Lecture 7
24th August, 1911
HAT
is it that has been the theme of our lectures during the last few days?
We have been trying to bring to light again in the impressive pictures
of Greek mythology, as the expression of an ancient wisdom, what in our
own time we can come to know through Spiritual, or Occult Science; and
we have certainly seen how much of what we come to know today in quite
another way is to be found there as something quite obvious. When we
realise this, especially when we discover that the deepest and most
significant principles of knowledge, principles still today not fully
recognised, were already expressed in pictorial fashion in this Greek
mythology, our usual very superficial ideas about it are bound to be
severely shaken.
The Greeks felt that
what they hid in their Mysteries and associated with the figure of
Dionysos was still deeper and more significant than all that they
associated with the upper gods — with Zeus, Poseidon, Pluto,
with Apollo, Mars and so on. For whereas they expressed pretty well
everything which had to do with the upper gods exoterically, by means
of the world around them, they veiled what had to do with Dionysos
within the sanctity of the Mysteries, and only communicated it to
those who had undergone a thorough preparation.
What then was the
contrast between what the Greeks felt in their ideas about the upper
gods, and what was withdrawn into the sanctity of the Mysteries? What
was the fundamental difference? In their ideas about the upper gods,
about Zeus, Poseidon, Pluto, Apollo, Mars and so on, they expressed
everything of which one can become conscious through a deeper insight
into the wonders of the world, a deeper insight into what takes place
all around us and into the laws which govern it. But something
essentially different was involved in what was associated with the
figure of Dionysos; Dionysos had to do with the deepest vicissitudes
of the human soul struggling for knowledge and for entry into the
super-sensible worlds. The Mysteries associated with his name threw
light upon the lot of the soul struggling for knowledge, living in
the depths; they shed light upon all the testings which the soul had
to undergo on its way.
If we would
understand the figure of Dionysos and his connection with these
tribulations, we must first give some thought to what modern
Spiritual Science has to say about the human mind in the act of
cognition. It might seem that modern man has abundant opportunity to
become instructed as to what cognition really is. For the study of
philosophy is accessible in all countries, and it is to this that we
look to supply the answer to the question of how knowledge comes
about. But from the standpoint of Spiritual Science philosophy has
not been very successful in answering this question, and you can
easily see why this is. So long as philosophy — the ordinary
philosophy of the day — refuses to recognise the truth about
the human being, that he consists of physical body, etheric body,
astral body and ego, it can come to no viable theory of knowledge.
For knowledge is bound up with the whole being of man, and unless the
true being of man, his fourfold nature, is taken into account, the
question as to what knowledge is will only be answered by the empty
phrases which are so familiar in modern philosophy. Because of the
limited time at our disposal I can of course only briefly refer to
this, I can only say a few words about the nature of human knowledge.
But we shall understand one another if we begin by asking how it is
acquired as distinct from what it may signify.
You all know that the
human being could never attain to knowledge if he did not think, if
in his mind he did not carry on something akin to work in ideation or
thinking. Knowledge does not come of itself. The human being has to
undertake work within himself, he has to allow ideas to pass through
his mind if he wants to know. As adherents of Spiritual Science we
have to ask ourselves where in human nature those processes take
place which we designate as ideation, as mental representation, and
which lead to knowledge.
According to the
materialistic illusion, the typical philosophic fantasy of today,
knowledge comes about as a result of work carried out by the brain.
