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* * * * *
CHRISTIANITY AS
MYSTICAL FACT
AND
THE MYSTERIES OF ANTIQUITY
BY
DR. RUDOLF STEINER
AUTHOR OF "MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE," "THE GATES
OF KNOWLEDGE," ETC.
_THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED_
EDITED BY H. COLLISON
THE AUTHORIZED ENGLISH TRANSLATION
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1914
COPYRIGHT, 1914
BY
H. COLLISON
The copyrights, the publishing rights, and the editorial
responsibility for the translations of the works of Rudolf Steiner,
Ph.D., with the exception of those already published under the
editorial supervision of Mr. Max Gysi, are now vested in Mr. Harry
Collison, M.A., Oxon.
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
_Christianity as Mystical Fact_ was the title given by the author to
this work, when, eight years ago, he gathered into it the substance of
lectures delivered by him in 1902. The title indicated the special
character of the book. In it the attempt was made, not merely to
represent historically the mystical content of Christianity, but to
describe the origin of Christianity from the standpoint of mystical
contemplation. Underlying this intention was the thought that at the
genesis of Christianity mystical facts were at work which can only be
perceived by such contemplation.
It is only the book itself which can make clear that by "mystical" its
author does not imply a conception which relies more on vague feelings
than on "strictly scientific statements." It is true that "mysticism"
is at present widely understood in the former sense, and hence it is
declared by many to be a sphere of the human soul-life with which
"true science" can have nothing to do. In this book the word
"mysticism" is used in the sense of the representation of a spiritual
fact, which can only be recognised in its true nature when the
knowledge of it is derived from the sources of spiritual life itself.
If the kind of knowledge drawn from such sources is rejected, the
reader will not be in a position to judge of the contents of this
book. Only one who allows that the same clearness may exist in
mysticism as in a true representation of the facts of natural science,
will be ready to admit that the content of Christianity as mysticism
may also be mystically described. For it is not only a question of the
contents of the book, but first and foremost of the methods of
knowledge by means of which the statements in it are made.
Many there are in the present day who have a most violent dislike to
such methods, which are regarded as conflicting with the ways of true
science. And this is not only the case with those willing to admit
other interpretations of the world than their own, on the ground of
"genuine knowledge of natural science," but also with those who as
believers wish to study the nature of Christianity.
The author of this book stands on the ground of a conception which
sees that the achievements of natural science in our age must lead up
into true mysticism. In fact, any other attitude as regards knowledge
actually contradicts everything presented by the achievements of
natural science. The facts of natural science itself indeed cannot be
comprehended by means of those methods of knowledge which so many
people would like to employ to the exclusion of others, under the
illusion that they stand on the firm ground of natural science. It is
only when we are prepared to admit that a full appreciation of our
present admirable knowledge of nature is compatible with genuine
mysticism, that we can take the contents of this book into
consideration.
The author's intention is to show, by means of what is here called
"mystical knowledge," how the source of Christianity prepared its own
ground in the mysteries of pre-Christian times. In this pre-Christian
mysticism we find the soil in which Christianity throve, as a germ of
quite independent nature. This point of view makes it possible to
understand Christianity in its independent being, even though its
evolution is traced from pre-Christian mysticism. If this point of
view be overlooked, it is very possible to misunderstand that
independent character, and to think that Christianity was merely a
further development of what already existed in pre-Christian
mysticism. Many people of the present day have fallen into this error,
comparing the content of Christianity with pre-Christian conceptions,
and then thinking that Christian ideas were only a continuation of the
former. The following pages are intended to show that Christianity
presupposes the earlier mysticism just as a seed must have its soil.
It is intended to emphasise the peculiar character of the essence of
Christianity, through the knowledge of its evolution, but not to
extinguish it.
It is with deep satisfaction that the author is able to mention that
this account of the nature of Christianity has found acceptance with
a writer who has enriched the culture of our time in the highest sense
of the word, by his important works on the spiritual life of humanity.
Edouard Schuré, author of _Les Grands Initiés_,[1] is so far in accord
with the attitude of this book that he undertook to translate it into
French, under the title, _Le mystère chrétien et les mystères
antiques_. It may be mentioned by the way, and as a symptom of the
existence at the present time of a longing to understand the nature of
Christianity as presented in this work, that the first edition was
translated into other European languages besides French.
The author has not found occasion to alter anything essential in the
preparation of this second edition. On the other hand, what was
written eight years ago has been enlarged, and the endeavour has been
made to express many things more exactly and circumstantially than was
then possible. Unfortunately the author was obliged, through stress
of work, to let a long period elapse between the time when the first
edition was exhausted, and the appearance of the second.
RUDOLF STEINER.
