Wonders of the World, Ordeals of the Soul, Revelations of the Spirit. Lecture 7 of 10.
Rudolf Steiner, Munich, August 24, 1911:
What is it that has been the theme of our lectures during the last few days? We have been trying to bring to light again in the impressive pictures of Greek mythology, as the expression of an ancient wisdom, what in our own time we can come to know through spiritual science, occult science; and we have certainly seen how much of what we come to know today in quite another way is to be found there as something quite obvious. When we realize this, especially when we discover that the deepest and most significant principles of knowledge, principles still today not fully recognized, were already expressed in pictorial fashion in this Greek mythology, our usual very superficial ideas about it are bound to be severely shaken.
The Greeks felt
that what they hid in their Mysteries and associated with the figure of Dionysos
was still deeper and more significant than all that they associated with the
upper gods — with Zeus, Poseidon, Pluto, with Apollo, Mars, and so on. For
whereas they expressed pretty well everything which had to do with the upper
gods exoterically, by means of the world around them, they veiled what had to do
with Dionysos within the sanctity of the Mysteries, and only communicated it to
those who had undergone a thorough preparation.
What then was
the contrast between what the Greeks felt in their ideas about the upper gods,
and what was withdrawn into the sanctity of the Mysteries? What was the
fundamental difference? In their ideas about the upper gods, about Zeus,
Poseidon, Pluto, Apollo, Mars, and so on, they expressed everything of which one
can become conscious through a deeper insight into the wonders of the world, a
deeper insight into what takes place all around us and into the laws which
govern it. But something essentially different was involved in what was
associated with the figure of Dionysos; Dionysos had to do with the deepest
vicissitudes of the human soul struggling for knowledge and for entry into the
supersensible worlds. The Mysteries associated with his name threw light upon
the lot of the soul struggling for knowledge, living in the depths; they shed
light upon all the testings which the soul had to undergo on its way.
If we would
understand the figure of Dionysos and his connection with these tribulations, we
must first give some thought to what modern spiritual science has to say about
the human mind in the act of cognition. It might seem that modern man has
abundant opportunity to become instructed as to what cognition really is. For
the study of philosophy is accessible in all countries, and it is to this that
we look to supply the answer to the question of how knowledge comes about. But
from the standpoint of spiritual science, philosophy has not been very successful
in answering this question, and you can easily see why this is. So long as
philosophy — the ordinary philosophy of the day — refuses to recognize the truth
about the human being — that he consists of physical body, etheric body, astral
body, and ego — it can come to no viable theory of knowledge. For knowledge is
bound up with the whole being of man, and unless the true being of man, his
fourfold nature, is taken into account, the question as to what knowledge is
will only be answered by the empty phrases which are so familiar in modern
philosophy. Because of the limited time at our disposal I can of course only
briefly refer to this, I can only say a few words about the nature of human
knowledge. But we shall understand one another if we begin by asking how it is
acquired, as distinct from what it may signify.
You all know
that the human being could never attain to knowledge if he did not think, if in
his mind he did not carry on something akin to work in ideation or thinking.
Knowledge does not come of itself. The human being has to undertake work within
himself, he has to allow ideas to pass through his mind if he wants to know. As
adherents of spiritual science we have to ask ourselves where in human nature
those processes take place which we designate as ideation, as mental
representation, and which lead to knowledge.
According to the
materialistic illusion, the typical philosophic fantasy of today, knowledge
comes about as a result of work carried out by the brain. Admittedly, work does
take place in the brain in the act of cognition, but if we bear in mind that the
main thing in knowledge is the work within the soul in the life of ideation, the
question must arise: ‘Has the content of the process of ideation anything
to do with the work which goes on in the brain?’ The brain is part of the
physical body, and what constitutes the content of our life of ideation, what
constitutes the work of our soul in ideation, in mental representation, which is
what brings knowledge about, does not go as far as the physical body; that all
takes place in the three higher members of the human being, takes place from the
ego through the astral body down to the etheric body. As far as its content
goes, you will find nothing in any element of our process of ideation which
takes place in the physical brain. Thus, if we are talking expressly of the
content or of the activity of mental representation, we must attribute that
solely to the three higher supersensible members of the human being, and then we
can ask ourselves what the brain has to do with all this that goes on
supersensibly in the human being. The obvious truth upon which modern philosophy
and psychology are based, that in the act of cognition processes do take place
in the brain, has of course to be admitted; it cannot and should not be denied,
but it is relatively unimportant. Nothing of the mental representation itself
lives in the brain. What significance, then, has the brain, has the external
bodily organization in general, for knowledge, or let us say to begin with, for
the life of ideation?
