Ancient Mysteries and Christianity

GA 87 — 19 April 1902, Berlin

23. Augustine

Highly Esteemed Attendees!

It was my task to show that Christianity underwent a development in the first centuries, and I emphasized that the conclusion of this development actually occurred relatively late, at least much later than the "orthodox" churches imagine this conclusion to have been.

This development also went through a mystical epoch. The main idea was that everywhere in the Mediterranean region, in Europe and far into Africa, there was a deepening of the religious worldview before our era, before the first century of the Christian era, and that this deepening of religious life moved in exactly the same direction and virtually grew towards Christianity, indeed formed the direct basis for many currents in Christianity.

When we sift through Christian writers from the first century, we cannot say what comes from these or those. The Apocalypse was nothing more than a popularization of ancient mystery ideas. Initiates into the mysteries often converted to Christianity later. They then expressed themselves in the same way as the pagan writers. This became particularly clear to us with the pseudo-Dionysius, Dionysius Areopagita, who is said to have been converted by the apostle Paul. The writings of this Dionysius probably date back to earlier times. They are imbued with mystical ideas; they also contain theosophical ideas. We are dealing with an ancient Egyptian priest who was initiated into the Egyptian or Eleusinian mysteries, who then expresses the truths in this way. Or we can also assume that the mysticism of Dionysius was expressed again in Alexandria. In the first century, we are dealing with a teaching that is in the process of development. In fact, we can say that it was not until the fourth century that the very specific doctrine known in the West as Christianity took hold.

The first writer to testify to the first purely Christian mysticism was St. Augustine, who concerns us today. In him we have the first Christian mysticism before us. Thus the riddle that the mysteries of the ancients underlie primitive Christianity will appear most clearly to us. The Gnostics were Christian mystics of the first century. I said that these Gnostics taught the ancient theosophical teachings of the Logos, of the Logos embodied in matter, and that they spread what they had gained from the ancient Mysteries. I said that they assumed that man can only ascend to a real vision through the various degrees of knowledge - they recognized a spiritualized Christ as their own - that they made use of all the means of the Christian mind in order to carry over as many teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as possible into those teachings which you can still guess from the Gospels today. There were also various sects among the Gnostics. Those teachings are essentially nothing more than ancient mysticism translated into popular form. If we think of this spirit [of the old teaching poured into new forms], then we have what the Gnostics represented. They were also the ones who said that the best cannot be entrusted to Scripture, but that the highest levels can only be transmitted from personality to personality.

So the Gnostics were the bearers of a spiritualized Christianity. We also have such confessions in Alexandria. We could list a whole series of Christian confessions, but we can no longer say what was taught by the various ecclesiastical writers who were labeled false teachers by the Church Fathers.

If we were to go through these various opinions, we would see that in the first years of Christian development we are dealing with a diverse, not a uniform doctrine, with a doctrine that has gained influxes from all sides. It is therefore the case that we are not dealing with a self-contained doctrine in the first century. Today's Christianity is a creation of the two councils of Nicaea and Constantinople.

We must see the most important personality within the Christian mystical development in Augustine, because he sought in himself a deepening that was not achieved in such a way by any later one, nor could it be overtaken, because the later time was [indeed] more Christian, but not more mystical. Augustine presents us with the beginning of that - in the fourth to fifth century - which can show us the basic difference between what must still have been present in [earlier] Christianity and what later took the place of this original Christianity.

I would like to say right away that those who approach the study of Augustine themselves - the deep life of the mind - will find the greatest satisfaction. I would like to say that I would not like to compare any personality with Augustine in terms of greatness and perspicacity of thought. But even among modern philosophers there are probably few and only a few that I would place alongside Augustine. Whoever takes Cartesius and studies him, whoever compares him with him, will find that Cartesius is only a one-sided education. Augustine, however, is one of the most profound thinkers of all time.

What we know about the Gnostics indicates that in addition to the ancient religious systems of the whole world, the Gnostics also had in their basic views that which was still widespread as mysteries, that in Gnosticism everything was indeed represented which we today seek to awaken in the teachings of Theosophy. He who tries to penetrate Gnosticism will be able to say to himself nothing other than that it is undoubtedly the case that this basic Gnostic view is still permeated by the sentiments and ideas which constituted the essence, the deepest core of the old religious systems, that only the documents do not speak to us clearly and distinctly enough.