Admittedly, work does take place in the brain in the act of
cognition, but if we bear in mind that the main thing in knowledge is
the work within the soul in the life of ideation, the question must
arise: ‘Has the content of the process of ideation
anything to do with the work which goes on in the brain?’ The
brain is part of the physical body, and what constitutes the content
of our life of ideation, what constitutes the work of our soul in
ideation, in mental representation, which is what brings knowledge
about, does not go as far as the physical body; that all takes place
in the three higher members of the human being, takes place from the
ego through the astral body down to the etheric body. As far as its
content goes, you will find nothing in any element of our process of
ideation which takes place in the physical brain. Thus, if we are
talking expressly of the content, or of the activity of mental
representation, we must attribute that solely to the three higher
super-sensible members of the human being, and then we can ask
ourselves what the brain has to do with all this that goes on
supersensibly in the human being. The obvious truth upon which modern
philosophy and psychology are based, that in the act of cognition
processes do take place in the brain, has of course to be admitted,
it cannot and should not be denied, but it is relatively unimportant.
Nothing of the mental representation itself lives in the brain. What
significance, then, has the brain, has the external bodily
organisation in general, for knowledge, or let us say to begin with,
for the life of ideation?
Since I must be
brief, I can only indicate it pictorially. As regards what really
happens in our souls in the forming of ideas and in thinking, the
work of the brain has precisely the same significance as a mirror has
for the man who sees himself in it. When you with your personality
move through space, you do not see yourself — unless you meet a
mirror; then you do see what you are, you see how you look.
A man who claims that the brain thinks, a man who professes that the
work of ideation, of representation, goes on in the brain, is just
about as shrewd as the man who looks at a mirror and says: ‘I
am not walking about out here, that is not me. I must get inside the
mirror, that is where I am.’ He would soon become convinced
that he was not in the mirror, but that the mirror was reflecting
what was outside it. So it is with the whole of the physical
organisation. What becomes evident through the work of the brain is
the inward super-sensible activity of the three higher members of the
human organisation. The mirror of the brain is needed in order that
this activity may become evident to the human being himself, in order
that through the mirror of the brain he may perceive what he is
supersensibly; this is an inevitable result of our contemporary human
organisation. If, as an earthly being today, man had not this
reflecting bodily organism, primarily the brain, he would still think
his thoughts but he would not be aware of them. The whole endeavour
of modern physiology and a good deal of modern psychology to
understand thinking is about as clever as looking into a mirror to
find your own reality. What I have here said in a few words can be
epistemologically and scientifically substantiated in the strictest
manner. It is of course quite another question whether the argument
would be at all understood. Experience indeed suggests the contrary.
In however strictly logical a manner one argues today even with
philosophers, they do not understand a mortal word, because they just
do not want to go into these things. For in the outer world today
there is still absolutely no will to tackle the most serious
problems concerning the human faculty of cognition.
| Diagram 3 Click image for large view | |
Let us take this
diagram to represent the human physical bodily organisation. When we wish
to express in correct diagrammatic form the human process of
cognition, we have to say: ‘No part of what thinking is,
nothing of the act of cognition, takes place anywhere within this
external physical organism; it all takes place in the adjacent
etheric and astral bodies and so on.’ It is there that
all the thoughts which I have indicated diagrammatically by these
circles are to be found. These thoughts do not enter into the brain
at all — it would be nonsense to think that they do —
they are reflected through the activity of the brain and thrown back
again into etheric body, astral body and ego. And it is these images
which we ourselves have first produced, and which are then made
visible to us by the brain — it is these mirrored images which
we see when as earthly men we become aware of what actually goes on
in our soul-life. Within the brain there is absolutely no thought;
there is no more of thought in the brain than there is of you in the
mirror in which you see yourself.
But the brain is a
very complicated mirror. The external mirror in which we see
ourselves is simple, but the brain is tremendously complicated and of
necessity a complex activity takes place in order that it can become
the instrument, not indeed for producing thought but for
reflecting it. In other words, before a single thought of a single
earthly man could come into existence, there had to be a preparation.
We know that this preparation took place during the Saturn, Sun and
Moon evolutions, and that in fine the present physical body, and with
it the brain, is the result of the work of many spiritual
hierarchies. So we can say that by the beginning of Earth evolution
man on Earth was so formed that he could develop his physical brain
to become the reflecting apparatus for what the human being really
is, for the real man, who is at first only to be met with in the
environment of this our physical bodily organisation. That is how we
put it today, and it can surely be understood, at all events by an.
audience of anthroposophists. Fundamentally this process of cognition
we are examining is quite easy to understand.