Since I must be
brief, I can only indicate it pictorially. As regards what really happens in our
souls in the forming of ideas and in thinking, the work of the brain has
precisely the same significance as a mirror has for the man who sees himself in
it. When you with your personality move through space, you do not see yourself —
unless you meet a mirror; then you do see what you are, you see how you
look. A man who claims that the brain thinks, a man who professes that the work
of ideation, of representation, goes on in the brain, is just about as shrewd as
the man who looks at a mirror and says: ‘I am not walking about out here, that
is not me. I must get inside the mirror, that is where I am.’ He would soon
become convinced that he was not in the mirror, but that the mirror was
reflecting what was outside it. So it is with the whole of the physical
organization. What becomes evident through the work of the brain is the inward
supersensible activity of the three higher members of the human organization.
The mirror of the brain is needed in order that this activity may become evident
to the human being himself, in order that through the mirror of the brain he may
perceive what he is supersensibly; this is an inevitable result of our
contemporary human organization. If, as an earthly being today, man had not this
reflecting bodily organism, primarily the brain, he would still think his
thoughts but he would not be aware of them. The whole endeavor of modern
physiology and a good deal of modern psychology to understand thinking is about
as clever as looking into a mirror to find your own reality. What I have here
said in a few words can be epistemologically and scientifically substantiated in
the strictest manner. It is of course quite another question whether the
argument would be at all understood. Experience indeed suggests the contrary. In
however strictly logical a manner one argues today even with philosophers, they
do not understand a mortal word, because they just do not want to go into these
things. For in the outer world today there is still absolutely no will to
tackle the most serious problems concerning the human faculty of cognition.
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Let us take this
diagram to represent the human physical bodily organization. If then we wish to
express in correct diagrammatic form the human process of cognition, we have to
say: ‘No part of what thinking is, nothing of the act of cognition, takes place
anywhere within this external physical organism; it all takes place in the
adjacent etheric and astral bodies and so on.’ It is there that all the
thoughts which I have indicated diagrammatically by these circles are to be
found. These thoughts do not enter into the brain at all — it would be nonsense
to think that they do — they are reflected through the activity of the brain and
thrown back again into etheric body, astral body, and ego. And it is these images,
which we ourselves have first produced, and which are then made visible to us by
the brain — it is these mirrored images which we see when as earthly men we
become aware of what actually goes on in our soul-life. Within the brain there
is absolutely no thought; there is no more of thought in the brain than there is
of you in the mirror in which you see yourself.
But the brain is
a very complicated mirror. The external mirror in which we see ourselves is
simple, but the brain is tremendously complicated, and of necessity a complex
activity takes place in order that it can become the instrument, not indeed for
producing thought but for reflecting it. In other words, before a single
thought of a single earthly man could come into existence, there had to be a
preparation. We know that this preparation took place during the Saturn, Sun, and
Moon evolutions, and that in fine the present physical body, and with it the
brain, is the result of the work of many spiritual hierarchies. So we can say
that by the beginning of Earth evolution man on Earth was so formed that he
could develop his physical brain to become the reflecting apparatus for what the
human being really is, for the real man, who is at first only to be met with in
the environment of this our physical bodily organization. That is how we put it
today, and it can surely be understood, at all events by an. audience of
anthroposophists. Fundamentally this process of cognition we are examining is
quite easy to understand.
What we today
are able to understand in this way was felt by the ancient Greek, and therefore
he said to himself: ‘There is concealed in this physical bodily organism,
without man's having any direct consciousness of it, something of great
significance. This physical organism is undoubtedly from the Earth, since it
consists of the materials and forces of the Earth, but there is something
secreted within it which can reflect back the whole life of the human soul.’
When the ancient Greek was directing his feeling upon the microcosm, upon man,
he called this element — coming from the Earth and thus macrocosmic — this
element which played a part in the constructing of the brain, the Dionysian
principle; so that it is Dionysos who works in us to make our bodily
organism into a mirror of our spiritual life.
Now, if we apply
ourselves to this purely theoretical exposition, if we enter into it, we can
experience that the soul is being put to a first and very gentle trial; it is
very slight, and since the organization of present-day man is not tuned to the
most delicate refinements, it usually passes unnoticed. These challenges will
have to become ruder if the man of today is to feel them.
