The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Guardian of the Threshold

[ 1 ] Important experiences during the ascent into the higher worlds include encounters with the “Keeper of the Threshold.” There is not just one, but essentially two: a “lesser” and a “greater” “Keeper of the Threshold.” A person encounters the former when the connecting threads between will, thought, and feeling within the finer bodies (the astral and etheric bodies) begin to loosen, as described in the previous chapter. A person encounters the “greater Guardian of the Threshold” when the dissolution of these connections extends to the physical parts of the body (namely, initially, the brain).

[ 2 ] The “lesser guardian of the threshold” is an independent being. It does not exist for a person until that person has reached the corresponding stage of development. Only a few of its most essential characteristics can be listed here.

[ 3 ] The first step is to attempt to depict, in narrative form, the encounter between the secret student and the Keeper of the Threshold. It is only through this encounter that the student becomes aware that his thinking, feeling, and willing have become detached from the connection in which they were originally rooted.

[ 4 ] A truly terrifying, ghostly being stands before the student. The student must draw upon all his presence of mind and all his confidence in the safety of his path of knowledge—qualities he has, however, been able to acquire sufficiently during his time as a secret student thus far.

[ 5 ] The “Guardian” explains its significance in roughly the following words: “Until now, powers that were invisible to you have reigned over you. They ensured that, throughout your previous lifetimes, each of your good deeds received its reward and each of your evil deeds had its dire consequences. Through their influence, your character was shaped by your life experiences and your thoughts. They determined your destiny. They determined the measure of pleasure and pain allotted to you in one of your incarnations, based on your behavior in previous incarnations. They ruled over you in the form of the all-encompassing law of karma. These powers will now loosen their grip on you to some extent. And some of the work they have done on you, you must now do yourself. You have suffered many heavy blows of fate up to now. Did you not know why? It was the consequence of a harmful deed in one of your previous lifetimes. You found happiness and joy and accepted them. They, too, were the result of earlier deeds. You have many beautiful aspects to your character, as well as some ugly flaws. You have brought both upon yourself through past experiences and thoughts. Until now, you have not been aware of the latter; only the effects were apparent to you. But they—the karmic forces—saw all your past deeds, your most hidden thoughts and feelings. And they have determined how you are now and how you live now.

[ 6 ] But now all the good and all the bad aspects of your past lives are to be revealed to you. Until now, they were woven into your very being; they were within you, and you could not see them, just as you cannot physically see your own brain. But now they are detaching themselves from you; they are stepping out of your personality. They are taking on an independent form that you can see, just as you see the stones and plants of the outside world. And—it is I myself, the Being who has formed a body out of your noble and your wicked deeds. My ghostly form is woven from the ledger of your own life. Until now, you have carried me invisibly within yourself. But it was beneficial for you that it was so. For the wisdom of your hidden destiny has, for that very reason, been working until now to erase the ugly blemishes in my form within you. Now that I have stepped out of you, this hidden wisdom has also departed from you. It will no longer concern itself with you. It will then place the work solely in your own hands. I must become a being that is perfect and glorious in itself, if I am not to fall into ruin. And were the latter to happen, I would drag even you down with me into a dark, corrupt world. — Your own wisdom must now, if the latter is to be prevented, be so great that it can take over the task of that hidden wisdom that has departed from you. – Once you have crossed my threshold, I will not for a single moment depart from your side in a form visible to you. And if, from now on, you do or think anything wrong, you will immediately perceive your guilt as an ugly, demonic distortion in this form of mine. Only when you have made amends for all your past wrongs and have purified yourself to such an extent that further evil is utterly impossible for you will my being have transformed into radiant beauty. And then, for the sake of your future work, I will be able to reunite with you as one being.

[ 7 ] But my threshold is built from every feeling of fear that still remains within you, and from every hesitation to take full responsibility for all your actions and thoughts yourself. As long as you still have any fear of steering your own destiny, this threshold will not contain everything it needs to be complete. And as long as even a single building block is missing, you will be forced to stand spellbound at this threshold or stumble over it. Do not attempt to cross this threshold until you feel completely free of fear and ready to assume the highest level of responsibility.