May, 1910.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This book is to be had in an English translation, by F. Rothwell,
under the title of _The Great Initiates_, A Sketch of the Secret
History of Religions, by Edouard Schuré (Pub., Rider & Son, London).
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION iii
CHAPTER
I.--POINTS OF VIEW 1
II.--THE MYSTERIES AND THEIR WISDOM 10
III.--THE GREEK SAGES BEFORE PLATO IN THE LIGHT OF THE
WISDOM OF THE MYSTERIES 39
IV.--PLATO AS A MYSTIC 63
V.--THE WISDOM OF THE MYSTERIES AND THE MYTH 93
VI.--THE MYSTERY WISDOM OF EGYPT 127
VII.--THE GOSPELS 147
VIII.--THE LAZARUS MIRACLE 159
IX.--THE APOCALYPSE OF ST. JOHN 177
X.--JESUS AND HIS HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 198
XI.--THE NATURE OF CHRISTIANITY 203
XII.--CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHEN WISDOM 215
XIII.--ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE CHURCH 227
NOTES 239
* * * * *
CHRISTIANITY AS MYSTICAL FACT
* * * * *
Christianity as Mystical Fact
I
POINTS OF VIEW
Natural Science has deeply influenced modern thought. It is becoming
more and more impossible to speak of spiritual needs and the life of
the soul, without taking into consideration the achievements and
methods of this science. It must be admitted, however, that many
people satisfy these needs, without letting themselves be troubled by
its influence. But those who feel the beating of the pulse of the age
must take this influence into consideration. With increasing swiftness
do ideas derived from natural science take possession of our brains,
and, unwillingly though it may be, our hearts follow, often in
dejection and dismay. It is not a question only of the number thus won
over, but of the fact that there is a force within the method of
natural science, which convinces the attentive observer that that
method contains something which cannot be neglected, and is one by
which any modern conception of the universe must be profoundly
affected. Many of the outgrowths of this method compel a justifiable
rejection. But such rejection is not sufficient in an age in which
very many resort to this way of thinking, and are attracted to it as
if by magic. The case is in no way altered because some people see
that true science long ago passed, by its own initiative, beyond the
shallow doctrines of force and matter taught by materialists. It would
be better, apparently, to listen to those who boldly declare that the
ideas of natural science will form the basis of a new religion. If
these ideas also appear shallow and superficial to one who knows the
deeper spiritual needs of humanity, he must nevertheless take note of
them, for it is to them that attention is now turned, and there is
reason to think they will claim more and more notice in the near
future.
Another class of people have also to be taken into account, those
whose hearts have lagged behind their heads. With their reason they
cannot but accept the ideas of natural science. The burden of proof is
too much for them. But those ideas cannot satisfy the religious needs
of their souls,--the perspective offered is too dreary. Is the human
soul to rise on the wings of enthusiasm to the heights of beauty,
truth, and goodness, only for each individual to be swept away in the
end like a bubble blown by the material brain? This is a feeling which
oppresses many minds like a nightmare. But scientific concepts oppress
them also, coming as they do come with the mighty force of authority.
As long as they can, these people remain blind to the discord in their
souls. Indeed they console themselves by saying that full clearness in
these matters is denied to the human soul. They think in accordance
with natural science so long as the experience of their senses and the
logic of their intellect demand it, but they keep to the religious
sentiments in which they have been educated, and prefer to remain in
darkness as to these matters,--a darkness which clouds their
understanding. They have not the courage to battle through to the
light.
There can be no doubt whatever that the habit of thought derived from
natural science is the greatest force in modern intellectual life, and
it must not be passed by heedlessly by any one concerned with the
spiritual interests of humanity. But it is none the less true that the
way in which it sets about satisfying spiritual needs is superficial
and shallow. If this were the right way, the outlook would indeed be
dreary. Would it not be depressing to be obliged to agree with those
who say: "Thought is a form of force. We walk by means of the same
force by which we think. Man is an organism which transforms various
forms of force into thought-force, an organism the activity of which
we maintain by what we call 'food,' and with which we produce what we
call 'thought.' What a marvellous chemical process it is which could
change a certain quantity of food into the divine tragedy of Hamlet."
This is quoted from a pamphlet of Robert G. Ingersoll, bearing the
title, _Modern Twilight of the Gods_. It matters little if such
thoughts find but scanty acceptance in the outside world. The point is
that innumerable people find themselves compelled by the system of
natural science to take up with regard to world-processes an attitude
in conformity with the above, even when they think they are not doing
so.
