Christianity as Mystical Fact
GA 8
IV. Plato as a Mystic
[ 1 ] The importance of the Mysteries to the spiritual life of the Greeks may be realized from Plato’s conception of the universe. There is only one way of understanding him completely. It is to place him in the light which streams forth from the Mysteries.
Plato’s later disciples, the 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 that the wisdom of the Mysteries was viewed. Even if the seventh Platonic letter is not from his hand, as is alleged, it does not signify for our present purpose, for it does not matter whether it was he or another who gave utterance to the 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 obtained 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 of one’s self 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 writer'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 sensation, an experience not gained by instantaneous communication, but by “the making of one’s 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 approach to Plato’s Dialogues is not a matter of indifference. They will mean more or less to us according 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 1isteners thrilled in the atmosphere of the Mysteries. His words awoke overtones that vibrated in sympathy, but these overtones needed the atmosphere of the Mysteries, or they died away without having been heard.
[ 2 ] In the centre of the world of the Platonic Dialogues stands the personality of Socrates. We need not here touch upon the historical aspect. 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 merely a moment of life like other moments. He approached 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. Phædo says this in the Dialogue on the Immortality of the Soul: “Truly I found myself in the strangest state of mind. 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 demeanor 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 disciples about immortality. His personality, which had learned by experience the worthlessness of life, furnishes proof far stronger than any logic or arguments founded on reason. It seems as though 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 something temporal dissolves into nothing there seems to be the medium in which it is possible for eternal harmonies to resound.
[ 3 ] 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 a red rose 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 are what Socrates points to, and first of all to the experience of wisdom itself.
What does he desire who aspires to wisdom? He wishes to free himself from what the senses offer him in every-day perception. He seeks for the spirit in the sense 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 indignant 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 drinking? 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 would 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 he, more than all other men, relieves his soul of association with the body.”
This justified Socrates in saying that the search for Wisdom 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 demand from spirit the same that his senses offer? Socrates thus expresses himself on this point: “But how about reasonable knowledge itself? Is the body a hindrance or not, if we take it as a companion on our search for knowledge? I mean, do sight and hearing procure for us any truth? Or is what the poets sing meaningless, namely, 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 we perceive by means of our bodily senses appears and disappears, and it is this appearing and disappearing that is the cause of our being deceived But when with our reasonable insight we look deeper into things, the eternal element in them is imparted to us. Thus the senses do not offer 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 tell 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 that transcends sense perception? Therefore the truth or falsity in things is decided by something within us that opposes the physical body and is consequently not subject to its laws. First of all, this something cannot be subject to the laws of growth and decay, for it contains truth within itself. Now, truth cannot have a yesterday and a today; 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 approaches an eternal element that lives within him. If we immerse ourselves wholly in spirit we live wholly in truth. The things of sense around us are no longer present merely in their physical form. Says Socrates: “And he accomplishes this most perfectly who approaches everything as much as possible with the spirit only, without either looking round When he is thinking, or calling in the aid of any other Sense when reflecting; but who, making 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 disturbs the soul and does not allow her to attain truth and insight when associated with her... 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 death.” Moreover, Socrates bases all higher morality on liberation from the body. He who follows only 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 even when these demands imperil the body. And who is prudent? Is not this he who “does not let himself be carried away by desires, but who maintains an indifferent and moral demeanor with regard to them? Therefore are not those alone prudent 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.
[ 4 ] Thence Socrates goes on to characterize rational cognition itself. What, after all, is knowledge? Undoubtedly we arrive at it by forming judgments. I form a judgment about some object; for instance, I say to myself: the object before me is a tree. How do I come to say that? I can only say 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 remember a physical object. I say that something I behold is tree, if it resembles other things which I have previously observed, and which I know are trees. Memory 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 reality two things are never exactly alike. I can only find a likeness in certain respects. The idea of a perfect similarity therefore arises within me without its having any counterpart in reality. And this idea helps me to form a judgment, as memory helps me to a judgment and to insight. Just as one tree reminds me of others, so am I reminded of the idea of similarity by looking at two things from a certain point of view. Thus, there arise within me thoughts like Memories which are not due to physical reality.
All manner of knowledge not borrowed from sense-reality is grounded on such thoughts. The whole of mathematics consists of them. He would be a bad geometrician who could only bring into mathematical relations what he can see with his eyes and touch with 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 mathematics teaches will be eternally true, even if tomorrow 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 mathematical truths would not apply, but these would be none the less true in themselves.
It is only when the soul is alone with herself that she can bring forth these eternal truths. She is at these times related to the true and eternal, and not to the ephemeral and deceptive. Hence Socrates says: “When the soul returning into herself reflects, she goes straight to what is pure and everlasting and immortal and like unto herself; and being related to this, cleaves unto it when the soul is alone, and is not hindered. And then the soul rests from her mistakes, and is like unto herself, even as the eternal is, with whom the soul is now in touch. This state of soul is called reason... Look now whether it does not follow from all that has been said that the soul is most like the divine, immortal, reasonable, monogeneous, indissoluble, what is always the same and like unto itself; and that on the other hand the body most resembles what is human and mortal, unreasonable, multiform, soluble, never the same nor remaining equal to itself... If, therefore this be so, the soul goes to what is like herself, to the immaterial, to the divine, immortal, reasonable. There she attains to bliss, freed from error and ignorance, from fear and undisciplined love and all other human evils. There she 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 characteristic nature of spirit that Socrates points his hearers. If they find it, they see with their own spiritual eyes that it is eternal. The dying Socrates does not prove immortality; 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 soul. 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 becoming than even has to do with odd. But death belongs to becoming. Therefore the soul has nothing to do with death. Must we not say of what is immortal that it admits of mortality as little as even admits of odd? Starting from this point, Socrates adds: “Must we not maintain, if the immortal is imperishable, that it is impossible for the soul to come to an end when death arrives? For from what has been already shown she does not admit of death, nor can she die any more than three can be an even number”
[ 5 ] Let us review the whole development of this dialogue, in which Socrates brings his hearers to behold the Eternal in human personality. The hearers accept his thoughts, and they search within themselves to see whether or not they can find in their inner experiences something that 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 themselves 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 not alive in them before. Is not this comparable with an initiation? And does it not 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 passages. As a philosophical teacher Plato wished to be what the initiator into the Mysteries was, as far as this was compatible with the philosophic manner of communication. It is evident that Plato feels himself in harmony with the Mysteries. He thinks he is on the right path only when this leads to the initiate’s goal. He expresses himself on the subject in the ,em>Timæus as follows: “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 uncreated—have the special duty, if we have not quite lost our way, to call upon and implore the gods and goddesses that we may teach everything first in conformity with their spirit, and next in harmony with ourselves” And Plato promises those who follow this path: “that Divinity, as a deliverer, will grant them illuminating teaching at the conclusion of their devious and wandering researches.”
[ 6 ] It is especially the Timaeus that reveals to us the Mystery character of the Platonic cosmogony. At the very beginning of this dialogue there is mention of an initiation. Solon is initiated by an Egyptian priest into the evolution of the worlds and the way in which eternal truths are expressed in the imagery of traditional myths. “There have already been many and various destructions of part of the human race,” says the Egyptian priest instructing 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 related in your country that Phaeton, the son of Helios, once mounted his father’s chariot, and as he did not know how to drive it, everything 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 everything on the earth by much fire. This annihilation happens periodically, after the lapse of certain long periods of time.” This passage in the Timæus Contains a plain indication of the attitude of the initiate towards folk-myths. He recognizes the truths hidden in their images.
The drama of the evolution of the world is brought before us in the Timaeus. Anyone who will follow up the traces which lead to this genesis of the cosmos arrives at a 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 initiate knew what this impossibility means. It points to the drama of God. God is not present for him in what belongs merely to the senses and understanding. In those He is only present as nature. He is under a spell in nature. The ancient mystic was convinced that 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 Timaeus stresses that. The Father made the world out of the body and the soul of the universe. He mixed together, in harmony and perfect proportions, the elements which came into being when He, pouring Himself out, sacrificed His separate existence. Thereby the body of the world came into being, and the soul of the world is stretched upon it in the form of a cross. She is what is divine in the world. She suffered the death of the cross so that the world might come into being. Plato “may therefore call nature the tomb of the Divine, a grave, however, sheltering not what is dead but the Eternal, to which death only gives the opportunity of bringing to expression the omnipotence of life. And man sees nature in the right light when he approaches her in order to release the crucified soul of the world. The soul of the world must rise again from her death, from her spell. Where can she revive? Only in the soul of initiated man. Then wisdom finds its right relation to the cosmos. The resurrection, the liberation of God, that is knowledge.
In the Timaeus the development of the world is traced from the imperfect to the perfect. An ascending Process 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 man stands for 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 Timaeus we 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 everything 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.” [ 8 ] 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 contains. This image can only be engendered in the human soul. Not the Father Himself, but the Son, God’s offspring, living in the soul, and being like unto the Father, Him man can bring forth.
[ 9 ] Philo, who was said to be the resurrected Plato, characterized as the “Son of God” the wisdom born of man that lives in the soul and contains the reason existing in the world. 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 God, “following in the paths of the Father, and creating forms, looking at their archetypes.” The platonizing 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 themselves 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.”
[ 10 ] It is like an initiation to Philo when he enters upon this path, in order to meet the logos that to him is the Son of God. “I do not shrink from relating what has happened 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 ascertained, I nevertheless found my mind barren and rigid, so that I was obliged to desist without having accomplished anything, and seemed to be caught in idle speculation. At the same 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 seed invisibly from above, and it was as though divine bower 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 as to show that anyone following it is conscious of flowing in one current with the Divine, when the logos becomes alive within him. This is also expressed 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 him whose satellite and servant it is, and to whom 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 perception and intellect offer, in which case he limits himself to his personality and withdraws from the cosmos; or he becomes conscious of the whole cosmic force and experiences the Eternal within his personality. “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 universal spirit, for one who goes beyond his own spirit says that it is nothing and connects everything with God; but one who avoids God, abolishes the First Cause, and makes himself the cause of everything which happens.”
