Christianity as Mystical Fact
GA 8
11. Christianity and Pagan Wisdom
[ 1 ] At the time of the first beginnings of Christianity there appear in ancient pagan culture conceptions of the world which seem to be a continuation of the Platonic way of thinking, and which may be understood as a more inward, spiritual Mystery wisdom. Such conceptions started with Philo of Alexandria (B.C. 25–A.D. 50). (See) Note 46) From his point of view the processes leading to the divine take place in the innermost part of the human soul. One could say that the mystery temple in which Philo seeks his initiations is simply and solely the innermost part of his being, and its higher experiences. In his case processes of a purely spiritual nature replace the procedures which took place in the Mystery centers. According to Philo sense-observation and cognition gained through the logical intellect, do not lead to the divine. They relate merely to what is transitory. But there is a path by which the soul may rise above these methods of cognition. It must step out of what it accepts as its ordinary “I.” It must be removed from this “I.” Then it enters a state of spiritual exaltation and illumination in which it no longer knows, thinks and cognizes in the ordinary sense. For it has become merged with the divine, identified with it. The divine is experienced in its essence, which cannot be formed in thoughts or imparted in concepts. It is experienced. One who experiences it knows that he can communicate this experience only if he is able to imbue his words with life. The world is a reflected image of this mystical reality, experienced in the innermost recesses of the soul. The world has come forth from the invisible, inconceivable God. A direct image of this Godhead is the wisdom-filled harmony of the world, out of which material phenomena arise. This wisdom-filled harmony is the spiritual image of the Godhead. It is the divine Spirit diffused in the world; cosmic reason, the Logos, the Offspring or Son of God. The Logos is the mediator between the world of the senses and the inconceivable God. When man steeps himself in cognition, he unites himself with the Logos. The Logos becomes embodied in him. The spiritually developed personality is the bearer of the Logos. Above the Logos is God; beneath is the transitory world. Man is called upon to link the two. What he experiences in his innermost being as spirit, is the cosmic Spirit. These ideas are directly reminiscent of Pythagorean thought. The center of existence is sought in the inner life. But this inner life is conscious of its cosmic significance. Augustine's statement, “We see all created things because they are; and they are because God sees them,” derives from a way of thinking essentially similar to that of Philo. And in describing what and how we see, Augustine adds significantly, “Because they are, we see them outwardly: and because they are perfect, we see them inwardly.”73aAugustine's Confessions, Book XIII, 38. The Loeb Library translation runs: “We therefore behold these things which thou hast created, because they are; but they are, because thou seest them. And we see without, that they are, and within, that they are good.” Another translation also reads: “... And we see without that they are, and within that they are good.” We find the same fundamental idea in Plato. Philo, like Plato, sees in the destiny of the human soul the closing act of the great cosmic drama, the awakening of the spellbound God. He describes the inner deeds of the soul in the following words: The wisdom within man followed “the ways of his Father, and shaped the different forms, looking to the archetypal patterns.” It is not a personal matter when man shapes such forms within himself. These forms are the eternal wisdom, they are the cosmic life. This is in harmony with the interpretation of the folk myths in the light of the Mysteries. The mystic searches for the deeper truth in the myths. And as the mystic treats the myths of paganism, Philo handles Moses' story of the creation. For him the Old Testament accounts are images of inner soul processes. The Bible relates the creation of the world. Whoever accepts it as a description of outer events, knows only half of it. Certainly it is written, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” But the true inner sense of such words must be experienced in the depths of the soul. God must be found within; then He appears as the “archetypal essence sending forth myriads of rays, none visible to sense, all to the mind.”74Philo, De cherubim et flammeo gladio, The Cherubim and the Flaming Sword, I, 97. A commentary on Genesis 3:24 and 4:1. This is how Philo expresses himself. In Plato's Timaeus the words are almost identical with those of the Bible: “And when the Father that engendered the universe perceived it in motion and alive, and a thing of joy to the eternal gods, He too rejoiced.”75Plato, Timaeus, 37 D. In the Bible we read, “and God saw that it was good.” For Plato, for Mystery wisdom, as well as for the Bible, cognition of the divine means to experience the process of creation as one's own destiny. Thus the story of creation and the story of the soul striving toward its apotheosis, flow into one. Philo is convinced that Moses' account of the creation may be used to tell the story of the soul which is seeking God. Everything in the Bible acquires a profoundly symbolic meaning when seen from this point of view. Philo becomes the interpreter of this symbolic meaning. He reads the Bible as the story of the soul.
