Ancient Mysteries and Christianity
GA 87 — 1 March 1902, Berlin
17. The Idea of Christ in Egyptian Spiritual Life
Highly Esteemed Attendees!
Hardly anything can make such a sublime impression as the Egyptians' idea of eternity, that man can enter the path of eternity. And on the other hand, there will hardly be a correspondence of two personalities of spiritual life in all details such as we could trace between Buddha on the one hand and the personality of Christ on the other.
However, anyone who wanted to go even further back into the old ideas of Indian religion would find that the Buddha as a personality, as he appears to us and as it is also according to the ideas of Indian religion, is only the last Buddha [of many]. It is therefore more a repetition than a first appearance of a [personality of such a nature]. Christians have lost this idea because they only know the one. We cannot follow the various Buddha figures in the life of the Indian religion.
We can only gain an insight into the origin of the Christian world once we have become aware of the origin of the Judeo-Christian idea, insofar as this is possible with an [esoteric] mystical deepening. In particular, we will become aware of how this idea of Christ living in the Egyptian religion was transformed into a historical event.
The Egyptian idea of Christ confronts us in the form that everyone who was found suitable by the Egyptian priesthood and whose talent could awaken the ability to undertake the ascent was subjected to the process of initiation by the Egyptian priests, the deeply initiated.
What does this process of initiation mean? One must first be clear what the whole basic idea of initiation is. According to the views of the Egyptian priesthood, it was intended to introduce people to the deepest secrets of existence, to the primal mysteries of the world. It is therefore the introduction of those who were admitted to initiation into that which was carefully kept hidden from the great multitude by the Egyptian priests and which was only communicated to those who wanted to make progress. Those who wanted to rise to the highest truths that could be conveyed in the Egyptian priestly schools and cults, to descend to the depths of the mysteries of the world, could only do so in a precisely prescribed way, because it was believed that only those who had gone through the entire sequence of stages could have the inner life to have certain views alive within them.
In abstract terms, this is the basic idea that leads to Egyptian initiation. It was believed that the person concerned should not only receive spiritual teachings, not only spiritual shells, for the reception of which it was sufficient if he could think logically, no, it was believed that the whole physical should also be transformed in such a way that his whole sensual perception served the spirit to a much higher degree than was the case with another.
The spiritual process that took place when the disciple was to be introduced to the Mysteries was often reminiscent of the Eleusinian drama of the Greeks and the ancient Osiris drama. The whole myth of Osiris and Isis, in which the ancient priests brought true - I do not say mere fantasy, but - imagination, insight into the deepest mysteries of the world, was to carry out practically what was to lead into this wisdom.
The cosmological, physiological and astronomical were not considered sufficient. It was believed that the whole body of man had to be transformed, that man had to be given a completely different view. They did not believe that man was born with fully developed abilities, as Western science believed. It was believed that man, as he had developed step by step up to now, had to be developed further so that life was not lost. It is therefore a matter of transforming body and mind in such a way that man can not only understand the highest knowledge logically and abstractly, but that he can also experience the deepest [life] of the world.
The priest depicted the entire development of the world in three symbols. First in the symbol of the pyramid. It has four sides. These correspond to the four elements: Earth, fire, water, air. At the top, these sides converge into a point. Each side is therefore represented by a triangle, in which the priest saw the three worlds represented externally.
In the pyramid he saw the physical nature, the primordial elements [and their] composition. In the sphinx, where animal and human are connected, he saw the symbol of the incarnation. The fact that an organic development from animal to human has taken place is again a theosophical view today.
Finally in the phoenix bird, which consumes itself in fire and then rises again from the ashes. It is the symbol of the soul. It is composed of the [mythical] primordial spirit, the [materialistic] skeleton of the world, the purely natural existence of the intermediate stages and the human soul, which is supposed to redeem the spirit from nature. The development presents itself in three stages: in the original spirit, the human soul and then in nature.