What we today are
able to understand in this way was felt by the ancient Greek, and
therefore he said to himself: ‘There is concealed in this
physical bodily organism, without man's having any direct
consciousness of it, something of great significance. This physical
organism is undoubtedly from the Earth, since it consists of the
materials and forces of the Earth, but there is something secreted
within it which can reflect back the whole life of the human
soul.’ When the ancient Greek was directing his feeling upon
the microcosm, upon man, he called this element — coming from
the Earth and thus macrocosmic — this element which played a
part in the constructing of the brain, the
Dionysian principle;
so that it is Dionysos who works in us to make our
bodily organism into a mirror of our spiritual life.
Now if we apply
ourselves to this purely theoretical exposition, if we enter into it,
we can experience that the soul is being put to a first and very
gentle trial; it is very slight, and since the organisation of
present-day man is not tuned to the most delicate refinements, it
usually passes unnoticed. These challenges will have to become ruder
if the man of today is to feel them.
It is only when one
is filled with enthusiasm for knowledge, when one looks upon the
attainment of knowledge as a matter of life itself, that one feels
what I am about to describe as a first tremendous challenge to the
soul. It comes about when this very knowledge leads us on to
recognise that the mighty word of wisdom ‘Know thyself’,
resounds towards us out of primeval times. Self-knowledge, as the
cardinal maxim upon which all other true knowledge turns, shines
before us as a high ideal. In other words, if we want to attain
knowledge in general, we must first endeavour to get to know
ourselves, to get to know what we are. Now all our knowledge takes
its course in the process of ideation. Our life of ideation, or
mental representation, which reproduces for us all the things outside
us, we experience in the form of mirrored image. The process does not
penetrate at all into what we are as physical bodily organism; it is
thrown back to us, and the human being can no more see into his own
physical being than he can see what is behind the mirror. Moreover he
does not penetrate into his physical organisation because his
soul-life is completely filled by this process of representation. One
is obliged to say: ‘Then it is quite impossible to learn to
know oneself, one can come to know nothing but this process of
ideation which has turned one into a reflecting apparatus. It is
impossible to penetrate further, we can only reach as far as the
frontier; and at the frontier the whole life of the soul is thrown
back again, as a man's image is thrown back in a mirror.’
If an undefined feeling challenges us to know ourselves, we have to
confess that we cannot do it, that it is impossible for us to know
ourselves.
What I have just been
saying is for most men of today an abstraction, because they have no
enthusiasm for knowledge, because they are incapable of
developing the passion which must come into play when the soul is
confronted by its own absolute need. But imagine this realisation
developed into feeling, and then the soul is faced with a hard task
indeed: ‘You must attain something which you cannot
attain!’ In terms of Spiritual Science that means that no
knowledge which man can acquire by exoteric means will lead to any
degree of self-knowledge.
From this springs the
endeavour to press on by quite another path than that of ordinary
knowledge to what the work of Dionysos within us is — to our
own being. That has to take place in the Mysteries. In other words,
something was given to man in the Mysteries which had nothing to do
with the ordinary soul-life, that is only mirrored in our bodily
organisation. The Mysteries could not confine man within the limits
of exoteric knowledge, for that would never have enabled them to lead
man into himself. Anyone determined to recognise only exoteric
science would consequently have to say: ‘The Mysteries must
have been pure humbug, for they only make sense on the assumption
that something quite different from ordinary knowledge was cultivated
in them, with the object of reaching Dionysos.’ Thus in the
Mysteries we have to expect happenings of a kind which approach man
in quite another way from all that man meets in ordinary exoteric
life. This brings us directly up against the question:
‘Is there really any means of penetrating into what is
ordinarily only a reflecting apparatus?’