[ 11 ] The Platonic view of the universe sets out to be knowledge that by its very nature is religion. It brings knowledge into relation with the highest to which man can attain through his feelings. Plato admits the validity of such knowledge only when feeling may be completely satisfied in it. It is then not abstract knowledge, 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 himself is born a being who surpasses him, the archetypal man; and this is another secret of the Mysteries brought to expression in the Platonic philosophy. Hippolytus, one of the Church Fathers, alludes to this secret: “This is the great secret of the Samothracians (who were guardians of a certain Mystery-cult), which cannot be expressed and which only the initiates know. But these latter Speak in detail of Adam, as the primordial, archetypal man.”
[ 12 ] The Platonic Dialogue on Love, or Symposium, 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 impulse or desire for the Divine must be present in it. Man must unconsciously be drawn to what afterwards, when raised into his consciousness, constitutes his supreme happiness. What Heraclitus calls the daimon in man 1Daimon is used here in the Greek sense. Today we would say spirit. is associated 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 politician, the scientist, 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 themselves shows the stage attained by their daimon. By love one being is attracted to another. The multiplicity, the diversity of the things into which divine unity was poured aspires to unity and harmony through love. Thus love has something divine in it, hence every man can understand it only as far as he participates in the Divine.
After those of 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 him it is not a divinity, but something that 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 claims not to be giving his own thoughts when speaking of love. He says he is only relating what a woman had imparted to him as a revelation. It was through mantic 2Everything that relates to knowledge gained through the eyes of the spirit is called by ancient mysticism mantic. Telestic, on the other hand, is the indication of the ways that lead to initiation. art that he came to his conception of love. Diotima, the priestess, awakened in Socrates the daimonic force that 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 mere poetic mode of expression, for no wise woman on the physical plane could awaken the daimon in the soul unless the daimonic force were latent in the soul herself. It is surely in Socrates’ own soul that we must also look for this wise woman. But there must be a reason why that which brings the daimon to life within the soul should appear as a being of external reality. The force cannot work in the same way as the forces that may be observed in the soul as belonging to and native to her. We see that it is the soul-force which precedes the conception of wisdom that Socrates represents as a “wise woman.” It is the mother-principle that gives birth to the Son of God, wisdom, the Logos. The unconscious soul-force that brings the divine into consciousness is represented as the feminine element. The soul that 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 recognized as the mother of the divine. Unconsciously she leads man to the divine With the inevitability of a natural force.
This conception throws light on the view of Greek mythology taken in the Mysteries. The world of the gods is born in the soul. Man looks upon what he creates in images as his gods (cf. p. 29) . But he must Advance to another conception. He must transmute into divine images the divine force that is active within him before the creation of those images. Behind the Divine appears the mother of the Divine, which is nothing but the original force of the human soul. Thus side by side with the gods man sets up goddesses.
Let us look at the myth of Dionysos in this light. Dionysos is the son of Zeus and a mortal mother, Semele. Zeus wrests the undeveloped child from its mother when she is slain by lightning, and shelters it in his own side till it is ready to be born. Hera, the mother of the gods, incites the Titans against Dionysos, and they tear the boy in pieces. But Pallas Athene rescues his heart, which is still beating, and brings it to Zeus. Out of it he creates his son for the second time.
In this myth we can accurately trace a process 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 (cf. p. 65 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 born 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 Divine unites itself with the earthly, temporal human soul. As soon as the Divine, the Dionysiac element stirs, the soul feels a violent desire for the true spiritual form of that element. Ordinary consciousness, which now appears in the form of a female goddess, Hera, becomes jealous at the birth of the Divine out of the higher consciousness. It arouses the lower nature of man (the Titans). The undeveloped divine child is torn in pieces. In man the divine child is present as intellectual science broken up. But if there be enough of the higher wisdom (Zeus) in man to be active, it nurses and cherishes the immature child, which is then born again as a second son of God (Dionysos). Thus from science, which is the dispersed divine force in man, is born undivided wisdom, which is the Logos, the son of God and of a mortal mother, of the perishable human soul that unconsciously aspires to 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 process, we are a long way from the spiritual reality enacted in it. In this spiritual reality the soul is not merely experiencing something in herself, but she has been completely detached from herself and takes part in a cosmic event that is not enacted within the soul at all but outside her.
[ 13 ] Platonic wisdom and the Greek myth are closely linked; so, too, are Mystery wisdom and myth. The created gods were a feature of popular religion, 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. A right understanding of that origin is salutary, a misunderstanding is pernicious.
Plato als Mystiker
[ 1 ] Was innerhalb des griechischen Geisteslebens die Mysterien bedeutet haben, das kann man an der Weltanschauung Platos sehen. Es gibt nur ein Mittel, ihn vollständig zu verstehen: Man muß ihn in die Beleuchtung rücken, die von den Mysterien ausstrahlt. Die späten Schüler des Plato, die Neuplatoniker, schreiben ihm ja auch eine Geheimlehre zu, an der er nur die Würdigen teilnehmen ließ, und zwar unter dem «Siegel der Verschwiegenheit». Als geheimnisvoll in dem Sinne, wie die Mysterienweisheit es war, wurde seine Lehre angesehen. Wenn der siebente der platonischen Briefe auch nicht von ihm selbst herrührt, was behauptet wird, so besagt das doch für den Zweck, der hier verfolgt wird, nichts: denn ob er oder ein anderer über die Gesinnung, die in dem Briefe zum Ausdrucke kommt, sich in dieser Weise ausspricht, das kann uns gleichgültig sein. Diese Gesinnung lag eben im Wesen seiner Weltanschauung. Es heißt in dem Briefe: «So viel kann ich über alle sagen, welche geschrieben haben und schreiben werden, als wüßten sie, worauf meine Bestrebung geht, mögen sie es nun von mir oder von andern gehört haben oder es selbst ersonnen haben, daß ihnen in nichts Glauben beizumessen ist. Von mir selbst gibt es keine Schrift über diese Gegenstände, noch dürfte eine solche erscheinen; derartiges läßt sich in keiner Weise wie andere Lehren in Worte fassen, sondern bedarf langer Beschäftigung mit dem Gegenstände und des Hineinlebens in denselben; dann aber ist es, als ob ein Funke hervorspränge und ein Licht in der Seele entzündete, das sich nun selbst erhält.» — Diese Worte könnten nur auf eine Ohnmacht im Gebrauch der Worte hindeuten, die nur eine persönliche Schwäche wäre, wenn man in ihnen nicht den Mysteriensinn finden könnte. Das, worüber Plato nicht geschrieben hat und nie schreiben wollte, muß etwas sein, dem gegenüber das Schreiben vergeblich ist. Es muß ein Gefühl, eine Empfindung, ein Erlebnis sein, das nicht durch augenblickliche Mitteilung, sondern durch «Hineinleben» erworben wird. Auf die intime Erziehung ist gedeutet, die Plato den Auserwählten zu geben vermochte. Für sie sprang dann Feuer aus seinen Reden; für die andern sprangen nur Gedanken heraus. — Es ist eben nicht gleichgültig, wie man an Platos Gespräche herantritt. Je nach der geistigen Verfassung, in der man ist, sind sie einem weniger oder mehr. Von Plato ging auf seine Schüler noch mehr über als der Wortsinn seiner Darlegungen. Da wo er lehrte, lebten die Teilnehmer in Mysterienatmosphäre. Die Worte hatten Obertöne, die mitschwangen. Aber diese Obertöne brauchten eben die Mysterienatmosphäre. Sonst verklangen sie ungehört.
[ 2 ] Im Mittelpunkt der platonischen Gesprächswelt steht die Persönlichkeit des Sokrates. Das Geschichtliche braucht hier nicht berührt zu werden. Auf den Charakter des Sokrates, wie er sich bei Plato findet, kommt es an. Sokrates ist eine durch den Tod für die Wahrheit geheiligte Person. Er ist gestorben, wie nur ein Eingeweihter sterben kann, dem der Tod nur ein Moment des Lebens ist wie andere. Er geht in den Tod wie zu einer anderen Begebenheit des Daseins. Er hatte sich so verhalten, daß selbst in seinen Freunden die Gefühle nicht erwachten, die sonst sich bei einer solchen Gelegenheit einzustellen pflegen. Phädon sagt das in dem «Gespräch über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele»: «Fürwahr, mir meinesteils war ganz sonderbar zu Mute dabei. Mich wandelte gar kein Mitleid an wie einen, der bei dem Tode eines vertrauten Freundes zugegen ist; so glückselig erschien mir der Mann in seinem Benehmen und in seinen Reden; so standhaft und edel endete er, daß ich vertraute, er ginge auch in die Unterwelt nicht ohne göttliche Sendung, sondern würde auch dort sich wohl befinden, wenn je einer sonst. Darum nun kam mich gar keine weichherzige Regung an, wie man doch denken sollte bei solchem Trauerfall, noch andrerseits fröhliche Stimmung wie sonst wohl bei philosophischen Beschäftigungen, obwohl unsere Unterredungen von dieser Art waren; sondern in einem wunderbaren Zustand befand ich mich und in einer ungewohnten Mischung von Lust und Betrübnis, wenn ich bedachte, daß dieser Mann nun gleich sterben würde.» Und der sterbende Sokrates belehrt seine Schüler über die Unsterblichkeit. Die Persönlichkeit, welche Erfahrung hat über den Unwert des Lebens, wirkt hier als ganz anderer Beweis denn alle Logik, alle Vernunftgründe. Es ist, als ob nicht ein Mensch spräche; denn dieser Mensch ist eben ein hinübergehender, sondern als ob die ewige Wahrheit selbst spräche, die in einer vergänglichen Persönlichkeit ihre Stätte aufgeschlagen hat. Wo ein Zeitliches sich in nichts auflöst, da scheint die Luft zu sein, in der das Ewige klingen mag.
