the time was ripe for the comprehension of the mystery of Christ. In
the Mysteries, a man was artificially prepared for the dawning upon
his consciousness, at the appropriate time, of the spiritual world.
Within the Essene or Therapeutic community the soul sought, by a
certain mode of life, to become ripe for the awakening of the higher
man. A further step forward is that man struggles through to a feeling
that a human individuality may have evolved to higher and higher
stages of perfection in repeated earth lives. One who had arrived at a
glimpse of this truth would also be able to feel that in Jesus a being
of lofty spirituality had appeared. The loftier the spirituality, the
greater the possibility of accomplishing something of importance. Thus
the individuality of Jesus could become capable of accomplishing the
deed which the Evangelists so mysteriously indicate in the Baptism by
John, and which, by the way in which they speak of it, they so clearly
point out as of the utmost importance. The personality of Jesus became
able to receive into its own soul Christ, the Logos, who was made
flesh in that soul. Thenceforward the Ego of Jesus of Nazareth was the
Christ, and the outer personality was the vehicle of the Logos. The
event of the Ego of Jesus becoming the Christ is enacted in the
Baptism by St. John. During the period of the Mysteries, "union with
the Spirit" was only for those who were initiated. Amongst the
Essenes, a whole community cultivated a life by means of which all its
members were able to arrive at the mystical union. In the coming of
Christ, something, _i.e._, the deeds of Christ, was placed before the
whole of humanity, so that all might share in the mystical union.
XI
THE NATURE OF CHRISTIANITY
The deepest effect must have been produced upon believers in
Christianity by the fact that the Divine, the Word, the eternal Logos,
no longer came to them in the dim twilight of the Mysteries, as Spirit
only, but that when they spoke of the Logos, they were made to think
of the historical, human personality of Jesus. Formerly the Logos had
only been seen in different degrees of human perfection. The delicate,
subtle differences in the spiritual life of personalities could be
observed, and the manner and degree in which the Logos became living
within those seeking initiation. A higher degree of maturity was to be
interpreted as a higher stage of evolution of spiritual life. The
preparatory steps had to be sought in a spiritual life already passed
through, and the present life was to be regarded as the preparatory
stage for future degrees of spiritual evolution. The conservation of
the spiritual power of the soul and the eternity of that force might
be stated in the words of the Jewish occult teaching in the book of
Sohar, "Nothing in the world is lost, nothing falls into the void, not
even the words and voice of man: everything has its place and
purport." Personality was but a metamorphosis of the soul, which
develops from one personality to another. The single life of the
personality was only considered as a link in the chain of development
stretching backwards and forwards.
This Logos metamorphosing itself in the many separate human
personalities has through Christianity been directed away from these
to the one unique personality of Jesus. What had previously been
distributed throughout the world was now united in a single
personality. Jesus became the unique God-Man. In Jesus something was
present once which must appear to man as the greatest of ideals, and
with which, in the course of man's repeated earthly lives, he ought
to be more and more united. Jesus took upon Himself the divinisation
of the whole of humanity. In Him was sought what formerly could only
be sought in a man's own particular soul. One did not any more behold
the divine and eternal within the personality of a man; all that was
now beheld in Jesus. It is not the eternal part of the soul that
conquers death and is raised through its own power as divine, but it
is that which was in Jesus, the one God that will appear and raise the
souls.
It follows from this that an entirely new meaning was given to
personality. The eternal, immortal part had been taken from it. Only
the personality, as such, was left. If immortality be not denied, it
has to be admitted as pertaining to the personality itself. Out of the
belief in the soul's eternal metamorphosis came the belief in personal
immortality. The personality acquired infinite importance, because it
was the only thing which was left to man.
Henceforth there is nothing between the personality and the infinite
God. A direct relation with Him must be established. Man was no
longer capable of himself becoming divine, in a greater or less
degree. He was simply man, standing in a direct but outward relation
to God. This brought quite a new note into the conception of the world
for those who knew the point of view held in the ancient Mysteries.
There were many people in this position during the first centuries of
Christianity. They knew the nature of the Mysteries. If they wished to
become Christians, they were obliged to come to an understanding with
the older conceptions. This brought them most difficult conflicts
within their souls. They sought in most various ways to effect a
settlement between the two tendencies in the conception of the world.
This conflict is reflected in the writings of early Christian times:
in those of heathens attracted by the sublimity of Christianity, as
well as in the writings of those Christians who found it hard to give
up the conceptions of the Mysteries. Slowly did Christianity grow out
of these Mysteries. On the one hand Christian convictions were
presented in the form of the Mystery truths, and on the other, the
Mystery wisdom was clothed in Christian words.
