiritual Beings becomes possible.

With these unfolding powers Steiner now developed up to his death in
1925, in twenty-five momentous years, that truly vast and
awe-inspiring body of spiritual and practical knowledge to which he
gave the name "Anthroposophy." (Incidentally, this word was first
coined by Thomas Vaughan, a brother of the English mystical poet,
Henry Vaughan, in the 17th century.) Anthroposophy literally means
wisdom of man or the wisdom concerning man, but in his later years
Steiner himself interpreted it on occasion as "an adequate
consciousness of being human." In this interpretation the moral
achievement of Steiner's work, his mission, his message to a
bewildered humanity which has lost "an adequate consciousness of being
human," to which Man has become "the Unknown," is summed up. This
monumental work lies before us today and is waiting to be fully
discovered by our Age -in some 170 books and in the published
transcripts of nearly 6,000 lectures.

Three characteristic stages can be observed in Steiner's
anthroposophical period. In a lecture given at the headquarters of the
German Anthroposophical Society at Stuttgart (on February 6, 1923) he
himself described these stages. Stage one (approximately 1901-1909):
to lay the foundation for a Science of the Spirit within Western
Civilization, with its center in the Mystery of Golgotha, as opposed
to the purely traditional handing down of ancient oriental wisdom
which is common to other organizations such as the Theosophical
Society. Stage two (approximately 1910-1917): the application of the
anthroposophical Science of the Spirit to various branches of Science,
Art and practical life. As one of the milestones for the beginning of
this second stage Steiner mentions the building of the Goetheanum,
that architectural wonder (since destroyed by fire) in which his work
as an artist had found its culmination. Stage three (approximately
1917-1925): first-hand descriptions of the spiritual world. During
these twenty-five years of anthroposophical activity, Steiner's
biography is identical with the history of the Anthroposophical
Movement. His personal life is entirely dedicated to and absorbed in
the life of his work.

It was during the last of the three phases that Steiner's prodigious
achievements in so many fields of life began to inspire a number of
his students and followers to practical foundations. Best known today
are perhaps the Rudolf Steiner Schools for boys and girls, which have
been founded in many countries and in which his concept of the true
human being is the well-spring of all educational methods and
activities. There are some seventy Steiner schools in existence with
well over 30,000 pupils. A separate branch are the Institutes for
Curative Education which have sprung up both in Europe and Overseas,
and whose activities have been immensely beneficial to the ever
increasing number of physically and mentally handicapped children and
adults. Steiner's contributions to medical research and to medicine in
general are used by a steadily growing number of doctors all over the
world, and his indications are tested and followed up in a number of
research centers and clinics. Another blessing for humanity flowed
from his method of Biodynamic Agriculture, by which he was able to add
to the basic principles of organic husbandry just those extras which,
if rightly used, can greatly increase both fertility and quality
without those chemical stimulants which in the long run poison both
the soil and its products.

In the field of Art there is hardly an area he did not touch with the
magic wand of creative originality. The second Goetheanum which
replaced the first one destroyed by fire shows the massive use of
reinforced concrete as a plastic material for architecture a
generation before this use was attempted by others. Steiner's direct
and indirect influence on modern painting with the symphonic use of
color, on sculpture, on glass-engraving, on metal work and other
visual arts is too far-reaching for anyone even to attempt to describe
in condensed form. Students and graduates of the Steiner schools for
Eurythmy and for Dramatic Art have performed before enthusiastic
audiences in the cultural centers of the world, ably directed by Marie
Steiner, his wife.

To those who have been attracted to this present publication by its
title and its reference to Christianity, it will be of particular
interest to hear that among those foundations which came into being
during the last phase of Steiner's anthroposophical work was a
Movement for Religious Renewal, formed by a body of Christian
ministers, students and other young pioneers who had found in Rudolf
Steiner "a man sent from God," able to show the way to a true
reconciliation of faith and knowledge, of religion and science. This
Movement is known today as "The Christian Community" and has centers
in many cities in the Old and New World. Apart from the inestimable
help this Movement received from him in theological and pastoral
matters, Rudolf Steiner was instrumental in mediating for this
Movement a complete spiritual rebirth of the Christian Sacraments for
the modern age and a renewal of the Christian priestly office.

Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity holds a
special place in the story of his remarkable and dedicated life. The
book contains the substance of a series of lectures Rudolf Steiner
gave in the winter of 1901-1902 in the "Theosophical Library" of
Berlin at the invitation of the President, Count Brockdorff. This
series had been preceded by another on the German mystics from Master
Eckhardt to Jacob Boehme (published in the Centennial Edition of the
Written Works of Rudolf Steiner under the title Mysticism at the Dawn
of the Modern Age, See Multimedia edition) in which Steiner had
ventured for the first time to present publicly some measure of his
spiritual knowledge.

After these lectures on the mystics which was something of a prelude,
Christianity as Mystical Fact now ushered in a new period in the
understanding of the basic facts of Christianity as well as in
Steiner's own life.

Compared with the free flow of spiritual teaching on Christianity
offered by Steiner in his later works, the book may appear somewhat
tentative and even reticent in its style. But it contains as in a
nutshell all the essential new elements he was able to develop and
unfold so masterfully in his later years.

Steiner considered the phrase "Mystical Fact" in the title to be very
important. "I did not intend simply to describe the mystical content
of Christianity," he says in his autobiography. "I attempted to show
that in the ancient Mysteries cult-images were given of cosmic events,
which occurred later on the field of actual history in the Mystery of
Golgotha as a Fact transplanted from the cosmos into the earth."

It will not be out of place to round off this biographical sketch with
a few personal reminiscences of the last four years of his life when I
met Steiner as man and Initiate among his friends and students, and
saw quite a good deal of him.

What was Rudolf Steiner like? In the first place there was nothing in
the least pompous about him. He never made one feel that he was in any
sense extraordinary. There was an astonishing matter-of-factness about
him, whether he spoke at a business meeting of the Anthroposophical
Society, presided over faculty meetings of the Waldorf School,
lectured on his ever increasing discoveries in the spiritual field, or
spoke in public discussions on controversial subjects of the day.

I attended small lecture courses of less than fifty people, heard him
lecture in the large hall of the first Goetheanum, was present at
large public meetings when he expounded his "Threefold Commonwealth"
ideas in the electric atmosphere of the Germany of 1923, during the
occupation of the Ruhr and the total collapse of the German Mark. He
was always the same: clear, considerate, helpful, unruffled. In those
days he could fill the largest halls in Germany, and his quiet voice
was strong enough to be heard without artificial amplification in the
last rows of the gallery.

His hair remained jet black to the end; I cannot remember a strand of
grey in it. His brown eyes, they sometimes had a shimmer of gold in
them, looked with sympathy upon everything. And he possessed a
wonderful buoyancy of carriage.

From 1913 Steiner lived permanently at Dornach, near Basel,
Switzerland, in a house known locally as "Villa Hansi." However, he
spent most of his time in his studio, which was really nothing but a
simple wooden building adjoining the large carpentry-shop where much
of the woodwork of the first Goetheanum was prefabricated. In this
studio he received an unending stream of callers. One would, perhaps,
be shown into the room by a helping friend, but at the end he would
always conduct one to the door himself. He put one at ease with such
courtesy that one was in danger of forgetting who he was. And he gave
the impression that he had no other care nor interest in the world
than to listen to one's immature questions.

He would sit on a simple wicker chair, his legs crossed, perhaps
occasionally moving one foot up and down. On the lapel of his black
coat one might see a slight trace of snuff, because he indulged in the
Old-World pleasure of taking snuff, but he neither drank nor smoked. I
have never met anyone, and I am sure I shall never meet anyone who
seemed so constantly at rest and in action simultaneously, all the
time perfectly relaxed and absolutely alert.

The last summer of his life, in 1924, was the most prolific of all. He
gave specialized courses on agriculture, on curative education, on
Eurythmy. Then followed a summer school in August at Torquay in
England; and when he returned to Dornach in early September, he
increased his activities still further and gave as many as five,
sometimes six different lectures each day. There was a daily course on
the New Testament Book of Revelation for the priests of the Christian
Community, another on pastoral medicine for priests and doctors
combined, another on dramatic art, where I remember him one morning
acting singlehanded the whole of Dantons Tod, a drama of the French
Revolution by the German writer, Buchner. On another morning he acted
the Faust fragment by Lessing. And in addition to all this, he also
held lectures for the workmen of the Goetheanum.

Besides these specialized courses, the general lectures and other
central activities of the Goetheanum School for the Science of the
Spirit continued without interruption.

But the inevitable moment approached when even his resilient body
showed the strain of his immense work. Sometimes for the period of a
whole week he would hardly sleep more than two hours each night. I
believe that he knew what he was doing. He well knew why he burned the
candle not only at both ends but also in the middle.

My last memory of him is of the night when I was privileged, together
with another friend, to keep vigil at the foot of his bed on which his
body was laid out. It was the night before his funeral. The bed stood
in his simple studio where he had been confined during the last six
months of his life. Looking down on him was the great wooden statue of
Christ which he had carved and nearly finished. Even in the literal
sense of the word he had laid down his life at the feet of Christ.

The dignity of his features was enhanced by the marble whiteness of
death. In the stillness of the night, with only a few candles burning,
it was as if ages of human history converged to do homage. With a deep
sense of reverence I wondered who he was. I am wondering still.

ALFRED HEIDENREICH
London, England
August 1961

 

Part V: Author's Preface to the Second Edition

AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

CHRISTIANITY AS MYSTICAL FACT was the title given to this book by its
author when eight years ago he included in it the contents of lectures
held in the year 1902. This title was intended to indicate the
particular character of the book. It represents an attempt to describe
not merely the mystical content of Christianity in its historical
form, but how Christianity arose out of mystical conception.
Underlying this was the idea that involved in this process was a
spiritual reality which can be seen only through such conception. Only
the content of the book can prove that the author has not used the
word "mystical" to denote a conception which relies more on indefinite
knowledge gained through feelings, than on "strictly scientific
exposition." In many circles today the word "mysticism" carries such a
connotation, hence the tendency is to explain this as a region of the
life of the human soul which can have nothing to do with "real
science." In this book the word "mysticism" is used for the exposition
of a spiritual fact whose nature can be recognized only when the
powers of cognition are taken from the source of spiritual life
itself. Whoever declines a method of cognition founded on such a
source will be unable to take any position with regard to this book.
Only one who admits that in "mysticism" the same clarity can exist as
in the truthful exposition of natural phenomena will accept this
method of describing the mystical content of Christianity. For even
more important than the content of the text is the means of cognition
which has led to its existence.

In our present day many people violently abhor such a means of
cognition. They see it as contradictory to true scientific method.
This is the case not only among those who will not allow the validity
of any interpretation of the world which is not founded upon "genuine
natural scientific fact," but also among those who wish to consider
Christianity in the capacity of believers. The author of this text
takes as his basis an interpretation which acknowledges that the
natural scientific achievements of our day demand elevation to true
mysticism. This interpretation can show that any other attitude toward
cognition absolutely contradicts everything offered by natural
scientific achievements. The means of cognition which so many people
who assume that they stand on firm natural scientific ground, would
like to use, simply do not embrace the facts of this natural science.

Only that reader will accept this book who is able to admit that full
understanding of our present marvelous knowledge of nature can be
combined with genuine mysticism.

By means of what is here called "mystical cognition" this book sets
out to show how the source of Christianity created its preliminary
conditions in the ancient Mysteries. In this "pre-Christian mysticism"
is demonstrated the soil in which Christianity germinates as an
independent seed. This point of view enables one to understand
Christianity in its independent essence, although at the same time one
can follow its development out of pre-Christian mysticism. If one
ignores this point of view it is only too easy to miss recognition of
its independence through the belief that Christianity is merely a
further development of what existed in pre-Christian mysticism. Many
opinions of today lapse into this error, comparing Christianity with
pre-Christian viewpoints, believing that the Christian viewpoint is
merely a further development of the pre-Christian. This book sets out
to show that Christianity presupposes the previous mysticism as the
plant seed does its soil. It seeks to emphasize the unique essence of
Christianity through cognition of its origin, not to extinguish it.

It gives the author profound satisfaction to mention that this
exposition of the "essence of Christianity" has met with the assent of
a personality whose notable writings on the spiritual life of mankind
have enriched the thoughts of our time in the deepest sense. Edouard
Schure, author of Les Grands Initie's, The Great Initiates, agreed so
thoroughly with the standpoint of this book that he himself undertook
its translation into French under the title: Le mystere chretien et
les mysteres antiques. The fact that the first edition was translated
into French and other European languages is mentioned here as a
symptom of the great longing of the present day to understand the
essence of Christianity in the sense of this book.

The author has not found occasion to make any essential changes in
this second edition. There are, however, extensions of the exposition
made eight years ago. The effort has also been made to state many
things more fully and accurately than was possible then.
Unfortunately, through volume of work the author has been forced to
allow a long interval to elapse between the time when the first
edition went out of print and the appearance of the second.

RUDOLF STEINER
May 1910.

 

Part VI: Points of View

POINTS OF VIEW

NATURAL SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT has deeply influenced the formulation of
present-day ideas. It is becoming more and more impossible to describe
the spiritual requirements of the "life of the soul" without reference
to the methods of thinking and the conclusions of natural science.
However, it must be admitted that many people satisfy these
requirements without taking into account the trend of natural
scientific thought in modern spiritual life. But those who are alert
to the pulse of the times must take this trend into consideration.
Ideas derived from natural science conquer our thought-life with
gathering momentum, and our unwilling hearts follow hesitantly and with
apprehension. Not only the number thus conquered is important: there
is a power inherent in natural scientific thought which convinces the
observant that a modern conception of the world cannot exclude its
impressions. Several of the side-growths of natural scientific thought
compel us to reject which this method of thought has gained widespread
recognition and attracts people as if by magic. The situation is not
altered by the fact that isolated individuals can see how true
science, through its own power has "long" led beyond the "shallow
doctrines of force and matter," taught by materialism. It appears to
be far more important to heed those who boldly declare that a new
religion should be built on natural scientific ideas. Even if such
people seem shallow and superficial to those who know the deeper
spiritual requirements of humanity, nevertheless they should be noted
because they claim attention in the present time, and there is good
reason to believe that they will win increasing recognition in the
future. And those also must be considered who have allowed their heads
to take precedence over their hearts. These people are unable to free
their intellects from natural scientific ideas. They are oppressed by
the need for proof. But the religious needs of their souls cannot be
satisfied by these natural scientific ideas. The latter offer too
comfortless a perspective for their satisfaction. Why be enthusiastic
about beauty, truth and goodness if in the end everything is to be
swept away into nothingness like a bubble of inflated brain tissue?
This is a feeling which oppresses many people like a nightmare.
Therefore scientific ideas also oppress them, pressing their claims
with tremendous authoritative force. As long as they can, these people
remain blind to the discord in their souls. Indeed, they comfort
themselves by saying that true clarity in these matters is denied the
human soul. They think in accordance with natural science so long as
the experience of their senses and logic demand it, but they keep to
the religious sentiments in which they have been educated, preferring
to remain in darkness concerning these matters, a darkness which
clouds their understanding. They have not the courage to struggle
through to clarity.

There can be no doubt whatever that the method of thought derived from
natural science is the greatest power in modern spiritual life. And
one who speaks of the spiritual concerns of mankind may not pass it by
heedlessly. Nevertheless it is also true that the method by which it
attempts to satisfy spiritual needs is shallow and superficial. If
this were the right method the outlook would indeed be comfortless.
Would it not be depressing to be forced to agree with those who say,
"Thought is a form of force. We walk with the same force with which we
think. Man is an organism that changes several forms of force into
thought-force. Man is a machine into which we put what we call food,
and produce what we call thought. Think of that wonderful chemistry by
which bread was changed into the divine tragedy of Hamlet! " This is
quoted from a lecture of Robert G. Ingersoll, titled The Gods. It is
irrelevant that such thoughts, casually expressed, apparently receive
little recognition. The main point is that countless people,
influenced by the natural scientific method of thought, seem compelled
to assume an attitude in line with the above quotation, even when they
believe they are not doing so. (See page 36)

The situation would indeed be comfortless if natural science itself
forced us to the credo advanced by many of its newer prophets. Matters
would be entirely comfortless for one who has become convinced from
the content of this natural science that its method of thought is
valid and unshakeable in the realm of nature. Such a person must say
to himself, However much people may quarrel over individual questions,
though volume after volume may be written and observation upon
observation collected about the "struggle for existence" (See page 36)
and its insignificance, about the "omnipotence" or "powerlessness" of
"natural selection," natural science itself moves on in one direction,
and must find increasing agreement within certain limits.

But are the demands made by natural science really as they are
described by some of its representatives? The behavior of these
representatives themselves proves that this is not the case. Their
behavior in their own field is not such as many describe and demand in
other fields. Would Darwin and Ernst Haeckel ever have made their
great discoveries about the evolution of life if, instead of observing
life and the structure of living beings, they had gone into the
laboratory to make chemical experiments with tissue cut out of an
organism? Would Lyell have been able to describe the development of
the crust of the earth if, instead of examining strata and their
contents, he had analyzed the chemical qualities of innumerable
stones? Let us really follow in the footsteps of these explorers who
appear as monumental figures in the development of modern science! We
shall then apply to the higher regions of spiritual life what they
have applied in the field of the observation of nature. Then we shall
not believe we have understood the essence of the "divine" tragedy of
Hamlet by saying that a wonderful chemical process transformed a
certain quantity of food into that tragedy. We shall believe it as
little as a naturalist can seriously believe that he has understood
the mission of heat in the evolution of the earth when he has studied
the action of heat upon sulphur in a chemical retort. Neither does he
attempt to understand the construction of the human brain by examining
the effect of liquid potash upon a fragment of it, but rather by
inquiring how, in the course of evolution, the brain has been
developed out of the organs of lower organisms.

It is therefore quite true that one who is investigating the nature of
spirit can only learn from natural science. He really needs only to do
as science does. But he must not allow himself to be misled by what
individual representatives of natural science would dictate to him. He
must investigate in the spiritual domain as they do in the physical,
but he need not adopt their opinions about the spiritual world,
confused as they are by their exclusive consideration of physical
phenomena.

We shall act in conformity with natural science only when we study the
spiritual evolution of man just as impartially as the naturalist
observes the material world. Then in the domain of spiritual life we
shall admittedly be led to a method of consideration differing from
the purely natural scientific method as geology differs from pure
physics or the investigation of the evolution of life from research
into purely chemical laws. We shall be led to higher methods which.
although they cannot be those of natural science, yet hold good in the
same sense. Many a one-sided view of natural science will allow itself
to be modified or corrected from another point of view, but this only
leads to progress in natural science and thereby one does not sin
against the latter. Such methods alone can lead to penetration into
spiritual developments like Christianity, or the world of ideas of any
other religion. Anyone applying these methods may provoke the
opposition of many who believe they are thinking scientifically, but
nevertheless he will know himself to be in full accord with a truly
scientific method of thought.

An investigator of this kind must also go beyond a merely historical
examination of the documents relating to spiritual life. This is
necessary just because of the attitude of mind he has acquired from
the consideration of natural occurrences. When a chemical law is
explained it is of little value to describe the retorts, dishes and
pincers which have led to its discovery. And in explaining the
beginning of Christianity, it is of just as much or as little value to
ascertain the historical sources drawn upon by the Evangelist Luke, or
those from which the book of Revelation of John was compiled. (See
page 36.) In this case "history" can be only the outer court to
research proper. By tracing the historical origin of documents we
shall not discover anything about the ideas in the writings of Moses
or in the traditions of the Greek mystics. In these documents the
ideas in question are expressed only in outward terms. And the
naturalist, investigating the nature of "man," does not concern
himself about the origin of the word "man," or how it has developed in
a language. He keeps to the thing itself, not to the word which
expresses it. And likewise, in studying spiritual life we shall have
to keep to the spirit and not to its outer documents.

 

Part VII: Mysteries and Mystery Wisdom

MYSTERIES AND MYSTERY WISDOM

SOMETHING LIKE A VEIL OF SECRECY conceals the manner whereby spiritual
needs were satisfied for those within the older civilizations who
sought a deeper religious and cognitive life than was offered by the
religions of the people. We are led into the obscurity of enigmatic
cults when we inquire into the satisfaction of these needs. Each
individual who finds such satisfaction withdraws himself for some time
from our observation. We see that the religion of the people cannot
give him what his heart seeks. He acknowledges the gods, but he knows
that in the ordinary conceptions of the gods the great enigmas of
existence are not disclosed. He seeks a wisdom which is carefully
guarded by a community of priest-sages. He seeks refuge in this
community for his striving soul. If the sages find him mature they
lead him step by step to higher insight, in a manner hidden from the
eyes of those outside What happens to him now is concealed from the
uninitiated. For a time he appears to be entirely removed from the
physical world. He appears to be transported into a secret world. And
when he is returned to the light of day a different, entirely
transformed personality stands before us. This personality cannot find
words sufficiently sublime to express how significant his experiences
were for him. He appears to himself as though he had gone through
death and awakened to a new and higher life, not merely figuratively,
but in highest reality. And it is clear to him that no one can rightly
understand his words who has not had the same experience.

Thus it was with those persons who through the Mysteries were
initiated into that secret wisdom, withheld from the people, and which
shed light upon the highest questions. This "secret" religion of the
elect existed side by side with the religion of the people. So far as
history is concerned, its source fades into the obscurity where the
origin of peoples is lost. We find this "secret" religion everywhere
among ancient peoples insofar as we can gain insight concerning them.
The sages of these peoples speak of the Mysteries with the greatest
reverence. What was concealed in them? And what did they reveal to one
who was initiated into them?

The enigma becomes still more puzzling when we realize that at the
same time the ancients regarded the Mysteries as something dangerous.
The way leading to the secrets of existence went through a world of
terrors. And woe to him who tried to reach them unworthily. There was
no greater crime than the "betrayal" of these secrets to the
uninitiated. The "traitor" was punished with death and confiscation of
property. We know that the poet Aeschylus was accused of having
brought something from the Mysteries to the stage. He was able to
escape death only by fleeing to the altar of Dionysus and producing
legal evidence that he was not an initiate.

What the ancients say about these secrets is rich in meaning and can
be variously interpreted. The initiate is convinced that it is sinful
to say what he knows and also that it is sinful for the uninitiated to
hear it. Plutarch speaks of the terror of those about to be initiated,
comparing their state of mind to a preparation for death. Initiation
had to be preceded by a special mode of life. This aimed at bringing
sensuality under the control of the spirit. Fasting, solitary life,
mortification and certain exercises of the soul served this purpose.
The things to which man clings in ordinary life were to lose all value
for him. The whole course of his experience and feeling had to take a
different direction. There can be no doubt about the meaning of such
exercises and tests. The wisdom to be offered to the neophyte could
produce the right effect upon his soul only if he had previously
changed his lower world of experience. He was inducted into the life
of the spirit. He was to behold a higher world. He could find no
relationship to this world without previous exercises and tests.
Everything depended just on this relationship. Whoever wishes to
understand these things correctly must have known by experience the
intimate facts of the life of cognition. He must know by experience
that two widely divergent relationships are possible in relation to
what is offered by the highest cognition. The world surrounding man is
his real world at first. He feels, hears and sees its processes.
Because he perceives them with his senses he calls them real and
thinks about them in order to gain insight into their connections. On
the other hand, what rises in his soul is not real to him at first in
the same sense. It is "mere" thoughts and ideas. At most, he sees in
them pictures of material reality. They themselves have no reality.
One cannot touch them; one cannot hear nor see them.

Another relationship to the world exists. A person who clings at all
costs to the kind of reality described above, will hardly grasp it. It
enters the lives of certain people at a certain moment. Their whole
relationship to the world is reversed. They call truly real the images
which arise in the spiritual life of their soul. They assign only a
lower form of reality to what the senses hear, touch and see. They
know they cannot prove what they say. They know they can only recount
their new experiences. And they know that in recounting them to others
they are in the position of a man who can see and who imparts his
visual impressions to one born blind. They undertake the communication
of their inner experiences, trusting that they are surrounded by
others, who, although their spiritual eye is still closed, have a
logical understanding which can be strengthened through the power of
what they hear. They believe in humanity and wish to open spiritual
eyes. They can only offer the fruits their spirit itself has gathered;
whether another sees the fruits depends upon whether he has
comprehension for what is seen by a spiritual eye. (See page 36.)
Something existing in man at first prevents him from seeing with the
eyes of the spirit. First of all he is not here for this purpose. He
is what his senses represent him to be, and his intellect is only the
interpreter and judge of his senses. These senses would fulfill their
mission badly if they did not insist upon the truth and infallibility
of their evidence. From its own point of view, an eye must uphold the
absolute reality of its perceptions, otherwise it would be a bad eye.
The eye is quite right, so far as it goes. It is not deprived of its
rights by the spiritual eye. This spiritual eye allows us to see what
the material eye sees, but in a higher light. Nothing the material eye
sees is denied. But a new radiance, hitherto unseen, shines from it.
Then we know that what we first saw was but a lower reality. We see
this still, but it is immersed in something higher, in the spirit. Now
it is a question of whether we experience and feel what we see.
Whoever is able to bring living experience and feeling to the material
world only, will regard the higher world as a Fata Morgana or as
"mere" phantasy-images. His feelings are directed entirely toward the
material world. When he tries to grasp spirit images, he seizes
emptiness. When he gropes after them, they withdraw from him. They are
"mere" thoughts. He thinks them; he does not live in them. They are
pictures, less real to him than fleeting dreams. Compared with his
reality they are like images made of froth which vanish as they
encounter the massive, solidly-built reality of which his senses tell
him. It is a different matter for the person whose experience and
feelings with regard to reality have changed. For him that reality has
lost its absolute stability, its unquestioned value. His senses and
his feelings need not become blunted. But they begin to doubt their
absolute authority; they leave space for something else. The world of
the spirit begins to animate this space.

At this point a dreadful possibility exists. A man may lose his
experience and feeling of direct reality without finding any new
reality opening before him. He is then suspended in a void. He seems
to himself dead. The old values have disappeared and no new ones have
taken their place. The world and man no longer exist for him. This is
by no means a mere possibility. At some time or other it happens to
everyone who wishes to attain higher cognition. He reaches a point
where to him the spirit interprets all life as death. Then he is no
longer in the world. He is beneath the world, in the nether world. He
accomplishes the, journey to Hades. It is well for him if he is not
submerged. It is well for him if a new world opens before him. Either
he disappears, or is confronted by a new self. In the latter case a
new sun and a new earth appear to him. Out of spiritual fire the whole
world has been reborn for him.

Thus the initiates describe what happened to them through the
Mysteries. Menippus relates that he journeyed to Babylon in order to
be taken to Hades and brought back again by the successors of
Zoroaster. He says that on his travels he swam across the great water
and that he passed through fire and ice. We hear that the mystics were
terrified by a drawn sword and that "blood flowed." We understand such
sayings when we know the point of transition from lower to higher
cognition. We ourselves have felt how all solid matter, all the
material world, has dissolved into water; we have lost the ground from
beneath our feet. Everything we had previously experienced as living
has been killed. The spirit has passed through material life as a
sword pierces a warm body; we have seen the blood of sensuality flow.

But a new life has appeared. We have climbed up from the nether world.
The orator Aristides relates, "I thought I touched the god and felt
him draw near, and I was then between waking and sleeping. My spirit
was so light that one who is not 'initiated' cannot speak of it nor
understand it." This new existence is not subject to the laws of lower
life. Growth and decay do not affect it. Much may be said about the
eternal, but one's words will be "but sound and smoke," who does not
speak of the same thing as those who speak of it after the journey to
Hades. The initiates have a new conception of life and death. Now for
the first time they are entitled to speak about immortality. They know
that whoever speaks of immortality without the knowledge gained
through initiation does not understand it. The uninitiated attribute
immortality only to something which is subject to the laws of growth
and decay.-The mystics did not desire to gain the mere conviction that
the kernel of life is immortal. In their view, such a conviction would
be worthless. This is because they believed the non-mystic simply does
not have the eternal living within him. If he were to speak of the
eternal, he would speak of nothing. The mystics seek the eternal
itself. They must first awaken the eternal within themselves; then
they can speak of it. Therefore Plato's severe saying has full reality
for them: Whoever is not initiated is submerged in the mire, (See page
36) and he alone enters eternity who has experienced mystical life.
Only in this way can the words in the fragment from Sophocles be
understood:

"Thrice happy they, who, having seen these rites,
Then pass to Hades: there to these alone
Is granted life, all others evil find."

Are not dangers described in speaking of the Mysteries? Is it not
robbing men of happiness, of the most valuable part of life, to lead
them to the gate of the nether world? Terrible is the responsibility
incurred by such an act. And yet, may we shirk this responsibility?
These were the questions the initiate had to ask himself. In his
opinion his knowledge was to the soul of the people as light is to
darkness. But in this darkness dwells innocent happiness. The mystics
were of the opinion that this happiness should not be interfered with
wantonly. For what would have happened in the first place had the
mystic "betrayed" his secret? He would have spoken words, nothing but
words. Nothing at all would have happened through the experiences and
feelings, which should have evoked the spirit from these words. For
this, preparation, exercises, tests and the complete change of
sense-experience would have been necessary. Without these, the hearer
would have been flung into emptiness, into nothingness. He would have
been deprived of what gave him happiness without being able to receive
anything in exchange. It might be said that one could not have taken
anything from him. For certainly mere words could not change his life
of experience. He could only have experienced reality through the
objects of his senses. One could have given him nothing but a
dreadful, life-destroying apprehension. This could be regarded only as
a crime. (See page 36) The above is no longer fully valid today for
the acquisition of spiritual cognition. The latter can be understood
conceptually because modern man has a capacity to form concepts which
the ancients lacked. Today people can be found who have cognition of
the spiritual world through their own experience; they can be
confronted by others who comprehend these experiences conceptually.
Such a capacity for forming concepts was lacking in the ancients.

Ancient Mystery wisdom is like a hothouse plant which must be
cherished and cared for in seclusion. To bring it into the atmosphere
of everyday conceptions is to put it in an element in which it cannot
flourish. It withers away to nothing before the caustic verdict of
modern science and logic. Let us therefore divest ourselves for a time
of all the education we have received through the microscope,
telescope and the ways of thought derived from natural science; let us
purify our hands which have become clumsy and have been too busy
dissecting and experimenting, so that we may enter the pure temple of
the Mysteries. For this a truly unprejudiced mind is necessary.

