The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. What is Mysticism?

[ 1 ] There is complete confusion in the widest circles regarding the concept that sums up the discussion in today’s lecture. Not long ago, I heard someone with a certain scholarly background say: “Well, one can certainly count Goethe among the mystics, for Goethe did admit that there is something dark and unfathomable.” And it is fair to say that, in essence, this judgment is shared by many people. What is not called “mysticism” in this world—and, in particular, what is not called “mystical”! When one does not have a clear understanding of a certain matter, when one has a sense of it that hovers between ignorance and a rather vague, dark intuition, one says: this matter is mystical or mysterious; when one is tempted, out of a certain complacency in thought and spiritual inquiry, to conclude that one knows nothing definite about a certain matter, and then—as is natural for many people—to forbid everyone else from knowing anything about it as well, one says: “That is simply a mystical matter.” In short, what one allows oneself, at most, to have only an intuitive sense of is very often described as the subject of mysticism.

[ 2 ] However, if the term “mysticism” is considered even just in terms of its historical origins, one will have to arrive at a completely different understanding of what the great minds of humanity understood by mysticism, and what they believed, above all else, to have possessed in regard to mysticism. One will then be able to observe, in particular, that there are indeed human beings who do not regard the subject of mysticism as something unfathomable and obscure, but who define the subject of mysticism precisely as that which can be attained through a certain higher clarity, through a certain brighter light of our soul, and that the very clarity which the other sciences can provide ceases precisely where the clarity of mysticism begins. This is the conviction of those who believe they have truly possessed mysticism. Now we encounter mysticism in the most ancient times of human development. However, what was called mysticism—for example, within the mysteries mentioned here on several occasions, let us say the mysteries of the Egyptians, the mysteries of the Asian peoples and the Greeks—what was called mysticism there—is so far removed from today’s imagination and the entire way of thinking today that it is somewhat difficult to provide a definition of mysticism from the outset when referring to these ancient forms of human mystical experience. One comes closest to the contemporary conception by first pointing to those forms of mysticism that are, so to speak, still close to the present day—as they appear among the German mystics, beginning with Meister Eckhart—roughly in the 13th and 14th centuries—and then reaching a certain high point in the incomparable mystic Angelus Silesius. If we explore mysticism in this context, we will find that it seeks a genuine understanding of the deepest foundations of the world; indeed, the quest of these mystics—who are still best understood today—is a particular way of thinking. It is a search for the foundations of existence through a purely inner experience of the soul—a realization sought above all by the soul freeing itself from all impressions of the external world and external perceptions, by withdrawing, so to speak, from the life of the external world and attempting to descend into the deep recesses of the soul’s life. When such a mystic is able, as it were, to forget—for a long or short time—all that his senses convey to him, all that his intellect can tell him about what the senses convey, when he, so to speak, completely diverts his attention from the entire external world and lives entirely within his own soul, and then seeks what remains there and can still be experienced when the soul is entirely alone with itself: then such a mystic feels himself on the path to the knowledge he seeks, and he believes that through such an inner life—of what the soul creates within itself and is able to set in motion within itself—he can look not only at what one can think, feel, and will in ordinary life, but he believes that behind all that ordinary thinking, feeling, and willing, to perceive the source from which the soul has sprung: namely, the divine-spiritual foundation of all things. And because such a mystic sees in the soul the most precious form of existence, because he sees in the soul that which, in the truest sense of the word, may first be called a child of divine spirituality, he believes he has found a sure path when he looks through the ordinary life of the soul toward the source from which this soul sprang, and to which he believes it must also return. In other words: the mystic believes that by immersing himself in the inner life of the soul, he finds the divine foundation of the world, which he cannot find no matter how much he dissects the external phenomena of nature and seeks to comprehend them with his intellect. Such a mystic supposes that what presents itself to the external senses forms a veil through which human cognition cannot penetrate directly to the divine foundations; but that what is experienced within the soul constitutes a much thinner fabric, a much thinner veil, and that one can advance inwardly toward what is the divine foundation of the world, which must, after all, also underlie the external phenomena. This is the mysticism that, in the form of experience, first presents itself to us as the mystical path of Meister Eckhart, the path of Johannes Tauler, and the path of Suso; and then continues through the mysticism of this age, up to the aforementioned Angelus Silesius.

