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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity
Schmidt Number: S-2702
On-line since: 5th July, 2002
WHEN a man of our time goes through an occult training which leads him
to such experiences as were described in the last two lectures, he
enters by means of this training into the spiritual worlds; and there
he experiences certain facts and meets with certain beings. The
phrase, To see the Sun at Midnight, is fundamentally only
an expression for spiritual facts and for the meeting with spiritual
beings who are connected with the Sun-existence. But when this man of
our time ascends into the higher worlds, he goes through certain
experiences which one cannot describe otherwise than by saying: A man
experiences much that is significant in the higher worlds through such
an ascent, but he also feels himself forsaken and alone. He feels that
he can gather up his experience in some such words as these:
Much, very much, you are seeing here, but the very thing you
must long for above all else, after all you have gone through
that you are not able to experience. And he would like to
question all the beings whom he meets after such an ascent concerning
certain secrets he longs to understand. That is the feeling he has.
But all these beings, who unveil much that is immense and powerful,
remain silent when he wants to learn from them about those mysteries
which he must now regard as the most important of all. Hence the man
of our time, when he has thus mounted to the higher worlds, feels it
to be above all painful that in spite of all the splendour, in spite
of his meeting with those glorious beings, he has an immense emptiness
in his inner life. And if nothing else were to happen, a protracted
experience of this loneliness, this forlorn condition in the higher
worlds, would finally bring about something like despair in his soul.
Now at this point something can happen and usually does happen
if the ascent has been undertaken according to the true rules of
Initiation which may be a protection from this despair, at
first, though not permanently. Something like a remembrance may arise
in the soul, or one might say a retrospect into far-off times of the
past, a kind of reading in the Akashic Record about long-past
happenings. And what is then experienced (one cannot characterise
these things except by trying to clothe them in approximate words)
might be put in the following way: When as a modern man you
ascend into these higher worlds, you are met by forlorn-ness, despair.
But pictures call up for you long-past happenings, showing you that in
distant times men ascended into the worlds into which you now wish to
rise. Yes, from these memory pictures you may well come to recognise
that in earlier incarnations your own soul took part in what these men
experienced when formerly they rose into the higher worlds. It might
even appear that the soul of a present-day man, in contemplating these
pictures, looks at experiences of his own, gone through in times long
since past. Then in those remote ages this soul would have been an
Initiate. In other cases, the man would know only that his soul had
been connected with those who as Initiates had then risen into the
higher worlds; but his soul now feels lonely and forsaken, whereas
those once initiated souls did not feel lonely and forsaken in the
same worlds, but experienced innermost bliss. He will recognise
further that this was so because in those ancient times souls were
differently constituted, and for this reason they experienced
differently what they beheld in the higher worlds. What is it, then,
that is really experienced?
The experience now in question is such that it brings before the soul
beings of higher worlds who are working upon the sense-world from the
super-sensible worlds; beings are perceived who stand behind our
sense-world; conditions are seen such as were described yesterday. But
if one tries to summarise all one sees, it can be characterised in
some such way as the following: The seer feels himself to be in the
higher worlds, and gazing down, as it were, into the sense-world; he
feels himself united in some way with spirits who have passed through
the Gate of Death, and, with them, too, he gazes downward, and sees
how they will again employ their forces in order to enter physical
existence. He looks down and sees how forces are sent out of the
super-sensible worlds in order to bring about the processes of the
different kingdoms of nature in the sense-world. He sees the whole
current of events which are prepared for our world out of the higher
worlds. Because in the course of a sojourn of this kind in the higher
worlds he is outside his physical and etheric bodies, he looks down
upon them and sees also those forces in the Cosmos, in the whole
spiritual universe, which are working on the physical and etheric
bodies of man. And through the activity of the beings into whose
company he has entered, he learns to understand how physical and
etheric bodies come into existence within the physical world. He
learns to understand this thoroughly. He comes to understand how
certain beings who are associated with the Sun send their activity
into the Earth and work on engendering the physical and etheric bodies
of man. He learns also to know certain beings associated with the
Moon-existence, who work down out of the Cosmos in order likewise to
co-operate in bringing about the physical and etheric bodies of human
beings.
