The New Mystery
Thus it was no longer a case of introducing one person or another into the temples of the Mysteries, but of the word spoken to all and heard now with more, now with less clarity and strength. And it will be left to the daimon, the angel in a person's own breast, to decide how far one's initiation can proceed. The Mystery-temple is the entire world.
No longer is blessedness reserved for those who have witnessed within the confines of the Mystery-temples those awe-inspring enactments that are the types and symbols of enternity. For now, 'Bleassed are those who have not seen, but who have believed.' Even if at first they wander in darkness, the light may yet reach them. There is no secrecy; the way opens out for all."
- Rudolf Steiner, Christianity as Mystical Fact
As I am reading this, I see Jesus literally re-enacting, in his life and death and resurrection, a secret ritual - a ritual that you weren't supposed to know about and certainly weren't ever supposed to see - out in the open where everyone can see it. Though he wasn't saying it, it was almost like there was a narrator speaking: 'Here is how the secret rituals go: the person getting initiated is tested, in various ways, and severely. The other intiates join in to put the neophyte to the test. They take part in his abuse. Then it's like the neophyte dies, from exhaustion, hunger, thirst. Then, when it really looks like he's died, ...' As the narrator speaks, we see Jesus' life played out in front of us.
Jesus knew something of the significance of his own life. He knew he was living out the will of something higher, something to which he was devoted. He knew why his life offended the ones who were actually initiates into the mysteries, who saw what Jesus was doing, and were horrified and enraged. He knew he was living out what the initiates had only acted out - even if it was a genuine spiritual experience they had while acting. For centuries and across cultures, punishment was threatened for telling people what was going on in the secret meetings and rituals. And here was Jesus showing the people around him what those secrets were.
Anyone can be initiated. The Mystery-temple is the entire world.
Comments
No, I've not read Jean Gebser. Are you reading it? Please let me know what you think.
I pulled out my copy of World's Apart - only a fraction of my library isn't in storage right now, but I have all of my Barfield, and most of my Steiner and Tolkien handy - and will read the last twenty pages or so, with your comments in mind. I'll post again soon.
Cheers.
Danny
I did re-read the last day of the dialogue, to the end of the book. I found it really difficult to follow. The characters were making such big leaps in their arguments, and seemingly sharing assumptions amongst themselves that I don't share with them. I found myself saying to myself, "What?" alot.
As to Hunter: He's a sharp logician. He represents C.S. Lewis (near the time of his death, and right up to it, I think, C.S. Lewis read, and kept handy, a copy of World's Apart). I think Hunter wants to get at the truth, and he wants Sanderson's views actually to hold up to scrutiny and to be TRUE. He wants that spiritual detail filled in the way that Steiner filled it in, in that space in the Christian theology between human consciousness and the godhead, a nearly empty space except for angels.
C.S. Lewis was a very sensual man, from what I understand. He had trouble with the women when he was young, before he converted to Christianity. He was a drinker and a smoker, and loved walking. He was strongly imaginative - he wrote and read poetry and fiction. But when he converted, he chose celibacy, apparently. He also, in a sense, kept his imagination celibate, in deliberately avoiding certain kinds of imaginative expression. He believed that imagination is a faculty of perceiving certain aspects of reality, but not the aspect of truth. Steiner has no doubt that this is in fact THE faculty of truth – the process of initiation.
Part of this I'm getting indirectly from what I remember of The Pilgrim's Regress (my favorite book for a few years), from Barfield's essays in Owen Barfield On C.S. Lewis, and from a few biographies I've read.
Anyway, by the very end of the dialogue Hunter appears actually bored, distracted and uninterested. Right before that is the intense personal back and forth between Hunter and Sanderson, where Hunter accuses Sanderson of diabolical pride. At the time they leave, Hunter says he’s really not that interested in being involved next time. Then he writes a letter to Burgeon later, saying that he’d rather actually participate in any next session.
Hunter is struggling with his sensual, imaginative nature against his sense of obligation to celibacy in mind as well as body. Near the end of the dialogue, when Sanderson starts talking about the holy spirit as it appears in his anthroposophy, Hunter takes great offense. Yet at other times he’s actually cutting off Dunn’s objections to Sanderson’s points, so that Sanderson can proceed with his exposition of supersensible perception. I think he's genuinely interested - curious.
In the end, though, Hunter completely misunderstands Sanderson, as evidenced by his saying that Sanderson is a humanist because Sanderson equates God with the human unconscious. In fact, the WORLD, not god, is the human unconscious - presented objectively before him - as Steiner put it. Further, it is in self-consciousness, not unconsciousness, that anthroposophical initiation proceeds.
Seems to me Hunter's religious convictions underwrite his logical scrutiny of Sanderson's views, and misrepresent those views as a result.