[ 3 ] One must, however, be clear that these spirits and personalities, in pursuing this path of spiritual inquiry, did not believe they would find only what could be regarded from the outset as the result of inner soul-searching. After all, in this winter’s lectures we have dealt with this inner soul-exploration in the most varied ways and from the most diverse perspectives; we have been able to point out that when one looks into what we are justified in calling the human inner life, one first encounters the darkest depths of the soul—where the soul is still subject to emotions such as terror, fear, anxiety, and hope—what we might call the spectrum of pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow. We have said that we summarize this part of the soul’s life in what is called the feeling soul. We have further explained how, within the dark depths of human soul life, a distinction must be made between what is called the intellectual or rational soul—which is reached when the “I,” the center of soul life, processes external impressions, allowing it to work in quiet devotion to balance what may arise in the feeling soul. We have said that what is called inner truth is realized in the intellectual soul. When the “I” then continues to work inwardly on what it has gained along this path to the intellectual soul, the “I” works its way upward to the conscious soul, where clear self-knowledge first becomes possible—where what leads from a mere inner life back up to knowledge, to true knowledge of the world, becomes possible. Thus, when we consider these three members of the soul life, we have, as it were, the fabric of what we find when we first immerse ourselves directly into our inner being. We see how the “I” works on these three members of the soul.

[ 4 ] Those who, as mystics, sought knowledge in the manner described—believed, however, that they would find something else by delving into the depths of the soul’s life. For them, what has just been mentioned was merely a kind of veil that one must pass through in order to reach the source of existence. And above all, those who have been mentioned believed that when they reached the source of the soul’s existence, they would experience inwardly what is depicted in external history as the events of Christ’s life and death.

[ 5 ] Now, however, the following is true when this mystical immersion takes place in the soul—even if only in the medieval sense: The path of such a mystic is this: he first faces the external world, with the most varied impressions on his sight, hearing, and other senses. He says to himself: I have before me the world of light, color, sound, and warmth, and everything that my senses convey to me; and I first process what my senses convey to me through my intellect. But in doing so, I am always bound to the external world; I cannot penetrate the dense fabric to reach the source from which that which presents itself to me as sounds, colors, and sensations originates. My soul, however, retains in its representations that which are images of this external world; above all, my soul also retains within itself that which it perceived and felt during those impressions. The impressions of the external world do not, after all, remain for our inner world what we might call cold, sober representations. For one kind of impression moves us in such a way that we are filled with pleasure, while another fills us with pain; one kind moves us with sympathy, and another with antipathy. Through our interests and our entire inner life, our “I,” so to speak, directs us toward the world, which makes impressions on us that sometimes uplift us and sometimes overwhelm us, so that when, as mystics, we first turn away from this external world, we retain the ideas and memories that give us inner images of the external world, but also what we have received in our sensations and feelings as the subjective impression of the external world. There we stand now, the mystic would say, with everything that the external world has imprinted upon us. Thus, we initially live with what the external world produces in the soul from morning till night, and with what arises in our soul as pleasure and suffering. Thus, inner life appears to us—at first—as a repetition and reflection of external life.

[ 6 ] Does our soul remain empty when it strives to forget everything that is reflected in it from the outside world, when it erases all impressions and ideas of the outside world? This is precisely the mystic’s experience: that there is another possibility for the soul—that when this soul, so to speak, forgets not only all memories but also everything it feels as sympathy and antipathy, it still has another possibility, that something still remains within it. Thus the mystic feels that the impressions of the external world—with their colorful images and their effects on the soul—are, at first, the living force that draws us into our inner life; that they have, to some extent, suppressed what lies in the secret depths of the soul. This is what the mystic feels. He tells himself: When we are absorbed in external life, this life in the external world acts like a strong, powerful light that outshines and extinguishes the finer, inner experiences of the soul, just as a strong light extinguishes a weaker one. And then, when we erase all the impressions of the external world, the inner spark—which is otherwise overshadowed, as Eckhart puts it—begins to shine; then we do not experience nothingness in our soul, but rather we experience something that previously seemed not to exist, something that had been imperceptible amid the loud clamor of the external world.

