The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. The Egyptian Mystery Wisdom

[ 1 ] "When you, freed from the body, ascend to the free ether, you will be an immortal god, escaped from death." This statement by Empedocles seems to briefly summarize what the ancient Egyptians thought about the eternal in man and its connection with the divine. Proof of this is the so-called "Book of the Dead", which was deciphered by the diligence of researchers in the nineteenth century. (See Lepsius, Das Totenbuch der alten Ägypter. Berlin 1842.) It is "the largest coherent literary work that has been preserved by the Egyptians". It contains all kinds of teachings and prayers that were given to every deceased person to take with them to the grave so that they would have a guide when they were rid of their mortal coil. The most intimate views of the Egyptians about the eternal and the creation of the world are contained in this work of literature. These views certainly point to concepts of the gods that are similar to those of Greek mysticism. -Of the various gods recognized in the various parts of Egypt, Osiris gradually became the most prominent and universal. The ideas about the other deities were summarized in him. Whatever thoughts the Egyptian people in their great mass may have had about Osiris, the "Book of the Dead" points to an idea of priestly wisdom which saw in Osiris an entity such as could be found in the human soul itself. -Everything that was thought about death and the dead says this clearly enough. If the body is given to the earthly, kept within the earthly, then the eternal takes the path to the primordial eternal. It appears for judgment before Osiris, who is surrounded by forty-two judges of the dead. The fate of the eternal in man depends on what these judges of the dead decide. Once the soul has confessed its sins, once it has been reconciled with eternal justice, invisible powers approach it and speak to it: "Osiris N. was purified in the pool that is south of the field of Hotep and north of the field of the locusts, where the gods of green wash themselves in the fourth hour of the night and in the eighth of the day with the image of the heart of the gods, passing from night to day. " Thus the eternal part of man is addressed within the eternal world order itself as an Osiris. After the name Osiris, the personal name of the person concerned is mentioned. And the one who unites with the eternal world order also calls himself "Osiris". "I am Osiris N. Growing under the flowers of the fig tree is the name of Osiris N." The human being thus becomes an Osiris. Being Osiris is only a perfect stage of development of being human. It seems self-evident that Osiris, who judges within the eternal world order, is also nothing but a perfect human being. There is a difference in degree and a difference in number between being human and being God. This is based on the mystery view of the secret of "number". Osiris as a world being is One; in every human soul he is therefore undividedly present. Every human being is an Osiris; and yet the One Osiris must also be presented as a special entity. Man is in the process of development; and at the end of his developmental trajectory lies his being God. Rather, one must speak of a divinity, not of a finished, completed God-being within this view.

