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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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Macrocosm and Microcosm
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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Macrocosm and Microcosm
Schmidt Number: S-2202
On-line since: 7th July, 2002
THE EGYPTIAN MYSTERIES OF OSIRIS AND ISIS
A rather difficult task confronts us today but my listeners will be
willing to submit to the greater demands made upon them if it is said
at the outset that this study will enable us during the next few days
to feel firmer ground under our feet. In Spiritual Science, unless we
are content to remain with abstractions, we must also listen from time
to time to information belonging to the higher regions of spiritual
knowledge. It may also be added that our study today will in no way
consist of deductions or theoretical inferences, but of matters which
have always been known to those who have penetrated more deeply into
these subjects. We shall therefore be dealing with knowledge possessed
by actual individuals.
We heard yesterday how a man would be able to find his bearings within
the inner Organisation of his astral body if he could, on waking,
descend consciously into this astral body; and we were able to form an
idea of what it means to pass the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold. In
point of fact, what was said yesterday was rather hypothetical, for
actually in normal life the moment never comes when merely through
waking a man can penetrate consciously into his inner being. At most
he can prepare himself by mystical deepening for conscious entry into
his external bodily sheaths. What this means, and the preparation it
entails, will only become clear in the course of these lectures. For
normal consciousness it may happen very occasionally
that a man has such moments of conscious awakening as a result of
conditions belonging to his previous incarnations. This can and does
happen to certain individuals. They wake up with a certain sense of
oppression. This sense of oppression is due to the fact that the inner
man, who during sleep felt outspread and free in the Macrocosm,
returns again into the prison of his body. There may also be another
feeling. Under these abnormal conditions a man feels a better being at
the moment of waking than during the course of the day; he feels that
there is something within him that he might call his better self.
Again the reason for this is that on waking a feeling has remained
with him that something has streamed into him during sleep from worlds
higher than the world of his own sensory experiences. These are
feelings that may arise under abnormal conditions even in ordinary
life and what has now been said can be regarded as a confirmation of
statements made in the lecture yesterday. Nevertheless it is only the
genuine mystic to whom the experience can come in its full intensity.
The question now is whether it is possible to go further. What has
been experienced in the way described is the inner side of the astral
body, of the spiritual part of man. But it is possible to descend
still more deeply, into parts of human nature which manifest in
ordinary life in a form less purely spiritual. Nevertheless, their
foundations are spiritual, for that is true of everything in the outer
world. The question is whether it is possible to descend even further,
into the physical body, and whether there is anything between the
astral body and the physical body. Yes, as is made clear in
anthroposophical literature, between the physical and the astral
bodies there is the etheric body, so that in descending to that level
we should encounter our etheric body and perhaps also traces of our
physical body, which otherwise we see only from without but which we
can recognise from within when we penetrate into it consciously.
Generally speaking, however, it is not good, nor is it without danger,
to take a further step in mystical deepening beyond those mentioned
yesterday. Everything spoken of then can be carried out cautiously by
one who has acquired some knowledge of what is contained in the book
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment
or in the second part of
Occult Science an Outline.
[* Notably
Chapter V. Knowledge of Higher Worlds. Concerning Initiation,
p. 222 in the 1962-3 edition.] Up to this point a man can progress
independently. To go further along the path leading into the inner
self, however, is not without danger; moreover it cannot be done at
all in the way in which a man of the present day likes to acquire his
spiritual knowledge. Accordingly a different path to knowledge is
chosen in our time.
In modern civilisation it is no longer right to take the path leading
to a deeper descent into the inner being without troubling about any
other considerations. The fundamental characteristic of spiritual life
today is that man subordinates himself to a certain degree only and
wishes to tread his path of knowledge in the fullest possible freedom.
We shall see that there is a path into the spiritual world which takes
this desire into full account: it is the Rosicrucian path of
knowledge. This is the true path of modern times. It did not exist in
those Mysteries of antiquity where man was initiated into the deeper
secrets of existence. There were Mysteries in which a man was simply
led past the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold into his own inner being
and there were others in which he was led out into the Macrocosm,
necessarily in a kind of ecstasy. These were the two most usual paths
in ancient times. The path of descent into the inner self was followed
especially in those places of Initiation which are called the Mystery
Sanctuaries of Osiris and Isis. And now, in order to explain what man
can experience by descending into his inner being, we will speak of
the experiences undergone by a pupil of the Osiris and Isis Mysteries.