It is only when
one is filled with enthusiasm for knowledge, when one looks upon the attainment
of knowledge as a matter of life itself, that one feels what I am about to
describe as a first tremendous challenge to the soul. It comes about when this
very knowledge leads us on to recognize that the mighty word of wisdom ‘Know
thyself’ resounds toward us out of primeval times. Self-knowledge, as the
cardinal maxim upon which all other true knowledge turns, shines before us as a
high ideal. In other words, if we want to attain knowledge in general, we must
first endeavor to get to know ourselves, to get to know what we are. Now, all
our knowledge takes its course in the process of ideation. Our life of ideation,
or mental representation, which reproduces for us all the things outside us, we
experience in the form of mirrored image. The process does not penetrate at all
into what we are as physical bodily organism; it is thrown back to us, and the
human being can no more see into his own physical being than he can see what is
behind the mirror. Moreover, he does not penetrate into his physical organization,
because his soul-life is completely filled by this process of representation.
One is obliged to say: ‘Then it is quite impossible to learn to know oneself:
one can come to know nothing but this process of ideation which has turned one
into a reflecting apparatus. It is impossible to penetrate further, we can only
reach as far as the frontier; and at the frontier the whole life of the soul is
thrown back again, as a man's image is thrown back in a mirror.’ If an undefined
feeling challenges us to know ourselves, we have to confess that we cannot do
it, that it is impossible for us to know ourselves.
What I have just
been saying is for most men of today an abstraction, because they have no
enthusiasm for knowledge, because they are incapable of developing the
passion which must come into play when the soul is confronted by its own
absolute need. But imagine this realization developed into feeling, and then the
soul is faced with a hard task indeed: ‘You must attain something which
you cannot attain!’ In terms of spiritual science that means that no knowledge
which man can acquire by exoteric means will lead to any degree of
self-knowledge.
From this
springs the endeavor to press on by quite another path than that of ordinary
knowledge to what the work of Dionysos within us is — to our own being. That has
to take place in the Mysteries. In other words, something was given to man in
the Mysteries which had nothing to do with the ordinary soul-life, that is only
mirrored in our bodily organization. The Mysteries could not confine man within
the limits of exoteric knowledge, for that would never have enabled them to lead
man into himself. Anyone determined to recognize only exoteric science would
consequently have to say: ‘The Mysteries must have been pure humbug, for they
only make sense on the assumption that something quite different from ordinary
knowledge was cultivated in them, with the object of reaching Dionysos.’ Thus in
the Mysteries we have to expect happenings of a kind which approach man in quite
another way from all that man meets in ordinary exoteric life. This brings us
directly up against the question: ‘Is there really any means of
penetrating into what is ordinarily only a reflecting apparatus?’
I should like to
begin from something seemingly quite unimportant. As soon as one takes the very
first step in describing spiritual truths — truths which lead to reality and not
to the maya of the outer world, not to illusion — one has to set about it in
quite a different way from the way one sets about describing scientific or other
matters in ordinary life. That is why it is so difficult to make oneself
understood. Today men try to confine everything within the fetters which have
been forged for modern science, and nothing that is not presented in this form
is accepted as ‘scientific’. But with such knowledge it is impossible to
penetrate into the nature of things. Hence in the lectures on spiritual science
which are given here, a different style, a different method of presentation is
used from the one to which ordinary science is accustomed; here things are so
described that light is thrown upon them from several sides, and in a certain
way language is taken seriously again. If one takes language seriously, one
reaches what one might call the genius of language. In one of the earlier
lectures of this course I said that it was not for nothing that in my second
Rosicrucian Mystery Play, The Soul's Probation, I used the word dichten for an
original activity of the World Creator, or that in The Portal of Initiation I said of Ahriman that he
creates ‘in dichtem Lichte’. [ 1 ] Anyone
who appraises such words in the light of present-day usage will believe that
they are just words like any other. Not at all. They are words which go back to
the original genius of language, words which draw out of the language something
that has not yet passed through the conscious human ego-life of ideation. And
language has many instances of this.