[ 2 ] It is not to be doubted that for such a view only he can really enter into the Osiris existence who already arrives as Osiris at the gate of the eternal world order. The highest life that man can lead will therefore have to consist in his transforming himself into Osiris. In the real human being, the most perfect Osiris possible must already live within the transient life. Man becomes perfect when he lives like an Osiris. When he goes through what Osiris went through. The Osiris myth thus takes on a deeper meaning. He becomes a role model for those who want to awaken the eternal within themselves. Osiris has been dismembered and killed by Typhon. The parts of the corpse were cherished and cared for by his wife Isis. After his death, he let his ray of light fall on her. She gave birth to Horus. This Horus took over the earthly tasks of Osiris. He is the second Osiris, still imperfect but progressing towards the true Osiris. --The true Osiris is in the human soul. This is initially the transient one. But its transience is destined to give birth to the eternal. Man may therefore regard himself as the tomb of Osiris. The lower nature (Typhon) has killed the higher one in him. The love in his soul (Isis) must nurture and care for the corpse parts, then the higher nature, the eternal soul (Horus), will be born, which can progress to the Osiris existence. The macrocosmic Osiris world process must be repeated microcosmically in the human being striving for the highest existence. This is the meaning of the Egyptian "initiation". What Plato describes as a cosmic process, that the Creator has stretched the world-soul in the form of a cross upon the world-body, and that the world-process is a redemption of this crucified world-soul, had to happen to man in miniature if he was to enable himself to be Osiris. The person to be initiated had to develop in such a way that his soul experience, his becoming Osiris, merged into one with the cosmic Osiris process. If we could look into the initiation temples in which people underwent the Osiris transformation, we would see that the processes represent a microcosmic becoming-world. The human being who comes from the "father" should give birth to the son within himself. What he actually carries within himself, the enchanted God, was to be revealed in him. This God is held down in him by the power of earthly nature. This lower nature must first be laid to rest so that the higher nature can arise. What is told of the initiation processes can be understood from this. Man was subjected to mysterious procedures. His earthly nature was thereby killed, his higher nature awakened. It is not necessary to study these procedures in detail. It is only necessary to understand their meaning. And this meaning lies in the confession that anyone who has gone through initiation could make. He could say: "I envisioned the infinite perspective at the end of which lies the perfection of the divine. I have felt that the power of this divine lies within me. I have buried what holds this power down in me. I died to the earthly. I was dead. As a lower man I had died; I was in the underworld. I consorted with the dead, that is, with those who are already inserted into the ring of the eternal world order. After my stay in the underworld, I rose from the dead. I have overcome death, but now I have become someone else. I no longer have anything to do with transient nature. With me, it is imbued with the Logos. I now belong to those who live forever and who will sit at the right hand of Osiris. I myself will be a true Osiris, united with the eternal world order, and the judgment of death and life will be given into my hands." The initiate had to undergo the experience that could lead him to such a confession. It is an experience of the highest kind, which thus approached man.

[ 3 ] Now imagine that an uninitiated person hears of someone undergoing such experiences. He cannot know what has really happened in the soul of the initiate. The initiate has physically died for him, he has lain in the grave and has risen from the dead. What has spiritual reality at a higher level of existence appears expressed in the forms of sensual reality as a process that breaks through the natural order, that is a "miracle". Initiation was such a "miracle". Whoever really wanted to understand it had to have awakened the powers within himself to stand on higher levels of existence. He had to approach these higher experiences with a life course already prepared for them. Whether these prepared experiences take place one way or another in individual life, they will always take a very specific, typical form. The life course of an initiate is therefore a typical one. It can be described independently of the individual personality. In fact, an individual personality can only be described as being on the path to the divine if it has undergone certain typical experiences. Buddha lived as such a personality with his followers; Jesus first appeared as such to his community. Today we know what parallelism exists between the biographies of Buddha and Jesus. Rudolf Seydel has convincingly demonstrated this parallelism in his book "Buddha and Christ". One need only follow the details to see that all objections to this parallelism are null and void.

