LECTURE
I
The
object of these lectures is to place before you an idea of the
Christ-Event in so far as it is connected with the historical
appearance of the Christ in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. So many
questions of the spiritual life are bound up with this subject that
the choice of it will enable us to make a wide survey of the realm of
Spiritual Science and its mission, and to discuss the significance of
the Anthroposophical Movement for the spiritual life of the present
time. We shall also have the opportunity of learning what the content
of religion is. And since this content must spring from the common
heritage of mankind, we shall seek to know it in its relation to the
deeper sources of religious life, and to what the sources of occult
science have to tell us concerning the foundation of all religious
and philosophic endeavours. Much that we shall have to discuss will
seem to lie very far from the theme itself, but it will all lead us
back to our main purpose.
We shall best come
to a more precise understanding of our subject — modern
religious life on the one hand and the spiritual-scientific deepening
of spiritual life on the other — if we glance at the origins
both of religious life and of occult spiritual life in recent
centuries. For as regards spiritual development in Europe during this
period, we can discern two directions of thought which have been
cultivated with the utmost intensity: on the one hand an exaggeration
of the Jesus-Principle, and on the other a most careful,
conscientious preservation of the Christ-Principle. When we place
before our minds these two recent streams, we must see in the
exaggeration of the Jesus-Principle a great and dangerous error in
the spiritual life of those times, and on the other side a movement
of deep significance, a movement which seeks above all the true paths
and is careful to avoid the paths of error. From the outset,
therefore, in our judgment of two entirely different spiritual
movements, we have to ascribe serious errors to one of them and most
earnest efforts after truth to the other.
The movement which
interests us in connection with our spiritual-scientific point of
view, and which we may call an extraordinarily dangerous error in a
certain sense, is the movement known in the external world as
Jesuitism. In Jesuitism we encounter a dangerous exaggeration of the
Jesus-Principle. In the other movement, which for centuries has
existed in Europe as Rosicrucianism, we have an inward
Christ-movement which above all seeks carefully for the ways of
truth.
Ever since a
Jesuitical current arose in Europe, much has been said and written in
exoteric life about Jesuitism. Those who wish to study spiritual life
from its deeper sources will thus be concerned to see how far
Jesuitism signifies a dangerous exaggeration of the Jesus-Principle.
If we wish to arrive at a true characterisation of Jesuitism, we must
get to know how the three chief principles of world-evolution, which
are indicated in the most varied ways in the different
world-outlooks, find practical expression in human life, including
exoteric life. Today we will first of all turn quite away from the
deeper significance and characterisation of these three fundamental
streams, which run through all life and all evolution, and will
review them from an external point of view.
First of all we have
the cognitional element in our soul-life. Now, whatever may be said
against the abstractions of a one-sided intellectual search for
truth, or against the alienation from life of many scientific,
philosophical, and theosophical endeavours, anyone who is clear in
his own mind as to what he wills and what he can will, knows that
Cognition belongs to the most deeply rooted activities of the soul.
For whether we seek knowledge chiefly through thinking, or more
through sensation or feeling, Cognition always signifies a taking
account of the world around us, and also of ourselves. Hence we must
say that whether we are satisfied for the moment with the simplest
experiences of the soul, or whether we wish to devote ourselves to
the most complicated analysis of the mysteries of existence,
Cognition is the primary and most significant question. For it is
basically through Cognition that we form a picture of the content of
the world — a picture we live by and from which our entire
soul-life is nourished. The very first sense-impression, in fact all
sense-life, must be included in the realm of Cognition, along with
the highest formulations of the intellect.
Under Cognition we
must include also the impulse to distinguish between the beautiful
and the ugly, for although it is true in a certain sense that there
is no disputing about taste, yet cognition is involved when someone
has adopted a certain judgment in a question of taste and can
distinguish between the beautiful and the ugly. Again, our moral
impulses — those which prompt us to do good and abstain from
evil — must be seen as moral ideas, as cognition, or as
impulses to do the one and avoid the other. Even what we call our
conscience, however vague the impulses from it may be, comes under
the heading of cognition. In short, the world we are consciously
aware of, whether it be reality or maya; the world we live in
consciously, everything we are conscious of — all this can be
embraced under the heading: cognitive spiritual life.
