transitory nature; but as such, it is destined to give birth to the
eternal. Man may, therefore, regard himself as the tomb of Osiris. The
lower nature (Typhon) has killed the higher nature in him. Love in his
soul (Isis) must take care of the dead fragments of his body, and then
the higher nature, the eternal soul (Horus) will be born, which can
progress to Osiris life. The man who is aspiring to the highest kind
of existence must repeat in himself, as a microcosm, the macrocosmic
universal Osiris process. This is the meaning of Egyptian initiation.
What Plato (_cf._ p. 80) describes as a cosmic process, _i.e._, that
the Creator has stretched the soul of the world on the body of the
world in the form of a cross, and that the cosmic process is the
release of this crucified soul,--this process had to be enacted in man
on a smaller scale if he was to be qualified for Osiris life. The
candidate for initiation had to develop himself in such a way that
his soul-experience, his becoming an Osiris, became blended into one
with the cosmic Osiris process.
If we could look into the temples of initiation in which people
underwent the transformation into Osiris, we should see that what took
place represented microcosmically the building of the cosmos. Man who
proceeded from the "Father" was to give birth to the Son in himself.
What he actually bears within him, divinity hidden under a spell, was
to become manifest in him. This divinity is kept down in him by the
power of the earthly nature; this lower nature must first be buried in
order that the higher nature may arise.
From this we are able to interpret what we are told about the
incidents of initiation. The candidate was subjected to mysterious
processes, by means of which his earthly nature was killed, and his
higher part awakened. It is not necessary to study these processes in
detail, if we understand their meaning. This meaning is contained in
the confession possible to every one who went through initiation. He
could say: "Before me was the endless perspective at the end of which
is the perfection of the divine. I felt that the power of the divine
is within me. I buried what in me keeps down that power. I died to
earthly things. I was dead. I had died as a lower man, I was in the
nether-world. I had intercourse with the dead, _i.e._, with those who
have already become part of the chain of the eternal cosmic order.
After my sojourn in the nether-world, I arose from the dead. I
overcame death, but now I have become different. I have nothing more
to do with perishable nature. It has in me become saturated with the
Logos. I now belong to those who live eternally, and who will sit at
the right hand of Osiris. I myself shall be a true Osiris, part of the
eternal cosmic order, and judgment of life and death will be placed in
my hands." The candidate for initiation had to submit to the
experience which made such a confession possible to him. Thus this was
an experience of the highest kind.
Let us now imagine that a non-initiate hears of such experiences. He
cannot know what has really taken place in the initiate's soul. In
his eyes, the initiate died physically, lay in the grave, and rose
again. What is a spiritual reality at a higher stage of existence
appears when expressed in the form of sense-reality as an event which
breaks through the order of nature. It is a "miracle." So far
initiation was a miracle. One who really wished to understand it must
have awakened within him powers to enable him to stand on a higher
plane of existence. He must have approached these higher experiences
through a course of life specially adapted for the purpose. In
whatever way these prepared experiences were enacted in individual
cases, they are always found to be of quite a definite type. And so an
initiate's life is a typical one. It may be described independently of
the single personality. Or rather, an individual could only be
described as being on the way to the divine if he had passed through
these definite typical experiences.
Such a personality was Buddha, living in the midst of his disciples.
As such an one did Jesus appear to his community. Nowadays we know of
the parallelism that exists between the biographies of Buddha and of
Jesus. Rudolf Seydel has convincingly proved this parallelism in his
book, _Buddha und Christus_. (Compare also the excellent essay by Dr.
Hübbe-Schleiden, "Jesus ein Buddhist.") We have only to follow out the
two lives in detail in order to see that all objections to the
parallelism are futile.
The birth of Buddha is announced by a white elephant, which descends
from heaven and declares to the queen, Maya, that she will bring forth
a divine man, who "will attune all beings to love and friendship, and
will unite them in a close alliance." We read in St. Luke's Gospel:
"To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of
David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her,
and said, 'Hail, thou that art highly favoured.... Behold, thou shalt
conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name
Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the
Highest.'"
The Brahmins, or Indian priests, who know what the birth of a Buddha
means, interpret Maya's dream. They have a definite, typical idea of
a Buddha, to which the life of the personality about to be born will
have to correspond. Similarly we read in Matthew ii. _et seq._, that
when Herod "had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the
people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born." The
Brahmin Asita says of Buddha: "This is the child which will become
Buddha, the redeemer, the leader to immortality, freedom, and light."