[ 7 ] But, the mystic asks himself as he seeks to gain clarity, can what we experience within ourselves be compared to what we experience in the external world? No, it cannot be compared to that. It differs radically from what we experience in the external world. After all, we approach all things in the external world in such a way that we cannot initially penetrate their inner nature; they truly present only their outer appearance to us. So that we can think: even if we perceive only colors and sounds, there is something behind them that must initially be regarded as the hidden essence of things; but with what we experience in the soul—when we set aside the impressions and ideas of the external world—the situation is such that we ourselves are immersed within it, that it is we ourselves, that we cannot say it shows us only its outer surface. For precisely what otherwise enables us to suspect a hidden inner life is absent from true inner experience. And if we now have the gift of surrendering ourselves to what shines forth within, then it reveals itself in its true essence in such a way that it, in turn, differs from everything we encounter in the external world. The latter presents itself to us as arising and passing away, as blossoming and withering, as being born and dying. But when we observe what reveals itself in the soul—when that tiny spark begins to shine—we realize in the very essence of the matter itself that all concepts of arising and passing away, birth and death, do not apply to it; that we are confronted with something independent, in the face of which all concepts of arising and passing away, of blooming and withering, of outside and inside—which we encounter in the external world—no longer make any sense. Thus, we do not grasp a surface, an outward aspect of the thing’s revelation in the soul, but rather we grasp the thing itself in its true essence; and it is precisely through this inner insight that we can come to obtain assurance of that which is imperishable within ourselves—that which within ourselves corresponds to the concept of the Spirit that we must form, in which all matter has its source. The mystic experiences this in such a way that he says: Thus I must put to death within myself, overcome within myself, all the experiences I otherwise have; the ordinary life of the soul must die within me, and death must spread; then the true soul rises, the victor over birth and death. And this awakening of the inner core of the soul following the death of ordinary soul life—the mystic experiences this as an inner resurrection, as a continuation of what is presented to him in the image handed down by history in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Thus the mystic sees the Christ event unfolding within himself, soul- and spirit-wise, as an inner mystical experience.

[ 8 ] Now, if we follow the mystics along this path, we must be clear that mysticism, pursued in this way, must lead everywhere to what one might call a certain unity in all experience. It is precisely in the nature of our inner life that we move from the diversity of sensory impulses, from the diversity of perceptions and feelings that ebb and flow, and from the diversity and abundance of thoughts toward simplification—for the simple reason that the “I” lives within the soul, the center of life, which is always working to create unity in our entire inner life. So we must say to ourselves: It is entirely understandable to us that, when the mystic treads the paths of soul experiences, these present themselves to him in such a way that all that is diverse and all that is manifold strives toward unity, which is simply given by the “I” living within us. Therefore, we find in all mystics a worldview that could be called spiritual monism—a striving for unity. And since the mystic rises to the realization that the inner being of the soul possesses qualities that are radically different from the qualities of the externally manifest world, he experiences, so to speak, even within himself the similarity between that which is the core of the soul and the divine-spiritual foundation of the world, which he therefore portrays as a unified whole.

[ 9 ] What has just been recounted should be taken merely as a story. It is impossible to convey the statements of a mystic in a modern sense other than, for example, from the perspective of a mystical experience—from the mystical experiences that one’s own soul undergoes as its most intimate experience. Then one can compare the unfamiliar things the mystic tells us with one’s own experiences. But external criticism is impossible, because one can only be told what is experienced if one has not experienced it oneself. Yet, if we proceed from the perspective that has always underlain our lectures, a clear path opens up to us—the path the mystic follows. The path to inner life presents itself to our soul; and this is, at first, even if we consider things merely from a historical perspective—as they have unfolded in human history—simply one of the paths. Even if one considers this or that path to be correct, it is one of the paths the human spirit has taken to explore reality, and one can only gain clarity regarding the actual answer to the question, “What is mysticism?” by shedding some light on the other path that can be taken. The mystic’s path leads to unity, to a divine-spiritual being. This has become clear to him through his turning inward, where the “I” is the unity of the soul’s experiences. The other path—along which, so to speak, the mystical exploration of existence or the grounds of existence must be illuminated—is the path that the human spirit has always sought to take: to penetrate the veil of the external world in search of the grounds of existence. Above all, alongside many other factors, it has been human intellectual endeavor that has sought—through what the senses can perceive and what everyday reason can grasp—to comprehend, in deeper thought, that which lies beneath the surface of things. Where, naturally, does such a path ultimately lead, in contrast to mysticism? If one takes into account all the factors involved, such a path can, in essence, lead to nothing other than inferring—from the multiplicity and diversity of external phenomena—a corresponding multiplicity of the spiritual foundations of existence. That is why, in more recent times, those who—like Leibniz or, later, Herbart—have embarked on this path through thought have found that it is not possible to explain the fullness of external phenomena on the basis of any single unity. They discovered, in short, what must be described as the true antithesis of all mysticism: they discovered monadology; they came to view the world—or, let us say, the realm of the world’s primordial grounds—as a multiplicity of monads, of spiritual entities.

[ 10 ] As Leibniz, the great thinker of the 17th and 18th centuries, puts it: When we look at what confronts us in space and time, we can no longer make sense of it if we believe that it originates from a single entity; rather, many entities must be interacting.