For the mystic, everything depends primarily upon the frame of mind in
which he approaches what he feels to be the highest, the answers to
the enigmas of existence. Particularly in our time, when only things
pertaining to physical science are recognized as deserving cognition,
it is difficult to believe that for the highest things, everything
depends on a frame of mind. Cognition thereby becomes an intimate
concern of each personality. For the mystic, however, it is so. Tell
someone the solution of the world-enigma! Hand it to him ready-made!
The mystic will consider it nothing but empty sound if the individual
does not confront this solution in the right manner. The solution is
nothing in itself; it disintegrates if it does not kindle in his
feeling the particular fire which is essential. Let a divine being
approach you! It may be nothing or everything. Nothing, if you meet it
in the frame of mind in which you confront everyday things.
Everything, if you are prepared and attuned to it. What it is in
itself is a matter which does not concern you; the point is whether it
leaves you as you were or makes a different man of you. But this
depends solely on you. You must have been prepared by the education
and development of the most intimate forces of your personality so
that what the divine is able to evoke may be kindled and released in
you. What is brought to you depends upon the reception you prepare for
it. Plutarch has given an account of this education; he has spoken of
the greeting the mystic offers the divine being who approaches him:
"For the god addresses each one of us as we approach him here with the
words 'Know Thyself,' as a form of welcome, which certainly is in no
wise of less import than 'Hail;' and we in turn reply to him 'Thou
art,' as rendering unto him a form of address which is truthful, free
from deception and the only one befitting him alone, the assertion of
Being. The fact is that we really have no share in Being, but
everything of a mortal nature is at some stage between coming into
existence and passing away, and presents only a dim and uncertain
semblance and appearance of itself; and if you apply the whole force
of your mind in your desire to apprehend it, it is like unto the
violent grasping of water, which, by squeezing and compression, loses
the handful enclosed, as it spurts through the fingers; even so
Reason, pursuing the exceedingly clear appearance of every one of
those things that are susceptible to modification and change, is
baffled by the one aspect of its coming into being, and by the other
of its passing away; and thus it is unable to apprehend a single thing
that is abiding or really existent. 'It is impossible to step twice in
the same river' are the words of Heraclitus, nor is it possible to lay
hold twice of any mortal substance in a permanent state; by the
suddenness and swiftness of the change in it there 'comes dispersion
and, at another time, a gathering together;' or, rather, not at
another time nor later, but at the same instant it both settles into
its place and forsakes its place; 'it is coming and going.' Wherefore
that which is born of it never attains unto being because of the
unceasing and unstaying process of generation, which, ever bringing
change, produces from the seed an embryo, then a babe, then a child
and in due course a boy, a young man, a mature man, an elderly man, an
old man, causing the first generations and ages to pass away by those
which succeed them. But we have a ridiculous fear of one death, we who
have already died so many deaths, and still are dying! For not only is
it true, as Heraclitus used to say, that the death of fire is birth
for air, and the death of air is birth for water, but the case is even
more clearly to be seen in our own selves: the man in his prime passes
away when the old man comes into existence, the young man passes away
into the man in his prime, the child into the young man, and the babe
into the child. Dead is the man of yesterday, for he is passed into
the man of to-day; and the man of to-day is dying as he passes into
the man of to-morrow. Nobody remains one person, nor is one person;
but we become many persons, even as matter is drawn about some one
semblance and common mold with imperceptible movement. Else how is it
that, if we remain the same persons, we take delight in some things
now, whereas earlier we took delight in different things; that we love
or hate opposite things, and so too with our admirations and our
disapprovals, and that we use other words and feel other emotions and
have no longer the same personal appearance, the same external form,
nor the same purposes in mind? For without change it is not reasonable
that a person should have different experiences and emotions; and if
he changes, he is not the same person, he has no permanent being, but
changes his very nature as one personality in him succeeds to another.
Our senses, through ignorance of reality, falsely tell us that what
appears to be is.''

Plutarch often shows himself to be an initiate. What he portrays for
us here is an essential condition of the life of a mystic. Man
acquires a wisdom by means of which his spirit sees through the
illusory character of material life. Everything the material nature
regards as existence, as reality, is plunged into the stream of
evolving life. And man himself fares the same as the other things of
the world. He disintegrates before the eyes of his spirit; his
totality is dissolved into parts, into transitory phenomena. Birth and
death lose their distinctive significance; they become moments of
coming into existence, and decay like everything else which happens.
The highest cannot be found in connection with growth and decay. It
can only be sought in something truly lasting, which looks back to
what has been and forward to what is to come. To find what looks
backward and forward is a higher stage of cognition. It is the spirit,
which is revealed in and through the material world. This spirit has
nothing to do with material growth. It does not come into existence
nor decay in the same manner as do sense phenomena. Whoever lives only
in the world of the senses has this spirit latent within him; whoever
sees through the illusory character of the world of the senses has it
as a revealed reality within him. Whoever achieves this insight has
developed a new organ within him. Something has taken place in him, as
in a plant which at first has only green leaves and then puts forth a
colored blossom. Certainly, the forces through which the flower
developed were already latent in the plant before the blossom came
into existence, but they became reality only when this latter took
place. Divine spiritual forces also are latent in the purely material
man, but they are a revealed reality only in the mystic. Therein lies
the transformation that has taken place in the mystic. By his
development he has added something new to the existing world. The
material world has made a material man of him and then left him to
himself. Nature has fulfilled her mission. Her potential connection
with the forces working within man is exhausted. But these forces
themselves are not yet exhausted. They lie as though spellbound in the
purely natural man, awaiting their release. They cannot release
themselves; they vanish into nothing if man himself does not grasp
them and develop them further, if he does not awaken to real existence
what slumbers hidden within him. Nature evolves from the least to the
most perfect. Nature leads beings by an extensive series of stages
from the inanimate through all forms of life up to material man. Man
in his material nature opens his eyes and becomes aware of himself in
the material world as a real being, capable of transforming itself. He
still observes in himself the forces out of which this material nature
is born. These forces are not the object of transformation because
they gave rise to the transformation. Man bears them within himself as
an indication that something lives within him, transcending his
material perception. What may come into existence through these forces
is not yet present. Man feels something light up within him which has
created everything, including himself; and he feels that this
something will spur him to higher achievement. It is within him; it
existed before his material appearance, and will be there after it.
Through it he has come into being, and he may grasp it, and himself
participate in his creation. Such feelings lived in the ancient mystic
after initiation. He felt the eternal, the divine. His deeds will
become a part of the creative activity of the divine. He may say to
himself: I have discovered a higher "I" within me, but this "I"
surpasses the boundaries of my material growth; it existed before my
birth, it will exist after my death. Creatively this "I" has worked
throughout eternity; creatively it will work in eternity. My material
personality is a creation of this "I." But it has incorporated me
within it; creatively it works in me; I am a part of it. What I am now
able to create is something higher than the material. My personality
is only a medium for this creative force, for this divine, within me.
In this way the mystic experienced his apotheosis.

The mystic named the force thus kindled within him, his true spirit.
He was the result of this spirit. It seemed to him as though a new
being had entered him and taken possession of his organs. This was a
being which stood between his material personality and the Sovereign
Power of the cosmos, the Godhead. The mystic sought his true spirit.
He said to himself, I have become man in the great natural world. But
nature has not completed her task. I myself must take over this
completion. However, I cannot do this in the gross realm of nature to
which my material personality also belongs. Whatever can develop in
this realm has developed. Therefore I must escape from this realm. I
must continue to build in the sphere of the spiritual, where nature
has stood still. I must create for myself a breathing space which
cannot be found in outer nature. This breathing space was prepared for
the mystics in the Mystery temples. There the forces slumbering within
them were awakened; there they were transformed into higher creative
spirit-natures. This transformation was a delicate process. It could
not endure the rough elements of the outdoors. When the process was
completed, through it man had become a rock grounded in the eternal,
able to defy all storms. But he was not permitted to believe that he
could communicate his experiences in their direct form to others.

Plutarch informs us that in the Mysteries "it is possible to gain the
clearest reflections and adumbrations of the truth about the daemons."
And from Cicero we learn that "those occult Mysteries . . . when
interpreted and explained prove to have more to do with natural
science than with theology." From such communications we see clearly
that for the mystic there existed a higher insight into natural
science than the religion of the people could give. Moreover this
shows that the daemons, that is, the spiritual beings, and the gods
themselves required explanation. Beings are approached who are of a
higher nature than the daemons and gods. And this is in the nature of
Mystery wisdom. The people pictured gods and daemons in images taken
entirely from the world of material reality. Surely one who could
penetrate the essence of the eternal was bound to lose confidence in
the eternalness of such gods! How could Zeus, as the people pictured
him, be eternal when he had the characteristics of a mortal being?
-One thing was clear to the mystic: man attains his idea of the gods
in a different manner from his ideas about other things. An object in
the external world compels me to form a definitive idea of it. In
contrast to this the formation of ideas of the gods has something
free, even arbitrary, about it. The compulsion of the external world
is lacking. Reflection teaches us that with the gods we imagine
something for which there is no external control. This puts man into a
state of logical uncertainty. He begins to feel that he is the creator
of his gods. He even asks himself: How do I come to transcend physical
reality in my world of ideas? The mystic must devote himself to such
thoughts. The doubts which then beset him were justified. He could
think to himself: Let us simply look at all these ideas of the gods.
Are they not similar to the creatures we meet in the world of the
senses? Has not man created them by mentally adding or subtracting
this or that quality essentially belonging to the world of the senses?
The barbarian who loves hunting creates a heaven for himself in which
the most glorious hunts of the gods take place. The Greek peoples
Olympus with divinities having their prototype in the reality which is
well known to him.

The philosopher Xenophanes (575-480 B.C.) referred to this fact with
crude logic. We know that the older Greek philosophers were absolutely
dependent on Mystery wisdom. This will be demonstrated in relation to
Heraclitus in particular. For this reason the saying of Xenophanes can
be accepted without reservation as a conviction based on mystic
knowledge. He says:

"But men have the idea that gods are born,
And wear their clothes, and have both voice and shape.
But had the oxen or the lions hands,
Or could with hands depict a work like men,
Were beasts to draw the semblance of the gods,
The horses would them like to horses sketch,
To oxen, oxen, and their bodies make
Of such a shape as to themselves belongs."

Through such insight man may become doubtful of everything divine. He
may reject the legends of the gods and acknowledge as reality only
that what his material perceptions compel him to acknowledge. But the
mystic did not become such a doubter. He understood that the doubter
was like a plant which said to itself: My colored blossom is vain and
worthless, for I am complete in my green leaves; what I add to them
only increases the illusory appearance. But neither could the mystic
remain content with the gods thus created, the gods of the people. If
the plant could think, it would understand that the forces which had
created the green leaves are also destined to create the colored
blossom. And it would not rest until it had investigated these forces
for itself in order to see them. So it was for the mystic in relation
to the gods of the people. He did not deny them nor declare them to be
vain, but he knew that they were created by man. The same natural
forces, the same divine elements which work creatively in nature also
work creatively in the mystic. In him also they engender ideas of the
gods. He wishes to see this force which is creating gods. It is not
like the gods of the people; it is something higher. Xenophanes also
indicates this:

One God there is, 'midst gods and men supreme;
In form, in mind, unlike to mortal men.

This God was also the God of the Mysteries. He could be called "a
hidden God," for nowhere, so it was thought, is He to be found by the
purely material man. Direct your gaze outward toward objects; you find
no divinity. Exert your intelligence; you may understand the laws by
which things come into existence and decay, but your intellect shows
you nothing divine. Saturate your fantasy with religious feeling; you
can create pictures of beings which you may take to be gods, but your
intellect dissects them for you, for it proves to you that you
yourself created them, and borrowed the material for their creation
from the material world. Insofar as you, as intellectual man, consider
the things about you, you must deny the gods. For God is not there for
your senses or intellect, which explain material perceptions. God is
magically concealed in the world. And you need His own force in order
to find Him. This force you must awaken within yourself. These are the
teachings which a neophyte of ancient times received. Then began for
him the great cosmic drama in which he was engulfed alive. This drama
consisted of nothing less than the release of the spellbound God.
Where is God? This was the question the mystic put before his soul.
God is not, but nature is. He must be found in nature. In nature He
has found an enchanted tomb. The words, "God is Love," are grasped by
the mystic in a higher sense. For God has carried this Love to its
uttermost. He has given Himself in infinite Love; He has diffused
Himself; He has divided Himself into the manifold variety of natural
things; they live, and He does not live in them. He rests in them. He
lives in man. And man can experience the life of God in himself. If he
is to let Him come to cognition he must release this cognition
creatively in himself. Man now gazes into himself. As a hidden
creative force, as yet unincarnated, works the divinity in his soul.
In this soul is a place where the spellbound divinity can come to life
again. The soul is the mother who by nature can conceive the divinity.
If the soul is fructified by nature it will give birth to a divinity.
Out of the marriage of the soul with nature a divinity will be born.
This is no longer a "hidden" divinity; it is revealed. It has life,
perceptible life, and walks among men. It is the released spirit in
man, the offspring of the spellbound divinity. It is not the great
God, who was, is and will be, but it can be taken as His revelation in
a certain sense. The Father rests in concealment, the Son is born to
man out of his own soul. Thus mystic cognition is a real event in the
cosmic process. It is the birth of an offspring of God. It is an event
as real as any other natural event, only on a higher level. This is
the great secret of the mystic, that he himself creatively releases
his divine offspring, but he also prepares himself beforehand to
acknowledge this divine offspring created by himself. The non-mystic
lacks the experience of the father of this offspring. For this father
slumbers under a spell. The offspring appears to be virginally born.
The soul appears to have borne him without fructification. All its
other offspring are conceived by the material world. In their case the
father can be seen and touched. He has material life. The divine
offspring alone is conceived of the eternal, hidden Father-God
Himself.

 

Part VIII: Greek Sages Before Plato in the Light of Mystery Wisdom

GREEK SAGES BEFORE PLATO
IN THE LIGHT OF MYSTERY WISDOM

NUMEROUS FACTS lead us to perceive that the philosophical wisdom of
the Greeks stems from the same basic conviction as does mystical
cognition. We can understand the great philosophers only when we
approach them with the feelings gained from observation of the
Mysteries. How reverently Plato speaks of the "secret teachings" in
the Phaedo "And it appears that those men who established the
Mysteries were not unenlightened, but in reality had a hidden meaning
when they said long ago that whoever goes uninitiated and unsanctified
to the other world will lie in the mire, but he who arrives there
initiated and purified will dwell with the gods. For as they say in
the Mysteries, 'the thyrsus-bearers are many, but the mystics few;'
and these mystics are, I believe, those who have been true
philosophers. And I in my life have, so far as I could, left nothing
undone, and have striven in every way to make myself one of them."
-Initiation can be discussed in this way only by someone who has
placed his own striving for wisdom entirely at the service of the
conviction engendered by initiation. And there is no doubt that a
bright light is cast upon the words of the great Greek philosophers
when they are illuminated by the Mysteries.

A saying which has been handed down about Heraclitus of Ephesus
(535-475 B.C.) gives a clear indication of his relationship to the
essence of the Mysteries, saying that his thoughts are "a path which
is difficult to travel," that anyone who approaches them uninitiated
will find only "obscurity and darkness," but that on the other hand
they are "brighter than sunlight" for the person who is introduced to
them by a mystic. When it is said of his book that he placed the
latter in the temple of Artemis, this means that he could be
understood only by initiates. (Historical evidence of Heraclitus'
relationship to the Mysteries has already been contributed by Edmund
Pfleiderer. See his book, Die Philosophie des Heraklit von Ephesus im
Lichte der Mysterienidee, Berlin 1886.) Heraclitus was called "The
Obscure" because only the light of the Mysteries provided the key to
his conceptions.

Heraclitus strikes us as a personality with the most serious attitude
toward life. If we know how to conjure up his appearance, we see in
his physiognomy that he bore within him the most intimate experiences
of cognition which he knew could only be indicated, not expressed, by
words. From the soil of such a conviction sprang his famous saying,
"Everything is in a state of flux," which Plutarch interprets in the
following words: "It is impossible to step twice in the same river nor
is it possible to lay hold twice of any mortal substance in a
permanent state, by the suddenness and swiftness of the change in it
there comes dispersion and at another time, a gathering together; or
rather, not at another time nor later, but at the same instant it both
settles into its place and forsakes its place; it is coming and
going." The man who thinks in this way has seen through the nature of
transitory things. He has felt urged to characterize in the sharpest
words the essence of transitoriness. Such a characterization cannot be
made unless the transitory is measured against the eternal. In
particular this characterization cannot be extended to man unless his
innermost being has been penetrated. Heraclitus does extend this
characterization to man: "Living and dead are the same and so are
waking and sleeping, youth and age. For the one in changing becomes
the other, and the other, changing, again becomes the one.'' Full
cognition of the illusory character of the lower personality is
expressed in this sentence. He speaks of this even more forcibly:
"There is life and death in our life, just as in our death." What does
this mean except that life can be valued more highly than death only
when seen from the point of view of the transitory. Death is decay to
make room for new life, but the eternal lives in the new life as in
the old. The same eternal appears in transitory life as in death. When
man has grasped this eternal he looks upon death with the same
feelings as he looks upon life. Only if he is unable to awaken this
eternal within himself does life have a special value for him. The
sentence, "Everything is in a state of flux" may be trotted out a
thousand times, but if it is not spoken with a feeling for this
content it is void of meaning. Cognition of eternal creation is
valueless if it does not cancel out our dependence upon earthly
creation. Heraclitus means to repudiate the lust for life which
presses after transitory things with the saying, "How shall we say of
our daily life: 'we are,' when we know that from the standpoint of the
eternal: 'we are and we are not.'" (Heraclitus, Fragment No. 81) "But
Hades is the same as Dionysus," states another of the Fragments of
Heraclitus. (127) Dionysus, the god of lust for life, of germination
and growth, to whom the Dionysian festivals were dedicated, is for
Heraclitus the same as Hades, the god of annihilation and destruction.
Only one who sees life within death and death within life, and in both
the eternal which is infinitely above life and death, his gaze alone
can behold in the right light the disadvantages and advantages of
existence. Then the disadvantages find their justification, for the
eternal lives in them also. What they appear to be from the standpoint
of the limited lower life is only illusory: "For men to get all they
wish is not the better thing. It is disease that makes health a
pleasant thing; evil, good; hunger, surfeit; and toil, rest." "Sea
water is the most pure and the most polluted; for fishes it is
drinkable and salutary, but for men it is undrinkable and
deleterious.'' (Fragment 104, 52) Heraclitus intends primarily to
point out not the transitory quality of earthly things, but the
splendor and majesty of the eternal. -Heraclitus spoke vigorously
against Homer, Hesiod and the scholars of his day. He wished to point
out the manner of their thought which clings only to the transitory.
He did not want the gods furnished with attributes taken from the
transitory world. And he could not respect as the highest a science
which investigated the laws of the growth and decay of things. For him
the eternal speaks through the transitory. He has a deeply significant
symbol for this eternal: "The harmony of the world is of opposite
tensions, as is that of the lyre or bow.''(Fragment 56) How much is
contained in this pictured Unity is attained by the striving of forces
in opposite directions and the harmonization of these diverging
forces. One tone contradicts another, yet together they achieve
harmony. If we apply this to the spiritual world we have the thought
of Heraclitus: "Immortals take on mortality, mortals immortality;
death is the eternal life of mortals, earthly life the death of
immortals.'' (Fragment 67)

To cling to the transitory with his cognition is the original fault of
man. Thereby he turns away from the eternal. Through this, life
becomes a danger to him. What happens to him comes to pass through
life. But it loses its sting when he no longer values life as
absolute. Then his innocence is restored to him. It is as though he
could return from the so-called seriousness of life to childhood. How
much that is play to the child is taken in all seriousness by the
adult! The one who knows, however, becomes like a child. "Serious"
values lose their worth when seen from the standpoint of the eternal.
Life then appears as a game. Therefore Heraclitus says, "Eternity is a
child at play; it is the dominion of a child." (Fragment 79) Where
does the original fault lie? It consists in taking with the utmost
seriousness those things to which this seriousness should not be
attached. God has descended into the world of things. Whoever receives
these things without God receives them seriously as the "Tombs of
God." He should play with them like a child and employ his seriousness
to draw out of them the God who sleeps spellbound within. Burning,
yes, scorching is the effect which contemplation of the eternal has
upon ordinary assumptions about things. The spirit dissolves the
thoughts of sensuality; it melts them. It is a consuming fire. This is
the higher sense of the thought of Heraclitus, that fire is the
archetypal substance of all things. Certainly this thought is to be
taken first in the sense of an ordinary physical exploration of the
phenomena of the world. But no one understands Heraclitus who does not
think about him in the way that Philo, who lived at the time of the
birth of Christianity, thought about the laws of the Bible. He says,
"There are people who take written laws only as pictures of spiritual
teaching. They search out the latter with great care and despise the
former. I can only censure such people for they should take care of
both: the cognition of the esoteric sense and the observation of the
exoteric.'' We pervert the thoughts of Heraclitus if we argue whether
by his concept of fire he meant physical fire, or whether for him fire
was only a symbol of the eternal spirit which dissolves and reforms
material things. He meant both and neither, because for him the spirit
also lived in ordinary fire. The force physically active in fire lives
on a higher plane in the human soul, melting sense-bound cognition in
its furnace and allowing contemplation of the eternal to emerge from
it.

Heraclitus in particular may easily be misunderstood. He allows strife
to be the father of things, (Fragment 44) but to him it is the father
only of "things," not of the eternal. If there were no polarities in
the world, if the most manifold conflicting interests did not exist,
the world of growth would not exist, nor would the world of decay.
What reveals itself, however, in this, what is diffused in it, is not
strife; it is harmony. Just because strife is in all things, the
spirit of the sage is to move over all things like fire, transforming
them into harmony. This point throws light on one of the great
thoughts of Heraclitean wisdom. What is the personal essence of man?
The above passage contains the answer of Heraclitus. Man is a mixture
of conflicting elements, into which God is descended. This is the
condition in which he finds himself. Further, he becomes aware of the
spirit within him, the spirit which is rooted in the eternal. This
spirit, however, is born for him personally out of the conflict of the
elements. This spirit should also pacify the elements. In man, nature
creates beyond herself. It is the same unique force which has begotten
the conflict, the mixture, which, filled with wisdom, is to remove
this conflict again. There we have the eternal duality which lives in
man, the eternal contradiction in him between temporal and eternal.
Through the eternal he has become something quite definite, and out of
this he should create something higher. He is both dependent and
independent. He can participate in the eternal spirit which he beholds
only to the extent of the mixture the eternal spirit has produced in
him. Just because of this he is called upon to form the eternal out of
the temporal. The spirit works in him. But it works in him in a
special way. It works out of the temporal. It is the peculiarity of
the human soul that something temporal works like something eternal,
that it leavens and strengthens like an eternal quality. This makes
the human soul similar to a god and a worm at the same time. Because
of this man stands midway between God and animal. This leavening and
strengthening force in him is his daemonic element. This is what
strives beyond him from within. Heraclitus points to this in a
striking way: "Man's daemon is his destiny."(Fragment 137) (Daemon is
meant here in the Greek sense. In the modern sense we would say
spirit.) Thus for Heraclitus what lives in man extends itself far
beyond the personal. This personal element is the bearer of a daemonic
element. This element is not confined to one personality and the death
and birth of the personality have no significance for it. What
connection has this daemonic element with what in the form of
personality comes into existence and decays? The personal element is
only a form of appearance for the daemonic. The bearer of such
cognition looks forward and backward beyond himself. That he
experiences the daemonic element in himself is to him evidence of his
own immortality. Now he may no longer ascribe to this daemonic element
the single task of filling out his personality. For the personality
can be only one form of appearance of the daemonic element. The daemon
cannot confine itself within one personality. It has the force to
animate many personalities. It can go from personality to personality.
This premise of Heraclitus gives rise as a matter of course to the
great thought of reincarnation. Not, however, to the thought alone,
but to the experience of reincarnation. The thought is only the
preparation for the experience. Whoever becomes aware of the daemonic
element within himself does not discover it to be an innocent primary
element.

He finds that it has characteristics. How has it come by these? Why
have I tendencies? Because other personalities have already worked
upon my daemon. And what will become of the effect which I produce on
the daemon, if I may not assume that its task is exhausted in my
personality? I prepare for a later personality. Something which is not
the same as a divinity, something which reaches beyond me, introduces
itself between me and the cosmic unity. My daemon introduces itself.
As my today is but the result of yesterday, and my tomorrow will only
be the result of my today, so my life is the continuation of another,
and will be the basis for another. As physical man looks backward on
numerous yesterdays and forward to numerous tomorrows, so the soul of
the sage beholds numerous lives in the past and numerous lives in the
future. What I acquired yesterday in the way of thoughts and
accomplishments, I use today. Is it not so with life? Do not men set
foot upon the horizon of existence with the most varied faculties?
Whence comes this variety? Does it come out of nothingness? Our
natural science congratulates itself on banishing the miracle from our
conceptions of organic life. David Friedrich Strauss (see Alter und
Neuer Glaube, Old and New Faith) considers it a great achievement of
modern times that we no longer think of a perfect organic creature
being miraculously created out of nothingness. We grasp perfection
when we are able to explain it as an evolution out of imperfection.
The structure of the ape is no longer a miracle if we may assume, as
ancestors of the ape, primitive fish which have gradually transformed
themselves. Let us agree to accept for the spirit what seems to us
right with regard to nature. Is the perfected spirit to have the same
origin as the imperfected spirit? Is Goethe to have the same
disposition as any Hottentot? The spirit of Goethe cannot have the
same spiritual predispositions as an aborigine, any more than a fish
has the same predisposition as an ape. The spiritual ancestry of
Goethe's spirit is different from that of the aborigine. The spirit
has grown like the body. The spirit in Goethe has more predecessors
than that in the aborigine. Let us take the teaching of reincarnation
in this sense. Then we shall no longer find it "unscientific." On the
contrary, what is found in the soul will then be explained in the
right way. What is given will not be accepted as a miracle. That I can
write is the result of the fact that I have learned to do so. One who
has never held a pen in his hand cannot sit down and write. But
someone or other is supposed to have a "spark of genius" in some
purely miraculous way. No, this "spark of genius" must also be
acquired; it must be learned. If it makes its appearance in a
personality, we call it a spiritual element. But first this spiritual
element also had to learn; in an earlier life it has acquired for
itself the "ability" it has in a later one.

In this way and no other did Heraclitus and the Greek sages conceive
the thought of eternity. For them there was no question of the
continuance of the actual personality. Let us refer to a saying of
Empedocles (490-430 B.C.). Of those who regard something as a miracle,
he says,

"Fools! for they have no far-reaching thoughts-
Who deem that what before was not comes into being,
Or that aught can perish and be utterly destroyed.
For it cannot be that aught can arise from what in no way is,
And it is impossible and unheard of that what is should perish;
For it will always be, wherever one may keep putting it.
A man wise in such matters would never surmise in his heart
That as long as mortals live what they call their life,
So long they are, and suffer good and ill;
While before they were formed and after they have been dissolved
They are just nothing at all."

The Greek sage did not raise the question whether there is an eternal
element in man; he only asked of what does this eternal consist and
how can man cherish and care for it within himself. For it was clear
to him from the beginning that man lives as a creature midway between
the earthly and the divine. There was no question of the divine
existing outside and beyond earthly things. The divine lives in man;
it lives there, but in a human way. It is the force which urges man to
make himself ever more and more divine. Only a person who thinks in
this way can say with Empedocles,

When, released from the body, you ascend to the free ether, You will
become an immortal god, escaping death.

What can happen to a human life from such a point of view? It can be
initiated into the ordered cycle of the eternal. Forces must be
present in it which are not brought into development by a purely
natural life. And this life could pass by unused if these forces
remained lying fallow. It was the task of the Mysteries to open them
up, thereby likening the human to the divine. And the Greek sages also
set themselves this task. Thus we understand Plato's words: "Whoever
goes uninitiated and unsanctified to the other world will lie in the
mire, but he who arrives there initiated and purified will dwell with
the gods." Here we are dealing with an idea of immortality, the
significance of which is determined within the whole cosmos.
Everything man undertakes in order to awaken the eternal within
himself he does in order to heighten the existence-value of the
cosmos. As a cognizant being one is not an idle observer of the whole
cosmos when he pictures to himself what would equally well be there
without him. His power of cognition is a higher natural creative
force. What lights up in him spiritually is a divinity which was
spellbound before, and which without his cognition would have to lie
fallow and wait for another deliverer. Therefore the human personality
does not live within itself and for itself; it lives for the cosmos.
Life extends far beyond individual existence when it is regarded in
this way. Within the framework of such a conception we can understand
sentences such as the following by Pindar, which gives us a glimpse of
the eternal: "Happy is he who has seen those Mysteries ere he passes
beneath the earth. He knows the truth about life's ending, and he
knows that its first seeds were of God's giving."

The proud physiognomy and solitary manner of sages like Heraclitus are
understandable. They could say proudly of themselves that much was
revealed to them, for they did not ascribe their knowledge to their
transitory personality at all, but to the eternal daemon within them.
Their pride was of necessity stamped with the attributes of humility
and modesty, which are expressed in the words: All knowledge of
transitory things is in eternal flux like these transitory things
themselves. Heraclitus calls the eternal cosmos a game; he could also
call it the most profoundly serious thing. But the word serious has
become worn out through being applied to earthly experiences. The game
of the eternal grants man a security in life of which he is deprived
by the seriousness arising out of the transitory.

Another form of world-conception, different from that of Heraclitus,
grew from the same foundation in the essence of the Mysteries, within
a community founded by Pythagoras in lower Italy in the sixth century
before Christ. The Pythagoreans saw the foundation of things in
numbers and figures, whose laws they investigated mathematically.
Aristotle says of them, "They were the first to advance the study of
mathematics, and having been brought up in it they thought its
principles were the principles of all things. Since of these
principles numbers are by nature the first, and in numbers they seemed
to see many resemblances to the things that exist and come into
being-more than in fire and earth and water, such and such a
modification of numbers being justice, another being soul and reason,
another being opportunity-and similarly almost all other things being
numerically expressible; since, again, they saw that the attributes
and ratios of numerical scales were expressible in numbers; since,
then, all other things seemed in their whole nature to be modeled
after numbers, and numbers seemed to be the first things in the whole
of nature, they supposed the demands of numbers to be the elements of
all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number."

