Life and Death: The Greater Guardian of the
Threshold
It has been
described in the foregoing chapter how significant for the human
being is his meeting with the so-called lesser Guardian of the
Threshold by virtue of the fact that he becomes aware of confronting
a supersensible being whom he has himself brought into existence, and
whose body consists of the hitherto invisible results of the
student's own actions, feelings, and thoughts. These unseen forces
have become the cause of his destiny and his character, and he
realizes how he himself founded the present in the past. He can
understand why his inner self, now standing to a certain extent
revealed before him, includes particular inclinations and habits, and
he can also recognize the origin of certain blows of fate that have
befallen him. He perceives why he loves one thing and hates another;
why one thing makes him happy and another unhappy. Visible life is
explained by the invisible causes. The essential facts of life, too
— health and illness, birth and death — unveil themselves
before his gaze. He observes how before his birth he wove the causes
which necessarily led to his return into life. Henceforth he knows
that being within himself which is fashioned with all its
imperfections in the visible world, and which can only be brought to
its final perfection in this same visible world. For in no other
world is an opportunity given to build up and complete this being.
Moreover, he recognizes that death cannot sever him forever from this
world; for he says to himself: “Once I came into this world
because, being what I was, I needed the life it provided to acquire
qualities unattainable in any other world. And I must remain bound to
this world until I have developed within myself everything that can
here be gained. I shall some day become a useful collaborator in
another world only by acquiring all the requisite faculties in this
physical world.”
Thanks to his
insight into the supersensible world, the initiate gains a better
knowledge and appreciation of the true value of visible nature than
was possible before his higher training; and this may be counted
among his most important experiences. Anyone not possessing this
insight and perhaps therefore imagining the supersensible regions to
be infinitely more valuable, is likely to underestimate the physical
world. Yet the possessor of this insight knows that without
experience in visible reality he would be totally powerless in that
other invisible reality. Before he can live in the latter he must
have the requisite faculties and instruments which can only be
acquired in the visible world. Consciousness in the invisible world
is not possible without spiritual sight, but this power of vision in
the higher world is gradually developed through experience in the
lower. No one can be born in the spiritual world with spiritual eyes
without having first developed them in the physical world, any more
than a child could be born with physical eyes, had they not already
been formed within the mother's womb.
From this
standpoint it will also be readily understood why the Threshold to
the supersensible world is watched over by a Guardian. In no case may
real insight into those regions be permitted to anyone lacking the
requisite faculties; therefore, when at the hour of death anyone
enters the other world while still incompetent to work in it, the
higher experiences are shrouded from him until he is fit to behold
them.
When the student
enters the supersensible world, life acquires quite a new meaning for
him; he discerns in the physical world the seed-ground of a higher
world, so that in a certain sense the higher will appear defective
without the lower. Two outlooks are opened before him; the first into
the past and the second into the future. His vision extends to a past
in which this physical world was not yet existent; for he has long
since discarded the prejudice that the supersensible world was
developed out of the sense-world. He knows that the former existed
first, and that out of it everything physical was evolved. He sees
that he himself belonged to a supersensible world before coming for
the first time into this sense-world. But this pristine supersensible
world needed to pass through the sense-world, for without this
passage its further evolution would not have been possible. It can
only pursue its course when certain things will have developed
requisite faculties within the realm of the senses. These beings are
none other than human beings. They owe their present life to an
imperfect stage of spiritual existence and are being led, even within
this stage, to that perfection which will make them fit for further
work in the higher world. At this point the outlook is directed into
the future. A higher stage of the supersensible world is discerned
which will contain the fruits matured in the sense-world. The
sense-world as such will be overcome, but its results will be
embodied in a higher world.
The existence of
disease and death in the sense-world is thus explained. Death merely
expresses the fact that the original supersensible world reached a
point beyond which it could not progress by itself. Universal death
must needs have overtaken it, had it not received a fresh
life-impulse. Thus this new life has evolved into a battle with
universal death. From the remnants of a dying, rigid world there
sprouted the seeds of a new one. That is why we have death and life
in the world. The decaying portion of the old world adheres to the
new life blossoming from it, and the process of evolution moves
slowly. This comes to expression most clearly in man himself. The
sheath he bears is gathered from the preserved remnants of the old
world, and within this sheath the germ of that being is matured which
will live in the future.