Compare with this Luke ii. 25: "And, behold, there was a man in
Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and
devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was
upon him.... And when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do
for him after the custom of the law, then took he him up in his arms,
and blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart
in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy
salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a
light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel."
It is related of Buddha that at the age of twelve he was lost, and
found again under a tree, surrounded by poets and sages of the olden
time, whom he was teaching. With this incident the following passage
in St. Luke corresponds: "Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year
at the feast of the passover. And when he was twelve years old, they
went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And when they had
fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind
in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it. But they,
supposing him to have been in the company, went a day's journey; and
they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they
found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking him. And
it came to pass that after three days they found him in the temple,
sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking
them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his
understanding and answers" (Luke ii. 41-47).
After Buddha had lived in solitude, and returned, he was received by
the benediction of a virgin, "Blessed is thy mother, blessed is thy
father, blessed is the wife to whom thou belongest." But he replied,
"Only they are blessed who are in Nirvana," _i.e._, who have entered
the eternal cosmic order. In St. Luke's Gospel (xi. 27), we read: "And
it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the
company lifted up her voice and said unto him, 'Blessed is the womb
that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.' But he said,
'Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep
it.'"
In the course of Buddha's life, the tempter comes to him and promises
him all the kingdoms of the earth. Buddha refuses everything in the
words: "I know well that I am destined to have a kingdom, but I do not
desire an earthly one. I shall become Buddha and make all the world
exult with joy." The tempter has to own that his reign is over. Jesus
answers the same temptation in the words: "Get thee hence, Satan, for
it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt
thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him" (Matthew iv. 10, 11). This
description of the parallelism might be extended to many other points
with the same result.
The life of Buddha ended sublimely. On a journey, he felt ill; he came
to the river Hiranja, near Kuschinagara. There he lay down on a carpet
which his favourite disciple, Ananda, spread for him. His body began
to be luminous from within. He died transfigured, his body irradiating
light, saying, "Nothing endures."
The death of Buddha corresponds with the transfiguration of Jesus.
"And it came to pass about eight days after these sayings, he took
Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray. And as
he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment
was white and glistering."
Buddha's earthly life ends at this point, but it is here that the most
important part of the life of Jesus begins,--His suffering, death, and
resurrection. Other accounts of Buddha's death need not here be
considered, even though they reveal profound aspects.
The agreement in these two redemptive lives leads to the same
conclusion. The narratives themselves indicate the nature of this
conclusion. When the priest-sages hear what kind of birth is to take
place, they know what is involved. They know that they have to do with
a Divine man; they know beforehand what kind of personality it is who
is appearing. And therefore his course of life can only correspond
with what they know about the life of a Divine man. In the wisdom of
their Mysteries such a life is traced out for all eternity. It _can_
only be as it _must_ be; it comes into manifestation like an eternal
law of nature. Just as a chemical substance can only behave in a
certain definite way, so a Buddha or a Christ can only live in a
certain definite way. His life is not described merely by writing a
casual biography; it is much better described by giving the typical
features which are contained for all time in the wisdom of the
Mysteries. The Buddha legend is no more a biography in the ordinary
sense than the Gospels are meant to be a biography in the ordinary
sense of the Christ Jesus. In neither is the merely accidental given;
both relate the course of life marked out for a world-redeemer. The
source of the two accounts is to be found in the mystery traditions
and not in outer physical history. Jesus and Buddha are, to those who
have recognised their Divine nature, initiates in the most eminent
sense. Hence their lives are lifted out of things transitory, and what
is known about initiates applies to them.[4] The casual incidents in
their lives are not narrated. Of such it might be announced "In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a
God and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us."
But the life of Jesus contains more than that of Buddha. Buddha's ends
with the Transfiguration; the most momentous part of the life of Jesus
begins after the Transfiguration. In the language of initiates this
means that Buddha reached the point at which divine light begins to
shine in men. He faces mortal death. He becomes the light of the
world. Jesus goes farther. He does not physically die at the moment
when the light of the world shines through him. At that moment he is a
Buddha. But at that very moment he enters upon a stage which finds
expression in a higher degree of initiation. He suffers and dies. What
is earthly disappears. But the spiritual element, the light of the
world, does not. His resurrection follows. He is revealed to his
followers as Christ. Buddha, at the moment of his Transfiguration,
flows into the blissful life of the Universal Spirit. Christ Jesus
awakens the Universal Spirit once more, but in a human form, in
present existence. Such an event had formerly taken place at the
higher stages of initiation. Those initiated in the spirit of the
Osiris myth attained to such a resurrection. In the life of Jesus,
this "great" initiation was added to the Buddha initiation. Buddha
demonstrated by his life that man is the Logos, and that he returns to
the Logos, to the light, when his earthly part dies. In Jesus, the
Logos himself became a person. In him, the Word was made flesh.
