Tenth Lecture

The event in Palestine was thus to incorporate into the great world scene the drama of initiation that had previously taken place in the mystery temples. Through Jesus' life and work, everything that was depicted in the mysteries was to become an historical reality. Now the two different initiations, the southern and the northern, were to be united in him. The Egyptian or southern initiation consisted of the disciple's descent into his own soul. In the last act of this, the disciple was put into a cataleptic sleep, from which he was awakened by the hierophant. In the northern initiation, which goes back to the Zarathustra initiation, the disciple was to silence his inner self in order to lose himself, so to speak, and merge with the mystery of the cosmos. He was to silence what was within, as the other was to silence what was without. He should feel the forces living within him, connecting him to the whole cosmos and expanding into the elements, into the air, the water, the light, the planets, the stones, living in them. It is characteristic of the northern mysteries that the disciple felt incorporated into the outside world, that he felt one with every being. “I am no longer outside the nature of this planet,” he could say to himself, ‘but I am in it.’ When he exhaled, he felt at one with the air and the light that permeates our planetary system. It was the microcosm of man experiencing the macrocosm of the world. First, however, he was shown through symbols how he could come to these experiences.