Ancient Mysteries and Christianity
GA 87 — 15 March 1902, Berlin
19. A Description of the Initiation Process
Highly Esteemed Attendees!
Our task will be, in the few hours remaining to us this winter, to carry [our reflections on] the mystical views of the Christian era as far as possible to Scotus Eriugena. From today we have six more hours: March 22, 29, 5, 12, 19, 26 April. By the ninth century A.D., I hope to move forward and touch on the consolidation of Christianity when St. Augustine deepened Christian doctrine.
If we look back at what we have let pass us by this winter, it was mystical views that were prepared in Greek and Egyptian antiquity. We have seen that the most outstanding of the Greek philosophers drew from what we have called the Mysteries. [We have seen that the Greek mythology presents us with mystically deepened experiences, that is, that what is represented externally in the myths was experienced internally in the mysteries.] We have seen how this mystical experience was philosophically transformed into the teachings of Heraclitus and Plato. And we have seen how the practical side was developed among the Egyptian priests, how a secret path was cultivated within the Egyptian priesthood, through which man could be led to the goal more quickly than if he left himself to fate and waited until [the initiation] came.
The Egyptian mysteries and mystery priests reached their climax in initiation. The initiation process also belonged to the cults of the Indian religion and was also carried out there. The process consisted of the great Osiris drama being performed on the individual personality as a process of initiation. The individual personality had to submit to a process whereby sensuality and the physical were purified to such an extent that it could comprehend the world in a spiritual way. The process was carried out within the Egyptian priestly mysteries in such a way that the person who was considered mature enough to be subjected to an etherization of the body was put into a kind of higher hypnosis, placed in a coffin, in a tomb. He lay there with his hands outstretched in a mystical sleep, from which he was to be awakened on the third day. The awakening from the mystical sleep was accomplished by the rising morning sun. But now this whole process made such an impression on him that he actually led a new life when he had gone through this process. Now he could understand when the Egyptian and Indian world views claim that the earthly is nothing and that the world of the senses no longer means anything. Goethe's words for this were: "Die and become."
If you study the mystical writings, you will often find this "Die and become". There, where the spiritual awakens and the lower, the tangible really evaporates. The lower, the tangible becomes nothing compared to the higher that awakens in us. Hence this mystical confession in various ways. Anyone who studies mystical writings will often have come across this expression. It can be found, for example, in Jakob Böhme, who expressed it in the words: "He who does not die before he dies, perishes when he dies". For those who have not achieved this, the situation is such that they must undergo the process on higher levels or in a next life.
This initiation process was intended to lead people up to their goal, to take them a step further on the path to divinity. Man was destined to transform the gross sensual world into a purely ethereal one. We are told that man then took on a new body, that he was endowed with a new body, that he was transfigured. Such an initiation process is described to us as taking place amidst tremendous natural phenomena, with thunder and lightning. It was this process that gave him the experience, the realization of the spiritual. Once he had achieved this, he realized that it was not matter that was real, but the spiritual.
Anyone who has lived a mystical life will always reveal this to us at some point. I would like to show this in Goethe's "Faust". You will find allusions to the dawn in it. You need only look up the passage where Faust speaks the words before summoning the earth spirit: "Only now do I realize what the wise man says: The spirit world is not closed; your mind is closed, your heart is dead! Arise, disciple, undaunted, bathe your earthly breast in the dawn." The dawn is the light by which the initiate awakens. When Faust, bathed, steps out of Lethe's flood, he sees the dawn again. We also have such a passage in the "Prologue in Heaven": "The sun sounds the old way in brotherly spheres Wettgesang, and its prescribed journey it completes with thunder" and so on. All things, as Goethe has expressed them, are to be taken in such a way that they are initially comprehensible even to those who do not penetrate into the depths. But the initiate will see that there is something more behind it. These are Goethe's own words.
So it is the initiation process that we have in Christianity as the content of the Christian creed. From here we must penetrate [further]. We will then see that we can only understand certain parts of Christianity in this way.
When we open the Gospel of Matthew, certain passages only become understandable to us from this theosophical starting point. Last time I showed how the Essaeans were the representatives of this [mystical] view through their lives. There we find the doctrine of the nothingness of the material. If we understand what is transmitted to us about the Essaeans, then we find that through Essaeanism this secret teaching has been transplanted into Judaism, that man can experience an inner deepening and that at the same time the view has been formed that it can be promoted through the initiation process.
Let us now ask ourselves: Do we also encounter the initiation process in the New Testament? If this were the case, then we would have to say to ourselves that in Jesus of Nazareth we are dealing with a secret teacher who took it upon himself, who saw in himself the main mission of no longer excluding anyone, at least from an inkling of this mystical process, who could not bring himself to pursue the depths of this science only in secret.