The mathematical-scientific observation of natural phenomena must
always lead to a kind of Pythagorean conception. If a string of
definite length is struck, a certain tone is sent forth. If the string
is shortened in definite numerical relationships, other tones come
into being. The pitch of these tones can be expressed by numerical
relationships. In physics color relationships also are expressed by
numbers. When two bodies combine to form one substance this always
occurs in such a way that of one substance one quite definite mass,
expressible by number, combines with an appropriate one of the other
substance. The Pythagoreans directed their observation upon such
arrangements of measure and number in nature. Geometric figures also
play a similar part in nature. For instance, astronomy is mathematics
applied to the heavenly bodies. The point which became important to
the thinking life of the Pythagoreans is the fact that man discovers
the laws of numbers and figures entirely by himself, through his
spiritual activity alone, and that when he looks out into nature the
objects follow these laws he has established for himself in his soul.
Man formulates for himself the concept of the ellipse; he establishes
the laws of the ellipse. And the heavenly bodies move according to the
laws he has established. (Of course we are not concerned here with the
astronomical conceptions of the Pythagoreans. What could be said of
them also applies to the Copernican conceptions in the connection
under consideration here.) From this it follows immediately that the
functions of the human soul are not a force apart from the rest of the
cosmos, but that these functions are the expression of a law-abiding
pattern which is interwoven with the cosmos. The Pythagorean said to
himself: The senses show material phenomena to man. But they do not
show the harmonious patterns which the objects obey. Rather, the
spirit of man must first find these harmonious patterns within himself
if he wishes to behold them outside in the cosmos. The deeper sense of
the cosmos, that which reigns in it as eternal law-abiding necessity,
becomes apparent as a present reality in the human soul. In the soul
the meaning of the cosmos dawns. This meaning does not lie in what is
seen, heard and touched, but in what the soul brings forth from its
deep recesses into the light of day. The eternal pattern therefore
lies hidden in the depths of the soul. Let us descend into the soul,
and we shall find the eternal. God, the eternal cosmic harmony, is
within the human soul. The soul is not confined to the physical body
enclosed by man's skin. For in the soul are born the patterns
according to which the worlds circle in space. The soul is not in the
personality. The personality merely provides the organ through which
what is interwoven with the cosmos can be expressed. Something of the
spirit of Pythagoras is contained in the saying of the Church Father,
Gregory of Nyssa: "It is said that human nature by itself is something
small and limited, but the Godhead is infinite, and how has the
infinite been embraced by something so tiny? And who says that the
infinity of the Godhead was enclosed within the bounds of the flesh as
in a vessel? For not even in our life is man's spiritual nature
enclosed within the bounds of the flesh; on the contrary the physical
body is limited by neighboring parts, but the soul expands freely over
the whole of creation by means of the activity of thought." The soul
is not the personality. The soul belongs to eternity. Taking this
point of view, the Pythagorean also had to admit that only "fools"
could suppose the qualities of the soul to be exhausted with the
personality. For them also it depended upon the awakening of the
eternal within the personal. To them cognition was communion with the
eternal. The more a man brought this eternal into existence within
himself the higher they valued him. The life of their community
consisted in fostering this communion with the eternal. In order to
lead the members of the community to such communion, the Pythagorean
education was established. This education, therefore, was a
philosophical initiation. And the Pythagoreans could very well say
that by their mode of life they strove toward the same goal as the
Mystery cults.

 

Part IX: Plato as a Mystic
PLATO AS A MYSTIC

THE SIGNIFICANCE of the Mysteries in the spiritual life of Greece can
be seen in Plato's conception of the world. There is only one means of
understanding him fully: he must be placed in the light which shines
forth from the Mysteries. The later pupils of Plato, the
Neoplatonists, attribute to him a secret teaching, to which he
admitted only those who were worthy, and then strictly under the "seal
of silence." His teaching was considered secret in the same sense as
the Mystery wisdom. Even if Plato himself is not the author of the
seventh Platonic Epistle, as some people assert, this makes no
difference for our purpose; it need not concern us whether Plato or
someone else expresses the attitude of mind contained in this letter.
This attitude of mind was inherent in his conception of the world. It
says in this Epistle: "But this much I can certainly declare
concerning all these writers, or prospective writers who claim to know
the subjects which I seriously study, whether as hearers of mine or of
other teachers, or from their own discoveries; it is impossible, in my
judgment at least, that these men understand anything about this
subject. There does not exist, nor will there ever exist, any treatise
of mine dealing therewith, for it does not at all admit of verbal
expression like other studies, but, as a result of continued
application to the subject itself and communion therewith, it is
brought to birth in the soul on a sudden, as light that is kindled by
a leaping spark, and thereafter it nourishes itself." These words
could only indicate a powerlessness in the use of words due to
personal weakness, if one could not find in them the sense contained
in the Mysteries. What Plato never wrote and never intended to write
about must be something that defies expression in writing. It must be
a feeling, a sensation, an experience that cannot be conveyed in a
moment, but is attained through "continued application . . . and
communion." The intimate training Plato was able to give to the elect
is indicated here. For them fire flashed forth from his words; for the
others, only thoughts. It is of great consequence how one approaches
Plato's Dialogues. They mean more or less according to one's frame of
mind. To Plato's pupils more than the mere literal sense of his
expositions was conveyed. Where he taught, the participants
experienced the atmosphere of the Mysteries. The words had overtones
which vibrated with them. But these overtones needed the atmosphere of
the Mysteries. Otherwise they died away unheard.

In the center of the world of Plato's Dialogues stands the personality
of Socrates. We need not touch on the historical aspect here. What
matters is the character of Socrates as represented by Plato. Socrates
is a person sanctified through death for the cause of truth. He died
as only an initiate can die, one to whom death is but a moment of life
like other moments. He meets death as any other occurrence of earthly
existence. His behavior was such that not even in his friends were the
feelings usual to such an occasion aroused. Phaedo says in the
Dialogue on the Immortality of the Soul: "For my part, I had strange
emotions when I was there. For I was not filled with pity as I might
naturally be when present at the death of a friend; since he seemed to
me to be happy, both in his bearing and his words, he was meeting
death so fearlessly and nobly. And so I thought that even in going to
the abode of the dead he was not going without the protection of the
gods, and that when he arrived there it would be well with him, if it
ever was well with anyone. And for this reason I was not at all filled
with pity, as might seem natural when I was present at a scene of
mourning; nor on the other hand did I feel pleasure, as was our custom
when we were occupied with philosophy-although our talk was of
philosophy-but a very strange feeling came over me, an unaccustomed
mixture of pleasure and of pain together, when I thought that Socrates
was presently to die.'' And the dying Socrates instructs his pupils
about immortality. His personality, knowing by experience the
valuelessness of life, here acts as proof of a quality very different
from all logic and intellectual reasoning. It is not as though a man
were conversing-for this man is at the point of crossing the threshold
of death-but as though the eternal truth itself which had made its
abode in a transitory personality, were speaking. Where the temporal
dissolves into nothingness we seem to find the air in which the
eternal can resound.

We hear no proofs of immortality in the logical sense. The whole
dialogue is directed toward leading the friends to the point where
they can behold the eternal. Then they will need no proofs. Is one to
prove that the rose is red to someone who sees it? Is one to prove
that the spirit is eternal to someone whose eyes have been opened so
that he can see this spirit? Socrates indicates living experiences.
First of all it is a meeting with wisdom itself. What is the aim of
the person who pursues wisdom? He wishes to free himself from all that
his senses offer him in everyday observation. He wishes to seek the
spirit in the material world. Is not this a fact which can be compared
to dying? "Other people" -this is Socrates' opinion- "are likely not
to be aware that those who pursue philosophy aright study nothing but
dying and being dead. Now if this is true, it would be absurd to be
eager for nothing but this all their lives, and then to be reluctant
when that came for which they had been eagerly practicing all along."
(Phaedo, 64 A) To reinforce this, Socrates asks one of his friends,
"Do you think a philosopher would be likely to care much about the
so-called pleasures, such as eating or drinking? . . . Or about the
pleasures of sexual desire? . . . Do you believe such a man would
think much of the other cares of the body, I mean such as the
possession of fine clothes and shoes and the other personal
adornments? Do you think he would care about them or despise them,
except so far as it is necessary to have them? . . . Altogether, then,
you think that such a man would not devote himself to the body, but
would, so far as he was able, turn away from the body and concern
himself with the soul? . . . To begin with, then, it is clear that in
such matters the philosopher, more than other men, separates the soul
from association with the body" (Phaedo, 64 D) After this Socrates is
entitled to say: Striving for wisdom is comparable to dying, in that
man turns from physical things. But where does he turn? He turns to
the spiritual. However, can he expect the same of the spirit as of his
senses? Socrates explains himself on this: "Now, how about the
acquisition of intelligent insight? Is the body a hindrance or not, if
it is made to share in the search for wisdom? What I mean is this:
Have the sight and hearing of men any truth in them, or is it true, as
the poets are always telling us, that we neither hear nor see
accurately? . . . Then, when does the soul attain to truth? For when
it tries to consider anything in company with the body, it is
evidently deceived by it." (Phaedo, 65 B) All that we perceive with
the physical senses comes into existence and dies away. And this
coming into existence and dying away is the cause of our being
deceived. But if we examine objects more thoroughly with intelligent
insight, then we partake of the eternal in them. But the physical
senses do not convey to us the eternal in its true form. They deceive
us when we rely implicitly upon them. They cease to deceive us if we
confront them with logical insight, making everything conveyed by the
senses subject to examination by this insight. But if logical insight
is to judge the statements of the senses, must not something live
within this insight which transcends the perceptions of the senses?
Hence what is true and false in objects is judged by something in us
which opposes the material body, and therefore is not subject to its
laws. Above all, this something must not be subjected to the laws of
growth and decay, for it bears truth within itself. Truth cannot have
a yesterday and a tomorrow; it cannot be this on one occasion and that
on another, as material things are. Hence truth in itself must be
eternal. As the philosopher turns away from the transitory material
world, and turns to truth, he approaches an eternal element, dwelling
within him. If we immerse ourselves wholly in the spirit, then we live
entirely in truth. The material world around us is no longer present
in its material form only. "Would not that man," asks Socrates, "do
this most perfectly who approaches each thing, so far as possible,
with the reason alone, not introducing sight into his reasoning nor
dragging in any of the other senses along with his thinking, but who
employs pure, absolute reason in his attempt to search out the pure,
absolute essence of things, and who removes himself, so far as
possible, from eyes and ears, and, in a word, from his whole body
because he feels that its companionship disturbs the soul and hinders
it from attaining truth and wisdom? . . . Well, then, this that we
call death, is it not a release and separation from the body? But, as
we hold, the true philosophers and they alone are always most eager to
release the soul, and just this-the release and separation of the soul
from the body-is their study.... Then, as I said in the beginning, it
would be absurd if a man who had been all his life fitting himself to
live as nearly in a state of death as he could, should then be
disturbed when death came to him.... In fact, then, the true
philosophers practice dying, and death is less terrible to them than
to any other men." (Phaedo, 66 A, 67 D, 67 E) Socrates also bases all
higher morality on the liberation of the soul from the body. One who
obeys only the demands of his body is not moral. Who has courage? asks
Socrates. He has courage who not only disregards his body but follows
the demands of his spirit when this endangers his body. And who is
self-restrained? He who is "not excited by the passions and in being
superior to them acts in a seemly way. Is self-restraint therefore not
a characteristic of those alone who despise the body and pass their
lives in philosophy?" (Phaedo, 68 C) And thus it is with all virtues,
according to Socrates.

Socrates proceeds to characterize intelligent insight itself. What
does cognition really mean? Doubtless we attain cognition through
forming judgments. Very well, I form a judgment about something; for
instance, I say to myself, This thing that stands before me is a tree.
How do I arrive at such a statement? I shall be able to do so only if
I already know what a tree is. I must remember my idea of a tree. A
tree is a material thing. If I remember a tree, I remember a material
object. I say that a thing is a tree if it reminds me of other things
I have perceived before, and which I know to be trees. Memory enables
me to reach cognition. Through memory I can compare the various
material things with each other. But in this my cognition is not
exhausted. If I see two similar things I form the judgment, These
things are similar. But in reality two things are never completely
similar. Wherever I find similarity it is only relative. Therefore I
think of similarity without finding it in material realty. The thought
of similarity helps me toward judgment, as memory helps me toward
judgment and cognition. Just as I remember trees when I see a tree, so
I remember the thought of similarity when I see two similar things.
Therefore thoughts arise within me like memories which are not gained
from material reality. All cognition not derived from this reality is
based on such thoughts. The whole of mathematics consists only of such
thoughts. It would be a poor geometrician who could relate
mathematically only what he sees with his eyes and grasps with his
hands. It follows that we have thoughts which do not stem from
transitory nature, but which arise from the spirit. And precisely
these thoughts bear the stamp of eternal truth upon them. What
mathematics teaches will be eternally true, even if the whole universe
were to collapse tomorrow, and a totally new one arise. The present
mathematical truths might not be applicable to the conditions
prevailing in a new universe, nevertheless they would remain true in
themselves. Only when the soul is alone with itself can it bring forth
such eternal truths out of itself. The soul therefore is related to
truth, to the eternal, and not to the transitory, the seemingly real.
For this reason Socrates says, "When the soul reflects alone by
itself, it departs into the realm of the pure, the everlasting, the
immortal and the changeless, and being akin to these, it dwells always
with them whenever it is by itself and is not hindered, and it has
rest from its wanderings and remains always the same and unchanging
with the changeless, since it is in communion therewith. And this
state of the soul is called wisdom.... Then see, if this is not the
conclusion from all that we have said, that the soul is most like the
divine and immortal and intellectual and uniform and indissoluble and
ever unchanging, and the body, on the contrary, most like the human
and mortal and multiform and unintellectual and dissoluble and
ever-changing....Then if it is in such a condition, the soul goes away
into what is like itself, into the invisible, divine, immortal and
wise, and when it arrives there it is happy, freed from error, folly,
fear, fierce loves and all the other human ills and, as the initiated
say, lives in truth through all after-time with the gods." (Plato,
Phaedo, 79 D, 80 B, 81 A) Here we cannot undertake to show all the
paths along which Socrates guides his friends to the eternal. All
these paths breathe the same spirit. All are intended to show that man
finds one thing when he follows the paths of transitory sense
perception, and another when his spirit is alone with itself. Socrates
points to the archetypal nature of the spirit for those who listen to
him. If they find it they can see with spiritual eyes that it is
eternal. The dying Socrates does not prove immortality: he simply
demonstrates the essence of the soul. It then becomes evident that
growth and decay, birth and death have nothing to do with this soul.
The essence of the soul lies in truth, but truth itself cannot grow
and decay. The soul has as much to do with growth as the crooked has
to do with the straight. Death, however, belongs to this process of
"growth." Therefore the soul has nothing to do with death. Must we not
say that the immortal assumes mortality as little as the straight
assumes crookedness. Continuing from this, Socrates says, "If the
immortal is also imperishable, it is impossible for the soul to perish
when death comes to meet it. For, as our argument has shown, it will
not admit death and will not be dead, just as the number three, we
said, will never be even." (Plato, Phaedo, 106 B)

Let us trace the whole development of this dialogue, in which Socrates
leads his listeners to the point where they are able to see the
eternal in the human personality. The listeners absorb his thoughts;
they search within themselves for something in their own inner
experiences through which they can say "yes" to his ideas. They put
forward the objections that spring to their minds. What has happened
to the listeners when the dialogue has reached its end? They have
found something in themselves which they did not possess before. They
have not merely absorbed an abstract truth; they have gone through a
process of development. Something has come to life within them which
was not alive in them before. Is not this comparable to an initiation
? Does not this throw light on the reason why Plato expressed his
philosophy in the form of dialogue? These dialogues are intended to be
nothing but a literary form of the proceedings in the Mystery places.
What Plato himself says at various points convinces us of this. As a
teacher of philosophy, Plato wanted, insofar as possible through this
medium, to be what the initiator was in the Mysteries. Well does Plato
know himself to be at one with the methods of the Mysteries! He
considers his method to be the right one only if it leads to the place
to which the mystic should be led! He expresses this in the Timaeus:
"All men who possess even a small share of good sense call upon God
always at the outset of every undertaking, be it small or great: we
therefore who are purposing to deliver a discourse concerning the
Universe, how far it is created or is uncreated, must needs invoke
gods and goddesses (if so be that we are not utterly demented),
praying that all we say may be approved by them in the first place,
and secondly by ourselves."(Plato, Timaeus, 27 C) And to those who
seek along such a path, Plato promises "that the Godhead, as Savior,
makes it possible that such a distant and difficult investigation, one
so prone to error, can be accomplished through an enlightened
philosophy." (Plato. Timaeus, 48 D)

The Timaeus in particular reveals to us the relationship of Plato's
world conception with the Mysteries. At the very beginning of this
dialogue, reference is made to an "initiation." Solon is "initiated"
into the creation of worlds by an Egyptian priest, and also into the
manner in which myths that have been handed down, express eternal
truths in picture form. "There have been and there will be many and
divers destructions of mankind," (thus the Egyptian priest instructs
Solon) "of which the greatest are by fire and water, and lesser ones
by countless other means. For in truth the story that is told in your
country as well as in ours, how once upon a time Phaethon, son of
Helios, yoked his father's chariot, and, because he was unable to
drive it along the course taken by his father, burnt up all that was
upon the earth and himself perished by a thunderbolt -that story, as
it is told, has the fashion of a legend, but the truth of it lies in
the occurrence of a shifting of the bodies in the heavens which move
round the earth, and a destruction of the things on the earth by
fierce fire, which recurs at long intervals." (Plato, Timaeus, 22 C,
22 D) This point in the Timaeus clearly refers to the relationship
between the initiate and the myths of the people. He perceives the
truths hidden in their pictures.

The drama of the world's creation is presented in the Timaeus. Whoever
wishes to retrace the paths leading to this creation comes to the
point of divining the archetypal force from which everything has
sprung. "Now to discover the Maker and Father of this Universe were a
task indeed; and having discovered Him, to declare Him unto all men
were a thing impossible." (Plato, Timaeus, 28 C) The mystic knew what
was meant by this "thing impossible." It indicates the drama of God.
God is not present for him in the materially comprehensible world.
There He is present as nature. He lies spell-bound in nature.
According to the ancient mystics, only he can approach Him who awakens
the divine within himself. Therefore He cannot so easily be made
comprehensible to everyone. He does not appear in person, even to
those who approach Him. This is what the Timaeus says. The Father has
created the world out of the cosmic body and the cosmic soul. In
perfect proportions He has united harmoniously the elements which came
into being when He offered His own, separate existence by diffusing
Himself. 'Thus the body of the world came into existence. On this body
of the world, the soul of the world is stretched in the form of a
cross. This soul is the divine element in the world. It has met with
death on the cross in order that the world may exist. Plato is able to
call nature the tomb of the divine element. This is not a tomb
containing something dead, but something eternal, for which death only
gives the opportunity to express the omnipotence of life. Man sees
this nature in the right light when he approaches it in order to
deliver the crucified soul of the world. It must be raised from death,
the spell must be lifted from it. Where can it come to life again?
Only in the soul of the man who is initiated. In this way wisdom finds
its right relationship to the cosmos. The resurrection, the
deliverance of the Godhead: this is cognition. The evolution of the
world from the least to the most perfect is traced in the Timaeus. An
ascending process is represented. The beings develop. God reveals
Himself in this development. The process of creation is a resurrection
of God from the tomb. Man makes his appearance in this stream of
evolution. Plato shows that with man something special has arrived.
True, the whole world is divine. And man is no more divine than the
other beings. But in the other beings God is concealed, and in man He
is manifest. The end of the Timaeus reads: "And now at length we may
say that our discourse concerning the Universe has reached its
termination. For this our Cosmos has received the living creatures
both mortal and immortal and been thereby fulfilled; it being itself a
visible Living Creature embracing the visible creatures, a perceptible
God made in the image of the Intelligible, most great and good and
fair and perfect in its creation-even this one and only begotten
world." (Plato, Timaeus, 92 C)

But this one and only begotten world would be incomplete if it did not
have among its images the image of the Creator Himself. Only out of
the soul of man can this image be born. It is not the Father Himself
who can be born of man, but the Son, the offspring of God living in
the soul, who is like unto the Father. (Note)

Philo of whom it was said that he was Plato reborn, called the wisdom
born of man, the "Son of God;" this wisdom lives in the soul and
contains the intelligence that exists in the world. This
world-intelligence, the Logos, appears as the book in which "has been
inscribed and engraved the formation of the world." Further it appears
as the Son of God, who "followed the ways of his Father, and shaped
the different kinds, looking to the archetypal patterns which that
Father supplied." In the manner of Plato, Philo speaks of this Logos
as the Christ: "For since God is the first and sole King of the
universe, the road leading to Him, being a king's road, is rightly
called royal. This road you must take to be philosophy . . . the
philosophy which the ancient circle of ascetics pursued in hard-fought
contest, eschewing the soft enchantments of pleasure, engaged with a
fine severity in the study of what is good and fair. This royal road
then, which we have just said to be true and genuine philosophy, is
called in the Law, the utterance and word of God." *

Philo experiences this as an initiation when he sets forth on the path
to meet the Logos who is, for him, the Son of God. "I feel no shame in
recording my own experience, a thing I know from its having happened
to me a thousand times. On some occasions, after making up my mind to
follow the usual course of writing on philosophical tenets, and
knowing definitely the substance of what I was to set down, I have
found my understanding incapable of giving birth to a single idea, and
have given up without accomplishing anything, reviling my
understanding for its self-conceit, and filled with amazement at the
might of Him Who is, to Whom is due the opening and closing of the
womb of the soul. On other occasions, I have approached my work empty
and suddenly become full, the ideas falling in a shower from above and
being sown invisibly, so that under the influence of the divine
possession I have been filled with corybantic frenzy and been
unconscious of anything, place, persons present, myself, words spoken,
lines written. For I obtained language, ideas, an enjoyment of light,
keenest vision, pellucid distinctness of objects, such as might be
received through the inner eye as the result of clearest cognition."
This is the description of a path to cognition which is so arranged
that whoever takes this path is conscious that he becomes one with the
divine when the Logos comes to life within him. This is clearly
expressed in the words: "When the mind is mastered by the love of the
divine, when it strains its powers to reach the inmost shrine, when it
puts forth every effort and ardor on its forward march, under the
divine impelling force it forgets all else, forgets itself and fixes
its thoughts and memories on Him alone Whose attendant and servant it
is, to Whom it dedicates incense, the incense of consecrated virtues."
-For Philo there are only two paths. Either man can pursue the
material world which is offered by perception and intellect, but then
he is limited to his own personality, he withdraws from the cosmos; or
he can become conscious of the all-embracing cosmic powers,
experiencing the eternal within his personality. "One who runs away
from God takes refuge in himself. There are two minds, that of the
universe, which is God, and the individual mind. One who flees from
his own mind flees for refuge to the Mind of all things. For one who
abandons his own mind acknowledges all that makes the human mind its
standard to be naught, and he refers all things to God. On the other
hand, one who runs away from God declares Him to be the cause of
nothing, and himself to be the cause of all things that come into
being."

Plato's world-conception aims to be a form of cognition which in its
whole nature is religion. It brings cognition into relationship with
the highest man can reach through his feelings. Plato allows cognition
to be valid only when it completely satisfies man's feelings. Then it
is not pictorial knowledge; it is the content of life. It is a higher
man in man. The personality is but an image of this higher man. In man
himself the superior, the archetypal man is born. And with this
another secret of the Mysteries is expressed in Plato's philosophy.
The Church Father Hippolytus points to this secret: "This is the great
and ineffable mystery of the Samothracians (the guardians of a
particular Mystery-cult) which it is permissible only for the
initiated to know. For the Samothracians expressly hand down, in the
Mysteries that are celebrated among them, that Adam is the archetypal
man." *

Plato's "dialogue on love," the Symposium, also describes an
"initiation." Here love appears as the herald of wisdom. If wisdom,
the Eternal Word (Logos), is the Son of the Eternal Creator of the
world, then love has a maternal relationship with this Logos. Before
it is possible for even a spark of the light of wisdom to light up in
the human soul, there must be an unconscious longing, which draws the
soul toward the divine. Man must be drawn unconsciously toward that
which, when raised into consciousness, subsequently brings him supreme
joy. What Heraclitus designates as the daemon (See page 17) in man is
united with the idea of love. In the Symposium men of the most varied
status, possessing the most varied views on life, speak of love; the
man in the street, the politician, the scientist, the poet of comedy,
Aristophanes and the serious poet, Agathon. Each has his conception of
love according to how he experiences life. How they express themselves
reveals the stage at which their "daemon" stands (See page 17).
Through love one being is drawn to another. The manifold variety of
things into which the divine unity is diffused strives through love
toward oneness and harmony. Love therefore has a divine quality. Hence
each man is capable of understanding it only insofar as he has
partaken of this divine quality. After these men, representing varying
stages of maturity, have declared their views on love, Socrates takes
up the discussion. He considers love from the viewpoint of a thinker
capable of cognition. For him love is not a god. But it is something
leading man to God. Eros, love, is no god for him. God is perfect, and
therefore possesses beauty and goodness. But Eros is only the longing
for beauty and goodness. Therefore he stands between man and God. He
is a "daemon," a mediator between the earthly and the divine. It is
significant that Socrates does not pretend to give his thoughts when
he speaks about love. He says he is only recounting a revelation about
it, which a woman gave him. He has conceived an idea of love's nature
through mantic art. (See page 36) The priestess Diotima awakened in
Socrates the daemonic force which was to lead him to the divine. She
"initiated" him. This passage in the Symposium is most revealing. We
must ask, Who is this "wise woman" who awakens the daemon in Socrates?
We should not think of mere poetic fantasy here. No actual wise woman
could have awakened the daemon in the soul if the force for this
awakening were not within the soul itself. We must seek this "wise
woman" in the soul of Socrates himself. There must, however, be a
basis which allows what brings the daemon to birth in the soul to
appear as a being in external reality. This force cannot work in the
same way as the forces we can observe in the soul as belonging to it
and at home with it. We see that it is the force of the soul before it
has received wisdom, which Socrates represents as the "wise woman." It
is the maternal principle which gives birth to the Son of God, Wisdom,
the Logos. The unconscious force of the soul is presented as a
feminine element, which allows the divine to enter consciousness. The
soul which as yet lacks wisdom is the mother of what leads to the
divine. This leads us to an important idea of mysticism. The soul is
recognized as the mother of the divine. With the inevitability of a
natural force it unconsciously leads man toward the divine.-This point
throws light on the conception held in the Mysteries regarding Greek
mythology. The world of the gods is born in the soul. Man regards as
his gods what he himself creates in the form of pictures (See page
17). But he must progress to another idea. He must transform into
pictures of the gods the divine force present in himself which is
active before the creation of these pictures of the gods. The mother
of the divine appears behind the divine, and this is none other than
the original force in the human soul. Man places goddesses beside his
gods. Let us look at the myth of Dionysus in the light of the above.
Dionysus is the son of Zeus and a mortal mother, Semele. Zeus tears
the premature infant from the mother as she lies slain by lightning,
keeping him in his own thigh until he is mature. Hera, the mother of
the gods, stirs up the Titans against Dionysus. They dismember the
boy. But Pallas Athene rescues the still beating heart and brings it
to Zeus. Thereupon Zeus begets the son for the second time. In this
myth we have an exact description of a process which takes place in
the depths of the human soul. Whoever wishes to speak in the sense of
the Egyptian priest who instructs Solon about the nature of a myth
could speak as follows: What you tell us, that Dionysus, the son of a
god and a mortal mother, is dismembered and is born again, may sound
like a fable, but what is true about it is the birth of the divine and
its destiny in the human soul. The divine unites with the
temporal-earthly soul of man. As soon as this divine element,
Dionysus, comes to life, the soul experiences a great longing for its
true spiritual status. The consciousness which once again appears in
the image of a female divinity, Hera, is jealous of the birth out of a
better consciousness. It stirs up the lower nature of man-the Titans.
The child of god, still immature, is dismembered. It is present in man
as a dismembered material-intellectual science. But if in man
sufficient higher wisdom (Zeus) is at work, it cherishes and cares for
the immature child, which then is born again as the second son of god
(Dionysus). Thus out of science, out of the dismembered divine force
in man, is born the harmonizing wisdom, which is the Logos, the son of
God and of a mortal mother, who is the transitory soul of man striving
unconsciously for the divine. We are far from the spiritual reality
represented in all this as long as we see in it only a mere process of
the soul and take it as a picture of this process. In this spiritual
reality the soul does not merely experience something within itself;
it is completely disconnected from itself and participates in a cosmic
process which in truth takes place outside itself and not within it.

Platonic wisdom and Greek mythology unite; so, equally, do Mystery
wisdom and mythology. The gods that they created were the objects of
the religion of the people; the history of their coming into existence
was the secret of the Mysteries. No wonder that it was accounted
dangerous to "betray" the Mysteries. This meant "betraying" the origin
of the gods of the people. And the right understanding of this origin
is wholesome; misunderstanding is destructive.

 

Part X: Mystery Wisdom and Myth

MYSTERY WISDOM AND MYTH

THE MYSTIC SOUGHT within himself for forces, for beings which remain
unknown to man so long as he is limited by the ordinary conception of
life. The mystic formulates the great question about his own spiritual
forces, which go beyond lower nature, and their laws. With his
ordinary materialistic, logical conception of life, man creates gods
for himself, or if he gains insight into this creation he disowns
them. The mystic perceives that he creates gods; he perceives why he
creates them; he can, so to speak, see beyond the natural laws of the
creation of gods. It is the same with him as it would be with a plant
if it suddenly acquired knowledge and learned to know the laws
governing its own growth and development. The plant develops in
innocent unconsciousness. If it knew its own laws it would have to
acquire an entirely new relationship to itself. The plant which has
acquired knowledge would have before it as an ideal what the poet
experiences when he sings about it, what the botanist thinks when he
investigates its laws. The same is true of the mystic with respect to
his laws and the forces working within him. As one who knows, he must
create beyond himself a divine element. This was the attitude of the
initiates toward what the people had created beyond nature. This was
their attitude toward the popular world of gods and myths. They wished
to perceive the laws of this world of gods and myths. Where the people
had a divinity, a myth, there they sought a higher truth. Let us
consider an example: The Athenians were compelled by the Cretan King
Minos to deliver to him seven boys and seven girls every eight years.
These were thrown as food to the Minotaur, a fearful monster. When for
the third time the sad consignment was to leave for Crete, the king's
son, Theseus, traveled with them. When he arrived in Crete, King
Minos' own daughter, Ariadne, took his part. The Minotaur lived in a
labyrinth, a maze from which, once one had wandered into it, he could
not find his way out again. Theseus wished to free his homeland from
the disgraceful tribute. He had to enter the labyrinth, into which the
monster's prey was usually thrown. He wished to slay the Minotaur. He
undertook this task; he overcame the fearful foe and again reached
freedom with the aid of a ball Of thread which Ariadne had given him.
The mystic had to recognize how the creative spirit of man comes to
form such a tale. As the botanist contemplates the growth of a plant
to discover its laws, so the mystic wished to contemplate the creating
spirit. He sought truth, wisdom, where the people had set up a myth.
Sallustius discloses the attitude of a mystic-sage toward such a myth:
"The universe itself can be called a myth, since bodies and material
objects are apparent in it, while souls and minds are concealed.
Furthermore, to wish to teach all men the truth about the gods causes
the foolish to despise, because they cannot learn, and the good to be
slothful, whereas to conceal the truth by myths prevents the former
from despising philosophy and compels the latter to study it."

