Christianity as Mystical Fact: And the Mysteries of Antiquity

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CHRISTIANITY AS 
MYSTICAL FACT 

AND 

THE MYSTERIES OF ANTIQUITY 



DR. RUDOLF STEINER 

AUTHOR OF "MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE,** "THE GATES 

OF KNOWLEDGE,*' ETC. 



THlItD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED 



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The copyrights, the publishing rights, and the editorial 
responsibility for the translations of the works of Rudolf 
Steiner, Ph.D., with the exception of those already pub- 
lished under the editorial supervision of Mr. Max Gysi, 
are now vested in Mr. Harry Collison, M.A., Oxon. 



Ube Itnichetbochec pttM, Hew fiorfc 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

/^HRISTIANITV as Mystical Fact was 
the title given by the author to this 
work, when, eight years ago, he gathered 
into it the substance of lectures delivered by 
him in 1902. The title indicated the special 
character of the book. In it the attempt 
was made, not merely to represent histori- 
cally the mystical content of Christianity, 
but to descr^b^ , ,tjie grigin, ol jChristianity 
from the stao^jiioini'.jbf mysficirf '^contempla- 
tion. Underlying^ - tJ^is = intention was the 
thought that at^'thergfenesJaof Christianity 
mystical facts W^^;4t: vforjt ^i^ch can only 
be perceived by^sudi contemplation. 

It is only the book itself which can make 
clear that by "mystical" its author does not 
imply a conception which relies more on 
vague feelings than on "strictly scientific 
statements." It is true that "mysticism" is 
at present widely understood in the former 

• • • 
lU 



iv Preface to the Second Edition 

sense, and hence it is declared by many to be 
a sphere of the human soul-life with which 
"true science" can have nothing to do. In 
this book the word "mysticism" is used in 
the sense of the representation of a spiritual 
fact, which can only be recognised in its true 
nature when the knowledge of it is derived 
from the sources of spiritual life itself. If 
the kind of knowledge drawn from such 
sources is rejected, the reader will not be 
in a position to judge of the contents of this 
book. Only one who allows that the same 
clearness may exist in mysticism as in a true 
representation of the facts of natural science, 




tically described.: EQr:it:W:not only a ques- 
tion of the cont€3lt& biw tke l^bok, but first and 
foremost of 'tEiirinetljpdSio^ knowledge by 
means of whict'th^ 'stettfftents in it are 
made. 

Many there are in the present day who 
have a most violent dislike to such methods, 
which are regarded as conflicting with the 
ways of true science. And this is not only 
the case with those willing to admit other 



Preface to the Second Edition v 

interpretations of the world than their own, 
on the ground of "genuine knowledge of 
natural science," but also with those who 
as believers wish to study the nature of 
Christianity. 

The author of this book stands on the 
ground of a conception which sees that the 
achievements of natural science in our age 
must lead up into true mysticism. In fact, 
any other attitude as regards knowledge actu- 
ally contradicts everything presented by the 
achievements of natural science. The facts 
of natural science itself indeed cannot be 
comprehended by means of those methods 
of knowledge which so many people would 
like to employ to the exclusion of others, 
under the illusion that they stand on the 
firm ground of natural science. It is only 
when we are prepared to admit that a full 
appreciation of our present admirable know- 
ledge of nature is compatible with genuine 
mysticism, that we can take the contents of 
this book into consideration. 

The author's intention is to show, by means 
of what is here called "mystical knowledge, " 
how the source of Christianity .prepared its 



vi Preface to the Second Edition 

own ground in the mysteries of pre-Christian 
times. In this pre-Christian mysticism we 
find the soil in which Christianity throve, as 
a germ of quite independent nature. This 
point of view makes it possible to understand 
Christianity in its independent being, even 
though its evolution is traced from pre- 
Christian mysticism. If this point of view be 
overlooked, it is very possible to misunder- 
stand that independent character, and to 
think that Christianity was merely a further 
development of what already existed in pre- 
Christian mysticism. Many people of the 
present day have fallen into this error, com- 
paring the content of Christianity with pre- 
Christian conceptions, and then thinking 
that Christian ideas were only a continuation 
of the former. The following pages are in- 
tended to show that Christianity presup- 
poses the earlier mysticispa just as a seed 
must have its soil. It is intended to empha- 
sise the peculiar character of the essence of 
Christianity, through the knowledge of its 
evolution, but not to extinguish it. 

It is with deep satisfaction that the author 
is able to mention that this account of the 



Preface to the Second Edition vii 

nature of Christianity has found accqptance 
with a writer who has enriched the culture 
of our time in the highest sense of the word, 
by his important works on the spiritual life 
of humanity, Edouard Schur6, author of 
Les Grands InitiSs, ' is so far in accord with 
the attitude of this book that he undertook 
to translate it into French, under the title, 
Le mystire chrStien et les mysthres antiques. 
It may be mentioned by the way, and as a 
symptom of the existence at the present 
time of a longing to understand thie nature 
of Christianity as presented in this work, 
that the first edition was translated into 
other European languages besides French. 

The author has not found occasion to alter 
anjrthing essential in the preparation of this 
second edition. On the other hand, what was 
written eight years ago has been enlarged, 
and the endeavour has been made to express 
many things more exactly and circumstan- 
tially than was then possible. Unfortunately 

' This book is to be had in an English translation, by 
F. Rothwell, under the title of The Great Initiates^ A 
Sketch of the Secret History of Religions, by Edouard 
Schur^ (Pub., Rider & Son, London). 



I 



viii Preface to the Second Edition 

the author was obliged, through stress of 
work, to let a long period elapse between the 
time when the first edition was exhausted, 
and the appearance of the second. 

Rudolf Steiner. 

May, 1910. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface to the Second Edition iii 

CBAPTBR 

I. — Points of View . . . i 

II. — ^The Mysteries and their 

Wisdom . .10 

III. — ^The Greek Sages before Plato 
in the Light of the Wisdom 
OF the Mysteries . . 39 

IV. — Plato as a Mystic 63 

V. — ^The Wisdom of the Mysteries 

and the Myth - • 93 

VI. — ^The Mystery Wisdom of Egypt 127 

VII. — ^The Gospels . . . .147 

VIII. — ^The Lazarus Miracle . - 159 

IX. — ^The Apocalypse of St. John . 177 

X. — ^Jesus and His Historical Back- 
ground -198 



X Contents 

CHAPTBK PAGE 

XI. — ^The Nature of Christianity . 203 

XII. — Christianity and Heathen 

Wisdom . . . .215 

XIII. — St. Augustine and the Church 227 

Notes 239 



CHRISTIANITY AS MYSTICAL 

FACT 



I 



Christianity as Mystical 

Fact 



POINTS OF VIEW 

NATURAL Science has deeply influenced 
modem thought. It is becoming more 
and more impossible to speak of spiritual 
needs and the Ufe of the soul, without taking 
into consideration the achievements and 
methods of this science. It must be ad- 
mitted, however, that many people satisfy 
these needs, without letting themselves be 
troubled by its influence. But those who 
feel the beating of the pulse of the age must 
take this influence into consideration. With 
increasing swiftness do ideas derived from 

natural science take possession of our brains, 

z 



2 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

and, unwillingly though it may be, our hearts 
follow, often in dejection and dismay. It is 
not a question only of the number thus won 
over, but of the fact that there is a force 
within the method of natural science, which 
convinces the attentive observer that that 
method contains something which cannot be 
neglected, and is one by which any modem 
conception of the universe must be profoundly 
affected. Many of the outgrowths of this 
method compel a justifiable rejection. But 
such rejection is not sufficient in an age in 
which very many resort to this way of think- 
ing, and are attracted to it as if by magic. 
The case is in no way altered because some 
people see that true science long ago passed, 
by its own initiative, beyond the shallow 
doctrines of force and matter taught by ma- 
terialists. It would be better, apparently, to 
listen to those who boldly declare that the 
ideas of natural science will form the basis of 
a new religion. If these ideas also appear 
shallow and superficial to one who knows 
the deeper spiritual needs of humanity, he 
must nevertheless take note of them, for it 
is to them that attention is now turned, 



Points of View 3 

and there is reason to think they will claim 
more and more notice in the near future. 

Another class of people have also to be 
taken into account, those whose hearts have 
lagged behind their heads. With their reason 
they cannot but accept the ideas of natural 
science. The burden of proof is too much 
for them. But those ideas cannot satisfy 
the religious needs of their souls, — ^the per- 
si)ective oflFered is too dreary. Is the human 
soul to rise on the wings of enthusiasm to the 
heights of beauty, truth, and goodness, only 
for each individual to be swept away in the 
end like a bubble blown by the material 
brain? This is a feeling which oppresses 
many minds like a nightmare. But scientific 
concepts oppress them also, coming as they 
do come with the mighty force of authority. 
As long as they can, these people remain 
blind to the discord in their souls. In- 
deed they console themselves by saying that 
full clearness in these matters is denied to 
the human soul. They think in accordance 
with natural science so long as the experience 
of their senses and the logic of their intellect 
demand it, but they keep to the religious 



^ 



4 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

sentiments in which they have been educated, 
and prefer to remain in darkness as to these 
matters, — a darkness which clouds their 
understanding. They have not the courage 
to battle through to the light. 

There can be no doubt whatever that the 
habit of thought derived from natural science 
is the greatest force in modem intellectual 
life, and it must not be passed by heedlessly 
by any one concerned with the spiritual 
interests of humanity. But it is ^none the 
less true that the way in which it sets about 
satisfying spiritual needs is superficial and 
shallow. If this were the right way, the 
outlook would indeed be dreary. Would it 
not be depressing to be obliged to agree with 
those who say: "Thought is a form of force. 
We walk by means of the same force by 
which we think. Man is an organism which 
transforms various forms of force into 
thought-force, an organism the activity of 
which we maintain by what we call 'food,' 
and with which we produce what we call 
'thought.' What a marvellous chemical 
process it is which could change a certain 
quantity of food into the divine tragedy of 



•« 



Points of View 5 

Hamlet. '* This is quoted from a pamphlet of 
Robert G. IngersoU, bearing the title, Modern 
Twilight of the Gods. It matters little if 
such thoughts find but scanty acceptance in 
the outside world. The point is that in- 
numerable people find themselves compelled 
by the system of natural science to take up 
with regard to world-processes an attitude 
in conformity with the above, even when they 
think they are not doing so. 

It would certainly be a dreary outlook if 
natural science itself compelled us to accept 
the creed proclaimed by many of its modem 
prophets. Most dreary of all for one who 
has gained, from the content of natural 
science, the conviction that in its own sphere 
its mode of thought holds good and its 
methods are unassailable. For he is driven 
to make the admission that, however much 
people may dispute about individual ques- 
tions, though volume after volume may be 
written, and thousands of observations accu- 
mulated about the struggle for existence and 
its insignificance, about the omnipotence or 
powerlessness of natural selection, natural 
science itself is moving in a direction which, 



6 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

within certain limits, must find acceptance 
in an ever-increasing degree. 

But are the demands made by natural 
science really such as they are described by 
some of its representatives? That they are 
not so is proved by the method employed 
by these representatives themselves. The 
method they use in their own sphere is not 
such as is often described, and claimed for 
other spheres of thought. Would Darwin 
and Ernst Haeckel ever have made their 
great discoveries about the evolution of life 
if, instead of observing life and the structure 
of living beings, they had shut themselves 
up in a laboratory and there made chemical 
experiments with tissue cut out of an or- 
ganism? Would Lyell have been able to 
describe the development of the crust of the 
earth if, instead of examining slyata and their 
contents, he had scrutinised the chemical 
qualities of innumerable rocks? Let us really 
follow in the footsteps of these investigators 
who tower like giants in the domain of 
modem science. We shall then apply to the 
higher regions of spiritual life the methods 
they have used in the study of nature. We 



Points of View 7 

shall not then believe we have understood 
the nature of the " divine" tragedy of Hamlet 
by saying that a wonderful chemical process 
transformed a certain quantity of food into 
that tragedy. We shall believe it as little 
as an investigator of nature could seriously 
believe that he has understood the mission of 
heat in the evolution of the earth, when he 
has studied the action of heat on sulphur in a 
retort. Neither does he attempt to under- 
stand the construction of the human brain 
by examining the eflFect of liquid potash on 
a fragment of it, but rather by inquiring how 
the brain has, in the course of evolution, 
been developed out of the organs of lower 
organisms. 

It is therefore quite true that one who is 
investigating the nature of spirit can do 
nothing better than learn from natural 
science. He need only do as science does, 
but he must not allow himself to be misled 
by what individual representatives of natural 
science would dictate to him. He must in- 
vestigate in the spiritual as they do in the 
physical domain, but he need not adopt the 
opinions they entertain about the spiritual 



8 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

world, confused as they are by their exclusive 
contemplation of physical phenomena. 

We shall only be acting in the spirit of 
natural science if we study the spiritual 
development of man as impartially as the 
naturalist observes the sense- world. We shall 
then certainly be led, in the domain of 
spiritual life, to a kind of contemplation 
which differs from that of the naturalist as 
geology differs from pure physics and biology 
from chemistry. We shall be led up to higher 
methods, which cannot, it is true, be those of 
natural science, though quite conformable 
with the spirit of it. Such methods alone are 
able to bring us to the heart of spiritual de- 
velopments, such as that of Christianity, or 
other worlds of religious conceptions. Any 
one applying these methods may arouse the 
opposition of many who believe they are 
thinking scientifically, but he will know him- 
self, for all that, to be in full accord with a 
genuinely scientific method of thought. 

An investigator of this kind must also go 
beyond a merely historical examination of 
the documents relating to spiritual life. This 
is necessary just on account of the attitude 



Points of View 9 

he has acquired from his study of natural his- 
tory. When a chemical law is explained, it is 
of small use to describe the retorts, dishes, 
and pincers which have led to the discovery 
of the law. And it is just as useless, when 
explaining the origin of Christianity, to as- 
certain the historical sources drawn upon by 
the Evangelist St. Luke, or those from which 
the "hidden revelation" of St. John is com- 
piled. History can in this case be only 
the outer court to research proper. It is not 
by tracing the historical origin of documents 
that we shall discover anything about the 
dominant ideas in the writings of Moses or in 
the traditions of the Greek mystics. These 
documents are only the outer expression for 
the ideas. Nor does the naturalist who is 
investigating the nature of man trouble about 
the origin of the word ''man," or the way in 
which it has developed in a language. He 
keeps to the thing, not to the word in which it 
finds expression. And in studying spiritual 
life we must likewise abide by the spirit and 
not by outer documents. 



II 



THE MYSTERIES AND THEIR WISDOM 

A KIND of mysterious veil hangs over the 
manner in which spiritual needs were 
satisfied during the older civilisations by 
those who sought a deeper religious life and 
fuller knowledge than the popular religions 
offered. If we inquire how these needs were 
satisfied, we find ourselves led into the dim 
twilight of the mysteries, and the individual 
seeking them disappears for a time from our 
observation. We see how it is that the popu- 
lar religions cannot give him what his heart 
desires. He acknowledges the existence of 
the gods, but knows that the ordinary ideas 
about them do not solve the great problems 
of existence. He seeks a wisdom which is 
jealously guarded by a community of priest- 
sages. His aspiring soul seeks a refuge in 
this community. If he is found by the sages 

10 



Mysteries and Their Wisdom 1 1 

to be sufficiently prepared, he is led up by 
them, step by step, to higher knowledge, in 
places hidden from the eyes of outward ob- 
servers. What then happens to him is con- 
cealed from the uninitiated. He seems for a 
time to be entirely removed from earthly life 
and to be transported into a hidden world. 

When he reappears in the light of day a 
diflferent, quite transformed person is before 
us. We see a man who cannot find words 
sublime enough to express the momentous 
experience through which he has passed. 
Not merely metaphorically but in a most real 
sense does he seem to have gone through the 
gate of death and to have awakened to a 
new and higher life. He is, moreover, quite 
certain that no one who has not had a similar 
experience can understand his words. 

This was what happened to those who were 
initiated into the Mysteries, into that secret 
wisdom withheld from the people and which 
threw light on the greatest questions. This 
"secret" religion of the elect existed side by 
side with the popular religion. Its origin 
vanishes, as far as history is concerned, into 
the obscurity in which the origin of nations 



12 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

is lost. We find this secret religion every- 
where amongst the ancients as far as we 
know anything concerning them; and we 
hear their sages speak of the Mysteries with 
the greatest reverence. What was it that 
was concealed in them? And what did they 
unveil to the initiate? 

The enigma becomes still more puzzling 
when we discover that the ancients looked 
upon the Mysteries as something dangerous. 
The way leading to the secrets of existence 
passed through a world of terrors, and woe to 
him who tried to gain them unworthily. 
There was no greater crime than the "be- 
trayal" of secrets to the uninitiated. The 
"traitor" was punished with death and the 
confiscation of his property. We know that 
the poet iEschylus was accused of having 
reproduced on the stage something from the 
Mysteries. He was only able to escape 
death by fleeing to the altar of Dionysos and 
by legally proving that he had never been 
initiated. 

What the ancients say about these secrets 
is significant, but at the same time ambigu- 
ous. The initiate is convinced that it would 



Mysteries and Their Wisdom 13 

be a sin to tell what he knows and also that it 
would be sinful for the uninitiated to listen. 
Plutarch speaks of the terror of those about 
to be initiated, and compares their state of 
mind to preparation for death. A special 
mode of life had to precede initiation, tend- 
ing to give the spirit the mastery over the 
senses. Fasting, solitude, mortifications, and 
certain exercises for the soul were the means 
employed. The things to which man clings 
in ordinary life were to lose all their value 
for him. The whole trend of his life of sen- 
sation and feeling was to be changed. 

There can be no doubt as to the meaning of 
such exercises and tests. The wisdom which 
was to be offered to the candidate for initia- 
tion could only produce the right effect upon 
his soul if he had previously purified the 
lower life of his sensibility. He was intro- 
duced to the life of the spirit. He was to 
behold a higher world, but he could not enter 
into relations with that world without pre- 
vious exercises and tests. The relations thus 
gained were the condition of initiation. 

In order to obtain a correct idea on this 
matter, it is necessary to gain experience of 



14 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

the intimate facts of the growth of knowledge. 
We must feel that there are two widely di- 
vergent attitudes towards that which the 
highest knowledge gives. The world sur- 
rounding us is to us at first the real one. 
We feel, hear, and see what goes on in it, 
and because we thus perceive things with our 
senses, we call them real. And we reflect 
about events, in order to get an insight into 
their connections. On the other hand, what 
wells up in our soul is at first not real to us 
in the same sense. It is "merely" thoughts 
and ideas. At the most we see in them only 
images of reality. They themselves have no 
reality, for we cannot touch, see, or hear 
them. 

There is another way of being connected 
with things. A person who clings to the kind 
of reality described above will hardly under- 
stand it, but it comes to certain people at 
some moment in their Uves. To them the 
whole connection with the world is completely 
reversed. They then call the images which 
well up in the spiritual life of their souls 
actually real, and they assign only a lower 
kind of reality to what the senses hear, touch, 



Mysteries and Their Wisdom 15 

feel, and see. They know that they cannot 
prove what they say, that they can only 
relate their new experiences, and that when 
relating them to others they are in the posi- 
tion of a man who can see and who imparts 
his visual impressions to one bom blind. 
They venture to impart their inner expe- 
riences, trusting that there are others round 
them whose spiritual eyes, though as yet 
closed, may be opened by the power of what 
they hear. For they have faith in humanity 
and want to give it spiritual sight. They 
can only lay before it the fruits which their 
spirit has gathered. Whether another sees 
them, depends on his spiritual eyes being 
opened or not. 

There is something in man which at first 
prevents him from seeing with the eyes of the 
spirit. He is not there for that purpose. He 
is what his senses are, and his intellect is only 
the interpreter and judge of them. The senses 
would ill ftdfil their mission if they did not 
insist upon the truth and infallibility of their 
evidence. An eye must, from its own point 
of view, uphold the absolute reality of its 
perceptions. The eye is right as far as it goes, 



1 6 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

and is not deprived of its due by the eye of 
the spirit. The latter only allows us to see 
the things of sense in a higher light. Nothing 
seen by the eye of sense is denied, but a new 
brightness, hitherto unseen, radiates from 
what is seen. And then we know that what 
we first saw was only a lower reaUty. We see 
that still, but it is immersed in something 
higher, which is spirit. It is now a question 
of whether we realise and feel what we see. 
One who lives only in the sensations and 
feelings of the senses will look upon impres- 
sions of higher things as a Fata Morgana, or 
mere play of fancy. His feelings are entirely 
directed towards the things of sense. He 
grasps emptiness when he tries to lay hold of 
spirit forms. They withdraw from him when 
he gropes after them. They are just " mere " 
thoughts. He thinks them, but does not 
live in them. They are images, less real to 
him than fleeting dreams. They rise up like 
bubbles while he is standing in his reality; 
they disappear before the massive, solidly 
built reality of which his senses tell him. 