[ 3 ] Keine Beweise im logischen Sinne hören wir über die Unsterblichkeit. Das ganze Gespräch ist darauf gerichtet, die Freunde dahin zu führen, wo sie das Ewige erblicken. Dann bedarf es ja für sie keiner Beweise. Wie soll man dem noch beweisen müssen, daß die Rose rot ist, der sie sieht? Wie soll man dem noch beweisen müssen, daß der Geist ewig ist, dem man die Augen öffnet, auf daß er diesen Geist sehe? — Erfahrungen, Erlebnisse sind es, auf die Sokrates hinweist. Erst ist es das Erlebnis mit der Weisheit selbst. Was will der, welcher nach Weisheit trachtet? Er will sich frei machen von dem, was ihm die Sinne in der alltäglichen Beobachtung bieten. Er will den Geist in der Sinnenwelt suchen. Ist das nicht eine Tatsache, die sich mit dem Sterben vergleichen läßt? «Nämlich diejenigen» — das ist des Sokrates Meinung — «die sich auf rechte Art mit Philosophie befassen, mögen wohl, ohne daß es freilich die anderen merken, nach gar nichts anderem streben, als zu sterben und tot zu sein. Ist nun dies wahr: so wäre es doch wohl sonderbar, wenn sie ihr ganzes Leben hindurch zwar sich um nichts anderes bemühten als darum; wenn es nun aber selbst käme, unwillig zu sein über das, wonach sie so lange gestrebt und sich bemüht haben.» — Sokrates fragt einen seiner Freunde, um das zu bekräftigen: «Scheint dir es, daß es sich für den Philosophen gezieme, sich Mühe zu geben um die sogenannten sinnlichen Lüste, wie um ein leckeres Essen und Trinken? Oder um die Vergnügungen des Geschlechtstriebes? Und die übrige Besorgung des Leibes; glaubst du, daß ein solcher Mann sie sehr beachte? Wie schöne Kleider zu haben, Schuhe und andre Arten von Schmuck des Leibes, glaubst du, daß er das beachte oder verachte in höherem Grade als die äußerste Not hiervon zu haben erfordert? Dünkt dich also nicht überhaupt eines solchen Mannes ganze Beschäftigung nicht auf den Leib gerichtet zu sein, sondern so viel nur möglich von ihm abgekehrt und der Seele zugewendet? Also hierin zuerst zeigt sich der Philosoph: Ablösend seine Seele von der Gemeinschaft mit dem Leibe im Vorzug mit allen übrigen Menschen.» Darnach darf Sokrates schon eines sagen: das Weisheitsstreben hat das mit dem Sterben gleich, daß der Mensch sich von dem Leiblichen abkehrt. Aber wohin wendet er sich denn? Er wendet sich dem Geistigen zu. Kann er aber von dem Geiste dasselbe wollen wie von den Sinnen? Sokrates spricht sich darüber aus: «Wie aber steht es nun mit der vernünftigen Einsicht selbst? Ist dabei der Leib im Wege oder nicht, wenn man ihn bei dem Streben darnach zum Gefährten annimmt? Ich meine so: Gewähren wohl Gesicht und Gehör dem Menschen einige Wahrheit? Oder singen nur die Dichter das immer so vor: daß wir nichts genau hören noch sehen? ... Wann also trifft die Seele die Wahrheit? Denn wenn sie mit des Leibes Hilfe versucht etwas zu betrachten, dann wird sie offenbar von diesem betrogen. » Alles was wir mit den Sinnen des Leibes wahrnehmen, entsteht und vergeht. Und dieses Entstehen und Vergehen bewirkt eben, daß wir betrogen werden. Aber wenn wir durch die vernünftige Einsicht tiefer in die Dinge hineinschauen, dann wird uns in ihnen das Ewige zuteil. Also bieten uns die Sinne nicht das Ewige in seiner wahren Gestalt. Sie sind in dem Augenblicke Betrüger, wenn wir ihnen unbedingt vertrauen. Sie hören auf uns zu betrügen, wenn wir ihnen die denkende Einsicht gegenüberstellen und ihre Aussagen der Prüfung dieser Einsicht unterwerfen. Wie könnte aber die denkende Einsicht über die Aussagen der Sinne zu Gericht sitzen, wenn in ihr nicht etwas lebte, was über die Wahrnehmungen der Sinne hinausgeht? Also, was wahr und falsch an den Dingen ist, darüber entscheidet in uns etwas, was sich dem sinnlichen Leibe entgegenstellt, was also nicht seinen Gesetzen unterworfen ist. Es darf dieses Etwas vor allem nicht den Gesetzen seines Werdens und Vergehens unterworfen sein. Denn dieses Etwas hat das Wahre in sich. Nun kann aber das Wahre nicht ein Gestern und Heute haben; es kann nicht einmal dies, das andere Mal jenes sein, wie die sinnlichen Dinge. Also muß das Wahre selbst ein Ewiges sein. Und indem sich der Philosoph von dem Sinnlich-vergänglichen ab- und dem Wahren zuwendet, tritt er zugleich an ein Ewiges heran, das in ihm wohnt. Und versenken wir uns ganz in den Geist, dann leben wir ganz in dem Wahren. Das Sinnliche um uns ist nicht mehr bloß in seiner sinnlichen Gestalt vorhanden. «Und der kann dies wohl am reinsten ausrichten», sagte Sokrates, «der mit dem Geiste so viel als möglich allein an jedes geht, ohne weder das Gesicht mit umzuwenden beim Denken, noch irgend einen anderen Sinn mit zuzuziehen bei seinem Nachdenken, sondern sich des reinen Gedankens allein bedienend, auch jegliches rein für sich zu fassen trachtet, so viel als möglich geschieden von Augen und Ohren, und, um es kurz zu sagen, von dem ganzen Leibe, der nur die Seele stört und sie nicht die Wahrheit und Einsicht erlangen läßt, wenn er mit dabei ist. Heißt nun nicht der Tod die Erlösung und Absonderung der Seele vom Leibe? Und sie zu lösen, streben immer am meisten nur allein die wahrhaften Philosophen; also ist das das Geschäft des Philosophen: Befreiung und Absonderung der Seele vom Leibe. Töricht ist deshalb, wenn ein Mann, der sich in seinem ganzen Leben darauf eingerichtet hat, so nahe als möglich dem Tode zu sein, nachher, wenn dieser kommt, sich ungebärdig stellen wollte . . . In der Tat trachten die richtigen Weisheitsucher darnach zu sterben, und der Tod ist ihnen unter allen Menschen am wenigsten furchtbar.» Auch alle höhere Sittlichkeit gründet Sokrates auf die Befreiung vom Leibe. Wer nur dem folgt, was ihm sein Leib gebietet, der ist nicht sittsam. Wer ist tapfer? fragt Sokrates. Derjenige ist tapfer, der nicht seinem Leibe folgt, sondern auch dann den Forderungen seines Geistes folgt, wenn diese Forderungen den Leib gefährden. Und wer ist besonnen? Heißt nicht besonnen sein, sich «von Begierden nicht fortreißen zu lassen, sondern sich gleichgültig gegen sie zu verhalten und sittsam; kommt nicht also auch die Besonnenheit allein denen zu, welche den Leib am meisten gering schätzen und in der Liebe zur Weisheit leben? » Und so ist es nach Sokrates Meinung mit allen Tugenden.
