The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. The Mysticism of Philo of Alexandria

[Ladies and gentlemen!]

[ 1 ] Last time, we saw how the fundamental teachings of Platonism were expressed particularly in the Phaedo and the Symposium, and how three preconditions were essentially necessary for the emergence of Christianity.

[ 2 ] The first prerequisite was the worldview that had been alive in the ancient mystery cults; the second was the initiation process, to which anyone who wished to become a myste had to submit; and the third was that a transformation had to take place.

[ 3 ] We have also attempted to clarify how this transformation took place, and we have seen how it subsequently became intertwined with a historical fact from which Christianity was then able to emerge. We have seen how Christianity had to place particular emphasis on substantiating its teachings through visible evidence as an actual process, and we have pointed out that in Philo of Alexandria we have a figure who was able to significantly deepen what had previously existed in Platonic mysticism.

[ 4 ] This is a fact that we must understand from the development of European mysticism itself. This becomes most vivid to us when we trace it in the work of the philosopher who lived around the time of Christ’s birth—namely, Philo. But it is precisely Philo’s mysticism that I must outline in broad strokes. I must trace its lifeblood in order to then be able to show how this very doctrine, which found expression in Alexandria, lived on in a wide variety of forms—on the one hand in North Africa, but also in Palestine, particularly within the Essene sect, from which Jesus of Nazareth emerged.

[ 5 ] For us Westerners, the best way to understand what Jesus taught is to take a detour through Philo’s worldview and his mysticism. What Jesus [learned] within the Essene community is something that emerged [also] from Philo’s mysticism, which drew, on the one hand, from the Egyptian-mystical worldview and, on the other hand, from the views of the Greeks, blended with the Jewish perspective. I will provide historical evidence for this later.

[ 6 ] Within Judaism, there were two strictly distinct schools of thought. These can be compared to the two schools of thought in Christianity: scholasticism and mysticism. If we consider these two schools of thought as they developed within the [thirteenth] century, we will notice that the same is true in Judaism. A rational philosophy emerged there, based on the interpretation of the written word as it is understood in Orthodoxy, and then another tradition—one that was, however, kept strictly secret—Jewish mysticism. This was kept so strictly secret that there are sayings that go something like this: “Whoever shares even a little of this with two people commits a great wrong.”—It was regarded as downright dangerous to reveal this secret teaching to the masses.

[ 7 ] When I refer to Philo’s mysticism, I am tempted to say that Philo, as a mystic and theosophist, made one of the greatest decisions—a decision that we hardly ever encounter again in history with the same significance. To characterize this, I would like to cite a few points that I have already discussed on other occasions.

[ 8 ] We know that philosophers have appeared in the past who claimed that everything divine is born from within human beings. We find this Feuerbachian view expressed as early as the fifth century B.C. by Greek philosophers. They expressed it in order to argue against the divine idea. Then, in the nineteenth century, Feuerbach articulated it in the following sense: If man creates the divine idea in his own mind, then it is a human creation. This negates its objective significance, and its only value is that it is to be overcome by man.

[ 9 ] This view is based solely on a misunderstanding of our cognitive process. There is no concept that has [not] arisen in the same way as the divine teachings. If we take a simple idea, it is a simple projection from the inner world into the outer world; it is the same way in which the highest idea that a human being can form—the idea of God—has arisen.

[ 10 ] To illustrate this, we can consider the collision of two balls. One ball flies this way, the other that way. It is said that the two balls flew farther as a result of the force of the collision. What we add is that no experience comes from the outside. When we say, “The ball collides—,” this is already something we can derive only from within ourselves. We have taken a certain force from within ourselves and projected it onto the outside world. So if we were to follow the logic of those who say that the concept of God has no justification, we would have to eliminate our entire inner life. We would know absolutely nothing about the external world. Conversely, however, those who adopt the mystical standpoint say: “Yes, it is precisely what we experience within that is the most real of all, and what the external world has to tell us, it reveals to us only indirectly through our inner being.” Therefore, it is merely a continuation of ordinary thinking to say that even the highest ideas, the highest concepts through which we explain the world to ourselves, are experienced only within us. Through these elements experienced spiritually within us, we can explain the world.

[ 11 ] Plato regarded the world he could experience within himself as the foundation of the entire universe. Now comes the great next step that still had to be taken here—the bold step that goes beyond Plato. Plato made the world of ideas—the world that reveals itself to the human spirit—the [primordial foundation], the primordial essence of the world.

[ 12 ] But when we let our world of ideas pass before our eyes—even in this vision of eternity in which Plato presents it to us—we find a necessary connection: one idea is linked to another, and one builds upon the other. There is a necessary harmony in this world of ideas.