It would certainly be a dreary outlook if natural science itself
compelled us to accept the creed proclaimed by many of its modern
prophets. Most dreary of all for one who has gained, from the content
of natural science, the conviction that in its own sphere its mode of
thought holds good and its methods are unassailable. For he is driven
to make the admission that, however much people may dispute about
individual questions, though volume after volume may be written, and
thousands of observations accumulated about the struggle for existence
and its insignificance, about the omnipotence or powerlessness of
natural selection, natural science itself is moving in a direction
which, within certain limits, must find acceptance in an
ever-increasing degree.
But are the demands made by natural science really such as they are
described by some of its representatives? That they are not so is
proved by the method employed by these representatives themselves. The
method they use in their own sphere is not such as is often described,
and claimed for other spheres of thought. Would Darwin and Ernst
Haeckel ever have made their great discoveries about the evolution of
life if, instead of observing life and the structure of living beings,
they had shut themselves up in a laboratory and there made chemical
experiments with tissue cut out of an organism? Would Lyell have been
able to describe the development of the crust of the earth if, instead
of examining strata and their contents, he had scrutinised the
chemical qualities of innumerable rocks? Let us really follow in the
footsteps of these investigators who tower like giants in the domain
of modern science. We shall then apply to the higher regions of
spiritual life the methods they have used in the study of nature. We
shall not then believe we have understood the nature of the "divine"
tragedy of Hamlet by saying that a wonderful chemical process
transformed a certain quantity of food into that tragedy. We shall
believe it as little as an investigator of nature could seriously
believe that he has understood the mission of heat in the evolution of
the earth, when he has studied the action of heat on sulphur in a
retort. Neither does he attempt to understand the construction of the
human brain by examining the effect of liquid potash on a fragment of
it, but rather by inquiring how the brain has, in the course of
evolution, been developed out of the organs of lower organisms.
It is therefore quite true that one who is investigating the nature of
spirit can do nothing better than learn from natural science. He need
only do as science does, but he must not allow himself to be misled by
what individual representatives of natural science would dictate to
him. He must investigate in the spiritual as they do in the physical
domain, but he need not adopt the opinions they entertain about the
spiritual world, confused as they are by their exclusive
contemplation of physical phenomena.
We shall only be acting in the spirit of natural science if we study
the spiritual development of man as impartially as the naturalist
observes the sense-world. We shall then certainly be led, in the
domain of spiritual life, to a kind of contemplation which differs
from that of the naturalist as geology differs from pure physics and
biology from chemistry. We shall be led up to higher methods, which
cannot, it is true, be those of natural science, though quite
conformable with the spirit of it. Such methods alone are able to
bring us to the heart of spiritual developments, such as that of
Christianity, or other worlds of religious conceptions. Any one
applying these methods may arouse the opposition of many who believe
they are thinking scientifically, but he will know himself, for all
that, to be in full accord with a genuinely scientific method of
thought.
An investigator of this kind must also go beyond a merely historical
examination of the documents relating to spiritual life. This is
necessary just on account of the attitude he has acquired from his
study of natural history. When a chemical law is explained, it is of
small use to describe the retorts, dishes, and pincers which have led
to the discovery of the law. And it is just as useless, when
explaining the origin of Christianity, to ascertain the historical
sources drawn upon by the Evangelist St. Luke, or those from which the
"hidden revelation" of St. John is compiled. History can in this case
be only the outer court to research proper. It is not by tracing the
historical origin of documents that we shall discover anything about
the dominant ideas in the writings of Moses or in the traditions of
the Greek mystics. These documents are only the outer expression for
the ideas. Nor does the naturalist who is investigating the nature of
man trouble about the origin of the word "man," or the way in which it
has developed in a language. He keeps to the thing, not to the word in
which it finds expression. And in studying spiritual life we must
likewise abide by the spirit and not by outer documents.
II
THE MYSTERIES AND THEIR WISDOM
A kind of mysterious veil hangs over the manner in which spiritual
needs were satisfied during the older civilisations by those who
sought a deeper religious life and fuller knowledge than the popular
religions offered. If we inquire how these needs were satisfied, we
find ourselves led into the dim twilight of the mysteries, and the
individual seeking them disappears for a time from our observation. We
see how it is that the popular religions cannot give him what his
heart desires. He acknowledges the existence of the gods, but knows
that the ordinary ideas about them do not solve the great problems of
existence. He seeks a wisdom which is jealously guarded by a community
of priest-sages. His aspiring soul seeks a refuge in this community.
If he is found by the sages to be sufficiently prepared, he is led up
by them, step by step, to higher knowledge, in places hidden from the
eyes of outward observers. What then happens to him is concealed from
the uninitiated. He seems for a time to be entirely removed from
earthly life and to be transported into a hidden world.
When he reappears in the light of day a different, quite transformed
person is before us. We see a man who cannot find words sublime enough
to express the momentous experience through which he has passed. Not
merely metaphorically but in a most real sense does he seem to have
gone through the gate of death and to have awakened to a new and
higher life. He is, moreover, quite certain that no one who has not
had a similar experience can understand his words.
