The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Guardian of the Threshold

[ 1 ] Important experiences when ascending to the higher worlds are the encounters with the "Guardian of the Threshold". There is not just one, but essentially two, a "lesser" and a "greater" "Guardian of the Threshold". A person encounters the former when the connecting threads between will, thinking and feeling within the finer bodies (the astral and etheric bodies) begin to loosen, as described in the previous chapter. The human being comes face to face with the "greater guardian of the threshold" when the dissolution of the connections also extends to the physical parts of the body (namely first of all the brain).

[ 2 ] The "lesser guardian of the threshold" is an independent being. It does not exist for humans until they have reached the appropriate stage of development. Only some of its most essential characteristics can be listed here.

[ 3 ] An attempt will first be made to describe in narrative form the encounter of the secret disciple with the Guardian of the Threshold. It is only through this encounter that the disciple becomes aware that his thinking, feeling and willing have broken free from their implanted connection.

[ 4 ] A horrible, ghostly being stands before the pupil. He needs all presence of mind and all confidence in the certainty of his path of knowledge, which he has been able to acquire sufficiently during his previous secret discipleship.

[ 5 ] The "Guardian" makes his meaning known in the following words: "Powers that were invisible to you have ruled over you until now. They caused every good deed of yours to have its reward and every evil deed of yours to have its bad consequences. Through their influence your character was built up from your life experiences and your thoughts. They caused your destiny. They determined the amount of pleasure and pain that was allotted to you in one of your embodiments according to your behavior in previous embodiments. They ruled over you in the form of the all-encompassing law of karma. These powers will now release some of their reins from you. And some of the work they have done on you, you must now do yourself. You have suffered many a heavy blow so far. You didn't know why? It was the result of a harmful deed in one of your previous lives. You found happiness and joy and accepted them. They too were the effect of earlier deeds. You have some beautiful aspects in your character, some ugly spots. You have caused both yourself through previous experiences and thoughts. Until now you have not known the latter; only the effects were apparent to you. But they, the karmic powers, saw all your previous life deeds, your most hidden thoughts and feelings. And they determined how you are now and how you live now.

[ 6 ] But now all the good and all the bad aspects of your past lives shall be revealed to you. Until now, they were interwoven into your own being, they were in you, and you could not see them, just as you cannot physically see your own brain. Now, however, they detach themselves from you, they emerge from your personality. They take on an independent form that you can see, just as you see the stones and plants of the outside world. And - it is I myself, the entity that has formed a body from your noble and your evil activities. My ghostly form is woven from the account book of your own life. You have carried me invisibly within yourself until now. But it was good for you that it was so. For the wisdom of your hidden destiny has therefore also worked to erase the ugly stains in my form within you. Now that I have stepped out of you, this hidden wisdom has also departed from you. It will no longer concern itself with you. It will only put the work into your own hands. I must become a perfect, glorious being in myself if I am not to fall prey to destruction. And if the latter were to happen, I would also drag you down with me into a dark, corrupt world. - Your own wisdom must now be so great, if the latter is to be prevented, that it can take over the task of that hidden wisdom which has departed from you. - When you have crossed my threshold, I will not leave your side for a moment as a visible figure. And if from now on you do or think wrong things, you will immediately perceive your guilt as an ugly, demonic distortion of this figure of mine. Only when you have made amends for all your past wrongdoing and have purified yourself so that further evil is quite impossible for you will my nature have transformed itself into radiant beauty. And then I will be able to reunite with you as one being for the benefit of your distant effectiveness.

[ 7 ] But my threshold is made of any feeling of fear that is still in you and of any fear of the power to take full responsibility for all your actions and thoughts yourself. As long as you still have any fear of directing your own destiny, this threshold will not have everything built into it that it needs. And as long as it still lacks a single building block, you will have to remain spellbound or stumble at this threshold. Do not attempt to cross this threshold until you feel completely free of fear and ready for the highest responsibility.