[ 4 ] Sokrates schreitet zur Charakteristik der vernünftigen Einsicht selbst vor. Was heißt denn überhaupt Erkennen? Zweifellos gelangen wir dadurch zur Erkenntnis, daß wir uns Urteile bilden. Nun wohl: ich bilde mir über einen Gegenstand ein Urteil; zum Beispiel ich sage mir: dies, was da vor mir steht, ist ein Baum. Wie komme ich dazu, mir das zu sagen? Ich werde es nur können, wenn ich schon weiß, was ein Baum ist. Ich muß mich erinnern an meine Vorstellung von dem Baume. Ein Baum ist ein sinnliches Ding. Wenn ich mich an einen Baum erinnere, dann also erinnere ich mich an einen sinnlichen Gegenstand. Ich sage von einem Dinge: es sei ein Baum, wenn es andern Dingen gleicht, die ich früher wahrgenommen habe und von denen ich weiß, daß sie Bäume sind. Die Erinnerung vermittelt mir die Erkenntnis. Die Erinnerung ermöglicht mir den Vergleich der mannigfaltigen sinnlichen Dinge untereinander. Aber darin erschöpft sich meine Erkenntnis nicht. Wenn ich zwei Dinge sehe, die gleich sind, so bilde ich mir das Urteil: diese Dinge sind gleich. Nun sind in der Wirklichkeit niemals zwei Dinge ganz gleich. Ich kann überall nur in einer gewissen Beziehung eine Gleichheit finden. Der Gedanke der Gleichheit tritt also in mir auf, ohne daß er in der sinnlichen Wirklichkeit ist. Er verhilft mir zu einem Urteil, wie mir die Erinnerung zu einem Urteil, zu einer Erkenntnis verhilft. Wie ich mich bei dem Baum an Bäume erinnere, so erinnere ich mich bei zwei Dingen, wenn ich sie in einer gewissen Beziehung betrachte, an den Gedanken der Gleichheit. Es treten also in mir Gedanken wie Erinnerungen auf, die nicht aus der sinnlichen Wirklichkeit erworben sind. Alle Erkenntnisse, die nicht aus dieser Wirklichkeit entlehnt sind, fußen auf solchen Gedanken. Die ganze Mathematik besteht nur aus solchen Gedanken. Der würde ein schlechter Geometer sein, der nur das in mathematische Beziehungen bringen könnte, was er mit Augen sehen, mit Händen greifen kann. Also haben wir Gedanken, die nicht aus der vergänglichen Natur stammen, sondern die aus dem Geiste aufsteigen. Und gerade diese tragen das Merkmal ewiger Wahrheit an sich. Ewig wahr wird sein, was die Mathematik lehrt; auch wenn morgen das ganze Weltgebäude einstürzte und sich ein ganz neues aufbaute. Es könnten für ein anderes Weltgebäude solche Bedingungen gelten, daß die gegenwärtigen mathematischen Wahrheiten nicht anwendbar wären; in sich wahr blieben sie aber doch. Wenn die Seele mit sich allein ist, dann nur kann sie solche ewige Wahrheiten aus sich hervorbringen. Also ist die Seele dem Wahren, dem Ewigen verwandt und nicht dem Zeitlichen, Scheinbaren. Daher sagt Sokrates: «Wenn die Seele durch sich selbst Betrachtungen anstellt, dann geht sie zu dem Reinen und immer Seienden und Unsterblichen und sich selbst Gleichen, und als diesem verwandt, hält sie sich zu ihm, wenn sie für sich selbst ist und es ihr vergönnt wird, und dann hat sie Ruhe von ihrem Irren und ist auch in Beziehung auf jenes immer sich selbst gleich, weil sie eben solches berührt, und diesen ihren Zustand nennt man eben die Vernünftigkeit. Sieh nun zu, ob aus allem Gesagten nicht hervorgeht, daß dem Göttlichen, Unsterblichen, Vernünftigen, Einartigen, Unauflöslichen und immer gleich und sich selbst gleichartig Verhaltenden die Seele am ähnlichsten ist; dem Menschlichen und Sterblichen und Unvernünftigen und Vielgestaltigen und Auflöslichen und nie gleich und sich selbst gleichartig Bleibenden wiederum der Leib am ähnlichsten ist. Also wenn sich das so verhält, so geht die Seele zu dem ihr ähnlichen Gestaltlosen und zu dem Göttlichen, Unsterblichen, Vernünftigen, wo sie dann dazu gelangt, glückselig zu sein, von Irrtum und Unwissenheit, Furcht und wilder Liebe und allen andern menschlichen Übeln befreit, und lebt dann, wie es bei den Eingeweihten heißt, wahrhaft die übrige Zeit mit Gott. »Es kann hier nicht die Aufgabe sein, alle Wege zu zeigen, die Sokrates seine Freunde zum Ewigen hingeleitet. Alle atmen ja denselben Geist. Alle sollen zeigen, daß der Mensch ein anderes findet, wenn er die Wege der vergänglichen Sinneswahrnehmung wandelt, und ein anderes, wenn sein Geist mit sich allein ist. Und auf diese ureigene Natur des Geistigen weist Sokrates die hin, die ihm zuhören. Finden sie es, dann sehen sie ja mit Geistesaugen selbst, daß es ewig ist. Der sterbende Sokrates beweist nicht die Unsterblichkeit; er zeigt einfach das Wesen der Seele. Und dann stellt sich heraus, daß Werden und Vergehen, Geburt und Tod mit dieser Seele nichts zu tun haben. Das Wesen der Seele ist in dem Wahren gelegen; das Wahre aber kann nicht werden und vergehen. So viel wie das Gerade mit dem Ungeraden, hat die Seele mit dem Werden zu tun. Der Tod aber gehört dem Werden an. Also hat die Seele mit dem Tode nichts zu tun. Muß man nicht von dem Unsterblichen sagen, daß es das Sterbliche so wenig annehme wie das Gerade das Ungerade. Muß man nicht sagen, meint davon ausgehend Sokrates, daß «wenn das Unsterbliche auch unvergänglich ist, die Seele unmöglich, wenn der Tod an sie kommt, untergehen kann. Denn den Tod kann sie ja nach dem vorhin Erwiesenen nicht annehmen, noch kann sie gestorben sein, wie die Drei niemals gerade sein kann.»
[ 5 ] Man überblicke die ganze Entwicklung in diesem Gespräche, in dem Sokrates seine Zuhörer dahin führt, daß sie das Ewige in der menschlichen Persönlichkeit schauen. Die Zuhörer nehmen seine Gedanken auf; sie forschen in sich selbst, ob sich in ihren eigenen inneren Erlebnissen etwas findet, wodurch sie zu seinen Ideen «ja» sagen können. Sie machen die Einwände, die sich ihnen aufdrängen. Was ist mit den Zuhörern geschehen, wenn das Gespräch sein Ende erreicht hat? Sie haben in sich etwas gefunden, was sie vorher nicht gehabt haben. Sie haben nicht bloß eine abstrakte Wahrheit in sich aufgenommen; sie haben eine Entwicklung durchgemacht. Es ist etwas in ihnen lebendig geworden, was vorher nicht in ihnen lebte. Ist das nicht etwas, was sich mit einer Einweihung vergleichen läßt? Wirft das nicht ein Licht darauf, warum Plato seine Philosophie in Gesprächsform dargelegt hat? Es sollen diese Gespräche eben nichts anderes sein als die literarische Form für die Vorgänge in den Mysterienstätten. Was Plato selbst an vielen Stellen sagt, überzeugt uns davon. Als philosophischer Lehrer hat Plato sein wollen, was der Einweihende in den Mysterien war; so gut man das mit der philosophischen Art der Mitteilung sein kann. Wie weiß sich doch Plato in Übereinstimmung mit der Art der Mysterien! Wie hält er seine Art nur dann für die rechte, wenn sie dorthin führt, wohin der Myste geführt werden soll! Darüber spricht er sich im Timäos aus: «Alle die einigermaßen die rechte Gesinnung haben, rufen bei kleinen und großen Unternehmungen die Götter an; wir aber, die über das All zu lehren vorhaben, inwiefern es entstanden und unentstanden ist, müssen doch besonders, wenn wir nicht völlig abgeirrt sind, die Götter und Göttinnen anrufen und beten, alles zunächst in ihrem Geiste und dann in Übereinstimmung mit uns selbst zu lehren.» Und denjenigen, die auf einem solchen Wege suchen, verspricht Plato «daß die Gottheit als Retter die verirrliche und so weit abseits liegende Untersuchung in einer einleuchtenden Lehre ihren Abschluß finden lasse».
[ 6 ] Der «Timäos» ist es besonders, der uns den Mysteriencharakter der platonischen Weltanschauung enthüllt. Gleich im Anfange dieses Gespräches ist von einer «Einweihung» die Rede. Solon wird von einem ägyptischen Priester in das Werden der Welten «eingeweiht» und in die Art, wie in überlieferten Mythen bildlich ewige Wahrheiten ausgesprochen werden. «Es haben schon viele und vielerlei Vertilgungen der Menschen stattgefunden (so lehrt der ägyptische Priester den Solon) und werden auch fernerhin noch stattfinden, die umfänglichsten durch Feuer und Wasser, andere, geringere aber durch unzählige andere Ursachen. Denn was auch bei euch erzählt wird, daß einst Phaeton, der Sohn des Helios, den Wagen seines Vaters bestieg und, weil er es nicht verstand auf dem Wege seines Vaters zu fahren, alles auf der Erde verbrannte und er selber vom Blitze erschlagen wurde, das klingt zwar wie eine Fabel, doch ist das Wahre daran die veränderte Bewegung der die Erde umkreisenden Himmelskörper und die Vernichtung von allem, was auf der Erde befindlich ist, durch vieles Feuer, welche nach dem Verlauf gewisser großer Zeiträume eintreten.» — In dieser Timäosstelle ist ein deutlicher Hinweis darauf enthalten, wie sich der Eingeweihte zu den Mythen des Volkes verhält. Er erkennt die Wahrheiten, die in ihren Bildern verhüllt sind.
[ 7 ] Das Drama des Weltwerdens wird im Timäos vorgeführt. Wer den Spuren nachgehen will, die zu diesem Weltwerden führen, der kommt zu der Ahnung der Urkraft, aus der alles geworden ist. «Den Schöpfer und Vater dieses Alls nun ist es schwierig zu finden; und wenn man ihn gefunden hat, unmöglich, sich für alle verständlich über ihn auszusprechen.» Der Myste wußte, was mit dieser «Unmöglichkeit» gemeint ist. Sie deutet auf das Drama des Gottes. Dieser ist ja für ihn nicht im Sinnlich-Verständigen vorhanden. Da ist er nur als Natur vorhanden. Er ist in der Natur verzaubert. Nur der kann sich ihm, nach der alten Mysten-Meinung, nähern, der das Göttliche in sich selbst erweckt. Also kann er nicht ohne weiteres für alle verständlich gemacht werden. Aber selbst für den, der sich ihm nähert, erscheint er nicht selbst. Das besagt der Timäos. Aus Weltleib und Weltseele hat der Vater die Welt gemacht. Harmonisch, in vollkommenen Proportionen hat er die Elemente gemischt, die entstanden, als er sich selbst vergießend ein eigenes besonderes Sein hingab. Dadurch wurde der Weltleib. Und gespannt auf diesen Weltleib ist in Kreuzesform die Weltseele. Sie ist das Göttliche in der Welt. Sie hat den Kreuzestod gefunden, auf daß die Welt sein könne. Das Grab des Göttlichen darf also Plato die Natur nennen. Doch nicht ein Grab, in dem ein Totes liegt, sondern ein Ewiges, für das der Tod nur die Gelegenheit gibt, die Allmacht des Lebens zum Ausdruck zu bringen. Und derjenige Mensch erblickt diese Natur in dem rechten Lichte, der vor sie hintritt, die gekreuzigte Weltseele zu erlösen. Auferstehen soll sie von ihrem Tode, aus ihrer Verzauberung. Wo kann sie wieder aufleben? Allein in der Seele des eingeweihten Menschen. Die Weisheit findet ihr rechtes Verhältnis damit zum Kosmos. Die Auferstehung, die Erlösung Gottes: das ist die Erkenntnis. Von dem Unvollkommenen zum Vollkommenen wird im Timäos die Weltentwicklung verfolgt. Ein aufsteigender Prozeß stellt sich in der Vorstellung dar. Die Wesen entwickeln sich. Gott enthüllt sich in dieser Entwicklung. Das Werden ist eine Auferstehung Gottes aus dem Grabe. Innerhalb der Entwicklung tritt der Mensch auf. Plato zeigt, daß mit dem Menschen etwas besonderes da ist. Zwar ist die ganze Welt ein Göttliches. Und der Mensch ist nicht göttlicher als die anderen Wesen. Aber in den anderen Wesen ist Gott auf verborgene Art, in dem Menschen auf offenbare Art gegenwärtig. Am Ende des Timäos steht: «und nunmehr möchten wir denn auch behaupten, daß unsere Erörterungen über das All ihr Ziel erreicht haben, denn nachdem diese Welt in der geschilderten Weise mit sterblichen und unsterblichen lebenden Wesen ausgerüstet und erfüllt worden, ist sie (so selbst) zu einem sichtbaren Wesen dieser Art geworden, welches alles Sichtbare umfaßt, zu einem Abbilde des Schöpfers und sinnlich wahrnehmbaren Gott und zur größten und besten, zur schönsten und vollendetsten (die es geben konnte) geworden, diese eine und eingeborene Welt.»