Then, however, arises a great longing, a longing that becomes terrible
for a man of the present time. It is the longing to know something of
how the astral body and the ego are born out of the Cosmos, how they
come into existence. Whereas the seer can discern exactly how the
physical body and the etheric body arise out of the forces of the
Cosmos, completely hidden from him is everything that could point to
how the astral body and the ego of man are brought into being. In
deepest darkness and secrecy is veiled everything that has to do with
the astral body and ego. Thus the feeling grows: What you are in your
innermost nature, what you yourself really are, is veiled from your
spiritual sight; and that in which you sheathe yourself when you are
living in the physical world is disclosed to you precisely enough!
All this is experienced by a man of the present time when he rises to
higher worlds in the manner described. It was experienced. also by
those who in ancient times undertook the ascent. But they did not feel
the great longing we have spoken of: they had no need to behold their
innermost being, for they were so constituted that they felt a deep
inward satisfaction in perceiving how the spiritual beings whose
company they had reached were at work in building physical and etheric
bodies on the Earth. In contemplating how these beings worked down
from the Sun to accomplish this task, the souls who were initiated in
past times found their highest satisfaction. It must be added that the
work performed by these beings presented itself under a different
aspect in those times; hence the satisfaction it could afford. In our
time the work appears in such a light that one asks: Wherefore all
this preparation of the physical and etheric bodies, if one cannot
understand what these sheaths conceal? That is the difference between
a person of the present time and a man of old. And the period in the
past which was connected particularly with these experiences is that
in which Zarathustra initiated his pupils and guided them up into the
higher worlds. If aspirants were to be led up into the higher worlds
in the same way to-day as they were by Zarathustra, they would feel
that emptiness and loneliness to which reference has been made. In the
time of Zarathustra those who were to be initiated experienced the
working of Ahura Mazdao on the physical body and the etheric body, and
in the unveiling of this wonderful mystery they felt bliss and
satisfaction, for they were so disposed that they felt inwardly
stirred when they saw how the sheaths which man needs if he is to
accomplish his Earth-mission are brought into existence. In this they
found satisfaction.
Thus it was with the Zarathustrian Initiation. For the initiates could
See the Sun at Midnight; that is, they were not looking
upon the physical form of the Sun but upon the spiritual beings who
are linked with the Sun. They saw emanating from the Sun the forces
which play into the physical body; saw how the forces which the Sun is
able to send forth mould the human head and form the different parts
of the human brain. For it would be folly for anyone to think that a
marvellous construction such as the human brain could come into
existence merely through terrestrial forces; solar forces must work
into it. These forces bring together the complex lobular formations of
the human brain, poised above the human face. Engaged in this task are
quite numerous beings; Zarathustra gave them the name of
Amshaspands. They furnish the stimulus for the forces of
the Cosmos which make possible the building of the human brain and the
upper nerves of the spinal cord, with the exception of the lower
twenty-eight pairs of nerves. Then Zarathustra also pointed out how
other currents flow from beings who are linked with the life of the
Moon; he showed how wonderfully the structure of the Cosmos is adapted
so that from twenty-eight groups of entities Izeds
as they are called currents proceed which build up the spinal
cord with its twenty-eight lower pairs of nerve fibres. Thus are
physical and etheric bodies formed out of currents which stream forth
from cosmic beings.
They were powerful impressions that the initiates of Zarathustra
received in this way. And in receiving them as an expression of the
work of Ahura Mazdao, they felt an inner bliss concerning all that is
thus accomplished. in the world. If a modern man were to raise himself
in the same way into the higher worlds, he would of course also be
capable of wonderment; he, too, would be able to begin to experience
the same bliss. But gradually he would pass on to the feeling which
one cannot clothe in words other than these: What is the purpose
of it all? I know nothing about that being who passes from incarnation
to incarnation! I know solely about those beings who in each new
incarnation build up sheaths out of the Cosmos, but they build only
sheaths. That was precisely the essence of the Zarathustra
Initiation: its revelation of the connection between the earthly part
of man and the life of the Sun. It was characteristic of the time of
Zarathustra that men were able to absorb into their occult knowledge
those mysteries we have now described.