[ 11 ] And through the mutual interaction of the monads—which he conceives of mentally—and through the activity of a world of monads, that which presents itself to the eye, the ear, and the external senses comes into being. This cannot be elaborated upon today, but a deeper consideration of the development of the spirit would reveal that all those who sought unity on the path outward were, in essence, initially succumbing to an illusion, the illusion that they were projecting outward—like a projection or a kind of shadow image—that which is experienced only mystically within, namely unity, and believed that the unity they found through the path inward also underlies the external world and is accessible there through thought, Sound thinking, however, finds no way to attain unity in the external world through thought; rather, it finds that what confronts us there in colorful diversity must come about through the interaction and interplay of various entities that influence one another—through monads. Thus, mysticism leads to unity because the “I” within us functions as a unified whole; because it functions as the center of the soul. Thus, the path through the external world necessarily leads to multiplicity, to monadology—that is to say, to the insight that many spiritual beings must interact to bring about our worldview, because, as human observers of the world, when we look outward, we gain our knowledge of the external world through a multiplicity of organs and a multiplicity of individual observations.

[ 12 ] Here we come to a point that deserves to be stated, one of boundless importance and significance, but one that, so to speak, has been given far too little consideration in the history of spiritual life: Mysticism leads to unity; but the fact that it recognizes the divine essence as unity stems from the inner disposition of the soul, from the “I.” The “I” imprints its mark of unity when one beholds the divine Spirit as a mystic. Contemplating the external world leads to the multiplicity of monads. But it is only our perception and the way in which the external world presents itself to us that leads to multiplicity, and therefore Leibniz and Herbart perceive the foundations of the world as a multiplicity. What emerges from this fact through deeper inquiry is that unity and multiplicity are concepts that must not be applied at all where one actually supposes the divine-spiritual foundation of the world to lie; that unity and multiplicity are not at all intended to serve as characteristics of the divine-spiritual foundation of the world; that this divine-spiritual foundation of the world cannot be characterized—if it is to be characterized in its essence—by saying that it is unitary, or by saying that it is monadological, that is, multiplicitous. Rather, we must say that it is transcendent of what unity and multiplicity are at first glance; multiplicity and unity are concepts that do not extend at all to where the divine-spiritual is to be grasped.

[ 13 ] This, however, establishes a principle that can shed light on much of what is called a dispute in philosophy—the dispute between monism and monadology. They so often appear as opposites in philosophical systems. If those who argue and debate were aware that they are working with inadequate concepts in relation to the foundation of the world, only then would they shed the proper light on the subject of their discussion.

[ 14 ] We have now, so to speak, discovered what constitutes the essence of true mysticism. We can say: it is an inner experience, but one of such a nature that it is intended to lead the mystic to true knowledge. Although he may not say that it is truth when he describes the object of his experience as unity—because the form of unity arises solely from his own self—he may nevertheless say that, as one who is within it, he experiences spiritual substantiality within himself.

[ 15 ] When we now move from this general description and characterization of mysticism to the individual mystics, we very often find precisely what the opponents of all mysticism point to. We find that this inner experience takes on individual forms within each individual, within each personality; that is to say, the experiences—the inner spiritual experiences—of one mystic do not fully correspond to the spiritual experiences of another mystic. Now, if one thinks clearly, this fact need not be particularly surprising, for the fact that two people experience something differently does not at all imply that the thing they are speaking of is false. If one person looks at a tree from the right and another looks at the same tree from the left, and they describe it, it will be the same tree, but each will describe it differently, and yet each description can be true. From this simple illustration, one can also understand why the inner experiences of individual mystics differ: after all, the mystic does not approach his inner experience as, so to speak, a completely blank slate. Even if it is his ideal to suppress and eradicate external experiences and to withdraw his attention from them completely, the fact remains that these external experiences leave a trace in his soul, and it is not irrelevant whether someone who becomes a mystic has experienced this or that. It certainly does make a difference whether the mystic has grown out of this or that national character, or whether he has experienced this or that in life. Even if he now casts everything he has experienced out of his soul, what he experiences inwardly will nevertheless be shaped by what he has experienced before. He must also describe it using concepts, ideas, and words that he brings in from his life up to that point. It is entirely possible that different mystics experience the very same thing, even if they describe it using different elements drawn from their previous experiences. And only for those who are able, through their own inner experience, to look beyond the individual aspects of the description and representation, will it be possible to recognize that, no matter how differently the various mystics may express themselves, what they experience—the reality of the experience—is, at its core, the same; just as when one photographs a tree from different angles, these photographs look different, yet the same tree underlies them all.