[ 13 ] Is that the highest thing a person can experience within themselves? That is roughly the question Philo asked himself. Is experiencing the necessary the highest thing? No, one can go beyond the necessary; one can experience the will within oneself as a free, creative will.

[ 14 ] I cannot get involved here in the debates over the freedom or lack of freedom of the will; I can only emphasize that, in the case of Philo, we are dealing with the free unfolding of the will as part of his mysticism. He said: “I can make my own decisions, thereby intervening in the course of the world and bringing about something that can be brought about only by me.” This awareness is purely individual, but once it has become deeply rooted in the personality, it transcends the world of ideas to the extent that it can create ideas within the human being only through the path of freedom.

[ 15 ] If human beings are to introduce the idea from the world of the Eternal into the material world, then they must have the ability—the capacity—to carry these ideas into the temporal realm; they must therefore be able to intervene creatively in the fabric of the world. To conceive of this most personal, most individual aspect as divine in and of itself—to regard not only the world of ideas, not only the spirit as such, but the most immediate inner experience as divine—that is the step that Philo took beyond Plato.

[ 16 ] Philo delved even deeper into his inner self and yet retained the belief that this innermost core was the primordial being, the primordial reality. Plato could find reality only in his Ideas. Where man himself forms the living link between the eternal and the temporal, Philo, digging even deeper, sought the divine no longer in the ideal but in life. This is one of the most significant philosophical conclusions that could still be drawn after Plato.

[ 17 ] Almost everyone can easily sense that, within our world of ideas, we are given something that extends beyond that world. We could not realize that we are individuals if a ray did not penetrate within us, if we could not perceive through our spirit that we belong to the universe. It is this spirit that shines within. What a person perceives as most individual—that which they can say belongs only to them—is the act of volition.

[ 18 ] It is most reasonable to say that this has nothing to do with the Great Universal Spirit. Philo’s greatest achievement is recognizing that the primordial essence of the world is still present there as well, and that it enters precisely into the most individual of all things. That is why Philo says: We must not merely penetrate to the Ideas, not merely to the Spirit; if we wish to feel the divine within us, we must descend even deeper. We must penetrate into the most immediate life. - It was there that Philo, having emerged from the purely spiritual realm—which Greek mysticism had most recently explored—and from the Platonic world of ideas, re-entered immediate life. Not only the person who knows, who thinks, who seeks the path through contemplation, but also the deeper seeker immerses themselves in the universe.

[ 19 ] This is a completely different, much more vibrant interpretation of what Plato had merely intuited and conceived. It was a deeper descent into the material world. Whereas Plato had called on people to step out of the material world in order to turn their gaze toward eternity, Philo attempted once again to plunge back [into the material world]—not merely into the spiritual world, but into the one that is full of life.

[ 20 ] And that is also the meaning of mysticism: not to recognize the spiritual, but to live in the spiritual; to set oneself a task within the spiritual; to be aware that God, in infinite love, has lost Himself in the material world and must be reborn, but can only be reborn if human beings transform the world process from a material one into a spiritual one, so that human beings actually immerse themselves in the material world while simultaneously undertaking the mission of sinking the Primordial Logos into the material world and thereby developing it back up into the spiritual world.

[ 21 ] This is how Philo conceives of Plato in terms of the understanding of life. He can no longer say: “Immerse yourselves in the world of ideas, and you will find life.” - He says: Look even below the world of Ideas; seek what lies even deeper in human consciousness. If you are able to spiritualize what lies even deeper to such an extent that you can recognize it as life, then you will attain the Divine.

[ 22 ] What was still possible for Plato—I would say, expressing the divine in the Ideas—becomes impossible for Philo. One can now only immerse oneself in the sea of life. The Platonic world of Ideas becomes merely a reflection, a shadow of that which lives behind the world of Ideas as the Primordial Eternal. We have thus placed behind the world of Ideas something that human beings cannot grasp, something they can only intuitively perceive, so that [Philo] creates for himself a perspective on life that lies beyond the world of Ideas.

[ 23 ] For Philo, therefore, the divine cannot be expressed in words. When he says that any thing exists, the concept of being is derived from sensory objects and from things he can perceive intellectually. Human beings can perceive both sensually and intellectually. He has no direct insight into what lies deeper. Only the perspective opens up toward one side of infinity. Man can never reach the end in this direction, nor can he ever grasp it on the other side—the side of the material.

[ 24 ] For Philo, just as for Plato, what a person experiences and what they create is an interpenetration of the spiritual and the material. In everything that is given to us, spirit and matter exist simultaneously. It is a mutual interplay, a mutual interpenetration of spirit and matter. The atom is matter that has taken form and is arranged according to laws. This lawful arrangement is an influence of the spiritual upon the world. What is arranged originates from matter. What we perceive as the soul is just as much an interpenetration of spirit and matter as the atom.