As we shall hear in the next lectures, it is possible today to attain
the Initiation which brings knowledge of these Mysteries, but the path
leading to that Initiation differs from what it once was.
In ancient Egypt something was necessary against which human nature,
as it is today, would rebel. It was necessary in those times that at
the point when the candidate for Initiation was to penetrate into the
higher worlds or even shortly before he should not
attempt to progress independently along his own path of knowledge but
should entrust himself to an initiated teacher, to a Guru the
term used in oriental philosophy. Otherwise the path was too
dangerous. As a general rule, even the steps towards mystical
deepening described yesterday were undertaken under the guidance of a
Guru.
What was the real purpose of this guidance by an initiated teacher?
When we descend in the morning into our bodily nature, our soul is
received by three Powers which have been called by names take from
ancient terminology the names of Venus, Mercury and Moon. Man
can deal by himself with what is generally understood as the Venus
influence when he is descending into his inner being. A certain
training in humility and selflessness will enable him to hold his own
in face of the Venus power. Before setting out on the path into the
unknown realm of his own inner being he must suppress all impulses of
egoism and self-love and cultivate selflessness. He must make himself
into a being who feels love and sympathy, not for his fellow-men only
but for all existence. Then, if need be, be can safely surrender
himself in his conscious descent to the power known as that of Venus.
But it would be more dangerous if a man were to leave himself unaided
at the mercy of the Mercury powers. In the ancient Egyptian Initiation
he was therefore under the guidance of a great teacher whose own
earlier experiences made him capable of being a leader because he was
fully conscious of the way in which these Mercury powers could be
controlled. A candidate for Initiation was therefore guided by a
Hermes- or Mercury-priest. This entailed strict submission to whatever
demands the teacher made upon the pupil. The pupil was compelled to
make the resolve to eliminate his own Ego completely, to submit to no
impulses of his own and to carry out meticulously what the
Hermes-priest instructed him to do. It was essential for the pupil of
the Osiris and Isis Mysteries to submit to this domination which would
be repugnant to a man of today and to which, moreover, he need not
subject himself. Obedience to the teacher through many years was
necessary, not merely in the pupil's outer actions, but in those
Mysteries he was compelled to entrust himself to the teacher's
guidance even in his thoughts and feelings, in order to be able to
descend without danger into a deeper level of his own inner being.
The lecture yesterday described what is meant by acquiring knowledge
of the inner nature of the astral body. We will now consider what the
pupil of the Osiris and Isis Mysteries was able, with the help of his
teacher, to experience in connection with the etheric body. The
elimination of his Ego caused him to see with the spiritual eyes of
the teacher, to see himself through the teacher's eyes, to think the
teacher's thoughts and to become a kind of external object to himself.
In this way remarkable experiences came to him. They were experiences
in which he felt as if his life were going backwards in time, as if
his whole being which he was now seeing with the spiritual eyes
of the Hermes-priest were spreading out and expanding; and
simultaneously he felt as if he were going backwards in time into
periods preceding his present life. Gradually he came to feel as if he
were going back many, many years, a span of time very much longer than
his life since birth. During this experience he saw, through the eyes
of the initiated priest, first of all himself, and then, far out
beyond, many generations whom he felt to be his forefathers. For a
certain time the candidate for this Initiation had the feeling that he
was moving backwards along the line of his ancestors not as if
he were identical with them, but as if he were hovering above them
moving backwards to a definite point, to a primeval ancestor.
Then the impression faded the impression of seeing earthly
figures with whom his existence was in some way related.
The teacher had now to make clear to the candidate what it was that he
had actually seen. Only in the following way can this become
intelligible. When we come into existence, having passed
through the spiritual world between death and rebirth, we bear within
us not only the characteristics derived from our preceding life but
also our inherited traits. We are born into a family, into a people,
into a race; we bear the inherited qualities of our ancestors. These
qualities are not derived from the last incarnation but have been
inherited from generation to generation. Now why is it that a man,
with his inborn nature, incarnates in a particular family, in a
particular people or race? Why, on descending to birth, does he seek
out certain definite, inherited characteristics? He would never do so
if he had no relation at all to them. In point of fact he was already
connected with these attributes long before his birth. If we were to
start from a particular individual and go back to his father,
grandfather, great-grandfather, and so on, we should find if we
were able to follow the line with inner vision the inherited
characteristics through a whole series of generations, as far back as
one in particular, where all trace of heredity would vanish. The
inherited characteristics are still present in their most attenuated
form until finally they are lost altogether.