[ 2 ] We may say that Philo's manner of reading the Bible is in harmony with the trend of his time, which originated in the wisdom of the Mysteries; indeed he relates that the Therapeutae interpreted ancient writings in the same way. “They have also works of ancient authors who were the founders of their way of thinking, and left behind them many monuments of the method used in allegorical interpretation ... the interpretation of the sacred scriptures is based upon the underlying meaning in the allegorical narratives.” Thus Philo's goal was to discover the underlying meaning of the “allegorical” narratives in the Old Testament.
Let us imagine where such an interpretation could lead. We read the account of creation, and find in it not only a narrative of outward events, but a representation of the ways which the soul must take to reach the divine. Thus as a microcosm, the soul must repeat in itself the ways of God, and its mystical striving for wisdom can take only this form. The drama of the universe must be enacted in every soul. The soul life of the mystic is the fulfillment of the prototype given in the account of creation. Moses wrote not only to recount historical facts, but to represent pictorially the ways the soul must take if it desires to find God.
[ 3 ] All this, in Philo's conception of the world, is contained within the human spirit. Man experiences within himself what God has experienced in the world. The Word of God, the Logos, becomes an experience of the soul. God led the Jews out of Egypt into the Promised Land; He made them undergo trials and privations before bestowing the Promised Land upon them. This is the outward event. Let us experience it inwardly. From the land of Egypt, the transitory world, passing through privations which lead to the suppression of sensuous experience and into the promised land of the soul, we reach the eternal. With Philo all this is an inner process. The God Who was poured out into the world, celebrates His resurrection in the soul, if His creative word is understood and re-created in the soul. Then within himself, man has given spiritual birth to God, to the Spirit of God that became Man, to the Logos, to Christ. In this sense, cognition, for Philo and those who thought like him, was a birth of Christ within the world of spirit. The Neoplatonic conception of the world, which developed contemporaneously with Christianity, was a continuation of Philo's method of thought. Let us see how Plotinus (204–269 A.D.) describes his spiritual experience:
[ 4 ] “Many times it has happened: Lifted out of the body into myself; becoming external to all other things and self-centered; beholding a marvelous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of community with the loftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring identity with the divine; rooted within it; attaining the strength to set myself above the higher world: yet, there comes the moment of descent from spiritual vision to reasoning, and after that reposing in God, I ask myself how it happens that I can now be descending, and how did my soul ever enter into my body, the soul which, in its essence, is the high thing it has shown itself to be,” and “What can it be that has brought the souls to forget the Father, God, and, though members of the Divine and entirely of that world, to ignore at once themselves and it? The evil that has overtaken them has its source in self-will, in the entry into the sphere of creation, and in the primal differentiation with the desire for self-ownership. They conceived a pleasure in this freedom and largely indulged in their own self-glorification; thus they were hurried down the wrong path, and in the end, drifting further and further, they came to lose even the thought of their origin in the Divine. Just as children who are immediately torn from their parents, and have for a long time been nurtured at a great distance from them, become ignorant both of themselves and their parents.”76Plotinus, 4th Ennead, On the Nature of the Soul, 8th Tractate, The Soul's Descent into the Body, 1. In the following words Plotinus describes the path of development the soul should seek: “Let not merely the enveloping body be at peace, the body's turmoil stilled, but all that lies around; earth at peace, and sea at peace, and air and the very heavens be still. Let the soul be observed, externally as it were, diffusing and flowing into the quiescent cosmos, permeating it from all sides, and pouring in its light. As the rays of the sun, throwing their brilliance upon a lowering cloud make it gleam all gold, so the soul entering body of the heaven-opened world, bestows life and immortality.”77Plotinus, 5th Ennead, The Divine Mind, 1st Tractate, On the Three Hypostases that Rank as the Principle of All Things, 1.