The mystic was conscious that by seeking the truth contained in a
myth, he was adding something to what was present in the consciousness
of the people. It was clear to him that he was placing himself above
this consciousness of the people just as a botanist places himself
above the growing plant. He said something quite different from what
was present in the mythological consciousness, but he looked upon what
he said as a deeper truth which was symbolically expressed in the
myth. Man confronts the material world as if it were a monstrous
enemy. To it he sacrifices the fruits of his personality. It devours
them. It does so until the conqueror (Theseus) awakens in man. His
cognition spins for him the thread by which he finds his way when he
enters the maze of the material world to slay his foe. The mystery of
human cognition itself is expressed in this conquering of the material
world. The mystic knows this mystery. It indicates a force in the
human personality. Ordinary consciousness is unaware of this force.
But the latter works within it nevertheless. It engenders the myth
which has the same structure as the mystical truth. This truth is
symbolized in the myth. What then are myths? They are a creation of
the spirit, of the unconsciously creative soul. The soul is governed
by entirely definite laws. It must work in a definite direction in
order to create beyond itself. On the mythological level it does this
in pictures, but these pictures are built up according to the laws of
the soul. We could also say that when the soul progresses beyond the
plane of mythological consciousness to the deeper truths, these bear
the same stamp as the myths did before, because one and the same force
is active in their creation. The Neoplatonic philosopher, Plotinus
(204-269 A. D.), referring to the Egyptian priest-sages, speaks thus
about this relationship between the way of thinking common to
pictorial myths and higher cognition:

"The wise of Egypt, whether in precise knowledge or by a prompting of
nature, indicated the truth where, in their effort toward
philosophical statement, they left aside the writing, forms that take
in the details of words and sentences, those characters that represent
sounds and convey the propositions of reasoning, and drew pictures
instead, engraving in the temple-inscriptions a separate image for
every separate item: thus they exhibited the thought-content in which
the Supreme goes forth. For each manifestation of knowledge and wisdom
is a distinct image, an object in itself, an immediate unity, not an
aggregate of discursive argument and detailed discussion. Later from
this wisdom in unity there appears, in another form of existence, an
image, already less compact, which announces the original in an
outward stage and seeks the causes by which things are such that the
wonder arises how a created world can be so excellent." *

Whoever wishes to become acquainted with the relationship between
mysticism and mythological tales, must see how mythology is dealt with
by the world conception of those whose wisdom accords with the method
of thinking of the Mysteries. Such accord exists to the fullest extent
in Plato. His interpretation of myths and his use of them in his
exposition, may be taken as a standard. (See page 19 ) In the
Phaedrus, a dialogue about the soul, the myth of Boreas is introduced.
This divine being, which was seen in the rushing wind, once glimpsed
the beautiful Orithea, daughter of the Greek King Erechtheus, as she
was picking flowers with her playmates. He was seized with a passion
for her, abducted her and took her to his cave. In this dialogue Plato
causes Socrates to reject a purely rational explanation of this myth.
According to such an explanation an external, natural fact is supposed
to be related symbolically in the tale. A gale is supposed to have
seized the king's daughter and flung her down from the cliff. "Such
explanations," says Socrates, "are very subtle and may be very
entertaining.... But when one has once begun to give a rational
explanation to one of these mythological figures, one must go on and
look at all the others with the same scepticism and reduce them one
after another to the rules of probability.... This sort of explanation
would be the business of a life. If anyone disbelieves in these
mythological figures, and, with a rustic kind of wisdom, undertakes to
explain each in accordance with probability, he will need a great deal
of leisure. But I have no leisure for such inquiries.... So I dismiss
these matters and, accepting the customary belief about them as I was
saying just now, I investigate not these things, but myself, to know
whether I am a monster of a more complicated structure and more savage
than Typhon, or a gentler and simpler creature, whose nature partakes
of divinity." From this we see that a rationalistic, intellectual
interpretation of myths was unacceptable to Plato. This must be
considered together with the manner in which he himself makes use of
myths to express his meaning through them. Where he speaks of the life
of the soul, where he leaves the paths of the transitory and seeks out
the eternal in the soul, where, therefore, the ideas supported by
material perception and intellectual thought are no longer present,
there Plato makes use of the myth. The Phaedrus speaks of the eternal
in the soul. Here the soul is represented as a team of two many-winged
horses with a charioteer. One of the horses is patient and wise, the
other stubborn and wild. When the team encounters an obstruction in
its path, the stubborn horse makes use of this to hinder the
intentions of the good one and thwart the charioteer. When the team
arrives at the point where it should follow the gods over the heavens,
the bad horse brings it into a state of confusion. Whether the bad
horse is overcome by the good and the team is able to enter the
supersensible realm beyond the obstruction, depends on the power of
the bad horse. So it happens that the soul is never able to raise
itself unhindered to the realm of the divine. Some souls raise
themselves to this vision of eternity in a greater degree than others.
The soul which has seen the beyond remains safe until the next
traverse; the soul which, because of the wild horse, has seen nothing,
must make the attempt on a new traverse. By these traverses are meant
the various incarnations of the soul. One traverse denotes the life of
the soul in one personality. The wild horse represents the lower
nature, the wise horse the higher nature, and the charioteer the soul
longing for its apotheosis. Plato makes use of the myth to show the
path of the eternal soul through various stages. Similarly, in other
writings of Plato, myth or symbolical narrative is used to show the
inner being of man, the part not perceptible to the senses.

Here Plato is in full accord with the manner of expression by myth and
parable used by others. In ancient Indian literature we find a parable
attributed to Buddha. A man much attached to life, who on no account
wishes to die, who seeks for sensual pleasure, is pursued by four
serpents. He hears a voice which commands him to feed and bathe the
four serpents from time to time. The man runs away for fear of the
evil serpents. Again he hears a voice. This draws his attention to
five murderers who are coming after him. Again the man runs away. A
voice draws his attention to a sixth murderer who wishes to strike off
his head with a drawn sword. Again the man flees. He comes to a
deserted village. He hears a voice which tells him that thieves will
shortly plunder the village. As he continues to flee he comes to a
great expanse of water. He does not feel safe on this shore; he makes
a basket for himself out of straw, sticks and leaves; in this he
reaches the further shore. Now he is safe; he is a Brahmin. The sense
of this parable is that man must pass through the most varied
conditions to attain to the divine. In the four serpents may be seen
the four elements, fire, water, earth and air. In the five murderers
may be seen the five senses. The deserted village is the soul which
has fled from the impressions of the senses, but is not yet safe when
alone with itself. If the soul inwardly takes hold of its lower nature
only, it must perish. Man must fashion a boat for himself which will
carry him over the waters of the transitory from one shore, material
nature, to the other, the eternal and divine.

Let us consider the Egyptian mystery of Osiris in this light.
Gradually Osiris had become one of the most important Egyptian
divinities. His representation supplanted other representations of
gods in certain parts of the country. A significant series of myths
formed itself around the figures of Osiris and his consort Isis.
Osiris was the son of the sun god; Typhon-Set was his brother and Isis
his sister. Osiris married his sister. With her he reigned over Egypt.
The evil brother, Typhon, plotted the destruction of Osiris. He caused
a casket to be made of the exact size of Osiris. At a banquet the
casket was offered as a gift to anyone who exactly fitted into it. No
one succeeded in this but Osiris. He laid himself in it. Then Typhon
and his accomplices hurled themselves upon Osiris, closed the casket
and threw it into the river. When Isis received the dreadful news she
was desperate and wandered everywhere searching for the corpse of her
husband. When she had found him, Typhon again gained power over him.
He tore him into fourteen pieces, which were scattered far apart in
different districts. Various tombs of Osiris were shown in Egypt. Here
and there in many places pieces of the god were said to have been laid
to rest. Osiris himself ascended from the nether world and conquered
Typhon; a ray from Osiris then fell upon Isis, who bore him the son
Harpokrates or Horus.

Now let us compare this myth with the way the world was understood by
the Greek philosopher Empedocles (490-430 B. C.). He assumes that the
single archetypal being was torn into the four elements, fire, water,
earth and air, into the multiplicity of existence. He sets in
opposition to each other two powers which affect growth and decay
within the world of existence: love and strife. Empedocles says of the
elements:

"There are these alone; but, running through one another,
They become men and the tribes of beasts.
At one time all are brought together into one order by Love;
At another, each is carried in different directions by the repulsion
of Strife." (Empedocles, Fragment, 26)

Then from Empedocles' standpoint what are the things of the world?
They are the elements, variously mixed. They could come into existence
only through the tearing apart of the archetypal One into the four
entities. This archetypal One is diffused into the elements of the
world. All the things that meet us partake of the diffused divinity,
but this divinity is hidden within them. It first had to die, so that
the things could come into existence. And what are these things? They
are mixtures of portions of the god, influenced in their structure by
love and hate. Empedocles says this distinctly:

"This is manifest in the mass of mortal limbs.
At one time all the limbs that are the body's portion
Are brought together by Love in blooming life's high season;
At another, severed by cruel Strife,
They wander each alone by the breakers of life's sea.
It is the same with plants, with fish that live in waters,
With beasts living on hills, with seabirds sailing on wings."
(Empedocles, Fragment, 20)

Empedocles must take the view that the sage rediscovers the divine
archetypal unity which is spellbound in the world, interwoven with
love and hate. But if man is to find the divine he himself must become
divine, for Empedocles takes his stand on the basis that only equals
can recognize each other. His conviction of the laws of cognition is
expressed in Goethe's saying, "If the eye were not of the nature of
the sun how could we see the light? If God's own power did not live
within us how could we strive for the divine?"

In the myth of Osiris the mystic is able to find these thoughts about
the world and man, which transcend the experience of the senses. The
divine creative force is diffused in the world. It appears as the four
elements. The god (Osiris) has been slain. Man, with his cognition,
which is of a divine nature, is to wake him again; he is to find him
again as Horus (Son of God, Logos, Wisdom) in the antithesis of Strife
(Typhon) and Love (Isis). Empedocles expresses his basic conviction in
Greek form with ideas reminiscent of the myths. Aphrodite is Love;
Neikos, Strife. They bind and release the elements.

Such an exposition of the content of a myth must not be confused with
a merely symbolical or allegorical interpretation. This is not
intended here. The pictures comprising the content of a myth are not
invented symbols for abstract truths, but real soul experiences of the
initiate. He experiences the pictures with spiritual organs of
perception as a normal man experiences the representations of
material things with his eyes and ears. Just as the representation is
of little value by itself if it is not activated by perception of the
external object, so the mythological picture is of little value
without its activation through real occurrences in the spiritual
world. It is only with respect to the material world that man at first
stands outside the activating things; on the other hand, he can
experience the mythological pictures only when he stands within the
corresponding spiritual events. To be able to stand within the latter,
in the opinion of the ancient mystics, he must have passed through
initiation. There the spiritual events which he sees are illustrated
as it were, by the mythological pictures. Whoever is unable to take
mythology as such an illustration of true spiritual events, has not
yet advanced to a comprehension of mythology. For the spiritual events
themselves are supersensible, and pictures whose content is
reminiscent of the material world are not in themselves spiritual, but
are merely an illustration of the spiritual. Whoever lives only in
pictures, lives in a dream; he lives in spiritual perception only when
he has reached the point of experiencing the spiritual in the picture,
just as in the material world one experiences the rose through the
representation of the rose. This is also the reason why the pictures
presented by myths cannot have only a single meaning. Because of their
illustrative character the same myths can express various spiritual
facts. It is, therefore, no contradiction when interpreters of myths
apply them now to one spiritual fact and again to a different one.

From this point of view a thread can be found running through the
manifold Greek myths. Let us consider the legend of Hercules. The
twelve labors imposed on Hercules are seen in a higher light when one
reflects that before the last and most difficult one he was initiated
into the Eleusinian Mysteries. At the command of King Eurystheus of
Mycenae he was to fetch Cerberus, the hound of hell, from the nether
world, and take him back there again. To be able to undertake a
journey into the nether world, Hercules had to be an initiate. The
Mysteries led man through the death of the transitory and thus into
the nether world; through initiation they wished to save the eternal
element in him from destruction. As a mystic he could overcome death.
Hercules overcame the dangers of the nether world as a mystic. This
justifies the interpretation of his other deeds as stages of the inner
development of the soul. He overcame the Nemean lion and brought him
to Mycenae. This means that he became master of the purely physical
force in man; he tamed it. Next he slew the nine-headed Hydra. He
overcame it with firebrands, dipping his arrows in its gall so that
they would never miss their mark. This means that he overcame lower
knowledge, the knowledge of the senses, through the fire of the
spirit, and out of what he had gained from this lower knowledge he
drew the strength to see the lower world in the light belonging to the
spiritual eye. Hercules caught the doe of Artemis. The latter is the
goddess of the chase. Hercules hunted down what the free nature of the
human soul can offer. The other labors can be interpreted in a similar
way. We cannot follow them in every detail here; our intention is only
to show how the general sense of the myth itself points to inner
development

A similar interpretation is possible for the voyage of the Argonauts.
Phrixus and his sister Helle, children of a Boeotian king, suffered
greatly at the hands of their stepmother. The gods sent a ram with a
golden fleece to them, which carried them away through the air. As
they crossed the straits between Europe and Asia, Helle was drowned.
Hence the straits are called the Hellespont. Phrixus reached the king
of Colchis on the eastern shore of the Black Sea. He sacrificed the
ram to the gods and presented the fleece to the King Aetes. The latter
had it hung in a grove and guarded by a frightful dragon. The Greek
hero, Jason, together with the other heroes, Hercules, Theseus and
Orpheus, undertook to fetch the fleece from Colchis. Jason was charged
with difficult tasks before he could reach the treasure of Aetes. But
Medea, the daughter of the king, who was versed in magic, helped him.
He tamed two fire-breathing bulls; he ploughed a field and sowed
dragons' teeth, so that armed men grew out of the earth. On the advice
of Medea he threw a stone among the men, whereupon they murdered one
another. By means of a magic potion from Medea, Jason put the dragon
to sleep; then he was able to obtain the fleece. With this he embarked
upon the return journey to Greece. Medea accompanied him as his wife.
The king pursued the fugitives. To delay him, Medea slew her little
brother Absyrtus, scattering his limbs upon the sea. Aetes was delayed
in gathering them up. Hence the couple were able to reach Jason's home
with the fleece. Here every single fact demands a deeper explanation.
The fleece is something belonging to man, something of infinite value
to him; in ancient times it was separated from him and its recapture
involves the overcoming of terrible powers. So it is with the eternal
in the human soul. It belongs to man. But he finds himself separated
from it. His lower nature separates him from it. Only when he
overcomes this lower nature, puts the latter to sleep, can he regain
it. This is possible when his own consciousness (Medea) comes to his
aid with its magic force. Medea becomes for Jason what Diotima, as the
teacher of love, was for Socrates (See page 19). Human wisdom
possesses the magic force to reach the divine after overcoming the
transitory. Out of the lower nature can come only a lower human
element, the armed men, which is overcome by the force of the
spiritual element, the advice of Medea. Even when man has found his
eternal element, the Recce, he is not yet safe. He must sacrifice a
part of his consciousness (Absyrtus). This is demanded by the material
world, which we can conceive of only as manifold (torn to pieces). We
could penetrate still more deeply into the description of the
spiritual events lying behind these pictures, but here we intend only
to indicate the principle of myth formation.

Of particular interest in relation to such an interpretation is the
saga of Prometheus. Prometheus and Epimetheus were the sons of the
Titan, Japetos. The Titans were the children of the oldest generation
of the gods, of Uranos (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth). Kronos, the youngest
of the Titans, dethroned his father and seized the rulership of the
world. For this, together with the remaining Titans, he was
overpowered by his son Zeus. And Zeus became supreme among the gods.
In the battle with the Titans, Prometheus stood at the side of Zeus.
On his advice Zeus banished the Titans into the nether world. But the
Titans' attitude of mind continued to live in Prometheus. He was only
half a friend to Zeus. When Zeus wished to destroy men for their
presumption, Prometheus took their part, teaching them the art of
numbers and writing, as well as other things leading to culture,
especially the use of fire. Because of this Zeus was angry with
Prometheus. Hephaestus, the son of Zeus, was commissioned to fashion
the image of a woman of great beauty, which the gods adorned with all
kinds of gifts. This woman was known as Pandora, the all-gifted.
Hermes, the messenger of the gods, brought her to Epimetheus, the
brother of Prometheus. She brought him a casket as a gift from the
gods. Epimetheus accepted the gift, despite the fact that Prometheus
had advised him on no account to accept a gift from the gods. When the
casket was opened, out flew all kinds of human plagues. Hope alone
remained inside, and that only because Pandora quickly closed the lid.
Therefore Hope has remained as the doubtful gift of the gods. At the
command of Zeus, Prometheus was chained to a rock in the Caucasus
because of his relationship with men. An eagle constantly fed upon his
liver, which continually renewed itself. Prometheus had to pass his
days in tortured solitude until one of the gods voluntarily sacrificed
himself, that is, dedicated himself to death. The tortured one bore
his suffering steadfastly. He had learned that Zeus would be dethroned
by the son of a mortal woman if he did not marry her. Zeus was anxious
to know this secret; he sent the messenger of the gods, Hermes, to
Prometheus to discover something about it. Prometheus denied him any
information.. The legend of Hercules is linked with that of
Prometheus. During his travels Hercules also came to the Caucasus. He
killed the eagle which was consuming the liver of Prometheus. The
centaur, Chiron, who could not die, although suffering from an
incurable wound, sacrificed himself for Prometheus. Then the latter
was reconciled with the gods.

The Titans are the force of will streaming from the original cosmic
spirit (Uranos) in the form of nature (Kronos). Here we must not think
of merely abstract forces of will, but of real beings of will.
Prometheus belongs among the latter. This characterizes his being. But
he is not entirely a Titan. In a certain sense he sides with Zeus, the
spirit who assumed the rulership of the world after the unbridled
nature-force (Kronos) had been tamed. Prometheus, therefore,
represents those worlds which have given man that forward-striving,
which is a force half of nature, half of spirit, the will. On the one
side the will is directed toward good, on the other side toward evil.
Its destiny is formed according to whether it inclines toward the
spiritual or the transitory. This destiny is the destiny of man
himself. Man is chained to the transitory. The eagle gnaws at him. He
must endure it. He can only attain the heights when he seeks his
destiny in solitude. He has a secret. Its content is that the divine
(Zeus) must marry a mortal, human consciousness itself, which is bound
to the physical body, in order to bring forth a son, human wisdom (the
Logos), who will redeem the god. Through this, consciousness becomes
immortal. Man may not betray this secret until a mystic (Hercules)
approaches him and removes the power which continually threatens him
with death. A being, half animal, half human, a centaur, must
sacrifice himself to redeem man. The centaur is man himself, the half
animal, half spiritual man. He must die so that the purely spiritual
man may be redeemed. What Prometheus, the human will, despises, is
taken by Epimetheus, the intellect, shrewdness. But the gifts offered
to Epimetheus are only troubles and plagues. For the intellect clings
to nothingness, to the transitory. And only one thing remains, the
hope that out of the transitory, one day the eternal may be born.

The thread running through the legends of the Argonauts, Hercules and
Prometheus, also holds good for the poem of the Odyssey by Homer. The
use of this method of interpretation in studying the latter work, may
appear forced. But upon a closer examination of everything that has to
be considered, even the most hardened doubter must lose his misgivings
about such an interpretation. Above all, it must surprise us to find
it related of Odysseus also that he descended to the nether world.
Whatever we may think of the author of the Odyssey in other respects,
it is impossible to credit him with causing a mortal being to descend
to the nether world without bringing him into relationship with all
that the journey to the nether world signified in the Greek world
conception. It signified the overcoming of the transitory and the
awakening of the eternal in the soul. That Odysseus achieved this
must, therefore, be admitted. With this his experiences, like those of
Hercules, gain a deeper meaning. They become a description of
something which does not belong to the material world, a description
of the soul's path of development. In addition, the Odyssey is not
related as one would expect of a sequence of external facts. The hero
makes voyages on magic ships. Actual geographical distances are
treated in a most arbitrary way. Material reality is simply
irrelevant. This becomes comprehensible if the actual events are
related only in order to illustrate spiritual development.
Furthermore, the author himself states in his introduction to the
work, that it deals with the search for the soul: "Tell me, O Muse, of
the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had
reached the sacred citadel of Troy. Many were the men whose cities he
saw and whose mind he learned, aye, and many the woes he suffered in
his heart upon the sea, seeking to win his own soul and the return of
his comrades." (Homer, Odyssey, Book I, 1-5)

Here we have a man seeking for the soul, the divine element, and his
wanderings in search of this divine element are related. He comes to
the land of the Cyclops. These are ungainly giants with one eye in
their foreheads. Polyphemus, the most terrible of them, devours
several of his companions. Odysseus saves himself by blinding the
Cyclops. Here we are dealing with the first stage of life's
pilgrimage. Physical power, the lower nature, must be overcome.
Whoever does not deprive it of its strength, whoever does not blind
it, will be devoured by it. Odysseus then reaches the island of the
witch Circe. She transforms some of his companions into grunting
swine. She also is conquered by him. Circe represents the lower
spiritual force which clings to the transitory. Through abuse of this
force she can thrust humanity only deeper into its animal nature.
Odysseus must overcome her. Then he can descend into the nether world.
He becomes a mystic. Now he is exposed to the dangers which beset a
mystic on his ascent from the lower to the higher stages of
initiation. He reaches the Sirens who lure passing travelers to their
death with sounds of enchanting sweetness. These are the images
produced by the lower fantasy, the first things to be followed by
anyone who has freed himself from the material world. He has come as
far as free creative activity, but not as far as the initiated spirit.
He chases after illusory images and must free himself from their
power. Odysseus must traverse the awesome passage between Scylla and
Charybdis. In his early stages the mystic wavers between spirit and
sensuality. He is still unable to grasp the full content of the
spirit, but sensuality has already lost its earlier value. All
Odysseus' companions perish in a shipwreck; he alone saves himself and
finds the nymph Calypso, who receives him in friendship and cares for
him for seven years. At last, at the command of Zeus, she releases him
to return to his home. The mystic has reached a stage at which all who
are striving with him, fail, except Odysseus, who alone is worthy. In
peace this worthy one enjoys gradual initiation for a period defined
by the mystically symbolical number seven.. Before Odysseus reaches
his home, however, he comes to the island of the Phaeacians. Here he
is hospitably received. The king's daughter is interested in him and
King Alcinous himself entertains him and does him honor. Once again
Odysseus encounters the world and its pleasures, and the spirit which
cling to the world (Nausicaa) awakens in him. However, he finds the
way home to the divine. At first nothing good awaits him at home. His
wife, Penelope, is surrounded by numerous suitors. To each she
promises marriage when she has finished a certain piece of weaving.
She avoids keeping her promise by unraveling at night what she has
woven during the day. The suitors must be overcome by Odysseus so that
he may be reunited with his wife in peace. The goddess Athene
transforms him into a beggar so that he will not be recognized at once
upon entering his house. Then he overcomes the suitors. Odysseus seeks
his own deeper consciousness, the divine forces of the soul. He wishes
to be united with them. Before the mystic finds them he must overcome
everything which lays claim to this consciousness in the form of a
suitor. This crowd of suitors comes from the world of lower reality,
of transitory nature. The logic applicable to this world is a weaving
which continually unravels itself after it has been spun. Wisdom (the
goddess Athene) is the sure guide to the deepest forces of the soul.
She transforms man into a beggar, i.e. she divests him of all that is
derived from the transitory.

The Eleusinian Festivals, celebrated in Greece in honor of Demeter and
Dionysus, appear steeped in Mystery wisdom. A sacred road led from
Athens to Eleusis. It was marked with secret signs which could bring
the soul into a mood of deep reverence. In Eleusis were secret temple
buildings which were served by priestly families. Dignity and the
wisdom with which this dignity was connected, were inherited in these
priest families from generation to generation. (Information concerning
these places of worship may be found in the book, Erganzungen zu den
letzten Untersuchungen auf der Acropolis in Athen by Karl Botticher,
Philologus, Suppl. Vol. 3 Section 3.) The wisdom making it possible
for services to be enacted there, was the Greek Mystery wisdom. The
festivals, celebrated twice yearly, displayed the great cosmic drama
of the destiny of the divine in the world and the destiny of the human
soul. The Minor Mysteries were celebrated in February, the Major
Mysteries in September. Initiations were connected with the festivals.
The symbolical presentation of the drama of man and the cosmos formed
the concluding act of the initiations undertaken there. The Eleusinian
temples were erected in honor of the goddess Demeter. She is a
daughter of Kronos. She bore a daughter, Persephone, to Zeus, before
his marriage to Hera. Once while Persephone was playing, she was
kidnaped by Pluto, the god of the nether world. Demeter, lamenting,
hastened to search for her all over the earth. In Eleusis the
daughters of Keleus, a local ruler, found Demeter sitting on a rock.
Taking the form of an old woman she entered the service of Keleus'
family as nurse to the son of the ruler's wife. She wished to endow
this son with immortality. Therefore she hid him every night in the
fire. When the mother once observed this, she wept and lamented.
Henceforth the bestowal of immortality was impossible. Demeter left
the house. Keleus built a temple. Demeter's sorrow for Persephone was
limitless. She caused famine to spread over the earth. To avoid
disaster the gods were obliged to placate her. Pluto was persuaded by
Zeus to allow Persephone to return to the upper world. Before this,
however, the god of the nether world gave her a pomegranate to eat.
Because of this she was compelled to return to the nether world again
and again at regular intervals. From then on she spent one third of
the year in the nether world and two thirds in the upper world.
Demeter was reconciled; she returned to Olympus. But in Eleusis, the
place of her anguish, she founded the service of the festivals to
commemorate her fate for ever.

The meaning of the Demeter-Persephone myth is not difficult to
recognize. It is the soul which alternates between the lower and the
upper world. The eternity of the soul and its eternal transformation
through birth and death, is represented pictorially. The soul is
descended from Demeter, the immortal. But it is carried off by the
transitory and becomes destined to share in the fate of the
transitory. It has eaten the fruit in the nether world; the human soul
is satiated with the transitory and therefore cannot dwell continually
in the divine heights. It must always return to the realm of the
transitory. Demeter represents that being from which human
consciousness has sprung; but this consciousness must be thought of as
having been able to come into existence through the spiritual forces
of the earth. Thus Demeter is the archetypal being of the earth, and
her gift to the earth in the form of the forces in the seeds and the
produce of the fields, only indicates a still deeper aspect of her
being. This being wishes to endow humanity with immortality. Demeter
hides her nursling in the fire at night. But man cannot endure the
pure power of fire (the spirit). Demeter must desist. She can only
found the temple service through which man may participate in the
divine insofar as he is able to do so.

The Eleusinian Festivals were an eloquent acknowledgment of belief in
the eternity of the human soul. This acknowledgment found pictorial
expression in the myth about Persephone. Dionysus was celebrated in
Eleusis, together with Demeter and Persephone. As in Demeter was
worshiped the divine creatrix of the eternal In man, so in Dionysus
was worshiped the divine element, ever changing in the whole world.
The god who had been diffused into the world and had been torn to
pieces in order to be re-born spiritually (See p. 19), had to be
celebrated together with Demeter. (A splendid presentation of the
spirit of the Eleusinian Mysteries is to be found in the book,
Sanctuaires d'Orient by Edouard Schure. Paris, 1898.)

 

Part XI: Egyptian Mystery Wisdom

EGYPTIAN MYSTERY WISDOM

WHEN RELEASED FROM THE BODY YOU ascend to the free aether, you will
become an immortal god, escaping death." In these words Empedocles
epitomizes what the ancient Egyptians thought about the eternal in man
and its connection with the divine. Evidence of this is provided by
the so-called Book of The Dead which has been deciphered by the
diligence of nineteenth century research workers. (See Lepsius, Das
Totenbuch der alen Agypter, Berlin, 1842.) It is "the greatest
coherent literary work of the Egyptians which has been preserved to
us." It contains all kinds of teachings and prayers, which were put in
the grave with each dead person to guide him when he was released from
his mortal frame. The Egyptians' most intimate conceptions about the
eternal and the genesis of the world are contained in this literary
work. These conceptions indeed indicate ideas of the gods similar to
those of Greek mysticism. -Of the various deities worshiped in
different parts of Egypt, Osiris gradually became the favorite and
most universally acknowledged. In him the ideas about the other
divinities were summarized. Whatever the Egyptian populace may have
thought about Osiris, the Book of the Dead indicates that according to
the ideas of priestly wisdom he was a being which could be found in
the human soul itself. This is expressed clearly in everything they
thought about death and the dead. When the body is given up to the
earth, preserved within the earthly element, then the eternal part of
man sets out upon the path to the primordial eternal. It is called to
judgment before Osiris, who is surrounded by forty-two judges of the
dead. The fate of the eternal in man depends upon the verdict of these
judges. If the soul has confessed its sins and is found to be
reconciled with eternal righteousness, invisible powers approach it,
saying, "The Osiris N. has been purified in the pool which is south of
the field of Hotep and north of the field of Locusts, where the gods
of verdure purify themselves at the fourth hour of the night and the
eighth hour of the day with the image of the heart of the gods,
passing from night to day." Thus within the eternal cosmic order the
eternal part of man is addressed as an Osiris. After the title Osiris,
the individual name of the person concerned is mentioned. The person
who is uniting himself with the eternal cosmic order also calls
himself "Osiris." "I am Osiris N. Growing under the blossoms of the
fig tree is the name of Osiris N." Thus man becomes an Osiris. The
Osiris-existence is only a perfect stage of development of human
existence. It seems obvious that even the Osiris who judges within the
eternal cosmic order is none other than a perfect man. Between human
existence and divine existence is a difference in degree and number.
At the root of this lies the conception of the Mysteries concerning
the mystery of "number." The cosmic being Osiris is One; nevertheless
he exists undivided in every human soul. Each man is an Osiris, yet
the one Osiris must be represented as a special being. Man is engaged
in development; at the end of his evolutionary course lies his
existence as a god. Within this conception one must speak of divinity
rather than of a perfected, completed divine being.