Just as we see the inherited characteristics finally disappearing, so
by starting from an individual we can see how the qualities of the son
are most similar to those of the father, rather less similar to those
of the grandfather, still less similar to those of the
great-grandfather, and so on. In the ancient Egyptian Mysteries of
Osiris and Isis the priest led the candidate for Initiation back as
far as the ancestor who still possessed characteristics which had been
transmitted, through heredity, to the pupil himself. It was revealed
to the pupil that man is connected in a certain way with his inherited
qualities. Thus he established a relationship, spiritually, with that
primeval ancestor from whom some quality in himself was derived. It
was also revealed to him that the human being spends a long time
preparing for himself in the spiritual world the qualities he is
ultimately to inherit. Nor does he merely inherit them; in a certain
sense he actually inculcates them into his ancestors. He continues to
work through the whole series of generations until finally that
physical body can be born towards which he feels drawn. Strange as it
may seem, we ourselves have worked out of the spiritual world at the
physical bodies of our own forefathers, in order gradually to shape
and mould the attributes we finally receive at birth as inherited
characteristics.
These things are revealed when a man descends into his own etheric
body; it then becomes evident to him that the etheric body has a long
history behind it. Long, long before entering existence through birth,
he was himself working in the spiritual world at the preparation of
the etheric body he now bears. He began to work at this etheric body
when the most ancient ancestor from whom he still inherits qualities,
came to the Earth. When it is said that man consists of physical body,
etheric body, astral body, and so on, this is merely an indication.
The only possibility of learning about it in greater precision is to
acquaint ourselves with the information given by those who have
themselves descended consciously into their bodily sheaths.
Thus man learns to move in the regions through which he passed before
entering physical existence. He comes to know a portion of his life
before birth, a portion which comprises centuries; for centuries have
elapsed since the time when, between his last death and present birth,
he began to form the archetype of his etheric body. It was then that
there was laid into his blood the first seed of those special
characteristics which were progressively elaborated, until the etheric
body had reached the point of being able to absorb these
characteristics at birth.-That is one side of the experience. What we
inherit is a reconstruction, so to speak, of everything we ourselves
have had to do previously in the spiritual world in order to be able
to enter into physical existence. Therefore the qualities that are
concentrated as it were in the present etheric body and were given
their stamp through the foregoing centuries, have always been called
the Upper meaning the heavenly or spiritual man.
This is the technical expression for the fact that by penetrating into
his etheric body man learns to know his upper nature. The
expression heavenly or spiritual man was also
used because it was realised that these attributes had been formed and
fashioned from the spiritual world through which the man had passed
during the period between his last death and the present birth.
And now as to the other side of the experience. When the pupil
had been led to a certain stage by the priest of Hermes, he was
confronted by something that may at first have seemed strange, but was
explained by his teacher as a phenomenon that should not be altogether
unknown to him. The pupil soon recognised that he was being confronted
with something he himself had left behind, something intimately
connected with him, though it now faced him as a foreign entity. What
was this? We shall understand it best by considering the moment of
death in the light of what spiritual investigation discloses. At that
moment a man discards his physical body; his Ego and astral body
remain namely, those members of his being which every night
pass into the state of sleep and also, for a short time, what
we are now trying to study from within, namely, the etheric body. For
a few days after death man lives in these three members of his being.
But then the main part of the etheric body passes away from him like a
second corpse. It is always said and I myself have constantly
indicated it that what then departs as a second corpse is
dispersed in the etheric world; the man takes with him only an
extract, a seed, of it into the life he is now beginning between death
and his next birth. What there passes over as a second corpse into the
universal ether needs a considerable time to dissolve; and it is the
last traces of the dissolving etheric body of his previous life
that the candidate for Initiation finds as a foreign entity when he
has passed backwards spiritually to the point where he arrives at the
last ancestor from whom he has inherited any quality. There he makes
contact with the last remnants of his previous etheric body. And now,
if he continues the process of Initiation, he must penetrate as it
were into this last etheric body of his, which he has left behind.
Then he lives backwards through further years almost, but not
quite as long as the period he previously lived through until he
encounters his earliest ancestor. The time is in the ratio of five to
seven. The man now lives through a time in which he finds, as it were
in ever denser form, what confronts him as the last remnant from his
past life; as it becomes more and more definitely formed, its
resemblance to his last etheric body grows until he finally recognises
the form his etheric body had assumed at the moment of his last death.
