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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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The Manicheans
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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The Manicheans
Schmidt Number: S-0948
On-line since: 30th May, 2002
The Manicheans
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
Lectures Section
Translation of brief notes made by Fraulein Scholl.
Several passages in the German are very obscure.
This lecture was edited in 1996 from a
typescript of unknown origin.
A Lecture given
by Rudolf Steiner
Berlin, November 11, 1904
Bn 93, GA 93, CW 93
Translation of brief notes made by Fraulein Scholl.
Several passages in the German are very obscure.
This lecture was edited in 1996 from a
typescript of unknown origin.
This lecture is also the 6th of 20 lecture in the lecture series
entitled,
The Temple Legend: Lecture VI: Manicheism.
This e.Text edition is provided through the wonderful work of:
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Thanks to an anonymous donation, this lecture has been made available.
Before one can understand Freemasonry, one must study the original
spiritual streams with which it is connected. An even more important
spiritual stream than that of the Rosicrucians was that of
Manicheanism. The Faust Problem is connected with it. Manicheanism was
founded by Manes about the third century after Christ and its great
opponent was Augustine. Manicheanism came from the region lying in the
eastern part of Asia Minor, ruled over by the kings of Western Asia.
Manicheanism founded a mighty spiritual stream to which the mediaeval
Albigensians, Waldensians, and Cathari also belonged, and later the
Order of the Templars and through an extraordinary concatenation of
relationships, Freemasonry. Freemasonry really belongs here, in spite
of the fact that it united with the Rosicrucians.
The tradition is as follows: In Western Asia there lived a merchant
who was exceedingly learned. He was the Author of four works: (1) The
Mysteries, (2) The Letters, (3) The Gospel, and (4) The Thesaurus.
Tradition holds that his death he left the writings to his widow, who
was a Persian. She had once redeemed a slave named Manes and he was
called ‘the Son of the Widow.’ His followers called
themselves ‘Sons of the Widow.’ Manes designated himself
‘Paraclete’ or ‘Holy Spirit’ promised by Christ to
humanity — that is as an incarnation of the Holy Spirit, merely a
reincarnation of the same. The teachings he proclaimed were attacked
by Augustine when he had become a member of the Catholic Church. He
presented the views of Catholicism as opposed to the Manichean
teaching, making a personality whom he calls ‘Faustus’ the
advocate of Manicheanism. It is usually thought that the different
conceptions of evil held by Manicheanism is what distinguishes it from
Western Christianity. Manicheanism is supposed to have taught that
evil is eternal, like the good, that there is no resurrection and that
evil has no end, that it has the same origin as the good and is
without beginning and hence without end.
We will examine the matter according to the tradition which is
supposed to have originated from Manes himself. In the legend of
Manicheanism we have a starting point for this examination. It is the
Temple Legend. All these Spiritual Streams came to expression
esoterically through legends. The Legend of Manes is a legend dealing
with super-sensible truths, a mighty cosmic legend. The Spirits of
Darkness wished to storm the Kingdom of Light. They came to its
borders for the attack. They were, however, able to achieve nothing.
Now they were to be punished by the Kingdom of Light. But in the
Kingdom of Light there is only good. Thus the Demons of Darkness could
only have been punished through good. Therefore the Spirits of the
Kingdom of Light took a portion of their own kingdom and mingled it
into the Kingdom of Darkness. Thereby a leaven, so to speak, came into
the Kingdom of Darkness and a kind of vortex arose. Death came into
it, whereby it consumed itself. It now carried within itself the seed
of its own destruction. There then arose from the Kingdom of Light the
Archetypal Man, the human race who must mingle with the Kingdom of
Darkness and overcome it.
The deep and profound thought here contained is the following: the
darkness must be overcome through the Kingdom of Light, through the
mingling of the Good with the Evil, in order that the Evil may be
redeemed, but not through punishment. The conception underlying this
is also that of Theosophy, namely that Evil is only an untimely Good.
For example, an excellent piano technique is good, but if the
executant wanted to hammer it out on the piano in the concert hall,
there it would be evil. That which without any doubt is evil today
must have been, in its own time proper place, good. The guiding forces
of the Lemurian epoch would work evil in a later epoch if they were
then still mingled in evolution.
In ancient epochs, in Atlantis and Lemuria, all knowledge was in part
influenced by that which stands above man. Not until our own epoch
have men matured to the stage where they have, as brothers, human
beings who have passed through all stages since the middle of the
Lemurian Race. In the Fifth Root Race, the guidance of the soul from
above withdraws, leaving it to take its own paths. In esotericism, the
soul was called the Mother or Isis. The Father was the Instructor or
Osiris, who represented the inpouring Divine. He is the Revealer. The
soul conceives or receives. The soul is the Mother. During the Fifth
Root Race the Father withdraws. Then the soul is widowed, becomes the
Widow. The soul, which will later on become completely independent, is
designated by Manes, the Divine Fructifier, as the Widow. Then Manes
designates himself as the Son, He it is who prepares the soul to
become independent. Everything that comes from him is a call to the
Divine-Spiritual Light of the soul, a rebellion of the soul against
everything which has not come from out of the soul itself. ‘You
must strip off everything that is external revelation, everything that
external authority has transmitted to you. Then you must become ripe
to behold your own soul.’