It is otherwise with one whose perceptions 
and feelings with regard to reality have 



Mysteries and Their Wisdom 17 

changed. For him that reality has lost its 
absolute stability and value. His senses and 
feelings need not become numbed, but they 
begin to be doubtful of their absolute author- 
ity. They leave room for something else. 
The world of the spirit begins to animate 
the space left. 

At this point a possibility comes in which 
may prove terrible. A man may lose his 
sensations and feelings of outer reality with- 
out finding any new reality opening up before 
him. He then feels himself as if suspended in 
the void. He feels as if he were dead. The 
old values have disappeared and no new ones 
have arisen in their place. The worid and 
man no longer exist for him. This, however, 
is by no means a mere possibility. It hap- 
pens at some time or other to every one who 
is seeking for higher knowledge. He comes 
to a point at which the spirit represents all 
life to him as death. He is then no longer in 
the world, but under it, — ^in the nether world. 
He is passing through Hades. Well for him 
if he sink not ! Happy if a new world open 
up before him ! Either he dwindles away or 
he appears to himself transfigured. In the 



1 8 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

latter case he beholds a new sun and a new 
earth. The whole world has been born 
again for him out of spiritual fire. 

It is thus that the initiates describe the 
effect of the Mysteries upon them. Menippus 
relates that he journeyed to Babylon in order 
to be taken to Hades and to be brought back 
again by the successors of Zarathustra. He 
says that he swam across the great water on 
his wanderings, and that he passed through 
fire and ice. We hear that the Mystics were 
terrified by a flashing sword, and that blood 
flowed. We understand this when we know 
from experience the point of transition from 
lower to higher knowledge. We then feel as 
if all solid matter and things of sense had dis- 
solved into water, and as if the ground were 
cut away from under our feet. Everything 
is dead which we felt before to be alive. The 
spirit has passed through the life of the senses, 
as a sword pierces a warm body ; we have seen 
the blood of sense-nature flow. But a new 
life has appeared. We have risen from the 
nether-world. The orator Aristides relates 
this: **I thought I touched the god and 
felt him draw near, and I was then between 



Mysteries and Their Wisdom 19 

waking and sleeping. My spirit was so 
light that no one who is not initiated can 
speak of or understand it." This new 
existence is not subject to the laws of 
lower life. Growth and decay no longer 
affect it. One may say much about the 
Eternal, but words of one who has not 
been through Hades are "mere sound and 
smoke." The initiates have a new concep- 
tion of life and death. Now for the first time 
do they feel they have the right to speak 
about immortality. They know that one who 
speaks of it without having been initiated 
talks of something which he does not under- 
stand. The uninitiated attribute immortal- 
ity only to something which is subject to the 
laws of growth and decay. The Mystics, 
however, did not merely desire to gain the 
conviction that the kernel of life is eternal. 
According to the view of the Mysteries, such 
a conviction would be quite valueless, for 
this view holds that the Eternal is not present 
as a living reality in the uninitiated. If such 
an one spoke of the Eternal, he would be 
speaking of something non-existent. It is 
rather the Eternal itself that the Mystics are 



20 Christianty as Mystical Fact 

seeking. They have first to awaken the 
Eternal within them, then they can speak of it. 
Hence the hard saying of Plato is quite real 
to them, that the uninitiated sinks into the 
mire, and that only one who has passed 
through the mystical life enters eternity. It 
is only in this sense that the words in the 
fragment of Sophocles can be understood: 
"Thrice-blessed are the initiated who come 
to the realm of the shades. They alone have 
life there. For others there is only misery 
and hardship." 

Is one therefore not describing dangers when 
speaking of the Mysteries? Is it not robbing 
a man of happiness and of the best part of his 
life to take him to the portals of the nether- 
world? Terrible is the responsibility incurred 
by such an act. And yet ought we to refuse 
that responsibility? These were the ques- 
tions which the initiate had to put to himself. 
He was of opinion that his knowledge bore 
the same relation to the soul of the people 
as light does to darkness. But innocent hap- 
piness dwells in that darkness, and the Mys- 
tics were of opinion that that happiness 
should not be sacrilegiously interfered with. 



Mysteries and Their Wisdom 21 

For what would have happened in the first 
place if the Mystic had betrayed his secret? 
He would have uttered words and only words. 
The feelings and emotions which would have 
evoked the spirit from the words would have 
been absent. To do this preparation, exer- 
cises, tests, and a complete change in the life 
of sense were necessary. Without this the 
hearer would have been hurled into emptiness 
and nothingness. He would have been de- 
prived of what constituted his happiness, 
without receiving anything in exchange. 
One may also say that one could take nothing 
away from him, for mere words would change 
nothing in his life of feeling. He would only 
have been able to feel and experience reality 
through his senses. Nothing but a terrible 
misgiving, fatal to life, would be given him. 
This could only be construed as a crime. 

The wisdom of the Mysteries is like a hot- 
house plant, which must be cultivated and 
fostered in seclusion. Any one bringing it 
into the atmosphere of everyday ideas brings 
it into air in which it cannot flourish. It 
withers away to nothing before the caustic 
verdict of modem science and logic. Let us 



22 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

therefore divest ourselves for a time of the 
education we gained through the microscope 
and telescope and the habit of thought de- 
rived from natural science, and let us cleanse 
our clumsy hands, which have been too busy 
with dissecting and experimenting, in order 
that we may enter the pure temple of the 
Mysteries. For this a candid and unbiassed 
attitude of mind is necessary. 

The important point for the Mystic is at 
first the frame of mind in which he approaches 
that which to him is the highest, the answers 
to the riddles of existence. Just in our day, 
when only gross physical science is recognised 
as containing truth, it is difficult to believe 
that in the highest things we depend upon the 
key-note of the soul. Knowledge thereby 
becomes an intimate personal concern. But 
this is what it really is to the Mystic. Tell 
some one the solution of the riddle of the uni- 
verse ! Give it him ready-made ! The Mys- 
tic will find it to be nothing but empty sound, 
if the personality does not meet the solution 
half-way in the right manner. The solu- 
tion in itself is nothing; it vanishes if the 
necessary feeling is not kindled at its contact. 



Mysteries and Their Wisdom 23 

A divinity approaches you. It is either 
everything or nothing. Nothing, if you meet 
it in the frame of mind with which you con- 
front everyday matters. Everything, if you 
are prepared, and attuned to the meeting. 
What the Divinity is in itself is a matter 
which does not affect you; the important 
point for you is whether it leaves you as it 
found you or makes another man of you. 
But this depends entirely on yourself. You 
must have been prepared by a special educa- 
tion, by a development of the inmost forces 
of your personality for the work of kindling 
and releasing what a divinity is able to 
kindle and release in you. What is brought 
to you depends on the reception you give 
to it. 

Plutarch has told us about this education, 
and of the greeting which the Mystic offers 
the divinity approaching him; "For the 
god, as it were, greets each one who ap- 
proaches him, with the words, 'Know thy- 
self,' which is surely no worse than the 
ordinary greeting, * Welcome. ' Then we an- 
swer the divinity in the words, *Thou art,' 
and thus we afl&rm that the true, primordial, 



24 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

and only adequate greeting for him is to 
declare that he is. In that existence we really 
have no part here, for every mortal being, 
situated between birth and destruction, mere- 
ly manifests an appearance, a feeble and un- 
certain image of itself. If we try to grasp it 
with our understanding, it is as when water 
is tightly compressed and runs over merely 
through the pressure, spoiling what it touches. 
For the understanding, pursuing a too defi- 
nite conception of each being that is subject 
to accidents and change, loses its way, now 
in the origin of the being, now in its destruc- 
tion, and is unable to apprehend anything 
lasting or really existing. For, as Heraclitus 
says, we cannot swim twice in the same wave, 
neither can we lay hold of a mortal being 
twice in the same state, for, through the 
violence and rapidity of movement, it is 
destroyed and recomposed; it comes into 
being and again decays ; it comes and goes. 
Therefore, that which is becoming can neither 
attain real existence, because growth neither 
ceases nor pauses. Change begins in the 
germ, and forms an embryo; then there 
appears a child, then a youth, a man, and an 



Mysteries and Their Wisdom 25 

old man; the first beginnings and successive 
ages are continually annulled by the ensuing 
ones. Hence it is ridiculous to fear one death, 
when we have already died in so many ways, 
and are still dying. For, as Heraclitus 
says, not only is the death of fire the birth of 
air, and the death of air the birth of water, 
but the same change may be still more plainly 
seen in man. The strong man dies when he 
becomes old, the youth when he becomes a 
man, the boy on becoming a youth, and the 
child on becoming a boy. What existed 
yesterday dies to-day, what is here to-day 
will die to-morrow. Nothing endures or is a 
unity, but we become many things, whilst 
matter wanders around one image, one 
common form. For if we were always the 
same, how could we take pleasure in things 
which formerly did not please us, how could 
we love and hate, admire and blame opposite 
things, how could we speak differently and 
give ourselves up to different passions, unless 
we were endowed with a different shape, 
form, and different senses? For no one can 
rightly come into a different state without 
change, and one who is changed is no longer 



26 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

the same; but if he is not the same, he no 
longer exists and is changed from what he 
was, becoming something else. Sense-per- 
ception only led us astray, because we do not 
know real being, and mistook for it that which 
is only an appearance." ' 

Plutarch often describes himself as an 
initiate. What he portrays here is a condi- 
tion of the life of the Mystic. Man acquires 
a kind of wisdom by means of which his 
spirit sees through the illusive character 
of sense-life. What the senses regard as 
being, or reality, is plunged into the stream 
of "becoming"; and man is subject to the 
same conditions in this respect as all other 
things in the world. Before the eyes of his 
spirit he himself dissolves, the sum-total of 
his being is broken up into parts, into fleeting 
phenomena. Birth and death lose their dis- 
tinctive meaning, and become moments of ap- 
pearing and disappearing, just as much as any 
other happenings in the world. The Highest 
cannot be found in the connection between 
development and decay. It can only be 

'Plutarch's Moral Works, On the Inscription EJ at 
Delphi, pp. 17-18. 



■'I 



Mysteries and Their Wisdom 2^ 

sought in what is really abiding, in what looks 
back to the past and forward to the future. 

To find that which looks (i.e. the spirit) 
backwards and forwards is the first stage of 
knowledge. This is the spirit, which is mani- 
festing in and through the physical. It has 
nothing to do with physical growth. It does 
not come into being and again decay as do 
sense-phenomena. One who lives entirely 
in the world of sense carries the spirit latent 
within him. One who has pierced through; 
the illusion of the world of sense has the spirit ; 
within him as a manifest reality. The man * 
who attains to this insight has developed a 
new principle within him. Something has 
happened within him as in a plant when it 
adds a coloured flower to its green leaves. 
It is true the forces causing the flower to 
grow were already latent in the plant before 
the blossom appeared, but they only became 
effective when this took place. Divine, 
spiritual forces are latent in the man who 
lives merely through his senses, but they 
only become a manifest reality in the initi- 
ate. Such is the transformation which takes 
place in the Mystic. By his development 



28 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

he has added a new element to the world. 
The world of sense made him a human be- 
ing endowed with senses, and then left him 
to himself. Nature had thus fulfilled her 
mission. What she is able to do with the 
powers operative in man is exhausted; not 
so the forces themselves. They lie as though 
spellbound in the merely natural man and 
await their release. They cannot release 
themselves. They fade away to nothing 
unless man seizes upon them and develops 
them, unless he calls into actual being what 
is latent within him. 

Nature evolves from the imperfect to the 
perfect. She leads beings, through a long 
series of stages, from inanimate matter, 
through all living forms up to physical man. 
Man looks around and finds himself a chang- 
ing being with physical reality, but he also 
perceives within him the forces from which 
the physical reality arose. These forces are 
not what change, for they have given birth 
to the changing world. They are within man 
as a sign that there is more life within him 
than he can physically perceive. What they 
may make man is not yet there. He feels 



Mysteries and Their Wisdom 29 

something flash up within him which created 
everything, including himself, and he feels 
that this will inspire liim to higher creative 
activity. This something is within him, it 
existed before his manifestation in the flesh, 
and will exist afterwards. By means of it 
he became, but he may lay hold of it and 
take part in its creative activity. 

Such are the feelings animating the Mystic 
after initiation. He feels the Eternal and 
Divine. His activity is to become a part of 
that divine creative activity. He may say 
to himself: *'I have discovered a higher ego 
within me, but that ego extends beyond the 
bounds of my sense-existence. It existed 
before my birth and will exist after my 
death. This ego has created from all eternity, 
it will go on creating in all eternity. My 
physical personality is a creation of this 
ego. But it has incorporated me within it, 
it works within me, I am a part of it. What 
I henceforth create will be higher than the 
physical. My personality is only a means 
for this creative power, for this Divine is 
within me. " Thus did the Mystic experience 
his birth into the Divine. 



30 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

The Mystic called the power that flashed 
up within him a daimon. He was himself 
the product of this daimon. It seemed to 
him as though another being had entered 
him and taken possession of his organs, a 
being standing between his physical person- 
ality and the all-ruling cosmic power, the 
divinity. 

The Mystic sought this — ^his daimon. He 
said to himself: "I have become a human 
being in mighty Nature, but Nature did not 
complete her task. This completion I must 
take in hand myself. But I cannot accom- 
plish it in the gross kingdom of nature to 
which my physical personality belongs. What 
it is possible to develop in that realm has 
already been developed. Therefore I must 
leave this kingdom and take up the building 
in the realm of the spirit at the point where 
nature left off. I must create an atmosphere 
of life not to be found in outer nature. " 

This atmosphere of life was prepared for 
the Mystic in the Mystery temples. There 
the forces slumbering within him were awak- 
ened, there he was changed into a higher 
creative spirit-nature. This transformation 



Mysteries and Their Wisdom 31 

was a deKcate process. It could not bear the 
untempered atmosphere of everyday life. 
But when once it was completed, its result 
was that the initiate stood as a rock, rising 
from the eternal and able to defy all storms. 
But it was impossible for him to reveal his 
experiences to any one unprepared to receive 
them. 

Plutarch says that the Mysteries gave deep 
understanding of the true nature of the dai- 
mons. And Cicero tells us that from the 
Mysteries, ''When they are explained and 
traced back to their meaning, we learn the na- 
ture of things rather than that of the gods." ' 
From such statements we see clearly that 
there were higher revelations for the Mystics 
about the nature of things than that which 
popular religion was able to impart. Indeed 
we see that the daimons, i, e., spiritual beings, 
and the gods themselves, needed explaining. 
Therefore initiates went back to beings of a 
higher nature than daimons or gods, and 
this was characteristic of the essence of the 
wisdom of the Mysteries. 

» Plutarch, On the Decline of the Oracles; Cicero On the 
Nature of the Gods, 



32 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

The people represented the gods and dai- 
mons in images borrowed from the world of 
sense-reality. Would not one who had pene- 
trated into the nature of the Eternal doubt 
about the eternal nature of such gods as 
these? How could the Zeus of popular 
imagination be eternal if he bore within him 
the qualities of a perishable being? One 
thing was clear to the Mystics, that man 
arrives at a conception of the gods in a 
different way from the conception of other 
things. An object belonging to the outer 
world compels us to form a very definite idea 
of it. In contrast to this, we form our con- 
ception of the gods in a freer and somewhat 
arbitrary manner. The control of the outer 
world is absent. Reflection teaches us that 
what we conceive as gods is not subject to 
outer control. This places us in logical un- 
certainty; we begin to feel that we ourselves 
are the creators of our gods. Indeed, we ask 
ourselves how we have arrived at a concep- 
tion of the universe that goes beyond physi- 
cal reality. The initiate was obliged to ask 
himself such questions ; his doubts were justi- 
fied. ''Look at all representations of the 



Mysteries and Their Wisdom 33 

gods, " he might think to himself. ' ' Are they 
not like the beings we meet in the world of 
sense? Did not man create them for him- 
self, by giving or withholding from them, in 
his thought, some quality belonging to beings 
of the sense- world? The savage lover of the 
chase creates a heaven in which the gods 
themselves take part in glorious hunting, 
and the Greek peopled his Olympus with 
divine beings whose models were taken from 
his own surroundings." 

The philosopher Xenophanes (b.c. 575-480) 
drew attention to this fact with a crude logic. 
We know that the older Greek philosophers 
were entirely dependent on the wisdom of 
the Mysteries. We will afterwards prove 
this in detail, beginning with Heraclitus. 
What Xenophanes says may at once be taken 
as the conviction of a Mystic. It runs 
thus: 

"Men who picture the gods as created in 
their own human forms, give them human 
senses, voices, and bodies. But if cattle and 
lions had hands, and knew how to use them, 
like men, in painting and working, they 
would paint the forms of the gods and 



34 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

shape their bodies as their own bodies were 
constituted. Horses wotild create gods in 
horse-form, and cattle wotild make gods like 
bulls." 

Through insight of this kind, man may 
begin to doubt the existence of anything 
divine. He may reject all mythology, and 
only recognise as reality what is forced upon 
him by his sense-perception. But the Mystic 
did not become a doubter of this kind. He 
saw that the doubter would be like a plant 
were it to say: "My crimson flowers are null 
and futile, because I am complete within my 
green leaves. What I may add to them is 
only adding illusive appearance." Just as 
Uttle cotdd the Mystic rest content with gods 
thus created, the gods of the people. If the 
plant cotdd think, it would understand that 
the forces which created its green leaves are 
also destined to create crimson flowers, and 
it would not rest till it had investigated those 
forces and come face to face with them. 
This was the attitude of the Mystic towards 
the gods of the people. He did not deny 
them, or say they were illusion ; but he knew 
they had been created by man. The same 



Mysteries and Their Wisdom 35 

forces, the same divine element, which are at 
work in nature, are at work in the Mystic. 
They create within him images of the gods. 
He wishes to see the force that creates the 
gods ; it comes from a higher source than these 
gods. Xenophanes alludes to it thus : "There 
is one god greater than all gods and men. 
His form is not like that of mortals, his 
thoughts are not their thoughts. " 

This god was also the God of the Mysteries. 
He might have been called a '^hidden God," 
for man could never find him with his senses 
only. Look at outer things around you, you 
will find nothing divine. Exert your reason, 
you may be able to detect the laws by which 
things appear and disappear, but even your 
reason will not show you anything divine. 
Saturate your imagination with religious feel- 
ing, and you may be able to create images 
which you may take to be gods, but your 
reason will pull them to pieces, for it will 
prove to you that you created them yourself, 
and borrowed the material from the sense- 
world. So long as you look at outer things in 
your quality of simply a reasonable being, 
you must deny the existence of God ; for God 



36 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

is hidden from the senses, and from that rea- 
son of yours which explains sense-perceptions. 

God lies hidden spellbound in the world, 
and you need His own power to find Him. 
You must awaken that power in yourself. 
These are the teachings which were given to 
the candidate for initiation. 

And now there began for him the great 
cosmic drama with which his life was bound 
up. The action of the drama meant nothing 
less than the deliverance of the spellbound 
god. Where is God? This was the question 
asked by the soul of the Mystic. God is not 
existent, but nature exists. And in nature 
He must be found. There He has found an 
enchanted grave. It was in a higher sense 
that the Mystic understood the words *'God 
is love." For God has exalted that love 
to its climax, He has sacrificed Himself in 
infinite love. He has poured Himself out, 
fallen into number in the manifold of nature. 
Things in nature live and He does not live. 
He slumbers within them. We are able to 
awaken Him; if we are to give Him exist- 
ence, we must deliver Him by the creative 
power within us. 



Mysteries and Their Wisdom 37 

The candidate now looks unto himself. As 
latent creative power as yet without existence, 
the Divine is living in his soul. In the soul 
is a sacred place where the spellbound god 
may wake to liberty. The soul is the mother 
who is able to conceive the god by nature. If 
the soul allows herself to be impregnated by 
nature, she will give birth to the divine. God 
is bom from the marriage of the soul with 
nature, — ^no longer a ** hidden," but a mani- 
fest god. He has life, a perceptible life, 
wandering amongst men. He is the god 
freed from enchantment, the offspring of the 
God who was hidden by a spell. He is not 
the great God, who was and is and is to 
come, but yet he may be taken, in a certain 
sense, as the revelation of Him. The Father 
remains at rest in the unseen ; the Son is bom 
to man out of his own soul. Mystical know- 
ledge is thus an actual event in the cosmic 
process. It is the birth of the Divine. It is 
an event as real as any natural event, only 
enacted upon a higher plane. 

The great secret of the Mystic is that he 
himself creates his god, but that he first 
prepares himself to recognise the god created 



38 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

by him. The uninitiated man has no feeling 
for the father of that god, for that Father 
slumbers under a spell. The Son appears to 
be bom of a virgin, the soul having seemingly 
given birth to him without impregnation. 
All her other children are conceived by the 
sense-world. Their father may be seen and 
touched, having the life of sense. The Divine 
Son alone is begotten of the hidden, eternal, 
Divine, Father Himself. 