And now, after this form has still further condensed, has more and
more assumed human shape, he is face to face with his last death. At
that moment, for one who is initiated, there is no longer any doubt
that reincarnation is a truth, for he has actually gone back to his
last death. Thus we have now come to know what man finds as a remnant
of his last earthly life. In spiritual science this has at all times
been called the Lower or the earthly man. The
pupil now connected the Upper with the Lower
man; he followed the Lower to the point where he reached
his last life on Earth.
Thus during his Initiation the pupil passed through a cycle leading
from his last earthly life to his present earthly life. He united
himself in an act of spiritual vision with what he had become in his
previous incarnation. In spiritual science this process has always
been called a cycle and it was originally expressed by the
symbol of the snake biting its own tail. This same symbol was used in
connection with many happenings, among them for the experience just
described, the experience undergone by one who was initiated in the
Mysteries of Osiris and Isis.
Obviously, therefore, there is much more to be said about the etheric
body than merely stating that it is one member of man's being. The
essential nature of the etheric body can only become known by
descending into our own inner self; we then come to know the two
beings who are united in every man, and we also recognise how karma
works. We are then able to explain to ourselves how it happens that we
enter existence through birth in a quite definite way. We were obliged
as it were to wait from the preceding death until the new birth, until
the old etheric body had dissolved; only then could a beginning be
made with forming the new one. This makes it evident that in fact a
man has not completely got rid of the products of his dissolved
etheric body. And by descending into his own inner being he may also
find the other part which has actually dissolved, because he has
retained an extract of it. If this were not the case it would be
impossible for him to find any trace of it again.
When these things are communicated gradually, even in public lectures
on Spiritual Science, you will realise how well-founded they are. You
are now at the point where you can see the reason for the statement
made, even in exoteric lectures, that an extract or essence of the
etheric body remains. All these data are the result of spiritual
investigation and are based upon the deepest imaginable foundations.
Thus a man has gone back as far as his last death, and in following
the process we have heard of certain qualities which one who is
entering into deeper forms of mystical experience learns to know
through his Initiation. Yesterday we heard of astral qualities
the feeling of infinite gratitude on the one side and, on the other,
the feeling of greatly enhanced obligation and responsibility
experienced by the mystic in his astral body. Today we have beard of
the Upper and the Lower man, the
Above and the Below, experienced by the mystic
when he descends into his etheric body.
The further steps on the path of Initiation then lead the pupil to the
point where, after having arrived in his spiritual retrospect at his
last death, he can go further and come to know his last earthly life.
But again this is by no means an easy matter. Under his teacher's
guidance the pupil is once again reminded that he must not go further
until he has achieved complete forgetfulness of self; for it is
impossible to make real progress as long as there remains any shred of
personal self-consciousness of this present incarnation, this present
life between birth and death. As long as a man still calls anything
his own he cannot attain knowledge of his preceding incarnation. In
the ordinary, normal life between birth and death he cannot come to
know the being who in the preceding incarnation was a completely
different personality. He must be capable of regarding himself as some
quite different being that is the important point and
yet not lose hold of himself when obliged to have this experience. He
must be capable of transformation to the degree of being able to feel
himself slipping as it were into a quite different bodily sheath.
Having attained the degree of selflessness where everything to do with
the present incarnation is forgotten, and having utterly given himself
up to the teacher, the pupil is then able to pass back through the
last incarnation from the death to the birth. Then he experiences, not
the things that were seen externally during that last incarnation, but
what he made of himself by his endeavours during that life. What the
eyes saw, the ears heard and what confronted him in the outer world is
experienced in a different way. What is now experienced are the
efforts he made in the bygone incarnation with the object of advancing
a step forward.
Having re-experienced these efforts the pupil is led back again by the
teacher to his present incarnation. The step from the previous to the
present incarnation is taken rapidly and then the pupil finds his
bearings again. He now has a strange feeling of being two
personalities, as if he has brought an additional one with him from
the spiritual world into his present personality. This gives rise to
the feeling of living in the physical body. A man cannot experience
himself in the physical body except by feeling that he has entered it
with the fruits of a preceding incarnation.
I have repeatedly reminded you that in normal everyday life a man sees
the physical body only from outside. Now for the first time he
realises what it means to see the physical body from within. To see
himself within his own physical body is only possible in the light of
the experiences of his preceding incarnation. But that is not enough;
only little can be learned from it about the present physical body.
