Christianity As Mystical Fact Part 8

Augustine's mode of thought told him, that with the coming of Christ other conditions had set in for souls seeking after the spirit than those which had previously existed. For him it was firmly established that in Christ Jesus had been revealed in outer historical fact that which the Mystic had sought in the Mysteries through preparation. One of his most significant utterances is the following, "What is now called the Christian religion already existed amongst the ancients and was not lacking at the very beginnings of the human race. When Christ appeared in the flesh, the true religion already in existence received the name of Christian." There were two ways possible for such a method of thought. One way is that if the human soul develops within it the forces which lead it to the knowledge of its true self, it will, if it only goes far enough, come also to the knowledge of the Christ and of everything connected with him. This would have been a mystery-wisdom enriched through the Christ event. The other way is taken by Augustine and is that by which he became the great model for his successors. It consists in cutting off the development of the forces of the soul at a certain point, and in borrowing the ideas connected with the coming of Christ from written accounts and oral traditions. Augustine rejected the first way as springing from pride of the soul; he thought the second was the way of true humility. Thus he says to those who wished to follow the first way: "You may find peace in the truth, but for that humility is needed, which does not suit your proud neck." On the other hand, he was filled with boundless inward happiness by the fact that since the coming of Christ in the flesh, it was possible to say that every soul can come to spiritual experience which goes as far as it can in seeking within itself, and then, in order to attain to the highest, has confidence in what the written and oral traditions of the Christian Church tell us about the Christ and his revelation. He says on this point: "What bliss, what abiding enjoyment of supreme and true good is offered us, what serenity, what a breath of eternity! How shall I describe it? It has been expressed, as far as it could be, by those great incomparable souls who we admit have beheld and still behold.... We reach a point at which we acknowledge how true is what we have been commanded to believe and how well and beneficently we have been brought up by our mother, the Church, and of what benefit was the milk given by the Apostle Paul to the little ones...." (It is beyond the scope of this book to give an account of the alternative method which is evolved from the Mystery Wisdom, enriched through the Christ event. The description of this method will be found in _An Outline of Occult Science_, see advt., front page.) Whereas in pre-Christian times one who wished to seek the spiritual basis of existence was necessarily directed to the way of the Mysteries, Augustine was able to say, even to those souls who could find no such path within themselves, "Go as far as you can on the path of knowledge with your human powers, thence trust (faith) will carry you up into the higher spiritual regions." It was only going one step further to say, it is natural to the human soul only to be able to arrive at a certain stage of knowledge through its own powers: thence it can only advance further through trust, through faith in written and oral tradition. This step was taken by the spiritual movement which a.s.signed to knowledge a certain sphere above which the soul could not rise by its own efforts, but everything which lay beyond this domain was made an object of faith which has to be supported by written and oral tradition and by confidence in its representatives. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest teacher within the Church (1224-1274), has set forth this doctrine in his writings in a variety of ways. His main point is that human knowledge can only attain to that which led Augustine to self-knowledge, to the certainty of the divine. The nature of the divine and its relation to the world is given by revealed theology, which is not accessible to man's own researches and is, as the substance of faith, superior to all knowledge.

The origin of this point of view may be studied in the theology of John Scotus Erigena, who lived in the ninth century at the court of Charles the Bald, and who represents a natural transition from the earliest ideas of Christianity to the ideas of Thomas Aquinas. His conception of the universe is couched in the spirit of Neo-Platonism.

In his treatise _De Divisione Naturae_, Erigena has elaborated the teaching of Dionysius the Areopagite. This teaching started from a G.o.d far above the perishable things of sense, and it derived the world from Him (_Cf._ p. 208 _et seq._). Man is involved in the trans.m.u.tation of all beings into this G.o.d, Who finally becomes what He was from the beginning. Everything falls back again into the G.o.dhead which has pa.s.sed through the universal process and has finally become perfected. But in order to reach this goal man must find the way to the Logos who was made flesh. In Erigena this thought leads to another: that what is contained in the writings which give an account of the Logos leads, when received in faith, to salvation. Reason and the authority of the Scriptures, faith and knowledge stand on the same level. The one does not contradict the other, but faith must bring that to which knowledge never can attain by itself.

