The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Preliminary Remarks to Part II

[ 1 ] With his description of the creation of the world as a threefold manifestation of the Logos, the divine spirit poured into the world, as already given in the last lecture of Part I and in the following texts, Rudolf Steiner linked this to his two recently published writings for his audience at that time: "Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life and Its Relationship to the Modern Worldview“ (published in 1901 as a summary of the lecture series given during the winter of 1900/01) and ”Christianity as a Mystical Fact" (published in 1902, also as a summary of the lecture series given in the winter of 1901/02).

[ 2 ] In “Mysticism,” great mystics of the Middle Ages describe how true self-knowledge, and from this, true knowledge of the world or God, can only be gained through mystical, i.e., inner experience. The writing “Christianity as a Mystical Fact” describes how the path to this was sought in the mysteries of antiquity: in order to attain the divine, the initiate mystic had to experience the cosmic drama of the creation process, the stretching out of the Logos, the world soul, onto the world body in the form of a cross, as his own spiritual destiny, so that the Logos poured out into the world could celebrate its resurrection in the soul and be born spiritually. This became historical fact when, at the beginning of our era, the Logos became flesh in the man Jesus. He had to repeat the cosmic world process in his fleshly existence, had to be crucified and resurrected. As a historical fact, the Logos made flesh had to go through this so that the defeat of death could apply not only to a select few, but to all of humanity. “Christianity as a mystical fact is a stage in the development of humanity; and the events in the mysteries were the preparation for this mystical fact.” (Chapter: Christianity and Pagan Wisdom).

[ 3 ] Thus, based on the mystical mode of knowledge and the Logosophy of the ancient mysteries, these two writings created the prerequisites for a spiritual-scientific, cosmologically oriented Christology, as it began to be presented in 1903.

[ 4 ] Since the audience at that time was very interested in the Logos teaching of the ancient mysteries, which had already been of great importance in the literature of the Theosophical Society before Rudolf Steiner,^{1See H. P. Blavatsky's works “Isis Unveiled” and “The Secret Doctrine”>; Writings by G. R. S. Mead and Annie Besant, especially “The Ancient Wisdom.”} he soon felt compelled to warn against speaking too abstractly about the Logos. In the notes on the three Logoi in the Berlin branch on February 2, 1904, which are unfortunately completely inadequate for printing, the following remark can be found: “One is so tempted to speak in general mental images about the first, second, and third Logos. Beginners in particular like to talk about the Logos right away and want to discuss the whole world with arguments about what tasks the first, second, and third Logos have. But that is not what we want.” Rather, he was concerned with clarifying what the task of individual beings is within the development of the world. As he often emphasized, spiritual scientific research is not based on speculation, but on real spiritual experience. Consequently, he says (Berlin, December 18, 1906, in GA 266/I) “Actually, no one in whom the higher consciousness has not awakened can form a mental image of the nature of the three Logoi. But by evoking the right images, one can prepare the soul for correct vision in the future.” The “right images” are undoubtedly to be understood as the images of the stages of development of the Logos poured out into the world, as they were presented in ever greater detail from 1903 onwards and made public in the work “An Outline of Esoteric Science” (1910).

H.W.