Therefore, what was enacted in the innermost recesses of the temples
by the guardians of the ancient Mysteries has been apprehended,
through Christianity, as a historical fact. The followers of Christ
Jesus confessed their belief in Him, the initiate, of unique and
supreme greatness. He proved to them that the world is divine. In the
Christian community, the wisdom of the Mysteries was indissolubly
bound up with the personality of Christ Jesus. That which man
previously had sought to attain through the Mysteries was now replaced
by the belief that Christ had lived on earth, and that the faithful
belonged to him.
Henceforward, part of what was formerly only to be gained through
mystical methods, could be replaced, in the Christian community, by
the conviction that the divine had been manifested in the Word present
amongst them. Not that for which each individual soul underwent a long
preparation was now decisive, but what those had heard and seen who
were with Jesus, and what was handed down by them. "That which was
from the beginning, which we have heard, which ... our hands have
handled, of the Word of life ... that which we have seen and heard
declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us." Thus
do we read in the first Epistle of St. John. And this immediate
reality is to embrace all future generations in a living bond of
union, and as a church is mystically to extend from race to race. It
is in this sense that the words of St. Augustine are to be understood,
"I should not believe the Gospels unless the authority of the Catholic
Church induced me to do so." Thus the Gospels do not contain within
themselves testimony to their truth, but they are to be believed
because they are founded on the personality of Jesus, and because the
Church from that personality mysteriously draws the power to make the
truth of the Gospels manifest.
The Mysteries handed down traditionally the means of arriving at
truth; the Christian community itself propagates the truth. To the
confidence in the mystical forces which spring up in the inmost being
of man, during initiation, was added the confidence in the One,
primordial Initiator.
The Mystics sought to become divine, they wished to experience
divinity. Jesus was divine, we must hold fast to Him, and then we
shall become partakers of His divinity, in the community founded by
Him; this became Christian conviction. What became divine in Jesus was
made so for all His followers. "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the
end of the world." The one who was born in Bethlehem has an eternal
character independent of time. The Christmas anthem thus speaks of the
birth of Jesus, as if it took place each Christmas, "Christ is born
to-day, the Saviour has come into the world to-day, to-day the angels
are singing on earth."
In the Christ-experience is to be seen a definite stage of initiation.
When the Mystic of pre-Christian times passed through this
Christ-experience, he was, through his initiation, in a state which
enabled him to perceive something spiritually,--in higher worlds,--to
which no fact in the world of sense corresponded. He experienced that
which surrounds the Mystery of Golgotha in the higher world. If the
Christian Mystic goes through this experience by initiation, he at the
same time beholds the historical event which took place on Golgotha,
and knows that in that event, enacted within the physical world, there
is the same content as was formerly only in the supersensible facts of
the Mysteries. Thus there was poured out on the Christian community,
through the "Mysteries of Golgotha," that which formerly had been
poured out on the Mystics within the temples. And initiation gives
Christian Mystics the possibility of becoming conscious of what is
contained in the "Mystery of Golgotha," whereas faith makes man an
unconscious partaker of the mystical stream which flowed from the
events depicted in the New Testament, and which has ever since been
pervading the spiritual life of humanity.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] The great initiates raised themselves through initiation up into
the sphere of the Logos and carried this Logos influence with them in
their human life. The fundamental difference between them and Jesus was
the fact that the Logos in the course of its evolution individualised
itself into One Divine Individuality who descended into Jesus of
Nazareth at the Baptism, and so that the Logos manifested its whole
Divine individuality through the personality of Jesus as far as it was
possible to express Divinity by human means. Such was the unique
character of the Christ Jesus.
VII
THE GOSPELS
The accounts of the life of Jesus which can be submitted to historical
examination are contained in the Gospels. All that does not come from
this source might, in the opinion of one of those who are considered
the greatest historical authorities on the subject (Harnack), be
"easily written on a quarto page."
But what kind of documents are these Gospels? The fourth, that of St.
John, differs so much from the others, that those who think themselves
obliged to follow the path of historical research in order to study
the subject, come to the conclusion: "If John possesses the genuine
tradition about the life of Jesus, that of the first three Evangelists
(the Synoptists) is untenable. If the Synoptists are right, the Fourth
Gospel must be rejected as a historical source" (Otto Schmiedel, _Die
Hauptprobleme der Leben Jesu Forschung_, p. 15). This is a statement
made from the standpoint of the historical investigator.