If we take the doctrine of re-embodiment, of reincarnation, it is this which alone corresponds to an eternal world order, which is strictly self-contained, which alone shows us how the world and God can be identical, because only on the premise of this doctrine can a complete balance, a harmony between the true and the false, in short a complete harmony between all apparently divergent ideas, be possible. I mean that man not only feels at one with some divine being, but with the eternal spirit which pervades the whole world, and feels this spirit not only as the one deity, but also as the individuality which passes through each individual life; I mean, therefore, the re-embodiment of the spirit which also confronts us in the Buddhist doctrine, which has not one, but many Buddhas. This doctrine [of re-embodiment] was undoubtedly something that was contained as a keynote in the ancient teaching of the Gnostics. We now understand why deeper initiates, disciples of Dionysius, used this apostle's name over and over again. Like the Pythagoreans, they were of the opinion that the spirit of the founder still lived on in them. They recognized him in themselves, just as the Pythagoreans recognized their forefather in themselves. It was only later that the teachings [of Dionysius] were recorded. The one who recorded them regarded himself as a personality who reached up in spirit to the time of the founding of the order.

This is the basic phenomenon of Christianity, that this doctrine of the general spirituality of the world, this esoteric view, is gradually being overcome, forgotten and disappearing. Christianity without this view of the world, without this basic mood, first appears to us clearly and distinctly in Augustine. He represents a view that is free from the transformation of the soul and free from the transformation of the spirit. In Augustine we therefore encounter the first mystic who only deals with the one personal human life. What lies between the individual personalities, what the old religions interposed between the individual personality and the All-Unity, has fallen away with Augustine.

The great and significant thing is that despite this, a personality appeared in the Church that reached an immeasurable depth, even though it knew no intermediate links between personality and all-unity. This is what gives us an understanding of Augustine's teachings. They contain a mysticism without the foundation of an ancient mystical view, a mysticism in which everything that the ancients placed between the two is placed in the Godhead. What is between man and the Godhead is placed within the Godhead. This is why Augustine also writes: "I have transferred into the Godhead that which men formerly perceived as their world. When people used to look at the whole world and then at their personal characteristics, they said to themselves: This world is not a boundary. It includes personalities before and after; and the balance that I cannot find in myself, I find in the whole world. What I lack in one place at one time can be replaced in another place and at another time. For people, therefore, everything is only seemingly limited, isolated, because sooner or later it balances itself out again. This whole question: How is it that a single personality with these or those characteristics appears in such a way that a peculiarity that destroys others turns to the good in this one? - This question stood before Augustine as a great riddle. He solved it in a way that it can only be solved. This man of wisdom appears to be inhuman, apparently carried away by the worst fanaticism when he speaks about this question, because he does not have the opportunity to answer in the sense of the theosophy of the ancients. That is why he had to burden a God with it, that is why he had to say: It is not the personality that determines its own existence in the eternal development of the spirit; this individual personality, he had to say to himself, stands there all by itself; and what stands opposite it is the infinite perfection of power [of God]. He had to say to himself as a logical thinker: So all the characteristics of man, regardless of whether he comes into the world as a sinner or as a good person, as a genius or imbecile, stem from the Godhead. This cannot be explained by anything else in the world. It can only lie in the Godhead, if all intermediate elements are removed. Hence the harsh teaching of Augustine: man is either predestined to eternal bliss or to eternal damnation.

It would have been impossible for a personality who suffered as much as he did to have taught such a harsh doctrine if he had not at the same time sought to build up a world system within this view in a logically consistent manner. In the last lecture, i.e. today over eight days, we will see how this doctrine was reversed immediately after Augustine by a highly significant inconsistency into a completely different doctrine, in the case of an equally profound thinker, Scotus Eriugena.

This is what makes St. Augustine understandable to us, this is what explains why this personality clings to it so rigidly: Man is predestined for good or for bad. That intermediate link [- re-embodiment -] which the Gnostics still had, has been lost to him. Now begins that Christian development which has eliminated the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, palingenesis.