In the book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind I have
pointed out what a beautiful expression there still was in old German for what
is indicated in an abstract way by geboren werden (to be born). When a
man comes into the world today he is said ‘to be born’. In old German there was
another expression for this. The human being was of course not conscious of what
really takes place at birth, but the genius of language, in which Dionysos plays
a part, reaching in this way right into the activity of mental
representation as distinct from the mere reflection of it — the genius of
language knew that, when the human being goes through the gate of death, then in
the first part of the time between death and a new birth, forces are at work in
him which he has brought with him from his previous life and which are the
forces which caused him to grow old in that life. Before we die we become old,
and the forces which make us old we carry over with us. In the first part of the
time between death and a new birth these forces go on working. But in the second
half of the life between death and rebirth quite different forces set in. Forces
take hold of us which fashion us in such a way that we return to the world as
little children, that we become young. The language of the Middle Ages
hinted at this mystery, by not using merely the abstract phrase geboren
werden but by saying: Der Mensch ist jung geworden (the man has
become young). This is an extremely significant expression! In the second part
of Goethe's Faust [ 2 ] we find this phrase:
im Nebellande jung geworden. Nebelland is an expression for the
Germany of the Middle Ages; it means no more than to have been born in Germany,
but in this expression there lies an awareness of the genius of language, thus
of a higher being than man, who participated in the creation of the human
organism. That one speaks of ‘Dichtung’ in German is based on awareness that the
‘Dichter’ brings together what is outspread in the world, condenses it. One day
there will be a philosophy which is not so dry and prosaic, not so philistine as
that of today, because it will enter into the living genius of language, which
in the ego-man of today underlies his conscious life of ideation. Much has to be
elicited from this genius of language if one wants to characterize the things of
the spiritual world, which lie beyond what ordinary consciousness can grasp.
Thus another
method of presentation has to be used in the description of spiritual things.
Hence the strangeness which is bound to be felt in many descriptions of the
higher worlds. When we speak of the spiritual worlds we already meet at the very
outset with something which must have originated behind what the human being has
in his consciousness. It has to be drawn from the subconscious depths of the
soul. Moreover, if one does this today something is necessary which seems quite
trivial but is nevertheless important. If one wants to describe
spiritual-scientific things in their true sense, one must forgo the use of the
customary terminology. One has perhaps even to go so far as to acknowledge quite
consciously: ‘If you reject the customary terminology then the professors and
all the other intellectuals will say you have no proper command of language.
They will find all manner of things to object to, they will find you lacking in
clarity; they will carp at all sorts of things in the way in which spiritual
science is expressed.’ One has to accept that quite consciously, for it is
inevitable. One must face up to the fact that one will probably be looked upon
as stupid, because one fails to make use of the customary ‘perfectly logical’
terms, which in a higher connection are the height of imperfection.
What I have
pointed out to you as a small matter — or not so small — was in ancient Greece a
necessity for the pupil of the Mysteries, and is still so today. In order to
come to his full self, in order to penetrate into his inmost being, which
otherwise is only reflected by his external bodily organization, the pupil must
divest himself of the usual conscious external method of acquiring knowledge.
Superficial persons could of course immediately say: ‘But you claim that the
human being always retains his common sense, and judges everything in the higher
worlds in accordance with it; yet you now say that he must renounce normal
external knowledge. Surely that is a contradiction!’ In reality it is quite
possible to test the things of the higher spiritual worlds with common sense and
intelligence while nevertheless withdrawing from that form of conscious
knowledge to which we are accustomed in the outer world. Here our souls are once
more faced by a severe ordeal. In what does this ordeal consist?
As things are
today, it is the habit of the soul to think and to apply the judgments of common
sense within certain moulds, namely in those forms which in the ordinary process
of mental representation are taught by the external world. That is the normal
thing. And now imagine some professor or other, who is learned in the science of
the outer world, and within the forms appropriate to that kind of knowledge an
exceptionally able thinker. People come and say: ‘You want to make yourself
understood by that professor; he obviously knows how to think scientifically in
the modern sense of the term; if he can't understand you, you must have
said something it is impossible for anyone to understand!’ Well, there is
no need to dispute that our professor has a sound commonsense judgment for the
things of the ordinary external world. But our subject matter is the
things of the spiritual world, and it will not do for him to listen with that
part of his soul which brings common sense to bear on the ordinary things of the
external world; he would have to listen with quite a different part of his soul.
It does not follow that his common sense will continue to accompany a man when
he seeks to grasp anything other than the things belonging to the outside world.
Those are the things for which common sense is adapted; and a man may well
possess an understanding for those things — and yet it may leave him in the
lurch when he comes to the things of the spiritual world.