Everyone, however,
must acknowledge that under the surface of this cognitive life
something else can be discerned; that in our everyday existence our
soul-life gives evidence of many things which are not part of our
conscious life. When we wake up in the morning, our soul-life is
always strengthened and refreshed and newly born from sleep. During
the unconsciousness of sleep we have gained something which is
outside the realm of conscious cognition, but comes from a region
where our soul is active below the level of consciousness.
In waking life, too,
we must admit that we are impelled by impulses, instincts and forces
which throw up their waves into our conscious life, while they work
and have their being below it. We become aware that they work below
the conscious when they rise above the surface which separates the
conscious from the subconscious. And indeed our moral life also makes
us aware of a subconscious soul-life of this kind, for we can see how
in the moral realm this or that ideal comes to birth. It takes only a
little self-knowledge to realise that these ideals do rise up into
our soul-life, but that we are far from always knowing how our great
moral ideals are connected with the deepest questions of existence,
or how they belong to the will of God, in which they must ultimately
be grounded. We might indeed compare our soul-life in its totality
with a deep ocean. The depths of this oceanic soul-life throw up
waves to the surface, and those that break out into the realm of air,
which we can compare with normal consciousness, are brought within
the range of conscious cognition. All conscious life is rooted in a
subconscious soul-life.
Fundamentally, the
whole evolution of mankind can be understood only if a subconscious
soul-life of this kind is acknowledged. For what does the progress of
spiritual life signify save that many things which have long dwelt
down below take form for the first time when they are brought to
surface level? So it is, for example, when an inventive idea arises
in the form of an impulse towards discovery. Subconscious soul-life,
as real as our conscious life, must therefore be recognised as a
second element in our life of soul.
If we place this
subconscious soul-life in a realm that is at first unknown —
but not unknowable — we must contrast it with a third element.
This element is immediately apparent to external, exoteric
observation, for if we turn our attention to the outer world through
our senses, or approach it through our intellect or any form of
mental activity, we come to know all sorts of things. But a more
exact consideration of every age of cognition compels us to realise
that behind everything we can know about the world at large something
else lies hidden: something that is certainly not unknowable but in
every epoch has to be described as not yet known. And this
not-yet-known, which lies below the surface of the known in the
mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, belongs as much to ourselves as
it does to external nature. It belongs to us in so far as we absorb
and work up in our physical organism the materials and forces of the
outer world; and inasmuch as we have within us a portion of nature,
we have also within us a portion of the unknown in nature. So in the
world wherein we live we must distinguish a triad: our conscious
spiritual life; our subconscious soul-life below the threshold of
consciousness; and that which, as the unknown in nature and at the
same time in man, lives in us as part of the great unknown Nature.
This triad emerges
directly from a rational observation of the world. And if looking
away from all dogmatic statements, from all philosophical or
theosophical traditions, in so far as these are clothed in conceptual
definitions or formulations, we may ask: How has the human mind
always expressed the fact that this triad is present not only in the
immediate environment, but in the whole world to which man himself
belongs? We must then reply: Man gives the name of Spirit to all that
can be known within the horizon of the conscious. He designates as
the Son or the Logos that which works in the subconscious and throws
up only its waves from down below. And to that which belongs equally
to the unknown in Nature, and to the part of our own being which is
of one kind with Nature, the name of the Father-Principle has always
been given, because it was felt to express the relation of the third
principle to the other two.
Besides what has now
been said concerning the Spirit, the Son, and the Father-Principle,
it can be taken for granted that other differentiations we have
formerly made, and also the differentiations made in this or that
philosophy, have their justifications. But we can say that the most
widely accepted idea of this differentiation corresponds with the
account of it given here.
Now let us ask: How
can we characterise the transition from that which belongs to the
Spirit, and so plays directly into the conscious life of the soul, to
the subconscious element which belongs to the Son-Principle? We shall
best grasp this transition if we realise that into ordinary human
consciousness there plays quite distinctly the element we designate
as Will, in contrast to the elements of ideation and feeling. If we
rightly interpret the Bible saying, ‘The Spirit is willing, but
the flesh is weak’, it indicates that everything grasped by
consciousness lies in the realm of the Spirit, whereas by ‘the
flesh’ is meant everything that lies more in the subconscious.
