---
ga: 51
title: "Platonic Mysticism and the Immaculate Conception of Spirit"
date: 1904-11-05
location: Berlin
words: 1703
---
# Platonic Mysticism and the Immaculate Conception of Spirit

## GA 51 — 5 November 1904, Berlin

### Lecture II

We have seen that underlying the mysticism of the Middle Ages is the view of the threefoldness of human nature and of the whole universe. We have seen how the mystic imagined the spirit and the physical and the spiritual. It is in the nature of mystical imagination that the mystic experiences in the spirit what is outside in nature, that he creates from himself what is outside in nature. In all knowledge, in all inner experience he seeks a revival of the universe from the soul of man. In the laws that govern the universe, he sees the great world thoughts, world ideas. Thus he stands completely on the standpoint of the Platonic world view. Plato was the great mystic of antiquity, and all those who practiced mysticism in the Middle Ages were based on Platonism. If the mystic therefore sees in nature the creating thought, the cosmic thought, then every single thing that surrounds the mystic becomes an expression of the spiritual. He distinguishes: first, the great laws of the world, the creative thoughts; second, formless matter; third, the power which matter becomes through the spirit's activity in it. Thus: first, law or world-thought; second, matter; third, force. The force arises from the fact that the world-thought expresses itself in the matter. Nothing could be perceived with the senses, if the force did not push itself to the senses and exert an effect on the senses. In the outer physical there are therefore three members. In the soul the external arises again inwardly.

We distinguish in the sense of mysticism: first, the father principle, the sum of all sensations and perceptions; second, that which receives the sensation in the soul was called the soul mother; third, the consciousness itself, wherein the sensation revives, was called the son. This is the connection of sensation, mental image, and thought.

In the soul itself, the mystic experiences the spirit in its inwardness as spirit directly, in three members: first, the Father Spirit, the unmoved mover of Aristotle; second, the longing for the unmoved mover that lived in the soul: the Word or Logos; third, the coming to life in the spiritual world: this is the Spirit.

The soul can sink into itself, look spiritually, through inspiration or intuition. The mystic says: when I look out into nature, the force acts on me, and I feel the force acting on me - called energetics, the life of force. - By immersing itself in the outside world, the soul must be animated by the sensation, according to the sentence of Aristotle. He says: If I want to see the unmoved mover, I must be free from all external sensation. This immersion into the soul he calls catharsis, purification. After the catharsis, the soul unites with the spirit when it becomes intuitive, when it does not unite with sensation from the external world.

The henosis - union - is the immersion in the spirit, the union with the divine original spirit. This can proceed only when the soul is purified from external sensation. This purified soul, free from external sensation, the mystic calls the virgin soul, which is not fertilized by external sensation. Just as the soul is otherwise fertilized by the outer world through sensation, so it is fertilized inwardly through the idea. If the soul experiences the idea in itself, if it lets itself be virginally fertilized by the spirit, then this conception is for the mystic the immaculate, virginal conception: the conceptio immaculata. The Idea will generate in the soul not only the Son who reproduces the external world, but the Son who is the Spirit itself. The revival of the second principle of the Spirit, the Word or Logos in the virgin soul, the mystic calls the revival of the Christ principle. Thus the soul can be impregnated by sensation and give birth to the Christ in itself, which is buried in the external world, or it can be impregnated by the idea, and then the soul gives birth in itself to the spiritual Christ, the Word or Logos. Only the one who experiences the Christ, the Logos in himself, is a real participant in the Christ principle in the higher sense for the Master Eckhart. It is of no help if man knows himself united with his God, if he regards the God as an external reality, but only if he lets the Christ-principle come to life in his soul. With his teachings, the Master Eckhart made hearts glow again and again by showing people that man can become drunk if he experiences this in himself. The deepest birth of the spirit must be born from one's own soul. The mystics have all understood this. Eckhart says that what matters is not the image that has become present, but that which is always present to man. God and I are one in recognition. God became man so that I might become God. He further speaks of how in each individual human being the higher, inner human being, who leads up to the spirit, comes to life. Two people live in each one, the worldly man and the spiritual man. The inner, spiritual man goes his ways for himself.