Thus man is
twofold: mortal and immortal. The mortal is in its last, the immortal
in its first stage. But it is only within this twofold world, which
finds its expression in the sense-world, that he can acquire the
requisite faculties to lead the world to immortality. Indeed, this
task is precisely to gather the fruits of the mortal for the
immortal. And as he glances at himself as the result of his own work
in the past he cannot but say: “I have in me the elements of a
decaying world. They are at work in me, and I can only break their
power little by little, thanks to the new immortal elements coming to
life within me.” This is the path leading man from death to
life. Could he but speak to himself with full consciousness at the
hour of his death, he would say: “The perishing world was my
task-master. I am now dying as the result of the entire past in which
I am enmeshed. Yet the soil of mortal life has matured the seeds of
immortal life. I carry them with me into another world. If it had
merely depended on the past, I could never have been born. The life
of the past came to an end with birth. Life in the sense-world is
wrested from universal death by the newly formed life-germ. The time
between birth and death is merely an expression for the sum of values
wrested from the dying past by the new life; and illness is nothing
but the continued effect of the dying portions of the
past.”
In the above the
answer will be found to the question why man works his way only
gradually through error and imperfection to the good and true. His
actions, feelings, and thoughts are at first dominated by the
perishing and the mortal. The latter gave rise to his sense-organs.
For this reason, these organs and all things activating them are
doomed to perish The imperishable will not be found in the instincts,
impulses, and passions, or in the organs belonging to them, but only
in the work produced by these organs. Man must extract from the
perishable everything that can be extracted, and this work alone will
enable him to discard the background out of which he has grown, and
which finds its expression in the physical sense-world.
Thus the first
Guardian confronts man as the counterpart of his two-fold nature in
which perishable and imperishable are blended; and it stands clearly
proved how far removed he still is from attaining that sublime
luminous figure which may again dwell in the pure, spiritual world.
The extent to which he is entangled in the physical sense-world is
exposed to the student's view. The presence of instincts, impulses,
desires, egotistical wishes and all forms of selfishness, and so
forth, expresses itself in this entanglement, as it does further in
his membership in a race, a nation, and so forth; for peoples and
races are but steps leading to pure humanity. A race or a nation
stands so much the higher, the more perfectly its members express the
pure, ideal human type, the further they have worked their way from
the physical and perishable to the supersensible and imperishable.
The evolution of man through the incarnations in ever higher national
and racial forms is thus a process of liberation. Man must finally
appear in harmonious perfection. In a similar way, the pilgrimage
through ever purer forms of morality and religion is a perfecting
process; for every moral stage retains the passion for the perishable
beside the seeds of an ideal future.
Now in the
Guardian of the Threshold as described above, the product of the past
is manifest, containing only so many seeds of the future as could be
planted in the course of time. Yet everything that can be extracted
from the sense-world must be carried into the supersensible world.
Were man to bring with him only what had been woven into his
counterpart out of the past, his earthly task would remain but
partially accomplished. For this reason the lesser Guardian of the
Threshold is joined, after a time, by the greater Guardian. The
meeting with the second Guardian will again be described in narrative
form.
When the student
has recognized all the elements from which he must liberate himself,
his way is barred by a sublime luminous being whose beauty is
difficult to describe in the words of human language. This encounter
takes place when the sundering of the organs of thinking, feeling,
and willing extends to the physical body, so that their reciprocal
connection is no longer regulated by themselves but by the higher
consciousness, which has now entirely liberated itself from physical
conditions. The organs of thinking, feeling and willing will then be
controlled from supersensible regions as instruments in the power of
the human soul. The latter, thus liberated from all physical bonds,
is now confronted by the second Guardian of the Threshold who speaks
as follows:
“Thou hast
released thyself from the world of the senses. Thou hast won the
right to become a citizen of the supersensible world, whence thine
activity can now be directed. For thine own sake, thou dost no longer
require thy physical body in its present form. If thine intention
were merely to acquire the faculties necessary for life in the
supersensible world, thou needest no longer return to the
sense-world. But now behold me. See how sublimely I tower above all
that thou hast made of thyself thus far. Thou hast attained thy
present degree of perfection thanks to the faculties thou wert able
to develop in the sense-world as long as thou wert still confined to
it. But now a new era is to begin, in which thy liberated powers must
be applied to further work in the world of the senses. Hitherto thou
hast sought only thine own release, but now, having thyself become
free, thou canst go forth as a liberator of thy fellows. Until today
thou hast striven as an individual, but now seek to coordinate
thyself with the whole, so that thou mayst bring into the
supersensible world not thyself alone, but all things else existing
in the world of the senses. Thou wilt some day be able to unite with
me, but I cannot be blessed so long as others remain unredeemed. As a
separate freed being, thou wouldst fain enter at once the kingdom of
the supersensible; yet thou wouldst be forced to look down on the
still unredeemed beings in the physical world, having sundered thy
destiny from theirs, although thou and they are inseparably united.