Now let us see if we can discover traces that Jesus belonged to the so-called initiates. According to the Gospel of Matthew, without question. We see that we are dealing with a person at the highest level of reincarnation, with a "Buddha" or "Christ". Such a person, however, could be none other than a member of the Essaean community, according to the whole matter in question. Nor could he be any other than one who belonged to the initiates of the Old Testament. Christ saw the [outer] world disappear in the face of what he saw as a vision. - Visions in the early stages are not realities. In the higher stages, however, this changes completely - it is the content that is conveyed in such a vision. Let us take the vision that the Christ had with Elijah and Moses, which brought him to the perfect transfiguration, where not only he but also his clothing was transfigured. That would be and was the highest revelation that a human being could receive, the participation in divinity itself. From there it also became clear that he was not merely a messenger of God, but an incarnated God. The Essene view makes it possible to understand that man can attain this level. This is expressed in the New Testament when [Christ wants to show the disciples] what he is going through, what he wants them to suspect, what he must let them suspect, by drawing their attention to the fact that the divine could creep in "like a thief in the night": the day of resurrection will appear, an awakening will take place. He wants to awaken this awareness in every human being. And awakening this consciousness was his mission. It was what the Essaeans themselves wanted. But the Essaeans wanted to make individual chosen ones. Jesus was also only chosen as an individual. But he wanted to bring everyone to it. But he could only show the path to those who had the good will. And only someone who was an initiate among the initiates could do this.
If you follow the writings of the first Christian centuries, especially the early ones, you will see how clear they were about the question of infallibility. This already existed at that time, the possibility of different interpretations by different personalities. Admittedly, everyone could interpret the nature of Jesus' personality in their own way. This is understandable when we remember that we are dealing with people who were at different levels. Even if we follow the Gnostics, we find that we are dealing with a secret doctrine. Just as it was the case with the mystics.
The priest felt he was the bearer of a secret doctrine. He knew that people could only be led to the secret teachings step by step. He knew that he had to give them in a form that would open everyone's heart, but that the meaning would still be conveyed. We can even assume that the one who wrote down the messages also understood the meaning. Jesus was both a secret teacher and a great public speaker. You only need to have the parable to recognize a higher truth in it. But the one who gave the parable could only be an initiated personality. The parables have their origin in the depths of the world soul. [Jesus] had an insight into the views of the spiritual world. He knew what the initiation process was all about. He was one who was able to experience the secrets of the spiritual world through his own inner revelation. Because he was at the stage of perfect incarnation, he was one who could and did carry out the initiation himself.
This is something that only the mystical teaching can represent. Only the mystical doctrine can read certain parts of Scripture correctly. They can follow the passages. They will always remain mysteries if they are not understood in the mystical sense, in connection with the Egyptian initiation process. Jesus emerged from the deep spiritual bed of the Essaeans in order to work in the sense of Essaean wisdom. He was also able to perform the initiation as it was undoubtedly part of the Essaean cult. But you have to understand how to read the Gospel, namely from John, who was also an initiate [of the Essaeans]. He tells it to us in a very masked form.
Those who have understood the Gospel will always find the point, they will find it emphasized, namely the point that must have been the cause of Jesus' death. This is the point where Renan, in a rather materialistic way, gets a certain uneasy feeling about the crucifixion and where he cannot explain why the most important miracle, the raising of Lazarus, should have had such a profound effect, why it might have been connected with the crucifixion of Jesus. The story of the resurrection of Lazarus cannot be understood, cannot be understood exoterically, by those who take it as it is given [in the Gospel]. Anyone who wanted to see a mere parable in the resurrection of Lazarus would get nowhere. Nor would anyone who understood it as a realistic depiction of what happened to the fig tree. One [- Luke -] understood and told it as a parable, the other, Mark [- and also Matthew -], tells it as a real miracle. The resurrection of Lazarus, which is undoubtedly the most important of the miracles that Jesus performed, had nothing in common with all these miracles. And this resurrection of Lazarus can only be understood if it is understood esoterically. It is an initiatory process that is described to us in a veiled manner. If we have the resurrection of Lazarus before us and know that it is an initiation process that is only told to us in a somewhat masked way, then we also have the reason why the commentators are so sultry from the moment when this initiation process is carried out into all the world. It became a great symbol. From now on, people believed in Jesus. People now knew what he was, a great secret teacher who wanted to preach the gospel to the whole world.
Now let's look at the initiation process itself. Such things are revealed to us by the sounds that are struck, which signify mystical symbols. And if you know how to understand mystical symbols, if you are used to reading mystical writings, then you are pointed out - as a Freemason is pointed out that he is dealing with another Freemason - you are pointed out when a deeply mystical theme is struck, just as in the Gospel of John the resurrection of Lazarus is told.