[ 4 ] Buddha's birth is announced by a white elephant hovering over Queen Maja. It indicates that Maja will bring forth a divine human being who "will make all beings love and befriend one another, uniting them in an intimate bond. " In the Gospel of Luke it says: ... to a virgin entrusted to a man named Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in to her and said, "Hail blessed one ... Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High." The Brahmins, the Indian priests, who know what it means when a Buddha is born, interpret Maja's dream. They have a certain typical idea of a Buddha. The life of the individual personality will have to correspond to this idea. Accordingly, we read in Matthew (2, 1 ff.): Herod "had all the chief priests and scribes gathered together among the people and inquired of them where Christ was to be born". - The Brahmin Asita says of the Buddha: "This is the child who will become Buddha, the Savior, the guide to immortality, freedom and light. " Compare with this (Luke 2, 25): "And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon, and the same man was devout and God-fearing, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was in him ... And when the parents brought the child Jesus into the temple to do for him according to the law, he took him in his arms and praised God, saying, "Lord, now you let your servant depart in peace, as you have said, for his eyes have seen your Savior, whom you have prepared before all nations. A light to enlighten the Gentiles, and for the praise of your people Israel." It is said of Buddha that he was lost as a twelve-year-old boy and that he was found again under a tree, surrounded by singers and wise men of old, whom he taught. Luke corresponds to this (2, 41 ff.): "And his parents went every year to Jerusalem for the paschal feast. And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast. And when the days were fulfilled and they returned home, the child Jesus remained in Jerusalem, and his parents did not know it. But they thought that he was among his companions, so they traveled a day's journey and looked for him among friends and acquaintances. And when they did not find him, they went again to Jerusalem looking for him. And after three days they found him sitting in the temple among the teachers, listening to them and questioning them; and all who listened to him were astonished at his understanding and his answers. " -After the Buddha has lived in solitude and returns, he is greeted by the blessing of a virgin: "Blessed is the mother, blessed is the father, blessed is the wife to whom you belong." But he replies: "Blessed are only those who are in nirvana", that is, those who have entered the eternal world order. In Luke (11:27): "And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the people lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the breasts which thou hast sucked. But he said, "Yes, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it." In the course of his life, the tempter approached Buddha and promised him all the kingdoms of the earth. Buddha rejects everything with the words: "I know that a kingdom has been granted to me, but I do not desire a worldly kingdom; I will become Buddha and make the whole world rejoice." The tempter must confess: "My dominion is gone." Jesus responds to the same temptation: "Get away from me, Satan! For it is written: You shall worship your Lord God and serve him only." "Then the devil left him" (Matthew 4:10 f.). - One could extend this description of parallelism over many more points: the result would be the same. - Buddha ended in a sublime way. On a hike he felt ill. He came to the river Hiranja, near Kushinagara. Here he lay down on a carpet spread out by his favorite disciple Ananda. His body began to glow from within. He ended transfigured, as a body of light, with the saying: "Nothing is long-lasting." This death of Buddha corresponds to the transfiguration of Jesus: "And it came to pass after these sayings about eight days, that he took unto him Peter, John, and James, and went up into a mountain to pray. And as he prayed, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became white and shining" (Luke 9:28). This is where Buddha's life ends, but the most important part of Jesus' life begins: suffering, death and resurrection. And what distinguishes the Buddha from the Christ lies in what made it necessary to take the life of Christ Jesus beyond the life of the Buddha. Buddha and Christ are not understood if they are merely thrown together. (This will become apparent in the remainder of this book.) Other accounts of the Buddha's death do not come into consideration here, even if they reveal some deep aspects of the matter.

[ 5 ] The agreement in the two saviors' lives forces a clear conclusion. The narratives themselves provide information about how this conclusion must turn out. When the wise priests hear about the nature of the birth, they know what it is. They know that they are dealing with a man of God. They know in advance what will happen to the personality who appears. And therefore their course of life can only correspond to what they know as the course of life of a god-man. In their mystery wisdom, such a course of life appears to be mapped out for eternity. It can only be as it must be. Such a course of life appears like an eternal law of nature. Just as a chemical substance can only behave in a very specific way, a Buddha, a Christ, can only live in a very specific way. One does not narrate the course of his life by writing his random biography; rather, one narrates it by recounting the typical traits that are contained in the mystery wisdom about it for all time. The Buddha legend is no more a biography in the usual sense than the Gospels want to be a biography of Christ Jesus. Both do not tell an accidental story; both tell the story of the life of a world savior. We have to look for the models for both in the mystery traditions, not in external, physical history. Buddha and Jesus are initiates in the noblest sense for those who have recognized their divine nature. (Jesus is the initiate through the indwelling of the Christian being.) Thus their life is removed from all that is transient. This means that what is known of initiates applies to them. One no longer recounts the random events of their lives. It is said of them: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." (John 1, 1 and 14.)