[ 5 ] It follows that this conception of the world has a profound similarity to Christianity. Among those who acknowledge the community of Jesus it is said, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life ... declare we unto you.” (I John 1: 1–3.) In the same way it might be said in the sense of Neoplatonism, that which was from the beginning, which cannot be heard or seen, must be spiritually experienced as the word of life.—The development of the old world conception thus is split. In Neoplatonism and similar conceptions of the world it leads to a concept of Christ related only to the spiritual realm, and on the other hand it leads to a fusion of this concept of Christ with a historical manifestation, the personality of Jesus. The writer of the Gospel of John may be said to unite these two world conceptions. “In the beginning was the Word.” He shares this conviction with the Neoplatonists. The Neoplatonists conclude that the Word becomes spirit in the innermost soul. The writer of John's Gospel, and with him the community of Christians, conclude that the Word became flesh in Jesus. The more intimate sense, in which alone the Word could become flesh was provided by the whole development of the old world conceptions. Plato says of the Macrocosm: God has stretched the soul of the world on the body of the world in the form of a cross.77aSee note 43, above. This soul of the world is the Logos. If the Logos is to become flesh He must repeat the cosmic process in physical existence. He must be nailed to the Cross and rise again. This most significant thought of Christianity had long before been outlined as a spiritual representation in the old world conceptions. This became a personal experience of the mystic during “initiation.” The Logos become Man had to experience this deed as a fact, valid for the whole of humanity. Something which was a Mystery process in the development of the old wisdom becomes historical fact through Christianity. Thus Christianity became the fulfillment not only of what the Jewish prophets had predicted, but also of what had been pre-formed in the Mysteries. The Cross of Golgotha is the Mystery cult of antiquity condensed into a fact. We find the Cross first in the ancient world conceptions; at the starting-point of Christianity it meets us within a unique event which is to be valid for the whole of humanity. From this point of view the mystical element in Christianity can be grasped. Christianity as mystical fact is a stage of development in the process of human evolution; and the events in the Mysteries and their effects are the preparations for this mystical fact.
Christentum und Heidnische Weisheit
[ 1 ] In der Zeit, in der auch das Christentum seine ersten Anfänge hat, treten innerhalb der antiken heidnischen Kultur Weltanschauungen auf, die sich als eine Fortführung der platonischen Vorstellungsart darstellen, und die auch als eine verinnerlichte, vergeistigte Mysterienweisheit aufgefaßt werden dürfen. Ihren Ausgang nahmen sie von dem Alexandriner Philo (25 v. Chr. bis 50 n. Chr.). Ganz ins Innere der Menschenseele scheinen bei ihm die Vorgänge verlegt, die zum Göttlichen führen. Man möchte sagen: der Mysterientempel, in dem Philo seine Weihen sucht, ist einzig und allein sein eigenes Innere und dessen höhere Erlebnisse selbst. Durch Prozesse rein geistiger Art ersetzt er die Prozeduren, die sich in den Mysterienstätten abspielen. Das Sinnesanschauen und die logische Verstandeserkenntnis führen nach seiner Überzeugung nicht zum Göttlichen. Sie haben es nur mit dem Vergänglichen zu tun. Aber es gibt für die Seele einen Weg, sich über diese Erkenntnisarten zu erheben. Sie muß aus dem heraustreten, was sie ihr gewöhnliches «Ich» nennt. Sie muß diesem «Ich» entrückt werden. Dann tritt sie in einen Zustand spiritueller Erhöhung, Erleuchtung ein, in dem sie nicht mehr im gewöhnlichen Sinne weiß, denkt und erkennt. Denn sie ist mit dem Göttlichen verwachsen, mit ihm ineinander geflossen. Das Göttliche wird erlebt als ein solches, das