What is required
if we intend to penetrate into spiritual worlds is not a critique of
spiritual-scientific things conducted by the instrument of common sense, but
that we should take our common sense along with us in our approach to them, and
not lose it on the way from outer science toward inner, spiritual science. What
matters is that the soul should be strong enough to avoid the experience so many
people endure today. You could describe it like this: As long as it is only a
question of external science, these people are paragons of logic, but when they
hear of spiritual science, then they have to make the journey from information
about external things to information about the spiritual world. And on this
journey they generally lose their common sense. Then they fancy that, because
they had it with them when they started, they must have had it later on too! It
would be a bad mistake to conclude that it is not possible to enter into the
things of the spiritual world with common sense. It is just that one must not
lose hold of it on the way there.
What I have just
put before you in a petty example was in a far higher sense a necessity for
Greek pupils of the Mysteries, as it is for modern mystics also. They have to
slough off completely, as it were, their normal consciousness, yet for all that
they have to keep with them the sound common sense which goes with normal
consciousness and then make use of it as an instrument for judgment in an
entirely different situation, from an entirely different viewpoint. Without
relinquishing his normal consciousness no one can become a mystic. He has to do
without the consciousness which serves him well in the everyday world. And the
challenge to the soul which emerges at this point, on the way from the customary
outer world to the spiritual world, is that it should not lose its common sense
and treat as nonsense what, if it has held on to its common sense, reveals
itself as a deeper experience.
Thus the pupil
in the Greek Mysteries needed to divest himself of all that he was able to
experience in the outer, the exoteric, world, and this is also necessary for the
mystic today. Hence the things of the world outside sometimes assume quite
different names when they enter into the sphere of mysticism. When in my
Rosicrucian play The Soul's Probation it is said of Benedictus that in his
speech the names of many things are changed, that they even take on a completely
opposite meaning, this is something of deep significance. What Capesius calls
unhappiness, Benedictus is obliged to call happiness. [ 3 ] Just as after death our life to begin with runs its course
backwards and we experience things in backward order, in the same way we have to
change the names of things into their opposites if we are speaking in the true
sense of the higher worlds. Hence you can estimate what an entirely different
world it was which the ancient Greeks acknowledged as the content of the holy
Mysteries.
What was the
meaning of Dionysos in these Mysteries? If you read the little book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind, which is
to be published within the next few days, you will see that in all ages there
have been great teachers of mankind who have remained unseen, who only manifest
themselves to clairvoyant consciousness. You will see that when the ancient
Egyptians said, in answer to a question from the Greeks as to who their teachers
were, that they were instructed by the gods, it was the truth. They meant that
men who were clairvoyant were inspired by teachers who did not descend to Earth,
but who appeared to them in the etheric sphere and taught them. I am not putting
it fancifully, what I am saying is absolutely true! When in ancient Greece
pupils were introduced into the Mysteries, after having undergone due
preparation so that they did not take such things lightly, superficially — as is
done today when they are discussed in abstract terms — they were then in a
position to see within the Mystery the teacher who was not to be seen by
physical eyes but was visible only to the inspired consciousness. The
hierophants, who were to be seen with physical eyes, were not the
important people. The important beings were those visible to clairvoyant
consciousness. In the Mysteries with which we are concerned in these lectures,
in the Dionysian Mysteries, the highest teacher of the pupils who were
sufficiently prepared was in fact the younger Dionysos himself — that figure
which I have already told you was a real one, he who was followed by a train of
sileni and fauns and who made the journey from Europe to Asia and back again. He
was the real teacher of the pupils in the Dionysian Mysteries. Dionysos appeared
in an etheric form in the holy Mysteries, and from him it was then possible to
perceive things which were not merely seen as mirror-images in normal
consciousness, but things which welled forth directly from the inner being of
Dionysos.
But because
Dionysos is in us, the human being saw his own self in Dionysos, and learnt to
know himself — not by brooding upon himself, as is so often recommended by
people who know nothing of reality — but the way to self-knowledge for the Greek
Mysteries was to go out of himself. The way to self-knowledge was not to brood
upon himself and to gaze only upon the mirror-images of ordinary soul-life, but
to contemplate that which he himself was, though he could not reach down to it
in normal consciousness, to look upon the great Teacher. The aspirants looked
upon the great Teacher, who was not yet visible when they entered into the
Mystery, as upon their own being. In the world outside, where he was recognized
merely as Dionysos, he made his journey from Europe to Asia and back, actually
incarnated in a fleshly body; there he was a real man standing upon the physical
plane. In the Mysteries he appeared in his spirit-form.