[ 16 ] There is, however, another point that in a certain sense constitutes an objection to mystical experience; and since the aim here is not to present a description based on sympathy or antipathy, but rather an objective account, it must not be concealed that this objection is valid against all mysticism. Because mystical experience must be an intimate, inner experience of the soul, and because the mystic brings with him the residue derived from his individual experiences and encounters prior to becoming a mystic, it will generally be extremely difficult for what a mystic says—precisely because it is so closely bound to his own soul—to be correctly understood or fully grasped by another soul at all. The most intimate aspects will always have to remain intimate to some degree in all mysticism and will be extremely difficult to communicate; even when one shows the mystic the highest degree of understanding and openness, it will still be difficult. Why? This is because, although what different mystics experience during their mystical experiences is the same—provided both mystics have advanced far enough — and anyone who has the good will to convince themselves of this will already recognize that both mystics are pointing to the same thing — yet what one mystic and the other experienced prior to their mystical experience is different. Therefore—because the mystical experience is colored by the preceding experience— therefore, the expressions and the character of the description—which derive not from the mystical experience itself but from the mystic’s pre-mystical life—will always remain somewhat incomprehensible to us unless we also make an effort to understand the mystic in a way that takes his pre-mystical experiences into account; that is, unless we gain an insight into why he describes his mystical experiences in precisely this way. This, however, diverts our attention from what is universally valid to a personal interest in the mystic. This is a fact that we can also observe, to a certain extent, in the history of the development of mysticism. We can say that, particularly in the case of the most intimate mystics, we must refrain from assuming that what they present as their insight, so to speak, can be transferred as it is to another person and accepted by that person. It is difficult to generalize; mystical insight, so to speak, cannot easily become a general understanding of the world.

[ 17 ] But this can make our interest in the individuality and personality of the mystic all the stronger, and we may find it infinitely fascinating to contemplate the mystical personality insofar as the general worldview is reflected in it. Thus, in a sense, what the mystic represents—and what is valued by him only because it leads him to the depths and sources of existence—will be of lesser interest to us in terms of the objective, in terms of what it tells us about the world; and it will be of particular interest to us in relation to the individual human being, in relation to the subjective, that is, to the mystical individuality. For those, then, who view the mystic through the lens of his mysticism, what is actually valuable is precisely what the mystic himself seeks to transcend: the personal, the immediate, the way he faces the world. In this way, we can indeed learn an infinite amount about the depth of human nature when we, so to speak, survey the history of humanity, moving from mystic to mystic; but we will find it difficult—and this can never be emphasized enough—to say: this or that mystic provides us with this or that which, for us, as he puts it, can have immediate validity.

[ 18 ] Objectively speaking, mysticism may indeed be contrasted with monadology, which aims to contemplate through thought the external world common to all human beings. Consequently, one has the feeling regarding these monadological systems that, although error upon error may occur within them, one can still discuss them and form an opinion about them based on one’s own subjective stage of development. In this sense, an error on the part of the monadologist would be conceivable, at least, only in light of his or her stage of development.

[ 19 ] Thus, the mysticism described here at the outset may be infinitely appealing, but we will nevertheless view its limitations quite objectively when we allow what has just been said about its characteristics to take effect on the soul.

[ 20 ] The essence of mysticism is seen in a different light when we measure it against what we derive, so to speak, from the deeper spiritual life of our present age as the true spiritual-scientific method for penetrating to the very foundations of existence. After all, one generally understands a subject—one that presents certain difficulties due to the subtlety of its concepts—properly only when one can measure it against something else that is related to it.

[ 21 ] It has often been said here in the lectures that there is an ascent to the higher worlds. In a certain sense, we have a threefold path here. We have pointed to the path outward and then to the path inward—a path not taken by the mystics of the ancient mysteries, but certainly by the medieval mystics—and in doing so, we have been able to clarify where the limits of the latter lie. We will now turn our attention away from these two paths to what can be described here as the true spiritual-scientific or spiritual-research path.

[ 22 ] It has already been said that this insight of the spiritual sciences consists not simply in a person setting out on a path—either outward toward the foundations of what reveals itself to the senses, that is, toward the monads; or inward toward what manifests itself as the foundations of one’s own soul life, toward the mystical unity of the world; but rather, it has been emphasized that the spiritual scientific method consists in stating that a person can not only follow paths made possible by their immediately available knowledge, but also possesses hidden, dormant powers of knowledge within themselves; and, starting from these, they then find paths other than the two mentioned. What does the person who follows one of the two paths described do? They say: Well, I remain as a human being just as I am; this is how I have become. I can go out and try to penetrate the veil of the sensory world and advance to the depths of existence; I can erase external experiences and then allow the tiny spark to rise up—the spark that is merely drowned out and overshadowed by the external world, and which otherwise eludes attention. But what underlies spiritual scientific knowledge is this: that human beings do not wish to remain, with their powers of cognition, as they are, but rather say: Just as I have developed into what I am today, so too can I—if I only apply the appropriate method—first develop myself within my soul and cultivate higher powers of cognition than I already possess. If one were to compare what has just been said with the mystical approach to knowledge, one would have to say: Certainly, if one eradicates the outer life of the soul, one can come to find that inner spark and observe how it then shines and comes to life once the other has been eradicated; but one is still only observing what is already there. Spiritual scientific research, however, would say to the mystic: No, we do not merely do that; we do indeed reach the spark, but we do not stop there; rather, we seek to develop the methods that can unfold this spark into a much stronger light. We take the path both outward and inward; we develop new powers of cognition, and thus do not immediately take the path outward or inward. In contrast to medieval mysticism, as well as to monadology and the ancient mystery teachings, modern spiritual scientific research is characterized by the fact that it develops the inner powers of cognition in such a way that the two paths—the path outward and the path inward toward the mystic’s spark—are united, so that a single path is taken on which one reaches both goals in the same way. Why is that?