[ 8 ] Until now, I only stepped out of your own personality when death called you away from an earthly life. But even then, my form was veiled from you. Only the powers of destiny, which ruled over you, saw me and could, according to my appearance, in the intervals between death and a new birth, train you in strength and ability so that you could work on the beautification of my form in a new earthly life for the benefit of your progress. It was also I myself whose imperfection repeatedly forced the forces of fate to return you to earth in a new embodiment. If you died, I was there; and because of me, the rulers of karma determined your rebirth. Only when you had unconsciously completely transformed me to perfection through repeatedly renewed lives in this way would you not have fallen prey to the powers of death, but would you have united with me completely and passed into immortality in unity with me.

[ 9 ] So today I stand visibly before you, as I have always stood invisibly beside you in the hour of death. When you have crossed my threshold, you will enter the realms that you have otherwise entered after physical death. You will enter them with full knowledge and from now on, by walking outwardly visible on earth, you will also walk in the realm of death, but that is the realm of eternal life. I am really also the angel of death; but I, I am at the same time the bringer of a never-ending higher life. In the living body you will die through me in order to experience the rebirth to indestructible existence.

[ 10 ] The realm you are about to enter will introduce you to beings of a supernatural nature. Bliss will be your share in this realm. But the first acquaintance with this world must be myself, I who am your own creature. Formerly I lived from your own life; but now I have awakened through you to an existence of my own and stand before you as a visible measure of your future deeds, perhaps also as your everlasting reproach. You were able to create me, but you also took on the duty of remaking me."

[ 11 ] What is hinted at here in a narrative is not to be imagined as something symbolic, but as a highly real experience of the secret disciple. ^{1It is clear from the above that the described "Guardian of the Threshold" is such an (astral) figure, which reveals itself to the awakening higher vision of the secret disciple. And the secret science leads to this supersensible encounter. It is an act of lower magic to make the "Guardian of the Threshold" visible to the senses. This involves the production of a cloud of fine material, an incense made from a series of substances in a specific mixture. The developed power of the magician is then able to have a formative effect on the incense and enliven its substance with the person's as yet unbalanced karma. - He who is sufficiently prepared for the higher vision no longer needs such sensual contemplation; and he who would see his still unbalanced karma as a sensually living being without sufficient preparation would run the risk of going astray. He should not strive for this. In Bulwer's "Zanoni", a novelistic depiction of this "Guardian of the Threshold" is given.}

[ 12 ] The guardian is to warn him not to go any further if he does not feel the strength within himself to meet the demands contained in the above salutation. As terrible as the figure of this guardian is, it is only the effect of the disciple's own past life, it is only his own character, awakened to independent life apart from him. And this awakening happens through the separation of will, thought and feeling. - This alone is an experience of a deeply meaningful kind, that one feels for the first time that one has given origin to a spiritual being oneself. - The preparation of the secret disciple must now aim at enduring the terrible sight without any shyness and that at the moment of the encounter he really feels his strength to have grown so much that he can take upon himself the beautification of the "guardian" with full knowledge.