There is no doubt that according to such a conception only one who has
already reached the gate of the eternal cosmic order as an Osiris can
really enter upon Osiris-existence. So the highest life man can lead
must consist in changing himself into an Osiris. In the true man an
Osiris must already live as perfectly as possible during mortal life.
Man becomes perfect when he lives as an Osiris, when he experiences
what Osiris has experienced. In this way the Osiris myth receives its
deeper significance. It becomes the example of a man who wishes to
awaken the eternal within him. Osiris had been torn to pieces, killed
by Typhon. The fragments of his body were cherished and cared for by
his consort Isis. After his death he let a ray of his light fall upon
her, and she bore him Horus. Horus took over the earthly tasks of
Osiris. He is the second Osiris, still imperfect but progressing
toward the true Osiris. The true Osiris is in the human soul. The
latter is of a transitory nature at first. However, its transitory
nature is destined to give birth to the eternal. Therefore man may
consider himself to be the tomb of Osiris. The lower nature (Typhon)
has killed the higher nature in him. Love in his soul (Isis) must
cherish and care for the dead fragments; then will be born the higher
nature, the eternal soul (Horus), which can progress to
Osiris-existence. Whoever strives toward the highest existence must
repeat in himself, as a microcosm, the macrocosmic, universal process
of Osiris. This is the meaning of the Egyptian "initiation." The
process Plato describes as cosmic, i.e., that the Creator has
stretched the soul of the world upon the body of the world in the form
of a cross, and that the cosmic process is a redemption of this
crucified soul (see page) -on a small scale this process had to happen
to man if he was to be capable of Osiris-existence. The neophyte had
to develop himself in such a way that his soul-experience, his
development as an Osiris, became identified with the cosmic Osiris
process. If we could look into the temples of initiation where people
were subjected to the transformation into Osiris, we would see that
what happened there represented microcosmically the creation of the
world. Man, who is descended from the "Father," was to give birth in
himself to the Son. The spellbound god, whom he actually bore within
him, was to be revealed in him. The power of earthly nature suppressed
this god within him. First this lower nature had to be buried in order
that the higher nature might rise again. From this it becomes possible
to interpret what is told of the processes of initiation. The
candidate was subjected to secret procedures. By means of the latter
his earthly nature was killed and his higher nature awakened. It is
not necessary to study these procedures in detail. One must only
understand their meaning. And this meaning is contained in the
acknowledgment which everyone who has been through initiation could
make. He could say: Before me floated the endless perspective, at the
end of which lies the perfection of the divine. I felt the power of
the divine within me. I buried what holds down this power within me. I
died to earthly things. I was dead. As a lower man I had died; I was
in the netherworld. I communicated with the dead, that is, with those
who already have become part of the circle of the eternal cosmic
order. After my sojourn in the nether world I arose from the dead. I
overcame death, but now I have become different. I have nothing more
to do with transitory nature. My transitory nature has become
permeated by the Logos. I now belong to those who live eternally, and
who will sit at the right hand of Osiris. I myself shall be a true
Osiris, united with the eternal cosmic order, and judgment over death
and life shall be placed in my hand. The neophyte had to undergo the
experience which could lead him to such an acknowledgment. The
experience which thus approached man was of the highest kind.

Let us now imagine that a non-initiate hears that someone has
undergone such experiences. He cannot know what has really taken place
in the soul of the initiate. In his eyes, the initiate has died
physically, has laid in the grave and has risen. When expressed in
terms of material reality an occurrence which has spiritual reality at
a higher stage of existence appears to break through the order of
nature. It is a "miracle." Such a "miracle" was initiation. Whoever
wished really to understand it must have awakened within himself
powers which would enable him to reach a higher stage of existence. He
had to prepare the whole course of his life in order to approach these
higher experiences. However they might take place in individual lives,
these prepared experiences always had a quite definite, typical form.
So the life of an initiate is a typical one. It may be described apart
from the individual personality. Or rather, an individual personality
could be characterized only as being on the way toward the divine if
he had gone through these definite, typical experiences. As such a
personality the Buddha lived with his followers; as such a personality
Jesus at first appeared to his community. Today we know of the
parallels which exist between the biographies of Buddha and of Jesus.
Rudolf Seydel has pointed out these parallels strikingly in his book,
Buddha and Christ. We need only follow up the details to see that all
objections to these parallels are futile.

The birth of Buddha is announced by a white elephant who descends to
Maya, the queen. He declares that she will bring forth a divine man
who "attunes all people to love and friendship and unites them in an
intimate company." In Luke's Gospel is written: ". . . to a virgin
espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David: and
the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her and said,
'Hail thou that art highly favored . . . Behold, thou shalt conceive
in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He
shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest.' " Maya's
dream is interpreted by the Brahmins, the Indian priests, who know
that it signifies the birth of a Buddha. They have a definite, typical
idea of a Buddha. The life of the individual personality will have to
correspond to this idea. Correspondingly we read in Matthew 2:1, et
seq., that when Herod "had gathered all the chief priests and scribes
of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be
born." The Brahmin Asita says of Buddha, "This is the child which will
become Buddha, the redeemer, the leader to immortality, freedom and
light." Compare this with Luke 2:5: "And behold there was a man in
Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout,
waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon
him.... And when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him
after the custom of the law, then took he him up in his arms, and
blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in
peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to
lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel." It is
related of Buddha that at the age of twelve he was lost, and was found
again under a tree, surrounded by minstrels and sages of ancient
times, whom he was teaching. This corresponds to Luke 2:41-47: "Now
his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover.
And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the
custom of the feast. And when they had fulfilled the days, as they
returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem, and Joseph and
his mother knew not of it. But they, supposing him to have been in the
company, went a day's journey; and they sought him among their
kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found him not, they turned
back again to Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass that after
three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the
doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that
heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers." After
Buddha had lived in solitude and had returned, he was received by the
benediction of a virgin: "Blessed is the mother, blessed is the
father, blessed is the wife to whom thou belongest." But he replied,
"Only they are blessed who are in Nirvana," i.e., those who have
entered the eternal cosmic order. In Luke 11:2-28 is written: "And it
came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company
lifted up her voice and said unto him, 'Blessed is the womb that bare
thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.' But he said, 'Yea rather,
blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.'" In the
course of Buddha's life the tempter approaches him, promising him all
the kingdoms of the earth. Buddha will have nothing to do with this,
answering, "I know well that a kingdom is appointed to me, but I do
not desire an earthly one; I shall become Buddha and make all the
world exult for joy." The tempter has to admit, "My reign is over."
Jesus answers the same temptation in the words: "Get thee hence,
Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him
only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him." (Matthew 4:10,11)
-This description of parallelism might be extended to many other
points: the results would be the same. The life of Buddha ended
sublimely. During a journey he felt ill. He came to the river Hiranja,
near Kuschinagara. There he lay down on a carpet spread for him by his
favorite disciple, Ananda. His body began to shine from within. He
died transfigured, a body of light, saying, "Nothing endures." The
death of Buddha corresponds with the transfiguration of Jesus: "And it
came to pass about eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and
John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray. And as he prayed,
the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white
and glistening." At this point Buddha's earthly life ends, but the
most important part of the life of Jesus begins here: Passion, Death
and Resurrection. The difference between Buddha and Christ lies in
what necessitated the continuation of the life of Christ Jesus beyond
that of Buddha. Buddha and Christ are not understood by simply
throwing them together. (This will become evident in the subsequent
chapters of this book.) Other accounts of the death of Buddha need not
be considered here, although they also reveal profound aspects of the
subject.

The conformity in the lives of these two redeemers leads to an
unequivocal conclusion. What this conclusion must be, the narratives
themselves indicate. When the priest sages hear about the manner of
the birth they know what is involved. They know that they are dealing
with a divine man. They know beforehand what conditions will exist for
the personality who is appearing. Therefore his career can only
correspond with what they know about the career of a divine man. Such
a career appears in their Mystery wisdom, marked out for all eternity.
It can be only as it must be. Such a career appears as an eternal law
of nature. Just as a chemical substance can behave only in a quite
definite way, so a Buddha or a Christ can live only in a quite
definite way. His career cannot be described as one would write his
incidental biography; rather, it is described by giving the typical
features contained for all time in the wisdom of the Mysteries. The
legend of Buddha is no more a biography in the ordinary sense, than
the Gospels are intended to be an ordinary biography of the Christ
Jesus. Neither describes an incidental career; both describe a career
marked out for a world-redeemer. The patterns for both must be sought
in the traditions of the Mysteries, not in outward physical history.
To those who have perceived their divine nature, Buddha and Jesus are
initiates in the most eminent sense. (Jesus is an initiate because the
Christ Being incarnates in him.) Thus everything transitory is removed
from their lives. What is known about initiates can be applied to
them. The incidental events of their lives are no longer described. It
is said of them, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.... And the Word became flesh and dwelt
among us.;' (John 1:1,14)

The life of Jesus, however, contains more than the life of Buddha.
Buddha's life ends with the transfiguration. The most significant part
of the life of Jesus begins after the transfiguration. In the language
of the initiates, Buddha reaches the point where divine light begins
to shine in man. He stands before the death of the physical. He
becomes the cosmic light. Jesus goes further. He does not die
physically at the moment the cosmic light transfigures him. At that
moment he is a Buddha. But at the same moment he enters upon a stage
which finds expression in a higher degree of initiation. He suffers
and dies. The physical part of him disappears. But the spiritual, the
cosmic light does not vanish. His resurrection follows. He reveals
himself to his community as Christ. At the moment of his
transfiguration, Buddha dissolves into the hallowed life of the
universal Spirit. Christ Jesus awakens this universal Spirit once more
to present existence in a human form. Such an event had formerly taken
place in a pictorial sense at the higher stages of initiation. Those
initiated according to the Osiris myth attained to such a resurrection
in their consciousness as a pictorial experience. In the life of Jesus
this "great" initiation was added to the Buddha initiation, not as a
pictorial experience, but as reality. Buddha demonstrated by his life
that man is the Logos and that he returns to this Logos, to the light,
when his physical part dies. In Jesus the Logos itself became a
person. In him the Word became flesh.

What was enacted for the ancient cults of the Mysteries within the
Mystery-temples, through Christianity has been grasped as a
world-historical fact. His community acknowledged the Christ Jesus,
the initiate, initiated in a uniquely great way. He proved to them
that the world is divine. For the community of Christ, the wisdom of
the Mysteries was indissolubly bound up with the personality of Christ
Jesus. The belief that he lived and that those who acknowledge him,
belong to him, replaced what would have been attained previously
through the Mysteries. Henceforth for those in the community of Christ
a part of what previously was only to be attained by the methods of
the mystics, could be replaced by the conviction that the divine is
given in the Word which had been present. The determining factor was
no longer only that for which each individual spirit had to undergo a
long preparation, but also the account of what they had heard and
seen, handed down by those who were with Jesus. "That which was from
the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,
which we ourselves have beheld, which our hands have touched,
concerning the Word of life . . . that which we have seen and heard,
we proclaim to you, that you may have fellowship with us." Thus it is
written in the first Epistle of John. This immediate reality is to
embrace all future generations in a living bond; as a Church it is to
extend mystically from generation to generation. In this way we may
understand the words of Augustine, "I should not believe the Gospel
except as moved by the authority of the Church.'' The Gospels,
therefore, contain in themselves no evidence of their truth, but they
are to be believed because they are founded on the personality of
Jesus, and because in a mysterious way the Church draws from this
personality the power to make them appear as truth. The Mysteries
handed down through tradition the means of coming to the truth; the
Christian community propagates this truth itself. Faith in the One,
the primordial Initiator was to be added to faith in the mystical
forces which light up in man's inner being during initiation. The
mystics sought apotheosis; they wished to experience it. Jesus was
made divine; we must cling to him; then we are participants in his
apotheosis within the community established by him: This became
Christian conviction. What was made divine in Jesus, is made divine
for his whole community. "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end
of the world." (Matthew 28:20) The one born in Bethlehem has an
eternal character. Thus the Christmas antiphon is able to speak of the
birth of Jesus as if it took place every Christmas: "Today Christ is
born; today the Saviour has come into the world; today the angels are
singing on earth." In the Christ-experience a quite definite stage of
initiation is to be seen. When the mystic of pre-Christian times went
through this Christ-experience, then, through his initiation, he was
in a condition enabling him to perceive something spiritual, in higher
worlds, for which the material world had no corresponding fact. He
experienced what comprises the Mystery of Golgotha in the higher
world. Now when the Christian mystic goes through this experience,
through initiation, at the same time he beholds the historical event
on Golgotha and knows that in this event, which took place in the
world of the senses, is the same content as formerly existed only in
the supersensible facts of the Mysteries. What had descended upon the
mystics within the Mystery temples in earlier times thus descended
upon the community of Christ through the "Mystery of Golgotha." And
initiation gives the Christian mystic the possibility of becoming
conscious of this content of the "Mystery of Golgotha," while faith
causes mankind to participate unconsciously in the mystical current
which flowed from the events depicted in the New Testament and has
been permeating the spiritual life of humanity ever since.

 

Part XII: The Gospels

THE GOSPELS

THE ACCOUNTS of the "Life of Jesus" which can be submitted to
historical examination are contained in the Gospels. All that does not
come from this source might, in the opinion of one of those who are
considered the greatest historical authorities on the subject,
Harnack, be "easily written on a quarto page." But what kind of
documents are these Gospels? The fourth, that of John, differs so much
from the others that those who believe themselves obliged to follow
the path of historical research in order to study the subject come to
the conclusion: "If John possesses the genuine tradition about the
life of Jesus, that of the first three Evangelists (the Synoptists) is
untenable; if the Synoptists are right, the fourth Gospel must be
rejected as a historical source." (Otto Schmidel, Die Hauptprobleme
der Leben Jesu-Forschung, Principal Problems of Research into the Life
of Jesus, p. 15.) This is a statement made from the standpoint of the
historical investigator. In the present work, where we are dealing
with the mystical content of the Gospels, such a point of view is
neither to be accepted nor rejected. But attention must certainly be
drawn to such an opinion as the following: "Measured by the standard
of consistency, inspiration, and completeness, these writings leave
very much to be desired; even when measured by the ordinary human
standard they suffer from many imperfections." This is the opinion of
a Christian theologian (Harnack in Wesen des Christentums, The Nature
of Christianity). If one agrees that the Gospels have a mystical
origin one finds that apparent contradictions can be explained without
difficulty, and one also discovers harmony between the fourth Gospel
and the other three. None of these writings are meant to be mere
historical tradition in the ordinary sense of the word. They do not
profess to give a historical biography(see page 27). What they
intended to give was already foreshadowed in the traditions of the
Mysteries, as the typical life of the Son of God. It was these
traditions which were drawn upon, not history. Now it was only natural
that these traditions should not be in literal agreement in every
Mystery center. Nevertheless the agreement was so close that the
Buddhists narrated the life of their divine man in almost the same way
as the Evangelists narrated the life of Christ. But naturally there
were differences. We need only assume that the four Evangelists drew
from four different Mystery traditions. It is evidence of the towering
personality of Jesus that in four writers belonging to different
traditions, he awakened the belief that he so perfectly corresponded
with their type of an initiate that they were able to describe him as
one who lived the typical life marked out in their Mysteries. Each of
them described his life according to his own Mystery traditions. And
if the narratives of the first three Evangelists (the Synoptists)
resemble each other, it proves nothing more than that they drew upon
similar Mystery traditions. The fourth Evangelist saturated his Gospel
with ideas in many respects reminiscent of the religious philosopher
Philo (see page * ). This simply proves that he was rooted in the same
mystical tradition as was Philo. In the Gospels one finds various
elements. First, facts are related which appear to lay claim to being
historical. Second, parables exist in which the narrative form is used
only to portray a deeper truth. And third, teachings meant to be taken
as the content of the Christian conception of life, are included. In
John's Gospel no actual parable is present. The source from which he
drew was a mystical school which believed parables to be unnecessary.
The role of professedly historical facts and parables in the first
three Gospels is clearly shown in the account of the cursing of the
fig tree. In Mark 11:11-14 we read: "And Jesus entered into Jerusalem,
and into the temple: and when he had looked round about upon all
things, and now the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany with
the twelve. And on the morrow when they were come from Bethany, he was
hungry: and seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves he came, if haply
he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it he found
nothing but leaves; for the time of the figs was not yet. And Jesus
answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for
ever." In the corresponding passage in Luke's Gospel he relates a
parable (Luke 13:6, 7): "He spake also this parable; A certain man had
a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came and sought fruit
thereon and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard,
Behold these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and
find none; cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?" This parable
symbolizes the worthlessness of the old teaching, represented by the
barren fig tree. What is meant metaphorically, Mark relates as an
apparently historical fact. Therefore we may assume that, in general,
facts related in the Gospels are not to be taken as only historical,
or as if they were to hold good only in the world of the senses, but
as mystical facts, as experiences recognizable only by spiritual
vision, and which stem from various mystical traditions. If we admit
this, the difference between the Gospel of John and the Synoptists
ceases to exist. For mystical interpretation, historical research
should not be taken into account. Even if one or the other Gospel were
written a few decades earlier or later, to the mystic all of them are
of equal historical worth, John's Gospel as well as the others.

The "miracles" also do not present the least difficulty when
interpreted mystically. They are supposed to break through the laws of
nature. They do this only when they are considered as occurrences
which are supposed to have taken place in the physical, transitory
sphere in such a way that ordinary sense-perception could have seen
through them without difficulty. But if they are experiences which can
be seen through only at a higher level, the spiritual level of
existence, then it is a matter of course that they cannot be grasped
by the laws of physical nature.

Thus it is first of all necessary to read the Gospels in the right
way: then we shall know in what manner they speak of the Founder of
Christianity. Their intention is to report in the style in which
communications were made through the Mysteries. They narrate in the
way a mystic would speak of an initiate. However, they give the
initiation as the unique characteristic of one unique Being. And they
make the salvation of humanity depend on the fact that men cleave to
this uniquely initiated Being. What had come to the initiates was the
"Kingdom of God." This unique Being has brought the Kingdom to all who
will cleave to him. What was formerly the personal concern of each
individual has become the common concern of all those willing to
acknowledge Jesus as their Lord.

We can understand how this came about if we admit that the wisdom of
the Mysteries was embedded in the religion of the Israelite people.
Christianity arose out of Judaism. We need not be surprised therefore
to find engrafted on Judaism together with Christianity, those
Mystery-conceptions which we have seen to be the common property of
Greek and Egyptian spiritual life. If we examine folk religions we
find various ideas about the spiritual. If we trace back to the deeper
wisdom of the priests, which in each case proves to be the spiritual
nucleus of the differing folk religions, we find agreement everywhere.
Plato is aware that he agrees with the priest-sages of Egypt as he
sets forth the main content of Greek wisdom in his philosophical
conception of the world. It is said that Pythagoras traveled to Egypt
and India and was instructed by the sages in those countries. Thinkers
who lived in the earlier days of Christianity found so much agreement
between the philosophical teachings of Plato and the deeper meaning of
Moses' writings that they called Plato the Moses of the Greek tongue."
*

Thus Mystery wisdom existed everywhere. In Judaism it acquired the
form it had to assume if it was to become a world religion. Judaism
awaited the Messiah. It is not surprising that when the personality of
a unique initiate appeared, the Jews could only conceive of him as
being the Messiah. Indeed, this circumstance sheds light on the fact
that what had been an individual concern in the Mysteries became the
concern of a whole people. From the beginning the Jewish religion had
been a religion of the people. The Jewish people regarded itself as
one organism. Its Jao was the God of the whole people. If the Son of
this God were to be born he must be the Redeemer of the whole people.
The individual mystic was not permitted to be saved by himself; the
whole people must share in the redemption. Thus it is rooted in the
fundamental ideas of the Jewish religion that One is to die for all.
And it is also certain that there were Mysteries in Judaism which
could be brought into the religion of the people, out of the dimness
of a secret cult. A fully developed mysticism existed side by side
with the priestly wisdom connected with the outer formulas of the
Pharisees. This secret Mystery wisdom is described in the same way
among the Jews as it is elsewhere. One day when an initiate was
speaking of it, his hearers sensed the secret meaning of his words and
said, Old man, what hast thou done? O that thou hadst kept silence!
Thou thinkest to navigate the boundless ocean without sail or mast.
This what thou art attempting. Wilt thou fly upwards? Thou canst not.
Wilt thou descend into the depths? An infinite abyss is yawning before
thee. The Kabbalists, from whom the above is taken, also speak of four
rabbis. These four rabbis sought the secret path to the divine. The
first died, the second lost his reason, the third caused tremendous
desolation, and on!y the fourth, Rabbi Akiba, entered and returned in
peace. *

Thus we see that also in Judaism there was a soil in which an initiate
of a unique kind could develop. He needed only say to himself: I will
not let salvation be limited to a few chosen people. I will let all
people participate in this salvation. He had to carry out into the
world at large what the elect had experienced in the temples of the
Mysteries. He had to be willing to take it upon himself, through his
personality, in spirit, to be to his community what the cult of the
Mysteries hitherto had been to those who took part in it. Indeed he
could not at once give the experiences of the Mysteries to the whole
community. Neither would he have wished to do so. But he wished to
give to all the certainty of what in the Mysteries was perceived to be
truth. He wished to cause the life which flowed in the Mysteries to
flow through the further historical evolution of humanity. Thus he
would raise mankind to a higher stage of existence. "Blessed are they
that have not seen, and yet believe." He wished to plant unshakably in
human hearts, in the form of faith, the certainty that the divine
really exists. A man who stands outside initiation and has this faith
certainly will go further than one who is without it. It must have
weighed on the heart of Jesus like a nightmare that among those
standing outside there may have been many unable to find the way. He
wished to lessen the gulf between those to be initiated and the
"people." Christianity was to be a means by which everyone could find
the way. If anyone is not yet ready, at least he is not cut off from
the possibility of sharing, to a certain degree unconsciously, in the
stream flowing through the Mysteries. "The Son of Man is come to seek
and to save that which was lost." Even those who cannot yet
participate in initiation may enjoy some of the fruits of the
Mysteries. Henceforth the Kingdom of God is not dependent on "external
observances": "Neither shall they say Lo here! or, lo there! for,
behold, the kingdom of God is within you." With Jesus the point in
question was not so much how far this or that person advanced in the
kingdom of the spirit, as that all should be convinced that such a
spiritual kingdom exists. "In this rejoice not, that the spirits are
subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written
in heaven." That is, have faith in the divine; the time will come when
you will find it.

 

Part XIII: The Miracle of the Raising of Lazarus

THE MIRACLE OF
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS

THERE IS NO DOUBT that among the "miracles" attributed to Jesus very
special importance must be attached to the raising of Lazarus at
Bethany. Everything unites in assigning a prominent position in the
New Testament to what the Evangelist relates at this point. One must
recall that it is related only by John, who claims a very definite
interpretation for his Gospel by the significant words with which it
opens. John begins with the sentences: "In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God.... And the Word
became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, a glory of
the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth." Anyone
who places such words at the beginning of his exposition is plainly
indicating that he wishes it to be interpreted in an especially
profound sense. Anyone who approaches it with merely intellectual
explanations, or otherwise in a superficial way, is like the person
who thinks that Othello "really" murders Desdemona on the stage. Then
what does John wish to convey by his introductory words? He clearly
states that he is speaking of something eternal, which existed at the
very beginning. He relates facts, but they should not be accepted as
the kind of facts which eye and ear consider, and upon which logical
reason exercises its art. Behind these facts he conceals the "Word"
which exists in the cosmic spirit. For him these facts are the medium
through which a higher sense is manifested. And therefore we may
assume that in the raising of a man from the dead, a fact which offers
the greatest difficulties to the eye, ear and logical reason, is
concealed the deepest meaning of all.

Something further must be added here. In his Life of Jesus Renan
indicated that the raising of Lazarus undoubtedly had a decisive
influence on the end of Jesus' life. From the standpoint Renan takes,
such a thought appears impossible. The belief was being circulated
among the people that Jesus had raised a man from the dead; why should
this fact appear so dangerous to his opponents that they asked the
decisive question: Can Jesus and Judaism live side by side? It will
not do to assert with Renan: "The other miracles of Jesus were passing
events, repeated in good faith and exaggerated by popular report; they
were thought no more of after they had happened. But this one was a
real event, publicly known, by means of which it was sought to silence
the Pharisees. All the enemies of Jesus were angered by the sensation
it caused. It is related that they tried to kill Lazarus." It is
incomprehensible why this should be so if Renan was right in his
belief that all that occurred at Bethany was a mock scene intended to
strengthen belief in Jesus- "Perhaps Lazarus, still pale from his
illness, had himself wrapped in a shroud and laid in the family tomb.
These tombs were large rooms hewn out of the rock and entered by a
square opening, closed by an immense stone slab. Martha and Mary
hurried to meet Jesus and brought him to the tomb before he entered
Bethany. The painful emotion felt by Jesus at the tomb of the friend
he believed dead (John 11:33-38) might be taken by those present for
the agitation and tremors which usually accompanied miracles. It was a
popular belief indeed that the divine virtue in a man was epileptic
and convulsive in character. To continue the above hypothesis, Jesus
wished to see once more the man he had loved, and when the stone had
been rolled away, Lazarus came forth in his shroud, his head bound
with a napkin. Naturally, this phenomenon was regarded by everyone as
a resurrection. Faith knows no other law than what it considers to be
true." Does not such an explanation appear absolutely naive when Renan
adds the following view: "Certain indications indeed seem to suggest
that causes arising in Bethany helped to hasten Jesus' death"?
Nevertheless a true feeling undoubtedly underlies this last statement
by Renan. But with the means at his disposal, Renan cannot explain or
justify this feeling.

Something of quite special importance must have been done by Jesus at
Bethany to justify the following words in reference to it: "Then the
chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council, and said, What
do we? for this man performs many signs." (John 11:47) Renan also
surmises something special: "It must be acknowledged that John's
account is essentially different from the reports of miracles of which
the Synoptists are full, and which are the fruit of popular
imagination. Let us add that John is the only Evangelist with accurate
knowledge of the relationship of Jesus with the family at Bethany, and
that it would be incomprehensible how a creation of the popular mind
could have been inserted in the frame of such personal reminiscences.
Therefore it is probable that the miracle in question was not among
the entirely legendary ones for which no one is responsible. In other
words, I think that something happened at Bethany which was looked
upon as a resurrection." Does not this really mean that something
happened at Bethany which Renan cannot explain? He entrenches himself
behind the words: "At this distance of time, and with only one text
bearing obvious traces of subsequent additions, it is impossible to
decide whether, in the present case, all is fiction, or whether a real
incident at Bethany served as a basis for the rumor." Are we not
dealing here with something which need only be read in the right way
to be truly understood? Then perhaps we should stop speaking of
"fiction."

It must be admitted that the whole account in John's Gospel is wrapped
in a veil of mystery. To gain insight into this we need only
demonstrate one point. If the report is to be taken in a literal,
physical sense, how are we to understand these words of Jesus: "This
sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of
God might be glorified thereby."? (John 11:4). This is the customary
translation of the words, but the situation would be better realized
if we were to translate them thus, as would be correct according to
the Greek also: "for the manifestation (revelation) of God, that the
Son of God might be revealed thereby." And what do these other words
mean: Jesus says, "I am the resurrection and the life: he who believes
in me, though he die, yet shall he live"? (John 11:25) It would be
trivial to believe that Jesus wished to say that Lazarus had become
ill only in order that Jesus might demonstrate his skill through him.
And it would be a further triviality to think that Jesus meant to
assert that belief in him restores life to someone who is dead in the
ordinary sense of the word. For what would be remarkable about a
person raised from the dead, if after his resurrection he was the same
as before death? Indeed, what would be the sense of describing the
life of such a person in the words: "I am the resurrection and the
life"? The words of Jesus at once come to life and make sense when we
understand them as the expression of a spiritual occurrence, and then
even take them in a certain way literally as they stand in the text.
Jesus actually says that he is the resurrection that has happened to
Lazarus, and that he is the life that Lazarus is living. Let us take
literally what Jesus is according to the Gospel of John. He is the
"Word that became flesh." He is the eternal that existed in the
beginning. If he is really the resurrection, then the "eternal,
primordial" has risen again in Lazarus. We are dealing therefore with
the resurrection of the eternal "Word." And this "Word" is the life to
which Lazarus has been awakened. We have to do with a case of
"illness." But it is not an illness leading to death, but to the
"glory of God," that is, to the revelation of God. If the "eternal
Word" has risen again in Lazarus then in truth the whole process
serves to make God manifest in Lazarus. For through the whole process
Lazarus has become another man. The "Word," the Spirit, did not live
in him before; now this Spirit lives in him. This Spirit has been born
in him. It is true that every birth is accompanied by an illness, the
illness of the mother. But this illness does not lead to death, but to
new life. That part of Lazarus becomes "ill" from which the "new man,"
permeated by the "Word," is born.

Where is the tomb from which the "Word" is born? To answer this
question we need only remember Plato, who calls man's body the tomb of
the soul. And we need only recall that Plato also speaks of a kind of
resurrection when he refers to the coming to life of the spiritual
world in the body. What Plato calls the spiritual soul, John calls the
"Word." And for him Christ is the "Word." Plato might have said,
Whoever becomes spiritual has caused the divine to rise from the tomb
of his body. And for John this resurrection is what happened through
the "Life of Jesus." It is no wonder then that he causes Jesus to say,
"I am the resurrection."

There can be no doubt that the event at Bethany was an awakening in a
spiritual sense. Lazarus became a different person. He was raised to a
life of which the "eternal Word" proclaims: "I am this life." What,
then, took place in Lazarus? The Spirit came to life within him. He
partook of the life which is eternal. We need only express his
experience of resurrection in the words of those who were initiated
into the Mysteries, and at once the meaning becomes clear What does
Plutarch say (see page) about the purpose of the Mysteries? They were
designed to enable the soul to withdraw from bodily life and unite
with the gods. Schelling describes the feelings of an initiate thus:
"The initiate, through the rites which he received, became a link in
the magic chain; he himself became a Cabeiri. He was received into the
indestructible relationship, joining the army of the higher gods, as
ancient inscriptions express it." (Schelling, Philosophie der
Offenbarung, Philosophy of Revelation) And the change that took place
in the life of a person who had received the rites of the Mysteries
cannot be more significantly described than in the words spoken by
Aedesius to his disciple, the Emperor Constantine: "If one day you
should partake in the Mysteries, you will feel ashamed of having been
born only as a man."