The individual human being is now included, integrated into this whole chain of development, and he should not only use his life, as the Egyptian priests were clear, to recognize the world, but to bring it a step forward. For they believed that if man is aware of his immense responsibility, he must not merely accept life, but that he must use it to do divine deeds when he works, to carry on the deeds of the gods.
With him who was at a sufficiently high level, who was as far as I have just indicated, the initiation was made. This initiation means nothing other than a repetition of the old myth of Isis and Osiris. We know that Osiris is one of the oldest gods of heaven and earth. Together with Isis, he rules heaven and earth. "Osiris can also incarnate in human form, so that they once lived as real people. They are said to have ruled our earth before the Hyksos invaded. They are therefore identical to the incarnated deities. Later, however, they all withdrew into service. That which was once worldly withdrew and was worshipped in service.
Osiris is murdered by his brother Seth-Typhon, who is the god of the abyss and fire. The god Seth-Typhon was tricked into murdering Osiris [in a coffin]. He was then dismembered and thrown out into the world.
When Isis realized this, she equipped a ship and gathered the pieces back together. Where she found a piece, she placed a church on it where it could be worshipped. Then she also found the heart again and was able to revive it through her love. It is just like in the Greek legend of Dionysus, where the heart also continued its development. Once again the god Osiris is resurrected through her love, once again [Isis] sees his head, once again a ray of light shines.
Through the ray of light, of love, she gives birth to her son Horus, who is thus in a sense a virgin-born son. He [replaces] his father. Isis and Horus continue to reign. Isis can even celebrate [the resurrection of Osiris] in a new body. Something takes place over his coffin that has been performed again and again as a kind of divine service. Thus, we are told, while their son Horus rules the people on earth, although he, according to the stay, completes his orbit on earth, also sits, as it were, at the right hand of the father.
I mean that the god Horus appears to us as the one who spiritually permeates the whole world and, according to the Egyptian priests, constitutes the soul of the world. This is a view that not only lived as a myth, but was actually dramatically presented in a tremendously grand and solemn manner to those who were to be accepted into the Egyptian priesthood. Once the imagination had been trained in a figurative way and the human spirit had assumed the form in which the god Osiris could fully live out, fully merge in the dust of the world and rise and be born on the other side, once the disciple had settled into these ideas, only then could he be led beyond the myth, then he was shown what is contained in the myth, then he was told that it is nothing other than the Logos himself, who has poured himself out into the infinite sea of worlds.
As a sign that the spirit had been poured into the infinite world sea - matter was imagined as a lake - the ceremonies were performed in places where there was a lake that represented the world sea in which the world spirit had become matter.
Horus was to be nothing other than the divine-human soul, which was poured into matter and was to bring matter back to its original existence. This cosmological truth, which relates to the individual human being, was handed down to the disciple. If he has not merely absorbed it in an abstract way, but if he has really lived into it, then he was considered worthy, since he does not merely grasp the external intellectual matter, but comprehends the great holiness of cosmology as something sublime, through which he himself believed to have become better.
Once the disciple had reached this stage, only then were the real processes undertaken with him, only then was he to experience that as a human being he is not only called to recognize, to be introduced into knowledge, but that this knowledge has to gain life.
This is expressed in a profound symbol in the Osiris myth and especially in the cult. Isis and Horus were depicted as people lying on the ground with their hands outstretched sideways. Below them they placed the cross [...]. This was the symbol for the resurrection of that which had fallen to the dust. In the cross we have the same idea as we have in Platonic philosophy, in which God, the All-Spirit, is crucified. Here it becomes a symbol and at the same time the awakener. Passing through the cross, at the coffin of Osiris, he will rise again and then be ruler anew.
This process took place for centuries in the Egyptian 'temples. The young priest was actually introduced to a new world. Mere recognition would be something egotistical. But the moment man realizes that he is only advancing a little in his development, he comes to the insight that he has made a living contribution to bringing the deity back from its envelope into its original form.