Ill 



THE GREEK SAGES BEFORE PLATO IN THE 
LIGHT OF THE WISDOM OF THE MYSTERIES 

NUMEROUS facts combine to show us 
that the philosophical wisdom of the 
Greeks rested on the same mental basis as 
mystical knowledge. We only understand 
the great philosophers when we approach 
them with feelings gained through study of 
the Mysteries. With what veneration does 
Plato speak of the ** secret doctrines" in the 
Phcedo. ** And it almost seems, " says he, "as 
though those who have appointed the initia- 
tions for us are not at all ordinary people, 
but that for a long time they have been en- 
joining upon us that any one who reaches 
Hades without being initiated and sanctified 
falls into the mire ; but that he who is purified 
and consecrated when he arrives, dwells with 
the gods. For those who have to do with 

39 



40 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

initiations say that there are many thyrsus- 
bearers, but few really inspired. These latter 
are, in my opinion, none other than those who 
have devoted themselves in the right way to 
wisdom. I myself have not missed the oppor- 
tunity of becoming one of these, as far as I 
was able, but have striven after it in every 
way. " 

It is only a man who is putting his own 
search for wisdom entirely at the disposal of 
the condition of soul created by initiation 
who could thus speak of the Mysteries. And 
there is no doubt that a flood of light is 
poured on the words of the great Greek 
philosophers, when we illustrate them from 
the Mysteries. 

The relation of Heraclitus of Ephesus 
(535-475 B.C.) to the Mysteries is plainly 
given us in a saying about him, to the effect 
that his thoughts "were an impassable road, " 
and that any one, entering upon them with- 
out being initiated, found only ** dimness and 
darkness," but that, on the other hand, they 
were "brighter than the sun" for any one 
introduced to them by a Mystic. And when 
it is said of his book, that he deposited it in 



The Greek Sages Before Plato 41 

the temple of Artemis, this only means that 
initiates alone could understand him. (Ed- 
mund Pfleiderer has already collected the his- 
torical evidence for the relation of Heraclitus 
to the Mysteries. Cf. his book Die Philosophie 
des Heraklit von Ephesus im Lichte der Mys- 
terienidee. Beriin, 1886.) Heraclitus was 
called "The Obscure," because it was only 
through the Mysteries that light could be 
thrown on his intuitive views. 

Heraclitus comes before us as a man who 
took life with the greatest earnestness. We 
see plainly from his features, if we know how 
to reconstruct them, that he bore within him 
intimate knowledge which he knew that words 
could only indicate, not express. Out of 
such a temper of mind arose his celebrated 
utterance, "All things fleet away," which 
Plutarch explains thus: "We do not dip 
twice into the same wave, nor can we 
touch twice the same mortal being. For 
through abruptness and speed it disperses 
and brings together, not in succession but 
simultaneously. " 

A man who thus thinks has penetrated the 
nature of transitory things, for he has felt 



42 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

compelled to characterise the essence of tran- 
sitoriness itself in the clearest terms. Such 
a description as this could not be given, 
unless the transitory were being measured by 
the eternal, and in particular it could not be 
extended to man without having seen his 
inner nature. Heraclitus has extended his 
characterisation to man. "Life and death, 
waking and sleeping, youth and age are the 
same; this in changing is that, and that again 
this." In this sentence there is expressed 
full knowledge of the illusionary nature of 
the lower personality. He says still more 
forcibly, ''Life and death are found in our 
living even as in our dying. " What does this 
mean but that it is only a transient point of 
view when we value life more than death? 
Dying is to perish, in order to make way for 
new life, but the eternal is living in the new 
life, as in the old. The sante eternal appears 
in transitory life as in death. When we grasp 
this eternal, we look upon life and death 
with the same feeling. Life only has a special 
value when we have not been able to awaken 
the eternal within us. The saying, "All 
things fleet away," might be repeated a 



The Greek Sages Before Plato 43 

thousand times, but unless said in this feeling, 
it is an empty sound. The knowledge of 
eternal growth is valueless if it does not 
detach us from temporal growth. It is the 
ttiming away from that love of life which 
impels towards the transitory, which Heracli- 
tus indicates in his utterance, ''How can we 
say about our daily life, ' We are, ' when from 
the standpoint of the eternal we know that 
*We are and are not?' " (Cf. Fragments of 
Heraclitus, No. 81.) "Hades and Dionysos 
are one and the same, " says one of the Frag- 
ments. Dionysos, the god of joy in life, of 
germination and growth, to whom the Dionys- 
iac festivals are dedicated is, for Heraclitus, 
the same as Hades, the god of destruction 
and annihilation. Only one who sees death; 
in life and life in death, and in both the' 
eternal, high above life and death, can view' 
the merits and demerits of existence in the* 
right light. Then even imperfections become 
justified, for in them too lives the eternal. 
What they are from the standpoint of the 
limited lower life, they are only in api)ear- 
ance, — "The gratification of men's wishes is 
not necessanly a happiness for them. Illness 



44 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

makes health sweet and good, hunger makes 
food appreciated, and toil rest." "The sea 
contains the purest and impurest water, 
drinkable and wholesome for fishes, it is un- 
drinkable and injurious to human beings.*' 
Here Heraclitus is not primarily drawing 
attention to the transitoriness of earthly 
things, but to the splendour and majesty of 
the eternal. 

Heraclitus speaks vehemently against 
Homer and Hesiod, and the learned men of 
his day. He wished to show up their way of 
thinking, which clings to the transitory only. 
He did not desire gods endowed with quali- 
ties taken from a perishable world, and he 
could not regard as a supreme science, that 
science which investigates the growth and 
decay of things. For him, the eternal speaks 
out of the perishable, and for this eternal he 
has a profound symbol. ''The harmony of 
the world returns upon itself, like that of the 
lyre and the bow. " What depths are hidden 
in this image! By the pressing asunder of 
forces, and again by the harmonising of these 
divergent forces, unity is attained. How one 
sotmd contradicts another, and yet, together, 



The Greek Sages Before Plato 45 

they produce harmony. If we apply this to 
the Spiritual world, we have the thought of 
Heraclitus, "Immortals are mortal, mortals- 
immortal, living the death of mortals, dying 
the life of the Immortals." 

It is man's original fault to direct his cogni- 
tion to the transitory. Thereby he turns 
away from the eternal, and life becomes a 
danger to him. What happens to him, comes 
to him through life, but its events lose their 
sting if he ceases to set unconditioned value 
on life. In that case his innocence is restored 
to him. It is as though he were from the 
so-called seriousness of life able to return to 
his childhood. The adult takes many things 
seriously with which a child merely plays, 
but one who really knows, becomes like a 
child. "Serious" values lose their value, 
looked at from the standpoint of eternity. 
Life then seems lil^e a play. On this account 
does Heraclitus say, "Eternity is a child at 
play, it is the reign of a child. " Where does 
the original fault lie? In taking with the 
utmost seriousness what does not deserve to 
be so taken. God has poured Himself into 
the universe of things. If we take these 



46 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

things and leave God unheeded, we take them 
in earnest as "the tombs of God." We 
should play with them like a child, and should 
earnestly strive to awaken forth from them 
God, who sleeps spellbound within them. 

Contemplation of the eternal acts like a 
consuming fire on ordinary iUusions about 
the nature of things. The spirit breaks up 
thoughts which come through the senses, 
it fuses them. This is the higher meaning of 
the Heraditean thought, that fire is the pri- 
mary element of all things. This thought is 
certainly to be taken at first as an ordinary 
physical explanation of the phenomena of 
the tmiverse. But no one understands Hera- 
clitus who does not think of him in the same 
way as Philo, living in the early days of 
Christianity, thought of the laws of the Bible. 
''There are people," he says, ''who take the 
written laws merely as symbols of spiritual 
teaching, who diligently search for the latter, 
but despise the laws themselves. I can only 
blame such, for they should pay heed to both, 
to knowledge of the hidden meaning and to 
observing the obvious one." If the question 
is discussed whether Heraclitus meant by 



The Greek Sages Before Platx) 47 

''fire" physical fire, or whether fire for him 
was only a symbol of eternal spirit which 
dissolves and reconstitutes all things, this is 
putting a wrong construction upon his 
thought. He meant both and neither of 
these things. For spirit was also alive, for 
him, in ordinary fire, and the force which is 
physically active in fire lives on a higher 
plane in the human soul, which melts in its 
crucible mere sense-knowledge, so that out 
of this the contemplation of the eternal may 
arise. 

It is very easy to misunderstand Heracli- 
tus. He makes Strife the ' * Father of things, ' ' 
but only of ''things," not of the eternal. If 
there were no contradictions in the world, if 
the most multifarious interests were not 
opposing each other, the world of becoming, 
of transitory things, would not exist. But 
what is revealed in this antagonism, what is 
poured forth into it, is not strife but har- 
mony. Just because there is strife in all 
things, the spirit of the wise should pass 
over them like a breath of fire, and change 
them into harmony. 

At this point there shines forth one of the 



48 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

great thoughts of Heraclitean wisdom. What 
is man as a personal being? From the above 
point of view Heraclitus is able to answer. 
Man is composed of the conflicting elements 
into which divinity has poured itself. In 
this state he finds himself, and beyond this 
becomes aware of the spirit within him— the 
spirit which is rooted in the eternal. But 
the spirit itself is bom, for man, out of the 
conflict of elements, and it is the first which 
has to calm them. In man. Nature surpasses 
her natural limits. It is indeed the same 
universal force which created antagonism 
and the mixture of elements which is after- 
wards, by its wisdom, to do away with the 
conflict. Here we arrive at the eternal 
dualism which lives in man, the perpetual 
antagonism between the temporal and the 
eternal. Through the eternal he has be- 
come something quite definite, and out of 
this, he is to create something higher. He is 
both dependent and independent. He can 
only participate in the eternal Spirit whom 
he contemplates, in the measure of the com- 
pound of elements which that eternal Spirit 
has effected within him. And it is just on 



The Greek Sages Before Plato 49 

this account that he is called upon to fashion 
the eternal out of the temporal. The spirit 
works within him, but works in a special way. 
It works out of the temporal. It is the 
peculiarity of the human soul that a tem- 
poral thing should be able to work like an 
eternal one, should grow and increase in 
power like an eternal thing. This is why the 
soul is at once like a god and a worm. Man, 
owing to this, stands in a mid-position be- 
tween God and animals. The growing and 
increasing force within him is his daimonic 
element, — that within him which pushes out 
beyond himself. 

"Man's daimon is his destiny." Thus 
strikingly does Heraclitus make reference 
to this fact. He extends man's vital es- 
sence far beyond the personal. The per- 
sonality is the vehicle of the daimon, which 
is not confined within the limit of the per- 
sonality, and for which the birth and death 
of the personality are of no importance. 
What is the relation of the daimonic ele- 
ment to the personality which comes and 
goes? The personality is only a form for the 
manifestation of the daimon. 



50 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

One who has arrived at this knowledge 
looks beyond himself, backwards and for- 
wards. The daimonic experiences through 
which he has passed are enough to prove 
to him his own immortality. And he can no 
longer limit his daimon to the one function 
of occupjring his personality, for the latter 
can only be one of the forms in which the 
daimon is manifested. The daimon cannot be 
shut up within one personality, he has power 
to animate many. He is able to transform 
himself from one personality into another. 
The great thought of reincarnation springs 
as a matter of course from the HeracUtean 
premises, and not only the thought but the 
experience of the fact. The thought only 
paves the way for the experience. One who 
becomes conscious of the daimonic element 
within him does not recognise it as innocent 
and in its first stage. He j&nds that it has 
qualities. Whence do they come? Why 
have I certain natural aptitudes? Because 
others have already worked upon my dai- 
mon. And what becomes of the work which 
I accomplish in the daimon if I am not to 
assume that its task ends with my personal- 



f 



The Greek Sages Before Plato 51 

ity? I am working for a future personality. 
Between me and the Spirit of the Universe, 
something interposes which reaches beyond 
me, but is not yet the same as divinity. This 
something is my daimon. My to-day is 
only the product of yesterday, my to-morrow 
will be the product of to-day; in the same 
way my life is the result of a former and will 
be the foundation of a future one. Just as 
mortal man looks back to innumerable yes- 
terdays and forward to many to-morrows, so 
does the soul of the sage look upon many 
lives in his past and many in the future. The 
thoughts and aptitudes I acquired yesterday 
I am using to-day. Is it not the same with 
life? Do not people enter upon the horizon 
of existence with the most diverse capacities? 
Whence this difference? Does it proceed 
from nothing? 

Our natural sciences take much credit to 
themselves for having banished miracle from 
our views of organic life. David Frederick 
Strauss, in his Alter und Neuer Glaube, con- 
siders it a great achievement of our day 
that we no longer think that a perfect 
organic being is a miracle issuing from no- 



52 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

thing. We understand its perfection when we 
are able to explain it as a development from 
imperfection. The structure of an ape is no 
longer a miracle if we assume its ancestors to 
have been primitive fishes which have been 
gradually transformed. Let us at least sub- 
mit to accept as reasonable in the domain 
of spirit what seems to us to be right in the 
domain of nature. Is the perfect spirit to 
have the same antecedents as the imperfect 
one? Does a Goethe have the same ante- 
cedents as any Hottentot? The antecedents 
of an ape are as unlike those of a fish as are 
the antecedents of Goethe's mind unlike 
those of a savage. The spiritual ancestry of 
Goethe's soul is a different one from that of 
the savage soul. The soul has grown as well 
as the body. The daimon in Goethe has 
more progenitors than the one in a savage. 
Let us take the doctrine of reincarnation in 
this sense, and we shall no longer find it 
unscientific. We shall be able to explain 
in the right way what we find in our souls, 
and we shall not take what we find as if 
created by a miracle. If I can write, it is 
owing to the fact that I learned to write. No 



The Greek Sages Before Plato 53 

one who has a pen in his hand for the first 
time can sit down and write oflhand. But 
one who has come into the worid with "the 
stamp of genius," must he owe it to a 
miracle? No, even the ''stamp of genius" 
must be acquired. It must have been learned. 
And when it appears in a person, we call it a 
daimon. This daimon too must have been to 
school ; it acquired in a former life what it puts 
into force in a later one. 

In this form, and this form only, did the 
thought of eternity pass before the mind of 
Heraclitus and other Greek sages. There 
was no question with them of a continuance 
of the immediate personality after death. 
Compare some verses of Empedocles (b.c. 
490-430). He says of those who accept the 
data of experience as miracles : 

Foolish and ignorant they, and do not reach 

far with their thinking, 
Who suppose that what has not existed can 

come into being, 
Or that something may die away wholly and 

vanish completely; 
Impossible is it that any beginning can come 

from Not-Being, 



54 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

Quite impossible also that being* can fade into 

nothing; 
For wherever a being is driven, there will it 

continue to be. 
Never will any believe, who has been in these 

matters instructed, 
That spirits of men only live while what is 

called life here endures, 
That only so long do they live, receiving their 

joys and their sorrows. 
But that ere they were bom here and when they 

are dead, they are nothing. 

The Greek sage did not even raise the 
question whether there was an eternal part in 
man, but only enquired in what this eternal 
element consisted and how man can nourish 
and cherish it in himself. For from the out- 
set it was clear to him that man is an inter- 
mediate creation between the earthly and the 
divine. It was not a question of a divine 
being outside and beyond the world. The 
divine lives in man but lives in him only in a 
human way. It is the force urging man to 
make himself ever more and more divine. 
Only one who thinks thus can say with 
Empedocles : 



The Greek Sages Before Plato 55 

When leaving thy body behind thee, thou soar- 

est into the ether, 
Then thou becomest a god, immortal, not 

subject to death. 

What may be done for a human life from 
this point of view? It may be introduced 
into the magic circle of the eternal. For in 
man there must be forces which merely 
natural life does not develop. And the life 
might pass away unused if the forces re- 
mained idle. To open them up, thereby to 
make man like the divine, — ^this was the task 
of the Mysteries. And this was also the 
mission which the Greek sages set before 
themselves. In this way we can understand 
Plato's utterance, that ''he who passes un- 
sanctified and uninitiated into the world 
below will lie in a slough, but that he who 
arrives there after initiation and purification 
will dwell with the gods." We have to do 
here with a conception of immortality, the 
significance of which lies bound up within the 
universe. Everything which man under- 
takes in order to awaken the eternal within 
him, he does in order to raise the value of the 
world's existence. The fresh knowledge he 



56 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

gains does not make him an idle spectator 
of the universe, forming images for himself 
of what would be there just as much if he did 
not exist. The force of his knowledge is a 
higher one, it is one of the creative forces of 
nature. What flashes up within him spiritu- 
ally is something divine which was previously 
under a spell, and which, failing the know- 
ledge he has gained, must have lain fallow 
and waited for some other exorcist. Thus a 
human personality does not live in and for 
itself, but for the world. Life extends far 
beyond individual existence when looked at 
in this way. From within such a point of 
view we can understand utterances like that 
of Pindar giving a vista of the eternal: 
"Happy is he who has seen the Mysteries 
and then descends under the hollow earth. 
He knows the end of life, and he knows the 
beginning promised by Zeus." 

We understand the proud traits and 
solitary nature of sages such as Heraclitus. 
They were able to say proudly of themselves 
that much had been revealed to them, for 
they did not attribute their knowledge to 
their transitory personality, but to the eter- 



The Greek Sages Before Plato 57 

nal daimon within them. Their pride had as 
a necessary adjunct the stamp of humility 
and modesty, expressed in the words, **A11 
knowledge of perishable things is in perpetual 
flux like the things themselves." Heraclitus 
calls the eternal universe a play, he could also 
call it the most serious of realities. But the 
word "earnest " has lost its force through being 
applied to earthly experiences. On the other 
hand, the realisation of ''the play of the 
eternal" leaves man that security in life of 
which he is deprived by that earnest which 
has come out of transitory things. 

A different conception of the universe 
from that of Heraclitus grew up, on the basis 
of the Mysteries, in the community founded 
by Pythagoras in the 6th century B.C. in 
Southern Italy. The Pythagoreans saw the 
basis of things in the numbers and geometri- 
cal figures of which they investigated the 
laws by means of mathematics. Aristotle 
says of them: "They first studied mathe- 
matics, and, quite engrossed in them, they 
considered the elements of mathematics 
to be the elements of all things. Now as 
numbers are naturally the first thing in mathe- 



I 



58 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

matics, and they thought they saw many 
resemblances in numbers to things and to 
development, and certainly more in numbers 
than in fire, earth, and water, in this way one 
quality of numbers came to mean for them 
justice, another, the soul and spirit, another, 
time, and so on with all the rest. Moreover 
they found in numbers the qualities and 
connections of harmony ; and thus everything 
else, in accordance with its whole nature, 
seemed to be an image of numbers, and 
numbers seemed to be the first thing in 
nature. " 

The mathematical and scientific study of 
natural phenomena must always lead to a 
certain Pythagorean habit of thought. When 
a string of a certain length is struck, a par- 
ticular sound is produced. If the string is 
shortened in certain numeric proportions, 
other sounds will be produced. The pitch 
of the sounds may be expressed in figures. 
Physics also expresses colour-relations in 
figures. When two bodies combine into one 
substance, it always happens that a certain 
definite quantity of the one body, expressible 
in numbers, combines with a certain definite 



The Greek Sages Before Plato 59 

quantity of the other. The Pythagoreans' 
sense of observation was directed to such 
arrangements of measures and numbers in 
nature. Geometrical figures also play a sim- 
ilar r61e. Astronomy, for instance, is mathe- 
matics applied to the heavenly bodies. One 
fact became important to the thought-life 
of the Pythagoreans. This was that man, 
quite alone and purely through his mental 
activity, discovers the laws of numbers and 
figures, and yet, that when he looks abroad 
into nature, he finds that things are obeying 
the same laws which he has ascertained for 
himself in his own mind. Man forms the 
idea of an ellipse, and ascertains the laws of 
ellipses. And the heavenly bodies move ac- 
cording to the laws which he has established. 
(It is not, of course, a question here of the 
astronomical views of the Pythagoreans. 
What may be said about these may equally 
be said of Copemican views in the connection 
now being dealt with.) Hence it follows as 
a direct consequence that the achievements 
of the human soul are not an activity apart 
from the rest of the world, but that in those 
achievements the cosmic laws are expressed. 



