Anthroposophy and Mysticism

Just as¹ Today, mysticism is understood to be the search for inner experiences that satisfy the human being after the longing to know one's own nature and one's relationship to the world has arisen. The not entirely conscious premise here is that man is capable of developing powers of the soul through which he can immerse himself in his own being to the point where he is connected to the roots of world-creating existence.

The path taken into the depths of the soul presents itself on closer inspection as a continuation of the path taken in ordinary memory. This reproduces the experiences of the soul in images of what the person has experienced in his or her dealings with the world. The images can be more or less faithful to the experiences, or they can be imaginatively transformed in the most diverse ways. The easiest way to visualize this process, which is naturally very complicated, is to use the comparison with a mirror. The impressions of the external world are received by the human being through the senses and processed by the powers of thought. Within the organism, they encounter processes in which they are not continued, but stopped and, in a given case, reflected like the light images from the mirror wall. However, the reflection occurs in such a way that the human organism has a more or less modifying effect on the impressions received from outside.

The mystic now penetrates deeper into his own being with intensified soul forces than is the case with ordinary memory. He pushes, as it were, through the intensified soul forces behind the mirror wall. There he encounters regions of his own organization that are not reached by the process of ordinary memory. The forces of these regions do participate when memory is formed, but they remain unconscious. Their effect only comes to light when the memory image is somewhat different from the direct experience. But what the mystic brings into his consciousness as the causes of these effects is experienced like a memory. It has the pictorial character of a memory. But whereas the latter reproduces experiences that were once present in the person's life on earth but are no longer there at the moment of experiencing them, the mystic experiences images that were never earthly experiences at all. He experiences a world of images in the form of memory thoughts, which is precisely what memory is.

When these matters are approached with anthroposophical research, it is found that the processes of one's own body reveal themselves in the mystical images obtained in the manner described. This occurs in a kind of symbolism that is also present in dream images. It can be said that the mystic dreams of the processes of his own bodily organization.

It is certainly a great disappointment for some who think differently about mysticism to discover the above. But for those who want to penetrate the mysteries of the world of reality, every kind of knowledge is welcome, including the fact that, when viewed in a certain way from the soul, the bodily processes appear as a web that is like nocturnal dreams. And if we follow this knowledge further, it shows that this fact is a guarantee of how the human body's organization ultimately has its origin in spiritual sources.

The anthroposophical researcher must know these things; he must understand the paths and prospects of mysticism. But his path is different. He does not penetrate directly behind the mirror of memory and thus into the bodily organization as the mystic does. He transforms the powers of memory while they are still soul-spiritual, while they are pure thought forces. This happens through the concentration of these powers and their meditative application. He dwells on clear images with highly concentrated soul forces. In doing so, he strengthens these forces within the soul region, while the mystic submerges into the region of the body.

The anthroposophical researcher thus arrives at a vision of a finer, more ethereal body of formative forces, which is connected to the physical human body as a higher one. The mystic enters into dreams about the physical body; the anthroposophical researcher arrives at a superphysical reality. This formative forces body no longer lives in spatial forms; it lives in a purely temporal existence. In relation to the spatial physical body, it is a time body. It initially presents the forces at work in the physical body during the earthly existence of the human being in their temporal progression, as in a tableau that can be seen all at once. It differs markedly from a mere comprehensive reminiscence of a person's previous life on earth at a particular moment. Such a memory-image represents more the way the world and people have approached the person remembering; but this characterized life tableau contains the sum and the confused interaction of the impulses coming from within the human being, through which the person has approached the world and other people in sympathy and antipathy. It thus reflects the way in which the person has shaped their life. This life tableau relates to the memory image as the impression in the seal to the imprint in the sealing wax.

This life tableau provides the first object of anthroposophical research; from there, further steps can be taken.

The arguments presented here show how little sense it makes to lump anthroposophy together with other well-known psychic research methods. In it one has not abstract idealism, but concrete knowledge of the spirit; and so one has not grasped its essential character if one identifies it with this or that form of mysticism, only in order not to engage with its very own nature, but to dismiss it with what one posits as an opinion about such a form or presupposes in the case of many. If this is taken into account, many of the misunderstandings that still circulate around the world today with regard to anthroposophy will disappear.