Clement of Alexandria (ob. 217 A.D.), a Christian writer whose
education had been pagan, is an instance of this, "God has not
forbidden us to rest from good deeds when keeping the sabbath. He
permits those who can grasp them to share in the divine mysteries and
in the sacred light. He has not revealed to the crowd what is not
suitable for them. He judged it fitting to reveal it only to a few,
who are able to grasp it and to work out in themselves the unspeakable
mystery which God confided to the Logos, not to the written word. And
God hath set some in the Church as apostles; and some prophets; and
some evangelists; and some pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of
the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body
of Christ." Individual souls in those days sought by very different
paths to find the way from the ancient views to the Christian ones.
And the one who thought he was on the right path called others
heretics. In the meanwhile, the Church grew stronger and stronger as
an outward institution. The more power it gained, the more did the
path, recognised as the right one by the decisions of councils, take
the place of personal investigation. It was for the Church to decide
who deviated too far from the divine truth which she guarded. The idea
of a "heretic" took firmer and firmer shape. During the first
centuries of Christianity, the search for the divine path was a much
more personal matter than it afterwards became. A long distance had
been travelled before Augustine's conviction became possible: "I
should not believe in the truth of the Gospels unless the authority of
the Catholic Church forced me to do so" (_cf._ p. 143).
The conflict between the method of the Mysteries and that of the
Christian religion acquired a special stamp through the various
Gnostic sects and writers. We may class as Gnostics all the writers of
the first Christian centuries who sought for a deep, spiritual meaning
in Christian teachings. (A brilliant account of the development of the
Gnosis is given in G.R.S. Mead's book mentioned above, _Fragments of a
Faith Forgotten_.) We understand the Gnostics when we look upon them
as saturated with the ancient wisdom of the Mysteries, and striving to
understand Christianity from that point of view. For them, Christ was
the Logos, and as such of a spiritual nature. In His primal essence,
He cannot approach man from without. He must be awakened in the soul.
But the historical Jesus must bear some relation to the spiritual
Logos. This was the crucial point for the Gnostics. Some settled it in
one way, some in another. The essential point common to them all was
that to arrive at a true understanding of the Christ-idea, mere
historical tradition was not enough, but that it must be sought either
in the wisdom of the Mysteries, or in the Neo-Platonic philosophy
which was derived from the same source. The Gnostics had confidence in
human wisdom, and believed it capable of bringing forth a Christ by
whom the historical Christ could be measured: in fact, through whom
alone the latter could be understood and beheld in the right light.
Of special interest from this point of view is the doctrine given in
the books of Dionysius the Areopagite. It is true that there is no
mention of these writings till the sixth century; it matters little
when and where they were written, the point is that they give an
account of Christianity which is clothed in the language of the
Neo-Platonic philosophy and presented in the form of a spiritual
contemplation of the higher world. At all events this is a form of
delineation which belongs to the first Christian centuries. In older
times the truth was handed on in the form of oral tradition; the most
important things were not entrusted to writing. The Christianity
described in the writings of Dionysius is set forth in the mirror of
the Neo-Platonic conception of the world. Sense-perception troubles
man's spiritual vision. He must reach out beyond the senses. But all
human ideas are primarily derived from observation by the senses. What
man perceives with his senses, he calls existence; what he does not so
perceive, he calls non-existence. Therefore if he wishes to open up an
actual view of the Divine, he must rise above existence and
non-existence, for these also, as he conceives them, have their
origin in the sphere of the senses. In this sense God is neither
existent nor non-existent; he is super-existent. Consequently he
cannot be attained by means of ordinary cognition, which has to do
with existing things. We have to be raised above ourselves, above our
sense-observation, above our reasoning logic, if we are to find the
way to spiritual vision. Thence we are able to get a glimpse into the
perspectives of the Divine.
But this super-existent Divinity has brought forth the Logos, the
basis of the universe, filled with wisdom. To him man's lower powers
are able to attain. He is present in the cosmos as the spiritual Son
of God, he is the Mediator between God and man. He may be present in
man in various degrees. He may for instance be realised in an external
institution, in which those diversely imbued with his spirit are
grouped into a hierarchy. A "church" of this kind is the outer reality
of the Logos, and the power which lives in it lived in a personal way
in the Christ become flesh, in Jesus. Thus the Church is through Jesus
united to God: Jesus is its meaning and crowning-point.
One thing was clear to all Gnosis, that one must come to an
understanding about the personality of Jesus. Christ and Jesus must be
brought into connection with one another. Divinity was taken away from
human personality and must, in one way or another, be recovered. It
must be possible to find it again in Jesus. The Mystic had to do with
a degree of divinity within himself, and with his earthly personality.