Again, it was in a different way that souls in ancient Egypt entered
the higher worlds at Initiation souls, for example, who went
through the Hermes Initiation. We have already spoken about all these
things; but in these lectures they will be presented in rather more
detail than was possible previously. When in ancient Egyptian times
souls were raised into the higher worlds through the Hermes
Initiation, then as it must always be after Initiation
they felt themselves to be outside their physical and etheric bodies
and knew that they were now within a world of spiritual facts and
spiritual beings. Wide was the circuit of vision through which these
souls were then led. They were shown the individual beings and facts,
as can happen also with the soul of to-day. But one must not think of
it as though they went about on physical feet; it was their vision
that was guided, as if a person's sight were to be led all round a
region as wide as the universe. Thus it was in this Initiation.
Then came a moment of experience wherein the initiates felt as though
a traveler in a country encircled by the sea had reached the shore.
They knew they had come to the farthest point attainable. In the
Egyptian Initiation they experienced what one cannot clothe in other
words than these: In your vision you have been led far and wide
through cosmic realms and have come to know the beings and forces that
work on your physical body and your etheric body. But now you are
entering the most holy place. You are entering a region where you can
feel yourself united with the Being who works with others on the part
of you that goes from one incarnation to another, and on your astral
body. It is a significant experience that occurs at this point,
for after it all things become in some sense different.
For the initiate, after that, one possibility is closed. In the world
he has now entered, on the shores of cosmic existence, he is no longer
able to make use of his former ways of thinking and judging. If he
cannot cast off all this earthly, physical power of judgment; if he
cannot disregard what has guided him so far, then he cannot have this
experience on the borders of existence; he cannot feel himself united
with that Being who is active when the human being as spirit and soul
approaches his birth into a new incarnation, and seeks nation, family
and parents in order to clothe himself with new sheaths. All the
beings whom he has already come to know, and who make it clear to him
how the etheric and physical sheaths arise and are formed out of the
Cosmos, are unable to explain what kind of forces are working in that
Being with whom he now feels himself united, and who is building and
weaving in the innermost astral being of the man himself. It becomes
quite apparent to the seer, as it was to the Egyptian soul who was
going through the Hermes Initiation, that now, after the soul is
outside its sheaths and has passed through the cosmic
existence already alluded to, it feels itself united with a
Being. The soul can feel the qualities of this Being, only it feels
itself as if it were within these qualities and not outside this
Being, and it can know that this Being is really there, but that it is
at the same time within this Being. And the first impression that the
aspirant receives of this Being is such that one says to oneself: In
this Being lie the forces which bring the soul from one incarnation to
another, and also the forces which illuminate the soul between death
and a new birth. All that is there within. But when there surges
towards you a force like unto spiritual cosmic Warmth, one that
conveys the soul from death to a new birth; and when there presses
towards you the spiritual Light that illumines souls between death and
a new birth, and when you feel how this Warmth and this Light stream
out from the Being with whom you are united, you are now in a quite
peculiar situation. You have had to drink the waters of Lethe, to
forget the art of understanding which formerly guided you through the
physical world, to lay aside your former power of judgment, your
intellectuality, for here these would only lead you astray; and as yet
you have gained nothing of a new kind. In your experience of the
cosmic Warmth which brings the soul to a new birth, you are within the
ocean of forces which illuminate the soul between death and a new
birth. You experience the force and the light which issue from this
Being. You behold this Being in such manner that you can do no other
than ask of it: Who art Thou? For Thou alone canst tell me who
Thou art, and only then can I know that which takes the essential
inward part of me as a human being from death to a new birth. Only
when Thou tellest me this can I know what my innermost nature is as
man! And mute remains the Being with whom the aspirant knows
himself to be united. He feels with the deepest part of himself that
he is united with the deepest part of the Being. The urge towards
self-knowledge arises, to know what a man is and yet the Being
remains silent. The aspirant must first have stood for a while before
this silent Being, and have felt deeply the longing to have the riddle
of the universe solved after a new manner, as it never can be on the
physical Earth; he must have brought into this world, to this Being,
as a force out of himself, the deep longing to have the riddle of the
universe solved in a way foreign to physical existence, and the soul
must entirely live in the longing to have the cosmic enigma solved in
this manner. Then, when he has felt himself united with the mute
spiritual Being, and has lived in him with longing for the solution
that we have indicated, then he feels that there streams forth into
this spiritual Being with whom he is united, the force of his own
longing. And because this force of the aspirant's own longing for the
solution of the riddle streams out into the spiritual Being, after a
time it gives birth to something like another being projected from it.