[ 13 ] One consequence of the happily survived encounter with the "Keeper of the Threshold" is that the next physical death is then a completely different event for the secret disciple than the deaths were before. He consciously experiences dying by taking off the physical body, just as one takes off a dress that has worn out or perhaps become unusable due to a sudden tear. This physical death of his is then, so to speak, a significant fact only for the others who live with him and whose perceptions are still entirely limited to the world of the senses. For them, the secret disciple "dies". For him, nothing of significance changes in his entire environment. The whole supersensible world into which he has entered already stood before him in a corresponding way before death, and the same world will also stand before him after death. But the "guardian of the threshold" is also connected with other things. Man belongs to a family, a people, a race; his activity in this world depends on his belonging to such an entity. His particular character is also related to this. And the conscious activity of individual human beings is by no means all that one has to reckon with in a family, tribe, people or race. There is a family, tribe (and so on) destiny, just as there is a family, race (and so on) character. For man, who is limited to his senses, these things remain general concepts, and the materialistic thinker in his prejudice will look down contemptuously on the secret scientist when he hears that for the latter the family or folk character, the tribal or racial destiny belong to real beings just as the character and destiny of the individual human being belong to a real personality. The secret scientist gets to know higher worlds, of which the individual personalities are members just as arms, legs and head are members of the human being. And in the life of a family, a people, a race, the very real family souls, people souls, race spirits also work alongside the individual human beings. Yes, in a certain sense the individual human beings are only the executive organs of these family souls, race spirits and so on. In full truth one can speak of the fact that, for example, a people's soul makes use of the individual human being belonging to its people in order to carry out certain work. The folk-soul does not descend to sensual reality. It walks in higher worlds. And in order to work in the physical-sensual world, it makes use of the physical organs of the individual human being. In a higher sense, it is just as if a construction technician makes use of the workers to carry out the details of the construction. - In the truest sense of the word, every human being receives his work from the family, national or racial soul. However, the sensual man is by no means initiated into the higher plan of his work. He works unconsciously on the aims of the national, racial souls and so on. From the moment the secret disciple meets the Guardian of the Threshold, he has not only to know his own tasks as a personality, but he must knowingly cooperate in those of his people, his race. Every extension of his sphere of vision necessarily imposes on him extended duties. The real process here is that the secret disciple adds a new soul-body to his finer one. He puts on one more garment. Hitherto he has walked through the world with the shells which clothe his personality. And what he had to do for his commonality, for his people, his race and so on, was taken care of by the higher spirits who made use of his personality. - A further revelation which the "Guardian of the Threshold" now makes to him is that these spirits will continue to withdraw their hand from him. He must step out of the community completely. And as an individual he would become completely hardened within himself, he would be heading for destruction if he did not now acquire for himself the powers that are inherent in the spirits of the people and the race. - It is true that many people will say: "Oh, I have freed myself completely from all tribal and racial connections; I only want to be "human" and "nothing but human"." But you have to say to them: Who brought you to this freedom? Did not your family place you in the world as you now stand in it? Did not your tribe, your people, your race make you what you are? They have brought you up; and if you are above all prejudices, one of the bringers of light and benefactors of your tribe or even of your race, you owe it to your upbringing. Yes, even if you say of yourself that you are "nothing but human": even that you have become so, you owe it to the spirits of your communities. - Only the secret disciple learns to recognize what it means to be completely abandoned by folk, tribal and racial spirits. Only he experiences in himself the insignificance of all such education for the life that now lies ahead of him. For everything that has been nurtured in him dissolves completely through the breaking of the threads between will, thought and feeling. He looks back on the results of all previous education as one would have to look at a house whose individual bricks are crumbling apart and which must now be rebuilt in a new form. It is again more than a mere allegory when one says: After the "Guardian of the Threshold" has spoken out about his first demands, a whirlwind rises from the place where he stands, extinguishing all the spiritual lights that have so far illuminated the path of life. And a complete darkness spreads before the secret disciple. It is only interrupted by the light emitted by the "Guardian of the Threshold" himself. And out of the darkness come his further admonitions: "Do not cross my threshold until you realize that you will shine through the darkness before you; do not take a single step forward until you are certain that you have enough fuel in your own lamp. The lamps of guides which you have had hitherto will be lacking in the future." After these words, the disciple has to turn around and look backwards. The "Guardian of the Threshold" now pulls away a curtain that has hitherto concealed deep secrets of life. The tribal, folk and racial spirits are revealed in their full effectiveness; and the disciple sees just as clearly how he has been led so far as he realizes, on the other hand, that he will no longer have this leadership. This is a second warning which man experiences at the threshold through his guardian.

[ 14 ] Unprepared, however, no one could endure the sight indicated here; but the higher training which makes it possible for man to penetrate to the threshold at all, puts him at the same time in a position to find the necessary strength at the appropriate moment. Indeed, this training can be so harmonious that the entrance into the new life is deprived of any exciting or tumultuous character. Then for the secret disciple the experience on the threshold will be accompanied by an anticipation of that bliss which will form the keynote of his newly awakened life. The sensation of new freedom will outweigh all other feelings; and with this sensation the new duties and new responsibilities will appear to him as something which man must assume at some stage of life.