[ 25 ] Wherever we perceive, we are dealing with a segment of the world that embodies both spirit and matter in all its parts. We ourselves are such a link. On the one hand, we have a perspective that must always be directed toward the eternal; [on the other, toward the temporal]; on the one hand, toward the unified; on the other, toward the material, toward the manifold. This is the fundamental thrust of what drove Philo to his view.

[ 26 ] We can approach what Philo intended from yet another angle. If we imagine—to use another metaphor I have employed many times before—a being that can only feel, that has no eyes, no ears, only tactile organs, then the entire world would present itself to it as tactile qualities, as qualities that the sense of touch can convey to us. If hearing were added to this, the world would be a world filled with sounds. And depending on whether a person adheres to one worldview or another, the world will appear differently to them. They might say: “I did not hear the sounds because I had no ears.”—Or: “The structure of my auditory organ adds sounds to the world, and the eyes add all the colors as well.”

[ 27 ] And now imagine this as a continuous process of developing new organs. There is much to be said about this. Consider how simple living beings are endowed only with tactile organs. If we were to speak in the spirit of Schopenhauer and depict the world solely as a realm of tactile impressions—as it appears to a simply developed being—then we would have to write: “The World as Tactile Sensation.” A more highly developed being would then have a different worldview. Every being thus has a higher or lower level of development. Human beings, however, in whom the powers that humanity has yet to attain were already present, would perceive what the actual primordial being is. But as human beings are today, they must leave it entirely undefined. They can regard what they perceive only as a reflection and strive to come ever closer and closer to the primordial being. Anyone who thinks in a subjectively materialistic way and believes that human beings find nothing real when they open up their senses will not think as Philo does. Philo says: When I hear sounds, I do not create those sounds myself, but rather I am enabled to recognize this kind of worldly phenomenon. — It was all there. He will never say: Because my ear is there, therefore a sound is there. Everything that can be perceived through human organs is always there; it is what is truly eternal. It was there before anything else existed, even before time existed.

[ 28 ] One must first understand this in order to see why Philo left the ending completely open-ended. Human beings must have developed all their faculties from within themselves; only then could their perception coincide with what the Primordial Being truly is. In this way, they can only grasp the perspective of the Primordial Reality, which is impenetrable simply because human beings are finite beings.

[ 29 ] It is not that this primordial being does not share the same essence as human beings. It is, to quote Goethe, an “obvious mystery.” It is present always and everywhere, and human beings can perceive and recognize it more and more. Yet for Philo, it is merely an assertion that he makes as a finite human being, and of which he is fully aware that it has meaning only for finite human beings; that—seen through the eyes of God—it would be a falsehood, that it would not be an exhaustive truth. This is Philo’s assertion: that the divine in the world does not reveal itself fully. It is only for human beings that it does not reveal itself fully. But human beings are on the path toward its full revelation. Thus, Philo speaks of a Primordial Reason. — We must use the word, but we must also be clear that the word does not exhaust what is at stake. -Thus, he uses the word for the Primordial Logos, yet at the same time he is aware that this is only an image, a shadow of the Primordial Logos, and that humanity has no choice but to embark on that path through which the divine essence is increasingly redeemed from the material world.

[ 30 ] The process that a person undergoes in this way involves immersing oneself in the material world in order to redeem God from matter with its help. One is fully aware that whoever recognizes this will set out on the path of truth. He regards it as the task of the philosophy of life to guide human beings, as living beings, onto this path, so that, as philosophers and mystics, they may arrive at the destination to which Egyptian mysticism sought to lead its disciples—where human beings carry out the divine work in the world. This is the fundamental idea, the fundamental sentiment, that led Philo to his views.

[ 31 ] Now I would like to show how Philo, precisely because he was part of Judaism at that time, could have been led to such a view, and I would also like to show how the Symbolum—which appeared to such great minds as Philo to be the endpoint pushed into infinite vastness—was transformed at the endpoint of Philo’s philosophy into the Symbol on Golgotha. One must be clear that the [Christian] symbol that rose on Calvary is a transformation of the very symbol that reflects the source from which Philo drew—the symbol through which Jewish mysticism at the turn of the years into the Christian era perceived the primordial source, which appeared as both God and man.

[ 32 ] Jewish mysticism—like all mysticism—was imbued with the belief that when a person looks within, they find the source of the world within themselves. But it was equally convinced that what a person finds within themselves is, at the same time, the true origin, the core of the world. And so, in the deepest part of their humanity, a person also finds the deepest part of the divine. Jewish mysticism expresses this deepest aspect of humanity through the symbol: the Father on the right, the Mother on the left, the Child in the center. This symbol of the immaculate Father, the immaculate Mother, and the Child, who was created in a purely spiritual manner—this image, which simultaneously expresses the two aspects of nature, the eternal development, the ceaseless transformation of the various forms of the world, and in the child that which has emerged from both the spiritual and the material—it was this image that ultimately appeared as the symbol, as that which human beings could have comprehended only if they had seen completely behind the scenes. As it was, however, they could conceive of this primordial mystery only through the image of the father and the mother with the child.