But what is born is not after the manner of an earthly birth, as the
aspirant knows at once through his own vision. An earthly birth arises
in time; it enters into the stream of time. But concerning
the birth from this Being, the aspirant knows: It is born from Him, it
has been born from Him since primordial times always, and this
birth continues from primordial ages up to the present. Only this
birth-process of one being from another has hitherto not been visible
to man; until now it has been withheld from his sight. This
birth-process consists in his: it is really continuous, but man, owing
to his having prepared himself by means of his yearning for the
solving of the riddle, now sees it it is now perceived in the
spiritual world. The aspirant knows this. Thus he does not say: Now a
being is born, but: From the Being with whom you have united yourself,
ever since primordial times, a being has always been born; but now the
process of the being's birth, and the being itself who is born, are
perceptible to you.
What I have now pictured to you, as far as it can be done in the words
of our language, is that to which the Hermes Initiator led. his
pupils. And the feelings that I have just described (I might say with
stammering words, for the things contain so much that the words of our
tongue can express them only in a stammering way) these
feelings were the experiences of the so-called Egyptian Isis
Initiation.
When the aspirant who was going through the Isis Initiation had
reached the furthest shore of existence and had gazed upon the beings
who build up the physical body and the etheric body, when he had stood
before the silent Goddess from whom Warmth and Light come forth for
the innermost of the human soul, he said to himself: That is
Isis. That is the mute and silent Goddess whose countenance can be
unveiled to no-one who sees only with mortal eyes, but only to those
who have worked themselves through to the shores which have been
described, so that they can see with those eyes which go from
incarnation to incarnation and are no longer mortal. For an
impenetrable veil hides the form of Isis from mortal eyes.
When the aspirant had thus gazed upon Isis and had experienced in his
soul the feeling described, he understood what has been described. as
the birth. What was this birth? He understood that it can
be designated as The resounding through all space of the Music
of the Spheres, and as the merging of the tones of this
Sphere-music with the creative cosmic Word the Word which
permeates space and pours into the beings everything that has to be so
poured into them, as the soul has to be poured into the physical and
etheric body after passing through the life between death and a new
birth. Everything that has to be thus poured out from the spiritual
world into the physical world, so that what is poured out acquires the
inward character of soul, is poured in from the Harmony of the Spheres
resounding through space. The Harmony of the Spheres gradually assumes
such a form that through the inner significance it expresses it can be
understood as the Cosmic Word the Word which ensouls the beings
that are vitalised by the forces of Warmth and Light which pour into
those bodies that arise from the divine forces and beings perceived
with the vision already attained.