6o Christianity as Mystical Fact 

The Pythagoreans said: "The senses show 
man physical phenomena, but they do not 
show the harmonious order which these things 
follow." The human mind must first find 
that harmonious order within itself, if it 
wishes to behold it in the outer world. The 
deeper meaning of the world, that which bears 
sway within it as an eternal, law-obeying 
necessity, this makes its appearance in the 
human soul and becomes a present reality 
there, the meaning of the universe is 
REVEALED in the soul. This meaning is not 
to be found in what we see, hear, and touch, 
but in what the soul brings up to the light 
from its own unseen depths. The eternal 
laws are thus hidden in the depths of the 
soul. If we descend there, we shall find the 
Eternal. God, the eternal harmony of the 
world, is in the human soul. The soul- 
element is not limited to the bodily substance 
which is enclosed within the skin, for what is 
bom in the soul is nothing less than the laws 
by which worlds revolve in celestial space. 
The soul is not in the personality. The per- 
sonality only serves as the organ through 
which the order which pervades cosmic space 



The Greek Sages Before Plato 6i 

may express itself. There is something of the 
spirit of Pythagoras in what one of the 
Fathers, Gregory of Nyssa, said: '*It is said 
that human nature is something small and 
limited, and that God is infinite, and it 
is asked how the finite can embrace the 
infinite. But who dares to say that the in- 
finity of the Godhead is limited by the boun- 
dary of the flesh, as though by a vessel? 
For not even during our lifetime is the spirit- 
ual nature confined within the boundaries of 
the flesh. The mass of the body, it is true, 
is Umited by neighbouring parts, but the 
soul reaches out freely into the whole of 
creation by the movements of thought." 

The soul is not the personality, the soul 
belongs to infinity. From such a point of 
view the Pythagoreans must have considered 
that only fools could imagine the soul-force 
to be exhausted with the personality. 

For them, too, as for Heraclitus, the essen- 
tial point was the awakening of the eternal 
in the personal. Knowledge for them meant 
intercourse with the eternal. The more 
man brought the eternal element within him 
into existence, the greater must he neces- 



62 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

saxily seem to the Pythagoreans. Life in 
their commtinity consisted in holding inter- 
course with the eternal. The object of the 
Pythagorean education was to lead the mem- 
bers of the community to that intercourse. 
The education was therefore a philosophical 
initiation, and the Pythagoreans might well 
say that by their manner of life they were 
aiming at a goal similar to that of the cults 
of the Mysteries. 



IV 



PLATO AS A MYSTIC 



THE importance of the Mysteries to the 
spiritual life of the Greeks may be 
realised from Plato's conception of the uni- 
verse. There is only one way of understand- 
ing him thoroughly. It is to place him in 
the light which streams forth from the 
Mysteries. 

Plato's later disciples, tlie Neo-Platonists, 
credit him with a secret doctrine which he 
imparted only to those who were worthy, and 
which he conveyed under the "seal of 
secrecy." His teaching was looked upon as 
mysterious in the same sense as the wisdom 
of the Mysteries. Even if the seventh Pla- 
tonic letter is not from his hand, as is al- 
leged, it does not signify for our present 
purpose, for it does not matter whether it 
was he or another who gave utterance to the 

63 



! 



64 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

view expressed in this letter. This view is of 
the essence of Plato's philosophy. In the 
letter we read as follows: "This much I 
may say about all those who have written 
or may hereafter write as if they knew the 
aim of my work, — that no credence is to be 
attached to their words, whether they ob- 
tained their information from me, or from 
others, or invented it themselves. I have 
written nothing on this subject, nor would 
anything be allowed to appear. This kind 
of thing cannot be expressed in words like 
other teaching, but needs a long study of 
the subject and a making oneself one with 
it. Then it is as though a spark leaped 
up and kindled a light in the soul which 
thereafter is able to keep itself alight.** 
This utterance might only indicate the writ- 
er's .powerlessness to express his meaning 
in words, — a mere personal weakness, — ^if the 
idea of the Mysteries were not to be found 
in them. The subject on which Plato had 
not written and would never write, must be 
something about which all writing would be 
futile. It must be a feeling, a sentiment, an 
experience, which is not gained by instan- 



Plato as "a Mystic 65 

taneous communication, but by making one- 
self one with it, in heart and soul. The 
reference is to the inner education which 
Plato was able to give those he selected. 
For them, fire flashed forth from his words, 
for others, only thoughts. 

The manner of our approach to Plato's 
Dialogues is not a matter of indifference. 
They will mean more or less to us, accord- 
ing to our spiritual condition. Much more 
passed from Plato to his disciples than the 
literal meaning of his words. The place where 
he taught his listeners thrilled in the atmos- 
phere of the Mysteries. His words awoke 
overtones in higher regions, which vibrated 
with them, but these overtones needed the 
atmosphere of the Mysteries, or they died 
away without having been heard. 

In the centre of the world of the Platonic 
Dialogues stands the personality of Socrates. 
We need not here touch upon the historical 
aspect of that personality. It is a question 
of the character of Socrates as it appears in 
Plato. Socrates is a person consecrated by 
his dying for truth. He died as only an 
initiate can die, as one to whom death is 
5 



66 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

merely a moment of life like other moments. 
He approaches death as he would any other 
event in existence. His attitude towards it 
was such that even in his friends the feelings 
usual on such an occasion were not aroused. 
Phaedo says this in the Dialogue on the Itn- 
mortality of the Soul: "Truly I found myself 
in the strangest state of mmd. I had no 
compassion for him, as is usual at the death 
of a dear friend. So happy did the man 
appear to me in his demeanour and speech, 
so steadfast and noble was his end, that I 
was confident that he was not going to Hades 
without a divine mission, and that even there 
it would be as well with him as it is with any 
one anywhere. No tender-hearted emotion 
overcame me, as might have been expected 
at such a mournful event, nor on the other 
hand was I in a cheerful mood, as is usual 
during philosophical pursuits, and although 
our conversation was of this nature; but I 
found myself in a wondrous state of mind 
and in an unwonted blending of joy and grief 
when I reflected that this man was about to 
die." The dying Socrates instructs his dis- 
ciples about immortality. His personality, 



Plato as a Mystic 67 

which had learned by experience the worth- 
lessness of life, furnishes a kind of proof 
quite different from logic and arguments 
founded on reason. It seems as if it were not 
a man speaking, for this man was passing 
away, but as if it were the voice of eternal 
truth itself, which had taken up its abode in 
a perishable personality. Where a mortal 
being is dissolving into nothing, there seems 
to be a breath of the air in which it is possible 
for eternal harmonies to resound. 

We hear no logical proofs of immortality. 
The whole discourse is designed to lead the 
friends where they may behold the eternal. 
Then they will need no proofs. Would it be 
necessary to prove that a rose is red, to one 
who has one before him? Why should it be 
necessary to prove that spirit is eternal, to 
one whose eyes we have opened to behold 
spirit? Experiences, inner events, Socrates 
points to them, and first of all to the ex- 
perience of wisdom itself. 

What does he desire who aspires after 
wisdom? He wishes to free himself from 
what the senses offer him in every-day per- 
ception. He seeks for the spirit in the sense- 



68 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

world. Is not this a fact which may be 
compared with dying? " For, '' according to 
Socrates, "those who occupy themselves 
with philosophy in the right way are really 
striving after nothing else than to die and to 
be dead, without this being perceived by 
others. If this is true, it would be strange if, 
after having aimed at this all through life, 
when death itself comes they should be in- 
dignant at that which they have so long 
striven after and taken pains about." 
To corroborate this, Socrates asks one of 
his friends: *'Does it seem to you befitting a 
philosopher to take trouble about so-called 
fleshly pleasures, such as eating and drink- 
ing? or about sexual pleasures? And do you 
think that such a man pays much heed to 
other bodily needs? To have fine clothes, 
shoes, and other bodily adornments, — do you 
think he considers or scorns this more than 
utmost necessity demands? Does it not 
seem to you that it should be such a man*s 
whole preoccupation not to turn his thoughts 
to the body, but as much as possible away 
from it and towards the soul? Therefore 
this is the first mark of the philosopher, that 



Plato as a Mystic 69 

he, more than all other men, relieves his 
soul of association with the body. " 

On this subject Socrates has something 
more to say, i. e., that aspiration after wis- 
dom has this much in common with dying, 
that it turns man away from the physical. 
But whither does he turn? Towards the 
spiritual. But can he desire the same from 
spirit as from the senses? Socrates thus 
expresses himself on this point: "But how 
is it with reasonable knowledge itself? Is the 
body a hindrance or not, if we take it as a 
companion in our search for knowledge? I 
mean, do sight and hearing procure man any 
truth? Or is what the poets sing meaningless, 
that we see and hear nothing clearly? . . . 
When does the soul catch sight of truth? 
For when it tries to examine something with 
the help of the body, it is manifestly deceived 
by the latter. " 

Everything of which we are cognisant by 
means of our bodily senses appears and dis- 
appears. And it is this appearing and dis- 
appearing which is the cause of our being 
deceived. But when with our reasonable in- 
telligence we look deeper into things, the 



70 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

eternal element in them is revealed to us. 
Thus the senses do not oflfer us the eternal 
in its true form. The moment we trust them 
implicitly they deceive us. They cease to 
deceive us if we confront them with our 
thinking insight and submit what they teU 
us to its examination. 

^ But how could our thinking insight sit in 
judgment on the declarations of the senses, 
unless there were something living within it 
which transcends sense-perception? There- 
fore the truth or falsity in things is decided 
by something within us which opposes the 
physical body and is consequently not sub- 
ject to its laws. First of all, it cannot be 
subject to the laws of growth and decay. 
For this something contains truth within it. 
Now truth cannot have a yesterday and a 
to-day, it cannot be one thing one day and 
another the next, like objects of sense. 
Therefore truth must be something eternal. 
And when the philosopher turns away from 
the perishable things of sense and towards 
truth, he is turning towards an eternal ele- 
ment that lives within him. If we immerse 
ourselves wholly in spirit, we shall live wholly 



Plato as a Mystic 71 

in truth. The things of sense around us are 
no longer present merely in their physical 
form. "And he accomplishes this most per- 
fectly," says Socrates, **who approaches 
everything as much as possible with the 
spirit only, without either looking round 
when he is thinking, or letting any other 
sense interrupt his reflecting ; but who, mak- 
ing use of pure thought only, strives to grasp 
everything as it is in itself, separating it as 
much as possible from eyes and ears, in 
short from the whole body, which only dis- 
turbs the soul and does not allow it to attain 
truth and insight when associated with the 
soul. . . . Now is not death the release and 
separation of the soul from the body? And 
it is only true philosophers who are always 
striving to release the soul as far as they can. 
This, therefore, is the philosopher's vocation^ 
to deliver and separate the soul from the 
body. . . . Therefore it would be foolish if 
a man, who all his life has taken measures to 
be as near death as possible, should, when it 
comes, rebel against it. . . . In truth the 
real seekers after wisdom aspire to die, and 
of all men they are those who least fear 



72 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

death. ** Moreover Socrates bases all higher 
morality on liberation from the body. He 
who only follows what his body ordains is 
not moral. Who is valiant? asks Socrates. 
He is valiant who does not obey his body but 
the demands of his spirit when these de- 
mands imperil the body. And who is tem- 
perate? Is not this he who ''does not let 
himself be carried away by desires, but who 
maintains an indiflFerent and moral demean- 
our with regard to them. Therefore are not 
those alone temperate who set least value 
on the body and live in the love of wisdom? " 
And so it is, in the opinion of Socrates, with 
all virtues. 

Thence Socrates goes on to characterise 
intellectual cognition. What is it after all, to 
cognise? Undoubtedly we arrive at it by 
forming judgments. I form a judgment 
about some object; for instance, I say to 
myself, what is in front of me is a tree. How 
do I arrive at saying that? I can only do it 
if I already know what a tree is. I must 
remember my conception of a tree. A tree 
is a physical object. If I remember a tree, I 
therefore remember a physical object. I say 



Plato as a Mystic 73 

of something that it is a tree, if it resembles 
other things which I have previously ob- 
served and which I know to be trees. Mem- 
ory is the medium for this knowledge. It 
makes it possible for me to compare the 
various objects of sense. But this does 
not exhaust my knowledge. If I see two 
similar things, I form a judgment and 
say, these things are alike. Now, in real- 
ity, two things are never exactly alike. I 
can only find a likeness in certain re- 
spects. The idea of a perfect similarity 
therefore arises within me without having 
its correspondence in reality. And this 
idea helps me to form a judgment, as mem- 
ory helps me to a judgment and to know- 
ledge. Just as one tree reminds me of 
others, so am I reminded of the idea of simi- 
larity by looking at two things from a certain 
point of view. Thoughts and memories there- 
fore arise within me which are not due to 
physical reality. 

All kinds of knowledge not borrowed from 
sense-reality are grounded on such thoughts. 
The whole of mathematics consists of them. 
He would be a bad geometrician who could 



^ 



74 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

only bring into mathematical relations what 
he Ln J with his eyes a«d u»ch mth his 
hands. Thus we have thoughts which do not 
originate in perishable nature, but arise out 
of the spirit. And it is these that bear in them 
the mark of eternal truth. What mathe- 
matics teach will be eternally true, even if 
to-morrow the whole cosmic system should 
fall into ruins and an entirely new one 
arise. Conditions might prevail in another 
cosmic system, to which our present ma- 
thematical truths would not be applicable, 
but these would be none the less true in 
themselves. 

It is only when the soul is alone with itself 
that it can bring forth these eternal truths. 
It is at these times related to the true and 
eternal, and not to the ephemeral and appar- 
ent. Hence Socrates says: ''When the soul 
returning into itself reflects, it goes straight 
to what is pure and everlasting and immortal 
and like unto itself ; and being related to this, 
cleaves unto it when the soul is alone, and is 
not hindered. And then the soul rests from 
its mistakes, and is like unto itself, even as 
the eternal is, with whom the soul is now 



Plato as a Mystic 75 

in touch. This state of soul is called wisdom. 
. . . Look now whether it does not follow 
from all that has been said, that the soul is 
most like the divine, immortal, reasonable, 
unique, indissoluble, what is always the 
same and like tinto itself; and that on the 
other hand the body most resembles what 
is human and mortal, unreasonable, multi- 
form, soluble, never the same nor remain- 
ing equal to itself. ... If, therefore, this 
be so, the soul goes to what is like itself, 
to the immaterial, to the divine, immor- 
tal, reasonable. There it attains to bliss, 
freed from error and ignorance, from fear 
and undisciplined love and all other hu- 
man evils. There it lives, as the initiates 
say, for the remaining time truly with 
God." 

It is not within the scope of this book to 
indicate all the ways in which Socrates leads 
his friends to the eternal. They all breathe 
the same spirit. They all tend to show that 
man finds one thing when he goes the way 
of transitory sense-perception, and another 
when his spirit is alone with itself. It is to 
this original nature of spirit that Socrates 



76 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

points his hearers. If they find it, they 
see with their own spiritual eyes that it is 
eternal. The dying Socrates does not prove 
the immortality of the soul, he simply lays 
bare the nature of the soul. And then it 
comes to light that growth and decay, birth 
and death, have nothing to do with the sotd. 
The essence of the soul lies in the true, and 
this can neither come into being nor perish. 
The soul has no more to do with the becom- 
ing than the straight has with the crooked. 
But death belongs to the becoming. There- 
fore the soul has nothing to do with 
death. Must we not say of what is im- 
mortal, that it admits of mortality as 
little as does the straight of the crooked? 
Starting from this point, "must we not 
ask," adds Socrates, "that if the immortal 
is imperishable, is it not impossible for 
the soul to come to an end when death 
arrives? For from what has been already 
shown, it does not admit of death, nor 
can it die any more than three can be an 
even number." 

Let us review the whole development of 
this dialogue, in which Socrates brings his 



Plato as a Mystic 77 

hearers to behold the eternal in human 
personality. The hearers accept his thoughts, 
and they look into themselves to see if they 
can find in their inner experiences something 
which assents to his ideas. They make the 
objections which strike them. What has 
happened to the hearers when the dialogue 
is finished? They have found something 
within them which they did not possess 
before. They have not merely accepted an 
abstract truth, but they have gone through 
a development. Something has come to life 
in them which was hot living in them before. 
Is not this to be compared with an initiation? 
And does not this throw light on the reason 
for Plato's setting forth his philosophy in the 
form of conversation? These dialogues are 
nothing else than the literary form of the 
events which took place in the sanctuaries 
of the Mysteries. We are convinced of this 
from what Plato himself says in many pas- 
sages. Plato wished to be, as a philosophical 
teacher, what the initiator into the Mysteries 
was, as far as this was compatible with the 
philosophical manner of communication. It 
is evident how Plato feels himself in harmony 



78 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

with the Mysteries ! He only thinks he is on 
the right path when it is taJdng him where 
the Mystic is to be led. He thus expresses 
himself on the subject in the TimcBus. 
"All those who are of right mind invoke 
the gods for their small or great enterprises; 
but we who are engaged in teaching about 
the universe, — how far it is created and un- 
created, — have the special duty, if we have 
not quite lost our way, to call upon and im- 
plore the gods and goddesses that we may 
teach everything first in conformity with 
their spirit, and next in harmony with our- 
selves." And Plato promises those who fol- 
low this path, that divinity, as a deliverer, 
will grant them illuminating teaching as the 
conclusion of their devious and wandering 
researches. 

It is especially the Timcms that reveals to 
us how the Platonic cosmogony is connected 
with the Mysteries. At the very beginning 
of this dialogue there is mention of an 
initiation. Solon is initiated by an Egyptian 
priest into the formation of the worlds, and 
the way in which eternal truths are symboU- 



Plato as a Mystic 79 

cally expressed in traditional myths. ''There 
have already been many and various de- 
structions of part of the human race," says 
the Egyptian priest to Solon, "and there will 
be more in the future ; the most extensive by 
fire and water, other lesser ones through 
countless other causes. It is also related in 
your country that Phaethon, the son of Helios, 
once mounted his father's chariot, and as he 
did not know how to drive it, everjrthing on 
the earth was burnt up, and he himself slain 
by lightning. This sounds like a fable, but 
it contains the truth of the change in the 
movements of the celestial bodies revolving 
round the earth and of the annihilation of 
everjrthing on the earth by much fire. This 
annihilation happens periodically, after the 
lapse of certain long periods of time. " This 
passage in the TinuBUS contains a plain indi- 
cation of the attitude of the initiate towards 
folk-myths. He recognises the traths hidden 
in their images. 

The drama of the formation of the world 
is brought before us in the TinuBus. Any one 
who will follow up the traces which lead to 
this formation of the cosmos arrives at a 



8o Christianity as Mystical Fact 

dim apprehension of the primordial force 
from which all things proceeded. ** Now it is 
difficult to find the Creator and Father of the 
universe, and when we have found Him, it is 
impossible to speak about Him so that all 
may understand." The Mystic knew what 
this ''impossibility" means. It points to the 
divine drama. God is not present in what 
belongs merely to the senses and understand- 
ing. In those He is only present as nature. 
He is under a spell in nature. Only one who 
awakens the divine within himself is able to 
approach Him. Thus He cannot at once be 
made comprehensible to all. But even to 
one who approaches Him, He does not appear 
Himself. The Timceus says that also. The 
Father made the universe out of the body 
and soul of the world. He mixed together, 
in harmony and perfect proportions, the 
elements which came into being when He, 
pouring Himself out, gave up His separate 
existence. Thereby the body of the world 
came into being, and stretched upon it, in the 
form of a cross, is the soul of the world. It 
is what is divine in the world. It found the 
death of the cross so that the world might 



Plato as a Mystic 8i 

come into existence. Plato may therefore 
call nature the tomb of the divine, a grave, 
however, in which nothing dead lies but 
the eternal, to which death only gives the 
opportunity of bringing into expression the 
omnipotence of life. And man sees nature 
in the right light when he approaches it in 
order to release the crucified soul of the 
world. It must rise again from its death, 
from its spell. Where can it come to life 
again? Only in the soul of initiated man. 
Then wisdom finds its right relation to the 
cosmos. The resurrection, the liberation of 
God, that is wisdom. In the TinuBUS the 
development of the world is traced from the 
imperfect to the i)erfect. An ascending pro- 
cess is represented imaginatively. Beings 
are developed. God reveals Himself in their 
development. Evolution is the resurrection 
of God from the tomb. Within evolution, 
man appears. Plato shows that in man there 
is something special. It is true the whole 
world is divine, and man is not more divine 
than other beings. But in other beings God 
is present in a hidden way, in man he is 
manifest. At the end of the Timcms we 





82 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

read: **And now we might assert that our 
study of the universe has attained its end, 
for after the world was provided and filled 
with mortal and immortal living beings, it, 
this one and only begotten world, has itself 
become a visible being embracing every- 
thing visible, and an image of the Creator. It 
has become the God perceptible to the senses, 
and the greatest and best world, the fairest 
and most perfect which there could be.*' 
But this one and only begotten world would 
not be perfect if the image of its Creator were 
not to be found amongst the images it con- 
tains. This image can only be engendered 
in the human soul. Not the Father Himself, 
but the Son, God's offspring, living in the 
sotil, and being like unto the Father, him 
man can bring forth. 