Lazarus lies prostrate with an illness. It only relates to his previous life. It is the initiation process that is to be carried out on him by the Christ himself. We are dealing with a sick man who has already succumbed to death. The translation is not bad. But it is also about the two sisters Mary and Martha being presented to us. "Mary is not just a proper name, Mary is the same as Maya in the Indian world view. She means nothing other than matter, the virgin matter into which the spirit must pour itself in order to pass through the various stages of embodiment, through the stages of inorganic nature, of plant and animal life and of man back to divinity. This Mary is [the being] from which the spirit must be born out of the as yet unmixed matter.
So we are dealing with Mary on the one hand and her sister Martha on the other. We will see that both sisters are described to us in a special way, we will see the significant contrast between these sisters. "It happened that they were walking. ... There was a woman named Martha. She took him into her house. And she had a sister named Mary, who sat at Jesus' feet and listened to him speak." - Mary is the symbol for the material existence, the one from which the spirit must be born again, and "Martha" is the one who provides services, who leads the spirit further along the path, the sister of the material, the actual symbol of the spiritual. Just as man walks in limbo between the material and the spiritual, so Lazarus walks between the two sisters - not with his sisters. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord and dried him with her hair.
The whole thing is then described to us as a kind of medical history. The sisters said to him: "Lord, behold, the one you love is sick. When Jesus heard this, he said: "The illness is not for death, but for the glory of God." It is the opposite of new life. He therefore wants to carry out the initiation process on Lazarus. The illness is for the glory of God, so that the person is led to divinity. "But Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus ... Now when he heard that he was sick ... He stayed two days where he was." The initiation process had to last three days and on the fourth day the one who was sleeping as if dead was to be awakened. "Then he said to the disciples, "Lazarus, our friend, is asleep" - the one whom Jesus loved - "but I am going to wake him up." The disciples misunderstood. Jesus said: "He is sleeping the death that passes through real death. Lazarus has died, he has lived through the mystical death." "Thomas said to the disciples: "Let us go and die with him."" - Lazarus was in the tomb for four days. [Gap in the transcript].
Of course, such a secret teacher could only be persecuted by orthodox Jewish teaching. The whole narrative is, as I said, masked. But it testifies to us that we are dealing with an initiation process and with the resurrection on the fourth day. If we follow these secret teachings, we realize that people in the first Christian centuries knew what they were dealing with.
He who was initiated into the initiation process is also initiated into the Apocalypse. There, too, we are given ample indication in various ways of what we are dealing with. When we read it under the conditions that have now been created, we are literally told that we are dealing with Christ as an initiator. [Gap in the transcript]
The beast is the sensual nature of man. "Their corpses will lie in the street. ... After three and a half days, the spirit of life from God entered them and they stepped on their feet." Here you have the initiation process in a more dogmatic way. To cite a [passage] from the Apocalypse, we are shown this. "I am the root of the race of David, the bright and morning star."
Understanding all this is necessary if we want to understand how Jesus worked the raising of Lazarus, the initiation process. If you consider everything that is attached to it, then you will see for yourself that it cannot be about anything else - if only because of the whole atmosphere that spreads around this initiation process.
I would like to raise the question once again: What was the most serious crime according to the views of the Jewish court? We know from allusions in Greek history - from Plutarch, for example, and so on - what a tremendous guilt was incurred by the one who made the mysteries public. Plutarch says that he will be careful not to reveal any of the mysteries publicly. It was [Jesus] who first formed the opinion that these premonitions must be awakened in every human being. The Jews could not do this, they had the law, the faith. The mysteries were considered bad because they took away people's faith. That was [in the eyes of the Pharisees] the great crime, that Jesus taught the initiation process, publicly.
What was the main point of the condemnation? People ask if he had a secret teaching. He said it was not a secret teaching, but that it was his job to teach it to the world. He was expressly questioned as to whether he had taught his doctrine to the whole world or whether he had preserved the mysterious. According to the opinion of those who had to judge Jesus, it was a kind of treachery that he had communicated what he should not have communicated to the people according to the opinion of those who condemned him. So we see that there was indeed a deep reason for the unease that appears in various commentators, and we also see that in the raising of Lazarus according to John, we are dealing with an outstanding initiator in Jesus.
Answer to the question:
The Church has made the initiation process an inspirational process. In doing so, the Church has made its mission possible for the millennia.
Christianity is a religion for the masses and also for the initiated.
The mystics admit that revelation is within them.
When science advances to the laws of nature, there also comes a period when faith is no longer effective and eventually leads them back to the theosophical.
The Church should carry out this work of initiation and make it accessible to the great masses.
The Church can no longer understand Theosophy, but Theosophy can understand the Church.
In Judaism, only the pure law was allowed to be taught, although the Talmud also contains secret teachings.
What Christ says of himself [and his] mission: "I know that you always hear me, but for the sake of the people I do this." Raising Lazarus from the dead.