The Christian had to do with the latter, and also with a perfect God,
far above all that is attainable by humanity. If we hold firmly to
this point of view, a fundamental mystic attitude of the soul is only
possible when the soul's spiritual eyes are opened; when, through
finding higher spiritual possibilities within itself, the soul throws
itself open to the light which issues from Christ in Jesus. The union
of the soul with its highest powers is at the same time union with the
historical Christ. For mysticism is an immediate consciousness and
feeling of the divine within the soul. But a God far transcending
everything human can never dwell in the soul in the real sense of the
word. The Gnosis and all subsequent Christian mysticism represent the
effort, in some way or other, to lay hold of that God, and to
apprehend Him directly in the soul.
A conflict in this case was inevitable. It was really only possible
for a man to find his own divine part, but this is both human and
divine,--the divine at a certain stage of development. Yet the
Christian God is a definite one, perfect in himself. It was possible
for a person to find in himself the power to strive upwards to this
God, but he could not say that what he experienced in his own soul, at
any stage of development, was one with God. A great gulf was fixed
between what it was possible to find in the soul, and what
Christianity called divine. It is the gulf between science and faith,
between knowledge and religious feeling.
This gulf does not exist for the Mystic in the old sense of the word.
For he knows for a certainty that he can only comprehend the divine by
degrees, and he also knows why this is so. It is clear to him that
this gradual attainment is a real attainment of real divine life, and
he finds it difficult to speak of a perfect, isolated divine
principle. A Mystic of this kind does not seek a perfect God, but he
wishes to experience the divine life. He seeks to be made divine, not
to gain an external relation to the Godhead.
It is of the essence of Christianity that its mysticism in this sense
starts with an assumption. The Christian Mystic seeks to behold
divinity within him, but at the same time he looks up to the
historical Christ as his physical eyes do to the sun. Just as the sun
is the means by which physical eyes behold physical objects, so does
the Christian Mystic intensify his inner nature that it may behold the
divine, and the light which makes such vision possible for him is the
fact of the appearance of Christ. It is He who enables man to attain
his highest possibilities. It is in this way that the Christian
Mystics of the Middle Ages differ from the Mystics of the ancient
Mysteries (_cf._ my book, _Mystics of the Renaissance_).
XII
CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHEN WISDOM
At the time of the first beginnings of Christianity, there appear in
heathen civilisation conceptions of the universe which seem to be a
continuation of the Platonic philosophy, and which may also be taken
as a deepening and spiritualisation of the wisdom of the Mysteries.
The beginning of such conceptions is to be dated from Philo of
Alexandria (B.C. 25-A.D. 50). From his point of view the processes
which lead to the divine take place in the innermost part of the human
soul. We might say that the temple in which Philo seeks initiation is
wholly within him, and his higher experiences are the Mysteries. In
his case processes of a purely spiritual nature replace the initiatory
ceremonies of the sanctuary.
According to Philo, sense-observation and knowledge gained through the
logical intellect do not lead to the divine. They have merely to do
with what is perishable. But there is a way by which the soul may rise
above these methods. It must come out of what it calls its ordinary
self: from this it must withdraw. Then it enters a state of spiritual
exaltation and illumination, in which it no longer knows, thinks, and
judges in the ordinary sense of the words; for it has become merged,
identified with the divine, which is experienced in its essence, and
cannot be imparted in thought-concepts or abstract ideas. It is
experienced, and one who goes through this experience knows that no
one can impart it, for the only way of reaching it is to live it. The
visible world is an image of this mystic reality which is experienced
in the inmost recesses of the soul. The world has come forth from the
invisible, inconceivable God. The harmony of the cosmos, which is
steeped in wisdom, and to which sense-phenomena are subject, is a
direct reflection of the Godhead, its spiritual image. It is divine
spirit poured out into the world,--cosmic reason, the Logos, the
offspring or Son of God. The Logos is the mediator between the world
of sense and the unimaginable God. When man steeps himself in
knowledge, he becomes united with the Logos, which is embodied in him.
The person who has developed spirituality is the vehicle of the Logos.
Above the Logos is God; beneath is the perishable world. It is man's
vocation to form the link between the two. What he experiences in his
inmost being, as spirit, is the universal Spirit. Such ideas are
directly reminiscent of the Pythagorean manner of thinking (_cf._ p.
57 _et seq._).
The centre of existence is sought in the inner life, but this life is
conscious of its cosmic value. St. Augustine was thinking in virtually
the same way as Philo, when he said: "We see all created things
because they are; but they are, because God sees them." And he adds,
concerning what and how we see: "And because they are, we see them
outwardly; because they are perfect, we see them inwardly."
Plato has the same fundamental idea (_cf._ p. 63 _et seq._). Like
Plato, Philo sees in the destiny of the human soul the closing act of
the great cosmic drama, the awakening of the divinity that is under a
spell. He thus describes the inner actions of the soul: the wisdom in
man's inner being walks along, "tracing the paths of the Father, and
shapes the forms while beholding the archetypes." It is no personal
matter for man to create forms in his inner being; they are the
eternal wisdom, they are the cosmic life.