As to the nature of the Will, we need only think of that which plays
up from the subconscious and enters into our consciousness only when
we form concepts of it. Only when we transform into concepts and
ideas the dark impelling forces which are rooted in the elemental
part of the soul — only then do they enter the realm of the
Spirit; otherwise they remain in the realm of the Son-Principle. And
since the Will plays through our feelings into the life of ideas, we
see quite clearly the breaking out into the conscious of the waves
from the subconscious ocean. In our threefold soul-life we have two
elements, ideation and feeling, which belong to conscious life, but
feeling descends directly into the realm of the Will, and the nearer
we come to the impulses of Will, the further we descend into the
subconscious, the dark realms into which we sink completely when
consciousness is engulfed in deep, dreamless sleep.
Thus we see that the
Will-element, because it descends into the realm of the subconscious,
stands towards the individual being of man in a relationship quite
different from that of cognition, the realm of the Spirit. And so,
when we differentiate between Spirit and Son, we may be impelled to
surmise that man's relationship to the Spirit is different from
his relationship to the Son. How is this to be understood?
Even in exoteric
life it is quite easy to understand. Certainly the realm of cognition
has given rise to all kinds of debate, but if people would only come
to understand one another concerning the concepts and ideas they
formulate for themselves, controversy over questions of cognition
would gradually cease. I have often emphasised that we no longer
dispute over mathematics, because we have raised mathematics entirely
into consciousness. The things we dispute about are those not yet
raised into consciousness: we still allow our subconscious impulses,
instincts, and passions to play into them. So we see that in the
realm of cognition we have to do with something more universally
human than anything to be found in the subconscious realm. When we
meet another human being and enter into the most varied relationships
with him, it is in the realm of conscious spiritual life that
understanding should be possible. And a mark of a healthy soul-life
is that it will always wish and hope to reach an understanding with
the other person concerning things that belong to conscious spiritual
life. It will be unhealthy for the soul if that hope is lost.
On the other hand,
we must recognise the Will-element, and everything in another
person's subconscious, as something which should on no account
be intruded upon; it must be regarded as his innermost sanctuary. We
need consider only how unpleasant to a healthy soul-life is the
feeling that the Will of another man is being put under compulsion.
It is not only aesthetically but morally unpleasant to see the
conscious soul-life of anyone eliminated by hypnotism or any other
powerful means; or to see the will-power of one person working
directly on the Will of another. The only healthy way to gain
influence over another person's Will is through cognition.
Cognition should be the means whereby one soul comes to an
understanding with another. A person must first translate his wishes
into a conceptual form; then they may influence another person's
cognition, and they should touch his Will only by this indirect
route. Nothing else can be satisfactory in the highest, most ideal
sense to a healthy life of soul. Every kind of forcible working of
Will upon Will must evoke an unpleasant impression.
In other words,
human nature strives, in so far as it is healthy, to develop in the
realm of the Spirit the life it has in common with others, and to
cherish and respect the realm of the subconscious, in so far as it
comes to expression in the human organism, as an inviolable sanctuary
that should rest in the personality, the individuality, of each man
and should not be approached save through the door of conscious
cognition. So at least a modern consciousness, attuned to our epoch,
must feel if it is to know itself to be healthy.
In later lectures we
shall see whether this was so in all periods of human evolution. What
has been said today will help us to think clearly about what is
outside us and what is within us, at least for our own period. This
leads to the conclusion that fundamentally the realm of the Son —
embracing everything that we designate as the Son or Logos —
must be awakened in each individual as a quite personal concern; and
that the realm of common life, where men may be influenced by one
another, is the realm of the Spirit.
We see this
expressed in the grandest, most significant way in the New Testament
accounts of the attitude of Christ Jesus towards His first disciples
and followers. From all that is told concerning the Christ-Event we
can gather that the followers who had hastened to Jesus during his
life-time were bewildered when His life ended with the crucifixion;
with that form of death which, in the land where the Christ-Event
took its course, was regarded as the only possible expiation for the
greatest crimes. And although this death on the cross did not affect
everyone as it did Saul, who later became Paul, and as Saul had
concluded that someone who suffered such a death could not be the
Messiah, or the Christ — for the crucifixion had made a milder
impression on the disciples, one might say — yet it is obvious
that the writers of the Gospels wished to give the impression that
Christ Jesus, through his subjection to the shameful death on the
cross, had forfeited some of the effect he had had on the hearts of
those around him.
But with this
account something else is connected. The influence that Christ Jesus
had acquired — an influence we must characterise more exactly
during these lectures — was restored to Him after the
Resurrection. Whatever may be our present thoughts about the
Resurrection, we shall have to discuss it here in the light of occult
science; and then, if we simply go by the Gospel narratives, one
thing will be clear: for those to whom Christ appeared after the
Resurrection He had become someone who was present in a quite special
way, different entirely from His previous presence.