This was what happened to those who were initiated into the Mysteries,
into that secret wisdom withheld from the people and which threw light
on the greatest questions. This "secret" religion of the elect existed
side by side with the popular religion. Its origin vanishes, as far as
history is concerned, into the obscurity in which the origin of
nations is lost. We find this secret religion everywhere amongst the
ancients as far as we know anything concerning them; and we hear their
sages speak of the Mysteries with the greatest reverence. What was it
that was concealed in them? And what did they unveil to the initiate?
The enigma becomes still more puzzling when we discover that the
ancients looked upon the Mysteries as something dangerous. The way
leading to the secrets of existence passed through a world of terrors,
and woe to him who tried to gain them unworthily. There was no greater
crime than the "betrayal" of secrets to the uninitiated. The "traitor"
was punished with death and the confiscation of his property. We know
that the poet Æschylus was accused of having reproduced on the stage
something from the Mysteries. He was only able to escape death by
fleeing to the altar of Dionysos and by legally proving that he had
never been initiated.
What the ancients say about these secrets is significant, but at the
same time ambiguous. The initiate is convinced that it would be a sin
to tell what he knows and also that it would be sinful for the
uninitiated to listen. Plutarch speaks of the terror of those about to
be initiated, and compares their state of mind to preparation for
death. A special mode of life had to precede initiation, tending to
give the spirit the mastery over the senses. Fasting, solitude,
mortifications, and certain exercises for the soul were the means
employed. The things to which man clings in ordinary life were to lose
all their value for him. The whole trend of his life of sensation and
feeling was to be changed.
There can be no doubt as to the meaning of such exercises and tests.
The wisdom which was to be offered to the candidate for initiation
could only produce the right effect upon his soul if he had previously
purified the lower life of his sensibility. He was introduced to the
life of the spirit. He was to behold a higher world, but he could not
enter into relations with that world without previous exercises and
tests. The relations thus gained were the condition of initiation.
In order to obtain a correct idea on this matter, it is necessary to
gain experience of the intimate facts of the growth of knowledge. We
must feel that there are two widely divergent attitudes towards that
which the highest knowledge gives. The world surrounding us is to us
at first the real one. We feel, hear, and see what goes on in it, and
because we thus perceive things with our senses, we call them real.
And we reflect about events, in order to get an insight into their
connections. On the other hand, what wells up in our soul is at first
not real to us in the same sense. It is "merely" thoughts and ideas.
At the most we see in them only images of reality. They themselves
have no reality, for we cannot touch, see, or hear them.
There is another way of being connected with things. A person who
clings to the kind of reality described above will hardly understand
it, but it comes to certain people at some moment in their lives. To
them the whole connection with the world is completely reversed. They
then call the images which well up in the spiritual life of their
souls actually real, and they assign only a lower kind of reality to
what the senses hear, touch, feel, and see. They know that they
cannot prove what they say, that they can only relate their new
experiences, and that when relating them to others they are in the
position of a man who can see and who imparts his visual impressions
to one born blind. They venture to impart their inner experiences,
trusting that there are others round them whose spiritual eyes, though
as yet closed, may be opened by the power of what they hear. For they
have faith in humanity and want to give it spiritual sight. They can
only lay before it the fruits which their spirit has gathered. Whether
another sees them, depends on his spiritual eyes being opened or not.
There is something in man which at first prevents him from seeing with
the eyes of the spirit. He is not there for that purpose. He is what
his senses are, and his intellect is only the interpreter and judge of
them. The senses would ill fulfil their mission if they did not insist
upon the truth and infallibility of their evidence. An eye must, from
its own point of view, uphold the absolute reality of its perceptions.
The eye is right as far as it goes, and is not deprived of its due by
the eye of the spirit. The latter only allows us to see the things of
sense in a higher light. Nothing seen by the eye of sense is denied,
but a new brightness, hitherto unseen, radiates from what is seen. And
then we know that what we first saw was only a lower reality. We see
that still, but it is immersed in something higher, which is spirit.
It is now a question of whether we realise and feel what we see. One
who lives only in the sensations and feelings of the senses will look
upon impressions of higher things as a Fata Morgana, or mere play of
fancy. His feelings are entirely directed towards the things of sense.
He grasps emptiness when he tries to lay hold of spirit forms. They
withdraw from him when he gropes after them. They are just "mere"
thoughts. He thinks them, but does not live in them. They are images,
less real to him than fleeting dreams. They rise up like bubbles while
he is standing in his reality; they disappear before the massive,
solidly built reality of which his senses tell him.