In a certain way
it is still so today. When in the world outside the modern leaders of men go
about in human garb, they are unrecognized by the world. When from the
standpoint of spiritual science we talk about ‘The Masters of Wisdom and of the
Harmony of Feelings’ people would often be surprised to know in what simple,
unassuming human form these Masters are to be found in all countries. They are
present on the physical plane. But they do not impart their most important
teachings on the physical plane, but following the example of Dionysos of old,
they impart them on the spiritual plane. And anyone who wishes to listen to
them, to be taught by them, must have access to them not only in their physical
bodies of flesh, but in their spiritual forms. In a certain way that is true
today as it was in the Dionysian Mysteries of old. Thus one of the tests we have
to undergo is to obey the exhortation ‘Know thyself’ by going out of
ourselves.
But in the
Dionysian Mysteries the soul was exposed to yet another test. I told you that
the aspirants learned to know Dionysos as a spirit-form. In the Mysteries they
were actually instructed by him, they learned to recognize him as a spirit-form
governed entirely by what was most essential and most important in man's own
nature, by what represented the human self firmly planted upon the Earth. When
the Greek pupils directed their clairvoyant sight upon the figure of Dionysos,
then this Dionysos seemed to them a beautiful, sublime figure, a noble external
representation of humanity. Now, just suppose that one of these pupils had left
the Mystery Temple, after having seen Dionysos there as a beautiful, sublime
human form. I expressly draw your attention to the fact that the younger
Dionysos still remained a teacher in the Mysteries long after the real man, of
whom I have told you that he journeyed from Europe to Asia and back again, was
dead. If however one of these pupils had left the place where the Mystery was
enacted and had encountered in the world outside the real Dionysos incarnated in
the flesh, if he had met that human being who corresponded to the higher man
whom he had seen in the Mystery, he would have seen no beauty! Just as today the
man who has entered into the Mystery may not hope to see the figure which he had
before him in sublime beauty in the spiritual world in the same august beauty on
the physical plane, just as he must be clear that the physical embodiment of the
spiritual form which he met in the Mystery is maya, is complete illusion,
and conceals the sublime beauty of the spiritual figure, so that in the physical
world it becomes in a way hideous — so it was in the case of Dionysos. And what
tradition has given us as the external appearance of Dionysos, who is not
represented as such a perfect divine form as Zeus, is in fact the image of the
Dionysos who was manifested in the flesh. The Dionysos of the Mystery was a
beautiful being; the fleshly Dionysos was not to be compared with him. Hence it
is no good looking for the figure of Dionysos among the finest types of antique
human beauty. He is not so represented by tradition, and we have in particular
to think of those who constituted his followers as being hideous in appearance,
like the satyrs and sileni.
What is more, we
discover in Greek mythology something extremely remarkable. We are told
something which is in fact the truth — that the teacher of Dionysos was himself
a very ugly man. This person, Silenus, who was the teacher of Dionysos himself,
the aspirants in the Mystery came to know also. But Silenus is described to us
as a wise individual. We need only recall that a great number of wise sayings
are attributed to him, sayings which repeatedly stress the worthlessness of the
normal life of man if it is only viewed from the outside in its maya or
illusion. Then we are told something which made a great impression upon
Nietzsche — we are told that King Midas asked Silenus, the teacher of Dionysos,
what was best for man. The wise Silenus gave the significant but puzzling reply:
‘Oh, thou race of brief duration, the best would be for thee not to have been
born, or since thou hast been born, the second best for thee would be swiftly to
die.’ This saying has to be rightly understood. It is an attempt to indicate the
relationship between the spirituality of the super-sensible world and the
maya, the great illusion, of outer life.
Thus, when we
look at them in their physical human forms, these exalted beings are by no means
beautiful — or at any rate they can only be regarded as beautiful in a different
sense from that in which the late Greek period understood ideal beauty. We can
in a way still idealize Dionysos in contrast to what he was as a man in the
outer world. If we wish to contrast the form Dionysos assumed in the physical
with the majestic splendor of the spiritual form which he revealed in the
Mystery itself, there is nothing to stop us doing so. We are not obliged to
think of him as ugly. But we should be wrong to think of the teacher of
Dionysos, old Silenus, otherwise than as with an ugly snub-nose, and ears which
stuck out, and anything but handsome. Silenus, the teacher of Dionysos, who was
finally to hand over to man the archetypal wisdom in a form suitable for the
human ego-consciousness — a wisdom which sprang from the deeper self of man —
this Silenus was still closely akin to the life of Nature, which man in his
present bodily form has really grown out of. The ancient Greek imagined that the
present comeliness of the human being, from the point of view of external maya,
had developed out of an old, ugly, human form, and that the type of the
individuality who was incarnated in Silenus, the teacher of Dionysos, was not at
all pleasing to look at.