Once he had arrived here, the priest was to be shown that he must not only recognize, but that he must penetrate matter itself, that he must divinize matter, that he must not merely keep the spirit to himself, but that he must proceed from and spend the spirit for the salvation of matter.
This is one of the most important acts that should be indelibly inscribed in a soul seeking initiation. Only when this act had been completed, only when the human being had understood in a physical-spiritual way that he had to represent a symbol that had to represent eternity, the content of eternity according to Egyptian representation, only when the disciple had understood that he had nothing else to represent here as a human being in this life than a symbol of these eternal world processes, then he was able and worthy to embark on the path, which was the path of Egyptian initiation.
This process actually consisted of man allowing the process of re-awakening to take place in the physical world. This is the point to which the Egyptian priests progressed, and this is also what made the deepest impression on their disciples. They put the disciple into a three-day sleep. They completely freed the organism. The spirit should live for itself [during this time] and then take possession of its body anew. And then, when it took possession of the body again, it had the body in a new, spiritualized way. For this reason, those seeking initiation were asked to lie down on a wooden cross or simply to lie on the ground and spread out their arms. He was left in this position for three days. The fact that he regarded himself as a living symbol of resurrection was symbolized by the fact that he was carried towards the rising morning sun. The rising morning sun awakened the one who had been dead for three days to a new existence.
Now we must believe the reports we have, for what I am about to say cannot be proved experimentally. Now he had passed through the gate of death. Now he was worthy to be initiated into the deepest mysteries. It was this process which made man a symbol and through which the individual, small ego was extinguished, this process which placed him in the service of the divine world order. He had become a symbol for the eternal great world fact.
Through this, man practically experienced what Jakob Böhme wanted to say with the words: "He who does not die before he dies, perishes when he dies." Because his spirit was able to leave the body and take possession of it again, he was able to embark on the path to deification, to becoming Osiris himself, in a completely different way. We have seen from the Egyptian Book of the Dead how the Egyptians imagined eternal life in contrast to physical-sensual existence; we have seen how this initiation was brought about.
Now it is a question of making this priest a servant of humanity, so that already in this life he was brought a little further along the path of Osiris, that he did not merely transmit truth, but prepared his spirit, transformed it, so that what for others is merely external truth was for him a sacred truth, which was connected with quite different feelings and sensations. In fact, an Egyptian priest was something quite different from another person. He was a person who led a spiritualized, an internalized life because he had gone through the process of descending to the dead. He had left his body and had been in the realms of infinity, and after three days he had taken possession of his body again, awakened by the rising sun and by the father of heaven and earth, the god Ra. This process, which signifies initiation at the lowest level, was undoubtedly what the Essaeans also experienced in a higher degree. They knew the initiation process and undoubtedly took it over from Egypt with their views and customs.
The question now is: Why, how did it come about that the deepening of this ancient form of religion occurred in such a way that the undoubtedly much more exoteric worship of the Jews was again brought closer to the great worship of the Egyptians?
First of all, there are no historical, external indications. The same basis led to the birth of a Buddha so many hundreds of years ago and the same basis later led to the birth of a Christ. We must be clear about the fact that the entire Jewish spiritual life grew out of the Egyptian spiritual life. If you follow the first chapters of Genesis and the commandments in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, you will find the same striking correspondence between Buddha and Jesus that I mentioned the other day. He will find in the first five chapters of Genesis what was common practice in the Egyptian priestly world. But we must be clear about the way in which Genesis came to the Jews and how it was propagated by them.
The one thing that must be clear to anyone who knows how to read Genesis is that Moses probably knew the Decalogue in the form in which he gave it. This results from the great correspondence we have in the Decalogue and in the commandments of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. And we must be clear that in ancient Egypt there was no other way to get this across than by being initiated.
Moses was an initiate. His task was to create other initiates in the Jewish priesthood. I will now show how even in outward appearances there is a similarity between Genesis and the ancient Egyptian myths. I will indicate one external feature which will speak sufficiently for the whole. You will see in what way the myths have been transformed. But a demonstration here would lead far too far.