When the teacher has brought the pupil to the point of standing
consciously within his own being together with his previous
personality, he must take him back once again over the path already
followed. The pupil now retraces the path from the penultimate birth
to the penultimate death; he undergoes again what he experienced in
his Upper and Lower being, and through the
penultimate death reaches back to the penultimate incarnation. A
single cycle brings him back to the last incarnation only; thereupon
the second cycle must be undertaken, bringing him back to the
penultimate incarnation. This gives rise to the feeling of being a
third personality who is included in the two preceding personalities.
The cycle can be repeated again and again, until the pupil reaches an
epoch lying far, far back in the evolution of the Earth, a far distant
age of civilisation. Then he finds that as an earlier personality he
was incarnated in preceding epochs of culture, for example in the
Greco-Latin epoch; earlier still in the Egyptian, in the ancient
Persian, in the ancient Indian, and even further back in the Atlantean
and the Lemurian epochs. There is then no more possibility of having
such experiences as have been described. A man can follow his own
course through every conceivable civilisation and race, right back to
the beginning of his earthly evolution, to his very first incarnation
on the Earth. Then it is found that all the earlier incarnations
continue as forces in what may be called the inmost essence of the
physical body. So you see, when it is said in exoteric language that
man consists of physical, etheric and astral bodies, this means that
he consists of something which, when viewed from within, seems like a
number of consecutive incarnations superimposed one above the other.
In point of fact, all our incarnations are at work in the inmost
nature of our physical body. And when we speak of the etheric body we
must bear in mind that, viewed from within, it appears as a cycle
running backwards from the present birth to the last death. The
qualities and characteristics of the sheaths into which we descend in
mystical experience are revealed.
When a man has retraced his course right back to his first
incarnation, he experiences a great deal more as well. At this point
of his retrospective journey he discovers that in a certain epoch of
the Earth's evolution he was in an entirely different environment,
that the Earth itself was quite different when he was living in his
first incarnation.
When we look out into the world today, three kingdoms of Nature
confront us: the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. We also have
these three kingdoms within us. We have within us the animal kingdom
because we possess an astral body which in a certain way permeates our
external, physical body with force and energy; we have within us the
plant kingdom because we possess an etheric or life-body, of which
something similar may be said; we have the mineral kingdom within us
because we take mineral substances into ourselves and let them pass
through our organism. When we ascend far enough into the spiritual
world to reach our first incarnation while experiencing the physical
body from within, we become aware that at that time the Earth has just
reached the point of its development when the mineral kingdom in its
present form first came into existence and it was therefore possible
for us to pass through our first physical embodiment because we were
able to take mineral substance into ourselves.
You may say: Yes, but was this mineral kingdom not in existence
earlier than the plant and animal kingdoms? Anyone who thinks
correctly will realise that ordinary coal is something that has come
from the plant; first it was plantlike and then became mineral. Under
conditions different from those of today the plant kingdom could exist
before there was a mineral kingdom. The mineral kingdom was a later
formation. Under different conditions the plant kingdom was already in
existence before there was any mineral kingdom. The mineral kingdom
was a product of hardening hardening of the plant kingdom. And
at the time of the formation of the mineral kingdom on our Earth, man
had his first earthly incarnation. The mineral kingdom has evolved
through long periods of time, during which man has been passing
through his earthly incarnations. It was then that he first took the
mineral kingdom into himself. Before then his bodily make-up was of a
quite different consistency, without mineral substance. For this
reason it was at all times said in spiritual science that in its
evolution the Earth progressed to the point where the mineral kingdom
was formed and at the same time man took the mineral kingdom into
himself.
So we see how by descending into his own being deeply enough to have
knowledge of his physical body from within, man comes to a point where
he emerges, comes forth from, himself. What else could be expected?
Through our astral body we are related to the animals, through our
etheric body to the plants and through our physical body to the
minerals. No wonder that when we descend as far as to the physical
body we come upon the mineral kingdom and pass into it. Not indeed
into the mineral kingdom as it is now, but as it was at the time when
it came into existence in the ancient Lemurian epoch. Our present
epoch followed that of Atlantis, and the Lemurian epoch preceded
Atlantis. Before the great Atlantean catastrophe the face of the Earth
was quite different from what it is today. We lived on a great
continent stretching between Europe and Africa on the one side and
America on the other. This was the Atlantean epoch. In a still earlier
epoch the configuration of the Earth was again different. Human
beings-we ourselves in earlier incarnations-lived on a continent
stretching between Australia, Africa and Asia. This was ancient
Lemuria, the name also used by modern science. That was the time when
man passed through his first incarnation and when the mineral kingdom
of the Earth took shape. That too was the time when the present Moon
in the heavens separated from the Earth.