[ 8 ] Until now, I have only emerged from your own personality when death called you away from an earthly life. But even then, my form was veiled from you. Only the forces of destiny that ruled over you could see me and, based on my appearance, were able—in the intervals between death and a new birth—to develop your strength and abilities so that, in a new earthly life, you could work toward the beautification of my form for the sake of your own progress. It was I myself whose imperfection repeatedly compelled the powers of fate to bring you back to Earth in a new incarnation. Whenever you died, I was there; and because of me, the directors of karma determined your rebirth. Only when, through ever-renewed lives of this kind, you had unconsciously transformed me entirely into perfection would you not have fallen prey to the powers of death, but would have united yourself completely with me and passed into immortality in unity with me.

[ 9 ] So today I stand visibly before you, just as I have always stood invisibly beside you at the hour of death. When you have crossed my threshold, you will enter the realms that you would otherwise have entered after physical death. You will enter them with full knowledge, and from then on, while walking visibly on Earth, you will simultaneously walk in the realm of death—which is, in fact, the realm of eternal life. I am indeed also the angel of death; but I am at the same time the bringer of a never-ending higher life. While still in the flesh, you will die through me in order to experience rebirth into an indestructible existence.

[ 10 ] The realm you are now entering will introduce you to beings of a supernatural nature. Bliss will be your lot in this realm. But I myself must be your first acquaintance in this world—I, who am your very own creation. I once lived from your own life; but now, through you, I have awakened to an existence of my own and stand before you as a visible measure of your future deeds—and perhaps also as your everlasting reproach. You were able to create me; but in doing so, you also assumed the duty to transform me.”

[ 11 ] What is implied here, presented in the form of a narrative, should not be imagined as something symbolic, but rather as a truly real experience of the initiate—one of the highest order. ^{1It is clear from the above that the “Keeper of the Threshold” described here is an (astral) figure who reveals himself to the secret student’s awakening higher vision. And it is to this supersensible encounter that the secret science leads. It is an act of lower magic to make the “Keeper of the Threshold” visible to the physical senses as well. This involves the creation of a cloud of fine substance—an incense prepared from a specific mixture of various substances. The magician’s developed power is then able to exert a formative influence on the incense and to animate its substance with the person’s still-unbalanced karma. — Those who are sufficiently prepared for higher vision no longer need such sensory perception; and anyone whose unbalanced karma were to appear before their eyes as a sensually living being without sufficient preparation would run the risk of straying into grave error. They should not strive for this. Bulwer’s *Zanoni* offers a fictional portrayal of this “Keeper of the Threshold.”}

[ 12 ] The Guardian is to warn him not to go any further if he does not feel within himself the strength to meet the demands contained in the address above. As terrifying as the form of this Guardian may be, it is nevertheless merely the effect of the student’s own past life; it is merely his own character, awakened to an independent existence outside of himself. And this awakening occurs through the separation of will, thought, and feeling. — It is in itself an experience of profound significance to feel, for the first time, that one has given rise to a spiritual being. – The secret student’s preparation must now be directed toward enabling him to endure the terrifying sight without the slightest hesitation and, at the moment of encounter, to feel that his strength has truly grown to such an extent that he can take it upon himself to assume the “Guardian’s” transformation with full awareness.