[ 8 ] Aber diese eine und eingeborene Welt wäre nicht vollkommen, wenn sie nicht unter ihren Abbildern auch das Abbild des Schöpfers selbst hätte. Nur aus der Menschenseele heraus kann dieses Abbild geboren werden, Nicht den Vater selbst, aber den Sohn, den in der Seele lebenden Sprossen Gottes, der gleich ist dem Vater: ihn kann der Mensch gebären.
[ 9 ] Als den «Sohn Gottes» bezeichnete Philo, von dem man sagte, daß er der wiedererstandene Plato sei, die aus dem Menschen geborene Weisheit, welche in der Seele lebt und die in der Welt vorhandene Vernunft zum Inhalte hat. Diese Weltvernunft, der Logos, erscheint als das Buch, in dem «aller Weltbestand eingetragen und gezeichnet ist». Sie erscheint weiter als der Sohn Gottes: «die Wege des Vaters nachahmend formt er, auf die Urbilder schauend, die Gestalten». Diesen Logos spricht der platonisierende Philo wie den Christus an: «Da Gott der erste und einzige König des Alls ist, so ist der Weg zu ihm mit Recht der Königliche genannt worden; als diesen aber betrachte die Philosophie. den Weg, welchen der Chor der alten Asketen wandelte, abgewandt von dem bestrickenden Zauber de» Lust, der würdigen und ernsten Pflege des Schönen hingegeben; diesen Königlichen Weg, den wir die wahre Philosophie nennen, heißt das Gesetz: Gottes Wort und Geist.»
[ 10 ] Wie eine Einweihung empfindet es Philo, wenn er diesen Weg betritt, um dem Logos zu begegnen, der ihm Gottes Sohn ist: «Ich scheue mich nicht, mitzuteilen, was mir selbst unzählige Male geschehen ist. Manchmal, wenn ich in gewohnter Weise meine philosophischen Gedanken niederschreiben wollte und ganz scharf sah, was festzustellen wäre, fand ich doch meinen Geist unfruchtbar und steif, so daß ich ohne etwas fertig zu bringen, ablassen mußte und mir in nichtigem Wähnen befangen vorkam; zugleich aber staunte über die Gewalt des Gedanklich-Realen, bei der es steht, den Schoß der Menschenseele zu öffnen und zu schließen. Andermal aber fing ich leer an und kam ohne weiteres zur Fülle, indem die Gedanken wie Schneeflocken oder Samenkörner von obenher unsichtbar herabgeflogen kamen, und es mich wie göttliche Kraft ergriff und begeisterte, so daß ich nicht wußte, wo ich bin, wer bei mir ist, wer ich selber bin, was ich sage, was ich schreibe: denn jetzt war mir der Fluß der Darstellung gegeben, eine wonnige Helle, scharfer Blick, klare Beherrschung des Stoffes, wie wenn das innere Auge nun alles mit der größten Deutlichkeit erkennen könnte.» — Das ist die Schilderung eines Erkenntnisweges, die so gehalten ist, daß man sieht, der diesen Weg geht, ist sich bewußt, daß, wenn der Logos in ihm lebendig wird, er mit dem Göttlichen zusammenfließt. Klar kommt das auch noch in den Worten zum Ausdruck: «Wenn der Geist, von der Liebe ergriffen, in das Heiligste seinen Flug nimmt, freudigen Schwunges, gottbeflügelt, so vergißt er alles andere und sich selbst, er ist nur von dem erfüllt und an den geschmiegt, dessen Trabant und Diener er ist, und dem er die heiligste und keuscheste Tugend als Rauchopfer darbringt.» — Es gibt für Philo nur zwei Wege. Entweder man folgt dem Sinnlichen, dem, was Wahrnehmung und Verstand bieten, dann beschränkt man sich auf die eigene Persönlichkeit, man entzieht sich dem Kosmos; oder aber man wird sich der kosmischen Allkraft bewußt; dann erlebt man innerhalb der Persönlichkeit das Ewige. «Wer Gott umgehen will, fällt sich selbst in die Hände; denn es kommt zweierlei in Frage: der Allgeist, welcher Gott ist, und der eigene Geist; der letztere entflieht und flüchtet zum Allgeist; denn wer über seinen eigenen Geist hinausgeht, sagt sich, daß dieser ein Nichts sei und knüpft alles an Gott; wer aber Gott ausweicht, hebt diesen Urgrund auf und macht sich zum Grunde von allem was geschieht.»
[ 11 ] Eine Erkenntnis, die durch ihre ganze Art Religion ist, will die platonische Weltanschauung sein. Sie bringt die Erkenntnis in Beziehung zu dem Höchsten, das der Mensch mit seinen Gefühlen erreichen kann. Nur wenn in der Erkenntnis das Gefühl sich am vollständigsten befriedigen kann, vermag Plato diese Erkenntnis gelten zu lassen. Sie ist dann nicht bildhaftes Wissen; sie ist Lebensinhalt. Sie ist ein höherer Mensch im Menschen. Derjenige Mensch, von dem die Persönlichkeit nur Abbild ist. In dem Menschen selbst wird der überragende, der Urmensch geboren. Und damit wäre wieder ein Mysteriengeheimnis in der platonischen Philosophie zum Ausdruck gebracht. Der Kirchenvater Hippolytos weist auf dieses Geheimnis hin: «Das ist das große Geheimnis der Samothraker (der Hüter eines bestimmten Mysterienkultus), das man nicht aussprechen kann, und das nur die Eingeweihten kennen. Diese aber wissen ausführlich von Adam als ihrem Urmenschen zu berichten.»