I should like to
begin from something seemingly quite unimportant. As soon as one
takes the very first step in describing spiritual truths —
truths which lead to reality and not to the maya of the outer world,
not to illusion — one has to set about it in quite a different
way from the way one sets about describing scientific or other
matters in ordinary life. That is why it is so difficult to make
oneself understood. Today men try to confine everything within the
fetters which have been forged for modern science, and nothing that
is not presented in this form is accepted as
‘scientific’. But with such knowledge it is impossible to
penetrate into the nature of things. Hence in the lectures on
Spiritual Science which are given here, a different style, a
different method of presentation is used from the one to which
ordinary science is accustomed; here things are so described that
light is thrown upon them from several sides, and in a certain way
language is taken seriously again. If one takes language seriously,
one reaches what one might call the genius of language. In one of the
earlier lectures of this course I said that it was not for nothing
that in my second Rosicrucian Mystery Play,
The Soul's Probation,
I used the word dichten for an original activity of
the World Creator, or that in
The Portal of Initiation
I said of Ahriman that he creates ‘in dichtem Lichte’.
[ 1 ]
Anyone who appraises such
words in the light of present-day usage will believe that they are
just words like any other. Not at all. They are words which go back
to the original genius of language, words which draw out of the
language something that has not yet passed through the conscious
human ego-life of ideation. And language has many instances of
this.
In the book
The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind,
I have pointed out what a beautiful expression there still was in old
German for what is indicated in an abstract way by geboren werden
(to be born). When a man comes into the world today he is said ‘to
be born’. In old German there was another expression for this. The
human being was of course not conscious of what really takes place at
birth, but the genius of language, in which Dionysos plays a part,
reaching in this way right into the activity of mental
representation as distinct from the mere reflection of it — the
genius of language knew that, when the human being goes through the
gate of death, then in the first part of the time between death and a
new birth, forces are at work in him which he has brought with him
from his previous life and which are the forces which caused him to
grow old in that life. Before we die we become old, and the forces
which make us old we carry over with us. In the first part of the
time between death and a new birth these forces go on working. But in
the second half of the life between death and rebirth quite different
forces set in. Forces take hold of us which fashion us in such a way
that we return to the world as little children, that we become
young. The language of the Middle Ages hinted at this
mystery, by not using merely the abstract phrase geboren
werden but by saying: Der Mensch ist jung geworden (the
man has become young). This is an extremely significant expression!
In the second part of Goethe's Faust
[ 2 ]
we find this phrase: im Nebellande jung geworden.
Nebelland is an expression for the Germany of the Middle
Ages; it means no more than to have been born in Germany, but in this
expression there lies an awareness of the genius of language, thus of
a higher Being than man, who participated in the creation of the
human organism. That one speaks of ‘Dichtung’ in German
is based on awareness that the ‘Dichter’ brings together
what is outspread in the world, condenses it. One day there will be a
philosophy which is not so dry and prosaic, not so philistine as that
of today, because it will enter into the living genius of language,
which in the ego-man of today underlies his conscious life of
ideation. Much has to be elicited from this genius of language if one
wants to characterise the things of the spiritual world, which lie
beyond what ordinary consciousness can grasp.
Thus another method
of presentation has to be used in the description of spiritual
things. Hence the strangeness which is bound to be felt in many
descriptions of the higher worlds. When we speak of the spiritual
worlds we already meet at the very outset with something which must
have originated behind what the human being has in his consciousness.
It has to be drawn from the sub-conscious depths of the soul.
Moreover, if one does this today something is necessary which seems
quite trivial but is nevertheless important. If one wants to describe
spiritual-scientific things in their true sense, one must forego the
use of the customary terminology. One has perhaps even to go so far
as to acknowledge quite consciously: ‘If you reject the
customary terminology then the professors and all the other
intellectuals will say you have no proper command of language. They
will find all manner of things to object to, they will find you
lacking in clarity; they will carp at all sorts of things in the way
in which Spiritual Science is expressed.’ One has to accept
that quite consciously, for it is inevitable. One must face up to the
fact that one will probably be looked upon as stupid, because one
fails to make use of the customary ‘perfectly logical’
terms, which in a higher connection are the height of
imperfection.