[ 13 ] One consequence of having successfully survived the encounter with the “Keeper of the Threshold” is that the next physical death is then a completely different experience for the initiate than previous deaths were. He consciously experiences dying by shedding the physical body, just as one sheds a garment that has become worn out or perhaps unusable due to a sudden tear. This physical death of his is then, so to speak, a significant event only for the others who live with him and whose perceptions are still entirely limited to the sensory world. To them, the initiate “dies.” For him, nothing of significance changes in his entire surroundings. The entire supersensible world into which he has entered was already present before him in an appropriate form before his death, and the same world will continue to be present to him after death as well. Now, however, the “Keeper of the Threshold” is also connected to something else. A person belongs to a family, a people, a race; his or her activity in this world depends on belonging to such a collective. His or her particular character is also connected to this. And the conscious activity of individual people is by no means all that must be taken into account when considering a family, a tribe, a people, or a race. There is a family, national (and so on) destiny, just as there is a family, racial (and so on) character. For the person who is limited to his or her senses, these things remain general concepts, and the materialist thinker, in his prejudice, will look down contemptuously upon the occultist when he hears that, for the latter, the character of a family or a people, or the destiny of a tribe or a race, are just as real as the character and destiny of an individual human being are to a real personality. The esotericist comes to know higher worlds of which individual personalities are members, just as arms, legs, and the head are members of the human being. And in the life of a family, a people, or a race, in addition to individual human beings, there are also very real family souls, national souls, and racial spirits at work. Indeed, in a certain sense, individual human beings are merely the executive organs of these family souls, racial spirits, and so on. It is entirely true to say, for example, that a national soul makes use of the individual human being belonging to its nation to carry out certain tasks. The national soul does not descend to the sensory realm. It moves in higher worlds. And in order to act in the physical-sensory world, it makes use of the physical organs of the individual human being. In a higher sense, it is just as if a construction engineer were to make use of workers to carry out the details of a building project. – Every human being is, in the truest sense of the word, assigned their work by the family, national, or racial soul. However, the sensory human being is by no means initiated into the higher plan of their work. They work unconsciously toward the goals of the national and racial souls, and so on. From the moment the initiatory student encounters the Keeper of the Threshold, he must not only be aware of his own tasks as an individual, but he must knowingly collaborate on those of his people and his race. Every expansion of his horizon inevitably imposes expanded duties upon him. The actual process involved is that the secret student adds a new, finer soul body to his own. He puts on another garment. Until now, he has walked through the world clothed in the veils that envelop his personality. And whatever he had to do for his community, his people, his race, and so on, was taken care of by the higher spirits who made use of his personality. – Another revelation that the “Keeper of the Threshold” now makes to him is that, from this point on, these spirits will withdraw their hand from him. He must step out of the collective entirely. And he would completely harden within himself as an individual; he would head toward ruin if he did not now acquire for himself the forces that are inherent in the national and racial spirits. – Admittedly, many people will say: “Oh, I have completely freed myself from all tribal and racial ties; I want to be only a ‘human being’ and ‘nothing but a human being.’” But one must say to them: Who brought you to this freedom? Did not your family place you in the world just as you now stand in it? Did not your tribe, your people, your race make you what you are? They raised you; and even if you are above all prejudices, a bringer of light and a benefactor to your tribe or even your race, you owe that to their upbringing. Yes, even if you say of yourself that you are “nothing but a human being”: you owe even the fact that you have become this way to the spirits of your communities. — Only the initiate learns to recognize what it means to be completely free from the spirits of nation, tribe, and race. Only he experiences for himself the insignificance of all such upbringing for the life that now lies ahead of him. For everything that has shaped him dissolves completely as the threads connecting will, thought, and feeling are severed. He looks back on the results of all his previous education as one would look upon a house crumbling into its individual bricks—a house that must now be rebuilt in a new form. It is more than a mere metaphor to say: After the “Keeper of the Threshold” has spoken of his first demands, a whirlwind rises from the very spot where he stands, extinguishing all the spiritual lights that have hitherto illuminated the path of life. And complete darkness spreads before the initiate. It is interrupted only by the radiance that the “Keeper of the Threshold” himself emits. And from the darkness, his further admonitions resound: “Do not cross my threshold until you are certain that you will illuminate the darkness within yourself; nor take a single step forward unless you are certain that you have enough fuel in your own lamp. The lamps of the guides you have had thus far will be lacking to you in the future.” After these words, the student must turn around and look back. The “Keeper of the Threshold” now draws back a curtain that has hitherto veiled the profound mysteries of life. The tribal, national, and racial spirits are revealed in their full power; and the disciple sees just as clearly how he has been guided up to this point as he realizes, on the other hand, that he will no longer have this guidance. This is a second warning that the human being experiences at the threshold through its Keeper.

[ 14 ] No one, however, could endure the sight described here without preparation; but the higher training that enables a person to advance as far as the threshold also puts him in a position to find the necessary strength at the appropriate moment. Indeed, this training can be so harmonious that any element of excitement or turmoil is removed from the entry into the new life. Then, for the initiate, the experience at the threshold will be accompanied by a foretaste of that bliss which will form the fundamental tone of his newly awakened life. The sensation of this new freedom will outweigh all other feelings; and with this sensation, the new duties and responsibilities will appear to him as something that a person must assume at a certain stage of life.