Christianity as Mystical Fact, and the Mysteries of AntiquitySteiner, Rudolf
Religion
Christianity as Mystical Fact, and the Mysteries of Antiquity
Steiner, Rudolf
Anthroposophy; Christianity and other religions; Mysteries, Religious; Mysticism
Where is the grave from which the "Word" is born? 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, therefore, 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 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 became a link 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, _Philosophie der Offenbarung_).
And the revolution that took place in the life of one who received
initiation cannot be more significantly described than in the words
spoken by Aedesius to his disciple, the Emperor Constantine: "If one
day thou shouldst take part in the Mysteries, thou wilt feel ashamed
of having been born merely as a man."
If we fill our souls with such feelings as these, we shall gain the
right attitude towards the event that took place at Bethany, and have
a peculiarly characteristic experience through St. John's narrative. A
certainty will dawn upon us which cannot be obtained by any logical
interpretation or by any attempt at rationalistic explanation. A
mystery in the true sense of the word is before us. The "Eternal Word"
entered into Lazarus. In the language of the Mysteries, he became an
initiate (_vide_ p. 132 _et seq._), and the event narrated to us must
be the process of initiation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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