Augustine is considered the greatest authoritative and most important Doctor of the Church. Let us now take a look at this great personality of St. Augustine himself. There will hardly have been a second personality in the Christian Church who combined all three characteristics in such a harmonious way. Let us disregard what the Christian Church had lost at that time and consider St. Augustine as a Christian mystic. Clear thinking, sharply based on reason, depth of mind and at the same time the noblest will and character. These were the qualities that were present in rare harmony in this man. We therefore also see that his life is a continuous process of self-initiation, which is sought by most mystics. We see how he is religiously educated by his mother Monika, but how he is not satisfied by the ordinary teachings of the Church; we see how he falls into doubt, how, after finding no satisfaction in the teachings that his mother could give him, he joins the Manichaeans, a sect.

This sect shows us that the Persian worldview had penetrated the Christian doctrine, in which two opposing forces play a role: Good and Evil. They regard Christ, as the Logos, as the helper who leads people entangled in the bonds of evil back to good. The Manichaeans are [destined] to explain evil. For them, evil is an original power and should only be overcome.

According to the theosophical view, evil arises merely through a sacrifice that the deity itself makes by entering into existence in an external way, by incarnating itself. This creates the appearance of evil, of falsity, of error. The error arises because the complete connection within the world cannot be made clear to us. It is concealed by the various material intermediate grounds between individuality and allness.

This teaching of the Manicheans satisfied Augustine for a time because he had felt the bad, the pulling down, the evil passions, desires and impulses in his youth. He could not explain this in any other way than that these forces are present in the world. However, something in St. Augustine resisted this view. And so it was that within this doctrine a contradiction arose and confronted him. He could not explain how two original elements could exist: a good All-One and an evil All-One. He could not grant error the same right [as truth] in his progressive thinking.

Now came something that must come over every human being who has progressed to this stage. The period arises when evil and good, ugliness and beauty actually confront him like two equal forces. The Buddha is approached by Mara, the Christ by Satan. Only life, immersion, can bring about victory. No knowledge that is given to us beforehand is capable of doing so. We ourselves must bring about victory through our own work on ourselves. There are two ways. We can perhaps advance to this conquest of evil through mystical guidance, or if this is not possible, as it was for Augustine, who could not have any external mystical guidance, then the only possibility is to fight for that victory from within ourselves, to climb that step.

Augustin found this guidance in Christianity, which he grasped as deeply as possible [...]. He did not find this path immediately. At first he did not find people who could help him. His own strength was not so well developed. He did not find anyone who could have taught him from the Christian tradition itself what he later called "the spirit over the letter". It was therefore necessary for him to go through the most terrible doubts into which he now fell. He himself became a doubter, a skeptic and went through the most bitter doubts of knowledge before he became a Christian in the sense [that] is called "soteric".

It was the Bishop of Milan, Ambrose, who introduced him to the spirit as opposed to the letter. We can still see the doubts he went through page by page in his "Confessions". This work should be read by everyone, Protestants and Catholics alike. They will read through the book with the greatest satisfaction. And so will everyone else who does not belong to these confessions.

Luther himself was an Augustinian monk, was a Catholic and regarded [Augustine] as the first saint. Anyone who has grown up in theosophical ideas will find in Augustine a mysticism that actually went as far as one can go without the missing teachings that I have mentioned. Doubt emerges everywhere between the lines in the "Confessions". He shows us how he fought throughout his life. And he became a victor over doubt.

What kind of doubts were these? We also have doubters in our time that we have to confront. But you have to study Augustine's doubt, and then you have to see and say: there is a right to doubt once you have reached this level of Augustine. The doubts that come from people who do not want to conquer them, or from people who have taken them from philosophy, seem to us like a frivolity of knowledge compared to Augustine's doubt. But Augustine's doubt, which is based on the question of how good and evil can be in harmony, is overcome in spite of everything. Augustine struggles through under the guidance of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. He describes this development in his spiritual journey. We see that Augustine achieved everything that could be achieved in the current of thought in which he was placed. We even see in him an echo of Indian teachings. His path of knowledge appears to us in seven limbs. Within the seven limbs, however, everything that must be missing is missing, since the primal element is missing.