Philo, of whom it was said that he was the 
resurrected Plato, characterised as the *'Son 
of God" the wisdom bom out of man, which 
lives in the soul and contains the reason 
existing in the worid. This cosmic reason, 
or Logos, appears as the book in which 
** everything in the world is recorded and 
delineated." It also appears as the Son of 



Plato as a Mystic 83 

God, "following in the paths of the Father, 
and creating forms, looking at their arche- 
types." The platonising Philo addresses 
this Logos as Christ, ''As God is the first and 
only king of the universe, the way to Him 
is rightly called the ' Royal Road. ' Consider 
this road to be philosophy . . . the road 
which the company of the ancient ascetics 
took, who turned away from the entangling 
fascination of pleasure and devoted them- 
selves to the noble and earnest cultivation 
of the beautiful. The law names this Royal 
Road, which we call true philosophy, God's 
word and spirit. " 

It is like an initiation to Philo when he 
enters upon this path, in order to meet the 
Logos who, to him, is the Son of God. "I 
do not shrink from relating what has hap- 
pened to me innumerable times. Often when 
I wished to put my philosophical thoughts 
in writing, in my accustomed way, and saw 
quite clearly what was to be set down, I 
nevertheless found my mind barren and rigid, 
so that I was obliged to desist without hav- 
ing accompUshed anything, and seemed to 
be hampered with idle fancies. At the same 



84 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

time I could not but marvel at the power 
of the reality of thought, with which it 
rests to open and to close the womb of the 
human soul. Another time, however, I 
would begin empty and arrive, without any 
trouble, at fulness. Thoughts came flying 
like snowflakes or grains of com invisibly 
from above, and it was as though divine 
power took hold of me and inspired me, so 
that I did not know where I was, who was 
with me, who I was, or what I was saying or 
writing ; for just then the flow of ideas was 
given me, a delightful clearness, keen insight, 
and lucid mastery of material, as if the inner 
eye were able to see everything with the 
greatest distinctness." 

This is a description of a path to knowledge 
so expressed that we see that any one taking 
this path is conscious of flowing in one 
current with the divine, when the Logos 
becomes alive within him. This is also ex- 
pressed clearly in the words: "When the 
spirit, moved by love, takes its flight into 
the most holy, soaring joyously on divine 
wings, it forgets everything else and itself. 
It only clings to and is filled with that of 



Plato as a Mystic 85 

which it is the satellite and servant, and to 
this it offers the incense of the most sacred 
and chaste virtue. " 

There are only two ways for Philo. Either 
man follows the world of sense, that is, what 
observation and intellect offer, in which case 
he limits himself to his personality and with- 
draws from the cosmos ; or he becomes con- 
scious of the universal cosmic force, and 
experiences the eternal within his personal- 
ity. **He who wishes to escape from God 
falls into his own hands. For there are two 
things to be considered, the universal Spirit 
which is God, and one's own spirit. The 
latter flees to and takes refuge in the uni- 
versal Spirit, for one who goes beyond his 
own spirit says that it is nothing and con- 
nects everjrthing with God; but one who 
avoids God, abolishes the First Cause, and 
makes himself the cause of everything which 
happens." 

The Platonic view of the universe sets out 
to be knowledge which by its very nature is 
also religion. It brings knowledge into rela- 
tion with the highest to which man can 
attain through his feelings. Plato will only 



86 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

allow knowledge to hold good when feeling 
may be completely satisfied in it. It is then 
more than science, it is the substance of life. 
It is a higher man within man, that man of 
which the personality is only an image. 
Within man is bom a being who surpasses 
him, a primordial, archetypal man, and this 
is another secret of the Mysteries brought to 
expression in the Platonic philosophy. Hip- 
polytus, one of the Early Fathers, alludes to 
this secret. ''This is the great secret of the 
Samothracians (who were guardians of a cer- 
tain Mystery-cult), which cannot be ex- 
pressed and which only the initiates know. 
But these latter speak in detail of Adam, as 
the primordial, archetypal man." 

The Platonic Dialogue on Love, or the Sym- 
posium, also represents an initiation. Here 
love appears as the herald of wisdom. If 
wisdom, the eternal word, the Logos, is the 
Son of the Eternal Creator of the cosmos, 
love is related to the Logos as a mother. 
Before even a spark of the light of wisdom 
can flash up in the human soul, a dim .im- 
pulse or desire for the divine must be present 
in it. Unconsciously the divine must draw 



Plato as a Mystic 87 

man to what afterwards, when raised into his 
consciousness, constitutes his supreme happi- 
ness. What Heraclitus calls the "daimon" 
in man (see p. 49) is connected with the idea 
of love. In the Symposium^ people of the 
most various ranks and views of life speak 
about love, — ^the ordinary man, the politi- 
cian, the scientific man, the satiric poet 
Aristophanes, and the tragic poet Agathon. 
They each have their own view of love, in 
keeping with their different experiences of 
life. The way in which they express them- 
selves shows the stage at which their "dai- 
mon" has arrived (cf. p. 49). By love one 
being is attracted to another. The multi- 
plicity, the diversity of the things into which 
divine unity was poured, aspires towards 
unity and harmony through love. Thus love 
has something divine in it, and owing to this, 
each individual can only understand it as far 
as he participates in the divine. 

After these men and others at different 
degrees of maturity have given utterance to 
their ideas about love, Socrates takes up 
the word. He considers love from the point 
of view of a man in search of knowledge. For 



88 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

him, it is not a divinity, but it is something 
which leads man to God. Eros, or love, 
is for him not divine, for a god is perfect, and 
therefore possesses the beautiful and good; 
but Eros is only the desire for the beautiful 
and good. He thus stands between man 
and God. He is a "daimon," a mediator 
between the earthly and the divine. 

It is significant that Socrates does not 
daim to be giving his own thoughts when 
speaking of love. He says he is only relating 
what a woman once imparted to him as a 
revelation. It was through mantic art that 
he came to his conception of love. Diotima, 
the priestess, awakened in Socrates the dai- 
monic force which was to lead him to the 
divine. She initiated him. 

This passage in the Symposium is highly 
suggestive. Who is the "wise woman" who 
awakened the daimon in Socrates? She is 
more than a merely poetic mode of expres- 
sion. For no wise woman on the physical 
plane could awaken the daimon in the soul, 
unless the daimonic force were latent in the 
soul itself. It is surely in Socrates' own soul 
that we must also look for this "wise woman.*' 



Plato as a Mystic 89 

But there must be a reason why that which 
brings the daimon to life within the soul 
should appear as an outward being on the 
physical plane. The force cannot work in the 
same way as the forces which may be ob- 
served in the soul, as belonging to and native 
to it. We see that it is the soul-force which 
precedes the coming of wisdom which Socra- 
tes represents as a **wise woman." It is the 
mother-principle which gives birth to the 
Son of God, Wisdom, the Logos. The un- 
conscious soul-force which brings the divine 
into the consciousness is here represented as 
the feminine element. The soul which as 
yet is without wisdom is the mother of what 
leads to the divine. This brings us to an 
important conception of mysticism. The 
soul is recognised as the mother of the divine. 
Unconsciously it leads man to the divine, 
with the inevitableness of a natural force. 

This conception throws light on the view 
of Greek mythology taken in the Mysteries. 
The world of the gods is bom in the soul. 
Man looks upon what he creates in images as 
his gods {cf. p. 33). But he must force his 
way through to another conception. He must 




90 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

transmute into divine images the divine 
force which is active within him before the 
creation of those images. Behind the divine 
appears the mother of the divine, which is 
nothing else than the original force of the 
human soul. Thus side by side with the 
gods, man represents goddesses. 

Let us look at the myth of Dionysos in this 
Jight. Dionysos is the son of ^Ze us^and a 
Ttiortal mother, Semele. Zeus wrests the still 
immature child from its mother when she is 
slain by lightning, and shelters it in his own 
side till it is ready to be bom. Hera, the 
mother of the gods, incites the Titans against 
Dionysos, and they tear him in pieces. But 
Pallas Athene rescues his heart, which is 
still beating, and brings it to Zeus. Out of it 
he engenders his son for the second time. 

In this myth we can accurately trace a 
process which is enacted in the depths of the 
human soul. Interpreting it in the manner 
of the Egyptian priest who instructed Solon 
about the nature of myths (c/. p. 78 et seq.)^ 
we might say, it is related that Dionysos 
was the son of a god and of a mortal mother, 
that he was torn in pieces and afterwards 



Plato as a Mystic 91 

bom again. This sounds like a fable, but it 
contains the truth of the birth of the divine 
and its destiny in the human soul. The di- 
vine unites itself with the earthly, temporal 
human soul. As soon as the divine, Dionysiac 
element stirs within the soul, it feels a violent 
desire for its own true spiritual form. Ordi- 
nary consciousness, which once again appears 
in the form of a female goddess, Hera, be- 
comes jealous at the birth of the divine out 
of the higher consciousness. It arouses the 
lower nature of man (the Titans). The still 
immature divine child is torn in pieces. Thus 
the divine child is present in man as intellec- 
tual science broken up. But if there be 
enough of the higher wisdom (Zeus) in man 
to be active, it nurses and cherishes the im- 
mature child, which is then bom again as a 
second son of God (Dionysos). Thus from 
science, which is the fragmentary divine force 
in man, is bom undivided wisdom, which is 
the Logos, the son of God and of a mortal 
mother, of the perishable human soul, which 
unconsciously aspires after the divine. As 
long as we see in all this merely a process in 
the soul and look upon it as a picture of this 



92 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

process, we are a long way from the spiritual 
reality which is enacted in it. In this spiritual 
reality the soul is not merely experiencing 
something in itself, but it has been released 
from itself and is taking part in a cosmic 
event, which is not enacted within the soul, 
in reality, but outside it. 

Platonic wisdom and Greek myths are 
closely linked together, so too are the myths 
and the wisdom of the Mysteries. The 
created gods were the object of popular re- 
ligion, the history of their origin was the 
secret of the Mysteries. No wonder that it 
was held to be dangerous to "betray" the 
Mysteries, for thereby the origin of the gods 
of the people was "betrayed." And a right 
understanding of that origin is salutary, a 
misunderstanding is injurious. 



V 



THE WISDOM OF THE MYSTERIES AND THE 

MYTH 

THE Mystic sought forces and beings 
within himself which are unknown to 
man as long as he remains in the ordinary 
attitude towards life. The Mystic puts the 
great question about his own spiritual forces 
and the laws which transcend the lower 
nature. A man of ordinary views of life, 
bounded by the senses and logic, creates gods 
for himself, or when he gets to the point of 
seeing that he has made them, he disclaims 
them. The Mystic knows that he creates 
gods, he knows why he creates them, he 
sees, so to say, behind the natural law which 
makes man create them. It is as though 
a plant suddenly became conscious, and 
learned the laws of its growth and develop- 
ment. As it is, it develops in lovely uncon- 

93 



94 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

sciousness. If it knew about the laws of its 
own being, its relation to itself would be 
completely changed. What the lyric poet 
feels when he sings about a plant, what the 
botanist thinks when he investigates its laws, 
this would hover before a conscious plant as 
an ideal of itself. 

It is thus with the Mystic with regard to 
the laws, the forces working within him. As 
one who knew, he was forced to create some- 
thing divine beyond himself. And the in- 
itiates took up the same attitude to that 
which the people had created beyond nature ; 
that is to the world of popular gods and 
myths. They wanted to penetrate the laws 
of this world of gods and myths. Where 
the people saw the form of a god, or a myth, 
they looked for a higher truth. 

Let us take an example. The Athenians 
had been forced by the Cretan king Minos to 
deliver up to him every eight years seven 
boys and seven girls. These were thrown as 
food to a terrible monster, the Minotaur. 
When the mournful tribute was to be paid for 
the third time, the king's son Theseus accom- 
panied it to Crete. On his arrival there, 



Mysteries and the Myth 95 

Ariadne, the daughter of Minos inter- 
ested herself in him. The Minotaur dwelt 
in the labyrinth, a maze from which no one 
could extricate himself who had once got in. 
Theseus desired to deliver his native city 
from the shameful tribute. For this purpose 
he had to enter the labyrinth into which the 
monster's booty was usually thrown, and to 
kill the Minotaur. He undertook the task, 
overcame the formidable foe, and succeeded 
in regaining the open air with the aid of a 
ball of thread which Ariadne had given him. 

The Mystic had to discover how the 
creative human mind comes to weave such 
a story. As the botanist watches the growth 
of plants in order to discover its laws, so did 
the Mystic watch the creative spirit. He 
sought for a truth, a nucleus of wisdom 
where the people had invented a myth. 

SaUust discloses to us the attitude of a 
mystical sage towards a myth of this kind. 
"We might call the whole world a myth," 
says he, "which contains bodies and things 
visibly, and souls and spirits in a hidden 
manner. If the truth about the gods were 
taught to all, the tmintelligent would disdain 



96 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

it from not understanding it, and the more 
capable would make light of it. But if 
the truth is given in a mystical veil, it is 
assured against contempt and serves as a 
stimulus to philosophic thinking." 

When the truth contained in a myth was 
sought by an initiate, he was conscious of 
adding something which did not exist in the 
consciousness of the people. He was aware 
of being above that consciousness, as a 
botanist is above a growing plant. Some- 
thing was expressed which was different from 
what was present in the mythical conscious- 
ness, but it was looked upon as a deeper truth, 
symbolically expressed in the myth. Man is 
confronted with his own sense-nature in the 
form of a hostile monster. He sacrifices to 
it the fruits of his personality, and the 
monster devours them, and continues to 
do so till the conqueror (Theseus) awakes 
in man. His intuition spins^the thread by 
means of which he finds his way again 
when he repairs to the maze of the senses 
in order to slay his enemy. The mystery 
of human knowledge itself is expressed 
in this conquering of the senses. The 



Mysteries and the Myth 97 

initiate knows that mystery. It points to a 
force in human personality unknown to or- 
dinary consciousness, but nevertheless active 
within it. It is the force which creates the 
myth, which has the same structure as mys- 
tical truth. This truth finds its symbol in 
the myth. 

What then is to be found in the mjrths? 
In them is a creation of the spirit, of the un- 
consciously creative soul. The soul has well- 
defined laws. In order to create beyond 
itself, it must work in a certain direction. 
At the mythological stage it does this in 
images, but these are built up according to 
the laws of the soul. We might also say that 
when the soul advances beyond the stage of 
mythological consciousness to deeper truths, 
these bear the same stamp as did the myths, 
for one and the same force was at work in 
their formation. 

Plotinus, the philosopher of the Neo- 
Platonic school (a.d. 204-269) , speaks of this 
relation of mythical representation to higher 
knowledge in reference to the priest-sages of 
Egypt. "Whether as the result of rigorous 
investigations, or whether instinctively when 
7 



98 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

imparting their wisdom, the Egyptian sages 
do not use, for expressing their teaching and 
precepts, written signs which are imitations 
of voice and speech ; but they draw pictures, 
and in the outlines of these they record, in 
their temples, the thought contained in each 
thing, so that every picture contains know- 
ledge and wisdom, and is a definite truth and 
a complete whole, although there is no ex- 
planation nor discussion. Afterwards the 
contents of the picture are drawn out of it 
and expressed in words, and the cause is 
foimd why it is as it is, and not otherwise. " 
If we wish to find out the connection of 
mysticism with mythical narratives, we must 
see what relationship to them there is in the 
views of the great thinkers, those who knew 
their wisdom to be in harmony with the meth- 
ods of the Mysteries. We find such harmony 
in Plato in the fullest degree. His explana- 
tions of myths and his application of them in 
his teaching may be taken as a model (c/. p. 
78 et seq.). In the PhcBdrus^ a dialogue on 
the soul, the myth of Boreas is introduced. 
This divine being, who was seen in the rush- 
ing wind, one day saw the fair Orithyia, 



Mysteries and the Myth 99 

daughter of the Attic king Erectheus, gather- 
ing flowers with her companions.. Seized 
with love for her, he carried her off to his 
grotto. Plato, by the mouth of Socrates, 
rejects a rationalist interpretation of this 
myth. According to this explanation, an 
outward, natural fact is poetically symbolised 
by the narrative. A hurricane seized the 
king's daughter and hurled her over the 
rocks. "Interpretations of this sort," says 
Socrates, *'are learned sophistries, however 
popular and usual they may be. . . . For 
one who has pulled to pieces one of these 
mythological forms must, to be consistent, 
elucidate sceptically and explain naturally 
all the rest in the same way. . . . But even 
if such a labour could be accomplished, it 
would in any case be no proof of superior 
talents in the one carrying it out, but only 
of superficial wit, boorish wisdom, and ridicu- 
lous haste. . . . Therefore I leave on one 
side aU such enquiries, and believe what is 
generally thought about the myths. I do 
not examine them, as I have just said, but I 
examine myself to see whether I too may 
perhaps be a monster, more complicated 






100 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

and therefore more disordered than the chi- 
maera, more savage than Typhon, or whether 
I represent a more docile and simple being, 
to whom some particle of a virtuous and 
divine nature has been given." 

We see from this that Plato does not 
approve of a rationalistic and merely intel- 
lectual interpretation of myths. This atti- 
tude must be compared with the way in 
which he himself uses myths in order to 
express himself through them. When he 
speaks of the life of the soul, when he leaves 
the paths of the transitory and seeks the 
eternal in the soul, when, therefore, images 
borrowed from sense-perception and reason- 
ing thought can no longer be used, then 
Plato has recourse to the myth. Phcedrus 
treats of the eternal in the soul, which is 
portrayed as a car drawn by two horses 
winged all over, and driven by a charioteer. 
One horse is patient and docile, the other 
wild and headstrong. If an obstacle comes 
in the way of the car the troublesome horse 
takes the opportunity of impeding the docile 
one and defying the driver. When the car 
arrives where it has to follow the gods up the 



Mysteries and the Myth loi 

celestial steep, the intractable horse throws 
the team into confusion. If it is less strong 
than the good horse, it is overcome, and the 
car is able to go on into the supersensible 
realm. It thus happens that the soul can 
never ascend without difficulties into the 
kingdom of the divine. Some souls rise more 
to the vision of eternity, some less. The 
soul which has seen the world beyond re- 
mains safe until the next journey. One who, 
on account of the intractable horse, has not 
seen beyond, must try again on the next 
journey. These journeys signify the various 
incarnations of the soul. One joiimey signifies 
the life of the soul in one personality. The 
wild horse represents the lower nature, the 
docile one the higher nature; the driver, 
the soul longing for union with the divine. 

Plato resorts to the myth in order to de- 
scribe the course of the eternal spirit through 
its various transformations. In the same 
way he has recourse, in other writings, to 
symbolical narrative, in order to portray the 
inner nature of man, which is not perceptible 
to the senses. 

Plato is here in complete harmony with the 



I02 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

mythical and allegorical manner of expres- 
sion used by others. For instance there is in 
ancient Hindu literature a parable attributed 
to Buddha. 

A man very much attached to life, who seeks 
sensuous pleasures and will die at no price 
is pursued by four serpents. He hears a 
voice commanding him to feed and bathe 
the serpents from time to time. The man 
runs away, fearing the serpents. Again he 
hears a voice, warning him that he is pur- 
sued by five murderers. Once more he 
escapes. A voice calls his attention to a 
sixth murderer, who is about to behead him 
with a sword. Again he flees. He comes to a 
deserted village. There he hears a voice 
telling him that robbers are shortly going to 
plunder the village. Having again escaped, 
he comes to a great flood. He feels unsafe 
where he is, and out of straw, wood, and 
leaves he makes a basket in which he ar- 
rives at the other shore. Now he is safe, he 
is a Brahmin. 

The meaning of this allegory is that man 
has to pass through the most various states 
before attaining to the divine. The four 



Mysteries and the Myth 103 

serpents represent the four elements, fire, 
water, earth, and air. The five murderers are 
the five senses. The deserted village is the 
soul which has escaped from sense-impres- 
sions, but is not yet safe if it is alone with 
itself, for if its lower nature lays hold of it, it 
must perish. Man must construct for him- 
self the boat which is to carry him over the 
flood of the transitory from the one shore, 
the sense-nature, to the other, the eternal, 
divine world. 

Let us look at the Egjrptian mystery of 
Osiris in this light. Osiris had gradually 
become one of the most important Egjrptian 
divinities; he supplanted other gods in cer- 
tain parts of the country; and an important 
cycle of myths was formed round him and 
his consort Isis. 

Osiris was the son of the Sun-god, his 
brother was Tjrphon-Set, and his sister was 
Isis. Osiris married his sister, and together 
they reigned over Egypt. The wicked 
brother, Typhon, meditated killing Osiris. 
He had a chest made which was exactly the 
length of Osiris' body. At a banquet this 
chest was offered to the person whom it 



104 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

exactly fitted. This was Osiris and none 
other! He entered the chest. Tj^hon and 
his confederates rushed upon him, closed 
the chest, and threw it into the river. When 
Isis heard the terrible news she wandered far 
and wide in despair, seeking her husband's 
body. When she had found it, Typhon again 
took possession of it, and tore it in fourteen 
pieces which were dispersed in many differ- 
ent places. Various tombs of Osiris were 
shown in Egypt. In many places, up and 
down the country, portions of the god were 
said to be buried. Osiris himself, however, 
came forth from the nether-world and van- 
quished Typhon. A beam shone from him 
upon Isis, who in consequence bore a son, 
Harpocrates or Horus. 