In the present work, in which we are dealing with the mystical
contents of the Gospels, such a point of view is neither to be
accepted nor rejected. But attention must certainly be drawn to such
an opinion as the following: "Measured by the standard of consistency,
inspiration, and completeness, these writings leave very much to be
desired, and even measured by the ordinary human standard, they suffer
from not a few imperfections." This is the opinion of a Christian
theologian (Harnack, _Wesen des Christentums_).
One who takes his stand on a mystical origin of the Gospels easily
finds an explanation of what is apparently contradictory, and also
discovers harmony between the fourth Gospel and the three others. For
none of these writings are meant to be mere historical tradition in
the ordinary sense of the word. They do not profess to give a
historical biography (_cf._ p. 140 _et seq._). What they intended to
give was already shadowed forth in the traditions of the Mysteries, as
the typical life of a Son of God. It was these traditions which were
drawn upon, not history. Now it was only natural that these traditions
should not be in complete verbal agreement in every Mystery centre.
Still, the agreement was so close that the Buddhists narrated the life
of their divine man almost in the same way in which the Evangelists
narrated the life of Christ. But naturally there were differences. We
have only to assume that the four Evangelists drew from four different
mystery traditions. It testifies to the extraordinary personality of
Jesus that in four writers, belonging to different traditions, he
awakened the belief that he was one who so perfectly corresponded with
their type of an initiate, that they were able to describe him as one
who lived the typical life marked out in their Mysteries. They each
described his life according to their own mystic traditions. And if
the narratives of the first three Evangelists resemble each other, it
proves nothing more than that they drew from similar mystery
traditions. The fourth Evangelist saturated his Gospel with ideas
which are, in many respects, reminiscent of the religious philosopher,
Philo (_cf._ p. 82). This only proves that he was rooted in the same
mystic tradition as Philo.
There are various elements in the Gospels. Firstly, facts are related,
which seem to lay claim to being historical. Secondly, there are
parables, in which the narrative form is only used to symbolise a
deeper truth. And, thirdly, there are teachings characteristic of the
Christian conception of life. In St. John's Gospel there is no real
parable. The source from which he drew was a mystical school which
considered parables unnecessary.
The part played by ostensibly historical facts and parables in the
first three Gospels is clearly shown in the narrative of the cursing
of the fig tree. In St. Mark xi. 11-14, we read: "And Jesus entered
into Jerusalem, and into the temple: and when he had looked round
about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he went out unto
Bethany with the twelve. And on the morrow, when they were come from
Bethany, he was hungry: and seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves,
he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to
it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. And
Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter
for ever." In the corresponding passage in St. Luke's Gospel, he
relates a parable (xiii. 6, 7): "He spake also this parable; A certain
man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought
fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his
vineyard, Behold these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig
tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?" This
is a parable symbolising the uselessness of the old teaching,
represented by the barren fig tree. That which is meant
metaphorically, St. Mark relates as a fact appearing to be historical.
We may therefore assume that, in general, facts related in the Gospels
are not to be taken as only historical, or as if they were only to
hold good in the physical world, but as mystical facts; as
experiences, for the recognition of which spiritual vision is
necessary, and which arise from various mystical traditions. If we
admit this, the difference between the Gospel of St. John and the
Synoptists ceases to exist. For mystical interpretation, historical
research has not to be taken into account. Even if one or another
Gospel were written a few decades earlier or later than the others,
they are all of like historical value to the mystic, St. John's Gospel
as well as the others.
And the "miracles" do not present the least difficulty when
interpreted mystically. They are supposed to break through the laws of
nature. They only do this when they are considered as events which
have so come about on the physical plane, in the perishable world,
that ordinary sense-perception could see through them offhand. But if
they are experiences which can only be fathomed on a higher stage of
existence, namely the spiritual, it is obvious that they cannot be
understood by means of the laws of physical nature.
It is thus first of all necessary to read the Gospels correctly; then
we shall know in what way they are speaking of the Founder of
Christianity. Their intention is to relate his life in the manner in
which communications were made through the Mysteries. They relate it
in the way in which a Mystic would speak of an initiate. Only, they
give the initiation as the unique characteristic of one unique being.
And they make salvation depend on man's holding fast to the initiate
of this unique order. What had come to the initiates was the "kingdom
of God." This unique being has brought the kingdom to all who will
cleave to him. What was formerly the personal concern of each
individual has become the common concern of all those who are willing
to acknowledge Jesus as their Lord.