Man develops out of material existence. He is at the same stage as plants and animals. That is the first stage. You will find these stages somewhat different from what is known about them in Theosophy. Man then develops from this material stage to the organic stage, he develops his organs, his organic activity, his sensory activity, his memory activity. He now also lives in the outside world. There he is on the second stage. There he works cognitively in the sensory element. Then he comes to the third stage. It introduces the spirit into the outer world. The spirit takes possession of the outer world, from the simple technical activities up to that which appears to us as our formulation of the spirit in the world, up to that through which the spirit receives its strength for practical work. And then, when man withdraws again, when he has become a willful being, when he feels the spirit of goodness and truth, then he is on the fourth stage. He reaches the fifth stage when he senses that the divine dwells in the true and receives a "prospect of the divine thoughts. He reaches the sixth stage when he not only feels the divine within himself, but also senses it in his eternal existence. He is on the seventh stage when he acts with willpower like the deity.

The Buddha teachings show us how man has to go through certain stages. When he has reached a certain stage, he sees the cosmic in-breath and out-breath; he sees how man emerges from one house, as it were, and then later enters another house. Thus the spiritually developed person sees how the human being enters the process of re-embodiment from the spiritual world and then returns to the spiritual world. This is what had to be distinguished in the Buddha teaching. In Augustine's teaching, which otherwise appears to us to be similar to the Buddhist teaching, we lack this poignant element, which had been forgotten in Christianity. Augustine's seven-limbed path lacks the gripping description given to us five hundred years before the birth of Christ on "The visible fruits of the ascetic life". It is a writing that no one will read without receiving the greatest impressions of the meaning of what was present in the Buddha community.

[Are they not words of deepest knowledge about Augustine that confront us in the wisdom of Augustine's biography?] What we previously encountered as a bone of contention appears to us [in Augustine] in a transfigured way. For example, the Trinity, which has led to countless sectarian formations. When we encounter this in Augustine, he refers us to our self-knowledge. He says: I immerse myself in my own personality, and this confronts me as a threefold. I feel myself first as my "being", then as the "knower" and then as the "willer". I am these three in one person. And just as I am these three in one person, so it is in that of which the personality is only an image. - The divine lives in man. Man can therefore only find the divine by penetrating into his inner being, in the inner truth that we can find through our self-knowledge.

The fact of thinking is the deepest fact there is for him. There he finds the most poignant words to describe it for him, which also gave him the certainty of the divine [primordial One]. "I went out into the world and looked at the most diverse natural things. I could find that they are divine, but I could not find that they are God. I look at people and finally look inside myself. I see that I must be divine, but I also see that I am not "God. I first had to come to complete certainty within myself, I had to become better myself. Then I discovered the "good in me." - Self-deepening must come first: That is true mysticism. If you have not first discovered what is within you, all previous self-knowledge will be of no avail. First awaken this primal One in you, then you will also be able to find the deepest. - He wanted to doubt that he is alive, doubt that he thinks; but he cannot doubt that. And what is this primordial One? "I asked the earth, the sea, I asked the winds" - see the "Confessions" - "they answer: We are not God." He could not recognize the spiritual [there]. He only saw it under symbols. He believed [at first] that this was it. But that was his mistake. He felt it was the highest good to see the spiritual also spiritually. - I now see the eternal goals, the eternal ideas, as the Pythagoreans saw them. I don't just see counted, understood things, but I see in such a way that I see into the numbers, into the things, that I see the purely spiritual itself.

In Scotus Eriugena we will get to know a personality of infinite, mystical depth. But we must say to ourselves that in Augustine we have found such a leading personality for Christianity that it becomes clear to us from Augustine's teaching and personality what Christianity has lost in terms of its old mystical views. It becomes clear to us to what depth it was able to reach despite what it had lost. St. Augustine experienced everything that was possible for him, because he was a personality who had lived through everything, who had found the law of truth as the primal law of life. This is the teaching of St. Augustine, which cannot be ignored when speaking of Western mysticism.

Answer to the question:

Question: It is strange that Augustine, despite his inner vision, despite his mystical deepening, did not find the doctrine of re-embodiment.

Answer: Those who follow Augustine's teaching achieve a harmony between cognition, feeling and moral love. This gives them the perspective of the divine, which they recognize as the innermost human being. This is a level of vision in which the divine does not take shape. However, this is possible when vision has reached the point where the spiritual presents itself to us on the most diverse levels. Its seven stages therefore also appear to us as the most important thing not contained.

Through contemplation, he can penetrate mysticism, and mysticism means life in the divine to him.

Buddha's personality is higher than the personality of Augustine.

The truly mystical has never been lost. The esoteric has permeated the exoteric both in Buddha and in the first Christian centuries.

the personality of Jesus. So [the second Logos] has been Christianized.