And now let us compare this myth with the 
view which the Greek philosopher, Emped- 
ocles (B.C. 490-430) takes of the imiverse. 
He asstmies that the one original primeval 
being was once broken up into the four 
elements, fire, water, earth, and air, or into 
the multiplicity of being. He represents two 
opposing forces, which within this world of 
existence bring about growth and decay, 



Mysteries and the Myth 105 

love and strife. Empedocles says of the 
elements : 



They remain ever the same, but yet by com- 
bining their forces 

Become transformed into men and the number- 
less beings besides. 

These are now joined into one, love binding the 
many together, 

Now once again they are scattered, dispersing 
through hatred and strife. 

What then are the things in the world from 
Empedocles' point of view? They are the 
elements in different combinations. They 
could only come into being because the 
Primeval Unity was broken up into the four 
essences. Therefore this primordial unity 
was poured into the elements. Anjrthing 
confronting us is part of the divinity which 
was poured out. But the divinity is hidden 
in the thing; it first had to die that things 
might come into being. And what are these 
things? Mixtures of divine constituents 
effectuated by love and hatred. Empedocles 
says this distinctly : 



io6 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

See, for a clear demonstration, how the Kmbs of 

a man are constructed, 
All that the body possesses, in beauty and pride 

of existence, 
All put together by love, are the elements there 

forming one. 
Afterwards hatred and strife come, and fatally 

tear them asunder. 
Once more they wander alone, on the desolate 

confines of life. 
So it is with the bushes and trees, and the water- 
inhabiting fishes. 
Wild animals roaming the mountains, and ships 

swiftly borne by their sails. 

Empedocles therefore must come to the 
conclusion that the sage finds again the 
Divine Primordial Unity, hidden in the world 
by a spell, and entangled in the meshes of 
love and hatred. But if man finds the 
divine, he must himself be divine, for 
Empedocles takes the point of view that 
a being is only cognised by its equal. 
This conviction of his is expressed in 
Goethe's lines: ''If the eye were not of 
the nature of the sim, how could we be- 
hold light? If divine force were not at 



Mysteries and the Myth 107 

work in us, how could divine things de- 
Kghtus?" 

These thoughts about the world and man, 
which transcend sense-experience, were found 
by the Mystic in the myth of Osiris. Divine 
creative force has been poured out into the 
tmiverse; it appears as the four elements; 
God (Osiris) is killed. Man is to raise him 
from the dead with his cognition, which is of 
divine nature. He is to find him again as 
Horus (the Son of God, the Logos, Wisdom), 
in the opposition between Strife (Typhon) 
and Love (Isis). Empedocles expresses his 
fxmdamental conviction in Greek form by 
means of images which border on myth. 
Love is Aphrodite, and strife is Neikos. 
They binti and unbind the elements. 

The portrayal of the content of a myth in 
the manner followed here must not be con- 
fused with a merely symbolical or even alle- 
gorical interpretation of myths. This is not 
intended. The images forming the contents 
of a myth are not invented symbols of 
abstract truths, but actual soul-experiences 
of the initiate. He experiences the images 
with his spiritual organs of perception, just 



io8 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

as the normal man experiences the images 
of physical things with his eyes and ears. 
But as an image is nothing in itself if it is 
not aroused in the perception by an outer 
object, so the mythical image is nothing 
unless it is excited by real facts of the spiritual 
worid. Only in regard to the physical world, 
man is at first outside the exciting causes, 
whereas he can only experience the images 
of myths when he is within the corresponding 
spiritual occurrences. In order, however, 
to be within them, he must have gone through 
initiation. Then the spiritual occurrences 
within which he is perceiving are, as it were, 
illustrated by the myth-images. Any one 
who cannot take the mythical element as 
such illustration of real spiritual occturences, 
has not yet attained to the imderstanding of 
it. For the spiritual events themselves are 
supersensible, and images which are reminis- 
cent of the physical world are not themselves 
of a spiritual nature, but only an illustration 
of spiritual things. One who lives merely in 
the images lives in a dream. Only one who 
has got to the point of feeling the spiritual 
element in the image as he feels in the sense- 



Mysteries and the Myth 109 

world a rose through the image of a rose, 
really lives in spiritual perceptions. This is 
the reason why the images of myths cannot 
have only one meaning. On account of their 
illustrative character, the same myths may 
express several spiritual facts. It is not 
therefore a contradiction when interpreters 
of myths sometimes connect a myth with one 
spiritual fact and sometimes with another. 
From this standpoint, we are able to find 
a thread to conduct us through the labjointh 
of Greek myths. Let us consider the legend 
of Heracles. The twelve labours imposed 
upon Heracles appear in a higher light when 
we remember that before the last and most 
difficult one, he is initiated into the Eleusin- 
ian mysteries. He is commissioned by King 
Eurystheus of Mycenae to bring the hell- 
hound Cerberus from the infernal regions 
and take it back there again. In order to 
undertake the descent into hell, Heracles 
had to be initiated. The Mysteries con- 
ducted man through the death of perishable 
things, therefore into the nether-world, and 
by initiation they rescued his eternal part 
from perishing. As a Mystic, he could 



1 10 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

vanquish death. Heracles having become a 
Mystic overcomes the dangers of the nether- 
world. This justifies us in interpreting his 
other ordeals as stages in the inner develop- 
ment of the soul. He overcomes the Nemaean 
lion and brings him to Mycenae. This means 
that he becomes master of purely physical 
force in man; he tames it. Afterwards he 
slays the nine-headed Hydra. He overcomes 
it with firebrands and dips his arrows in 
its gall, so that they become deadly. This 
means that he overcomes lower knowledge, 
that which comes through the senses. He 
does this through the fire of the spirit, and 
from what he has gained through the lower 
knowledge, he draws the power to look at 
lower things in the light which belongs to 
spiritual sight. Heracles captures the hind 
of Artemis, goddess of hunting: everything 
which free nature offers to the'himian soul, 
Heracles conquers and subdues. The other 
labours may be interpreted in the same way. 
We cannot here trace out every detail, and 
only wish to describe how the general sense 
of the myth points to inner development. 
A similar interpretation is possible of the 



Mysteries and the Myth iii 

expedition of the Argonauts. Phrixus and 
his sister Helle, children of a Boeotian king, 
suffered many things from their step-mother. 
The gods sent them a ram with a golden 
fleece, which flew away with them. When 
they came to the straits between Europe and 
Asia, Helle was drowned. Hence the strait 
is called the Hellespont. Phrixus came to the 
King of Colchis, on the east shore of the 
Black Sea. He sacrificed the ram to the gods, 
and gave its fleece to King iEetes. The 
king had it hung up in a grove and guarded 
by a terrible dragon. The Greek hero Jason 
tmdertook to fetch the fleece from Colchis, 
in company with other heroes, Heracles, 
Theseus, and Orpheus. Heavy tasks were 
laid upon Jason by iEetes for the obtaining 
of the treasure, but Medea, the king's daugh- 
ter, who was versed in magic, aided him. 
He subdued two fire-breathing bulls. He 
ploughed a field and sowed in it dragon's 
teeth from which armed men grew up out of 
the earth. By Medea's advice he threw a 
stone into their midst, whereupon they killed 
each other. Jason lulls the dragon to sleep 
with a charm of Medea's and is then able 



112 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

to win the fleece. He returns with it to 
Greece, Medea accompanying him as his 
wife. The king pursues the fugitives. In 
order to detain him, Medea slays her little 
brother Absyrtus, and scatters his limbs in 
the sea. iEetes stays to collect them, and the 
pair are able to reach Jason's home with the 
neece. 

Each of these facts requires a deep elucida- 
tion. The fleece is something belonging to 
man, and infinitely precious to him. It is 
something from which he was separated in 
times of yore, and for the recovery of which 
he has to overcome terrible forces. It is 
thus with the eternal in the human soul. It 
belongs to man, but man is separated from 
it by his lower nature. Only by overcoming 
the latter, and lulling it to sleep, can he 
recover the eternal. This becomes possible 
when his own consciousness (Medea) comes 
to his aid with its magic power. Medea is 
to Jason what Diotima was to Socrates, a 
teacher of love {cf, p. 88). Man's own wis- 
dom has the magic power necessary for at- 
taining the divine after having overcome the 
transitory. From the lower nature there can 



Mysteries and the Myth 113 

only arise a lower human principle, the armed 
men who are overcome by spiritual force, 
the counsel of Medea. Even when man has 
found the eternal, the fleece, he is not yet 
safe. He has to sacrifice part of his con- 
sciousness (Absyrtus). This is exacted by 
the physical world, which we can only appre- 
hend as a multiple (dismembered) world. 
We might go still deeper into the description 
of the spiritual events lying behind the 
images, but it is only intended here to indi- 
cate the principle of the formation of myths. 
Of special interest, when interpreted in 
this way, is the legend of Prometheus. He 
and his brother Epimetheus are sons of the 
Titan lapetus. The Titans are the offspring 
of the oldest generation of gods, Uranus 
(Heaven) and Gaea (Earth). Kronos, the 
youngest of the Titans, dethroned his father 
and seized upon the government of the world. 
In return, he was overpowered, with the 
other Titans, by his son Zeus, who became 
the chief of the gods. In the struggle with 
the Titans, Prometheus was on the side of 
Zeus. By his advice, Zeus banished the 
Titans to the nether-world. But in Prome- 

8 



114 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

theus there still lived the Titan spirit, he was 
only half a friend to Zeus. When the latter 
wished to exterminate men on account of 
their arrogance, Prometheus espoused their 
cause, taught them numbers, writing, and 
everything else which leads to culture, es- 
pecially the use of fire. This aroused the 
wrath of Zeus against Prometheus. Heph- 
aistos, the son of Zeus, was commissioned 
to make a female form of great beauty, whom 
the gods adorned with every possible gift. 
She was called Pandora, the all-gifted one. 
Hermes, messenger of the gods, brought her 
to Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus. 
She brought him a casket, as a present from 
the gods. Epimetheus accepted the present, 
although Prometheus had warned him against 
receiving any gift from the gods. When the 
casket was opened, every possible human 
evil flew out of it. Hope alone remained, 
and this because Pandora quickly closed the 
box. Hope has therefore been left to man, 
as a doubtful gift of the gods. By order of 
Zeus, Prometheus was chained to a rock on 
the Caucasus, on account of his relation to 
man. An eagle perpetually gnaws his liver, 



Mysteries and the Myth 115 

which is as often renewed. He has to pass 
his life in agonising loneliness till one of the 
gods voluntarily sacrifices himself, i. e., de- 
votes himself to death. The tormented Pro- 
metheus bears his sufferings steadfastly. It 
had been told him that Zeus would be de- 
throned by the son of a mortal unless Zeus 
consented to wed this mortal woman. It was 
important for Zeus to know this secret. He 
sent the messenger Hermes to Prometheus, 
in order to learn something about it. Pro- 
metheus refused to say anything. The legend 
of Heracles is connected with that of Pro- 
metheus. In the course of his wanderings 
Heracles comes to the Caucasus. He slays 
the eagle which was devouring the liver of 
Prometheus. The centaur Chiron, who can- 
not die, although suffering from an incurable 
wound, sacrifices himself for Prometheus, 
who is thereupon reconciled with the gods. 

The Titans are the force of will, proceeding 
as nature (Kronos) from the original univer- 
sal spirit (Uranus). Here we have to think 
not merely of will-forces in an abstract form, 
but of actual will-beings. Prometheus is 
one of them, and this describes his nature. 



ii6 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

But he is not altogether a Titan. In a cer- 
tain sense he is on the side of Zeus, the 
Spirit, who enters upon the rulership of the 
world after the unbridled force of nature 
(Kronos) has been subdued. Prometheus is 
thus the representative of those worlds which 
have given man the progressive element, 
half nature-force, half spiritual force, man's 
will. The will points on the one side towards 
good, on the other, towards evil. Its fate is 
decided according as it leans to the spiritual 
or the perishable. This fate is that of man 
himself. He is chained to the perishable, 
the eagle gnaws him, he has to suffer. He 
can only reach the highest by seeking his 
destiny in solitude. He has a secret which 
is that the divine (Zeus) must marry a mor- 
tal (human consciousness bound up with the 
physical body), in order to beget a son, 
human wisdom (the Logos) which will de- 
liver the deity. By this means consciousness 
becomes immortal. He must not betray this 
secret till a Mystic (Heracles) comes to him, 
and annihilates the power which was per- 
petually threatening him with death. A 
being half animal, half human, a centatu*, is 



Mysteries and the Myth 117 

obliged to sacrifice if6elf to redeem man. 
The centaur is man himself, half animal, half 
spiritual. He must die in order that the 
purely spiritual man may be delivered. That 
which is disdained by Prometheus, human 
will, is accepted by Epimetheus, reason or 
prudence. But the gifts offered to Epime- 
theus are only troubles and sorrows, for 
reason clings to the transitory and perish- 
able. And only one thing is left — the hope 
that even out of the perishable the eternal 
may some day be bom. 

The thread running through the legends 

« 

of the Argonauts, Heracles and Prometheus, is 
continued in Homer's Odyssey. Here we find 
ourselves compelled to use our own method 
of interpretation. But on closer considera- 
tion of everything which has to be taken into 
account, even the sturdiest doubter must lose 
all scruples about such an interpretation. In 
the first place, it is a startling fact that it is 
also related of Odysseus that he descended 
into the nether- world. Whatever we may 
think about the author of the Odyssey in 
other respects, it is impossible to imagine his 
representing a mortal descending to the in- 



ii8 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

femaJ regions, without his bringing him into 
connection with what the journey into the 
nether- world meant to the Greeks. It meant 
the conquest of the perishable and the 
awakening of the eternal in the soul. It must 
therefore be conceded that Odysseus accom- 
plished this, and thereby his experiences 
and those of Heracles acquire a deeper sig- 
nificance. They become a delineation of the 
non-sensuous, of the soul's progress of de- 
velopment. Hence the narrative in the 
Odyssey is different from what is demanded 
by a history of outer events. The hero makes 
voyages in enchanted ships. Actual geo- 
graphical distances are dealt with in most 
arbitrary fashion. It is not in the least a 
question of what is physically real. This 
becomes comprehensible, if the physically 
real events are only related for the sake of 
illustrating the development of a soul. More- 
over the poet himself at the opening of the 
book says that it deals with a search for the 
soul: 

"O Muse, sing to me of the man full of 
resotirce, who wandered very much after he 
had destroyed the sacred city of Troy, and 



Mysteries and the Myth 119 

saw the cities of many men, and learned their 
manners. Many griefs also in his mind did 
he suffer on the sea, although seeking to 
preserve his own soul, and the return of his 
companions." 

We have before us a man seeking for the 
soul, for the divine, and his wanderings 
during this search are narrated. He comes 
to the land of the Cyclopes. These are un- 
couth giants, with only one eye and that in 
the centre of the forehead. The most terrible, 
Polyphemus, devotirs several of Odysseus' ^(6-^ 
companions. Odysseus himself escapes by 
blinding the Cyclopes. Here we have to do 
with the first stage of life's pilgrimage. 
Physical force or the lower nattire has to be 
overcome. It devours any one who does not 
take away its power, who does not blind 
it. Odysseus next comes to the island of the 
enchantress Circe. She changes some of his 
companions into grunting pigs. She also is 
subdued by Odysseus. Circe is the lower 
mind-force, which cleaves to the transitory. 
If misused, it may thrust men down even 
deeper into bestiality. Odysseus has to over- 
come it. Then he is able to descend into the 



A* J J </> 



I20 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

nether-world. He becomes a Mystic. Now 
he is exposed to the dangers which beset the 
Mystic on his progress from the lower to the 
higher degrees of initiation. He comes to 
the Sirens, who lure the passer-by to death 
by sweet magic sounds. These are the forms 
of the lower imagination, which are at first 
pursued by one who has freed himself from 
the power of the senses. He has got so far 
' that his spirit acts freely, but is not initiated. 
He pursues illusions, fropa the power of which 
he must break loose. I Odysseus has to accom- 
plish the awful passage between Scylla and 
Charybdis. The Mystic, at the beginning of 
the path wavers between spirit and sensuous- 
ness. He cannot yet grasp the full value of 
spirit, yet sensuousness has already lost its 
former attraction. All Odysseus* companions 
perish in a shipwreck; he alone escapes 
and comes to the nymph Calypso, who 
receives him kindly and takes care of him 
for seven years. At length, by order of 
Zeus, she dismisses him to his home. The 
Mystic has arrived at a stage at which all his 
fellow-aspirants fail; he alone, Odysseus, is 
worthy. He enjoys for a time, which is de- 



Mysteries and the Myth 121 

fined by the mystically symbolic number 
seven, the rest of gradual initiation. Before 
Odysseus arrives at his home, he comes to the 
isle of the Phaeaces, where he meets with 
a hospitable reception. The king's daughter 
gives him sympathy, and the king, Alcinous, 
entertains and honotirs him. Once more does 
Odysseus approach the worid and its joys, 
and the spirit which is attached to the worid, 
Nausicaa, awakes within him. But he finds 
the way home, to the divine. At first noth- 
ing good awaits him at home. His wife, 
Penelope, is surrounded by numerous suitors. 
Each one she promises to marry, when she 
has finished weaving a certain piece of work. 
She avoids keeping her promise by undoing 
every night what she has woven by day. 
Odysseus is obliged to vanquish the suitors 
before he can be reunited to his wife in 
peace. The goddess Athene changes him 
into a beggar so that he may not be recog- 
nised at his entrance; and thus he overcomes 
the suitors. Odysseus is seeking his own 
deeper consciousness, the divine powers of 
the soul. He wishes to be united with them* 
Before the Mystic can find them, he must 



122 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

overcome everjrthing which sues for the 
favour of that consciousness. The band of 
suitors spring from the world of lower reality, 
from perishable nature. The logic directed 
against them is a spinning which is always 
undone again after it has been spun. Wis- 
dom (the goddess Athene) is the sure guide 
to the deepest powers of the soul. It changes 
man into a beggar, i. e., it divests him of 
everything of a transitory nature. 

The Eleusinian festivals, which were cele- 
brated in Greece in honour of Demeter and 
Dionysos, were steeped in the wisdom of the 
Mysteries. A sacred road led from Athens to 
Eleusis. It was bordered with mysterious 
signs, intended to bring the soul into an ex- 
alted mood. In Eleusis were mysterious tem- 
ples, served by families of priests. The dignity 
and the wisdom which was bound up with it 
were inherited in these families from genera- 
tion to generation. (Instructive information 
about the organisation of these sanctuaries 
will be found in Karl Botticher's Ergdn- 
zungen zu den leizten Untersuchungen auj der 
AkropoUs in Athen, Philologus, Supplement, 



Mysteries and the Myth 123 

vol. iii, part 3.) The wisdom, which quali- 
fied for the priesthood, was the wisdom of 
the Greek Mysteries. The festivals, which 
were celebrated twice a year, represented 
the great worid-drama of the destiny of the 
divine in the world, and of that of the human 
soul. The lesser Mysteries took place in 
February, the greater in September. Initia- 
tions were connected with the festivals. The 
symbolical presentation of the cosmic and 
human drama formed the final act of the 
initiations of the Mystics, which took place 
here. 

The Eleusinian temples had been erected 
in honour of the goddess Demeter. She was 
a daughter of Kronos. She had given to 
Zeus a daughter, Persephone, before his mar- 
riage with Hera. Persephone, while playing, 
was carried away by Hades (Pluto), the god 
of the infernal regions.. Demeter wandered 
far and wide over the earth, seeking her 
with lamentations. Sitting on a stone in 
Eleusis, she was found by the daughters of 
Keleus, ruler of the place; in the form of an 
old woman she entered the service of his 
family, as nurse to the queen's son. She 



124 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

wished to endow this boy with immor- 
tality, and for this purpose hid him in fire 
every night. When his mother discovered 
this, she wept and lamented. After that the 
bestowal of immortaUty was impossible. De- 
meter left the house. Keleus then built a 
temple. The grief of Demeter for Persephone 
was limitless. She spread sterility over the 
earth. The gods had to appease her, to 
prevent a great catastrophe. Then Zeus in- 
duced Hades (Pluto) to release Persephone 
into the upper world, but before letting her 
go, he gave her a pomegranate to eat. This 
obliged her to return periodically to the 
nether-world for evermore. Henceforward 
she spent a third of the year there, and two- 
thirds in the world above. Demeter was 
appeased and returned to Olympus; but at 
Eleusis, the place of her suffering, she f otmded 
the cult which should keep her fate in 
remembrance. 