What I have pointed
out to you as a small matter — or not so small — was in
ancient Greece a necessity for the pupil of the Mysteries, and is
still so today. In order to come to his full self, in order to
penetrate into his inmost being, which otherwise is only reflected by
his external bodily organisation, the pupil must divest himself of
the usual conscious external method of acquiring knowledge.
Superficial persons could of course immediately say: ‘But you
claim that the human being always retains his common sense, and
judges everything in the higher worlds in accordance with it; yet you
now say that he must renounce normal external knowledge. Surely that
is a contradiction!’ In reality it is quite possible to test
the things of the higher spiritual worlds with common sense and
intelligence while nevertheless withdrawing from that form of
conscious knowledge to which we are accustomed in the outer world.
Here our souls are once more faced by a severe ordeal. In what does
this ordeal consist?
As things are today,
it is the habit of the soul to think and to apply the judgments of
common sense within certain moulds, namely in those forms which in
the ordinary process of mental representation are taught by the
external world. That is the normal thing. And now imagine some
professor or other, who is learned in the science of the outer
world—and within the forms appropriate to that kind of
knowledge an exceptionally able thinker. People come and say:
‘You want to make yourself understood by that professor; he
obviously knows how to think scientifically in the modern sense of
the term, if he can't understand you, you must have
said something it is impossible for anyone to
understand!’ Well, there is no need to dispute that our
professor has a sound common sense judgment for the things of the
ordinary external world. But our subject matter is the
things of the spiritual world, and it will not do for him to listen
with that part of his soul which brings common sense to bear on the
ordinary things of the external world; he would have to listen with
quite a different part of his soul. It does not follow that his
common sense will continue to accompany a man when he seeks to grasp
anything other than the things belonging to the outside world. Those
are the things for which common sense is adapted; and a man may well
possess an understanding for those things — and yet it may
leave him in the lurch when he comes to the things of the spiritual
world.
What is required if
we intend to penetrate into spiritual worlds is — not a
critique of spiritual-scientific things conducted by the instrument
of common sense, but that we should take our common sense along with
us in our approach to them, and not lose it on the way from outer
science towards inner, spiritual science. What matters is that the
soul should be strong enough to avoid the experience so many people
endure today. You could describe it like this. As long as it is only
a question of external science, these people are paragons of logic,
but when they hear of Spiritual Science, then they have to make the
journey from information about external things to information about
the spiritual world. And on this journey they generally lose their
common sense. Then they fancy that, because they had it with them
when they started, they must have had it later on too! It would be a
bad mistake to conclude that it is not possible to enter into the
things of the spiritual world with common sense. It is just that one
must not lose hold of it on the way there.
What I have just put
before you in a petty example was in a far higher sense a necessity
for Greek pupils of the Mysteries, as it is for modern mystics also.
They have to slough off completely as it were their normal
consciousness, yet for all that they have to keep with them the sound
common sense which goes with normal consciousness and then make use
of it as an instrument for judgment in an entirely different
situation, from an entirely different viewpoint. Without
relinquishing his normal consciousness no one can become a mystic. He
has to do without the consciousness which serves him well in the
everyday world. And the challenge to the soul which emerges at this
point, on the way from the customary outer world to the spiritual
world, is that it should not lose its common sense and treat as
nonsense what, if it has held on to its common sense, reveals itself
as a deeper experience.