[ 23 ] This comes about because the development of the higher powers of cognition, through a method of modern spiritual science, leads the human being through three stages of cognition. The first stage of cognition, which goes beyond ordinary cognition, is called imaginative cognition. The second stage is inspired cognition, and the third stage is what is called, in the true sense, intuitive cognition. How, then, does the first stage of cognition come about? — What does one do within the soul to develop higher cognitive powers? From the way it comes about, you can see how monadology and mysticism are transcended through this path of cognition in modern spiritual scientific research. The example that provides a particularly easy introduction to understanding imaginative cognition has already been mentioned here several times. It is precisely an example drawn from the methods that the spiritual scientist applies to himself; it is one example among many that is best illustrated by framing what takes place between teacher and student as a dialogue.

[ 24 ] A teacher who wished to cultivate in a student those higher powers of cognition that lead to imagination would say to the student: Look at the plant; it grows out of the ground and unfolds leaf after leaf until it blooms. Compare this plant to a human being standing before you. This human being has an advantage over the plant; he has the advantage that the world is reflected within him in his ideas, feelings, and sensations; he has what is called human consciousness. But he has had to pay a price for this human consciousness; namely, on his path to becoming human, he had to take on passions, instincts, and desires that can lead him into error, injustice, and evil. The plant grows, so to speak, according to its innate laws; it unfolds its nature in accordance with these innate laws, and it stands before us in its green, succulent freshness, chaste, without our being able—unless we are fantasists—to attribute to it passions, instincts, and desires that might lead it astray from the right path. But let us now consider what is the outward expression of the human life of consciousness, of the human “I”—when we observe the blood as it circulates through the human being just as the green chlorophyll sap does through the plant, then we must say: Blood pulses through and circulates within the human being, serving as an expression both of his ascent to higher levels of consciousness and of his passions and desires, which pull him down. And now the teacher of spiritual science might say to his student: Imagine that the human being continues to develop, that through his “I” he becomes master over error, evil, and ugliness—over everything that seeks to drag him down into evil—and that he purifies and refines his emotions and passions. Imagine a real ideal toward which a human being strives, and where his blood will no longer be the expression of any passions, but rather of that which within him himself reigns supreme over everything that can drag him down; then his red blood can be compared to what has become of the green plant sap even in the red rose. Just as the red rose presents the sap to us in chaste purity, revealing to us on a more perfect level what the plant represents on a less perfect one, so too would the red blood of the purified and cleansed human being represent to us what it is when the human being has become master over everything that drags him down.

[ 25 ] The spiritual teacher can awaken these feelings and ideas in the mind and soul of the spiritual student. If the spiritual student is not a dry, sober student—not a block of wood—if he can perceive and feel the entire mystery that is figuratively presented to us in such a comparison, then it will have an effect on his soul; then what appears before his soul as a symbol of the experience in spiritual contemplation will be a real experience for him. This symbol can be the Rose Cross: the black cross, which is meant to express what has been put to death in the lower nature of the human being; and the roses, like the red blood that has been purified and refined upward to a chaste expression of his higher soul within himself. The black cross, entwined with red roses, thus becomes a symbolic synthesis of what the soul experiences in that dialogue between the spiritual student and the teacher. When the spiritual student has earned such a symbol with the blood of his soul—by allowing all the ideas, feelings, and sensations to act upon his soul that inwardly entitle him to synthesize something in the Rose Cross—when he does not merely believe: “I am simply picturing a Rose Cross before me,” but if he possesses within it the essence of a higher inner mood attained entirely through a bleeding soul, then he will see that such an image—and other similar images—stirs something within his soul. This is something that is no longer merely a spiritual spark, but a new power of insight that enables him to view the world in a new way. He has not remained stuck at the level he was at in his previous life, but has developed his soul upward. And if he does this again and again, he will finally arrive at imaginative insight, which shows him that there is something else out there in the world. Thus, a new kind of insight develops in contrast to the understanding he already possesses if he were to remain at the level he was at previously.