It is not difficult to discover the meaning 
of the myth of Demeter and Persephone. It 
is the soul which lives alternately above and 
below. The immortality of the soul and its 
perpetually recurring transformation by birth 



Mysteries and the Myth 125 

and death are thus symbolised. The sotd origi- 
nates from the immortal — Demeter. But it is 
led astray by the transitory, and even pre- 
vailed upon to share its destiny. It has par- 
taken of the fruits in the nether-world, the 
human soul is satisfied with the transitory, 
therefore it cannot permanently live in the 
heights of the divine. It has always to return 
to the realm of the perishable. Demeter is 
the representative of the essence from which 
human consciousness arose; but we must 
think of it as the consciousness which was 
able to come into being through the spiritual 
forces of the earth. Thus Demeter is the 
primordial essence of the earth, and the 
endowment of the earth with the seed-forces 
of the produce of the fields through her, 
points to a still deeper side of her being. 
This being wishes to give man immortality. 
She hides her nursling in fire by night. But 
man cannot bear the pure force of fire (the 
spirit). Demeter is obliged to abandon the 
idea. She is only able to found a temple 
service, through which man is able to partici- 
pate in the divine as far as this is possible. 
The Eleusinian festivals were an eloquent 



126 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

« 

confession of the belief in the immortality 
of the human soul. This confession found 
symbolic expression in the Persephone myth. 
Together with Demeter and Persephone 
Dionysos was commemorated in Eleusis. .As 
Demeter was honoured as the divine creatress 
of the eternal in man, so in Dionysos was 
honoured the ever-changing divine in the 
world. The divine poured into the world 
and torn to pieces in order to be spiritually 
reborn (c/. p. 90) had to be honoured together 
with Demeter. (A brilliant description of 
the spirit of the Eleusinian Mysteries is 
found in Edouard Schur6's book, Sanduaires 
d' Orient. Paris, 1898.) 



VI 



THE MYSTERY WISDOM OF EGYPT 

When leaving thy body behind thee, thou soar- 

est into the ether, 
Then thou becomest a god, inunortal, not subject 

to death. . 

IN this utterance of Empedocles {cf. p. 55) 
is epitomised what the ancient Egyptians 
thought about the eternal element in man 
and its connection with the divine. The 
proof of this may be found in the so-called 
Book of the Deadf which has been deciphered 
by the diligence of nineteenth-century in- 
vestigators (cf. Lepsius, Das Totenbuch der 
alten Agypter, Berlin, 1842). It is "the 
greatest continuous literary work which has 
come down to us from ancient Egypt. " All 
kinds of instructions and prayers are con- 
tained in it, which were put into the tomb 

127 



128 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

of each deceased person to serve as a guide 
when he was released from his mortal tene- 
ment. The most intimate ideas of the Egyp- 
tians about the Eternal and the origin of the 
world are contained in this work. These 
ideas point to a conception of the gods 
similar to that of Greek mysticism. 

Osiris gradually became the favourite and 
most universally recognised of the various 
deities worshipped in different parts of 
Egypt. In him were comprised the ideas 
about the other divinities. Whatever the 
majority of the Egyptian people may have 
thought about Osiris, the Book of the Dead 
indicates that the priestly wisdom saw in 
him a being that might be found in the 
human soul itself. Everything said about 
death and the dead shows this plainly. While 
the body is given to earth, and kept by it, 
the eternal part of man enters upon the path 
to the primordial eternal. It comes before 
the tribunal of Osiris, and the forty-two 
judges of the dead. The fate of the eternal 
part of man depends on the verdict of these 
judges. If the soul has confessed its sins and 
been deemed reconciled to eternal justice. 



Mystery Wisdom of Egypt 129 

invisible powers approach it and say: "The 
Osiris N. has been purified in the pool which 
is south of the field of Hotep and north of 
the field of Locusts, where the gods of 
verdure purify themselves at the fourth hour 
of the night and the eighth hour of the 
day with the image of the heart of the gods, 
passing from night to day." Thus, within 
the eternal cosmic order, the eternal part of 
man is addressed as an Osiris. After the 
name Osiris comes the deceased person's own 
name. And the one who is being united with 
the eternal cosmic order also calls himself 
"Osiris." "I am the Osiris N. Growing 
under the blossoms of the fig-tree is the name 
of the Osiris N. " Man therefore becomes an 
Osiris. Being Osiris is only a perfect stage 
in human development. It seems obvious 
that even the Osiris who is a judge within 
the eternal cosmic order is nothing else but 
a perfect man. Between being human and 
divine, there is a difference in degree and 
number. The mystic view of the mystery of 
"number" underlies this. Osiris as a cosmic 
being is One, yet on this account he exists 
undivided in each human soul. Each person 
9 



I30 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

is an Osiris, yet the One Osiris must be repre- 
sented as a separate being. Man is in course 
of development; at the end of his evolution- 
ary career, he becomes divine. In taking this 
j view, we must speak of divinity, or becom- 
; ing divine, rather than of a separate divine 
' being, complete in himself. 

It cannot be doubted but that according 
to this view only he can really enter upon 
the Osiris existence, who has reached the 
portals of the eternal cosmic order as an 
Osiris. Thus, the highest life which man 
can lead must consist in his changing himself 
into Osiris. Even during mortal life, a true 
man will live as a perfect Osiris as far as he 
can. He becomes perfect when he lives as 
an Osiris, when he passes through the ex- 
periences of Osiris. In this way, we see the 
deeper significance of the Osiris myth. It 
becomes the ideal of the man who wishes to 
awaken the eternal within him. 

Osiris is torn to pieces and killed by Ty- 
phon. The fragments of his body are pre- 
served and cared for by his consort, Isis. 
After his death he let a ray of his own light 
fall upon her, and she bore him Horus. This 



Mystery Wisdom of Egypt 131 

Horns takes up the earthly tasks of Osiris. 
He is the second Osiris, still imperfect, but 
progressing towards the true Osiris. 

The true Osiris is in the human soul, which 
at first is of a transitory nature; but as such, 
it is destined to give birth to the eternal. 
Man may, therefore, regard himself as the 
tomb of Osiris. The lower nature (Typhon) 
has killed the higher nature in him. Love in 
his soul (Isis) must take care of the dead 
fragments of his body, and then the higher 
nature, the eternal soul (Horus) will be bom, 
which can progress to Osiris life. The man 
who is aspiring to the highest kind of exis- 
tence must repeat in himself, as a microcosm, 
the macrocosmic imiversal Osiris process. 
This is the meaning of Egyptian initiation. 
What Plato (c/. p. 80) describes as a cosmic 
process, i. e., that the Creator has stretched 
the soul of the world on the body of the world 
in the form of a cross, and that the cosmic 
process is the release of this crucified soul, — 
this process had to be enacted in man on a 
smaller scale if he was to be qualified for 
Osiris life. The candidate for initiation had 
to develop himself in such a way that his 



132 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

soul-experience, his becoming an Osiris, be- 
came blended into one with the cosmic 
Osiris process. 

If we could look into the temples of initia- f 

tion in which people underwent the trans- 
formation into Osiris, we should see that 
what took place represented microcosmically 
the building of the cosmos. Man who pro- 
ceeded from the ''Father" was to give birth 
to the Son in himself. What he actually 
bears within him, divinity hidden under a 
spell, was to become manifest in him. This 
divinity is kept down in him by the power of 
the earthly nature; this lower nature must 
first be buried in order that the higher nature 
may arise. 

From this we are able to interpret what we 
are told about the incidents of initiation. 
The candidate was subjected to mysterious 
processes, by means of which his earthly 
nature was killed, and his higher part awak- 
ened. It is not necessary to study these 
processes in detail, if we understand their 
meaning. This meaning is contained in the 
confession possible to every one who went 
through initiation. He could say: "Before 



Mystery Wisdom of Egypt 133 

me was the endless perspective at the end of 
which is the perfection of the divine. I felt 
that the power of the divine is within me. 
I buried what in me keeps down that power. 
I died to earthly things. I was dead. I had 
died as a lower man, I was in the nether- 
worid. I had intercourse with the dead, i. e., 
with those who have already become part 
of the chain of the eternal cosmic order. 
After my sojourn in the nether-world, I arose 
from the dead. I overcame death, but now 
I have become different. I have nothing more 
to do with perishable nature. It has in me 
become saturated with the Logos. I now 
belong to those who live eternally, and who 
will sit at the right hand of Osiris. I myself 
shall be a true Osiris, part of the eternal 
cosmic order, and judgment of life and death 
will be placed in my hands. " The candidate 
for initiation had to submit to the experience 
which made such a confession possible to 
him. Thus this was an experience of the 
highest kind. 

Let us now imagine that a non-initiate 
hears of such experiences. He cannot know 
what has really taken place in the initiate's 



134 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

sotd. In his eyes, the initiate died physically, 
lay in the grave, and rose again. What 
is a spiritual reality at a higher stag^ of 
existence appears when expressed in the form 
of sense-reality as an event which breaks 
through the order of nature. It is a "mira- 
cle." So far initiation was a miracle. One 
who really wished to tmderstand it must have 
awakened within him powers to enable him 
to stand on a higher plane of existence. He 
must have approached these higher expe- 
riences through a course of life specially 
adapted for the purpose. In whatever way 
these prepared experiences were enacted in 
individual cases, they are always fotmd to be 
of quite a definite type. And so an initiate's 
life is a typical one. It may be described 
independently of the single personaUty. Or 
rather, an individual could only be de- 
scribed as being on the way to the divine 
if he had passed through these definite 
typical experiences. 

Such a personality was Buddha, living in 
the midst of his disciples. As such an one 
did Jesus appear to his community. Nowa- 
days we know of the parallelism that exists 



Mystery Wisdom of Egypt 135 

between the biographies of Buddha and of 
Jesus. Rudolf Seydel has convincingly proved 
this- parallelism in his book, Buddha und 
Christus. (Compare also the excellent essay 
by Dr. Hubbe-Schleiden, "Jesus ein Bud- 
dhist. ") We have only to follow out the 
two lives in detail in order to see that all 
objections to the parallelism are futile. 

The birth of Buddha is announced by a 
white elephant, which descends from heaven 
and declares to the queen, Maya, that she 
will bring forth a divine man, who "will 
attune all beings to love and friendship, and 
will unite them in a close alliance. " We read 
in St. Luke's Gospel: "To a virgin espoused 
to a man whose name was Joseph, of the 
house of David; and the virgin's name was 
Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and 
said, 'Hail, thou that art highly favoured. 
. . . Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy 
womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call 
his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall 
be called the Son of the Highest.' " 

The Brahmins, or Indian priests, who 
know what the birth of a Buddha means, 
interpret Maya's dream. They have a defi- 



136 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

nite, typical idea of a Buddha, to which the ^ 
life of the personality about to be bom will 
have to correspond. Similarly we read in 
Matthew ii. et seq., that when Herod "had 
gathered all the chief priests and scribes of 
the people together, he demanded of them 
where Christ should be bom." The Brah- 
min Asita says of Buddha: "This is the child 
which will become Buddha, the redeemer, the 
leader to immortality, freedom, and light." 
Compare with this Luke ii. 25 : "And, behold, 
there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name 
was Simeon ; and the same man was just and 
devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel : 
and the Holy Ghost was upon him. . . . And 
when the parents brought in the child Jesus, 
to do for him after the custom of the law, 
then took he him up in his arms, and blessed 
God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy 
servant depart in peace, according to thy 
word : for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, 
which thou hast prepared before the face 
of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, 
and the glory of thy people Israel." 

It is related of Buddha that at the age of 
twelve he was lost, and found again under a 



^ 



Mystery Wisdom of Egypt 137 

tree, surrounded by poets and sages of the 
olden time, whom he was teaching. With this 
incident the following passage in St. Luke 
corresponds: "Now his parents went to 
Jerusalem every year at the feast of the pass- 
over. And when he was twelve years old, 
they went up to Jerusalem after the custom 
of the feast. And when they had fulfilled 
the days, as they returned, the child Jesus 
tarried behind in Jerusalem ; and Joseph and 
his mother knew not of it. But they, sup- 
posing him to have been in the company, 
went a day's journey; and they sought him 
among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And 
when they found him not, they turned back 
again to Jerusalem, seeking him. And it 
came to pass that after three days they found 
him in the temple, sitting in the midst of 
the doctors, both hearing them, and asking 
them questions. And all that heard him 
were astonished at his understanding and 
answers" (Luke ii. 41-47). 

After Buddha had lived in solitude, and 
returned, he was received by the benediction 
of a virgin, "Blessed is thy mother, blessed 
is thy father, blessed is the wife to whom 



138 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

thou belongest." But he replied, "Only 
they are blessed who are in Nirvana," i. «., 
who have entered the eternal cosmic order. 
In St. Luke's Gospel (xi. 27), we read: "And 
it came to pass, as he spake these things, 
a certain woman of the company lifted up 
her voice and said unto him, ' Blessed is the 
womb that bare' thee, and the paps which 
thou hast sucked.' But he said, *Yea 
rather, blessed are they that hear the word of 
God, and keep it.'" 

In the course of Buddha's life, the tempter 
comes to him and promises him all the king- 
doms of the earth. Buddha refuses every- 
thing in the words: "I know well that I am 
destined to have a kingdom, but I do not 
desire an earthly one. I shall become Bud- 
dha and make all the world exult with joy. " 
The tempter has to own that his reign is over. 
Jesus answers the same temptation in the 
words: " Get thee hence, Satan, for it is writ- 
ten, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and 
him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil 
leaveth him" (Matthew iv. 10, 11). This 
description of the parallelism might be exten- 
ded to many other points with the same result. 



Mystery Wisdom of Egypt 139 

The life of Buddha ended sublimely. On 
a journey, he felt ill; he came to the river 
Hiranja, near Kuschinagara. There he lay 
down on a carpet which his favourite disciple, 
Ananda, spread for him. His body began 
to be luminous from within. He died trans- 
figured, his body irradiating light, saying, 
"Nothing endures." 

The death of Buddha corresponds with the 
transfiguration of Jesus. "And it came to 
pass about eight days after these sayings, 
he took Peter and John and James, and 
went up into a mountain to pray. And as 
he prayed, the fashion of his countenance 
was altered, and his raiment was white and 
glistering." 

Buddha's earthly life ends at this point, 
but it is here that the most important part of 
the life of Jesus begins, — ^His suffering, death, 
and resurrection. Other accounts of Bud- 
dha's death need not here be considered, 
even though they reveal profound aspects. 

The agreement in these two redemptive 
lives leads to the same conclusion. The nar- 
ratives themselves indicate the nature of this 
conclusion. When the priest-sages hear what 



140 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

kind of birth is to take place, they know 
what is involved. They know that they 
have to do with a Divine man; they know 
beforehand what kind of personality it is 
who is appearing. And therefore his course 
of life can only correspond with what they 
know about the life of a Divine man. In the 
wisdom of their Mysteries such a life is 
traced out for all eternity. It can only be as 
is must be; it comes into manifestation like 
an eternal law of nature. Just as a chemical 
substance can only behave in a certain 
definite way, so a Buddha or a Christ can 
only live in a certain definite way. His life 
is not described merely by writing a casual 
biography; it is much better described by 
giving the typical features which are con- 
tained for all time in the wisdom of the Mys- 
teries. The Buddha legend is no more a 
biography in the ordinary sense than the 
Gospels are meant to be a biography in the 
ordinary sense of the Christ Jesus. In neither 
is the merely accidental given; both relate 
the course of life marked out for a world- 
redeemer. The source of the two accounts is 
to be found in the mystery traditions and 



Mystery Wisdom of Egypt 141 

not in outer physical history. Jesus and 
Buddha are, to those who have recognised 
their Divine nature, initiates in the most 
eminent sense. Hence their lives are lifted 
out of things transitory, and what is known 
about initiates applies to them. ^ The casual 
incidents in their Uves axe not narrated. Of 
such it might be announced "In the begin- 
ning was the Word, and the Word was with 
God, and the Word was a God and the Word 
was made flesh and dwelt among us." 

But the life of Jesus contains more than 
that of Buddha. Buddha's ends with the 
Transfiguration; the most momentous part 
of the life of Jesus begins after the Trans- 
figuration. In the language of initiates this 
means that Buddha reached the point at 

*The great initiates raised themselves through initiation 
up into the sphere of the Logos and carried this Logos 
influence with them in their human life. The fundamental 
difference between them and Jesus was the fact that the 
Logos in the course of its evolution individualised itself 
into One Divine Individuality who descended into Jesus 
of Nazareth at the Baptism, and so that the Logos mani- 
fested its whole Divine individuality through the person- 
ality of Jesus as far as it was possible to express Divinity 
by human means. Such was the unique character of the 
Christ Jesus. 



142 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

which divine light begins to shine in men. 
He faces mortal death. He becomes the 
light of the world. Jesus goes farther. He 
does not physically die at the moment when 
the light of the world shines through him. 
At that moment he is a Buddha. But at that 
very moment he enters upon a stage which 
finds expression in a higher degree of initia- 
tion. He suffers and dies. What is earthly 
disappears. But the spiritual element, the 
light of the world, does not. His resurrec- 
tion follows. He is revealed to his followers 
as Christ. Buddha, at the moment of his 
Transfiguration, flows into the blissful life of 
the Universal Spirit. Christ Jesus awakens 
the Universal Spirit once more, but in a hu- 
man form, in present existence. Such an event 
had formerly taken place at the higher stages 
of initiation. Those initiated in the spirit 
of the Osiris myth attained to such a resur- 
rection. In the life of Jesus, this "great" 
initiation was added to the Buddha initiation. 
Buddha demonstrated by his life that man 
is the Logos, and that he returns to the 
Logos, to the light, when his earthly part 
dies. In Jesus, the Logos himself became 



Mystery Wisdom of Egypt 143 

a person. In him, the Word was made 
flesh. 

Therefore, what was enacted in the inner- 
most recesses of the temples by the guardians 
of the ancient Mysteries has been appre- 
hended, through Christianity, as a historical 
fact. The followers of Christ Jesus confessed 
their belief in Him, the initiate, of tmique and 
supreme greatness. He proved to them that 
the worid is divine. In the Christian com- 
munity, the wisdom of the Mysteries was 
indissolubly bound up with the personality 
of Christ Jesus. That which man previously 
had sought to attain through the Mysteries 
was now replaced by the belief that Christ 
had lived on earth, and that the faithful 
belonged to him. 

Henceforward, part of what was formerly 
only to be gained through mystical methods, 
could be replaced, in the Christian com- 
munity, by the conviction that the divine 
had been manifested in the Word present 
amongst them. Not that for which each 
individual sotd underwent a long preparation 
was now decisive, but what those had heard 
and seen who were with Jesus, and what 



144 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

was handed down by them. "That which 
was from the beginning, which we have heard, 
which . . . our hands have handled, of the 
Word of life • . . that which we have seen 
and heard declare we tmto you, that ye also 
may have fellowship with us. " Thus do we 
read in the first Epistle of St. John. And 
this immediate reality is to embrace all 
future generations in a living bond of imion, 
and as a church is mystically to extend from 
race to race. It is in this sense that the words 
of St. Augustine are to be imderstood, "I 
should not believe the Gospels imless the 
authority of the Catholic Church induced 
me to do so." Thus the Gk)spels do not 
contain within themselves testimony to their 
truth, but they are to be believed because 
they are f oimded on the personality of Jesus, 
and because the Church from that personal- 
ity mysteriously draws the power to make 
the truth of the Gospels manifest. 

The Mysteries handed down traditionally 
the means of arriving at truth; the Christian 
commimity itself propagates the truth. To 
the confidence in the mystical forces which 
spring up in the inmost being of man, during 



Mystery Wisdom of Egypt 145 

initiation, was added the confidence in the 
One, primordial Initiator. 

The Mystics sought to become divine, 
they wished to experience divinity. Jesus 
was divine, we must hold fast to Him, and 
then we shall become partakers of His divin- 
ity, in the community foimded by Him; this 
became Christian conviction. What became 
divine in Jesus was made so for all His fol- 
lowers. "Lo, I am with you alway, even 
tmto the end of the worid." The one who 
was bom in Bethlehem has an eternal charac- 
ter independent of time. The Christmas 
anthem thus speaks of the birth of Jesus, 
as if it took place each Christmas, "Christ 
is bom to-day, the Saviour has come into 
the world to-day, to-day the angels are sing- 
ing on earth." 

In the Christ-experience is to be seen 
a definite stage of initiation. When the 
Mystic of pre-Christian times passed through 
this Christ-experience, he was, through his 
initiation, in a state which enabled him to 
perceive something spiritually, — ^in higher 
worlds, — to which no fact in the world of 
sense corresponded. He experienced that 

10 



146 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

which surrounds the Mystery of Golgotha 
in the higher world. If the Christian Mystic 
goes through this experience by initiation, 
he at the same time beholds the historical 
event which took place on Golgotha, and 
knows that in that event, enacted within the 
physical world, there is the same content 
as was formerly only in the supersensible 
facts of the Mysteries. Thus there was 
poured out on the Christian commtmity, 
through the "Mysteries of Golgotha," that 
which formerly had been poured out on the 
Mystics within the temples. And initiation 
gives Christian Mystics the possibility of be- 
coming conscious of what is contained in 
the ** Mystery of Golgotha," whereas faith 
makes man an unconscious partaker of the 
mystical stream which flowed from the events 
depicted in the New Testament, and which 
has ever since been pervading the spiritual 
life of humanity. 