Thus the pupil in the
Greek Mysteries needed to divest himself of all that he was able to
experience in the outer, the exoteric, world, and this is also
necessary for the mystic today. Hence the things of the world outside
sometimes assume quite different names when they enter into the
sphere of mysticism. When in my Rosicrucian play The Soul's Probation
it is said of Benedictus that in his speech the names of many things
are changed, that they even take on a completely opposite meaning,
this is something of deep significance. What Capesius calls
unhappiness, Benedictus is obliged to call happiness.
[ 3 ]
Just as after death our life to begin with runs its
course backwards and we experience things in backward order, in the
same way we have to change the names of things into their opposites
if we are speaking in the true sense of the higher worlds. Hence you
can estimate what an entirely different world it was which the
ancient Greeks acknowledged as the content of the holy Mysteries.
What was the meaning
of Dionysos in these Mysteries? If you read the little book
The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind,
which is to be published within the next few days, you will see that in
all ages there have been great teachers of mankind who have remained unseen,
who only manifest themselves to clairvoyant consciousness. You will
see that when the ancient Egyptians said, in answer to a question
from the Greeks as to who their teachers were, that they were
instructed by the gods, it was the truth. They meant that men who
were clairvoyant were inspired by teachers who did not descend to
Earth, but who appeared to them in the etheric sphere and taught
them. I am not putting it fancifully, what I am saying is absolutely
true! When in ancient Greece pupils were introduced into the
Mysteries, after having undergone due preparation so that they did
not take such things lightly, superficially — as is done today
when they are discussed in abstract terms — they were then in a
position to see within the Mystery the teacher who was not to be seen
by physical eyes but was visible only to the inspired consciousness.
The hierophants, who were to be seen with physical eyes were
not the important people. The important Beings were those visible to
clairvoyant consciousness. In the Mysteries with which we are
concerned in these lectures, in the Dionysian Mysteries, the highest
teacher of the pupils who were sufficiently prepared was in fact the
younger Dionysos himself — that figure which I have already
told you was a real one, he who was followed by a train of sileni and
fauns and who made the journey from Europe to Asia and back again. He
was the real teacher of the pupils in the Dionysian Mysteries.
Dionysos appeared in an etheric form in the holy Mysteries, and from
him it was then possible to perceive things which were not merely
seen as mirror-images in normal consciousness, but things which
welled forth directly from the inner being of Dionysos.
But because Dionysos
is in us, the human being saw his own self in Dionysos, and learnt to
know himself — not by brooding upon himself, as is so often
recommended by people who know nothing of reality — but the way
to self-knowledge for the Greek Mysteries was to go out of himself.
The way to self-knowledge was not to brood upon himself and to gaze
only upon the mirror-images of ordinary soul-life, but to contemplate
that which he himself was, though he could not reach down to it in
normal consciousness, to look upon the great Teacher. The aspirants
looked upon the great Teacher, who was not yet visible when they
entered into the Mystery, as upon their own being. In the world
outside, where he was recognised merely as Dionysos, he made his
journey from Europe to Asia and back, actually incarnated in a
fleshly body; there he was a real man standing upon the physical
plane. In the Mysteries he appeared in his spirit-form.
In a certain way it
is still so today. When in the world outside the modern leaders of
men go about in human garb, they are unrecognised by the world. When
from the standpoint of Spiritual Science we talk about ‘The
Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings’ people would
often be surprised to know in what simple, unassuming human form
these Masters are to be found in all countries. They are present on
the physical plane. But they do not impart their most important
teachings on the physical plane, but following the example of
Dionysos of old, they impart them on the spiritual plane. And anyone
who wishes to listen to them, to be taught by them, must have access
to them not only in their physical bodies of flesh, but in their
spiritual forms. In a certain way that is true today as it was in the
Dionysian Mysteries of old. Thus one of the tests we have to undergo
is to obey the exhortation ‘Know thyself’ by going out of
ourselves.