Let us saturate our souls with such feelings, and then we shall gain
the right relationship to the occurrence at Bethany. We shall then
experience something quite special in the narrative of John. A
certainty will dawn upon us which no logical interpretation, no
attempt at rational explanation, can give. A mystery in the true sense
of the word stands before us. Into Lazarus the "eternal Word" has
entered. In the language of the Mysteries, he became an initiate (see
page 14). Thus the event related to us must be an act of initiation.

Let us now place the whole event before ourselves as an initiation.
Jesus loved Lazarus (John 11:36). This indicates no ordinary
affection. The latter would be contrary to the spirit of John's
Gospel, in which Jesus is the "Word." Jesus loved Lazarus because he
found him ready for the awakening of the "Word" within him. Jesus was
connected with the family at Bethany. This simply means that Jesus had
prepared everything in that family for the great final act of the
drama: the raising of Lazarus. Lazarus was the pupil of Jesus. He was
a pupil of such caliber that Jesus could be quite certain that the
awakening would be accomplished in him. The final act of the drama of
awakening was a pictorial action revealing the Spirit. The person
involved in it not only had to understand the words, "Die and come to
life,"67 he had to fulfill them himself by a spiritually real action.
His earthly part, of which his higher being in the sense of the
Mysteries must be ashamed, had to be laid aside. The earthly part had
to die a pictorially real death. The fact that his body was then put
into a somnambulistic sleep for three days can only be regarded, in
contrast to the immensity of the transformation of life which preceded
it, as an external event to which a far more significant spiritual one
corresponds. This act, however, was indeed also the experience which
divided the life of the mystic into two parts. One who does not know
from experience the deeper content of such acts cannot understand
them. He can only appreciate them by means of a comparison. The
substance of Shakespeare's Hamlet may be condensed into a few words.
Anyone who learns these words can say in a certain sense that he knows
the content of Hamlet. And intellectually he does. But someone who
allows all the wealth of Shakespeare's drama to stream in upon him
perceives Hamlet quite differently. The content of a life, which
cannot be replaced by a mere description, has passed through his soul.
The idea of Hamlet has become an artistic, personal experience within
him. On a higher level a similar process is accomplished in man
through the magic, significant process of initiation. What he attains
spiritually he lives through pictorially. The word "pictorially" is
used here in the sense that while an outer event is really
accomplished materially, at the same time it is nevertheless a
picture. We are not dealing with an unreal, but with a real picture.
The earthly body has actually been dead for three days. From death
comes forth the new life. This life has outlasted death. Man has
acquired faith in the new life This is what happened with Lazarus.
Jesus had prepared him for the awakening. He experienced a
pictorially real illness. The latter is an initiation, which after
three days leads to a really new life. *

Lazarus was ready to accomplish this act. He wrapped himself in the
robe of the mystic. He enclosed himself in a condition of lifelessness
which was at the same time a pictorial death. And when Jesus came
there, the three days had been fulfilled. "Then they took away the
stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his
eyes, and said, 'Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.'" (John
11:41.) The Father had heard Jesus, for Lazarus had come to the final
act of the great drama of cognition. He had perceived how resurrection
is attained. An initiation into the Mysteries had been fulfilled.

It was an initiation such as had been understood throughout the ages.
It had been demonstrated by Jesus as the initiator. Union with the
divine had always been represented in this manner.

In Lazarus Jesus accomplished the great miracle of the transformation
of life in the sense of ancient traditions. Through this event
Christianity is linked with the Mysteries. Lazarus had become an
initiate through Christ Jesus himself. Thereby Lazarus had become able
to rise into the higher worlds. He was at the same time both the first
Christian initiate and the first to be initiated by Christ Jesus
himself. Through his initiation he had become capable of perceiving
that the "Word" which had come to life within him had become a person
in Christ Jesus, and thus there stood before him in the personality of
his "awakener" the same which had been revealed within him
spiritually. From this point of view the following words of Jesus are
significant: "And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of
the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou
hast sent me." (John 11:42) That is to say, it is a question of
revealing that in Jesus the "Son of the Father" lives in such a way
that when he awakens his own being in man, man becomes a mystic. In
this way Jesus made it plain that the meaning of life lay hidden in
the Mysteries, and that they paved the way to this meaning. He is the
living Word; in him was personified what had become ancient tradition.
And the Evangelist is justified in expressing this in the sentence: In
him the Word became flesh. He rightly sees in Jesus himself an
incarnated mystery. And because of this, John's Gospel is a mystery.
In order to read it rightly we must bear in mind that the facts are
spiritual facts. If a priest of an ancient order had written it, he
would have described traditional rites. For John, these rites took the
form of a person. They became the "Life of Jesus." Burckhardt, an
eminent modern investigator of the Mysteries, in Die Zeit Kon
stantins, The Time of Constantine, says that they are "matters about
which we shall never be clear," but this is simply because he has not
perceived the way to this clarity. If we examine the Gospel of John
and behold in the sphere of pictorially physical reality the drama, of
cognition enacted by the ancients, we are looking upon the Mystery
itself.

In the words "Lazarus, come forth," we can recognize the call by which
the Egyptian priest-initiators summoned back to everyday life those
who had subjected themselves to the processes of "initiation," which
withdrew them from the world that they might die to earthly things and
gain a conviction of the reality of the eternal. But with these words
Jesus had revealed the secret of the Mysteries. It is easy to
understand that the Jews could not let such an act go unpunished, any
more than the Greeks could have refrained from punishing Aeschylus,
had he betrayed the secrets of the Mysteries. For Jesus the main point
in the initiation of Lazarus was to represent before all "the people
which stand by," an event which, according to ancient priestly wisdom,
might be accomplished only in the secrecy of the Mysteries. The
initiation of Lazarus was to prepare the way for the understanding of
the "Mystery of Golgotha." Previously only those who "saw" that is to
say, who were initiated, were able to know something of what was
achieved by initiation; but now a conviction of the secrets of higher
worlds could also be gained by those who "have not seen and yet have
believed."

 

Part XIV: The Apocalypse of John

THE APOCALYPSE OF JOHN

AT THE END of the New Testament stands a remarkable document, the
Apocalypse, the secret revelation of Saint John. We need only read the
opening words to feel the esoteric character of this book. "The
Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God granted him, to show to his
servants how the necessary events will shortly run their course; this
is sent in signs by the angel of God to his servant John." What is
revealed here is "sent in signs." Therefore we must not take the
literal sense of the words as they stand, but seek for a deeper sense,
of which the words are only signs. But there are also many other
things which point to such a "secret meaning." John addresses himself
to seven communities in Asia. This cannot mean actual, material
communities. For the number seven is the sacred symbolic number which
must be chosen because of its symbolic meaning. The actual number of
the Asiatic communities would have been different. And its esoteric
character is further indicated by the manner in which John arrived at
the revelation: "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard
behind me a voice like a trumpet, saying; "What you see, write in a
book and send it to the seven communities." Therefore we are dealing
with a revelation received by John in the Spirit. And it is the
revelation of Jesus Christ. What became revealed to the world through
Christ Jesus appears in an esoteric form. Such an esoteric sense
therefore must be sought in the teaching of Christ. This revelation
bears the same relationship to ordinary Christianity as the revelation
of the Mysteries in pre Christian times bore to the folk religion.
Hence the attempt to treat this Apocalypse as a Mystery appears
justified.

The Apocalypse is addressed to seven communities. What does this mean?
We need only single out one of the messages to perceive the sense. In
the first of these is said: "Write to the angel of the community of
Ephesus: The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand,
who walks in the midst of the seven golden lights. I know your deeds
and what you have suffered and also your patient endurance, and that
you will not support those who are evil, and that you have called to
account those who call themselves apostles, and are not, and that you
have recognized them as false. And you are enduring patiently and
building up your work upon my name, and you have not grown weary of
it. But I demand from you that you should attain to your highest love.
Realize then from what you have fallen, change your thinking and
accomplish the highest deeds. If you do not, I will come and move your
light from its place, unless you change your thinking. But this you
have, that you despise the deeds of the Nicolaitians, which I also
despise. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the
communities: To him who is victorious I will give food of the tree of
life, which is in the Paradise of God." (Rev.2:1-7) This is the
message addressed to the angel of the first community. The angel, who
represents the spirit of his community, has entered upon the path
marked out by Christianity. He is able to distinguish between the
false adherents of Christianity and the true. He wishes to be
Christian, and has founded his work on the name of Christ. But it is
required of him that he should not bar his own way to the highest love
by errors of any kind. He is shown the possibility of taking a wrong
course through such errors. Through Christ Jesus the path toward
attainment of the divine has been marked out. Patient endurance is
needed for further advancement in the sense of the first impulse. It
is possible to believe too soon that one has grasped the right sense.
This happens if someone allows himself to be led part of the way by
Christ and then, after all, leaves this leadership by surrendering
himself to false ideas about it. Thereby he relapses into his lower
self. He has left the "first love." The knowledge arising out of
material perception may be raised into a higher sphere, becoming
wisdom by being spiritualized and made divine. If it does not reach
this height, it remains among transitory things. Christ Jesus has
pointed out the path to the Eternal. With unwearied, patient endurance
knowledge must follow the path leading to its apotheosis. Lovingly it
must follow the steps which transform it into wisdom. The Nicolaitians
were a sect who took Christianity too lightly. They saw but one thing:
Christ is the divine Word, the eternal wisdom which will be born in
man. Therefore they concluded that human wisdom is the divine Word.
Hence it follows that one need only pursue human knowledge in order to
realize the divine in the world. But the meaning of Christian wisdom
cannot be construed thus. The knowledge which begins as human wisdom
is as transitory as anything else unless it is changed into divine
wisdom. You are not thus, says the "Spirit" to the angel of Ephesus;
you have not relied merely upon human wisdom. You have trodden the
Christian path with patient endurance. But you must not believe that
the very highest love is not needed to attain this goal. For this a
love is necessary which far surpasses all love for other things. Only
this is the "highest love." The path to the divine is an infinite one,
and it must be understood that when the first stage has been reached
it can be only the preparation for ascending to ever higher stages. In
this way, through the first of the messages is shown how they should
be interpreted. The sense of the others can be found in a similar
manner.

John turned and saw "seven golden lights," and "in the midst of the
lights the image of the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with
a golden girdle round his loins; his head and his hair were gleaming
white like wool or snow, and his eyes were sparkling in the fire." We
are told (Rev.1:20) that "the seven lights are the seven communities."
This means that the lights are seven different ways of attaining to
the divine. All of them are more or less imperfect. And the Son of Man
"had seven stars in his right hand" (verse 16). "The seven stars are
the angels of the seven communities" (verse 20). Here the "guiding
spirits" (daemons) of the wisdom of the Mysteries have become the
guiding angels of the "communities." These communities are represented
as bodies for spiritual beings. And the angels are the souls of these
"bodies," just as human souls are the guiding powers of human bodies.
The communities are the paths to the divine in the imperfect, and the
souls of the communities should become guides along these paths. For
this purpose they themselves must grow in such a way that their leader
is the being who has the "seven stars" in his right hand. "And out of
his mouth issued a two-edged sharp sword, and his countenance in its
glory was like the shining sun." In the Mysteries this sword is also
found. The neophyte was terrified by a "drawn sword." This indicates
the situation of one wishing to know the divine by experience, so that
the "countenance" of wisdom may "shine upon him with a glory like the
sun." Through this experience John also goes. It is to be a test of
his strength. "And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead; and he
laid his right hand upon me and said: Do not be terrified" (verse 17).
The neophyte must go through experiences which otherwise come to man
only when he goes through death. His guide must lead him beyond the
region where birth and death have meaning. The initiate enters upon a
new life, "and I was dead, and behold, I became alive throughout the
cycles of life; and I have the keys of Death and the Realm of the
Dead." Thus prepared, John is lead onward in order to learn the
secrets of existence. "After this I looked, and behold, the door to
heaven was opened, and the first voice which became audible sounded to
me like a trumpet, and said Come up hither, and I will show you what
will happen after this." The messages of the seven spirits of the
communities announce to John what is to occur in the material,
physical world in order to prepare the way for Christianity; what he
now sees "in the Spirit" leads him to the spiritual, primal source of
things, hidden behind physical evolution, but which will be realized
in a spiritualized age in the near future by means of physical
evolution. The initiate experiences now in the Spirit what is to
happen in the future. "And immediately I was withdrawn into the realm
of Spirit. And I beheld a throne in heaven, and one seated on the
throne. And he who sat there appeared like the jasper and carnelian
stone; and a rainbow surrounded the throne that looked like an
emerald." In this way the primal source of the material world is
described in the pictures in which it clothes itself for the seer.
"And in the sphere around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and
seated upon the twenty-four thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed
in white flowing garments, and with golden crowns upon their heads."
(chapter 4, verses 1,2)

-Beings far advanced upon the path of wisdom thus surround the primal
source of existence, to gaze on its infinite essence and to bear
testimony to it. "And in the midst of the throne, and around the
throne, were four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind.
And the first living creature was like a lion, and the second like a
bull, the third looked like a human being, and the fourth was like a
flying eagle. And each of the four living creatures had six wings,
full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease
to proclaim: Holy, holy, holy, the God, the Almighty, who was, and is,
and is to be." It is not difficult to perceive that the four beasts
represent the supersensible life underlying the forms of life
presented by the material world. Afterward, when the trumpets sound,
they raise their voices, that is, when the life expressed in material
forms has been transmuted into spiritual life.

In the right hand of him who sits on the throne is the scroll in which
the path to the highest wisdom is marked out (chapter 5, verse 1).
Only one is worthy to open the scroll. "Behold the Lion of the Tribe
of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the
scroll and its seven seals." The scroll has seven seals (see page 36).
The wisdom of man is sevenfold. That it is designated as being
sevenfold is again connected with the sacred character of the number
seven. The mystical wisdom of Plato designates as seals the eternal
cosmic thoughts which come to expression in things. Human wisdom seeks
for these creative thoughts. But only the scroll which is sealed with
them, contains the divine truth. The fundamental thoughts of creation
must first be unveiled, the seals must be opened, before what is in
the scroll can be revealed. Jesus, the Lion, has power to open the
seals. He has given a direction to the great creative thoughts which,
through them, leads to wisdom. The Lamb who was strangled and
sacrificed his blood for God; Jesus, who bore Christ in himself and
who thus, in the highest sense, passed through the Mystery of life and
death, opens the scroll (chapter 5, verses 9-10). And as each seal is
opened (chapter 6) the four living creatures declare what they know.
At the opening of the first seal a white horse upon which sits a rider
with a bow (See page 36), appears to John. The first cosmic power, an
embodiment of creative thought, becomes visible. It is directed into
the right course by the new rider, Christianity. Strife is quieted by
the new faith. At the opening of the second seal a red horse appears,
on which again there is a rider. He takes peace, the second cosmic
power, from the earth so that through sloth humanity may not neglect
to cultivate the divine. The opening of the third seal reveals the
cosmic power of justice, guided by Christianity; the fourth brings the
power of religion, which has received new dignity through
Christianity. The meaning of the four living creatures thus becomes
clear. They are the four chief cosmic powers which are to receive new
leadership through Christianity, War: the lion; Peaceful Work: the
bull; Justice: the being with the human face; and Religious
Enthusiasm: the eagle. The meaning of the third being becomes clear
when it is said at the opening of the third seal: "A quart of wheat
for a shilling, and three quarts of barley for a shilling," and that
the rider holds a balance. At the opening of the fourth seal a rider
becomes visible whose name was "Death, and Hell followed him."
Religious justice is the rider (chapter 6, verses 6 and 7).

And when the fifth seal is opened there appear the souls of those who
have already acted in the spirit of Christianity. Creative thought
itself, embodied in Christianity, is manifested here. But by this
Christianity is at first meant only the first community of Christians,
which is transitory like other forms of creation. The sixth seal is
opened (chapter 7), it is evident that the spiritual world of
Christianity is an eternal world. The people seem to be permeated by
that spiritual world out of which Christianity itself proceeded. What
it has itself created becomes sanctified. "And I heard the number of
the sealed: a hundred and forty-four thousand who were sealed of all
the tribes of the children of Israel" (chapter 7, verse 4). They are
those who prepared for the eternal before Christianity existed, and
who were transformed by the Christ impulse. The opening of the seventh
seal follows. What true Christianity should mean for the world becomes
evident. The seven angels who "stand before God" (chapter 8, verse 2)
appear. Again these angels are spirits from the ancient
Mystery-conceptions transferred to Christianity. They are the spirits
who lead to the vision of God in a truly Christian way. Therefore what
is next accomplished is a leading to God; it is an "initiation" which
is bestowed upon John. The announcements of the angels are accompanied
by the signs necessary at initiations. "The first angel sounded and
hail came out of fire mingled with blood, and it fell on the earth.
And a third of the earth was burnt up, also a third of the trees was
burnt up, and all the green grass was burnt up." And similar things
happen at the announcements of the other angels when they sound their
trumpets. At this point we see we are not dealing with an initiation
in the old sense but with a new one which should take the place of the
old. Christianity should not be confined, like the ancient Mysteries,
to a few elect. It should belong to the whole of humanity. It should
be a religion of the people; the truth should be given to each one who
"has ears to hear." The ancient mystics were singled out from a great
number; the trumpets of Christianity sound for every one who is
willing to hear them. Whether or not he draws near, depends upon
himself. This is why the terrors accompanying this initiation of
humanity are so enormously enhanced. What is to become of the earth
and its inhabitants in a distant future is revealed to John at his
initiation. Underlying this is the thought that initiates are able to
foresee in the higher worlds what is realized only in the future for
the lower world. The seven messages represent the meaning of
Christianity for the present age; the seven seals represent what is
now being prepared for the future through Christianity. The future is
veiled, sealed to the uninitiated; in initiation it is unsealed. When
the earthly period is over, during which the seven messages hold good,
a more spiritual time will begin. Then life will no longer flow on as
it appears in physical shapes, but even outwardly it will be a copy of
its supersensible forms. These latter are represented by the four
animals and the other images contained in the seals. In a yet more
distant future appears that form of the earth which the initiate
experiences through the trumpets. Thus the initiate prophetically
experiences what is to happen. And one who is initiated in the
Christian sense experiences how the Christ impulse penetrates and
continues to work in earthly life. And after it has been shown how
everything that clings too closely to the transitory to attain true
Christianity has met with death, there appears the mighty angel with a
little scroll open in his hand, and which he gives to John (chapter
10, verse 9): "And he said to me Take it, and eat: it will be bitter
to your stomach but sweet in your mouth like honey." John was not only
to read the little scroll; he was to absorb it, letting its contents
permeate him. What avails any cognition unless man is vitally and
thoroughly permeated by it? Wisdom should become life; man should not
merely perceive the divine, but become divine himself. Such wisdom as
is written in the scroll no doubt causes pain to the transitory
nature: "it will be bitter to your stomach;" but so much the more does
it make the eternal part happy: "but it will be sweet in your mouth
like honey." Only through such an initiation can Christianity become
actual on the earth. It kills everything belonging to the lower
nature. "And their dead bodies will lie in the square of the great
city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their
Christ was crucified." This refers to the believers in Christ. They
will be mistreated by the powers of the transitory world. But it is
only the transitory members of human nature that will be ill treated,
which the true essence will then have conquered. Thereby their destiny
is a copy of the exemplary fate of Christ Jesus. "Spiritually Sodom
and Egypt" is the symbol of a life which clings to the external and
does not change itself through the Christ impulse. Christ is
everywhere crucified in the lower nature. Where this lower nature
conquers, everything remains dead. Human corpses cover the squares of
the cities. Those who overcome the lower nature and bring about an
awakening of the crucified Christ, hear the trumpet of the seventh
angel: "The kingdoms of the world have become the kingdom of our Lord
and of his Christ; and he shall reign from cosmic age to cosmic age"
(chapter 11, verse 15). 'And the temple of God in heaven was opened,
and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple" (verse 9). In
the conception of these events the initiate sees the old struggle
between the lower and higher nature renewed. For everything the
neophyte formerly had to go through must be repeated in the one who
follows the Christian path. As once Osiris was threatened by the evil
Typhon, so now the "great Dragon, the old Serpent" (chapter 12, verse
9) must be overcome. The woman, the human soul, gives birth to lower
knowledge, which is an adverse power if it does not raise itself to
wisdom. Man must pass through that lower knowledge. Here in the
Apocalypse it appears as the "old Serpent." In all mystical wisdom
from the remotest times the serpent has been the symbol of cognition.
Man may be led astray by this serpent, by cognition, if he does not
bring to life in him the Son of God who crushes the serpents head.
"And the great Dragon was thrown out, that old Serpent, whose name is
Devil, and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world: he was thrown down
to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him" (chapter 12,
verse 9). In these words one can read what Christianity would be. A
new method of initiation. In a new form was to be attained what had
been attained in the Mysteries. In them also the serpent had to be
overcome. But this was no longer to take place in the same way. The
one, the archetypal Mystery, the Christian Mystery, was to replace the
many Mysteries of antiquity. Jesus, in whom the Logos became flesh,
was to become the Initiator of the whole of humanity. And this
humanity was to become his own community of mystics. Not a separation
of the elect but a linking together of all is to occur. Each is to be
able to become a mystic according to his maturity. The message sounds
forth to all; he who has an ear, hastens to learn the secrets. The
voice of the heart is to decide in each individual case. This or that
person is not to be introduced individually into the Mystery temples,
but the word is to be spoken to all; then some will be able to hear it
more clearly than others. It will be left to the daemon, the angel
within each human breast, to decide how far he can be initiated. The
whole world is a Mystery temple. Blessing is not only to come to those
who see the wonderful processes in the special temples for initiation,
processes which give them a guarantee of the eternal, but "Blessed are
they who have not seen, and yet believe." Even if at first they grope
in the dark, nevertheless the light may come to them later. Nothing is
to be withheld from anyone; the way is to be open to all. The latter
part of the Apocalypse describes graphically the dangers threatening
Christianity through Antichristian powers, and how the Christian
powers must be victorious nevertheless. All other gods are united in
the One Christian Divinity: "And the city has no need of sun or moon
to shine upon it: for the revelation of God lights it, and its light
is the Lamb" (chapter 21, verse 23). The mystery of the "Revelation of
Saint John" is that the Mysteries shall no longer be kept hidden. "And
he said to me: Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book,
for the Godhead is near." The author of the Apocalypse has set forth
what he believes to be the relationship of his church to the churches
of antiquity. He wished to express what he thought about the Mysteries
in the form of a spiritual Mystery. He wrote his Mystery on the island
of Patmos. He is said to have received the "Revelation" in a grotto.
These details indicate that the revelation was of the character of a
Mystery. Thus Christianity emerged from the Mysteries. In the
Apocalypse its wisdom is itself born as a Mystery, but as a Mystery
which transcends the frame of the old Mystery world. The unique
Mystery is to become the universal Mystery. It may appear
contradictory to say that the secrets of the Mysteries became revealed
through Christianity, and that nevertheless a Christian Mystery is to
be seen again in the experience of the spiritual visions of the writer
of the Apocalypse. The contradiction disappears at once when we
reflect that the secrets of the ancient Mysteries were revealed
through the events in Palestine. Through these events was laid bare
what previously had been veiled in the Mysteries. A new Mystery has
been introduced into the evolution of the world through the appearance
of the Christ. The initiate of ancient times experienced, in the
spiritual world, how evolution points the way to the as yet "hidden
Christ;" the Christian initiate experiences the hidden effects of the
"revealed Christ."

 

Part XV: Jesus and His Historical Background

JESUS AND HIS
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

THE SOIL OUT of which the spirit of Christianity grew is to be sought
in the wisdom of the Mysteries. It was only necessary for the
fundamental conviction to become widespread that this spirit must be
introduced into life in a greater measure than had come to pass
through the Mysteries themselves. But such a conviction was present in
many circles. We need only look at the rule of life of the Essenes and
Therapeutae who had been established long before the beginning of
Christianity. The Essenes were a closed Palestinian sect, whose
numbers at the time of Christ were estimated at four thousand. They
formed a community which required that its members should lead a life
which developed a higher self within the soul, and through this
bringing about a rebirth. The novice was subjected to a strict test to
ascertain whether he was sufficiently mature to prepare himself for a
higher life. If he was admitted he had to undergo a period of
probation. He was required to take a solemn oath that he would not
betray to strangers the secrets of the discipline. The latter was
designed to quell the lower nature in man so that the spirit
slumbering within him might be awakened more and more. Whoever had
experienced the spirit in himself up to a certain stage rose to a
higher degree in the order and enjoyed a corresponding authority
conditioned by fundamental convictions and not by external compulsion.
-Similar to the Essenes were the Therapeutae, who lived in Egypt. All
the relevant details of their discipline are contained in a treatise
by the philosopher Philo, About the Contemplative Life. (The dispute
concerning the authenticity of this work must now be regarded as
settled and it may be rightly assumed that Philo truly described the
life of a community existing long before Christianity and well known
to him. On this subject see G. R. S. Mead's Fragments of a Faith
Forgotten.) We need look at only a few passages from Philo's treatise
in order to see what their objective was. "The dwellings of the
community are very simple, merely providing shelter against the two
great dangers, the fiery heat of the sun and the icy cold of the air.
The dwellings are not close together as are those in towns, for
proximity is irksome and unpleasing to those who are seeking solitude;
nor are they far apart, because of the fellowship which is so dear to
them, and also for mutual help in case of an attack by brigands. In
each dwelling is a consecrated room, called a sanctuary or monasterion
(closet or cell) in which in solitude they are initiated into the
mysteries of the sanctified life.... They also have works of ancient
authors, the founders of their way of thinking, and who left behind
them many details concerning the method used in allegorical
interpretation.... The interpretation of the sacred scriptures is
based upon the underlying meaning in the allegorical narratives." Thus
we see that what had been striven for in the narrower circle of the
Mysteries had become the concern of a community. But naturally its
strict character has been weakened by being shared. The communities of
the Essenes and Therapeutae form a natural transition from the
Mysteries to Christianity. Christianity, however, wished to extend to
humanity as a whole what these communities had made the concern of a
sect. This of course prepared the way for a still further weakening of
its strict character.

From the existence of such sects it becomes evident how far the time
was ripe for the comprehension of the Mystery of Christ. In the
Mysteries the neophyte was artificially prepared so that at the
suitable stage the higher spiritual world would arise in his soul.
Within the community of the Essenes or Therapeutae, by means of a
suitable way of life, the soul sought to prepare itself for the
awakening of the "higher man." It is then a further step to struggle
through to the intimation that a human individuality might have
developed to higher and higher stages of perfection in repeated lives
on earth. Anyone who had arrived at such a presentiment of this truth
would also be able to feel that in Jesus a being of high spirituality
had appeared. The higher the spirituality the greater the possibility
of accomplishing something of importance. Thus Jesus' individuality
could become capable of accomplishing the deed which is so
mysteriously signified in the Gospels by the event f his Baptism by
John, and which, by the manner of its presentation, is so clearly
marked out as something of the utmost importance. The personality of
Jesus became able to receive into its own soul Christ, the Logos, so
that He became flesh in it. Since this Incarnation the "Ego" of Jesus
of Nazareth is the Christ, and the outer personality is the bearer of
the Logos. This event of the "Ego" of Jesus becoming the Christ is
represented by the Baptism by John. During the time of the Mysteries,
"union with the Spirit" was the concern of a few neophytes only. Among
the Essenes a whole community cultivated a life by which its members
were able to attain this "union;" through the Christ event something,
that is, the deeds of Christ, the discoveries was placed before the
whole of humanity so that the "union" became a matter of cognition for
all mankind.

 

 

Part XVI: The Essence of Christianity

THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY

THE FACT that the Divine, the Word, the eternal Logos was no longer
met only on a spiritual plane in the dark secrecy of the Mysteries but
that in speaking about the Logos they were indicating the historical
and human personality of Jesus, must have exercised the deepest
influence upon those who acknowledged Christianity. Previously the
Logos had been seen as reality only in different stages of human
perfection. It was possible to observe the delicate, subtle
differences in the spiritual life of the personality and to see in
what manner and degree the Logos became living within the individual
personalities seeking initiation. A higher degree of maturity had to
be interpreted as a higher stage in the evolution of spiritual
existence. The preparatory steps had to be sought in a past spiritual
life. And the present life had to be regarded as the preparatory stage
for future stages of spiritual evolution. The conservation of the
spiritual power of the soul and the eternity of that power could be
assumed from the Jewish esoteric teaching (The Zohar), "Nothing in the
world is lost, nothing falls into the void, not even the words and
voice of man; everything has its place and destination." The one
personality was only a metamorphosis of the soul which changes from
personality to personality. The single life of the personality was
considered only as a link in the chain of development reaching forward
and backward. Through Christianity this changing Logos is directed
from the individual personality to the unique personality of Jesus.
What previously had been distributed throughout the world was now
united in a unique personality. Jesus became the unique God-Man. In
Jesus something once was present which must appear to man as the
greatest of ideals and with which in the course of man's repeated
earthly lives he ought in the future to be more and more united. Jesus
took upon himself the apotheosis of the whole of humanity. In him was
sought what formerly could be sought only in a man's own soul. What
had always been found as divine and eternal in the human personality
had been taken from it. And all this eternal could be seen in Jesus.
It is not the eternal part in the soul that conquers death and is
raised as divine through its own power, but the one God who was in
Jesus, will appear and raise the souls. From this it follows that an
entirely new significance was given to personality. The eternal,
immortal part had been taken from it. Only the personality as such was
left. If eternity were not to be denied, immortality must be ascribed
to the personality itself. The belief in the soul's eternal
metamorphosis became the belief in personal immortality. The
personality gained infinite importance because it was the only thing
in man to which he could cling. Henceforth there is nothing between
the personality and the infinite God. A direct relationship with Him
must be established. Man was no longer capable of becoming divine
himself in a greater or lesser degree; he was simply man, standing in
a direct but outward relationship to God. Those who knew the ancient
Mystery-conceptions were bound to feel that this brought quite a new
note into the conception of the world. Many people found themselves in
this position during the first centuries of Christianity. They knew
the nature of the Mysteries; if they wished to become Christians they
were obliged to come to terms with the old method. This brought them
into difficult conflicts within their souls. They tried in the most
varied ways to find a balance between the divergent world conceptions.
This conflict is reflected in the writings of early Christian times,
both of pagans attracted by the sublimity of Christianity and of those
Christians who found it hard to give up the ways of the Mysteries.
Christianity grew slowly out of Mystery wisdom. On the one hand
Christian convictions were presented in the form of the Mystery
truths, and on the other the Mystery wisdom was clothed in Christian
words. Clement of Alexandria (died 217 A.D.), a Christian writer whose
education had been pagan, provides an instance of this: "Thus the Lord
did not hinder us from doing good while keeping the Sabbath, but
allowed us to communicate of those divine mysteries, and of that holy
light, to those who are able to receive them. He did not disclose to
the many what did not belong to the many; but to the few to whom he
knew that they belonged, who were capable of receiving and being
moulded according to them. But secret things are entrusted to speech,
not to writing, as God confided the unutterable mystery to the Logos,
not to the written word." "God gave to the church some, apostles; and
some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for
the edifying of the body of Christ." * By the most diverse means
personalities tried to find the way from the ancient conceptions to
the Christian ones. And each of them, believing he was on the right
path, called the others heretics. Side by side with the latter, the
Church grew stronger as an external institution. The more power it
gained the more the path recognized as the right one by the decisions
of councils took the place of personal investigation. It was for the
Church to decide who deviated too far from the divine truth which it
guarded. The concept of a "heretic" took firmer and firmer shape.
During the first centuries of Christianity the search for the divine
path was a much more personal matter than it became later. A long
distance had to be traveled before Augustine's conviction could become
possible: "I should not believe the Gospel except as moved by the
authority of the Church." (see page 27)

The conflict between the method of the Mysteries and that of the
Christian religion acquired a special stamp through the various
"Gnostic" sects and writers. We may class as Gnostics all the writers
of the first Christian centuries who sought for a deeper spiritual
sense in Christian teachings. (A brilliant account of the development
of Gnosis is given in G. R. S. Mead's book mentioned above, Fragments
of a Faith Forgotten ) We understand the Gnostics when we look upon
them as saturated with the ancient wisdom of the Mysteries and
striving to understand Christianity from that point of view. For them
Christ is the Logos. As such He is above all of a spiritual nature. In
His primal essence He cannot approach man from without. He must be
awakened in the soul. But the historical Jesus must bear some
relationship to this spiritual Logos. This was the crucial question
for the Gnostics. Some settled it in one way, some in another. The
essential point common to them all was that to arrive at a true
understanding of the Christ-idea, mere historical tradition was not
sufficient, but that it must be sought either in the wisdom of the
Mysteries or in the Neoplatonic philosophy which was derived from the
same source. The Gnostics had faith in human wisdom, and believed it
capable of bringing forth a Christ by whom the historical Christ could
be measured. In fact, through the former alone could the latter be
understood and beheld in the right light.