The Osiris myth knows Osiris on the one side and Seth-Typhon on the other. Both are a kind of brother and sister. They are hostile to each other. They are both descended from heaven. They are sons of heaven. They are presented as incarnate deities. Next to Osiris we have Seth-Typhon. You also have this pair of brothers in Genesis as Cain and Abel.
The fact that we still have traces of the Egyptian priestly religion in Genesis is proven by the passage in the fifth chapter, which deals with the human race. Adam was 130 years old, fathered a son and named him Seth. It is the same figure. In him you have a real son of Adam. In Adam we only have to recognize a kind of god-man, actually only a figure of Ra, the highest heavenly god, translated more into human form. His sons are to be equated with the sons of Ra. [In the Seth of the Cain and Abel story we would see the Seth of the Osiris myth.] This correspondence is not accidental. It is clear that we are dealing with a profound correspondence.
I have only mentioned this to show the method. You can recognize the ancient Egyptian priestly religion in Genesis. This is how Genesis came about. The Egyptian priestly religion has been lost, but was later rebuilt from what was planted by tradition. This is why it is difficult for us to recognize the original form of what Moses handed down to us. But within the Egyptian priestly religion we can. When we reconstruct them, they correspond to the old mythical forms, to the oldest forms, so that we are in fact just as surprised by them as we were by the correspondence between the life of the Buddha and the life of the Christ.
This contemplation will give us a view of the actual reason for the emergence of the Christ figure. If we go back to the sacred books of the Indians, which were completed two thousand years before the birth of Christ, we find a most curious legend that confronts us in the form of the Indian Vedic literature. It introduces us to the whole Indian world view. You will find the legend of [Adhima] and [Heva]. The two were created as human beings on Ceylon in paradise. They are presented to us in full innocence. A serpent comes to them. It says to them: Why do you want to stay within these realms? They then wander through these areas and [Adhima] says to [Heva]: Let us see what kind of land this is that we see in the distance. - The serpent also invited them to do so and said: 'When you get there, you will be like Brahma and realize the deepest secrets of the world. - It all seems great to them. But when they get there, the whole thing dissolves into a kind of mirage and they are in harsh, barren realms. But they are comforted by Brahma, who tells them, after the world had appeared to them as an insubstantial reflection: I will send Vishnu to you.
It is the same as what we find in Genesis as the prophecy of God foretelling the coming of the Christ. You can find the sagas of the ancient Vedic literature in Genesis as well. This legend is intimately connected with the Indian world view. This Adam and Eve myth is in the deepest harmony with the teaching that has been propagated up to Buddhism and has become personal in Buddha, with the world view that what we perceive with our senses is basically a mirage, an illusion, a deceptive image and that man has a completely different goal in the eternal, in Nirvana. What is beyond nirvana is a vain appearance.
God himself made man, that is the meaning of the ancient myths. Brahma creates the first man in his own image. It is Brahma who incarnates in the first man. The primal human pair then descends further. It continues to connect with matter, and from the imprinting of the spirit in the dust arises the life that we recognize as human life.
This human life is nothing, since its only purpose is to give birth to the divine again. But a sacrifice is to descend to penetrate matter. [Brahma] must descend to attain his true, great life. This is expressed in the ancient Indian myth and this is also expressed in the Indian worldview, which sees everything in the world as illusory.
So you also have a similar harmony between the ancient myth of the Vedas and the [Jewish] worldview. They are in complete agreement with each other.
To grasp this view of the nothingness, of the mere appearance of the world, was one of the insights that the initiates were to be taught in a living way. He was not to see that which was to be seen in a coarse, crude manner. But that which the [non-initiated] people do not see, they should see. Wherever we go back to the mystical sources, be it in the ancient Vedas or in Genesis, wherever there is a deeper understanding, there is also the perception that we are dealing with a mere mirage - as in the Indian. [And this can only become what it must become when the deity appears in its form and when man not only contributes to bringing knowledge into the world, but also to permeating matter with spirit, so that not only the spirit becomes alive, but also that matter becomes alive with the spirit at the same time.