sich nicht in Gedanken formen, nicht in Begriffen mitteilen läßt. Es wird erlebt. Und der es erlebt, weiß, daß er von ihm nur Mitteilung machen kann, wenn er dazu kommt, den Worten Leben zu geben. Von dieser mystischen Wesenheit, die man in den tiefsten Schachten der Seele erlebt, ist die Welt das Abbild. Sie ist aus dem unsichtbaren, undenkbaren Gott hervorgegangen. Ein unmittelbares Bild dieser Gottheit ist die weisheitsvolle Harmonie der Welt, der die sinnlichen Erscheinungen folgen. Diese weisheitsvolle Harmonie ist das geistige Ebenbild der Gottheit. Es ist der in die Welt ergossene göttliche Geist: die Weltvernunft, der Logos, der Sproß oder Sohn Gottes. Der Logos ist der Vermittler zwischen der Sinnenwelt und dem unvorstellbaren Gott. Indem der Mensch sich mit Erkenntnis durchdringt, vereinigt er sich mit dem Logos. Der Logos wird in ihm verkörperlicht. Die zur Geistigkeit entwickelte Persönlichkeit ist Träger des Logos. Über dem Logos liegt Gott; unterhalb desselben die vergängliche Welt. Der Mensch ist berufen, die Kette zwischen beiden zu schließen. Was er in seinem Innern als Geist erlebt, ist der Weltengeist. Unmittelbar wird man bei solchen Vorstellungen an die pythagoreische Denkart erinnert. Im Innenleben wird der Kern des Daseins gesucht. Aber das Innenleben ist sich seiner kosmischen Geltung bewußt. Es ist im wesentlichen aus einer Vorstellungsart hervorgegangen, die der des Philo ähnlich ist, was Augustinus sagt: «Wir sehen alle Dinge, die gemacht sind, weil sie sind; aber weil Gott sie sieht, sind sie.» — Und über das, was und wo durch wir sehen, fügt er bezeichnend hinzu: «Und weil sie sind, sehen wir sie äußerlich; und weil sie vollkommen sind, sehen wir sie innerlich.» Bei Plato ist die gleiche Grundvorstellung vorhanden. Philo hat genau wie Plato in den Schicksalen der menschlichen Seele den Abschluß des großen Weltendramas, die Erweckung des verzauberten Gottes, gesehen. Er hat ja die inneren Taten der Seele mit den Worten beschrieben: die Weisheit in dem Innern des Menschen geht «die Wege des Vaters nachahmend und formt, auf die Urbilder schauend, die Gestalten». Es ist daher keine persönliche Angelegenheit, wenn der Mensch in sich Gestalten formt. Diese Gestalten sind die ewige Weisheit, sind das kosmische Leben. Das ist im Einklang mit der Mysterienauffassung von den Volksmythen. Der Myste sucht in den Mythen den tieferen Wahrheitskern. Und was der Myste mit den heidnischen Mythen tut, das vollbringt Philo mit den mosaischen Schöpfungsberichten. Die Berichte des alten Testamentes sind ihm Bilder für innere Seelenvorgänge. Die Bibel erzählt die Weltschöpfung. Wer sie als Darstellung äußerer Vorgänge nimmt, der kennt sie nur halb. Gewiß steht geschrieben: «Im Urbeginn schuf Gott Himmel und Erde. Und die Erde war wüst und leer, und es war finster in der Tiefe; und der Geist Gottes schwebte über den Wassern.» Aber der wahre, innere Sinn solcher Worte muß in den Tiefen der Seele erlebt werden. Es muß der Gott im Innern gefunden werden, dann erscheint er als der «Urglanz, der unzählige Strahlen aussendet, nicht sinnlich-wahrnehmbar, sondern insgesamt gedanklich». So drückt sich Philo aus. Fast genau wie in der Bibel heißt es bei Plato, im «Timäos»: «Als nun aber der Vater, welcher das All erzeugt hatte, es ansah, wie es belebt und bewegt und ein Bild der ewigen Götter geworden war, da empfand er Wohlgefallen daran.» In der Bibel liest man: «Und Gott sah, daß alles gut war.» — Das Göttliche erkennen, heißt wie bei Plato, wie in der Mysterienweisheit auch im Sinne der Bibel: den Schöpfungswerdegang als eigenes seelisches Schicksal erleben. Geschichte der Schöpfung und Geschichte der sich vergöttlichenden Seele fließen dadurch in Eins zusammen. Man kann den Schöpfungsbericht des Moses nach Philos Überzeugung dazu verwenden, die Geschichte der Gott suchenden Seele zu schreiben. Alle Dinge in der Bibel erhalten dadurch einen tief symbolischen Sinn. Philo wird zum Ausleger dieses symbolischen Sinnes. Er liest die Bibel als Seelengeschichte.