[ 12 ] Eine «Einweihung» stellt auch das Platonische «Gespräch über die Liebe», das «Symposion» dar. Hier erscheint die Liebe als die Vorverkünderin der Weisheit. Ist die Weisheit, das ewige Wort (Logos) der Sohn des ewigen Weltschöpfers, so hat die Liebe eine mütterliche Beziehung zu diesem Logos. Bevor auch nur ein lichter Funke des Weisheitslichtes in der menschlichen Seele aufleuchten kann, muß ein dunkler Drang, ein Zug zu diesem Göttlichen vorhanden sein. Unbewußt muß es den Menschen zu dem ziehen, was nachher, ins Bewußtsein erhoben, sein höchstes Glück ausmacht. Was bei Heraklit als der Dämon im Menschen auftritt, damit verbindet sich die Vorstellung der Liebe. — Im «Symposion» sprechen sich Menschen verschiedensten Standes und verschiedenster Lebensauffassung über die Liebe aus: der Alltagsmensch, der Politiker, der Wissenschaftler, der Komödiendichter Aristophanes und der ernste Dichter Agathon. Sie haben, den Erfahrungen ihrer Lebenslage gemäß, jeder ihre Anschauungen über die Liebe. Wie sie sich äußern, dadurch kommt zum Vorschein, auf welcher Stufe ihr «Dämon» steht. Durch die Liebe wird ein Wesen zum andern hingezogen. Das Mannigfaltige, die Vielheit der Dinge, in welche die göttliche Einheit zerflossen ist, strebt durch die Liebe zur Einheit, zur Harmonie. Etwas Göttliches hat also die Liebe. Jeder kann sie daher nur so verstehen, wie er selbst des Göttlichen teilhaftig ist. Nachdem die Menschen verschiedener Reifestufen ihre Gedanken von Liebe dargelegt haben, ergreift Sokrates das Wort. Er betrachtet als Erkenntnismensch die Liebe. Für ihn ist sie kein Gott. Aber sie ist etwas, das den Menschen zu Gott hinführt. Eros, die Liebe, ist ihm kein Gott. Denn der Gott ist vollkommen, also hat er das Schöne und Gute. Aber Eros ist nur das Verlangen nach dem Schönen und Guten. Er steht also zwischen dem Menschen und Gott. Er ist ein «Dämon», ein Mittler zwischen Irdischem und Göttlichem. — Es ist bedeutsam, daß Sokrates nicht seine Gedanken zu geben behauptet, da wo er über die Liebe spricht. Er sagt, er erzähle nur, was ihm eine Frau als Offenbarung darüber gegeben habe. Eine mantische 1Als «Mantik» ist für die alte Mystik alles dasjenige zu bezeichnen, was sich auf ein Wissen durch «Geistesaugen» bezieht; «Telestik» ist dagegen die Angabe der Wege, welche zur Einweihung führen. Kunst ist es, durch die er zu einer Vorstellung von der Liebe gekommen ist. Diotime, die Priesterin, hat in Sokrates erweckt, was als dämonische Kraft in ihm zum Göttlichen führen soll. Sie hat ihn «eingeweiht». — Vielsagend ist dieser Zug des «Symposion». Man muß fragen: wer ist die «weise Frau», die in Sokrates den Dämon erweckt? Man kann hier nicht an bloße dichterische Einkleidung denken. Denn keine sinnlich-wirkliche weise Frau könnte den Dämon in der Seele wecken, wenn die Kraft zu dieser Erweckung nicht in der Seele selbst wäre. In der eigenen Seele des Sokrates müssen wir doch auch diese «weise Frau» suchen. Aber es muß ein Grund vorhanden sein, der als äußerlich-wirkliches Wesen das erscheinen läßt, was in der Seele selbst den Dämon zum Dasein bringt. Diese Kraft kann nicht so wirken wie die Kräfte, die man in der Seele als zu ihr gehörig, als in ihr heimisch, beobachten kann. Man sieht, es ist die Seelenkraft vor Empfang der Weisheit, die Sokrates als «weise Frau» hinstellt. Es ist das mütterliche Prinzip, das den Sohn Gottes, die Weisheit, den Logos gebiert. Als weibliches Element wird die unbewußt wirkende Kraft der Seele hingestellt, die das Göttliche ins Bewußtsein eintreten läßt. Die noch weisheitslose Seele ist die Mutter dessen, was zum Göttlichen führt. Man wird da auf eine wichtige Vorstellung der Mystik geführt. Die Seele wird als die Mutter des Göttlichen anerkannt. Unbewußt führt sie mit der Notwendigkeit einer Naturkraft den Menschen zum Göttlichen hin. — Ein Licht strahlt von da aus auf die Mysterienanschauung von der griechischen Mythologie. Die Götterwelt ist in der Seele geboren. Der Mensch sieht, was er selbst in Bildern schafft, als seine Götter an. Aber er muß noch zu einer anderen Vorstellung vordringen. Er muß auch die göttliche Kraft in sich, die vor Erschaffung der Götterbilder tätig ist, in Götterbilder wandeln. Hinter dem Göttlichen tritt die Mutter des Göttlichen auf, die nichts anderes als die ursprüngliche menschliche Seelenkraft ist. Neben die Götter stellt der Mensch die Göttinnen hin. Man betrachte den Dionysos-Mythos in dem Lichte, das da gewonnen ist. Dionysos ist der Sohn des Zeus und einer sterblichen Mutter, der Semele. Der vom Blitze erschlagenen Mutter entreißt Zeus das noch unreife Kind und birgt es bis zur Reife in der eigenen Hüfte. Hera, die Göttermutter, reizt die Titanen gegen Dionysos auf. Sie zerstückeln den Knaben. Aber Pallas Athene rettet das noch schlagende Herz und bringt es dem Zeus. Er erzeugt darauf den Sohn zum zweiten Male. Man sieht genau in diesem Mythos einen Vorgang, der sich im Innersten der menschlichen Seele abspielt. Und wer im Sinne des ägyptischen Priesters spräche, der den Solon über die Natur eines Mythos belehrt, der könnte so sprechen: Was bei euch erzählt wird, daß Dionysos, der Sohn des Gottes und einer sterblichen Mutter geboren, zerstückelt und noch einmal geboren ist, das klingt zwar wie eine Fabel, doch das Wahre daran ist die Geburt des Göttlichen und sind dessen Schicksale in der eigenen menschlichen Seele. Das Göttliche verbindet sich mit der zeitlich-irdischen Menschenseele. Sobald nur dieses Göttliche, Dionysische, sich regt, empfindet die Seele ein heftiges Verlangen nach seiner wahren geistigen Gestalt. Das Bewußtsein, das wieder im Bilde einer weiblichen Gottheit, Hera, erscheint, wird eifersüchtig auf die Geburt aus dem besseren Bewußtsein. Es stachelt die niedere Natur des Menschen auf — (die Titanen). Das noch unreife Gotteskind wird zerstückelt. So ist es im Menschen vorhanden als zerstückelte sinnlich-verständige Wissenschaft. Ist im Menschen aber so viel von der höheren Weisheit (Zeus) vorhanden, daß diese wirksam ist, dann hegt und pflegt diese das unreife Kind, das dann als zweiter Gottessohn (Dionysos) wiedergeboren wird. So wird aus der Wissenschaft, der zerstückelten göttlichen Kraft im Menschen, die einheitsvolle Weisheit geboren, die der Logos ist, der Sohn Gottes und einer sterblichen Mutter, der vergänglichen, unbewußt nach dem Göttlichen hinstrebenden Menschenseele. Solange man in alledem nur einen bloßen Seelenvorgang sieht und es etwa als Bild eines solchen auffaßt, ist man weit entfernt von der geistigen Wirklichkeit, die sich da abspielt. In dieser geistigen Wirklichkeit erlebt die Seele nicht bloß etwas in sich; sondern sie ist ganz von sich losgekommen und erlebt einen Weltvorgang mit, der in Wahrheit gar nicht in ihr, sondern außer ihr sich abspielt.
[ 13 ] Platonische Weisheit und griechischer Mythos schließen sich zusammen; ebenso Mysterienweisheit und Mythos. Die erzeugten Götter waren Gegenstand der Volksreligion; die Geschichte ihrer Entstehung war das Geheimnis der Mysterien. Kein Wunder, daß es für gefährlich galt, die Mysterien zu «verraten». Man «verriet» ja damit die Herkunft der Volksgötter. Und das richtige Verständnis über diese Herkunft ist heilsam; das Mißverständnis verderblich.
Plato as a mystic
[ 1 ] What the mysteries meant within Greek intellectual life can be seen in Plato's world view. There is only one way to understand him fully: One must place him in the light that radiates from the Mysteries. Plato's later disciples, the Neoplatonists, ascribe to him a secret doctrine in which he only allowed the worthy to participate, under the "seal of secrecy". His teaching was regarded as mysterious in the sense that mystery wisdom was. Even if the seventh of the Platonic letters does not originate from him, as is claimed, this says nothing for the purpose pursued here: for whether he or someone else speaks in this way about the attitude expressed in the letter, we can be indifferent. This attitude lay in the very essence of his world view. It says in the letter: "I can say this much about all those who have written and will write, as if they knew what my aspirations are, whether they have heard it from me or from others or have thought it up themselves, that they are not to be believed in anything. There is no writing by myself on these subjects, nor is there likely to be; such things cannot be put into words in any way like other teachings, but require long occupation with the subject and living in it; but then it is as if a spark leaped forth and kindled a light in the soul, which now sustains itself." - These words could only indicate an impotence in the use of words, which would only be a personal weakness if one could not find the sense of mystery in them. That which Plato did not write about and never wanted to write about must be something against which writing is futile. It must be a feeling, a sensation, an experience that is not acquired through instantaneous communication, but through "living in". The intimate education that Plato was able to give to the chosen ones is indicated. For them, fire leapt out of his speeches; for the others, only thoughts leapt out. - It is not indifferent how one approaches Plato's conversations. Depending on the mental state you are in, they are less or more important to you. Plato passed on to his students even more than the literal meaning of his explanations. Where he taught, the participants lived in an atmosphere of mystery. The words had overtones that resonated. But these overtones needed the mystery atmosphere. Otherwise they would fade away unheard.
[ 2 ] The personality of Socrates is at the center of the Platonic world of conversation. There is no need to touch on history here. What matters is the character of Socrates as found in Plato. Socrates is a person sanctified by death for the truth. He died as only an initiate can die, for whom death is only a moment of life like others. He goes to death as to another event of existence. He had behaved in such a way that even his friends did not awaken the feelings that usually arise on such an occasion. Phaedon says this in the "Conversation on the Immortality of the Soul": "Indeed, for my part I felt quite strange about it. I felt no pity at all, as one who is present at the death of an intimate friend; so blissful did the man appear to me in his behavior and in his speeches; so steadfast and noble did he end, that I trusted that he would not go to the underworld without a divine mission, but would also be well there, if ever anyone else. That is why I did not feel any soft-hearted emotion, as one would think in such a case of mourning, nor, on the other hand, any cheerful mood, as is usually the case in philosophical occupations, although our conversations were of this kind; but I found myself in a wonderful state and in an unusual mixture of pleasure and sadness when I considered that this man was about to die." And the dying Socrates teaches his pupils about immortality. The personality, which has experience of the unworthiness of life, acts here as a completely different proof than all logic, all rational reasons. It is as if it were not a man speaking, for this man is just a passing one, but as if the eternal truth itself were speaking, which has taken up its abode in a perishable personality. Where the temporal dissolves into nothing, there seems to be the air in which the eternal may sound.