[ 26 ] And now let us consider how this path came to be. Did the person say: “I will walk this path outward and search for the foundations of things”? — That is only part of what they said. They say to themselves: “I am now going out into the external world, and I am not seeking the underlying nature of things; I am not searching for molecules and atoms; I do not even take what the external world offers me—but I retain within myself something of what this external world offers me.” The black cross is not something that would arise in the soul if one did not have the wood outside; the red rose is something the soul could never construct if it did not have an external impression of the red rose. Thus, what constitutes the content of the soul is indeed drawn from the external world.

[ 27 ] We cannot say, like the mystic, that we have eliminated all external influences, that we have completely diverted our attention from the outside world; we can say that we have taken in from the external world what it can give us—we have not closed the gate to the external world, but have surrendered ourselves to it—yet we have not taken it as it gives it to us; for nowhere in reality is there a Rose Cross. That from which we have formed the Rose Cross as a symbol exists in the external world; the Rose Cross itself is not in the external world. What, then, is the reason that we have combined these two—the rose and the wood—into a single symbol? This reason lies in the work we do on our own soul. We take what we can experience within our own soul when we surrender the soul to the external world, and what we can experience in the external world when we do not merely gaze at it as it is, but when we immerse ourselves in the external world—in this way we experience mystically and inwardly what arises for us from the comparison of the plant with the developing human being. We have refrained from taking in this soul experience directly, as a mystic would, but have instead offered up these soul experiences to what the external world has to offer, and with the help of what the soul can give inwardly, we have formed a symbol for ourselves. In this symbol, mystical inner life and outer life have merged. We must never say that the Rose Cross is a truth in relation to the sensory world, nor in relation to the inner world; for no one could construct a Rose Cross in the inner world if they did not receive impressions from the external world. In this symbol, what the soul can experience and perceive from within itself has merged with what it can receive from without. This symbol now stands before us once again in such a way that it does not lead directly into the outer world or directly into the inner world, but rather acts as a force. When we place it before our soul in meditation, this force brings forth a new spiritual eye, and we now look into the spiritual world that we could not previously find either within or without; and we first gain a sense that what underlies the external world—and what we can now experience through imaginative insight—is the same, identical to what we also possess within.

[ 28 ] If we are now to advance toward inspired insight, then we must shed something from our image. We must do something that is directly analogous to the entire process of the mystic who turns inward. There we must forget the rose and the cross. It is a difficult procedure, but it can be carried out. We must remove the entire symbol—in terms of its content—from our imagination. But what will be difficult to achieve must be achieved.

[ 29 ] It was a spiritual activity that was necessary to present the comparison given above as a symbol before the soul. We must observe the soul itself—what it did to present the black cross as the human being to be overcome before the soul; we must visualize its inner experiences in the formation of symbols. Thus, when a person immerses themselves mystically in their soul experiences, they arrive at inspired insight. And then, through a new capacity—the capacity for inspiration—they experience not only the spark within, but also its unfolding into a powerfully blazing force of insight, through which they experience something that reveals itself as completely related to, yet entirely independent of, their inner self. For they have not observed their activity merely as an inner one, but as one they have exercised in relation to the external world. Thus, even here in this mystical remnant, there is present that which is merely a knowledge of the inner self and yet a knowledge of what is connected to the external world.

[ 30 ] Now comes a task that is the opposite of the mystic’s work. Here we must do something similar to ordinary scientific research; we must go out into the external world. The latter is the difficult part, but it is necessary if intuitive knowledge is to be attained. Here, a person must turn their attention away from their own activity; they must forget what they have done to bring about the Rose Cross. But if they have patience, if they perform their exercises correctly and for long enough, he will see that something remains with him of which he knows with absolute certainty that it is entirely independent of his own inner experience, is not subjectively colored, but leads him upward to something that is independent of his subjective personality—yet which, through his objective being, reveals itself to be equal to that which is the center of the human being, the human “I.” In order to attain intuitive knowledge, we step outside of ourselves and yet arrive at something that is identical to our own inner being. Thus we ascend from what we experience within to the spiritual realm, which we now experience not within but in the external world.

[ 31 ] In the first stage—imaginative insight—a person engages in an activity that is both mysticism and monadology, which elevates them above both mysticism and monadology. In inspired insight, they take a step on a higher level—the same step that the mystic, who remains as a human being just as they are, takes on a lower level. In intuitive knowledge, the student of the spirit takes a step that leads him out into the external world on the proper level—not immediately as he is.