[ 2 ] Man darf sagen, daß Philo mit dieser Art die Bibel zu lesen, einem Zuge seiner Zeit entsprach, der aus der Mysterienweisheit geschöpft war; konnte er ja dieselbe Art der Auslegung alter Schriften von den Therapeuten berichten. «Sie besitzen auch Werke alter Schriftsteller, die einst ihre Schule leiteten und viele Erklärungen über die in den allegorischen Schriften übliche Methode hinterließen . . . Die Auslegung dieser Schriften ist bei ihnen auf den tieferen Sinn der allegorischen Erzählungen gerichtet». So war Philos Absicht auf den tieferen Sinn der «allegorischen» Erzählungen des alten Testaments gerichtet. Man vergegenwärtige sich, wozu eine solche Auslegung führen konnte. Man liest den Schöpfungsbericht und findet darin nicht nur eine äußerliche Erzählung sondern das Vorbild für die Wege, welche die Seele nehmen muß, um zum Göttlichen zu gelangen. Die Seele muß also — darin nur kann ihr mystisches Weisheitsstreben bestehen — in sich die Wege Gottes mikrokosmisch wiederholen. Es muß sich in jeder Seele das Weltendrama abspielen. Eine Erfüllung des im Schöpfungsbericht gegebenen Vorbildes ist das Seelenleben des mystischen Weisen. Moses hat nicht nur geschrieben, um geschichtliche Tatsachen zu erzählen, sondern um in Bildern zu veranschaulichen, was die Seele für Wege nehmen muß, wenn sie Gott finden will.
[ 3 ] Das alles bleibt in der Weltanschauung Philos innerhalb des Geistes beschlossen. Der Mensch erlebt in sich, was Gott in der Welt erlebt hat. Das Wort Gottes, der Logos, wird Seelenereignis. Gott hat die Juden aus Ägypten nach dem gelobten Lande geführt; er hat sie durch Qualen und Entbehrungen gehen lassen, um ihnen dann das Land der Verheißung zu schenken. Das ist der äußere Vorgang. Man erlebe ihn im Innern. Man geht aus dem Lande Ägypten, der vergänglichen Welt, durch die Entbehrungen, welche zur Unterdrückung der sinnlichen Welt führen, in das gelobte Land der Seele ein, man erreicht das Ewige. Bei Philo ist das alles innerlicher Vorgang. Der Gott, der in die Welt ausgegossen wurde, feiert seine Auferstehung in der Seele, wenn sein Schöpfungswort verstanden und in der Seele nachgebildet wird. Dann hat der Mensch in sich den Gott, den Mensch gewordenen Gottesgeist, den Logos, Christus, auf geistige Art geboren. In diesem Sinne war die Erkenntnis für Philo und für diejenigen, die in seinem Sinne dachten, eine Christusgeburt innerhalb der Welt des Geistigen. Eine Fortbildung dieser philonischen Denkungsart war auch die neuplatonische Weltanschauung, die sich mit dem Christentum zugleich fortbildete. Man sehe, wie Plotin (204 bis 269 n. Chr.) seine geistigen Erlebnisse schildert:
[ 4 ] «Oftmals, wenn ich aus dem Schlummer der Körperlichkeit erwache, zu mir komme, von der Außenwelt abgewendet in mich einkehre, so schaue ich eine wundersame Schönheit; dann bin ich gewiß, meines besseren Teiles inne geworden zu sein; ich betätige das wahre Leben, bin mit dem Göttlichen geeint, und in ihm gegründet, gewinne ich die Kraft, mich noch über die Überwelt hinaus zu versetzen. Wenn ich dann nach diesem Ruhen in Gott aus dem Geistesschauen wieder zur Gedankenbildung herabsteige, dann frage ich mich, wie es zuging, daß ich jetzt herabsteige, und daß überhaupt einmal meine Seele in den Körper eingegangen ist, da sie doch in ihrem Wesen so ist, wie sie sich mir eben gezeigt hatte», und «was mag denn der Grund sein, daß die Seelen den Vater, Gott, vergessen, da sie doch aus dem Jenseits stammen und ihm gehören, und so von ihm und sich selbst nichts wissen? Des Bösen Anfang ist für sie der Wagemut und die Werdelust und die Selbstentfremdung und die Lust, nur sich zu gehören. Es gelüstete sie nach Selbstherrlichkeit; sie tummelten sich nach ihrem Sinne, und so gerieten sie auf den Abweg und schritten zum vollen Abfalle vor, und damit schwand ihnen die Erkenntnis ihres Ursprungs aus dem Jenseits, wie Kinder, früh von ihren Eltern getrennt und in der Ferne aufgezogen, nicht wissen, wer sie und ihre Eltern sind». Die Lebensentwicklung, welche die Seele suchen soll, wird von Plotin dargestellt: «Befriedet sei ihr Körperleben und dessen Wogenschlag, befriedet sehe sie alles, was sie umgibt: die Erde und das Meer und die Luft und den Himmel selbst, ohne Regung. Sie lerne darauf achten, wie die Seele von außen her in den ruhenden Kosmos gleichsam sich ergießt und einströmt, von allen Seiten andringt und einstrahlt; wie die Sonnenstrahlen eine dunkle Wolke erleuchten und goldig erglänzen machen, so verleiht die Seele, wenn sie in den Leib der himmelumspannten Welt eingeht, ihm Leben und Unsterblichkeit.»