Thus we have seen that by descending into and acquiring knowledge of
our own being through genuine mystical deepening under the guidance of
a teacher, we also emerge from ourselves in a certain sense. The path
leads us out of ourselves to the Mineral Earth whence we have derived
our physical substance.
This is the one path that I wanted to describe to you, the path which
could be followed and was indeed followed by many human beings in the
ancient Mysteries of Isis and Osiris. It could only be followed under
the guidance of a teacher to whom the candidate for Initiation
subjected himself entirely. Unless the individual had submitted his
Ego entirely to his teacher he would never have been able to tread the
path that has been described, for he would have come to know only the
very worst sides of his inner being, what he had made of himself
through his own self-seeking Ego.
During the next few days we shall describe the other path by speaking
of the Northern Mysteries, where man was led, not into himself but out
of himself, into the heavens. Then, as well as these two paths which
owing to the progressive development of human nature and its
consequent insistence on freedom are no longer suitable, we shall
study the path that is right for modern humanity: the
Rosicrucian path.
It only remains to be said that certain later mystics strove to find
help solely in themselves when they had no Guru or teacher to follow
so strictly. They were able to find help in a different way and it is
interesting that the path they trod can be explained in the light of
what has here been described. Think, for example, of Meister
Eckhart, the medieval mystic. He was one who had no leader or
teacher as did candidates in the ancient Mysteries of Isis and Osiris.
The descent into his inner being would have been fraught with great
dangers for him had he persisted beyond a certain point in these
efforts to achieve inner deepening by his own method. At a certain
moment he could scarcely have escaped the claims of his Ego. For the
danger on this descent into a man's inner being is that his Ego may
assert itself for its own selfish aims. Long speeches may be made
about finding the God within. But people who talk in this vein have
usually not made much real progress. If they had, they would
inevitably discover that the self-seeking Ego asserts itself with
terrific force. It may often be found that such people, when following
the ordinary conventions of life, are good and decent characters, but
directly they practise mystical deepening and ignore influences from
outside, their inner self asserts itself. If education has hitherto
made them desire to speak the truth it may happen that as soon as
their self-seeking Ego asserts its claims, they begin to lie
profusely; they become underhand, more intensely selfish than others.
Such traits may often be observed in mystics who have been badly
guided, who like to speak constantly of the need to find the
higher man within themselves. In such cases, however, it
is not a higher man but a being inferior even by
conventional standards. It behoves everyone to protect himself from
claims made by his own self-seeking Ego. And mystics with good and
healthy propensities, such as Meister Eckhart, tried to do so. In the
Egyptian Mysteries the candidate for Initiation was guarded in this
respect by the priest of Hermes who had taken charge of him. Meister
Eckhart had no leader or teacher in that sense of the word;
Tauler had one from a certain time in his life onwards. [* See
Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age,
by Rudolf Steiner. The teacher who came to Tauler was known as the
Friend of God from the Oberland.] By what means did
Meister Eckhart protect himself against the claims of his own Ego?
Like nearly all medieval Christian mystics who had no actual Guru
because the time was approaching when human nature would rebel against
it, Eckhart protected himself by inducing a feeling of the greatest
intensity: Now you are no longer yourself; you have become a different
being; a being other than yourself is thinking, feeling and willing
within you. Let your whole self be filled with Christ! Eckhart
made the saying of Paul a reality: Not I, but Christ in
me. He was one who had experienced this transformation; he had
laid aside his own self. He eliminated his Ego and felt himself filled
with a different Ego. The word Entwerdung (as the opposite of
becoming) was a beautiful expression used by medieval
mystics. Mystics such as Meister Eckhart, or the writer of the work
known as Theologica Deutsch, let a higher man, a being able to
quicken and inspire, speak in them. Hence their constant insistence
that their aim was to surrender the self entirely to the being they
experienced within them.
From this we see how with the approach of the modern age the medieval
Christian mystics put in the place of an external Guru, an inner
leader: the Christ.
We shall hear in the next lecture what has now to be done in order
that a man rooted in the spiritual life of today may find the path
enabling him to maintain intact the character and constitution of his
soul. We have spoken of the path taken in the Northern Mysteries in
order to experience the Macrocosm into which man enters on going to
sleep. We shall begin to-morrow by describing the process of going to
sleep and then pass on to speak of the macrocosmic spheres into which
man finds his way through methods belonging to the modern path of
knowledge leading into the higher worlds.
Last Modified: 02-Nov-2024
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