Now, as students
of spiritual science it will not be difficult for you, from all I have said so
far, to suppose that both in the younger Dionysos and in his teacher, the wise
Silenus, we have to do with individualities who have been of immense importance
for the education of modern human consciousness. Thus when we cast about to find
the individualities in the spiritual environment who—both for our own as well as
for Greek consciousness—were and are momentous for what man has become, we find
these two, Dionysos and the wise Silenus. These individualities are there in
prehistoric times into which no history, no epic, goes back, but of which
nevertheless the later history of the Greeks tells us, particularly in the epic
tradition of its sagas and its myths. In these times both the wise Silenus and
Dionysos were incarnated in physical bodies, performed physical deeds, and died,
as their bodies had to do. The individualities remained.
Now you know of
course that in human history very much happens which is highly surprising to the
man who only thinks abstractly; this is especially the case as regards the
incarnation of human and other beings. Sometimes a later incarnation, although
more advanced, may from the outside seem less perfect than an earlier one. In my
second Rosicrucian Mystery Play, in the incarnation of the monk in the Middle
Ages (Maria in modern times), I have been able to give just a very faint idea of
the spiritual realities. Thus in history too the abstract thinker must sometimes
be overcome with astonishment when he contemplates two successive incarnations,
or at any rate incarnations which belong together. The younger Dionysos, who, I
told you, allowed his soul to be poured out into external culture, was
nevertheless able at a specific time to gather himself together again as a soul
in a single physical human body; he was born again, incarnated among men; but in
such a way that he did not keep his old form but added to his outer physical
form something of what had constituted his spirit-form in the Dionysian
Mysteries. Both the younger Dionysos and his teacher, the wise Silenus, were
reincarnated in historical times. Those initiated in the Mystery-wisdom of
ancient Greece were fully conscious that these two had been born again; so were
the Greek artists, who were stimulated and inspired by the initiates.
Little by little
such things have to be told if spiritual science is not to stop at platitudes,
if it is to enter into reality. Things which are true have to be told for
the sake of the further evolution of humanity. The wise old teacher of Dionysos
was born again, and in his further incarnation was none other than Socrates.
Socrates is the reincarnation of old Silenus, he is the reincarnated teacher of
Dionysos. And Dionysos himself, that reincarnated being in whom verily lived the
soul of Dionysos, of old, was Plato. One only realizes the profound meaning of
Greek history if one enters into what was known—not of course to the writers of
external history — but to the initiates who have handed down the tradition from
generation to generation right up to today — knowledge which can also be found
in the Akasha Chronicle. Spiritual science can once more proclaim that Greece in
its early period harbored the teacher of humanity, whom it sent over to Asia in
the journey conducted by Dionysos, whose teacher was Silenus. What Dionysos and
the wise Silenus were able to do for Greece was renewed in a manner suited to a
later age by Socrates and Plato. In the very time when the Mysteries were
falling into decay, in the very time in which there were no more initiates who
could still see the younger Dionysos clairvoyantly in the holy Mysteries, that
same Dionysos emerged as the pupil of the wise Silenus, he who had himself
become Socrates — emerged as Plato, the second great teacher of Greece, the true
successor of Dionysos.
One only
recognizes the meaning of Greek spiritual culture in the sense of ancient Greek
Mystery-wisdom when one knows that the old Dionysian culture experienced a
revival in Plato. And we admire Platonism in quite another way, we relate
ourselves to it in its true stature, when we know that in Plato there dwelt the
soul of the younger Dionysos.
Notes:1. dichten = to compose, as author or a poet, to make literature; dicht = thick. In Ahriman's speech in Scene 4, he says: ‘Ich wirke diese Schönheit in dichtem Licht’ — translated in the English version as ‘which charm I weave for thee in light condensed’.2. Part II Act 2. Laboratory Scene. Spoken by Homunculus.
Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/GA/GA0129/19110824p02.html
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