The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture Eight

[ 1 ] Christian initiation has existed since the origins of Christianity and the time of the apostles, and it has remained unchanged throughout the Middle Ages and up to the present day, in the numerous religious orders as well as in the Rosicrucians. This initiation consists of spiritual exercises that produce the same and unchanging symptoms. The societies that carry it out in deep secrecy are the true cradle of all spiritual life as well as all religious progress of humanity.

[ 2 ] Christian initiation is in some ways more difficult than the initiation of antiquity. This is related to the nature and mission of Christianity, which came into the world at a time when humanity was undergoing its deepest descent into matter. This descent must give humanity a new consciousness, but rising from this depth, from this material density, requires greater effort and makes initiation more difficult. That is why the Christian master demands a higher degree of humility and devotion from his disciple.

[ 3 ] Christian initiation has always consisted of seven stages. Four of these correspond to four stations of Calvary. They are as follows:

First: The washing of the feet
Second: The scourging
Third: The crowning with thorns
Fourth: The carrying of the cross
Fifth: The mystical death
Sixth: The burial
Seventh: The resurrection

[ 4 ] The washing of the feet is a preparatory exercise of a purely moral nature. It refers to the scene where Christ washes the feet of his disciples before Easter (John 13). “Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is an apostle greater than the one who sent him.” Theology gives this act a purely moral interpretation and sees it merely as an example of deep humility and absolute submission of the Master to his disciples and to his work. The Rosicrucians also see this, but in a much deeper sense that includes the evolution of all beings in nature. It is an allusion to the law that the higher is the product of the lower. The plant could say to the stone: I am above you, for I have life, which you do not have, but without you I could not exist, for from you I draw the juices that nourish me. —- And the animal could say to the plant: I am above you, for I have feelings, passions, and impulses of will that you do not have, but without the food you give me, without your leaves, grasses, and fruits, I could not live. — And man would have to say to the plants: I am above you, but I owe you the oxygen I breathe. He would have to say to the animals: I have a soul that you do not have, but we are brothers and companions, and we are advancing in the general evolution. - The esoteric meaning of the washing of feet is therefore that Christ Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, could not be without the apostles.

[ 5 ] The disciple who has meditated on this subject for months and sometimes years experiences the vision of the washing of feet on the astral plane during sleep. He can then ascend to the second degree of Christian initiation:

[ 6 ] The flagellation: At this stage, the person learns to resist the scourge of life. Life brings us all kinds of suffering: physical and moral, intellectual and spiritual. In this phase, the student experiences life as a terrible and incessant torture. He must endure it with complete equanimity of soul and stoic courage. He must no longer know fear, whether physical or moral. Once he has become fearless, he sees the scene of the flagellation in a dream. In the course of another vision, he sees himself being flagellated in place of Christ. This event is accompanied by certain physical symptoms and is transferred to the entire feeling of life and love through an intensification of the whole faculty of sensation.

[ 7 ] An example of this hypersensitivity transferred to intellectual life can be found in the life of Goethe. After lengthy osteological studies of the human and animal skeletons, as well as comparative observations, Goethe came to the conclusion that the intermaxillary bone must exist in humans. Before him, it was denied that the intermaxillary bone could be found in the upper jaw of humans. He himself recounts that he jumped for joy and fell into a kind of ecstasy when he discovered that this bone actually exists in the human jaw, still visible through a seam. He himself calls it one of the most miraculous events of his life. Goethe had the same feeling during his trip to Italy when, looking at the remains of a sheep's skull, he had another idea that was even more amazing for human evolution — an idea that could be called both esoteric and Darwinian: namely that the human brain, the center of reason—preceded by the cerebellum, the center of volitional movements—is a blossoming and unfolding of the spinal cord, just as the blossom is an unfolding and synthesis of the root and the stem. How did Goethe make these wonderful discoveries, which alone would secure his immortality? Certainly through his high intellect, but also through his lively and deep sympathy with all beings and with all of nature. This sensitivity is a refinement and expansion of the forces of life and love. It corresponds to the second degree of Christian initiation and is the result of the trial of flagellation. Man acquires a feeling of love for all beings, which allows him to live within nature.

[ 8 ] The crowning with thorns: Here, man must learn to defy the world, morally and intellectually, to endure contempt when what is most dear to him is attacked. He must be able to remain upright when everything presses him to the ground; to say yes when the whole world says no. This must be learned before one can go further. A new symptom now presents itself, the power of discernment, or rather the ability to instantly distinguish between three forces that are always connected in human beings: will, feeling, and thinking. One must learn to separate or unite them at will. As long as, for example, an external event causes us to become ecstatic, we are not mature, because this enthusiasm, triggered by the event, does not come from us and can even exert a disturbing influence on us that we cannot control. The student's enthusiasm should originate solely in the depths of mystical life. It is therefore necessary to remain dispassionate towards every event, whatever its nature. Only in this way can freedom be attained. This separation between feeling, intellect, and will causes a change in the brain that is characterized by the crowning with thorns. In order for this to take place safely, it is necessary that the forces of personality are sufficiently trained and completely balanced. If this is not the case, or if the student has a bad guide, this change can ignite madness. Madness is based on nothing other than this division, which takes place outside of the will, without the unity being restored by inner willpower. In contrast, the student practices making this division disappear when he wants to. A flash of his will restores the bond between the organs and functions of his soul, while in the madman the rift can become incurable and cause damage to the central nervous system.