In speaking on the
Gospel of St. John I have already pointed out how impossible it would
have been for anyone who knew Jesus not to recognise Him after three
days, or to confuse Him with someone else, if He had not appeared in
an altered form. The Evangelists wish particularly to evoke the
impression that the Christ appeared in this altered form. But they
also wish to indicate something else. For the Christ to exert
influence on human souls, a certain receptivity in those souls was
necessary. And this receptivity had to be acted on not merely by an
influence from the realm of the Spirit but by the actual sight of the
Christ-Being.
If we ask what this
signifies, we must realise that when a person stands before us, his
effect upon us goes beyond anything we are conscious of. Whenever a
human being or other being works upon us, unconscious elements affect
our soul-life; they are produced by the other being indirectly
through consciousness, but he can produce them only if he stands
before us in actuality. What the Christ brought about from person to
person after the so-called Resurrection was something that worked up
from the unconscious soul-powers of the disciples into their
soul-life: an acquaintance with the Son. Hence the differences in the
portrayal of the risen Christ; hence, too, the variations in the
accounts, showing how the Christ appeared to one or other person,
according to the disposition of the person concerned. Here we see the
Christ-Being acting on the subconscious part of the souls of the
disciples; hence the appearances are quite individual, and we should
not complain because they are not uniform.
If, however, the
significance of the Christ for the world was to be His bringing to
all men something common to all of them, then not only this
individual working of the Son had to proceed from the Christ, but the
element of Spirit, which can encompass something that belongs to all
men, had to be renewed by Him. This is indicated by the statement
that after the Christ had worked upon the Logos-nature of man. He
sent forth the Spirit in the form of the renewed or ‘holy
Spirit’. Thus was created that element common to all men which
is characterised when we are told that the disciples, after they had
received the Spirit, began to speak in the most diverse tongues. Here
we are shown how the common element resides in the outpouring of the
Holy Spirit. And something else is indicated: how different is this
outpouring of the Spirit from the simple imparting of the power of
the Son, for in the Acts of the Apostles we are told that certain
persons to whom the apostles came had already received the
Jesus-baptism, and yet they had now to receive for the first time the
Spirit, symbolically indicated by the laying on of hands. In the
characterisation of the Christ-Event we are made very precisely aware
of the difference between the working we have to designate as the
Christ-working, which acts upon the subconscious impulses of the soul
and so must have a personal, inward character, and the
Spirit-element, which represents something common to all mankind.
It is this
Spirit-element that those who have named themselves ‘Rosicrucians’
have sought to preserve most carefully, as far as human weakness
permits. The Rosicrucians have always wished to adhere strictly to
the rule that even in the highest regions of Initiation nothing must
be worked upon except the Spirit-element which, as common between man
and man, is available in the evolution of humanity. The Initiation of
the Rosicrucians was an Initiation of the Spirit. It was never an
Initiation of the Will, for the Will of man was to be respected as a
sanctuary in the innermost part of the soul. Hence the individual was
led to those Initiations which were to take him beyond the stage of
Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition, but always so that he could
recognise within himself the response which the development of the
Spirit-element was to call forth. No influence was to be exerted on
the Will.
We must not mistake
this attitude for one of indifference towards the Will. The point is
that by excluding all direct working upon the Will, the purest
spiritual influence was imparted indirectly through the Spirit. When
we come to an understanding with another man with regard to entering
on the path of knowledge of the Spirit, light and warmth are radiated
from the spiritual path, and they then enkindle the Will, but always
by the indirect path through the Spirit — never otherwise.
In Rosicrucianism,
therefore, we can observe in the highest sense that impulse of
Christianity which finds twofold expression: on the one hand in the
Son-element, in the Christ-working which goes down deeply into the
subconscious; on the other, in the Spirit-working which embraces all
that falls within the horizon of our consciousness. We must indeed
bear the Christ in our Will; but the way in which men should come to
an understanding with each other in life concerning the Christ can be
found only — in the Rosicrucian sense — through a
conscious soul-life which penetrates ever more deeply into the
occult.