It is otherwise with one whose perceptions and feelings with regard to
reality have changed. For him that reality has lost its absolute
stability and value. His senses and feelings need not become numbed,
but they begin to be doubtful of their absolute authority. They leave
room for something else. The world of the spirit begins to animate the
space left.
At this point a possibility comes in which may prove terrible. A man
may lose his sensations and feelings of outer reality without finding
any new reality opening up before him. He then feels himself as if
suspended in the void. He feels as if he were dead. The old values
have disappeared and no new ones have arisen in their place. The world
and man no longer exist for him. This, however, is by no means a mere
possibility. It happens at some time or other to every one who is
seeking for higher knowledge. He comes to a point at which the spirit
represents all life to him as death. He is then no longer in the
world, but under it,--in the nether world. He is passing through
Hades. Well for him if he sink not! Happy if a new world open up
before him! Either he dwindles away or he appears to himself
transfigured. In the latter case he beholds a new sun and a new
earth. The whole world has been born again for him out of spiritual
fire.
It is thus that the initiates describe the effect of the Mysteries
upon them. Menippus relates that he journeyed to Babylon in order to
be taken to Hades and to be brought back again by the successors of
Zarathustra. He says that he swam across the great water on his
wanderings, and that he passed through fire and ice. We hear that the
Mystics were terrified by a flashing sword, and that blood flowed. We
understand this when we know from experience the point of transition
from lower to higher knowledge. We then feel as if all solid matter
and things of sense had dissolved into water, and as if the ground
were cut away from under our feet. Everything is dead which we felt
before to be alive. The spirit has passed through the life of the
senses, as a sword pierces a warm body; we have seen the blood of
sense-nature flow. But a new life has appeared. We have risen from the
nether-world. The orator Aristides relates this: "I thought I touched
the god and felt him draw near, and I was then between waking and
sleeping. My spirit was so light that no one who is not initiated can
speak of or understand it." This new existence is not subject to the
laws of lower life. Growth and decay no longer affect it. One may say
much about the Eternal, but words of one who has not been through
Hades are "mere sound and smoke." The initiates have a new conception
of life and death. Now for the first time do they feel they have the
right to speak about immortality. They know that one who speaks of it
without having been initiated talks of something which he does not
understand. The uninitiated attribute immortality only to something
which is subject to the laws of growth and decay. The Mystics,
however, did not merely desire to gain the conviction that the kernel
of life is eternal. According to the view of the Mysteries, such a
conviction would be quite valueless, for this view holds that the
Eternal is not present as a living reality in the uninitiated. If such
an one spoke of the Eternal, he would be speaking of something
non-existent. It is rather the Eternal itself that the Mystics are
seeking. They have first to awaken the Eternal within them, then they
can speak of it. Hence the hard saying of Plato is quite real to them,
that the uninitiated sinks into the mire, and that only one who has
passed through the mystical life enters eternity. It is only in this
sense that the words in the fragment of Sophocles can be understood:
"Thrice-blessed are the initiated who come to the realm of the shades.
They alone have life there. For others there is only misery and
hardship."
Is one therefore not describing dangers when speaking of the
Mysteries? Is it not robbing a man of happiness and of the best part
of his life to take him to the portals of the nether-world? Terrible
is the responsibility incurred by such an act. And yet ought we to
refuse that responsibility? These were the questions which the
initiate had to put to himself. He was of opinion that his knowledge
bore the same relation to the soul of the people as light does to
darkness. But innocent happiness dwells in that darkness, and the
Mystics were of opinion that that happiness should not be
sacrilegiously interfered with. For what would have happened in the
first place if the Mystic had betrayed his secret? He would have
uttered words and only words. The feelings and emotions which would
have evoked the spirit from the words would have been absent. To do
this preparation, exercises, tests, and a complete change in the life
of sense were necessary. Without this the hearer would have been
hurled into emptiness and nothingness. He would have been deprived of
what constituted his happiness, without receiving anything in
exchange. One may also say that one could take nothing away from him,
for mere words would change nothing in his life of feeling. He would
only have been able to feel and experience reality through his senses.
Nothing but a terrible misgiving, fatal to life, would be given him.
This could only be construed as a crime.
The wisdom of the Mysteries is like a hothouse plant, which must be
cultivated and fostered in seclusion. Any one bringing it into the
atmosphere of everyday ideas brings it into air in which it cannot
flourish. It withers away to nothing before the caustic verdict of
modern science and logic. Let us therefore divest ourselves for a
time of the education we gained through the microscope and telescope
and the habit of thought derived from natural science, and let us
cleanse our clumsy hands, which have been too busy with dissecting and
experimenting, in order that we may enter the pure temple of the
Mysteries. For this a candid and unbiassed attitude of mind is
necessary.