From this point of view the doctrine given in the books of Dionysius
the Areopagite is of special interest. It is true that there is no
mention of these writings until the sixth century. But it matters
little when and where they were written; the point is that they give
an account of Christianity which is clothed in the language of
Neoplatonic philosophy, and presented in the form of a spiritual
vision of the higher world. In any case this is a form of presentation
belonging to the first Christian centuries. In olden times this
presentation was handed on in the form of oral tradition; in fact the
most important things were not entrusted to writing. Christianity thus
presented could be regarded as reflected in the mirror of the
Neoplatonic world conception. Sense-perception dims man's spiritual
vision. He must go beyond the material world. But all human concepts
are derived primarily from observation by the senses. What man
observes with l^lis senses he calls existent; what he does not so
observe he calls non-existent. Therefore if he wishes to open up an
actual view of the divine he must go beyond existence and
non-existence, for as he conceives them these also have their origin
in the sphere of the senses. In this sense God is neither existent nor
non-existent. He is super-existent. Consequently He cannot be attained
by means of ordinary perception, which has to do with existing things.
We must be raised above ourselves, above our sense-observation, above
our reasoning logic if we are to find the bridge to spiritual
conception; then we are able to get a glimpse into the perspectives of
the divine. But this super-existent divinity has brought forth the
Logos, the foundation of the universe, filled with wisdom. Man's lower
powers are able to reach Him. He is present in the structure of the
world as the spiritual Son of God; He is the mediator between God and
man. He may be present in man in various stages. For instance, He may
be realized in an external institution, in which those variously
imbued with His spirit are grouped into a hierarchy. A "Church" of
this kind is the material reality of the Logos, and the power which
lives in it lived personally in the Christ become flesh, in Jesus.
Thus through Jesus the Church is united to God; in Him lies its
meaning and crowning-point.

One thing was clear to all Gnosis: one must come to terms with the
idea of Jesus as a personality. Christ and Jesus must be brought into
relationship with each other. Divinity was taken from human
personality and must be recovered in one way or another. It must be
possible to find it again in Jesus. The mystic was dealing with a
degree of divinity within himself, and with his own earthly material
personality. The Christian was dealing with the latter and also with a
perfect God, far above all that is humanly attainable. If we hold
firmly to this conception a fundamentally mystical attitude of soul is
only possible when the soul finds the higher spiritual element in
itself and its spiritual eye is opened so that the light issuing from
the Christ in Jesus falls upon it. The union of the soul with its
highest powers is at the same time union with the historical Christ.
For mysticism is a direct feeling and experience of the divine within
the soul. But a God far transcending everything human can never dwell
in the soul in the real sense of the word. Gnosis and all subsequent
Christian mysticism represent the effort in one way or another to lay
hold of that God and to apprehend Him directly in the soul. A conflict
in this case was inevitable. In reality it was only possible for a man
to find his own divine part; but this is a human-divine part, that is,
a divine part at a certain stage of development. Yet the Christian God
is a definite one, perfect in Himself. It was possible for a person to
find in himself the power to strive upward to this God, but he could
not say that what he experienced in his own soul at any stage of
development was one with God. A gulf appeared between what it was
possible to perceive in the soul and what Christianity described as
divine. It is the gulf between knowledge and belief, between cognition
and religious feeling. This gulf does not exist for a mystic in the
old sense of the word. He knows that he can comprehend the divine only
by degrees, and he also knows why this is so. It is clear to him that
this gradual attainment is a real attainment of the true, living
divinity and he finds it difficult to speak of a perfect, isolated
divine principle. A mystic of this kind does not wish to recognize a
perfect God, but he wishes to experience the divine life. He wishes to
become divine himself; he does not wish to gain an external
relationship to the Godhead. It is of the essence of Christianity that
its mysticism in this sense starts with an assumption. The Christian
mystic seeks to behold divinity within himself, but he must look to
the historical Christ as his eyes do to the sun; just as the physical
eye says to itself, By means of the sun I see what I have power to
see, so the Christian mystic says to himself, I will intensify my
innermost being in the direction of divine vision, and the light which
makes such vision possible is given in the Christ who has appeared. He
is, and through this I am able to rise to the highest within myself.
In this the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages show how they differ
from the mystics of the ancient Mysteries. (See my book, Die Mystik im
Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens. Berlin, 1901, Mysticism at
the Dawn of the Modern Age, Englewood, New Jersey, 1960, Volume 3 of
the Centennial Edition of the Written Works of Rudolf Steiner, 1861 -
1961.)

 

Part XVII: Christianity and Pagan Wisdom

CHRISTIANITY AND PAGAN WISDOM

AT THE TIME of the first beginnings of Christianity there appear in
ancient pagan culture conceptions of the world which seem to be a
continuation of the Platonic way of thinking, and which may be
understood as a more inward, spiritual Mystery wisdom. Such
conceptions started with Philo of Alexandria" (B.C. 25-A.D. 50). From
his point of view the processes leading to the divine take place in
the innermost part of the human soul. One could say that the mystery
temple in which Philo seeks his initiations is simply and solely the
innermost part of his being, and its higher experiences. In his case
processes of a purely spiritual nature replace the procedures which
took place in the Mystery centers. According to Philo
sense-observation and cognition gained through the logical intellect,
do not lead to the divine. They relate merely to what is transitory.
But there is a path by which the soul may rise above these methods of
cognition. It must step out of what it accepts as its ordinary "I." It
must be removed from this "I." Then it enters a state of spiritual
exaltation and illumination in which it no longer knows, thinks and
cognizes in the ordinary sense. For it has become merged with the
divine, identified with it. The divine is experienced in its essence,
which cannot be formed in thoughts or imparted in concepts. It is
experience. One who experiences it knows that he can communicate this
experience only if he is able to imbue his words with life. The world
is a reflected image of this mystical reality, experienced in the
innermost recesses of the soul. The world has come forth from the
invisible, inconceivable God. A direct image of this Godhead is the
wisdom-filled harmony of the world, out of which material phenomena
arise. This wisdom-filled harmony is the spiritual image of the
Godhead. It is the divine Spirit diffused in the world; cosmic reason,
the Logos, the Offspring or Son of God. The Logos is the mediator
between the world of the senses and the inconceivable God. When man
steeps himself in cognition, he unites himself with the Logos. The
Logos becomes embodied in him. The spiritually developed personality
is the bearer of the Logos. Above the Logos is God; beneath is the
transitory world. Man is called upon to link the two. What he
experiences in his innermost being as spirit, is the cosmic Spirit.
These ideas are directly reminiscent of Pythagorean thought. (See
page) The center of existence is sought in the inner life. But this
inner life is conscious of its cosmic significance. Augustine's
statement, "We see all created things because they are; and they are
because God sees them," derives from a way of thinking essentially
similar to that of Philo. And in describing what and how we see,
Augustine adds significantly, "Because they are, we see them
outwardly: and because they are perfect, we see them inwardly." We
find the same fundamental idea in Plato (see page 19 ). Philo, like
Plato, sees in the destiny of the human soul the closing act of the
great cosmic drama, the awakening of the spellbound God. He describes
the inner deeds of the soul in the following words: The wisdom within
man followed "the ways of his Father, and shaped the different forms,
looking to the archetypal patterns." It is not a personal matter when
man shapes such forms within himself. These forms are the eternal
wisdom, they are the cosmic life. This is in harmony with the
interpretation of the folk myths in the light of the Mysteries. The
mystic searches for the deeper truth in the myths (see page 22). And
as the mystic treats the myths of paganism, Philo handles Moses' story
of the creation. For him the Old Testament accounts are images of
inner soul processes. The Bible relates the creation of the world.
Whoever accepts it as a description of outer events, knows only half
of it. Certainly it is written, "In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and
darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters." But the true inner sense of such words
must be experienced in the depths of the soul. God must be found
within; then He appears as the "archetypal essence sending forth
myriads of rays, none visible to sense, all to the mind." This is how
Philo expresses himself. In Plato's Timaeus the words are almost
identical with those of the Bible: "And when the Father that
engendered the universe perceived it in motion and alive, and a thing
of joy to the eternal gods, He too rejoiced." In the Bible we read,
"and God saw that it was good." For Plato, for Mystery wisdom, as well
as for the Bible, cognition of the divine means to experience the
process of creation as one's own destiny. Thus the story of creation
and the story of the soul striving toward its apotheosis, flow into
one. Philo is convinced that Moses' account of the creation may be
used to tell the story of the soul which is seeking God. Everything in
the Bible acquires a profoundly symbolic meaning when seen from this
point of view. Philo becomes the interpreter of this symbolic meaning.
He reads the Bible as the story of the soul.

We may say that Philo's manner of reading the Bible is in harmony with
the trend of his time, which originated in the wisdom of the
Mysteries; indeed he relates that the Therapeutae interpreted ancient
writings in the same way. "They have also works of ancient authors who
were the founders of their way of thinking, and left behind them many
monuments of the method used in allegorical interpretation . . . the
interpretation of the sacred scriptures is based upon the underlying
meaning in the allegorical narratives." (See page) Thus Philo's goal
was to discover the underlying meaning of the "allegorical" narratives
in the Old Testament.

Let us imagine where such an interpretation could lead. We read the
account of creation, and find in it not only a narrative of outward
events, but a representation of the ways which the soul must take to
reach the divine. Thus as a microcosm, the soul must repeat in itself
the ways of God, and its mystical striving for wisdom can take only
this form. The drama of the universe must be enacted in every soul.
The soul life of the mystic is the fulfillment of the prototype given
in the account of creation. Moses wrote not only to recount historical
facts, but to represent pictorially the ways the soul must take if it
desires to find God.

All this, in Philo's conception of the world, is contained within the
human spirit. Man experiences within himself what God has experienced
in the world. The Word of God, the Logos, becomes an experience of the
soul. God led the Jews out of Egypt into the Promised Land; He made
them undergo trials and privations before bestowing the Promised Land
upon them. This is the outward event. Let us experience it inwardly.
From the land of Egypt, the transitory world, passing through
privations which lead to the suppression of sensuous experience and
into the promised land of the soul, we reach the eternal. With Philo
all this is an inner process. The God Who was poured out into the
world, celebrates His resurrection in the soul, if His creative word is
understood and re-created in the soul. Then within himself, man has
given spiritual birth to God, to the Spirit of God that became Man, to
the Logos, to Christ. In this sense, cognition, for Philo and those
who thought like him, was a birth of Christ within the world of
spirit. The Neoplatonic conception of the world, which developed
contemporaneously with Christianity, was a continuation of Philo's
method of thought. Let us see how Plotinus (204-269 A.D.) describes
his spiritual experience:

"Many times it has happened: Lifted out of the body into myself;
becoming external to all other things and self-centered; beholding a
marvelous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of community with the
loftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring identity with the
divine; rooted within it; attaining the strength to set myself above
the higher world: yet, there comes the moment of descent from
spiritual vision to reasoning, and after that reposing in God, I ask
myself how it happens that I can now be descending, and how did my
soul ever enter into my body, the soul which, in its essence, is the
high thing it has shown itself to be," and "What can it be that has
brought the souls to forget the Father, God, and, though members of
the Divine and entirely of that world, to ignore at once themselves
and it? The evil that has overtaken them has its source in self-will,
in the entry into the sphere of creation, and in the primal
differentiation with the desire for self-ownership. They conceived a
pleasure in this freedom and largely indulged in their own
self-glorification; thus they were hurried down the wrong path, and in
the end, drifting further and further, they came to lose even the
thought of their origin in the Divine. Just as children who are
immediately torn from their parents, and have for a long time been
nurtured at a great distance from them, become ignorant both of
themselves and their parents." In the following words Plotinus
describes the path of development the soul should seek: "Let not
merely the enveloping body be at peace, the body's turmoil stilled,
but all that lies around; earth at peace, and sea at peace, and air
and the very heavens be still. Let the soul be observed, externally as
it were, diffusing and flowing into the quiescent cosmos, permeating
it from all sides, and pouring in its light. As the rays of the sun,
throwing their brilliance upon a lowering cloud make it gleam all
gold, so the soul entering body of the heaven-opened world, bestows
life and immortality."

It follows that this conception of the world has a profound similarity
to Christianity. Among those who acknowledge the community of Jesus it
is said, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our
hands have handled, of the Word of life . . . declare we unto you." (I
John 1: 1-3.) In the same way it might be said in the sense of
Neoplatonism, that which was from the beginning, which cannot be heard
or seen, must be spiritually experienced as the word of life. The
development of the old world conception thus is split. In Neoplatonism
and similar conceptions of the world it leads to a concept of Christ
related only to the spiritual realm, and on the other hand it leads to
a fusion of this concept of Christ with a historical manifestation,
the personality of Jesus. The writer of the Gospel of John may be said
to unite these two world conceptions. "In the beginning was the Word."
He shares this conviction with the Neoplatonists. The Neoplatonists
conclude that the Word becomes spirit in the innermost soul. The
writer of John's Gospel, and with him the community of Christians,
conclude that the Word became flesh in Jesus. The more intimate sense,
in which alone the Word could become flesh was provided by the whole
development of the old world conceptions. Plato says of the Macrocosm:
God has stretched the soul of the world on the body of the world in
the form of a cross. This soul of the world is the Logos. If the Logos
is to become flesh He must repeat the cosmic process in physical
existence. He must be nailed to the Cross and rise again. This most
significant thought of Christianity had long before been outlined as a
spiritual representation in the old world conceptions. This became a
personal experience of the mystic during "initiation." The Logos
become Man had to experience this deed as a fact, valid for the whole
of humanity. Something which was a Mystery process in the development
of the old wisdom becomes historical fact through Christianity. Thus
Christianity became the fulfillment not only of what the Jewish
prophets had predicted, but also of what had been pre-formed in the
Mysteries. The Cross of Golgotha is the Mystery cult of antiquity
condensed into a fact. We find the Cross first in the ancient world
conceptions; at the starting-point of Christianity it meets us within
a unique event which is to be valid for the whole of humanity. From
this point of view the mystical element in Christianity can be
grasped. Christianity as mystical fact is a stage of development in
the process of human evolution; and the events in the Mysteries and
their effects are the preparations for this mystical fact.

 

Part XVIII: Augustine and the Church

AUGUSTINE AND THE CHURCH

THE FULL FORCE of the conflict which was enacted in the souls of
Christian believers during the transition from paganism to the new
religion is shown in the person of Augustine (354-430). When we see
how this conflict has become resolved in the spirit of Augustine we
are enabled in a mysterious way to penetrate the spiritual struggles
of Origin, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus, Jerome and
others.

Augustine was a personality in whom deep spiritual needs developed out
of a passionate nature. He passed through pagan and half-Christian
ideas. He suffered deeply from the most dreadful doubts which can
attack a man who has felt the impotence of many varieties of thought
in the face of spiritual problems, and who has tasted the depressing
effect of the question, Can man know anything at all?

At the beginning of his struggles Augustine's thoughts clung to the
transitory things of the material world. He could conceive of the
spiritual only in material images. It is a deliverance for him when he
rises above this stage. He describes this in his Confessions: "When I
desired to think upon my God, I knew not how to think of Him except as
a mass of bodies, for what was not of such a nature seemed to me to be
nothing. This was the greatest and almost the only cause of my
inevitable error." Thus he indicates the point which a person is bound
to reach who is seeking the true life in the spirit. There are
thinkers, and they are not few, who maintain that it is impossible to
arrive at pure thought, free from any material substance. These
thinkers confuse what they believe they ought to say about their own
soul life with what is humanly possible. On the contrary, the truth is
that it is only possible to arrive at higher cognition when thought
has been freed from all material substance; when a soul life has been
developed in which images of reality do not cease when their
demonstration in sense-impressions comes to an end. Augustine relates
how he achieved spiritual vision. Everywhere he asked where the
"divine" was to be found. "I asked the earth and it said, I am not He;
and all things that are in the earth confessed the same. I asked the
ocean and the depths and all that lives in them, and they answered me:
We are not thy God. Seek above us. I asked the fleeting winds, and the
whole air, with all its inhabitants made answer: The philosophers who
seek for the essence of things in us are deceived. We are not God. I
asked the heavens, the sun, moon and stars, and they said: Neither are
we the God whom thou seekest." And Augustine perceived that there is
but one thing which can answer his question about the divine: his own
soul. The soul said, No eyes nor ears can impart to you what is in me.
for I alone can tell you, and I tell you in such a way that doubt is
impossible. "Men may doubt whether vital force lives in air or in
fire, but who can doubt that he himself lives, remembers, understands,
wills, thinks, knows and judges? If he doubts, it is a proof that he
is alive, he remembers why he doubts, he understands that he doubts,
he will assure himself of something, he thinks, he knows that he knows
nothing, he judges that he must not accept anything hastily." External
things do not defend themselves when their essence and existence are
denied. But the soul does defend itself. It could not be doubtful of
itself unless it existed. By its doubt it confirms its own existence.
"We are and we perceive our existence and we love our own existence
and cognition. On these three points no error disguised as truth can
trouble us, for we do not apprehend them with our bodily senses like
physical things.'' Man learns about the divine by bringing his soul to
perceive itself as spiritual in order that it may find its way as
spirit into the spiritual world. Augustine had struggled through to
this perception. Out of such an attitude of mind grew the desire in
pagan personalities seeking cognition, to knock at the portal of the
Mysteries. In the age of Augustine such convictions could lead a man
to become a Christian. Jesus, the Logos become man, had shown the path
which must be followed by the soul if it would attain the goal of
which it must speak when in communion with itself. In 358 at Milan
Augustine received the teachings of Ambrose. All his doubts about the
Old and New Testaments vanished when the most important passages were
interpreted by his teacher, not in a merely literal sense, but "were
spiritually laid open and expounded by him, the mystical veil thereof
being removed." What had been guarded in the Mysteries was embodied
for Augustine in the historical tradition of the Gospels and in the
community where that tradition was preserved. By degrees he comes to a
conviction regarding Church doctrine, of which he says, "I felt it was
with moderation and honesty that it commanded things to be believed
that were not demonstrated." He arrives at the idea, "Who could be so
blind as to say that the Church of the Apostles deserves to have no
faith placed in it, when it is so loyal and is supported by the
conformity of so many brethren; when these have handed down their
writings to posterity so conscientiously, and when the Church has so
strictly maintained the succession of teachers down to our present
bishops?" Augustine's method of thinking told him that since the
Christ event other conditions had begun for souls seeking the spirit
in place of those which had existed previously. For him it was firmly
established that in Christ Jesus there had been revealed in the outer
historical world what the mystic had sought through preparation in the
Mysteries. One of his most significant utterances is the following:
"What is now called the Christian religion already existed among the
ancients, and was not lacking at the very beginnings of the human
race. When Christ appeared in the flesh, the true religion already in
existence received the name of Christian." Two paths of development
were possible for such a mode of thinking. One is that if the human
soul develops within it the forces leading it to the cognition of its
true self, if it but goes far enough, it will also come to cognition
of the Christ and of everything connected with him. This would have
been a Mystery knowledge enriched through the Christ event. The other
way is that actually taken by Augustine, by which he became the great
example for his successors. It consists in cutting off the development
of the forces of the soul at a certain point and in receiving the
ideas connected with the Christ event from written accounts and oral
traditions. Augustine rejected the first way as springing from pride
of soul; he thought the second way was the way of true humility. Thus
he says to those who wished to follow the first way: "You may find
peace in the truth, but for this, humility is needed, which does not
suit your proud neck." On the other hand he was filled with boundless
inward happiness by the fact that since the "appearance of Christ in
the flesh" it was possible to say that experience of the spiritual can
be attained by every soul which goes as far as it can in seeking
within itself, and then, in order to reach the highest, has faith in
what the written and oral traditions of the community of Christians
tell about the Christ and his revelation. On this point he says: "What
bliss, what abiding enjoyment of supreme and true good is offered to
us, what serenity, what a breath of eternity! How shall I describe it?
It has been expressed, as far as it could be, by those great
incomparable souls who we admit have beheld and still behold.... We
reach a point at which we acknowledge how true is what we have been
commanded to believe and how well and beneficiently we have been
brought up by our mother the Church, and of what benefit was the milk
given by the Apostle Paul to the little ones . . ." (It is beyond the
scope of this book to give an account of the alternative method of
thinking which is evolved from the Mystery knowledge enriched through
the Christ event. The description of this method will be found in my
outline of a Geheimwissenschaft. ) Whereas in pre-Christian times one
who wished to seek the spiritual foundations of existence was
necessarily directed to the way of the Mysteries, Augustine was able
to say, even to those souls who could find no such path within
themselves: Go as far as you can on the path of cognition with your
human powers; from there, faith (belief) will carry you up into the
higher spiritual regions. It was only going one step further to say:
It is in the nature of the human soul to be able to arrive only at a
certain stage of cognition through its own powers; from there it can
advance further only through faith, through belief in the written and
oral tradition. This step was taken by the spiritual movement which
assigned to natural perception a certain sphere above which the soul
could not rise by its own efforts, but everything which lay beyond
this sphere was made an object of belief which has to be supported by
written and oral tradition, and by faith in its representatives.
Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274), the greatest teacher of the Church, has
set forth this doctrine in the most varied ways in his writings. Human
perception can only attain to that which led Augustine to self
knowledge, to the certainty of the divine. The nature of the divine
and its relation to the world is given by revealed theology, which is
not accessible to man's own perception, and as an article of faith, is
superior to all cognition.

The origin of this point of view may be observed in the world
conception of John Scotus Erigena, who lived in the ninth century at
the court of Charles the Bald, and who represents a natural transition
from early Christianity to the point of view of Thomas Aquinas. His
conception of the world is expressed in the sense of Neoplatonism. In
his treatise, De Divisione Naturae, Erigena has elaborated the
teaching of Dionysius the Areopagite. This teaching started with a God
far above the transitory things of the material world and it derived
the world from Him. (See page ) Man is involved in the transformation
of all beings toward this God, Who finally attains to what He was from
the beginning. Everything falls back again into the Godhead which has
passed through the universal process and finally has become perfected.
But in order to reach this goal man must find the way to the Logos who
became flesh. In Erigena this thought leads to another, that faith in
the content of the writings which give an account of the Logos, leads
to salvation. Reason and the authority of the Scriptures, belief and
cognition, stand side by side. The one does not contradict the other,
but faith must bring that to which knowledge alone can never raise
itself.

*

The cognition of the eternal which the ancient Mysteries withheld from
the multitudes, when presented in this way by Christian thought and
feeling, became an article of faith which by its very nature was
related to something unattainable by mere knowledge. It was the
conviction of the pre-Christian mystic that to him was given cognition
of the divine, and to the people, a faith expressed in imagery.
Christianity came to the conviction that God has given His wisdom to
mankind through His revelation, and man attains an image of the divine
revelation through his cognition. The wisdom of the Mysteries is a
hot-house plant which is revealed to a few mature individuals;
Christian wisdom is a Mystery revealed as cognition to none, but as an
article of faith it is revealed to all. In Christianity the viewpoint
of the Mysteries lived on. But it lived on in an altered form. All,
not only the special individual, were to share in the truth. But it
should so happen that at a certain point man perceived his inability
to penetrate further by means of cognition, and from there on ascended
to faith. Christianity brought the content of the Mysteries out of the
darkness of the temple into the clear light of day. The one spiritual
stream within Christianity outlined here led to the idea that this
content must necessarily be retained in the form of faith..

 

Part A: Comments by the Author

COMMENTS BY THE AUTHOR

Page 13: The words of Ingersoll are introduced at this point in the
book, not only with reference to those people who declare them to be
word for word their own conviction. Many people do not do so, and yet
their ideas about natural phenomena and man are such that if they were
logical they would have to arrive at these statements. It does not
matter what anyone declares to be his conviction theoretically, but it
matters whether this conviction really follows from his whole method
of thought. Someone may even abhor or laugh at the above words; but if
he forms for himself an explanation which takes into account only the
outer facts without rising to the spiritual background underlying
natural phenomena, as a logical consequence he will construct a
materialistic philosophy out of it.

Page 13: For those who can observe rightly the "Spirit of Nature"
speaks powerfully in the facts which are at present being dealt with
by the cliches "struggle for existence," "omnipotence of natural
selection," etc. But not in the opinions which science forms about
them today. The first of these circumstances contains the reason why
natural science will gain increasingly widespread attention. From the
second circumstance it follows that the opinions of science need not
be accepted as essential to cognition of the facts. The possibility of
being tempted by the latter is, however, immeasurably great at the
present time.

Page 13: It should not be concluded, from remarks such as those
regarding the sources of the Gospel of Luke etc., that the author of
this book underestimates purely historical research. This is not the
case. It is absolutely justified, but it should not be intolerant of
the method of thinking which proceeds from spiritual points of view.
In this book no value is placed on bringing in quotations at every
possible point, but whoever wishes to do so can see clearly that an
all-round and really unprejudiced judgment will find no contradiction
anywhere between what is said here and what is truly established
historically. Admittedly, anyone who wants to be one-sided, and holds
this or that theory to be what has been established as certainty, may
find that the assumptions of this book "do not hold their own" from
the "scientific'' standpoint, but are "without any objective
foundation."

Page 14: It is said above that those whose spiritual eyes are opened
can behold the realm of the spiritual world. It should not, however,
be concluded from this that a logical judgment about the results of
initiation can be formed only by one who himself has "spiritual eyes."
These are necessary only for research. When the results of the
research are communicated, everyone can understand who allows his
intelligence and unprejudiced sense of truth to speak. Such a person
also can use these results in life and gain satisfaction from them
without as yet possessing "spiritual eyes" himself.

Page 14. The "sinking into the mire'' of which Plato speaks must also
be interpreted in the sense of the previous comment.

Page 15: What is said about the impossibility of communicating
teachings of the Mysteries refers to the fact that they cannot be
communicated in the form in which the initiate experiences them to
anyone who is unprepared. But they always have been communicated in
the form in which they could be understood by the non-initiate. For
example, the myths provided the ancient form for communicating the
content of the Mysteries in a generally comprehensible manner.

Page 21: In ancient mysticism "Mantic" signifies everything relevant
to knowledge gained through "spiritual eyes." On the other hand,
"Telestic" is the indication of the paths which lead to initiation.

Page 28: "Cabeiri" in ancient mysticism, are beings whose
consciousness is far above that of modern man. Schelling wishes to say
that through initiation man himself transcends his present
consciousness and enters a higher one.

Page 30: Regarding the significance of the number seven, enlightenment
may be gained from my book Geheimwissenschaft, Leipzig 1910. [26th
edition, Stuttgart 955-]

Page 30: The meanings of the apocalyptic symbols can be only very
briefly indicated here. Of course one could enter much more deeply
into all these things. However, this does not lie within the scope of
this book.

 

Part B: Reference Guide to Principal Themes

REFERENCE GUIDE TO PRINCIPAL THEMES IN
CHRISTIANITY AS MYSTICAL FACT,
BASED ON OTHER WORKS BY
RUDOLF STEINER

Compiled by
PAUL M. ALLEN

Readers of the works of Rudolf Steiner frequently wish to trace his
handling of specific themes as these appear in his written books and
the published transcripts of his nearly 6,000 lectures. As an aid to
this method of study, a method Steiner himself recommended, leading
themes of Christianity as Mystical Fact are here traced to other
places in books and lectures of Rudolf Steiner as these have appeared
in English translation. It is hoped that these references, highly
selective as they necessarily are, and by no means exhaustive, will
encourage readers in a further study of his ideas regarding the Deed
of Christ, the pre-Christian Mysteries, and on the religious strivings
of mankind as a whole. In the list which follows, the themes are given
in the order in which they appear in the book.

The form of the present reference guide is based on the compiler's
book, The Writings and Lectures of Rudolf Steiner, a Chronological
Bibliography of his Books, Lectures, Addresses, Courses, Cycles,
Essays and Reports as published in English translation, New York,
1956. Copies of this work can be obtained through the publishers of
the present book.