Thus did the aspirant look into the world of the Harmony of the
Spheres, the world of the Cosmic Word; thus did he look into the world
which is the veritable home of the human soul during the time between
death and a new birth. That which is hidden deep in the physical
earthly existence of man, but lives between death and a new birth in
the splendour of the Light and Warmth; that which deeply veils itself
in the physical world as the world of the Harmony of the Spheres and
the Cosmic Word, was experienced in the Hermes-Initiation as coming to
birth from Isis. There Isis stands before the aspirant, Isis herself
on the one side, and on the other side the being she has borne, whom
one must speak of as Cosmic Tones and the Cosmic Word. The aspirant
feels himself in the company of Isis and of the Cosmic Word born of
her. And this Cosmic Word is in the first place the
appearing of Osiris. Isis in association with Osiris: thus
do they appear before direct vision; for in the very oldest Egyptian
Initiation it was said that Osiris was at the same time spouse and son
of Isis. And in the older Egyptian Initiation the essential thing was
that the aspirant, through this Initiation, experienced the mysteries
of soul-life, which remains united with man during the period between
death and a new birth. Through the union with Osiris it was possible
to recognise oneself in one's deeper significance as man.
So it was brought to pass that the Egyptian Initiate met the Cosmic
Word and the Cosmic Tones as the elucidators of his own being in the
spiritual world. But that was up to a certain point of time only in
the old Egyptian period. After that it ceased. There was a great
difference this is shown also by the Akashic Records when one
looks back into ancient times between the experiences of the
Egyptian Initiate in the ancient Egyptian temples and what he
experienced later on.
Let us bring before our souls what the Initiate experienced in these
later times. He could still be led through the vast spaces of the
universe to the confines of existence; there he could meet with all
the beings who build up the physical and etheric bodies of man; there
he could approach the shores of being and could have the vision of the
mute, silent Isis, and could apprehend in her the Cosmic Warmth which
contains for man the forces that lead from death to a new birth. There
he could also become acquainted with the Light which illumines the
soul between death and a new birth; and the longing arose to hear the
Cosmic Word and the Cosmic Harmony; longing lived in the soul when it
united itself with the silent Isis. But the Goddess remained dumb! In
that later age no Osiris could be born, no Cosmic Harmony resounded,
no Cosmic Word expounded that which now showed itself only as Cosmic
Warmth and Cosmic Light. And the soul of the aspirant could not have
expressed. these experiences otherwise than by saying something like
the following; Thus, 0 Goddess, do I look up in grief to thee,
tormented by the thirst for knowledge, the yearning for knowledge, and
thou, thou remainest silent and speechless towards the tormented and
sorrow-laden soul. And this soul, because it cannot understand itself,
seems to itself as though extinguished, as if it must lose its very
existence. And through her mourning countenance the Goddess
expressed her powerlessness to bring forth the Cosmic Word and the
Cosmic Harmony. The aspirant saw in her that she had been deprived of
the power to bring forth Osiris and to have him at her side, Osiris as
Son and Spouse. He felt that Osiris had been torn from Isis.
Those who went through this Initiation and came back into the physical
world had a serious but resigned world-outlook. They knew her, the
Holy Isis, but they felt themselves as Sons of the Widow.
And the point of time between the old Initiation, wherein one was able
to experience the birth of Osiris in those ancient Egyptian Mysteries,
and that wherein one met only the mute, mourning Isis and could become
a Son of the Widow in the Egyptian Mysteries; the point of time which
separates these two phases of the Egyptian Initiation when was
it? It was the time in which Moses lived. For the karma of Egypt was
fulfilled in such a way that not only was Moses initiated into the
Mysteries of Egypt, but he took them with him. When he led his people
out of Egypt he took with him the part of the Egyptian Initiation
which added the Osiris-Initiation to the mourning Isis, as she later
became. Such was the transition from the Egyptian civilisation to that
of the Old Testament. Truly, Moses had carried away the secret of
Osiris, the secret of the Cosmic Word! And if he had not left behind
the powerless Isis there could not have resounded for him, in the way
that he had to understand it for the sake of his people, that great,
significant Word, I AM THE I AM, (Ejeh asher
Ejeh). So was the Egyptian Mystery carried over to the ancient
Hebrew Mystery.