[ 3 ] We hear no evidence in the logical sense about immortality. The whole conversation is aimed at leading the friends to where they see the eternal. Then they need no proof. How should we have to prove that the rose is red to those who see it? How should one still have to prove that the spirit is eternal to him whose eyes are opened so that he may see this spirit? - Experiences, experiences are what Socrates refers to. First it is the experience of wisdom itself. What does the one who seeks wisdom want? He wants to free himself from what the senses offer him in everyday observation. He wants to seek the spirit in the world of the senses. Is this not a fact that can be compared to dying? "Those" - this is Socrates' opinion - "who occupy themselves with philosophy in the right way may well, without the others realizing it, strive for nothing other than to die and be dead. If this is true, then it would be strange if they spent their whole lives striving for nothing else but this, but if they themselves were to be unwilling to do what they have striven and labored for so long." - Socrates asks one of his friends to confirm this: "Does it seem to you that it is proper for a philosopher to make an effort for the so-called sensual pleasures, such as delicious food and drink? Or the pleasures of the sexual instinct? And the other cares of the body; do you think that such a man pays much attention to them? Like having beautiful clothes, shoes, and other kinds of adornment of the body, do you think that he will regard or despise them to a greater degree than the extreme necessity of having them? Does it not seem to you, then, that the whole occupation of such a man is not directed towards the body, but is turned away from it as much as possible and turned towards the soul? In this, then, the philosopher shows himself first: detaching his soul from communion with the body in preference to all other men." According to this, Socrates can say one thing: the pursuit of wisdom is the same as death, that man turns away from the body. But where does he turn to? He turns to the spiritual. But can he want the same thing from the spirit as from the senses? Socrates speaks about this: "But what about rational insight itself? Does the body stand in the way or not, if one accepts it as a companion in the pursuit of it? I mean like this: Do sight and hearing grant man some truth? Or is it only the poets who always sing that we neither hear nor see anything clearly? ... So when does the soul encounter the truth? For when it tries to observe something with the help of the body, it is obviously deceived by it. " Everything that we perceive with the senses of the body comes into being and passes away. And this coming into being and passing away causes us to be deceived. But if we look deeper into things through rational insight, then we are granted the eternal in them. Thus the senses do not offer us the eternal in its true form. They are deceivers the moment we trust them implicitly. They cease to deceive us when we confront them with thinking insight and subject their statements to the scrutiny of this insight. But how could thinking insight sit in judgment on the statements of the senses if it did not contain something that goes beyond the perceptions of the senses? Thus, what is true and false about things is decided by something in us that opposes the sensory body, that is, that is not subject to its laws. Above all, this something must not be subject to the laws of its becoming and passing away. For this something has the true in itself. But the true cannot have a yesterday and a today; it cannot be this once and that the other time, like sensual things. Thus the true itself must be eternal. And by turning away from the sensual and transient and towards the true, the philosopher simultaneously approaches an eternal that dwells within him. And if we immerse ourselves completely in the spirit, then we live completely in the true. The sensual around us is no longer merely present in its sensual form. "And he can accomplish this most purely," said Socrates, "who approaches everything with his mind alone as much as possible, without turning his face when he thinks, nor drawing in any other sense when he thinks, but using pure thought alone, and also seeks to grasp each thing purely for itself, separated as much as possible from eyes and ears, and, to put it briefly, from the whole body, which only disturbs the soul and does not allow it to attain truth and insight when it is present. Is not death the redemption and separation of the soul from the body? And it is only the true philosophers who strive most to solve it; so this is the business of the philosopher: Liberation and separation of the soul from the body. It is therefore foolish for a man who has prepared his whole life to be as close as possible to death, to be unruly when death comes . . . Indeed, the true seekers of wisdom strive to die, and death is the least fearful to them of all men." Socrates also bases all higher morality on liberation from the body. He who follows only what his body commands is not moral. Who is brave? asks Socrates. He is brave who does not follow his body, but follows the demands of his spirit even when these demands endanger his body. And who is prudent? Does not being prudent mean "not to be carried away by desires, but to be indifferent to them and modest; does not prudence also belong only to those who hold the body in the lowest esteem and live in the love of wisdom? " And so, according to Socrates, is it with all virtues.
[ 4 ] Socrates proceeds to characterize rational insight itself. What does cognition actually mean? We undoubtedly arrive at knowledge by forming judgments. Well, I form a judgment about an object; for example, I say to myself: this thing standing in front of me is a tree. How do I come to say that to myself? I will only be able to do so if I already know what a tree is. I have to remember my idea of the tree. A tree is a sensual thing. If I remember a tree, then I remember a sensual object. I say of a thing that it is a tree if it resembles other things that I have perceived before and that I know to be trees. Memory gives me the knowledge. Memory enables me to compare the manifold sensory things with one another. But this is not the end of my knowledge. When I see two things that are the same, I form the judgment: these things are the same. Now in reality no two things are ever quite the same. I can only find equality everywhere in a certain respect. The idea of equality thus arises in me without being in sensory reality. It helps me to a judgment, just as memory helps me to a judgment, to knowledge. Just as I remember trees in the case of the tree, so I remember the thought of equality in the case of two things when I look at them in a certain relationship. So thoughts and memories arise in me that are not acquired from sensory reality. All knowledge that is not borrowed from this reality is based on such thoughts. The whole of mathematics consists only of such thoughts. He would be a bad geometrician who could only bring into mathematical relationships what he could see with his eyes and grasp with his hands. So we have thoughts that do not originate from transient nature, but that arise from the spirit. And it is precisely these that bear the mark of eternal truth. What mathematics teaches will be eternally true, even if the entire world structure were to collapse tomorrow and a completely new one were to be built. Such conditions could apply to another world structure that the present mathematical truths would not be applicable; but they would still remain true in themselves. If the soul is alone with itself, only then can it produce such eternal truths from itself. Thus the soul is related to the true, the eternal, and not to the temporal, the apparent. Hence Socrates says: "When the soul contemplates through itself, it goes to the pure and ever existing and immortal and equal to itself, and as related to it, it holds itself to it when it is for itself and is granted it, and then it has rest from its error and is also always equal to itself in relation to that, because it touches just such a thing, and this its state is called reasonableness. Now see if it does not follow from all that has been said that the soul is most like the divine, immortal, rational, monotonous, indissoluble, and always the same and like itself; and that the body is most like the human and mortal and unreasonable and multiform and dissoluble, and never the same and like itself. So when this is the case, the soul goes to the formless that resembles it and to the divine, immortal, rational, where it then attains to being blissful, freed from error and ignorance, fear and wild love and all other human evils, and then, as the initiates say, truly lives the rest of the time with God. "It cannot be the task here to show all the ways in which Socrates leads his friends to the Eternal. They all breathe the same spirit. They should all show that man finds another when he walks the paths of transient sense perception, and another when his spirit is alone with himself. And Socrates points out this intrinsic nature of the spiritual to those who listen to him. If they find it, then they see for themselves with the eyes of the spirit that it is eternal. The dying Socrates does not prove immortality; he simply shows the nature of the soul. And then it turns out that becoming and passing away, birth and death have nothing to do with this soul. The essence of the soul lies in the true; but the true cannot become and pass away. The soul has as much to do with becoming as the even has to do with the uneven. Death, however, belongs to becoming. So the soul has nothing to do with death. Must it not be said of the immortal that it accepts the mortal as little as the even accepts the odd? Is it not necessary to say, says Socrates on this basis, that "even if the immortal is imperishable, the soul cannot possibly perish when death comes to it. For, according to what has already been shown, it cannot accept death, nor can it have died, just as the three can never be straight."
[ 5 ] Consider the whole development in this conversation, in which Socrates leads his listeners to see the eternal in the human personality. The listeners take in his thoughts; they search within themselves to see whether there is anything in their own inner experiences that enables them to say "yes" to his ideas. They make the objections that come to them. What has happened to the listeners when the conversation has come to an end? They have found something in themselves that they did not have before. They have not just absorbed an abstract truth; they have undergone a development. Something has come alive in them that was not there before. Is this not something that can be compared to an initiation? Does this not shed light on why Plato presented his philosophy in the form of a conversation? These conversations are supposed to be nothing other than the literary form for the events in the Mystery Places. What Plato himself says in many places convinces us of this. As a philosophical teacher, Plato wanted to be what the initiate in the Mysteries was; as good as one can be with the philosophical way of communication. How Plato knows himself to be in accordance with the nature of the Mysteries! How he considers his way to be the right one only when it leads to where the Mystic is to be led! He speaks about this in the Timaeus: "All those who are somewhat right-minded invoke the gods in small and great undertakings; but we, who intend to teach about the universe, how it came into being and how it did not come into being, must especially, if we have not gone completely astray, invoke the gods and goddesses and pray to them to teach everything first in their spirit and then in accordance with ourselves." And to those who seek such a path, Plato promises "that the deity as savior will let the confused and so far off investigation find its conclusion in a plausible teaching".
[ 6 ] It is the "Timaeus" in particular that reveals to us the mystery character of the Platonic world view. Right at the beginning of this conversation there is talk of an "initiation". Solon is "initiated" by an Egyptian priest into the becoming of the worlds and into the way in which eternal truths are figuratively expressed in traditional myths. "Many and various exterminations of men have already taken place (so the Egyptian priest teaches Solon) and will continue to take place, the most extensive by fire and water, but others, lesser ones, by innumerable other causes. For what is also told among you, that Phaeton, the son of Helios, once mounted his father's chariot and, because he did not know how to drive in his father's way, burned everything on earth and was himself struck dead by lightning, sounds like a fable, but the truth of it is the changed movement of the heavenly bodies orbiting the earth and the destruction of everything on earth by much fire, which occurs after the passage of certain great periods of time." - This Timaeus passage contains a clear indication of how the initiate relates to the myths of the people. He recognizes the truths that are veiled in their images.