The outer man can lead a life for himself; but the inner life takes its own course by allowing itself to be fertilized inwardly by the Logos. Again and again Eckhart held this up to man through his powerful sermons. The little spark in the soul is the essential. The Fünklein is an eternal One.

When man experiences the revival of the Fünklein, he feels God Himself in the soul. There is an artistic expression among the mystics: the soul has let itself into the ground. - This is a connection to the image of the door with the hinge. As the hinge, on which the door turns, remains unmoved, so the inner man remains unmoved; inside he leads his own life. The inner experiencing of God is what comes about when the soul lets itself into its ground. The mystic calls the awareness of the divine life in himself the serenity (Angelus Silesius). The mystic experiences the God within himself. Through this, God is present in the person as in a dwelling. The mystic feels himself as a mediator of God and the world; he carries out the orders of the Godhead lowered into the soul. He has the mental image that God needs man; this mental image runs like a leitmotif through the whole mysticism of the Middle Ages. This is what constitutes the consecration of mysticism.

Eckhart compares the world to a building, and people to the building blocks. Man, as a building block, should not withdraw from the universe. The mystic feels united with the primordial divine life: this is the being enlightened, which in mysticism is called the self-knowledge of man. It shows that, just as the mathematician generates numbers, man can generate the highest from himself. Self-knowledge becomes immediate enthusiasm, because self-knowledge means devotion to the Godhead.

In John Tauler, this moodiness of the mystic comes out in his whole life: his life was an exposition of the divine life. He says, as long as I only discuss and present the highest divine wisdom, I have not achieved the right thing. I must disappear myself completely and let God speak from me. He says God looks at His own laws, through which He created the world, through me, my self is the self-life: I must let God experience Himself in me.

Eckhart's mysticism is a mystical knowledge; in Tauler we find mystical life. From the time on, a special artistic expression of the mystic is found: the one who experiences God in himself is called "God-friend".

An unknown personality appeared during Tauler's sermon; he is called the "God-friend from the upper country". He never meets us otherwise than that he appears, as it were, as a mirror of the other personalities who are influenced by him. Johannes Tauler states in his master book that he communicated knowledge of God to people, but he could not yet let life overflow; then the God-friend came and gave Johannes Tauler his enlightenment. The original source itself came alive in him. For a long time he gave up all preaching and withdrew with the unknown man from the upper country, in order to bring himself into the state of mind in which this spiritual life was rising, so that he made himself the channel of divine wisdom and it overflowed through him into others. His speech gained fire, he made the greatest impression; people were transformed by his words, through which people found the spark within them kindled. The dying to all that lives in the outside world, that is the revival of the new man: that is what Johannes Tauler could now bring about through the power of his word. Goethe says: "For as long as you do not have this, this dying and becoming, you are only a dull guest on the dark earth." The experience of the conceptio immaculata is the dying and becoming, in the lower sense and in the higher sense. Those who listened to Tauler experienced the Unio mystica. Just as man feels all the external beauties that come from outside through sensation, so the mystic feels the beauty of the spiritual world through Christ, whom he experiences; it is an experience that makes him drunk: this is the true music of the spheres. Just as man feels the sensual harmony in the world of sensation, so the mystic feels in the soul the coherence of the great laws of the world, the action, the creation of the Logos, of God Himself, the music of the spheres. Through the human soul, the eternal God expresses himself in his Logos. Johannes Ruysbroek, the Belgian mystic, emphasizes this thought in a particularly intense way. The mystic understands in mysticism the lighting up of the divine source in his own soul. The mystic felt in himself, in self-knowledge, the divinity. Through this he found such flaming words for it.