73. “The Story of the Year”

A report about festivals and celebrations. By the author of “Light on the Path”. Translated from English by members of the Theosophical Society. Authorized translation. Sueviaverlag. Jugenheim an der Bergstraße, 1904.

This is an important booklet for those who want to get to know occult truths in an intimate way. A high wisdom lives in it. However, this wisdom is not expressed. For the booklet cannot be taken as if one could learn something from it as from a writing in our ordinary literature. Those who allow the contents to take effect on them, absorbing them into their thoughts, feelings and will, can allow a unique elixir of life to flow through their soul and thereby rise to an inkling of the great truth that the human spirit lives according to the same laws as the All-Spirit (whereby here, “All-Spirit” is understood only to mean the spirit that rules the heavenly bodies related to our Earth and its evolution). The inner life of this All-Spirit was once as the human spirit is today. And the spirit of man will be in the future what the spirit of the universe is today. In the outer world, however, the deeds of the All-Spirit confront the human spirit. Just as the sun rises and sets, just as it completes its cycle during the year and during the millennia, just as the earth brings its seeds and children to maturity, leads them to death and lets them rise again: all these are the deeds of this All-Spirit. The human being who rises above sensory perception sees the plants ripening, bearing seeds, sinking the seeds into the earth, enduring the sleep of death in the earth and then rising again: and in all this he feels the effects of divine life. And he rises to the realization that this divine life first had to undergo a long apprenticeship until it had matured its spirit to do such deeds. And then it also dawns on man that this apprenticeship of the gods was similar to his own present one. And in the deeds of the gods he then sees the blueprints of his own future. When the snow covers the sleeping life of the earth during the short winter days, when the first sprouts of the trees push towards the re-strengthened sunbeam, then he sees in it the divine masterpieces, and he says to himself: your spirit is of the same kind as the one that can do all this. And you must rise and look up fervently at these masterpieces on the days when they reveal themselves to you. Then these days become festivals for you, and in the course of the year these festivals will join together for you to become an insight into the harmonious work of the gods, from which you have to learn. Christmas, Easter and the other annual festivals thus come to life in his soul. And what the sun brings about in the course of the year will be the hieroglyph for the secret revelation of one's own future.

When man rises to such intuition, he can gradually recognize how his own spirit once split off from the All-Spirit, to be sunk into the material earth ground, there to learn to accomplish things in the future that are similar to those that are around him today. He will bring the darkness in which he is to his own contemplation, if he looks merely at his own present stage of development; and he will let himself be illuminated by the light that radiates from the deeds of the gods. Thus he grows together with the universe, finally feeling himself to be a part of it, just as a little finger must feel itself to be a part of the organism. And so he will see the Christmas season approaching his soul and know that it means the same thing in the life of this soul as once occurred in the soul of the god when it learned to perform the deed that falls on Christmas in the course of the year. Christmas is then not just an outward sign and symbol for him, but a source of strength that truly plants a seed in his soul for the future. And so it will be for the other festivals of the year.

Because this booklet leads to such feelings, it is a truly occult work. It does not just speak about the festivals in the way that a textbook might speak about magnetism, but it is a guide, like a person who, instead of a textbook, hands us a real magnet that we can then work with ourselves. The students of the initiation have learned to celebrate the seasonal festivals as suggested in this writing. And that is why these festivals themselves have given them such occult insights, just as a magnet attracts iron.

The book describes the process of human development from the moment when a person awakens to the ability to look into the karmic chains of their own soul until the moment when the higher self, the Christ, awakens, which has now transformed a child into a companion of divine beings. For it corresponds to the first moment of Christmas and what precedes it, and to the second, Easter. Those who can witness what is happening in the heavens during this time know the most important occult secrets. And those who awaken the right feelings within themselves at the appropriate times, as prescribed by the Büchelchen, prepare themselves to experience such secrets. If you take this booklet, live by it for a year and a second year and so on, in the sense that the instructions for attaining higher knowledge in the secret schools indicate, you will already perceive astral and mental, and the day will come when you will do so with full consciousness.

The moment is beautifully described when the soul begins to rise inwardly to see the karmic chain, how it becomes lonely, abandoned by what it has hitherto called reality. All the sacred awe of this momentous moment in human life lies in the words (page 1): “The disciple who now enters the hall of learning - a place known to the seers - will find it dark and deserted, with wide-open gates and blown by the wind. There is no peace anywhere, not a single spot of light. The walls are black, and the river, which used to flow freely and unbridled before us, is black and foaming like mad. Truly a scene to make you want to flee, and no disciple will want to challenge it a second time. Only the ignorant go forward and suddenly face it. The more wise know of the desert, remain silent and maintain their confidence despite the nightmare that threatens them; for whether they dwell quietly with their own, whether they are with their dearest friends, the sudden awareness of absolute loneliness will come to rest on their hearts despite everything, even in the midst of their companions, so that it stands still with oppression and agony."

Those who truly want to penetrate the occult world must understand such things vividly, for they describe the moment when man learns to renounce all knowledge that comes only from outside and learns to recognize that higher knowledge can never flow from anywhere other than from within. Then he learns to rise above so-called “objective” proofs and finds the source of truth by sacrificing all illusions. In “solitude” he learns to recognize that no one and nothing but he himself can lay this truth on the altar of sacrifice for humanity and the universe. The gatherers of seemingly “objective proofs” for the mind and also the so-called metapsychics – the latest fashion in French psychology has coined this word to prove to the discerning that it is still very far from understanding occultism – all these close the door to the secrets firmly in front of them, for they demand for their proofs precisely what must be overcome by those who want to penetrate into the higher secrets. Anyone who wants to prove the existence of spirits as one proves the presence of hydrogen does not understand himself; and anyone who seeks something mectapsychic as one seeks the presence of an acid is not on the path to the spirit, regardless of whether he is engaged in scholarly sport with the valuable observations of Richet, or of any spiritualist amateur club.

The encounter with the other initiates and the contemplation of the world from this perspective are described in the little book as downright powerful and true to life: “The disciple has become an individuality and is recognized. The message that proclaims this to him is audible only in his own heart and in the hearts of those who, like him, are able to hear the voice of silence. It does not reach the outer ear. The multitude of unseen souls, who in darkness and half-consciousness cherish the desire to become a part of the divine body of love, appear as a veiled multitude in the mighty process in the drama of the world soul. They are the unfree with undeveloped abilities, who blindly place their trust in a god taught to them and in their personal teachers.

And no less grand and true to life is the description of what the awakening of the higher soul means: “Since the day of birth, after the divine part of man has separated itself from the choirs of angels to consider itself equal to its own ephemeral footprints in the sands of time, that part has remained in darkness; now it is heading towards the recovery of eternal life. So it was at the birth of Buddha and of Christ; and so it is at the birth of the divine in every human being in whom this miracle takes place.” Those who understand this in a living way know occult truths of the highest value. Words of such depth are not often found in entire libraries, not even in so-called theosophical ones.

The translators of the booklet, the same ones who also translated the “Flita” discussed in the previous essay into German, will have done many a great favor if these two books should find an understanding audience. It may also be said that the translations are cast in beautiful German. We will make progress in Germany with the theosophical movement and achieve what we are supposed to achieve if there are several people who combine the attitude and correct understanding of what is important as these translators do.