The important point for the Mystic is at first the frame of mind in
which he approaches that which to him is the highest, the answers to
the riddles of existence. Just in our day, when only gross physical
science is recognised as containing truth, it is difficult to believe
that in the highest things we depend upon the key-note of the soul.
Knowledge thereby becomes an intimate personal concern. But this is
what it really is to the Mystic. Tell some one the solution of the
riddle of the universe! Give it him ready-made! The Mystic will find
it to be nothing but empty sound, if the personality does not meet the
solution half-way in the right manner. The solution in itself is
nothing; it vanishes if the necessary feeling is not kindled at its
contact. A divinity approaches you. It is either everything or
nothing. Nothing, if you meet it in the frame of mind with which you
confront everyday matters. Everything, if you are prepared, and
attuned to the meeting. What the Divinity is in itself is a matter
which does not affect you; the important point for you is whether it
leaves you as it found you or makes another man of you. But this
depends entirely on yourself. You must have been prepared by a special
education, by a development of the inmost forces of your personality
for the work of kindling and releasing what a divinity is able to
kindle and release in you. What is brought to you depends on the
reception you give to it.
Plutarch has told us about this education, and of the greeting which
the Mystic offers the divinity approaching him; "For the god, as it
were, greets each one who approaches him, with the words, 'Know
thyself,' which is surely no worse than the ordinary greeting,
'Welcome.' Then we answer the divinity in the words, 'Thou art,' and
thus we affirm that the true, primordial, and only adequate greeting
for him is to declare that he is. In that existence we really have no
part here, for every mortal being, situated between birth and
destruction, merely manifests an appearance, a feeble and uncertain
image of itself. If we try to grasp it with our understanding, it is
as when water is tightly compressed and runs over merely through the
pressure, spoiling what it touches. For the understanding, pursuing a
too definite conception of each being that is subject to accidents and
change, loses its way, now in the origin of the being, now in its
destruction, and is unable to apprehend anything lasting or really
existing. For, as Heraclitus says, we cannot swim twice in the same
wave, neither can we lay hold of a mortal being twice in the same
state, for, through the violence and rapidity of movement, it is
destroyed and recomposed; it comes into being and again decays; it
comes and goes. Therefore, that which is becoming can neither attain
real existence, because growth neither ceases nor pauses. Change
begins in the germ, and forms an embryo; then there appears a child,
then a youth, a man, and an old man; the first beginnings and
successive ages are continually annulled by the ensuing ones. Hence it
is ridiculous to fear one death, when we have already died in so many
ways, and are still dying. For, as Heraclitus says, not only is the
death of fire the birth of air, and the death of air the birth of
water, but the same change may be still more plainly seen in man. The
strong man dies when he becomes old, the youth when he becomes a man,
the boy on becoming a youth, and the child on becoming a boy. What
existed yesterday dies to-day, what is here to-day will die to-morrow.
Nothing endures or is a unity, but we become many things, whilst
matter wanders around one image, one common form. For if we were
always the same, how could we take pleasure in things which formerly
did not please us, how could we love and hate, admire and blame
opposite things, how could we speak differently and give ourselves up
to different passions, unless we were endowed with a different shape,
form, and different senses? For no one can rightly come into a
different state without change, and one who is changed is no longer
the same; but if he is not the same, he no longer exists and is
changed from what he was, becoming something else. Sense-perception
only led us astray, because we do not know real being, and mistook for
it that which is only an appearance."[2]
Plutarch often describes himself as an initiate. What he portrays here
is a condition of the life of the Mystic. Man acquires a kind of
wisdom by means of which his spirit sees through the illusive
character of sense-life. What the senses regard as being, or reality,
is plunged into the stream of "becoming"; and man is subject to the
same conditions in this respect as all other things in the world.
Before the eyes of his spirit he himself dissolves, the sum-total of
his being is broken up into parts, into fleeting phenomena. Birth and
death lose their distinctive meaning, and become moments of appearing
and disappearing, just as much as any other happenings in the world.
The Highest cannot be found in the connection between development and
decay. It can only be sought in what is really abiding, in what looks
back to the past and forward to the future.
To find that which looks (_i.e._ the spirit) backwards and forwards is
the first stage of knowledge. This is the spirit, which is manifesting
in and through the physical. It has nothing to do with physical
growth. It does not come into being and again decay as do
sense-phenomena. One who lives entirely in the world of sense carries
the spirit latent within him. One who has pierced through the illusion
of the world of sense has the spirit within him as a manifest reality.
The man who attains to this insight has developed a new principle
within him. Something has happened within him as in a plant when it
adds a coloured flower to its green leaves. It is true the forces
causing the flower to grow were already latent in the plant before the
blossom appeared, but they only became effective when this took place.