This is in harmony with the interpretation of the myths of the people
in the light of the Mysteries. The Mystic searches for the deeper
truth in the myths (_cf._ p. 94 _et seq._). And as the Mystic treats
the myths of paganism, Philo handles Moses' story of the creation. The
Old Testament accounts are for him images of inner soul-processes. The
Bible relates the creation of the world. One who merely takes it as a
description of outer events only half knows it. It is certainly
written, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And
the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of
the deep. And the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters." But
the real inner meaning of the words must be lived in the depths of the
soul. God must be found within, then He appears as the "Primal
Splendour, who sends out innumerable rays, not perceptible by the
senses, but collectively thinkable." This is Philo's expression. In
the _Timæus_ of Plato, the words are almost identical with the Bible
ones, "Now when the Father, who had created the universe, saw how it
had become living and animated, and an image of the eternal gods, he
felt pleasure therein." In the Bible we read, "And God saw that it was
good."
The recognition of the divine is for Philo, as well as for Plato and
in the wisdom of the Mysteries, to live through the process of
creation in one's own soul. The history of creation and the history of
the soul which is becoming divine, in this way flow into one. Philo is
convinced that Moses' account of the creation may be used for writing
the history of the soul which is seeking God. Everything in the Bible
thereby acquires a profoundly symbolical meaning, of which Philo
becomes the interpreter. He reads the Bible as a history of the soul.
We may say that Philo's manner of reading the Bible corresponds to a
feature of his age which originated in the wisdom of the Mysteries. He
indeed relates that the Therapeutæ interpreted ancient writings in the
same way. "They also possess works by ancient authors who once
directed their school and left behind many explanations about the
customary method pursued in allegorical writings.... The
interpretation of such writings is directed to the deeper meaning of
the allegorical narratives" (_cf._ p. 200). Thus Philo's aim was to
discover the deeper meaning of the "allegorical" narratives in the Old
Testament.
Let us try to realise whither such an interpretation could lead. We
read the account of creation and find in it not only a narrative of
outward events, but an indication of the way which the soul has to
take in order to attain to the divine. Thus the soul must reproduce in
itself, as a microcosm, the ways of God, and in this alone can its
efforts after wisdom consist. The drama of the universe must be
enacted in each individual soul. The inner life of the mystical sage
is the realisation of the image given in the account of creation.
Moses wrote not only to relate historical facts, but to represent
pictorially the paths which the soul must travel if it would find God.
All this, in Philo's conception of the universe, is enacted within the
human soul. Man experiences within himself what God has experienced in
the universe. The word of God, the Logos, becomes an event in the
soul. God brought the Jews from Egypt into Palestine; he let them go
through distress and privation before giving them that Land of
Promise. That is the outward event. Man must experience it inwardly.
He goes from the land of Egypt, the perishable world, through the
privations which lead to the suppression of the sense-nature, into the
Promised Land of the soul, he attains the eternal. With Philo it is
all an inward process. The God who poured Himself forth into the world
consummates His resurrection in the soul when that soul understands
His creative word and echoes it. Then man has spiritually given birth
within himself to divinity, to the divine spirit which became man, to
the Logos, Christ. In this sense knowledge was, for Philo and those
who thought like him, the birth of Christ within the world of spirit.
The Neo-Platonic philosophy, which developed contemporaneously with
Christianity, was an elaboration of Philo's thought. Let us see how
Plotinus (A.D. 204-269) describes his spiritual experiences:
"Often when I come to myself on awaking from bodily sleep and, turning
from the outer world, enter into myself, I behold wondrous beauty.
Then I am sure that I have been conscious of the better part of
myself. I live my true life, I am one with the divine and, rooted in
the divine, gain the power to transport myself beyond even the
super-world. After thus resting in God, when I descend from spiritual
vision and again form thoughts, I ask myself how it has happened that
I now descend and that my soul ever entered the body at all, since, in
its essence, it is what it has just revealed itself to me. What can
the reason be for souls forgetting God the Father since they come
from the beyond and belong to Him, and, when they forget Him, know
nothing of Him or of themselves? The first false step they take is
indulging in presumption, the desire to become, and in forgetfulness
of their true self and in the pleasure of only belonging to
themselves. They coveted self-glorification, they rushed about in
pursuit of their desires and thus went astray and fell completely
away. Thereupon they lost all knowledge of their origin in the beyond,
just as children, early separated from their parents and brought up
elsewhere, do not know who they themselves and their parents are."
Plotinus delineates the kind of life which the soul should strive to
develop. "The life of the body and its longings should be stilled, the
soul should see calm in all that surrounds it: in earth, sea, air, and
heaven itself no movement. It should learn to see how the soul pours
itself from without into the serene cosmos, streaming into it from all
sides; as the sun's rays illuminate a dark cloud and make it golden,
so does the soul, on entering the body of the world encircled by the
sky, give it life and immortality."