Ye all did perforce descend into the sense-world to gather powers
needed for a higher world. To separate thyself from thy fellows would
mean to abuse those very powers which thou couldst not have developed
save in their company. Thou couldst not have descended had they not
done so; and without them the powers needed for supersensible
existence would fail thee. Thou must now share with thy fellows the
powers which, together with them, thou didst acquire. I shall
therefore bar thine entry into the higher regions of the
supersensible world so long as thou hast not applied all the powers
thou hast acquired to the liberation of thy companions. With the
powers already at thy disposal thou mayst sojourn in the lower
regions of the supersensible world; but I stand before the portal of
the higher regions as the Cherub with the fiery sword before
Paradise, and I bar thine entrance as long as powers unused in the
sense-world still remain in thee. And if thou dost refuse to apply
thy powers in this world, others will come who will not refuse; and a
higher supersensible world will receive all the fruits of the
sense-world, while thou wilt lose from under thy feet the very ground
in which thou wert rooted. The purified world will develop above and
beyond thee, and thou shalt be excluded from it. Thus thou wouldst
tread the black path, while the others from whom thou didst
sever thyself tread the white path.”
With these words
the greater Guardian makes his presence known soon after the meeting
with the first Guardian has taken place. The initiate knows full well
what is in store for him if he yields to the temptation of a
premature abode in the supersensible world. An indescribable splendor
shines forth from the second Guardian of the Threshold; union with
him looms as a far distant ideal before the soul's vision. Yet there
is also the certitude that this union will not be possible until all
the powers afforded by this world are applied to the task of its
liberation and redemption. By fulfilling the demands of the higher
light-being the initiate will contribute to the liberation of the
human race. He lays his gifts on the sacrificial altar of humanity.
Should he prefer his own premature elevation into the supersensible
world, the stream of human evolution will flow over and past him.
After his liberation he can gain no new powers from the world of the
senses; and if he places his work at the world's disposal it will
entail his renouncement of any further benefit for himself.
It does not
follow that, when called upon to decide, anyone will naturally follow
the white path. That depends entirely upon whether he is so far
purified at the time of his decision that no trace of self-seeking
makes this prospect of felicity appear desirable. For the allurements
here are the strongest possible; whereas on the other side no special
allurements are evident. Here nothing appeals to his egotism. The
gift he receives in the higher regions of the supersensible world is
nothing that comes to him, but only something that flows from him,
that is, love for the world and for his fellows. Nothing that egotism
desires is denied upon the black path, for the latter provides, on
the contrary, for the complete gratification of egotism, and will not
fail to attract those desiring merely their own felicity, for it is
indeed the appropriate path for them. No one therefore should expect
the occultists of the white path to give him instruction for the
development of his own egotistical self. They do not take the
slightest interest in the felicity of the individual man. Each can
attain that for himself, and it is not the task of the white
occultists to shorten the way; for they are only concerned with the
development and liberation of all human beings and all creatures.
Their instructions therefore deal only with the development of powers
for collaboration in this work. Thus they place selfless devotion and
self-sacrifice before all other qualities. They never actually refuse
anyone, for even the greatest egotist can purify himself; but no one
merely seeking an advantage for himself will ever obtain assistance
from the white occultists. Even when they do not refuse their help,
he, the seeker, deprives himself of the advantage resulting from
their assistance. Anyone, therefore, really following the
instructions of the good occultists will, upon crossing the
Threshold, understand the demands of the greater Guardian; anyone,
however, not following their instructions can never hope to reach the
Threshold. Their instructions, if followed, produce good results or
no results; for it is no part of their task to lead to egotistical
felicity and a mere existence in the supersensible worlds. In fact,
it becomes their duty to keep the student away from the supersensible
world until he can enter it with the will for selfless
collaboration.
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