But in the Dionysian
Mysteries the soul was exposed to yet another test. I told you that
the aspirants learned to know Dionysos as a spirit-form. In the
Mysteries they were actually instructed by him, they learned to
recognise him as a spirit-form governed entirely by what was most
essential and most important in man's own nature, by what
represented the human self firmly planted upon the Earth. When the
Greek pupils directed their clairvoyant sight upon the figure of
Dionysos, then this Dionysos seemed to them a beautiful, sublime
figure, a noble external representation of humanity. Now just suppose
that one of these pupils had left the Mystery Temple, after having
seen Dionysos there as a beautiful, sublime human form. I expressly
draw your attention to the fact that the younger Dionysos still
remained a teacher in the Mysteries long after the real man, of whom
I have told you that he journeyed from Europe to Asia and back again,
was dead. If however one of these pupils had left the place where the
Mystery was enacted and had encountered in the world outside the real
Dionysos incarnated in the flesh, if he had met that human being who
corresponded to the higher man whom he had seen in the Mystery, he
would have seen no beauty! Just as today the man who has entered into
the Mystery may not hope to see the figure which he had before him in
sublime beauty in the spiritual world in the same august beauty on
the physical plane, just as he must be clear that the physical
embodiment of the spiritual form which he met in the Mystery is
maya, is complete illusion, and conceals the sublime beauty
of the spiritual figure, so that in the physical world it becomes in
a way hideous — so it was in the case of Dionysos. And what
tradition has given us as the external appearance of Dionysos, who is
not represented as such a perfect divine form as Zeus, is in fact the
image of the Dionysos who was manifested in the flesh. The Dionysos
of the Mystery was a beautiful being; the fleshly Dionysos was not to
be compared with him. Hence it is no good looking for the figure of
Dionysos among the finest types of antique human beauty. He is not so
represented by tradition, and we have in particular to think of those
who constituted his followers as being hideous in appearance, like
the satyrs and sileni.
What is more, we
discover in Greek mythology something extremely remarkable. We are
told something which is in fact the truth — that the teacher of
Dionysos was himself a very ugly man. This person, Silenus who was
the teacher of Dionysos himself, the aspirants in the Mystery came to
know also. But Silenus is described to us as a wise individual. We
need only recall that a great number of wise sayings are attributed
to him, sayings which repeatedly stress the worthlessness of the
normal life of man if it is only viewed from the outside in its maya
or illusion. Then we are told something which made a great impression
upon Nietzsche — we are told that King Midas asked Silenus, the
teacher of Dionysos, what was best for man. The wise Silenus gave the
significant but puzzling reply: ‘Oh, thou race of brief
duration, the best would be for thee not to have been born, or since
thou hast been born, the second best for thee would be swiftly to
die.’ This saying has to be rightly understood. It is an
attempt to indicate the relationship between the spirituality of the
super-sensible world, and the maya, the great illusion, of
outer life.
Thus, when we look at
them in their physical human forms, these exalted beings are by no
means beautiful — or at any rate they can only be regarded as
beautiful in a different sense from that in which the late Greek
period understood ideal beauty. We can in a way still idealise
Dionysos in contrast to what he was as a man in the outer world. If
we wish to contrast the form Dionysos assumed in the physical with
the majestic splendour of the spiritual form which he revealed in the
Mystery itself, there is nothing to stop us doing so. We are not
obliged to think of him as ugly. But we should be wrong to think of
the teacher of Dionysos, old Silenus, otherwise than as with an ugly
snub-nose, and ears which stuck out, and anything but handsome.
Silenus, the teacher of Dionysos, who was finally to hand over to man
the archetypal wisdom in a form suitable for the human
egoconsciousness — a wisdom which sprang from the deeper self
of man — this Silenus was still closely akin to the life of
Nature, which man in his present bodily form has really grown out of.
The ancient Greek imagined that the present comeliness of the human
being, from the point of view of external maya, had developed out of
an old, ugly, human form, and that the type of the individuality who
was incarnated in Silenus, the teacher of Dionysos, was not at all
pleasing to look at.