 

Part C: General References

GENERAL REFERENCES TO
Christianity as Mystical Fact

The Spiritual Hierarchies, Cycle 7, Lecture 3, Duesseldorf, April 13,
1909. Published London, 1931, p. 24. S-1975

Universe, Earth and Man, Cycle 4, Lecture 10, Stuttgart, August 14,
1908. Published London, 1941, p. 203. S-1846

The Gospel of John in Relation to the Other Gospels, Cycle 8, Lecture
7, Cassel, June 3o, 1909. Published New York, 1948, p. 97. S-203s

Ibid., Lecture 8, July 1, 1909, New York, 1948, p. 112. S-2036

Ibid., Lecture 14, July 7, 1909, New York, 1948, p. 218. S-2043

The Gospel of Matthew, Cycle 15, Lecture 9, Bern, September 9, 1910.
Published London, 1946, p. 135. S-2280

From Jesus to Christ, Cycle 19, Lecture 4, Carlsruhe, October 8, 19l
l. Published London, 1944, p- 55- S-2451

Ibid., Lecture 6, October 10, 1911, London, 1944, p. 84. S-2453

Ibid., Lecture 10, October 14, 1911, London, 1944, p. 143. S-2457

Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy, Cycle 22,
Lecture 4, Christiania (Oslo), June 6, 1912. Published London, 1945,
p. 62. S-2607

Ibid., Lecture 8, June 10, 1912, London, 1945, p. 142. S-2611

The Gospel of Mark, Cycle 24, Lecture 10, Basel, September 24, 1912.
Published New York, 1950, p. 172. S-2636

The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, Cycle 25, Lecture 1,
Cologne, December 28, 1912. Published London, 1945, p. 7. S-2670

The Life Between Death and Rebirth in Relation to Cosmic Facts, Cycle
37, Lecture 1, Berlin, November 5, 1912. Published London, 1930, p. 1.
S-2643

Building Stones for a New Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha,
Cycle 45, Lectures I and 5, Berlin, March 27 and April 14, 1917.
Published London, 1945, pp- 7 and 80. S-3354 and 3359

The Course of my Life, Rudolf Steiner's Autobiography, published by
Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1951. See especially Chapters 26, 27,
30 and 31, for references to Christianity as Mystical Fact.

 

Part D: References to Specific Themes and Persons
REFERENCES TO SPECIFIC THEMES AND PERSONS
arranged in order of their appearance in the text of
Christianity as Mystical Fact

GREEK MYSTERIES AND MYSTERY WISDOM (General)

The East in the Light of the West, Cycle 9, Lectures 6, 8, 9, Munich,
August, 1909. Published London, 1940, p. 100 seq. S-2050-

The Gospel of John, Cycle 3, Lectures 8, 9, 10. Hamburg, May, 1908.
Published New York, 1940, p. 123 seq. S-1764-

Wonders of the World, Cycle 18, Lectures 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10. Munich,
August 1911. Published London 1929, p. 30 seq. S-2429-(The entire
cycle of 10 lectures is important for the subject of Mysteries and
Mystery Wisdom.)

The Mission of the Folk Souls, Cycle 13, Especially lecture 7,
Christiania, Oslo, June 12, 1910. Published London, 1929, p. 81.
S-2252

The Manifestations of Karma, Cycle 12, Lecture 11, Hamburg, May 28,
1910. Published London, 1947, p. 201. S-224

AESCHYLUS:

The East in the Light of the West, Cycle 9, Lecture 3, Munich, August
25,1909. Published London, 1940, p. 40. S-2046

The Gospel of John, Cycle 3, Lecture 8, Hamburg, May 27, 1908.
Published New York, 1940, p. 123. S 1764

The Christ Impulse and the Development of the Ego Consciousness, Cycle
17, Lectures I and 6, Berlin, October 25, 1909 and May 2, 1910.
Published London, 1926, pp. I and 64. S-2078 and 2220

Wonders of the World, Cycle 18, Lecture 10, Munich, August 27, 1911.
Published London, 1929, p. 128. S-2437

From Jesus to Christ, Cycle 19, Lecture 5, Carlsruhe, October 9, 1911.
Published London, 1944, p. 69. S-2452

The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of Paul, Cycle 25, Lecture 1,
Cologne, December 28, 1912. Published London, 1945, p. 7. S-2670

DIONYSUS:

Wonders of the World, Cycle 18, Lectures 4, 5, 6, 7, Munich, August,
1911. Published London, 1929. S-2427-

The Gospel of John, Cycle 3, Lecture 5, Hamburg, May 23, 1908.
Published New York, 1940, p. 78. S-1760

The East in the Light of the West, Cycle 9, Lecture 6, Munich, August
28, 1909. Published London, 1940, p. 100. S-2050

ZARATHUSTRA:

The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity, Cycle 26, Lecture 3,
Berlin, February 5, 1913. Published London, 1943, p. 44. 55702

The Spiritual Hierarchies, Cycle 7, Lectures 1, 6, 9. Duesseldorf,
April, 1909. Published London, 1931. S-1973-

Excursus on the Gospel of Mark, Cycle 30, Lectures 3 and 5, Berlin,
November 7 and December 19, 1910. Published London, 1937, pp. 47 and
99. S-2301 and 2332

The Gospel of Matthew, Cycle 15, Lectures 1-4, 6, 7, 12. Bern,
September 1910. Published London, 1946, p. 7 seq. S-2272-

The Mission of Folk Souls, Cycle 13, Lectures 3, 4, 6, Christiania,
Oslo, June, 1910. Published London, 1929, p. 28 seq. S-2248-

Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and the Kingdoms of Nature,
Cycle 21, Lecture 6, Helsingfors (Helsinki), April 8, 1912. Published
London, 1951, p. 88. S-2571

The Gospel of John in Relation to the Other Gospels, Cycle 8, Lectures
I and 8, Cassel, June 24 and July 1, 1908. Published New York, 1948,
pp. I and 112. S-2029 and 2036

Wonders of the World, Cycle 18, Lectures 4 and 8, Munich, August 1911
and 25, 1911. Published London, ^1929, pp. 44 and 98. S-2430 and 2435

The Gospel of Luke, Cycle 10, Lectures 4 through 7, Basel, September
1909. Published London, 1935, p. 76 seq. S-2057-

From Jesus to Christ, Cycle 19, Lecture 8, Carlsruhe, October 12,
1911. Published London, 1944, p. 114. S-2455

The East in the Light of the West, Cycle 9, Lectures 5 and 9, Munich,
August 27 and 31, 1909. Published London, 1940, pp. 80 and 190. S-2048
and 2053

Zarathustra, A lecture given in the Architects' House, Berlin, January
11, 1911. Published in Turning Points in Spiritual History, London,
1934, p. 45. Also in Anthroposophical Quarterly, Vol. 2, 1927, p. 1.
S-2356

SOPHOCLES:

Wonders of the World, Cycle 18, Lecture 10, Munich, August 27, 1911.
Published London, 1929, p. 128. S-2437

The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of Paul, Cycle 25, Lecture 1,
Cologne, December 28, 1912. Published London 1945, p. 7. S-2670

Zeus:

The East in the Light of the West, Cycle 9, Lecture 4, Munich, August
26,1909. Published London, 1940, p. 60. S-2047

Wonders of the World, Cycle 18, Lectures 3 and 5, Munich, August 20
and 22, 1911. Published London, 1929, PP. 30 and 60. S 2429 and 2432

The Gospel of Mark, Cycle 24, Lecture 7, Basel, September 21, 1912.
Published New York, 1950, P. 118. S 2633

PLATO:

Universe, Earth and Man. Cycle 4, Lecture 8, Stuttgart, August 12,
1908. Published London, 1941, P. 158. S-l814

The East in the Light of the West, Cycle 9, Lecture 3, Munich, August
25, 1909. Published London, 1940, P. 40. S 2046

The Gospel of John, Cycle 3, Lecture 9, Hamburg, May 29, 1908.
Published New York, 1940, P. 137. S-l766

The Gospel of John in Relation to the Other Gospels, Cycle 8, Lecture
8, Cassel, July 1, 1909. Published New York, 1948, P. 112. S 2036

The Mission of the Folk Souls, Cycle 13, Lecture 4, Christiania
(Oslo), June 10, 1910. Published London, 1929, P. 42. S 2249

The Biblical Secrets of Creation, Cycle 14, Lecture 10, Munich, August
26, 1910. Published London, 1944, P. 117. S 2270

Life Between Death and Rebirth, Cycle 37, Lecture 4, Berlin, December
10, 1912. Published London, 1930, P. 45. S 2660

Christ and the Spiritual World, Cycle 31, Lecture 1, Leipzig, December
28, 1913. Published London, n.d., p. 1. S 2857

Cosmic and Human Metamorphosis, Cycle 44, Lecture 5, Berlin, March 6,
1917. Published London, 1926, P. 46. S 3348

Wonders of the World, Cycle 18, Lecture 7, Munich, August 24, 1911.
Published London, 1929, P. 85. S 2434

The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of Paul, Cycle 25, Lecture 1,
Cologne, December 28, 1912. Published London, 1945, P. 7. S 2670

Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, Cycle
45, Lecture 5, Berlin, April 14, 1917. Published London, 1945,
P.80.S-3359

Excursus on the Gospel of Mark, Cycle 30, Lecture 10, Berlin, June 10,
1911. Published London. 1937, P. 217. S-2425

HERACLITUS:

Spiritual Hierarchies, Cycle 7, Lecture 3, Duesseldorf, April 13,
1909. Published London, 1931, P. 24. S 1975

Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, Cycle
45, Lecture 2, Berlin, April 3, 1917. Published London, 1945. P-22.
S-3356

The Gospel of Mark, Cycle 24, Lecture 7, Basel, September 1, 19l2.
Published New York, 1950, P. 118. S 2633

Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy, Cycle 22,
Lecture 1, Christiania (Oslo), June 2, 1912. Published London,
1945.P-7. -S-2603

The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of Paul, Cycle 25, Lecture 1,
Cologne, December 28, 1912. Published London, 1945, P. 7. S 2670

Christ and the Human Soul, Cycle 34, Lecture 3, Norrkoping, July I5,
1914. Published London, 1927, P. 49. S 2942

HOMER:

Egyptian Myths and Mysteries, Cycle 5, Lecture 7, Leipzig, September
9,1908. Published London, 1933, P. 99. S l829

Life Between Death and Rebirth, Cycle 37, Lecture I, Berlin, November
5, 1912. Published London, 1930, P. 1. S2643

The Gospel of Mark, Cycle 24, Lecture 1, Basel, September 15, 1912.
Published New York, 1950, P. 1. S 2626

Earthly and Cosmic Man, Cycle 36, Lectures 3 and 5, Berlin. March 26
and May 2, 1912. Published London, 1948, P. 50 and 87. S 2564 and 2587

On the Forming of Destiny and Life After Death, Cycle 40, Lecture 3,
Berlin, November 20, 1915. Published London, 1927, P. 26. S 3148

EMPEDOCLES:

The Gospel of Mark, Cycle 24, Lectures 1, 2, 7, Basel, September 1912.
Published New York, 1950, p. I seq. S 2626-

The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity, Cycle 26, Lecture 4,
Berlin, February 7, 1913. Published London, 1943, P. 63. S 2707

The Christ Impulse and the Development of the Ego-Consciousness, Cycle
17, Lecture 6, Berlin, May 2, 1910. Published London, 1926, P
64.S-2220

PYTHAGORAS:

The Gospel of Matthew, Cycle 15, Lecture 3, Bern, September 3, 1910.
Published London, 1946, p. 41. S-2274

Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy, Cycle 22,
Lecture 4, Christiania (Oslo), June 6, 1912. Published London, 1945,
p. 62. S-2607

Excursus on the Gospel of Mark, Cycle 30, Lecture 2, Berlin, October
24,1910. Published London. 1937, p. 25. S-2290

Christ and the Human Soul, Cycle 34, Lecture 4, Norrkoping, July 16,
1912. Published London, 1927, p. 61. S-2944

SOCRATES:

Wonders of the World, Cycle 18, Lecture 7, Munich, August 24, 1911.
Published London, 1929, p. 85. S-2434

From Jesus to Christ, Cycle 19, Lecture 10, Carlsruhe, October 14,
1911. Published London, 1944, p- 143- S-2457

The Gospel of Mark, Cycle 24, Lecture 4, Basel, September 18, 1912.
Published New York, 1950, p. 62. S-2629

Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy, Philosophy, Cycle 22,
Lecture 8, Christiania (Oslo), June 10, 1912. Published London, 1945,
p.142.S-2611

The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of Paul, Cycle 25, Lecture 1,
Cologne, December 28, 1912. Published London, 1945, p. 7. S-2603

Earthly Death and Cosmic Life, Cycle 48, Lecture 4, Berlin, March 5,
1918. Published London, 1927, p. 31. S-3493

ANCIENT EGYPT AND EGYPTIAN MYSTERIES:

Universe, Earth and Man in their Relationship to Egyptian Myths and
Modern Civilization, Cycle 4. 11 lectures given in Stuttgart, August,
1908. Published London, 1941. S-1807-

Egyptian Myths and Mysteries and their Connection with the Active
Spiritual Forces of Today, Cycle 5, 12 lectures given in Leipzig,
September, 1908. Published London, 1933. S-1823-

The Manifestations of Karma, Cycle 12, Lectures I and 8, Hamburg. May
16 and 25, 1908. Published London, 1947, pp. 7 and 149. S-2229 and
2237

The Mission of the Folk Souls, Cycle 13, Lecture 1, Christiania
(Oslo), June 7, 1910. Published London 1929, p. 1. S-2246. Lectures 7
and 8 in this cycle also contain references on this theme.

Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy, Philosophy, Cycle 22,
Lecture 1, Christiania (Oslo), June 2, 1912. Published London 1945,
p.7.S-2603

Christ and the Spiritual World, Cycle 31, Lectures 3 and 4, December
30 and 31, 1913, Leipzig. Published London, n.d., pp. 23 and 35.
S-2859 and 2861

The Gospel of Matthew, Cycle 15, Lectures 7 and 8, Bern, September 7
and 8, 1910. Published London, 1946, pp. 103 and 1 18. S-2278 and 2279

Wonders of the World, Cycle 18, Lectures 4 and 7, Munich, August 21
and 24, 1911. Published London, 1929, pp. 44 and 85. S-243c) and 2434

The Gospel of John, Cycle 3, Lectures 8, 9, 10, Hamburg, May, 1908.
Published New York, 1940, p. 123 seq. S-1764-

The East in the Light of the West, Cycle 9, Lectures 5 and 8, Munich,
August 27 and 30, 1909. Published London, 1940, p. 80 and 154. S-2048
and 2052

Earthly and Cosmic Man, Cycle 36, Lecture 6, Berlin, May 14, 1912.
Published London, 1948, p. 105. S-2594

LOGOS.

The Gospel of John, Cycle 3, Lectures 1-3, 6, 7, 12, Hamburg, May,
1908. Published New York, 1940, p. 15 seq. S-1755-

The Gospel of John in Relation to the Other Gospels, Cycle 8, Lectures
I and 8, Cassel, June 24 and July 1, 1909. Published New York, 1948,
pages I and 112. S-2029, 2036.

The Gospel of Matthew, Cycle 15, Lecture 12, Bern, September 12, 1910.
Published London, 1946, p. 194. S-2283

From Jesus to Christ, Cycle 19, Lecture 1, Carlsruhe, October 5, 1911.
Published London, 1944, p. 9. S-2448

The Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and the Kingdoms of
Nature, Cycle 21, Lecture 8, Helsingfors (Helsinki), April 11, 1912.
Published London 1951, p. 132. S-2574

Earthly and Cosmic Man, Cycle 36, Lecture 5, Berlin, May 2, 1912.
Published London, 1948, p. 87. S-2587

PALLAS ATHENE:

Wonders of the World, Cycle 18, Lectures 5 and 9, Munich August 22 and
26, 1911. Published London, 1929, PP. 60 and 113. S-2432 and 2436

HERA:

Wonders of the World, Cycle 18, Lecture 5, Munich, August 22, 1911.
Published London, 1929, P. 60. S 2432

OEDIPUS:

The Gospel of John in Relation to the Other Gospels, Cycle 8, Lectures
2 and m, Cassel, June 25 and July 4, 1909. Published New York 1948,
PP. 16 and 166. S 2030 and 2040

The East in the Light of the West, Cycle 9, Lecture 7, Munich, August
29, 1909, Published London, 1940, P. 126. S 2051

The Gospel of Mark, Cycle 24, Lecture 7, Basel, September 21, 1912.
Published New York, 1950, P. 118. S 2633

MYTHS AND SAGAS IN GENERAL:

Earthly and Cosmic Man, Cycle 36, Lecture 3, Berlin, March 26, 1912.
Published London, 1948, P. 50. S 2564

The East in the Light of the West, Cycle 9, Lecture 1, Munich, August
23, 1909. Published London, 1940, P. 1. S 2044

The Gospel of Matthew, Cycle 15, Lecture 3, Bern, September 3, 1910.
Published London, 1946, P. 41. S 2274 (Also lecture g in this cycle)

The Inner Nature of Man, Cycle 32, Lecture 4, Vienna, April 12, 1914.
Published London, 1948, P. 38. S 2916

ORESTIA:

The East in the Light of the West, Cycle 9, Lecture 3, Munich, August
25, 1909. Published London, 1940, P. 40. S 2046

PLOTINUS:

Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy, Philosophy, Cycle 22,
Lecture 4, Christiania (Oslo), June 6, 1912. Published London, 1945,
P.62.S-2607

BUDDHA:

Buddha, a lecture given in Berlin, March 2, 1911. Published in Turning
Points in Spiritual History, London, 1934, p. 129- Also in
Anthroposophical Quarterly, Volume 2, 1927, p. 353. S-2390

Buddha and Christ, a lecture given in Berlin, December 2, 1909.
Published in Turning Points in Spiritual History, London, 1934, p. 71.
Also in Anthroposophical Quarterly, Volume 1, 1926, p. 279. S-2114

The Spiritual Hierarchies, Cycle 7, Lecture 1, Duesseldorf, April 12,
1909. Published London, 1931, p. 1. S-1973

From Jesus to Christ, Cycle 19, Lectures 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10. Carlsruhe,
October 6 onward, 1911. Published London, 1944, p. 23 seq S-2449

The Gospel of Luke, Cycle 10, Lectures 2 through 9, Basel, September,
1909. Published London, 1935, p. 29 seq. S-2055-

The Gospel of Matthew, Cycle 15, Lectures 4, 5, 7. Bern, September.
1910. Published London, 1946, p. 58 seq. S-2275-

Life Between Death and Rebirth, Cycle 37, Lectures 5 and 10. Berlin,
December 22, 1912 and April 1, 1913. Published London, 1930, page 58
and 118. S-2667 and 2756

Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy, Philosophy, Cycle 22,
Lectures 1, 9, 10, Christiania (Oslo), June 2, 11, 12, 1912. Published
London, 1945, p. 7 seq. S-2603-

The Gospel of John in Relation to the Other Gospels, Cycle 8, Lectures
1, 2, 13, 14, Cassel, June 24 onward, 1909. Published New York, 1948,
p. I seq. S-2029-

OSIRIS AND ISIS:

See references on Ancient Egypt and Egyptian Mysteries, above.

HERACLES, HERCULES:

Egyptian Myths and Mysteries, Cycle 5, Lecture 4, Leipzig, September
5,1908. Published London, 1933, p. 55. S-1826

JASON:

Egyptian Myths and Mysteries, Cycle 5, Lecture 10, Leipzig, September
12,1908. Published London, 1933, p. 147. S-1832.

PROMETHEUS:

The Gospel of Matthew, Cycle 1 5, Lecture 9, Bern, September 9, 1910.
Published London, 1946, p.

35. S-2280

Egyptian Myths and Mysteries, Cycle 5, Lecture ^lo, Leipzig, September
12, 1908. Published London, 1933, p. 147. S-1832

The Manifestations of Karma, Cycle 12, Lecture 7, Hamburg, May 22,
1910. Published London, 1947, p. 129. S-2235

Earthly and Cosmic Man, Cycle 3fi, Lecture 6, Berlin, May 14, 1912.
Published London, 1948, p. 105. S-2594

DEMETER-PERSEPHONE:

Wonders of the World, Cycle 18, Lectures I and 2, Munich, August 18
and 19, 1911. Published London, 1929, pp. I and 15. S-2427 and 2428

THE GOSPELS:

Rudolf Steiner gave 6 courses of lectures devoted especially to a
consideration of the four Gospels, as follows:

The Gospel of John, Cycle 3,

2 lectures given at Hamburg, beginning on May 18, 1908. Published New
York, 1940. S-755

The Gospel of John in Relation to the other Three Gospels, Especially
the Gospel of Luke, Cycle 8, 14 lectures given at Cassel, beginning on
June 24, 1909. Published New York, 1948. S-2029-

The Gospel of Luke, Cycle 10, 10 lectures given at Basel, beginning on
September 15, 1909. Published London, 1935. S-2054-

The Gospel of Matthew, Cycle 15, 12 lectures given at Bern, beginning
on September 1, 1910. Published London, 1946. S-2272-

The Gospel of Mark, Cycle 24, 10 lectures given at Basel, beginning on
September 15, 1912. Published New York, 1950. S-2626

Excursus on the Gospel of Mark, Cycle 30, 10 lectures given at Berlin,
beginning on October 17, 1910. Published London, 1937. S-2288

In addition to the above, references to the Gospels are scattered
throughout Rudolf Steiner's books and lectures, and examination of any
of the latter will readily lead one to his many expressions regarding
the written accounts of the life of the Christ upon earth.

LAZARUS, THE MIRACLE OF THE RAISING OF LAZARUS FROM THE DEAD:

The Gospel of John, Cycle 3, Lecture 4, Hamburg, May 22, 1908.
Published New York, 1940, p. 43 seq. S-1759

The Gospel of John in Relation to the Other Gospels, Cycle 8, Lectures
7, 8, 10, Cassel, June, 1909. Published, New York, 1948. S-2029

HAMLET (Shakespeare):

The Gospel of Mark, Cycle 24, Lecture 1, Basel, September 15, 1912.
Published New York, 1950, p. I seq. S-2626

APOCALYPSE OF JOHN -- THE BOOK OF REVELATION:

A most comprehensive study of the Apocalypse is contained in a course
of 12 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at Nuremberg, as follows:

The Apocalypse, Cycle 6, 12 lectures, Nuremberg, June 18-30, 1908.
Published London 1943, p. 11 seq. S-1780

BEASTS OF THE APOCALYPSE, THE FOUR:

In addition to references to them contained in the Apocalypse cycle of
1908 (see above under "Apocalypse"), consult:

The Theosophy of the Rosicrucians, Cycle 2, Lecture 2, Munich, May 25,
1907. Published London, 1953, p. 18. S-1535

Spiritual Hierarchies, Cycle 7, Lecture 4, Duesseldorf, April 13,
1909. Published London, 1931, p. 35. S-1976

Egyptian Myths and Mysteries, Cycle 5, Lectures 3 and 8, Leipzig,
September 4 and 10, 1908. Published London, 1933, pp. 41 and 113.
S-1825 and 1830

The Gospel of John in Relation to the Other Gospels, Cycle 8, Lecture
8, Cassel, July 1, 1909. Published New York, 1948, p. 112. S-2036

Wonders of the World, Cycle 18, Lecture 9, Munich, August 26, 1911.
Published London, 1929, p. 113. S-2436

ESSENES, THE:

The Gospel of Matthew, Cycle 15, Lectures 4-6, 8, 10, Bern, September.
1910 Published London. 1946 p 58 seq. S-2275

JOHN THE BAPTIST:

The Gospel of John, Cycle 3, Lectures 4 and 5, Hamburg, May 22 and 23,
1908. Published New York 1940, P. 43 seq. S l759 60

The Gospel of John in Relation to the Other Gospels, Cycle 8, Lectures
1, 6, 7, Cassel, June, 1909. Published New York, 1948. S 2029

The Gospel of Luke, Cycle 10, Lectures 5-8, 10, Basel, September 1909.
Published London 1935, P. 96 seq. S 2058

The Gospel of Mark, Cycle 24, Lectures 2, 3, 5, 6, Basel, September
1912. Published New York, 1950, P 19 seq. S 2627-

Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, Cycle
45, Lectures 3 and 5, April 10 and 14, 1917, Berlin. Published London
1945, PP. 38 and 80. S 3357 and 3359

Christ and the Spiritual World, Cycle 31, Lecture 4, December 31,
1913, Leipzig. Published London, n.d., p. 35. S 2861

The Gospel of Matthew, Cycle 15, Lecture 8, Bern, September 10, 1910.
Published London, 1946, P. 154. S 2281

Earthly and Cosmic Man, Cycle 36, Lecture 4, Berlin, April 23, 1912.
Published London 1948, P. 69. S 2583

Excursus on the Gospel of Mark, Cycle 30, Lecture 4, Berlin, December
6, 1910. Published London 1937, P. 71. S 2323

GNOSIS AND THE GNOSTICS:

The Gospel of John, Cycle 3, Lecture 3, Hamburg, May 20, 1908.
Published New York 1940, P. 43. S l757

The World of the Senses and the World of Spirit, Cycle 20, Lecture 1,
Hannover, December 27, 1911. Published London, 1947, P. 5. S 2507

The Gospel of Mark, Cycle 24, Lecture 7, Basel, September 21, 1912.
Published New York, 1950, P. 118. S 2633

Christ and the Spiritual World, Cycle 31, Lectures I and 2, Leipzig,
December 28 and 29, 1913. Published London, n.d., p. I seq. S 2857 -
58

Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha Cycle
45, Lectures I and 8, Berlin, March 27 and April 24, 1917 Published
London 1945, pp. 7 and 121- S-3354 and 3362

PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA:

Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, Cycle
45, Lecture 6, Berlin, April 17, 1917. Published London,
1945,P-92-S-3360

AUGUSTINE, THE CHURCH FATHER:

From Jesus to Christ, Cycle 19, Lecture 4, Carlsruhe, October 8, 1911.
Published London 1944, P. 55. S 2451

Christ and the Human Soul, Cycle 34, Lecture 1, Norrkoping, July
12,1914. Published London 1927, P. 29. S 2939

Egyptian Myths and Mysteries, Cycle 5, Lecture 10, Leipzig, September
12, 1908. Published London 1933, P. 147. S l832

Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, Cycle
45, Lecture 7, Berlin, April 19, 1917. Published London 1945, P.106.
S-336

THOMAS AQUINAS:

The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of Paul, Cycle 25, Lecture 1,
Cologne, December 28, 1912. Published London, 1945, P. 7. S 2670

The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, 3 Lectures given at Dornach, May 22
to 24, 1920. Published London, 1932. S4130-32-34

JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA:

Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy, Cycle 22,
Lecture 4, June 6, 1912, Christiania (Oslo). Published London
1945,P.62.S-2607

DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE:

The Gospel of John, Cycle 3, Lecture 2, Hamburg, May 19, 1908.
Published New York, 1940, P. 29. S l756

The Spiritual Hierarchies, Cycle 7, Lectures ^I and 3, April 12 and
13, 1909, Duesseldorf. Published London, 1931, PP. 1 and 24. S 1973
and 1975

The East in the Light of the West, Cycle 9, Lecture 6, August 28,
1900. Munich. Published London 1940, P. 100. S 2050

CHRISTOLOGY:

In addition to the cycles of lectures mentioned under the section
listing references on "the Gospels," above, the following lectures
among many others give specific material relative to the Christ and to
Christology:

Christ at the Time of the Mystery of Golgotha and Christ in the
Twentieth Century. A lecture given in London, May 2, 1913. Published
London, n.d. brochure. S-2774

The Pre-Earthly Deeds of Christ. A lecture given in Pforzheim, March
7, 1914. Published London, n.d. brochure. S-2900

The Four Sacrifices of Christ: the Three Steps Leading to the Mystery
of Golgotha. A lecture given in Basel, June 2, 1914. Published New
York, 1934, brochure. S-2934

How Do I Find the Christ? A lecture given in Zurich, October 16,
1918. Published New York, 1941, brochure. S-3578

The Teachings of Christ the Resurrected, Reflections on the Mystery of
Golgotha. A lecture given at the Hague, April 13, 1922. Published New
York, 1940, brochure. S-4814

How Can Mankind Find the Christ Again? 5 lectures given in Dornach,
December 24-29, 1918. Published New York, 1947. S-3619

Cognition and Knowledge of the Christ. A lecture given in London,
April 15, 1922. Published London, n.d., brochure. S-4816

The Threefold Sun and the Risen Christ. A lecture given in London,
April 24, 1922. Published New York, 1942, brochure. S-4821

The Mystery of the Trinity. 4 lectures given in Dornach, July 23, and
following days, 1922. Published London 1947, brochure. S-4903

The Mystery of Golgotha. A lecture given in Manchester College Chapel,
Oxford University, August 27, 1922. Published London 1940, brochure.
S-4963

Cosmology, Religion, Philosophy. A report in essay form by Rudolf
Steiner covering a course of 10 lectures given by him at Dornach in
September 1922. Published London, 1943. S-4968

The Concealed Aspects of Human Existence and the Christ Impulse. A
lecture given at The Hague, November 5, 1922. Published New York 1911.
brochure S-5073

The Christ Mystery in Relation to the Secrets of Pentecost. A lecture
given in Christiania (Oslo), May 17, 1923. Published London 1927 as a
brochure. Also contained in the book, Three Lectures on Easter and
Pentecost, published in London, 1932, p. 37. S-5282

The Birth of Christianity. A lecture given at Dornach, March 5, 1924.
Published London 1950, brochure. S-5629

Christianity in the Evolution of Modern Mankind. A lecture given in
Berlin, February 15, 1909. Published New York, 1944, brochure. S-1937

The Bible and Wisdom. A lecture given at Hamburg, December 5, 908.
Published London, 1941, brochure. S-1883

 

Part E: Acknowledgment

Acknowledgment

Three bibliographical works in German have been of assistance in
preparation of the foregoing Reference Guide:

Das Vortragswerk Rudolf Steiners (The Lectures of Rudolf Steiner), a
listing of his lectures, addresses, courses and cycles, compiled by
Hans Schmidt and published by The Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer
Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland, 1950.

Das Literarische Lebenswerk Rudolf Steiners (The Literary Work of
Rudolf Steiner), a bibliography prepared by C. S. Picht and published
by the same publisher, 1926.

Bibliographie der Werke Rudolf Steiners (Bibliography of the Works of
Rudolf Steiner), prepared by Dr. Guenther Wachsmuth as a
bibliographical supplement to his Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner, and
issued by the same publisher as the above books, 1942.

To date, none of the three bibliographical works have been published
in English translation, though the Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner by
Guenther Wachsmuth can be ordered through the publishers of the
present book.

 

Rudolf Steiner

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