[ 6 ] But the life of Jesus contains more than the life of Buddha. Buddha concludes with transfiguration. The most meaningful part of Jesus' life begins after the transfiguration. Translate that into the language of the initiates: Buddha has reached the point where the divine light begins to shine in the human being. He stands before the death of the earthly. He becomes the light of the world. Jesus goes further. He does not die physically at the moment in which the world light transfigures him. He is a Buddha at that moment. But at this moment he also enters a stage which finds its expression in a higher degree of initiation. He suffers and dies. The earthly disappears. But the spiritual, the world light does not disappear. His resurrection takes place. He reveals himself as Christ for his community. Buddha melts into the blissful life of the All-Spirit at the moment of his transfiguration. Christ Jesus awakens this All-Spirit once again in human form into the present existence. This was accomplished with the Initiate in the higher consecrations in a sense that is pictorial. Those initiated in the sense of the Osiris myth had reached such resurrection in their consciousness as in an image-experience. This "great" initiation, not as an image-experience, but as reality, was thus added to the Buddha-initiation in the life of Jesus. Buddha proved with his life that man is the Logos and that he returns to this Logos, to the light, when his earthly nature dies. In Jesus, the Logos himself has become personal. In him, the Word became flesh.

[ 7 ] What took place for the ancient mystery cults inside the mystery temples has been understood by Christianity as a world-historical fact. The church has confessed Christ Jesus, the Initiate, the one and only Initiate. He proved to her that the world is a divine one. For the Christian community, mystery wisdom became inextricably linked with the personality of Christ Jesus. The fact that he lived and that his confessors belonged to him: this belief took the place of what the mysteries had previously sought to achieve. - From then on, part of what could previously only be achieved through mystical methods could be replaced for those who belonged to the Christian community by the conviction that the divine was given in the Word that was present. Not that for which the spirit of each individual had to be prepared for a long time was now solely decisive, but what was heard and seen by those who were around Jesus and what was handed down through them. "What has happened from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we ourselves have seen, what our hands have touched of the word of life ... what we have seen and heard, we report to you so that you may have fellowship with us. " So it says in the first epistle of John. And this immediate reality is to embrace all generations as a living bond; it is to be mystically intertwined as a church from generation to generation. This is how Augustine's words are to be understood: "I would not believe the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so. " Thus the Gospels do not in themselves have an identifying mark for their truth; but they are to be believed because they are based on Jesus' personality; and because the Church mysteriously derives from this personality the power to make them appear as truth. - The Mysteries have handed down through tradition the means of arriving at the truth; the Christian community propagates this truth itself. In addition to trust in the mystical powers that light up within the human being during initiation, there should also be trust in the One, the Primordial Initiator. The mystics sought divinization; they wanted to experience it. Jesus was divinized; one must adhere to him; then one is a participant in the divinization within the community founded by him: this became a Christian conviction. What was idolized in Jesus is idolized for his entire community. "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world" (Matthew 28:20). He who was born in Bethlehem has an eternal character. The Christmas antiphon may speak of the birth of Jesus as if it happened on every Christmas: "Today Christ has been born; today the Savior has appeared, today the angels sing on earth. " - In the experience of Christ one can see a very specific stage of initiation. When the Myste of pre-Christian times underwent this Christ-experience, he was, through his initiation, in a state which enabled him to perceive something spiritually - in higher worlds - for which there was no corresponding fact in the sensual world. He experienced what the Mystery of Golgotha encompasses in the higher world. Now when the Christian Myste undergoes this experience through initiation, he sees at the same time the historical event on Golgotha and knows that in this event, which took place within the sense world, is the same content as before only in the supersensible facts of the Mysteries. Thus with the "Mystery of Golgotha" there has been poured out upon the Christian community that which was previously poured out upon the Mystics within the Mystery Temple. And initiation gives the Christian mystics the opportunity to become aware of this content of the "Mystery of Golgotha", while faith allows people to unconsciously participate in the mystical current that emanated from the events described in the New Testament and has permeated the spiritual life of humanity ever since.