Divine, spiritual forces are latent in the man who lives merely
through his senses, but they only become a manifest reality in the
initiate. Such is the transformation which takes place in the Mystic.
By his development he has added a new element to the world. The world
of sense made him a human being endowed with senses, and then left him
to himself. Nature had thus fulfilled her mission. What she is able to
do with the powers operative in man is exhausted; not so the forces
themselves. They lie as though spellbound in the merely natural man
and await their release. They cannot release themselves. They fade
away to nothing unless man seizes upon them and develops them, unless
he calls into actual being what is latent within him.
Nature evolves from the imperfect to the perfect. She leads beings,
through a long series of stages, from inanimate matter, through all
living forms up to physical man. Man looks around and finds himself a
changing being with physical reality, but he also perceives within him
the forces from which the physical reality arose. These forces are not
what change, for they have given birth to the changing world. They are
within man as a sign that there is more life within him than he can
physically perceive. What they may make man is not yet there. He
feels something flash up within him which created everything,
including himself, and he feels that this will inspire him to higher
creative activity. This something is within him, it existed before his
manifestation in the flesh, and will exist afterwards. By means of it
he became, but he may lay hold of it and take part in its creative
activity.
Such are the feelings animating the Mystic after initiation. He feels
the Eternal and Divine. His activity is to become a part of that
divine creative activity. He may say to himself: "I have discovered a
higher ego within me, but that ego extends beyond the bounds of my
sense-existence. It existed before my birth and will exist after my
death. This ego has created from all eternity, it will go on creating
in all eternity. My physical personality is a creation of this ego.
But it has incorporated me within it, it works within me, I am a part
of it. What I henceforth create will be higher than the physical. My
personality is only a means for this creative power, for this Divine
is within me." Thus did the Mystic experience his birth into the
Divine.
The Mystic called the power that flashed up within him a daimon. He
was himself the product of this daimon. It seemed to him as though
another being had entered him and taken possession of his organs, a
being standing between his physical personality and the all-ruling
cosmic power, the divinity.
The Mystic sought this--his daimon. He said to himself: "I have become
a human being in mighty Nature, but Nature did not complete her task.
This completion I must take in hand myself. But I cannot accomplish it
in the gross kingdom of nature to which my physical personality
belongs. What it is possible to develop in that realm has already been
developed. Therefore I must leave this kingdom and take up the
building in the realm of the spirit at the point where nature left
off. I must create an atmosphere of life not to be found in outer
nature."
This atmosphere of life was prepared for the Mystic in the Mystery
temples. There the forces slumbering within him were awakened, there
he was changed into a higher creative spirit-nature. This
transformation was a delicate process. It could not bear the
untempered atmosphere of everyday life. But when once it was
completed, its result was that the initiate stood as a rock, rising
from the eternal and able to defy all storms. But it was impossible
for him to reveal his experiences to any one unprepared to receive
them.
Plutarch says that the Mysteries gave deep understanding of the true
nature of the daimons. And Cicero tells us that from the Mysteries,
"When they are explained and traced back to their meaning, we learn
the nature of things rather than that of the gods."[3] From such
statements we see clearly that there were higher revelations for the
Mystics about the nature of things than that which popular religion
was able to impart. Indeed we see that the daimons, _i.e._, spiritual
beings, and the gods themselves, needed explaining. Therefore
initiates went back to beings of a higher nature than daimons or gods,
and this was characteristic of the essence of the wisdom of the
Mysteries.
The people represented the gods and daimons in images borrowed from
the world of sense-reality. Would not one who had penetrated into the
nature of the Eternal doubt about the eternal nature of such gods as
these? How could the Zeus of popular imagination be eternal if he bore
within him the qualities of a perishable being? One thing was clear to
the Mystics, that man arrives at a conception of the gods in a
different way from the conception of other things. An object belonging
to the outer world compels us to form a very definite idea of it. In
contrast to this, we form our conception of the gods in a freer and
somewhat arbitrary manner. The control of the outer world is absent.
Reflection teaches us that what we conceive as gods is not subject to
outer control. This places us in logical uncertainty; we begin to feel
that we ourselves are the creators of our gods. Indeed, we ask
ourselves how we have arrived at a conception of the universe that
goes beyond physical reality. The initiate was obliged to ask himself
such questions; his doubts were justified. "Look at all
representations of the gods," he might think to himself. "Are they
not like the beings we meet in the world of sense? Did not man create
them for himself, by giving or withholding from them, in his thought,
some quality belonging to beings of the sense-world? The savage lover
of the chase creates a heaven in which the gods themselves take part
in glorious hunting, and the Greek peopled his Olympus with divine
beings whose models were taken from his own surroundings."