[ 32 ] And now we can answer the question: What is mysticism? — It is an endeavor of the human soul to find the divine-spiritual source of existence through deepening into one’s own inner being. Fundamentally, spiritual scientific knowledge must also follow this mystical path. However, it is clear that it must not embark on this path too soon, but must first make the necessary preparations to be able to undertake it within the soul. Thus we can say: Mysticism is an undertaking that springs from a legitimate impulse and urge of the human soul—something that is, formally speaking, entirely correct; which is undertaken too early by the human soul only if that human soul has not first attempted to make progress in imaginative knowledge. If one wishes to deepen ordinary human life through mysticism, there is a danger that one has not freed oneself deeply enough from oneself and become sufficiently independent to provide anything other than an individually colored image of the world. But once one has ascended to imaginative cognition, one has poured out one’s inner self into something drawn from the external world; there, one has earned the right to be a mystic as well. All mysticism should therefore be undertaken at the appropriate stage of human development. The dangers of mysticism become apparent when a person attempts too early to do what underlies mystical insight.

[ 33 ] Thus we may say: In what constitutes legitimate mysticism, we find a stage in spiritual science that enables us to learn to understand precisely what the true goal and intention of spiritual scientific research is. There is hardly anything through which one can learn as much about the goal and intentions of spiritual research as through the devoted contemplation of the mystics. One can work one’s way up through the mystics to the insights of spiritual research. One must simply not believe that the true spiritual researcher, when he recognizes something as worthy of being called mysticism, thereby denies all further development. It is precisely in this way that mysticism appears to the spiritual researcher as something legitimate; however, one must ascend to a certain degree of development if its methods are to lead not to subjective results, but to those that can now be regarded as true knowledge of the spiritual world. Thus, one can ultimately say that the question, “What is mysticism?”—can be answered by stating that mysticism is an endeavor of the human soul that is often undertaken too early in the soul’s development. There is, then, little need to elaborate on the dangers that premature mystical immersion can cause in a person. Premature mystical immersion is a journey into the depths of the human soul before a person has made the necessary preparations for their inner world to grow together with the outer world. In doing so, they often unjustifiably cut themselves off from the outer world. But this can, in essence, be nothing more than a sophisticated and refined form of egoism. This is also the case with many mystics when they turn their attention away from the external world and indulge in inner raptures and bliss, exaltations and liberations that they experience in their inner life—in that golden mood that can pour over the soul when it truly revels in its inner world. This egoism, however, can be overcome when the “I” is compelled first to step outside itself and allow its activity in the formation of symbols to flow into the external world. Thus, a symbolism of imaginative insight will lead to a truth that sheds its egoistic character. The danger that ultimately threatens the mystic—and which can arise when a quest for mystical knowledge is undertaken at a stage of insufficient development—is that a person may become an eccentric or a refined egoist on a higher level. Mysticism is justified, and true is what Angelus Silesius said:

[ 34 ] When you rise above yourself and let God reign, Then the Ascension takes place within your spirit. — It is true that, through the development of the soul, human beings reach not only their inner selves but also the spiritual realms that underlie the outer world. However, one must take this rising above oneself with the utmost seriousness, and one must not confuse this going beyond oneself with mere brooding over the self, as is already the case within human beings. We must take the first part of the sentence—“When you rise above yourself”—with the utmost seriousness, and we must also take the second part of the sentence—“and God takes charge”—with the utmost seriousness. But we do not allow God to reign when we withdraw from any aspect of divine revelation; rather, we do so when we unite the inner and the outer as two aspects of divine-spiritual revelation. We do not truly allow God to reign when we merely withdraw from the external world; rather, we allow Him to reign when we are able to sacrifice our inner self to what may flow toward us as a revelation from the external world. If we cultivate this attitude with regard to our spiritual-scientific knowledge, then we also take the second line of Angelus Silesius in the right way: We allow the spiritual-divine foundation of the outer and inner worlds to reign within us; and only then can we hope that the third part will also be fulfilled for us—that we will be lifted up through an ascension, that is, to reach a spiritual realm that is colored neither by our inner world nor by the outer world, but is of the same essence as all that the infinite world of stars radiates luminously toward us from without, as the atmosphere that surrounds our Earth, as the greenery of plants, as the beings that inhabit the rivers and fill the seas; but which at the same time lives as the Divine-Spiritual when we think and reflect, feel and will regarding the world—that which is Divine-Spiritual both externally and internally. Thus, we see in particular from such an example that it is not enough for us to simply accept a statement like that of Angelus Silesius, but that we must take this statement into ourselves at the proper level, where it is understood by us solely and entirely in a comprehensive and true way. Then we will see that mysticism, because it contains the true essence, truly leads us to the point where we are ready to gradually perceive the spiritual realms, and that mysticism, in the highest and truest sense, can realize within us what can be sought and discovered in this beautiful sentence by Angelus Silesius:

[ 35 ] When you rise above yourself and truly allow the divine-spiritual foundation of the world to reign within you, then the ascent to the divine-spiritual sources of existence takes place within you.