[ 5 ] Es ergibt sich, daß diese Weltanschauung mit dem Christentum eine tiefgehende Ähnlichkeit hat. Bei den Bekennern der Jesusgemeinde heißt es: «Was von Anfang an geschehen ist, was wir gehört und gesehen haben mit Augen, was wir selbst geschauet, was unsere Hände berührt haben von dem Worte des Lebens ... das melden wir euch»; so könnte im Sinne des Neuplatonismus gesagt werden: Was vom Anfange an geschehen ist, was man nicht hören und sehen kann: das muß man spirituell erleben als das Wort des Lebens. — Die Entwicklung der alten Weltanschauung vollzieht sich somit in einer Spaltung. Sie führt zu einer Christus-Idee, die sich auf rein Geistiges bezieht, im Neuplatonismus und ähnlich gerichteten Weltanschauungen; und andrerseits zu einem Zusammenfließen dieser Christus-Idee mit einer geschichtlichen Erscheinung, der Persönlichkeit Jesu. Den Schreiber des Johannes-Evangeliums kann man den Verbinder der beiden Weltanschauungen nennen. «Im Urbeginne war das Wort.» Diese Überzeugung teilt er mit den Neuplatonikern. Das Wort wird Geist im Innern der Seele: das folgern die Neuplatoniker. Das Wort ist in Jesus Fleisch geworden, das folgert der Schreiber des Johannes-Evangeliums, und mit ihm die Christengemeinde. Der nähere Sinn, wie das Wort allein Fleisch werden konnte, war durch die ganze Entwicklung der alten Weltanschauung gegeben. Plato erzählt ja das makrokosmische: Gott hat auf den Weltleib in Kreuzesform die Weltseele gespannt. Diese Weltseele ist der Logos. Soll der Logos Fleisch werden, so muß er im Fleisches-Dasein den kosmischen Weltprozeß wiederholen. Er muß ans Kreuz geschlagen werden und auferstehen. Als geistige Vorstellung war dieser wichtigste Gedanke des Christentums in den alten Weltanschauungen längst vorgezeichnet. Als persönliches Erlebnis machte es der Myste bei der «Einweihung» durch. Als Tatsache, die für die ganze Menschheit Geltung hat, mußte es der «Mensch gewordene Logos» durchmachen. Etwas, was also Mysterienvorgang in der alten Weisheitsentwicklung war: das wird durch das Christentum zur historischen Tatsache. Dadurch wurde das Christentum die Erfüllung nicht nur dessen, was die jüdischen Propheten vorhergesagt hatten; sondern es wurde auch die Erfüllung dessen, was die Mysterien vorhergebildet hatten. — Das Kreuz auf Golgatha ist der in eine Tatsache zusammengezogene Mysterienkult des Altertums. Dieses Kreuz begegnet uns zuerst in den alten Weltanschauungen; es begegnet uns innerhalb eines einmaligen Ereignisses, das für die ganze Menschheit gelten soll, am Ausgangspunkte des Christentums. Von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus kann das Mystische im Christentum begriffen werden. Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache ist eine Entwicklungsstufe im Werdegang der Menschheit; und die Ereignisse in den Mysterien und die durch dieselben bedingten Wirkungen sind die Vorbereitung zu dieser mystischen Tatsache.