Now as students of
Spiritual Science it will not be difficult for you, from all I have
said so far, to suppose that both in the younger Dionysos and in his
teacher the wise Silenus, we have to do with individualities who have
been of immense importance for the education of modern human
consciousness. Thus when we cast about to find the individualities in
the spiritual environment who—both for our own as well as for
Greek consciousness—were and are momentous for what man has
become, we find these two, Dionysos and the wise Silenus. These
individualities are there in prehistoric times into which no history,
no epic, goes back, but of which nevertheless the later history of
the Greeks tells us, particularly in the epic tradition of its sagas
and its myths. In these times both the wise Silenus and Dionysos were
incarnated in physical bodies, performed physical deeds and died, as
their bodies had to do. The individualities remained.
Now you know of
course that in human history very much happens which is highly
surprising to the man who only thinks abstractly; this is especially
the case as regards the incarnation of human and other beings.
Sometimes a later incarnation, although more advanced, may from the
outside seem less perfect than an earlier one. In my second
Rosicrucian Mystery Play, in the incarnation of the monk in the
Middle Ages (Maria in modern times), I have been able to give just a
very faint idea of the spiritual realities. Thus in history too the
abstract thinker must sometimes be overcome with astonishment when he
contemplates two successive incarnations, or at any rate incarnations
which belong together. The younger Dionysos, who, I told you, allowed
his soul to be poured out into external culture was nevertheless able
at a specific time to gather himself together again as a soul in a
single physical human body; he was born again, incarnated among men;
but in such a way that he did not keep his old form but added to his
outer physical form something of what had constituted his spirit-form
in the Dionysian Mysteries. Both the younger Dionysos and his
teacher, the wise Silenus, were reincarnated in historical times.
Those initiated in the Mystery-wisdom of ancient Greece were fully
conscious that these two had been born again; so were the Greek
artists, who were stimulated and inspired by the Initiates.
Little by little such
things have to be told if Spiritual Science is not to stop at
platitudes, if it is to enter into the reality. Things which are true
have to be told for the sake of the further evolution of humanity.
The wise old teacher of Dionysos was born again, and in his further
incarnation was none other than Socrates. Socrates is the
reincarnation of old Silenus, he is the reincarnated teacher of
Dionysos. And Dionysos himself, that reincarnated being in whom
verily lived the soul of Dionysos of old, was Plato. One only
realises the profound meaning of Greek history if one enters into
what was known—not of course to the writers of external history
— but to the Initiates who have handed down the tradition from
generation to generation right up to today — knowledge which
can also be found in the Akasha Chronicle. Spiritual Science can once
more proclaim that Greece in its early period harboured the teacher
of humanity whom it sent over to Asia in the journey conducted by
Dionysos, whose teacher was Silenus. What Dionysos and the wise
Silenus were able to do for Greece was renewed in a manner suited to
a later age by Socrates and Plato. In the very time when the
Mysteries were falling into decay, in the very time in which there
were no more Initiates who could still see the younger Dionysos
clairvoyantly in the holy Mysteries, that same Dionysos emerged as
the pupil of the wise Silenus, he who had himself become Socrates
— emerged as Plato, the second great teacher of Greece, the
true successor of Dionysos.
One only recognises
the meaning of Greek spiritual culture in the sense of ancient Greek
Mystery-wisdom when one knows that the old Dionysian culture
experienced a revival in Plato. And we admire Platonism in quite
another way, we relate ourselves to it in its true stature when we
know that in Plato there dwelt the soul of the younger Dionysos.
Notes:
1.
dichten = to compose, as author or a poet, to make
literature; dicht = thick. In Ahriman's speech in Scene 4,
he says: ‘Ich wirke diese Schönheit in dichtem
Licht’ — translated in the English version as
‘which charm I weave for thee in light
condensed’.
2. Part II Act
2. Laboratory Scene. Spoken by Homunculus.
3.
The Soul's Probation, Scene I.
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