The Essence of Christianity

GA 68a — 28 November 1904, Cologne

10. Christian Mysticism — The Masters of Cologne: Eckhart, Albertus Magnus

On Monday evening in the yellow hall of the Casino Society, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, the Secretary General of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, spoke about Christian mysticism. He began with a general discussion of the centuries of mystical flowering (13th to 17th) and the essence of mysticism, then about individual famous masters of mysticism such as Albertus Magnus, Eckhardt, Johannes Tauler, Hugo von Sankt Victor, Angelus Silesius, among others, and finally about the essence of theosophy and the unification of modern worldviews with mystical and theosophical ones. Mysticism, according to the speaker, is not something fantastic or unclear, but the prerequisite for clarity. Clarity itself is based on spiritual experience and the endeavor to develop, purify and then shape the inner self in order to come to the experience of higher values through the inner self. Mystics start from the principle that light is not only received by the physical eye, but that the spiritual eye, a separate organ, can also perceive light, a small world of its own, the microcosm, creative light, when the mystic delves into himself. Mysticism is thus the development of the inner life. The speaker then outlined the work and main teachings of the great mystics mentioned and their forerunners, the scholastics; their teachings culminated in educating oneself to contemplate the spirit, “surrender to the spirit is the highest knowledge”. From this develops the selflessness to be praised in the mystics, the high purity of intention, which is why so many who taught the secret of the highest knowledge have remained unknown, said the layman from the Oberland and the author of German theology. In the course of the beautifully shaped lecture, which only relatively few listeners attended, the speaker touched on further relationships between Fichte and Goethe, whom he called “a mystic and theosophist in the most beautiful sense”, to the mystical and theosophical world view.