[ 9 ] During the stage known in Christian initiation as the crowning with thorns, a frightening phenomenon occurs, known as the “guardian of the threshold,” which could also be called the appearance of the doppelganger. The spiritual being of the human being, formed from his streams of will, his desires, and his intellectual abilities, then appears to the initiate as an image in his dream consciousness. And this image is sometimes repulsive and terrifying, for it is the result of his good and bad qualities and his karma; it is the pictorial personification of all this on the astral plane. This is the evil ferryman in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Man must defeat him in order to find his higher self. The guardian of the threshold, a phenomenon of clairvoyant vision dating back to the earliest times, is the actual origin of all the myths about the hero's struggle with the monster, Perseus and Heracles with the Hydra, St. George and Siegfried with the dragon.

[ 10 ] The premature onset of clairvoyance and the sudden appearance of the doppelganger or the guardian of the threshold can drive those who have not followed all the preparations and taken all the precautions imposed on the student to madness.

[ 11 ] Carrying the cross, in turn, symbolically refers to a spiritual virtue. This virtue, which consists in carrying the world in one's consciousness, as Atlas carried the world on his shoulders, could be called: the feeling of becoming one with the earth and with all that it contains. In Eastern initiation, it is called: the end of the feeling of separation.

[ 12 ] People, especially modern people, generally identify with their bodies. In his “Ethics,” Spinoza names the first fundamental idea of man: the idea of the body in action. The student must cultivate the thought that his body is no more important in the totality of things than any other body, be it that of an animal, a table, or a piece of marble. The self does not end at the skin: it is one with the whole of worldly life, just as our hand is one with the whole of our physicality. What would the hand be on its own? A scrap! What would the human body be without the earth on which it stands, without the air it breathes? It would die, for it is only a small particle of this earth and its atmosphere. For this reason, the student must immerse himself in every being and become one with the spirit of the earth.

[ 13 ] Once again, it is Goethe who has given a magnificent description of this stage in the first part of his “Faust,” where the spirit of the earth, whom Faust conjures up, appears to him and speaks:

In the floods of life, in the storm of deeds
I surge up and down,
Weaving back and forth!
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A changing weave,
A glowing life;
Thus I create on the whirring loom of time
And weave the living garment of the deity.

[ 14 ] Feeling at one with all beings does not mean despising one's body, but carrying it like an external object, just as Christ carried his cross. The spirit should carry the body as the hand holds the hammer. Then the student becomes aware of the occult powers that lie dormant in his body. In the course of his meditation, he can thus bring forth the stigmata on his skin. This is then the sign that he is ready for the fifth stage, where a sudden enlightenment reveals to him:

[ 15 ] Mystical death: While exposed to the greatest suffering, the disciple says to himself: I realize that the entire sensory world is only an illusion. He truly feels as if he is dying and sinking into darkness. But then he sees the darkness tear apart and a new light appear: the astral light shines forth. This is the tearing of the curtain in the temple. This light has nothing in common with the light of the sun. It sparkles beyond things and beyond human beings. The sensation it causes is unlike that of external light. To get an idea of it, let us use the following comparison: Imagine leaving a noisy city and entering a dense forest. Gradually, the noises fade away and the silence becomes complete. Finally, you begin to notice what lies beyond the silence, crossing the zero point where every external sound has died away. The sound returns from the other side of life to the inner ear. This is what the soul experiences when it enters the astral world. It comes into contact with the inner nature of the things it knows – just as one enters a growing series of negative numbers beyond zero.

[ 16 ] One must have lost everything in order to gain everything again, including one's own existence. But at the moment when one loses everything, it seems that one dies to oneself and begins to live outside of oneself. This is mystical death. Once you have gone through it, the time has come for:

[ 17 ] The burial: Here, the person feels permeated by the feeling that their own body has become alien to them and that they are completely one with the planet. They have merged with the earth and find themselves back in the life of the planet.

[ 18 ] Resurrection: It is an indescribable feeling that is impossible to describe, except as “in the innermost sanctum.” For this last stage, there are no words, no comparison. Once you have reached this stage, you receive the gift of healing. However, it must be added that those who receive it also receive the opposite ability: to make others ill, because the negative always accompanies the positive. Hence the great responsibility associated with this ability, which can be characterized as follows: the creative word flows from the soul in fire.