The philosopher Xenophanes (B.C. 575-480) drew attention to this fact
with a crude logic. We know that the older Greek philosophers were
entirely dependent on the wisdom of the Mysteries. We will afterwards
prove this in detail, beginning with Heraclitus. What Xenophanes says
may at once be taken as the conviction of a Mystic. It runs thus:
"Men who picture the gods as created in their own human forms, give
them human senses, voices, and bodies. But if cattle and lions had
hands, and knew how to use them, like men, in painting and working,
they would paint the forms of the gods and shape their bodies as
their own bodies were constituted. Horses would create gods in
horse-form, and cattle would make gods like bulls."
Through insight of this kind, man may begin to doubt the existence of
anything divine. He may reject all mythology, and only recognise as
reality what is forced upon him by his sense-perception. But the
Mystic did not become a doubter of this kind. He saw that the doubter
would be like a plant were it to say: "My crimson flowers are null and
futile, because I am complete within my green leaves. What I may add
to them is only adding illusive appearance." Just as little could the
Mystic rest content with gods thus created, the gods of the people. If
the plant could think, it would understand that the forces which
created its green leaves are also destined to create crimson flowers,
and it would not rest till it had investigated those forces and come
face to face with them. This was the attitude of the Mystic towards
the gods of the people. He did not deny them, or say they were
illusion; but he knew they had been created by man. The same forces,
the same divine element, which are at work in nature, are at work in
the Mystic. They create within him images of the gods. He wishes to
see the force that creates the gods; it comes from a higher source
than these gods. Xenophanes alludes to it thus: "There is one god
greater than all gods and men. His form is not like that of mortals,
his thoughts are not their thoughts."
This god was also the God of the Mysteries. He might have been called a
"hidden God," for man could never find him with his senses only. Look
at outer things around you, you will find nothing divine. Exert your
reason, you may be able to detect the laws by which things appear and
disappear, but even your reason will not show you anything divine.
Saturate your imagination with religious feeling, and you may be able
to create images which you may take to be gods, but your reason will
pull them to pieces, for it will prove to you that you created them
yourself, and borrowed the material from the sense-world. So long as
you look at outer things in your quality of simply a reasonable being,
you must deny the existence of God; for God is hidden from the senses,
and from that reason of yours which explains sense-perceptions.
God lies hidden spellbound in the world, and you need His own power to
find Him. You must awaken that power in yourself. These are the
teachings which were given to the candidate for initiation.
And now there began for him the great cosmic drama with which his life
was bound up. The action of the drama meant nothing less than the
deliverance of the spellbound god. Where is God? This was the question
asked by the soul of the Mystic. God is not existent, but nature
exists. And in nature He must be found. There He has found an
enchanted grave. It was in a higher sense that the Mystic understood
the words "God is love." For God has exalted that love to its climax,
He has sacrificed Himself in infinite love, He has poured Himself out,
fallen into number in the manifold of nature. Things in nature live
and He does not live. He slumbers within them. We are able to awaken
Him; if we are to give Him existence, we must deliver Him by the
creative power within us.
The candidate now looks unto himself. As latent creative power as yet
without existence, the Divine is living in his soul. In the soul is a
sacred place where the spellbound god may wake to liberty. The soul is
the mother who is able to conceive the god by nature. If the soul
allows herself to be impregnated by nature, she will give birth to the
divine. God is born from the marriage of the soul with nature,--no
longer a "hidden," but a manifest god. He has life, a perceptible
life, wandering amongst men. He is the god freed from enchantment, the
offspring of the God who was hidden by a spell. He is not the great
God, who was and is and is to come, but yet he may be taken, in a
certain sense, as the revelation of Him. The Father remains at rest in
the unseen; the Son is born to man out of his own soul. Mystical
knowledge is thus an actual event in the cosmic process. It is the
birth of the Divine. It is an event as real as any natural event, only
enacted upon a higher plane.
The great secret of the Mystic is that he himself creates his god, but
that he first prepares himself to recognise the god created by him.
The uninitiated man has no feeling for the father of that god, for
that Father slumbers under a spell. The Son appears to be born of a
virgin, the soul having seemingly given birth to him without
impregnation. All her other children are conceived by the sense-world.
Their father may be seen and touched, having the life of sense. The
Divine Son alone is begotten of the hidden, eternal, Divine, Father
Himself.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Plutarch's Moral Works, _On the Inscription EJ at Delphi_, pp.
17-18.
[3] Plutarch, _On the Decline of the Oracles_; Cicero _On the Nature of
the Gods._
III
THE GREEK SAGES BEFORE PLATO IN THE LIGHT OF THE WISDOM OF THE
MYSTERIES