VII 



THE GOSPELS 

THE accounts of the life of Jesus which 
can be submitted to historical exam- 
ination are contained in the Gospels. All 
that does not come from this source might, 
in the opinion of one of those who are con- 
sidered the greatest historical authorities on 
the subject (Hamack), be "easily written 
on a quarto page. " 

But what kind of documents are these 
Gospels? The fotirth, that of St. John, differs 
so much from the others, that 'those who 
think themselves obliged to follow the path 
of historical research in order to study the 
subject, come to the conclusion: "If John 
possesses the genuine tradition about the 
life of Jesus, that of the first three Evangelists 
(the S3moptists) is untenable. If the Synop- 
tists are right, the Fotuth Gospel must be 

X47 



148 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

rejected as a historical source" (Otto 
Schmiedel, Die Hauptprohleme der Leben 
Jesu Forschung, p. 15). This is a statement 
made from the standpoint of the historical 
investigator. 

In the present work, in which we are 
dealing with the mystical contents of the 
Gospels, such a point of view is neither to be 
accepted nor rejected. But attention must 
certainly be drawn to such an opinion as the 
following: "Measured by the standard of 
consistency, inspiration, and completeness, 
these writings leave very much to be de- 
sired, and even measured by the ordinary 
human standard, they suffer from not a 
few imperfections." This is the opinion of 
a Christian theologian (Hamack, Wesen des 
Christentums) . 

One who takes' his stand on a mystical 
origin of the Gospels easily finds an explana- 
tion of what is apparently contradictory, and 
also discovers harmony between the fourth 
Gospel and the three others. For none of 
these writings are meant to be mere historical 
tradition in the ordinary sense of the word. 
They do not profess to give a historical 



The Gospels 149 

biography (c/. p. 140 et seq.). What they 
intended to give was ab-eady shadowed forth 
in the traditions of the Mysteries, as the » 
typical life of a Son of God. It was these 
traditions which were drawn upon, not his- j; 
tory. Now it was only natural that these 
traditions shovdd not be in complete verbal 
agreement in every Mystery centre. Still, 
the agreement was so close that the Bud- 
dhists narrated the hfe of their divine man 
almost in the same way in which the Evangel- 
ists narrated the life of Christ. But natur- 
ally there were diflFerences. We have only to 
assume that the four EvangeUsts drew from 
four different mystery traditions. It testifies 
to the extraordinary personality of Jesus 
that in four writers, belonging to different 
traditions, he awakened the belief that he 
was one who so perfectly corresponded with 
their type of an initiate, that they were able 
to describe him as one who lived the typical 
life marked out in their Mysteries. They 
each described his life according to their own 
mystic traditions. And if the narratives of 
the first three Evangelists resemble each 
other, it proves nothing more than that they 



150 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

drew from similar mystery traditions. The 
fourth Evangelist saturated his Gospel with 
ideas which are» in many respects, reminiscent 
of the religious philosopher, Philo (c/. p. 82). 
This only proves that he was rooted in the 
same mystic tradition as Philo. 

There are various elements in the Gospels. 
Firstly, facts are related, which seem to lay 
claim to being historical. Secondly, there 
are parables, in which the narrative form is 
only used to symbolise a deeper truth. And, 
thirdly, there are teachings characteristic of 
the Christian conception of life. In St. John's 
Gospel there is no real parable. The source 
from which he drew was a mystical school 
which considered parables unnecessary. 

The part played by ostensibly historical 
facts and parables in the first three Gospels 
is clearly shown in the narrative of the 
cursing of the fig tree. In St. Mark xi. 11- 
14, we read: "And Jesus entered into Jeru- 
salem, and into the temple: and when he 
had looked round about upon all things, and 
now the eventide was come, he went out 
tmto Bethany with the twelve. And on the 
morrow, when they were come from Bethany, 



The Gospels 151 

he was hungry: and seeing a fig tree afar off 
having leaves, he came, if haply he might 
find any thing thereon: and when he came 
to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the 
time of figs was not yet. And Jestis answered 
and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee 
hereafter for ever." In the corresponding 
passage in St. Luke's Gospel, he relates a 
parable (xiii. 6, 7): "He spake also this 
parable ; A certain man had a fig tree planted 
in his vineyard; and he came and sought 
fruit thereon, and found none. Then said 
he unto the dresser of his vineyard. Behold 
these three years I come seeking fruit on this 
fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why 
cumbereth it the ground? " This is a parable 
symbolising the uselessness of the old teach- • 
ing, represented by the barren fig tree. That 
which is meant metaphorically, St. Mark 
relates as a fact appearing to be historical. 
We may therefore assume that, in general, 
facts related in the Gospels are not to be 
taken as only historical, or as if they were 
only to hold good in the physical world, but 
as mystical facts; as experiences, for the 
recognition of which spiritual vision is neces- 



152 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

sary» and which arise from various mystical 
traxlitions. If we admit this, the difference 
between the Gospel of St. John and the 
Synoptists ceases to exist. For mystical 
interpretation, historical research has not to 
be taken into account. Even if one or 
another Gospel were written a few decades 
earlier or later than the others, they are all 
of like historical value to the mystic, St. 
John's Gospel as well as the others. 

And the "miracles" do not present the 
least difficulty when interpreted mystically. 
They are supposed to break through the 
laws of nature. They only do this when 
they are considered as events which have 
so come about on the physical plane, in the 
perishable world, that ordinary sense-per- 
ception covdd see through them offhand. But 
if they are experiences which can only be 
fathomed on a higher stage of existence, 
namely the spiritual, it is obvious that they 
cannot be understood by means of the laws 
of physical nature. 

It is thus first of all necessary to read the 
Gospels correctly; then we shall know in 
what way they are speaking of the Founder 



The Gospels 153 

of Christianity. Their intention is to relate 
his life in the manner in which communica- 
tions were made through the Mysteries. They 
relate it in the way in which a Mystic wovdd 
speak of an initiate. Only, they give the 
initiation as the unique characteristic of one 
unique being. And they make salvation 
depend on man's holding fast to the initiate 
of this unique order. What had come to the 
initiates was the '* kingdom of God." This 
unique being has brought the kingdom to all 
who will cleave to him. What was formeriy 
the personal concern of each individual has 
become the common concern of all those 
who are willing to acknowledge Jesus as their 
Lord. 

We can imderstand how this came about 
if we admit that the wisdom of the Mysteries 
was imbedded in the popvdar religion of the 
Jews. Christianity arose out of Judaism. 
We need not therefore be stirprised at find- 
ing engrafted on Judaism, together with 
Christianity those mystical ideas which we 
have seen to be the common property of 
Greek and Egyptian spiritual life. If we 
examine national religions, we find various 



154 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

conceptions of the spiritual; but if, in each 
case, we go back to the deeper wisdom of 
the priests, which proves to be the spir- 
itual nucleus of them all, we find agree- 
ment ever3rwhere. Plato knows himself to 
be in agreement with the priest-sages of 
Egypt when he is tr3ring to set forth the 
main content of Greek wisdom in his philo- 
sophical view of the universe. It is related 
of Pythagoras that he travelled to Egypt 
and India, and was instructed by the sages 
in those countries. Thinkers who lived in 
the earlier days of Christianity found so 
much agreement between the philosophical 
teachings of Plato and the deeper meaning 
of the Mosaic writings, that they called 
Plato a Moses with Attic tongue. 

Thus Mystery wisdom existed eversrwhere. 
In Judaism it acquired a form which it had 
to assume if it was to become a world-religion. 

Judaism expected the Messiah. It is not 
to be wondered at that when the personality 
of an unique initiate appeared, the Jews 
could only conceive of him as being the 
Messiah. Indeed this circumstance throws 
light on the fact that what had been an 



The Gospels 155 

individual matter in the Mysteries became 
an affair of the whole nation. The Jewish 
religion had from the beginning been a 
national religion. The Jewish people looked 
upon itself as one organism. Its Jao was 
the God of the whole nation. If the son of 
this God were to be bom, he must be the 
redeemer of the whole nation. The individual 
Mystic was not to be saved apart from others, 
the whole nation was to share in the redemp- 
tion. That one is to die for all is founded on 
the fundamental ideas of the Jewish religion. 
It is also certain that there were mysteries 
in Judaism, which could be brought out of 
the dimness of a secret cult into the popular 
religion. A fully-developed mysticism ex- 
isted side by side with the priestly wisdom 
which was attached to the outer formalism of 
the Pharisees. This mystery wisdom is spok- 
en of among the Jews just as it is elsewhere. 
When one day an initiate was speaking of it, 
and his hearers sensed the secret meaning of 
his words, they said: "Old man, what hast 
thou done? Oh, that thou hadst kept silence! 
Thou thinkest to navigate the boundless 
ocean without srft or mast. This is what 



156 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

thou art attempting. Wilt thou fly upwards? 
Thou canst not. Wilt thou descend into 
the depths? An immeasurable abyss is yawn- 
ing before thee." And the Kabbalists, from 
whom the above is taken, also speak of four 
Rabbis; and these four Rabbis sought the 
secret path to the divine. The first died; 
the second lost his reason; the third caused 
monstrous evils, and only the fourth. Rabbi 
Akiba, went in and out of the spiritual world 
in peace. 

We thus see that within Judaism also there 
was a soil in which an initiate of an unique 
kind could develop. He had only to say to 
himself: "I will not let salvation be limited 
to a few chosen people. I will let all people 
participate in it. " He was to carry out into 
the world at large what the elect had ex- 

« 

perienced in the temples of the Mysteries. 
He had to be willing to take upon himself to 
be, in spirit, to his community, through his 
personality, that which the cult of the Mys- 
teries had heretofore been to those who took 
part in them. It is true he could not at once 
give to the whole community the experiences 
of the Mysteries, nor would he have wished 



The Gospels 1 57 

to do so. But he wished to give to all the 
certainty of the truth contemplated in the 
Mysteries. He wished to cause the life, 
which flowed within the Mysteries, to flow 
through the ftirther historical evolution of 
humanity, and thus to raise mankind to a 
higher stage of existence. ''Blessed are they 
that have not seen, and yet have believed." 
He wished to plant imshakably in human 
hearts, in the form of confidence, the cer- 
tainty that the divine really exists. One 
who stands outside initiation and has this 
confidence will certainly go further than one 
who is without it. It must have weighed 
like a mountain on the mind of Jesus to 
think that there might be many standing 
outside who do not find the way. He wished 
to lessen the gulf between those to be initiated 
and the ''people." Christianity was to be a 
means by which every one might find the 
way. Should one or another not yet be ripe, 
at any rate he is not cut off from the possibil- 
ity of sharing, more or less unconsciously, in 
the benefit of the spiritual current flowing 
through the Mysteries. "The Son of Man 
is come to seek and to save that which was 



158 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

lost. " Henceforward even those who cannot 
yet share in initiation may enjoy some of the 
fruits of the Mysteries. Henceforth the 
Kingdom of God was not to be dependent on 
outward ceremonies : " Neither shall they say, 
Lo here! or, Lo there! for, behold, the King- 
dom of God is within you. " With Jesus the 
point in question was not so much how far 
this or that person advanced in the kingdom 
of the spirit, as that all should be convinced 
that that kingdom exists. "In this rejoice 
not, that the spirits are subject tmto you; 
but rather rejoice, because your names are 
written in heaven. " That is, have confidence 
in the divine. The time will come when 
you will find it. ^ 



VIII 



THE LAZARUS MIRACLE 



AMONGST the "miracles'' attributed to 
Jesus, very special importance must be 
attached to the raising of Lazarus at Bethany. 
Everything combines to assign a prominent 
position in the New Testament to that which 
is here related by the Evangelist. We must ; 
bear in mind that St. John alone relates it, 
the Evangelist who by the weighty words 
with which he opens his Gospel claims for 
it a very definite interpretation. 

St. John begins with these sentences: ** In 
the beginning was the Word, and the Word 
was with God, and the word was a God. . . . 
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt 
among us, and we beheld his glory, a glory 
as of the only begotten of the Father, full of 
grace and truth. " 

One who places such words at the be- 

159 



i6o Christianity as Mystical Fact 

ginning of his narrative is plainly indicating 
that he wishes it to be interpreted in a 
very deep sense. The man who approaches 
it with merely intellectual explanations, or 
otherwise in a superficial way, is like one 
who thinks that Othello on the stage really 
murders Desdemona. What then is it that 
St. John means to say in his introductory 
words? He plainly says that he is speak- 
ing of something eternal, which existed at 
the beginning of things. He relates facts, 
but they are not to be taken as facts ob- 
served by the eye and ear, and upon which 
logical reason exercises its skill. He hides 
behind facts the ''Word" which is in the 
Cosmic Spirit. For him, the facts are the 
medium in which a higher meaning is ex- 
pressed. And we may therefore assume that 
in the fact of a man being raised from the 
dead, a fact which offers the greatest difficul- 
ties to the eye, ear, and logical reason, the 
very deepest meaning lies concealed. 

Another thing has to be taken into con- 
sideration. Renan, in his Life of JesuSf has 
pointed out that the raising of Lazarus un- 
doubtedly had a decisive influence on the end 



The Lazarus Miracle i6i 

of the life of Jesus. Such a thought appears 
impossible from the point of view which 
Renan takes. For why should the fact that 
the belief was being circulated amongst the 
populace that Jesus had raised a man from 
the dead appear to his opponents so danger- 
ous that they asked the question, "Can 
Jesus and Judaism exist side by side?" It 
does not do to assert with Renan: "The other 
miracles of Jesus were passing events, re- 
peated in good faith and exaggerated by 
popular report, and they were thought no 
more of after they had happened. But this 
one was a real event, publicly known, and by 
means of which it was sought to silence the 
Pharisees. All the enemies of Jesus were 
exasperated by the sensation it caused. It is 
related that they sought to kill Lazarus." 
It is incomprehensible why this should be if 
Renan were right in his opinion that all that 
happened at Bethany was the getting up of 
a mock scene, intended to strengthen belief 
in Jesus. "Perhaps Lazarus, still pale from 
his illness, had himself wrapped in a shroud 
and laid in the family grave. These tombs 
were large rooms hewn out of the rock, and 

ZI 



1 62 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

entered by a square opening which was closed 
by an immense slab. Martha and Mary 
hastened to meet Jesus» and brought him 
to the grave before he had entered Bethany. 
The painftil emotion felt by Jesus at the 
grave of the friend whom he believed to be 
dead (John xi. 33, 38) might be taken by 
those present for the agitation and tremors 
which were wont to accompany miracles. 
According to popular belief, divine power 
in a man was like an epileptic and con- 
vulsive element. Continuing the above hy- 
pothesis, Jesus wished to see once more the 
man he had loved, and the stone having 
been rolled away, Lazarus came forth in 
his grave-clothes, his head botmd with a nap- 
kin. This apparition naturally was looked 
upon by every one as a resurrection. Faith 
knows no other law than the interest of 
what it holds to be true. " Does not such 
an explanation appear absolutely naive, when 
Renan adds the following opinion: "Every- 
thing seems to suggest that the miracle of 
Bethany materially contributed to hasten 
the death of Jesus"? Yet there is undoubt- 
edly an accurate perception underl3dng this 



The Lazarus Miracle 163 

last assertion of Renan. But with the means 
at his disposal he is not able to interpret or 
justify his opinion. 

Something of quite special importance 
must have been accomplished by Jesus at 
Bethany, in order that such words as the 
following may be accounted for: "Then 
gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees 
a council, and said, 'What do we? for this 
man doeth many miracles'" (John xi. 47). 
Renan, too, conjectures something special: 
"It must be acknowledged," he says, "that 
John's narrative is of an essentially different 
kind from the accounts of miracles of which 
the Synoptists are full, and which are the 
outcome of the popular imagination. Let 
us add that John is the only Evangelist with 
accurate knowledge of the relations of Jesus 
with the family at Bethany, and that it 
would be incomprehensible how a creation 
of the popular mind could have been inserted 
in the frame of such personal reminiscences. 
It is, therefore, probable that the miracle in 
question was not amongst the wholly legend- 
ary ones, for which no one is responsible. In 
other words, I think that something took ^ 



1 64 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

place at Bethany which was Icx^ked upon as a 
resurrection." Does not this really mean 
that Renan surmises that something hap- 
pened at Bethany which he cannot explain? 
He entrenches himself behind the words: 
''At this distance of time, and with only one 
text bearing obvious traces of subsequent 
additions, it is impossible to decide whether, 
in the present case, all is fiction, or whether a 
real fact which happened at Bethany served 
as the basis of the report that was spread 
abroad. " Might it not be that we have to do 
here with something of which we might 
arrive at a true understanding merely by 
reading the text in the right way? In that 
case, we should perhaps no longer speak of 
''fiction." 

It must be admitted that the whole narra- 
tive of this event in St. John's Gospel is 
wrapped in a mysterious' veil. To show this, 
we need only mention one point. If the 
narrative is to be taken in the literal, physical 
sense, what meaning have these words of 
Jesus: "This sickness is not tmto death, but 
for the glory of God, that the Son of God 
might be glorified thereby." This is the 



The Lazarus Miracle 165 

usual translation of the words, but the actual 
state of the case is better arrived at, if they 
are translated, '*for the vision (or manifesta- 
tion) of God, that the Son of God might be 
manifested thereby/' This translation is 
also correct according to the Greek original. 
And what do these other words mean, ** Jesus 
said tmto her, I am the resurrection, and the 
life: he that believeth in me, though he 
were dead, yet shall he live"? (John xi. 4, 
25). It would be a triviality to think that 
Jesus meant to say that Lazarus had only 
become ill in order that Jesus might manifest 
His skill through him. And it would again 
be a triviality to think that Jesus meant to 
assert that faith in Him brings to life again 
one who in the ordinary sense is dead. What 
would there be remarkable about a person 
who has risen from the dead, if after his 
resurrection he were the same as he was 
before dying? Indeed what would be the 
meaning of describing the life of such a 
person in the words, **I am the resurrection 
and the life"? Life and meaning at once 
come into the words of Jesus if we under- 
stand them to be the expression of a spiritual 



1 66 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

occurrence and then, in a certain sense, 
literally as they stand in the text. Jesus 
actually says that He is the resurrection that 
has happened to Lazarus, and that He is 
the life that Lazarus is living. Let us 
take literally what Jesus is in St. John's 
Gospel. 

He is "the Word that was made flesh." 
He is the Eternal that existed in the begin- 
ning. If he is really the resurrection, then 
the Eternal, Primordial has risen again in 
Lazarus. We have, therefore, to do with a 
resurrection of the eternal "Word," :and this 
"Word" is the life to which Lazarus has 
been raised. It is a case of illness, not one 
leading to death, but to the glory, i. e., the 
manifestation of God. If the eternal Word 
has reawakened in Lazarus, the whole event 
conduces to manifest God in Lazarus. For 
by means of the event Lazarus has become a 
different man. Before it, the Word, or spirit 
did not live in him, now it does. The spirit 
has been bom within him. It is true that 
every birth is accompanied by illness, that 
of the mother, but the illness leads to new life, 
not to death. In Lazarus that part of him 



The Lazarus Miracle 167 



»f 



becon^es ill from which the "new man, 
permeated by the "Word,** is bom. 



Where is the grave from which the " Word ** 
is bom? To answer this question we have 
only to remember Plato, who calls man's 
body the tomb of the soul. And we have 
only to recall Plato's speaking of a kind of 
resurrection when he alludes to the coming 
to life of the spiritual world in the body. 
What Plato calls the spiritual soul, St. John 
denominates the "Word." And for him, 
Christ is the "Word." Plato might have 
said, "One who becomes spiritual has caused 
something divine to rise out of the grave of 
his body." For St. John, that which took 
place through the life of Jesus was that 
resurrection. It is not surprising, there- 
fore, if he makes Jesus say, "I am the 
resurrection. " 

There can be no doubt that the occurrence 
at Bethany was an awakening in the spiritual 
sense. Lazarus became something different 
from what he was before. He was raised 
to a life of which the Eternal Word could say, 
I am that life." What then took place in 



i< 



i68 Christianity as Mystical Fact 

Lazarus? The spirit came to life within 
him. He became a partaker of the life which 
is eternal. We have only to express his 
experience in the words of those who were 
initiated into the Mysteries, and the meaning 
at once becomes clear. What does Plutarch 
(vide supra p. 26 et seq.) say about the 
object of the Mysteries? They were to serve 
to withdraw the soul from bodily life and 
to unite it with the gods. Schelling thus 
describes the feelings of an initiate : 

*'The initiate through his initiation be- 
came a Unk in the magic chain, he himself 
became a Kabir. He was admitted into an 
indestructible association and, as ancient 
inscriptions express it, joined to the army 
of the higher gods" (Schelling, Philosophic 
der Offenbarung), And the revolution that 
took place in the life of one who received 
initiation cannot be more significantly de- 
…[truncated]