The knowledge of the eternal which the ancient Mysteries withheld from the mult.i.tude became, when presented in this way by Christian thought and feeling, the content of faith, which by its very nature had to do with something unattainable by mere knowledge. The conviction of the pre-Christian Mystic was that to him was given knowledge of the divine, while the people were obliged to have faith in its expression in images. Christianity came to the conviction that G.o.d has given his wisdom to mankind through revelation, and man attains through his knowledge an image of this divine revelation. The wisdom of the Mysteries is a hothouse plant, which is revealed to a few individuals ripe for it. Christian wisdom is a Mystery revealed as knowledge to none, but as a content of faith revealed to all. The standpoint of the Mysteries lived on in Christianity, but in a different form. All, not only the special individual, were to share in the truth, but the process was that at a certain point man owned his inability to penetrate farther by means of knowledge, and thence ascended to faith. Christianity brought the content of the Mysteries out of the obscurity of the temple into the clear light of day. The one Christian movement mentioned led to the idea that this content must necessarily be retained in the form of faith.

NOTES

P. 5--To one who has true perception, the "Spirit of Nature"

speaks powerfully in the facts currently expressed by the catchword, "struggle for existence," etc.; but not in the opinions which modern science deduces from them. In the first statement lies the reason why natural science is attracting more and more widespread attention. But it follows from the second statement that scientific opinions should not be taken as if they necessarily belonged to a knowledge of facts. The possibility of being led astray by mere opinion is, in these days, infinitely great.

P. 9--It should not be concluded from these remarks about the sources of St. Luke's Gospel, that purely historical research is undervalued by the writer of this book. This is not the case.

Historical research is absolutely justified, but it should not be impatient with the method of presentation proceeding from a spiritual point of view. It is not considered of importance to make various kinds of quotations in this book; but one who is willing will be able to see that a really unprejudiced, broad-minded judgment will not find anything that is here stated to be contrary to what has been actually and historically proved.

One who will not be broad-minded, but who holds this or that theory to be a firmly-established fact, may easily think that a.s.sertions made in this book are untenable from a scientific point of view, and are made without any objective foundation.

P. 15--It is said above that those whose spiritual eyes are opened are able to see into the spiritual world. The conclusion must not on this account be drawn that only one who possesses spiritual sight is able to form an intelligent opinion about the results arrived at by the initiate. Spiritual sight belongs only to the investigator. If he afterwards communicates what he has discovered, every one can understand it who gives fair play to his reason and preserves an unbia.s.sed sense of truth. And such an one may also apply the results of research to life and derive satisfaction from them without himself having spiritual sight.

P. 20--"The sinking into the mire" spoken of by Plato must also be interpreted in the sense referred to in the last note.

P. 20--What is said about the impossibility of imparting the teaching of the Mysteries has reference to the fact that they could not be communicated to those unprepared in the same form in which the initiate experienced them; but they were always communicated to those outside in such a form as was possible for the uninitiated to understand. For instance the myths gave the old form, in order to communicate the content of the Mysteries in a way that was generally comprehensible.

P. 88--Everything that relates to knowledge gained through the "eyes of the spirit" is called by ancient mysticism "Mantik."

"Telestik," on the other hand, is the indication of the ways which lead to initiation.

P. 168--"Kabirs," according to ancient mysticism, are beings with a consciousness far above the human consciousness of to-day.

Sch.e.l.ling means that man through initiation ascends to a state of consciousness above his present one.

P. 186--An explanation of the meaning of the number seven may be obtained in _An Outline of Occult Science_ (see advt., front page).

P. 187--The meanings of the Apocalyptic signs can only be given quite shortly here. Of course, all these things might be much more thoroughly explained, but of this the scope of this book does not allow.

THE END