The fact that God himself has become dust is the fault of the serpent, which has to take up dust again and again. The dust-born is nothing other than the deity incarnating in matter and emerging from it again. We are dealing here with something that is not just a falling away, but a sacrifice. The deity pours itself out in order to be redeemed again. This falling away is depicted to us. The serpent is nothing other than the antitype of the deity, it is the deity in a different form. This is why the snake is the symbol for the initiation process in all religions. It consists in the fact that man not only recognizes, but that by recognizing he redeems matter from being mere matter, that he gives birth to spirit out of mere matter. The snake is the symbol for this process.
Goethe also used the symbol of the snake in the "Fairy Tale", but only at the time when he was familiar with the mystical symbols. In the myth of the Fall of Man, we are dealing with a view that we can trace both in ancient Egyptian priestly beliefs and in Genesis. We are dealing with ancient beliefs from which Buddhism and Christianity then arise. And when we look at the Egyptian priestly religion, we are dealing with a deification of man - as [with] Heraclitus.
This becoming immortal, this becoming God was the task that was to be symbolized by the three-day burial and the resurrection process. We see this process revived as a historical event in the story of Christ. We see what everyone who wanted to be initiated into the Egyptian mysteries had to go through, the coming to life after taking up the symbol of the cross, [in the Christ event] emerge in all [publicity] in an individual.
This could only take place in a time and in a community that had done the groundwork, as in Essaeanism, which could understand what was happening. From this we see that a necessary process took place, a process that must always occur if one could say - as the process took place with John the Baptist - that this is a Christ, as Brahma could say with Buddha. So it had to be prepared in advance.
In Essaeanism lived the belief [of the Egyptian initiates] that man could become divine if he stepped up to the judgment steps of Osiris in order to become God himself. To have this highest task, which man sets himself, once as a historical process before him as something lasting, that is what confronts us at the bottom of Essaeanism.
Now we come to pursue this. You must bear in mind that what took place in the Egyptian priest centuries ago, what took place in countless people, took place in a single process, but in such a way that we recognize in it exactly the plan of the Egyptian idea of eternity.
Let me add this one more passage in order to have a point of reference for the next time, namely that he who sought the entrance through the gate of death in order to enter the land of Osiris had to undergo a series of trials. He is led before 42 judges of the dead. These are nothing other than the people who have become "Osiris" in the realm of the dead; people who once lived and have already become "Osiris". He appears before them, so that the one who visits the world beyond appears before his most distinguished ancestors. And the one who is called to become an "Osiris" is nothing other than a new form, a renewed form, a link in the forty-two-membered series.
This series plays a role in the Essaean community. It is nothing other than what was already present here on earth. These 42 judges of the dead appear to us right at the beginning of the Gospel in a different form. They are nothing other than the 42 ancestors of Jesus. He has become "Osiris", the forty-second in the line. He is the one who is called to judge the living and the dead. This is why the most important progenitors of the human race are also cited as the progenitors of Jesus. It is a direct translation of an Essaean tradition that can be traced directly in the Gospel of Matthew. It is nothing other than the translation of the judges of the dead in Egyptian terms.
The fact that we are confronted with the incarnation of Jesus immediately after the genealogy has been presented: "[Mattan] begets Jacob, Jacob begets Joseph" and so on, may strike us. Next time, we will examine and get to know the reason for this.
[Answer to question:]
I just wanted to point out that we are dealing with two gender registers. One has gone through the Essaean view and the other from Matthew belongs to a different set of ideas and is linked to it.
42 members = 3 times 14 = 6 times 7 - at the boundary of the sixth round and at the entrance to the seventh round. The seven parts into which the ancient Egyptians divided man. The number 7 is not sacred because it is seven, but because they recognized the secret of the world in it. So it is not a superstition. Development is a continuous overcoming of matter by the spirit. Just as the globe once bore no people, but now people live on it, these people will develop more and more and progress to greater spirituality.