Christianity and pagan wisdom
[ 1 ] In the period in which Christianity also had its first beginnings, world views emerged within the ancient pagan culture which can be seen as a continuation of the Platonic way of thinking and which can also be understood as an internalized, spiritualized mystery wisdom. They originated with the Alexandrian Philo (25 BC to 50 AD). He seems to have transferred the processes that lead to the divine completely into the interior of the human soul. One could say that the mystery temple in which Philo seeks his consecration is solely his own inner self and its higher experiences. He replaces the procedures that take place in the mystery sites with processes of a purely spiritual nature. According to his conviction, sensory perception and logical understanding do not lead to the divine. They only deal with the transient. But there is a way for the soul to rise above these forms of knowledge. It must step out of what it calls its ordinary "I". It must be removed from this "I". Then it enters a state of spiritual elevation, enlightenment, in which it no longer knows, thinks and recognizes in the ordinary sense. For it has grown together with the divine, merged with it. The divine is experienced as something that cannot be formed in thoughts, cannot be communicated in concepts. It is experienced. And he who experiences it knows that he can only communicate it if he comes to give life to the words. The world is the image of this mystical entity that is experienced in the deepest recesses of the soul. It has emerged from the invisible, unthinkable God. A direct image of this deity is the wisdom-filled harmony of the world, which is followed by sensual phenomena. This wisdom-filled harmony is the spiritual image of the deity. It is the divine spirit poured into the world: the world reason, the Logos, the offspring or Son of God. The Logos is the mediator between the world of the senses and the unimaginable God. By imbuing himself with knowledge, man unites himself with the Logos. The Logos is embodied in him. The personality developed into spirituality is the bearer of the Logos. God lies above the Logos; below it lies the transient world. Man is called to close the chain between the two. What he experiences within himself as spirit is the spirit of the world. Such ideas immediately remind us of the Pythagorean way of thinking. The core of existence is sought in the inner life. But the inner life is aware of its cosmic validity. It has essentially emerged from a way of thinking that is similar to that of Philo, which Augustine says: "We see all things that are made because they are; but because God sees them, they are." - And about what and where through we see, he adds significantly: "And because they are, we see them outwardly; and because they are perfect, we see them inwardly." The same basic idea is present in Plato. Philo, like Plato, saw in the destinies of the human soul the conclusion of the great world drama, the awakening of the enchanted god. He described the inner deeds of the soul with the words: the wisdom within man "imitates the ways of the Father and, looking at the archetypes, forms the figures". It is therefore not a personal matter when man forms shapes within himself. These forms are the eternal wisdom, the cosmic life. This is in line with the mystery concept of folk myths. The Myst seeks the deeper core of truth in the myths. And what Myste does with the pagan myths, Philo accomplishes with the Mosaic accounts of creation. For him, the accounts of the Old Testament are images of inner soul processes. The Bible tells of the creation of the world. Anyone who takes it as a depiction of external processes knows it only halfway. It is certainly written: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was upon the face of the waters." But the true, inner meaning of such words must be experienced in the depths of the soul. God must be found within, then he appears as the "primordial radiance that emits innumerable rays, not sensually perceptible, but all in thought". This is how Philo expresses himself. Almost exactly as in the Bible, Plato says in the "Timaeus": "But when the Father, who had created the universe, saw how it was animated and moved and had become an image of the eternal gods, he was pleased with it." In the Bible we read: "And God saw that everything was good." - To recognize the divine means, as in Plato, as in mystery wisdom, also in the sense of the Bible: to experience the course of creation as one's own spiritual destiny. The history of creation and the history of the divinizing soul thus merge into one. According to Philo's conviction, Moses' account of creation can be used to write the story of the God-seeking soul. All things in the Bible thus take on a deeply symbolic meaning. Philo becomes the interpreter of this symbolic meaning. He reads the Bible as a story of the soul.
[ 2 ] It can be said that Philo's way of reading the Bible corresponded to a trend of his time, which was drawn from the wisdom of the mysteries; after all, he was able to report the same way of interpreting ancient writings from the therapists. "They also possess works of ancient writers who once directed their school and left many explanations of the method used in the allegorical writings . . . Their interpretation of these writings is directed towards the deeper meaning of the allegorical narratives". Thus Philo's intention was directed towards the deeper meaning of the "allegorical" stories of the Old Testament. Consider what such an interpretation could lead to. One reads the account of creation and finds in it not only an external narrative but the model for the paths that the soul must take in order to reach the divine. The soul must therefore - only in this can its mystical striving for wisdom consist - microcosmically repeat in itself the ways of God. The drama of the world must take place in every soul. A fulfillment of the model given in the creation account is the soul life of the mystical sage. Moses wrote not only to recount historical facts, but to illustrate in images the paths the soul must take if it wants to find God.