Augustine, on the contrary, advocated the principle: I would not
believe in the truth of the Gospels unless the authority of the
Catholic Church compelled me to do so.
But Faust says, “We will only accept the teachings in
freedom.” That is presented exoterically in the Faust Saga.
Luther is the continuer of the principle of Authority. Faust, on the
contrary, supports himself on the inner spiritual light of the soul.
Luther throws an inkpot at the Devil's head. Faust enters into a pact
with Evil.
From the Kingdom of Light a spark is sent into the Kingdom of Darkness
in order that through itself the Darkness may be redeemed, in order
that Evil may be overcome through gentleness (Milde). We must
explain the confluence of Life and Form out of the cooperation of Good
and Evil. Life becomes form through finding opposition. It does not
all at once express itself in a form. Only consider how Life hurries
from form to form. Life has fashioned the lily, then Life overcomes
the Form and it passes over into the seed out of which a new form will
be born. Life is formless it could (not?) live out its own nature in
itself. Life is everywhere. The limited form is the hindrance. There
would be no forms if Life were not obstructed and arrested in its
forces which stream out in every direction. Form grows precisely out
of that which at higher stages appears as fetters. The Life that
pulsates in the Catholic Church is the Christian Life. (From the time
of St. Augustine until the 15th century.) The Life therein is
Christianity. This pulsating Life emerges again and again. (As for
example in the Christian Mystics.) The form is nothing else than the
Life of the old Roman Empire. What was first republic, and then
empire, what lived then in its external appearance as the Roman State,
surrendered its Life to the Form. (The old offices of the state were
continued further through the Bishops and Presbyters.) The new Life is
poured into the old Form. What was formerly Life, later becomes Form
for a new Life.
The fructification of Manes is today the Life of men. The Form is what
has come, like a seed, out of the Lunar Epoch. In that epoch,
evolution was the Life of men. Now this is its outer shell, its form.
In the confluence of Life and Form, the other is given at the same
time. The Good of an earlier age unites with the Good of a newer age.
That gives at the same time the possibility of material manifestation,
the possibility of manifested existence. That is the doctrine of
Manicheanism.
What is the meaning of the utterance of Manes that he is the
Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, the Son of the Widow? It means that he
will prepare for that epoch in which the men of the Sixth Root Race
will be led by themselves, by the light of their own souls. Manes will
create an overlapping stream, a stream which goes further than the
stream of the Rosicrucians. The stream of Manes goes over to the Sixth
Root Race which has been in preparation since the founding of
Christianity. Christianity will appear in its perfected form in the
Sixth Root Race.
Life as such overcomes every Form. It propagates itself through
Christianity and lives in all forms and confessions. Whoever seeks the
Christian Life will find it. It creates Forms and shatters Forms. But,
in addition, a form for the Christian Life of the Sixth Root Race must
be prepared. A number of human beings must be formed into an
organization, a Form, in which the Christianity of the Sixth Root Race
can find its place. This Form, this external Form of Society must
spring from a handful of men whom Manes prepares. This is the
community that Manes prepares. Therefore the first endeavor of
Manicheanism is to shape external life in its pure form. That is why
Manicheanism laid such great stress on purity. The Cathari were a sect
which appeared like a meteor. They gave themselves this name, Cathari,
because Cathari means ‘the Pure Ones.’ They were human
beings who had to keep themselves pure in their mode of life and in
their moral relationships. In Manicheanism, it was less a question of
the cultivation of Life but rather of the cultivation of the external
Form of Life for the Sixth Root Race. In this Sixth Root Race, Good
and Evil will form a far greater contrast than they do today. What
will appear in the Fifth Round for the whole of humanity, i.e., that
the physiognomy will be a direct expression for that which karma has
created in man, so, in the Sixth Root Race, Evil will appear,
especially in the Spiritual. There will be men who are mighty in Love
and Goodness. But Evil will also be there as a mood and a disposition
(Gesinnung) without any covering, within a large number of
human beings. They will extol Evil. Some inkling in regard to the Evil
in the Sixth Root Race glimmers in many men of genius. (Nietzsche's
Blond Beast is a portent of this Evil in the Sixth Root Race.) The
task of the Sixth Root Race is to draw Evil again into itself through
gentleness (Milde). In those who are the followers of the Sons
of the Widow there will live the inviolable principle that Evil must
be overcome through gentleness. That is the task of the Manichean
spiritual stream. It appears in forms which many can call to mind, and
need not be mentioned. It must express itself in the forming of a
community which has to spread above all things: Peace, Love, and
Non-resistance to Evil. It must create a Form for the Life that is to
come later.
Augustine worked out the Form of the Catholic Church. It was the Form
for the present, and had to be the most vigorous opponent of the Form
for the future. Augustine, building the Form for the present, Faustus
striving to prepare in man the sense for the Form of the future —
that was the contrast in the third and fourth centuries after Christ.
It is still there. It comes to expression later, again modified and
toned down, in the two streams of Augustinianism and Manicheanism.
Those who lead the conflict on the one side are all conscious that
they are waging war. But those who, as Manes, are battling on the
other side, are not all of them conscious of this. Only the head of
the movement is conscious of it. Thus they are pitted against each
other: Jesuitism (Augustinianism) and Freemasonry (Manicheanism).
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