We have tried now to show, using such words as are available for these
matters, what the experiences were like in the Mysteries of
Zarathustra and of Egypt. These things do not lend themselves to
intellectual presentation. The essential point is that the soul goes
through experiences corresponding to what I have endeavoured to
describe. And it is important to enter into what took place in the
soul of the aspirant in the later Egyptian Initiation: to feel how he
raised his soul into the higher worlds and met Isis with the mourning
look and sorrow-stricken countenance, the result of her having to look
on the human soul which was well able to yearn and thirst for
knowledge of the spiritual worlds, but could not be satisfied.
Thus also certain Greek Initiates experienced the same Being of whom
the Egyptians spoke as the later Isis. Hence the seriousness of the
Greek Initiation, where it appears in its solemnity. What had been
experienced in earlier times in the super-sensible worlds that
which gave significance to those super-sensible worlds in that they
resounded to the Cosmic Word and Cosmic Tone was no longer
there. It was there no more ... The super-sensible worlds were as
though desolate and forsaken by the Cosmic Word, those worlds into
which in earlier Initiations man had been able to enter. The
Zarathustrian Initiate could still feel satisfied when in these worlds
he encountered the Beings already described, for he felt himself
fulfilled by the Cosmic Light, which he perceived as Ahura Mazdao. He
perceived it as masculine, of solar nature; the Egyptian perceived it
as feminine, lunar. And at a higher stage in the Zarathustrian
Initiation he perceived also the Cosmic Word, not so concretely as if
born from such a Being as Isis; but he experienced it and he knew the
Harmony of the Spheres and the Cosmic Word.
In the later Egyptian time and also in other lands during this
late Egyptian time when a man raised himself into the higher
worlds, his feelings were quite similar to those of a present-day man,
as described at the beginning of the present lecture. He rises up into
the higher worlds, becomes acquainted with all the Beings who
co-operate in building up the physical and etheric bodies, but he
feels himself forsaken and alone if nothing else appears, because he
has something in himself that longs for the Cosmic Word and the Cosmic
Harmony, and the Cosmic Word and the Cosmic Harmony cannot resound for
him. To-day such a man feels lonely and forsaken; in the later
Egyptian Age he did not only feel forsaken and desolate, but, if he
was a true Son of the Widow and was out of the physical
and etheric bodies and in the spiritual worlds, he felt himself as a
human soul in such a way that be was constrained to clothe his feeling
in the words: The God is preparing to leave the worlds which you have
always trodden when you felt the Cosmic Word; the God has ceased to be
active there. And ever more and more did this feeling condense itself
into what one may call the super-sensible equivalent of that which one
encounters in the sense-world as the death of man when one sees
a person die, when one knows that he is passing out of the physical
world. And now, when the Initiate of the later Egyptian Age rose up
into the higher worlds, he was a partaker in the gradual dying of the
God. As one feels with a person when he is passing into the spiritual
world, so did the Initiate of the later Egyptian period feel how the
God took leave of the spiritual world in order to pass over into
another world. This was the significant and remarkable part of the
later Egyptian Initiation that when the aspirant raised his
life into the spiritual worlds, it was not into rapture and bliss, but
in order to partake in the gradual passing away of a God who was
present in these higher worlds as Cosmic Word and Cosmic Harmony. Out
of this frame of mind there gradually condensed the myth of Osiris,
who was torn away from Isis and conveyed to Asia, and for whom Isis
mourned.
With this lecture we have placed ourselves on one bank of the stream
which separates the evolution of humanity into two parts. We have come
from the direction of this evolution as far as the bank; we stand upon
it, and what this standing there signifies has been brought home to us
through the frame of mind, of the later Egyptian Initiate, the
Son of the Widow, who was initiated in order to experience
mourning and resignation. It will now be our task, in the boat of
Spiritual Science, to cross the stream which separates the two shores
of human evolution.
In the last lecture we shall see what is on the other shore
when we push off our boat from the place where we have experienced the
mourning for the God who is dying in the Heavens, when we leave that
place in order to traverse the stream and arrive at the other bank.
When the boat of spiritual science has carried us across, with the
remembrance that we have previously experienced the dying of a God in
the Heavens, we shall see what is offered to our view on the other
side.
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