[ 3 ] This all remains resolved within the spirit in Philo's world view. Man experiences in himself what God has experienced in the world. The Word of God, the Logos, becomes a soul event. God led the Jews out of Egypt to the promised land; he let them go through torment and hardship in order to then give them the land of promise. That is the outward process. Experience it on the inside. One goes from the land of Egypt, the transient world, through the hardships that lead to the suppression of the sensual world, into the promised land of the soul, one reaches the eternal. For Philo, this is all an inner process. The God who was poured out into the world celebrates his resurrection in the soul when his word of creation is understood and imitated in the soul. Then man has given birth in himself to God, the Spirit of God made man, the Logos, Christ, in a spiritual way. In this sense, for Philo and for those who thought along his lines, knowledge was a birth of Christ within the world of the spiritual. The Neoplatonic worldview, which developed at the same time as Christianity, was also a further development of this Philonic way of thinking. See how Plotinus (204 to 269 AD) describes his spiritual experiences:
[ 4 ] "Often, when I awaken from the slumber of corporeality, come to myself, turn away from the outside world and enter into myself, I behold a wondrous beauty; then I am certain that I have become aware of my better part; I experience true life, am united with the divine, and founded in it, I gain the strength to move myself even beyond the overworld. When, after this resting in God, I descend again from the spiritual vision to the formation of thoughts, then I ask myself how it happened that I now descend, and that my soul has entered the body at all, since it is in its essence as it had just shown itself to me," and "what may be the reason that souls forget the Father, God, since they come from the beyond and belong to him, and thus know nothing of him and themselves? For them, the beginning of evil is daring and the lust for value and self-alienation and the desire to belong only to themselves. They lusted after self-importance; they romped about according to their senses, and so they went astray and progressed to full apostasy, and with it the knowledge of their origin from the beyond disappeared from them, just as children, early separated from their parents and brought up in the distance, do not know who they and their parents are. The development of life that the soul should seek is described by Plotinus: "Let its bodily life and its waves be pacified, let it see everything that surrounds it pacified: the earth and the sea and the air and the sky itself, without emotion. She learns to observe how the soul pours itself from outside into the dormant cosmos, as it were, and flows in, penetrates and radiates from all sides; just as the sun's rays illuminate a dark cloud and make it shine golden, so the soul, when it enters the body of the heaven-embraced world, gives it life and immortality."
[ 5 ] It turns out that this worldview has a profound similarity with Christianity. The confessors of the Jesus church say: "What has happened from the beginning, what we have heard and seen with our eyes, what we ourselves have seen, what our hands have touched of the Word of Life ... this we report to you"; this could be said in the sense of Neoplatonism: What has happened from the beginning, what cannot be heard or seen: that must be experienced spiritually as the Word of Life. - The development of the old world view thus takes place in a split. It leads to an idea of Christ, which refers to the purely spiritual, in Neoplatonism and similarly oriented world views; and on the other hand to a confluence of this idea of Christ with a historical phenomenon, the personality of Jesus. The writer of the Gospel of John can be called the connector of the two world views. "In the beginning was the Word." He shares this conviction with the Neoplatonists. The Word becomes spirit within the soul: that is the conclusion of the Neoplatonists. The Word became flesh in Jesus, concluded the writer of the Gospel of John, and with him the Christian community. The closer sense of how the Word alone could become flesh was given by the entire development of the ancient world view. Plato tells the macrocosmic story: God has stretched the world soul over the world body in the form of a cross. This world soul is the Logos. If the Logos is to become flesh, he must repeat the cosmic world-process in his fleshly existence. He must be crucified and resurrected. As a spiritual concept, this most important idea of Christianity had long been outlined in the old world views. The Myste went through it as a personal experience at the "initiation". The "Logos made man" had to go through it as a fact that is valid for all mankind. Something that was therefore a mystery process in the ancient development of wisdom became a historical fact through Christianity. Thus Christianity not only became the fulfillment of what the Jewish prophets had foretold, but it also became the fulfillment of what the mysteries had foreshadowed. - The cross on Golgotha is the mystery cult of antiquity condensed into one fact. We first encounter this cross in the ancient world views; we encounter it at the starting point of Christianity within a unique event that is supposed to apply to the whole of humanity. It is from this point of view that the mystical in Christianity can be understood. Christianity as a mystical fact is a stage in the development of mankind; and the events in the Mysteries and the effects caused by them are the preparation for this mystical fact.