In reaction against
many other spiritual streams in Europe, the opposite way was taken by
those who are usually called Jesuits. The radical, fundamental
difference between what we justifiably call the Christian way of the
Spirit and the Jesuit way of the Spirit, which gives a one-sided
exaggeration to the Jesus-Principle, is that the intention of the
Jesuit way is to work directly, at all times, upon the Will. The
difference is clearly shown in the method by which the pupil of
Jesuitism is educated. Jesuitism is not to be taken lightly, or
merely exoterically, but also esoterically, for it is rooted in
esotericism. It is not, however, rooted in the spiritual life that is
poured out through the symbol of Pentecost, but it seeks to root
itself directly in the Jesus-element of the Son, which means in the
Will; and thereby it exaggerates the Jesus-element of the Will.
This will be seen
when we now enquire into the esoteric part of Jesuitism, its various
spiritual exercises. How were these exercises arranged? The essential
point is that every single pupil of Jesuitism goes through exercises
which lead into the occult life, but into the Will, and within the
field of occultism they hold the Will in severe discipline; they
‘break it in’, one might say. And the significant fact is
that this discipline of the Will does not arise merely from the
surface of life, but from something deeper, because the pupil has
been led into the occult, in the way just indicated.
If now, leaving
aside the exercises of prayer preparatory to all Jesuit exercises, we
consider these occult exercises, at least in their chief points, we
find that the pupil has first to call up a vivid Imagination of
Christ Jesus as the King of the Worlds — mark this carefully:
an Imagination. And no one would be received into the degrees of
Jesuitism who had not gone through such exercises, and had not
experienced in his soul the transformation which such psychic
exercises mean for the whole man. But this Imaginative presentation
of Christ Jesus as King of the Worlds has to be preceded by something
else. The pupil has to call up for himself, in absolute solitude and
seclusion, a picture of man as he was created in the world, and how
by falling into sin he incurred the possibility of most terrible
punishments. And it is strictly prescribed how one must picture such
a man; how if he were left to himself he would incur the utmost of
torturing penalties. The rules are extraordinarily severe. With all
other concepts or ideas excluded, this picture must live
uninterruptedly within the soul of the future Jesuit, the picture of
the God-forsaken man, the man exposed to the most fearful
punishments, together with the feeling: ‘That am I, since I
have come into the world and have forsaken God, and have exposed
myself to the possibility of the most fearful punishments.’
This must call forth the fear of being forsaken by God, and
detestation of man as he is according to his own nature.
Then, in a further
Imagination, over against the picture of the outcast, God-forsaken
man, must be set the picture of the God full of pity who then became
Christ, and through His acts on earth atones for what man has brought
about by forsaking the divine path. In contrast to the Imagination of
the God-forsaken man, there must arise that of the all-merciful,
loving Being, Christ Jesus, to whom alone it is due that man is not
exposed to all possible punishments working upon his soul. And, just
as vividly as a feeling of contempt for the forsaking of the divine
path had first to become fixed in the soul of the Jesuit pupil, so
must a feeling of humility and contrition now take hold of him in the
presence of Christ.
When these two
feelings have been called forth in the pupil, then for several weeks
he has to practise severe exercises, picturing to himself in
Imagination all details of the life of Jesus from his birth to the
Crucifixion and Resurrection. And all that can arise in the soul
emerges when the pupil lives in rigorous seclusion and, except for
necessary meals, lets nothing else work upon his soul than the
pictures which the Gospels give of the compassionate life of Jesus.
But these pictures do not merely appear before him in thoughts and
ideas; they must work upon his soul in vivid, living Imaginations.
Only someone who
really knows how the human soul is transformed through Imaginations
which work with full living power — only he knows that under
such conditions the soul is in fact completely changed. Such
Imaginations, because they are concentrated in the most intense,
one-sided way, first on sinful man, secondly on the compassionate
God, and then only on the pictures from the New Testament, evoke
precisely, through the law of polarity, a strengthened Will. These
pictures produce their effect directly, at first hand, for any
reflection upon them must be dutifully excluded. It is solely a
matter of holding before one's mind these Imaginations, as they
have just been described.
What then follows is
this. In the further exercises Christ Jesus — and now we may no
longer say Christ but exclusively Jesus — is represented as the
universal King of the Worlds, and thereby the Jesus element is
exaggerated. Because Christ had to be incarnated in a human body, the
purely spiritual took part in the physical world; but over against
this participation stand the monumental and most significant words:
‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ We can exaggerate the
Jesus element by making Jesus into a king of this world, by making
Him that which He would have become if He had not resisted the
tempter who wished to give Him ‘all the kingdoms of the world
and the glory thereof’. Then Jesus of Nazareth would have been
a king who, unlike other kings who possess only a portion of the
earth, would have had the whole earth under his sway. If we think of
this king portrayed in this guise, his kingly power so increased that
the whole earth is his domain, then we should have the very picture
that followed the other exercises through which the personal will of
each Jesuit pupil had been sufficiently strengthened.