[ 7 ] The drama of becoming a world is presented in the Timaeus. Whoever wants to follow the traces that lead to this becoming-world comes to the suspicion of the primordial power from which everything came into being. "Now it is difficult to find the Creator and Father of this universe; and when one has found him, it is impossible to speak about him in a way that everyone can understand." The Myste knew what was meant by this "impossibility". It points to the drama of God. For him, God is not present in the sensible-understanding. There he is only present as nature. He is enchanted in nature. Only he who awakens the divine in himself can approach him, according to the old mystical opinion. So it cannot be made comprehensible to everyone without further ado. But even for those who approach him, he does not appear himself. This is what the Timaeus says. The Father made the world out of the body and soul of the world. Harmoniously, in perfect proportions, he mixed the elements that came into being when he gave himself, shedding his own special being. Thus the world body was created. And stretched over this world body in cross form is the world soul. It is the divine in the world. It has found the death of the cross so that the world may be. Plato may therefore call nature the grave of the divine. But not a grave in which a dead person lies, but an eternal one, for which death only gives the opportunity to express the omnipotence of life. And that person sees this nature in the right light who steps before it to redeem the crucified soul of the world. It is to be resurrected from its death, from its enchantment. Where can it be resurrected? Only in the soul of the initiated human being. Wisdom thus finds its right relationship to the cosmos. The resurrection, the redemption of God: that is knowledge. From the imperfect to the perfect, the development of the world is traced in the Timaeus. An ascending process is depicted in the imagination. The beings develop. God reveals himself in this development. Becoming is a resurrection of God from the grave. Man appears within the development. Plato shows that there is something special about man. The whole world is indeed divine. And man is not more divine than the other beings. But in the other beings God is present in a hidden way, in man in a revealed way. At the end of the Timaeus it says: "and now we would also like to claim that our discussions about the universe have reached their goal, for after this world has been equipped and filled with mortal and immortal living beings in the way described, it has (itself) become a visible being of this kind, which encompasses everything visible, an image of the Creator and a sensually perceptible God, and has become the greatest and best, the most beautiful and most perfect (that could exist), this one and only world."
[ 8 ] But this one and indigenous world would not be perfect if it did not also have the image of the Creator Himself among its images. Only out of the human soul can this image be born, not the Father himself, but the Son, the offspring of God living in the soul, who is like the Father: man can give birth to him.
[ 9 ] Philo, who was said to be the resurrected Plato, described the "Son of God" as the wisdom born of man, which lives in the soul and contains the reason present in the world. This world reason, the Logos, appears as the book in which "all the world's existence is recorded and drawn". It further appears as the Son of God: "imitating the ways of the Father, he forms the figures, looking at the archetypes". The Platonizing Philo addresses this Logos as the Christ: "Since God is the first and only King of the universe, the way to him has rightly been called the royal way; but philosophy considers this to be the way which the choir of the ancient ascetics walked, turned away from the beguiling magic of pleasure, devoted to the worthy and serious cultivation of beauty; this royal way, which we call true philosophy, is called the law: God's Word and Spirit."
[ 10 ] Philo feels like an initiation when he enters this path to meet the Logos, who is the Son of God to him: "I am not afraid to share what has happened to me countless times. Sometimes, when I wanted to write down my philosophical thoughts in the usual way and saw quite clearly what could be established, I found my mind barren and stiff, so that I had to desist without accomplishing anything and felt caught up in vain imaginings; but at the same time I marveled at the power of the thought-real, by which it stands to open and close the womb of the human soul. At other times, however, I began empty and came to fullness without further ado, in that the thoughts came flying down invisibly from above like snowflakes or seeds, and it seized and inspired me like divine power, so that I did not know where I was, who was with me, who I myself was, what I was saying, what I was writing: for now the flow of representation was given to me, a blissful brightness, sharp vision, clear mastery of the material, as if the inner eye could now recognize everything with the greatest clarity. " - This is the description of a path of knowledge which is held in such a way that one sees that he who walks this path is aware that when the Logos comes to life in him, he flows together with the divine. This is also clearly expressed in the words: "When the spirit, seized by love, takes its flight into the holiest, joyful momentum, God-winged, it forgets everything else and itself, it is only filled with and nestled against the one whose satellite and servant it is, and to whom it offers the holiest and most chaste virtue as an incense offering." - For Philo, there are only two paths. Either one follows the sensual, what perception and understanding offer, then one limits oneself to one's own personality, one withdraws from the cosmos; or one becomes aware of the cosmic all-power; then one experiences the eternal within the personality. "He who wants to avoid God falls into his own hands; for there are two things in question: the All-Spirit, which is God, and his own spirit; the latter escapes and flees to the All-Spirit; for he who goes beyond his own spirit says to himself that it is nothing and ties everything to God; but he who avoids God abolishes this primordial ground and makes himself the ground of everything that happens."
[ 11 ] The Platonic worldview aims to be a form of knowledge that is religion in its entirety. It relates knowledge to the highest that man can achieve with his feelings. Plato is only able to accept this knowledge when feeling can satisfy itself most completely in knowledge. It is then not figurative knowledge; it is the content of life. It is a higher man in man. The person of whom the personality is only an image. The superior, the human being is born in the human being himself. And this again expresses a mystery secret in Platonic philosophy. The church father Hippolytus refers to this secret: "This is the great secret of the Samothracians (the guardians of a certain mystery cult), which cannot be spoken and which only the initiated know. But they know in detail about Adam as their original man."
[ 12 ] The Platonic "Symposium", the "Discussion on Love", also represents an "initiation". Here, love appears as the herald of wisdom. If wisdom, the eternal word (Logos) is the son of the eternal creator of the world, then love has a maternal relationship with this Logos. Before even a bright spark of the light of wisdom can shine in the human soul, there must be a dark urge, a pull towards this divine. Unconsciously, man must be drawn to that which later, raised to consciousness, constitutes his highest happiness. What appears in Heraclitus as the demon in man is associated with the idea of love. - In the "Symposium", people from a wide range of backgrounds and with different views on life talk about love: the everyday man, the politician, the scientist, the comic poet Aristophanes and the serious poet Agathon. They each have their own views on love according to their experiences in life. The way they express themselves reveals the level of their "demon". Through love, one being is drawn to another. The manifold, the multiplicity of things into which the divine unity has merged, strives through love towards unity, towards harmony. Love therefore has something divine about it. Everyone can therefore only understand it to the extent that they themselves are partakers of the divine. After people of different levels of maturity have presented their thoughts on love, Socrates takes the floor. As a man of knowledge, he considers love. For him, it is not a god. But it is something that leads man to God. Eros, love, is not a god for him. Because the god is perfect, so he has beauty and goodness. But Eros is only the desire for the beautiful and the good. It therefore stands between man and God. He is a "demon", a mediator between the earthly and the divine. - It is significant that Socrates does not claim to give his thoughts when he talks about love. He says he is only telling what a woman gave him as a revelation about it. It is a mantic 1In ancient mysticism, "mantics" refers to everything that relates to knowledge through "spiritual eyes"; "telestics", on the other hand, is the indication of the paths that lead to initiation. art through which he has arrived at an idea of love. Diotime, the priestess, has awakened in Socrates the demonic power that is supposed to lead him to the divine. She has "initiated" him. - This feature of the "Symposium" is very telling. One must ask: who is the "wise woman" who awakens the demon in Socrates? One cannot think here of mere poetic disguise. For no sensual-real wise woman could awaken the demon in the soul if the power for this awakening were not in the soul itself. We must also look for this "wise woman" in Socrates' own soul. But there must be a reason that makes that which brings the demon into existence in the soul itself appear as an external, real being. This force cannot work in the same way as the forces that can be observed in the soul as belonging to it, as being at home in it. You see, it is the power of the soul before receiving wisdom that Socrates presents as the "wise woman". It is the maternal principle that gives birth to the Son of God, Wisdom, the Logos. The unconsciously active power of the soul, which allows the divine to enter consciousness, is presented as the feminine element. The still wisdom-less soul is the mother of that which leads to the divine. This leads us to an important concept of mysticism. The soul is recognized as the mother of the divine. Unconsciously it leads man to the divine with the necessity of a natural force. - From there, a light shines on the mystery view of Greek mythology. The world of the gods is born in the soul. Man sees what he himself creates in images as his gods. But he must advance to another conception. He must also transform the divine power within himself, which is active before the creation of the images of the gods, into images of the gods. Behind the divine appears the mother of the divine, who is nothing other than the original human soul-power. Next to the gods, man places the goddesses. Consider the myth of Dionysus in the light that has been gained. Dionysus is the son of Zeus and a mortal mother, Semele. Zeus snatches the still immature child from his mother, who has been struck dead by lightning, and hides it in his own hip until it reaches maturity. Hera, the mother of the gods, incites the Titans against Dionysus. They dismember the boy. But Pallas Athena rescues the beating heart and brings it to Zeus. He then creates the son a second time. This myth reveals a process that takes place in the innermost part of the human soul. And whoever speaks in the spirit of the Egyptian priest who instructs Solon about the nature of a myth could speak like this: What is told among you, that Dionysus, the son of the god and of a mortal mother, was born, dismembered and born again, sounds like a fable, but what is true about it is the birth of the divine and are its destinies in one's own human soul. The divine unites with the temporal-earthly human soul. As soon as only this divine, Dionysian, stirs, the soul feels a strong longing for its true spiritual form. Consciousness, which again appears in the image of a female deity, Hera, becomes jealous of the birth from the better consciousness. It incites the lower nature of man - (the Titans). The still immature child of God is dismembered. Thus it is present in man as fragmented sensual-understanding science. But if so much of the higher wisdom (Zeus) is present in man that it is effective, then it nurtures and cares for the immature child, which is then reborn as the second son of God (Dionysus). Thus from science, the fragmented divine power in man, is born the unified wisdom that is the Logos, the son of God and a mortal mother, the transient human soul that unconsciously strives for the divine. As long as one sees in all this only a pure soul process and understands it as a picture of such, one is far removed from the spiritual reality that takes place there. In this spiritual reality, the soul does not merely experience something within itself; rather, it has become completely detached from itself and experiences a world process that in truth does not take place within it at all, but outside of it.
[ 13 ] Platonic wisdom and Greek myth merge; likewise mystery wisdom and myth. The created gods were the subject of popular religion; the story of their creation was the secret of the mysteries. No wonder it was considered dangerous to "betray" the mysteries. After all, one was "betraying" the origin of the folk gods. And a correct understanding of this origin is salutary; misunderstanding is pernicious.