To prepare for this
picture of ‘King Jesus’, this Ruler over all the kingdoms
of the earth, the pupil had to form an Imagination of Babylon and the
plain around Babylon as a living picture, and, enthroned over
Babylon, Lucifer with his banner. This picture had to be visualised
with great exactitude, for it is a powerful Imagination: King
Lucifer, with his banner and his hosts of Luciferic angels, seated
amidst fire and dense smoke, as he sends out his angels to conquer
the kingdoms of the earth. And the whole danger that issues from the
‘banner of Lucifer’ must first of all be imagined by
itself, without casting a glance upon Christ Jesus. The soul must be
entirely engrossed in the Imagination of the danger which issues from
the banner of Lucifer. The soul must learn to feel that the greatest
danger to the world's existence that could be conjured forth
would be a victory for the banner of Lucifer. And when this picture
has had its effect, the other Imagination, ‘The banner of
Jesus’, must take its place. The pupil must now visualise
Jerusalem and the plain around Jerusalem; King Jesus with His hosts,
how He sends out His hosts, how He conquers and drives off the hosts
of Lucifer and makes Himself King of the whole earth — the
victory of the banner of Jesus over the banner of Lucifer.
These are the
strength-giving Imaginations for the Will which are brought before
the soul of the Jesuit pupil. This is what completely changes his
Will; makes him such that in his Will, because it is trained
occultly, he turns away from everything else and surrenders
absolutely to the idea: ‘King Jesus must become the Ruler upon
earth, and we who belong to His army have to employ every means to
make Him Ruler of the earth. To this we pledge ourselves, we who
belong to His host assembled on the plain of Jerusalem, against the
host of Lucifer assembled on the plain of Babylon. And the greatest
disgrace for a soldier of King Jesus is to forsake His banner.’
These ideas,
gathered up into a single resolution of the Will, can certainly give
the Will immense strength. But we must ask: what is it in the
soul-life that has been directly attacked? The element that ought to
be regarded as intrinsically holy, the element that ought not to be
touched — the Will-element. In so far as this Jesuit training
lays hold of the Will-element, while the Jesus-idea seizes the
Will-element completely, in so far is the concept of the dominion of
Jesus exaggerated in the most dangerous way — dangerous because
through it the Will becomes so strong that it can work directly upon
the Will of another. For where the Will becomes so strong through
Imaginations, which means by occult methods, it acquires the capacity
for working directly upon the Will of another, and hence also along
all the other occult paths to which such a Will can have recourse.
Thus we see how in
recent centuries we encounter these two movements, among many others:
one has exaggerated the Jesus-element and sees in ‘King Jesus’
the sole ideal of Christianity, while the other looks solely at the
Christ-element and carefully sets aside anything that could go beyond
it. This second outlook has been much calumniated because it
maintains that Christ has sent the Spirit, so that, indirectly
through the Spirit, Christ can enter into the hearts and minds of
men. In the development of civilisation during the last few centuries
there is hardly a greater contrast than that between Jesuitism and
Rosicrucianism, for Jesuitism contains nothing of what Rosicrucianism
regards as the highest ideal concerning human worth and human
dignity, while Rosicrucianism has always sought to guard itself from
any influence which could in the remotest sense be called Jesuitical.
In this lecture I
wished to show how even so lofty an element as the Jesus-principle
can be exaggerated and then becomes dangerous, and how necessary it
is to sink oneself into the depths of the Christ-Being if we wish to
understand how the strength of Christianity must reside in esteeming,
to the very highest degree, human dignity and human worth, and in
strictly refraining from groping our clumsy way into man's
inmost sanctuary. Rosicrucianism, even more than Christian mysticism,
is attacked by the Jesuit element, because the Jesuits feel that true
Christianity is being sought elsewhere than in the setting which
offers merely ‘King Jesus’ in the leading role. But the
Imaginations here indicated, together with the prescribed exercises,
have made the Will so strong that even protests brought against it in
the name of the Spirit can be defeated.
|