[ 33 ] This primordial symbol of Jewish mysticism is nothing other than the very beginning of the Bible itself. The Jewish mystic saw in human beings the primordial source of all that is divine and, at the same time, of the deepest aspects of humanity. He saw this because it was there that becoming and development truly split apart or diverged most intensely, and their parts were united only through an act of will. Thus, the symbol—which, as a symbol of deepening, leads through the free act of will into the very primordial essence of the world—is represented by the Father and the Mother, by “man and woman,” and by the Third, which has emerged from both and which, in its ongoing development, contains both.

[ 34 ] We interpret this symbol—which those who embark on the path of knowledge would find more and more often—as one of the ways for humans to attain [higher] consciousness. One of the ways to attain [higher] consciousness is expressed through this symbol.

[ 35 ] Let us imagine that, as it were, human beings turn their gaze away from the original, primordial meaning of this symbol, that they are content, at first, to find the masculine and the feminine in this image incomprehensible, and direct their gaze toward the child—that is, toward that intermediate stage in development which we describe as spiritual-material and spiritual-sensual— let us imagine that human beings sought to comprehend the world from this intermediate stage, from the child, because they may have become aware that the other is unattainable, that it lies at the end, and that they therefore direct their gaze toward the center, so that what lies to the left and right appears as shadows; then you have placed the human as the unattainable divine.

[ 36 ] They have viewed human beings as living beings within the course of world development, and within these human beings, what appears as male and female is merely their inner forces—as it were, merely the consciousness, the realization within them that they can, on their path, reach that goal at the end of which lie the two elements of the feminine and the masculine.

[ 37 ] Human beings have two kinds of consciousness. One is their [own], which safely guides them along the path; the other is that they have a guide who leads them forward—that something definite and indefinite exists within them at the same time—that there is something within them which they can pursue on their own, and something that lives within them by grace, which propels them forward and leads them step by step along the path of development.

[ 38 ] The second divine power, the Guide, approaches him and says: “Let go of the divine; turn your gaze away from the divine, so that you may recognize that which lives within you.” And what lives within you? The path between good and evil lives within you. You will recognize good and evil. - Thus, the child’s path through life begins when the Guide approaches the child and says: Develop your own abilities; then your own abilities will lead you to that end which you can intuit in an infinite perspective. But you must be clear that you possess this Divine only within yourself as [your own] power.

[ 39 ] Now the child—I would say, the divine-human—comes into the proper perspective, and the other aspect steps aside as a secondary matter, as mere human power standing beside the human being as good and evil, as that which he recognizes on his life’s journey. And there you have the transformation of the Jewish symbol of the world. This transformation is the true Christian symbol on the Kreuzberg. The Savior in the center, with the Father and Mother to the left and right. In the thieves, we see a reflection of what we have in the original symbol as the mother and father principles, as the material and spiritual principles. Thus, in the mirror of the symbol, the mysticism of that time—Jewish mysticism—is transformed into Christian mysticism. Our gaze is directed toward that side of the symbol—not toward the end, since it cannot be reached, but toward the Son—which constitutes the center of the new worldview.

[ 40 ] This is a symbolic and mystical interpretation of what took place at that time under the influence of philosophical ideas such as those presented by Philo. Viewed from one perspective, it is a new philosophical life; viewed from another, it is a certain renunciation—from the perspective of the ancient mysteries. And here lies the explanation for why the mystery was kept so secret. It was kept secret because it cannot be understood. It first had to be transformed, humanized, if this symbol, this mystery—which was accessible only to a few—was to attain universal significance.

[ 41 ] Please do not misunderstand me; I do not wish to place the primary emphasis on the transformation of the symbol; I merely wanted to use this symbol as a mirror to show what was taking place among the people at that time—how, for example, in the Essene community, under the influence of Buddhist teachings, a doctrine developed similar to that of Philo, yet one that had a different purpose and came about differently, because the most diverse mystical schools attained a kind of deepening through figures such as Philo. Philo, just like others of his time, was thoroughly imbued with all the mystical teachings available at that time.

[ 42 ] An outward expression of the aspiration of that time to recognize, as it were, the primordial divine that slumbers behind all limited conceptions of the divine—that which is hidden behind them—can be found in the biography of another [“Christ”], as he was conceived, and in the biography of Apollonius of Tyana [by Philostratus]. This Apollonius is presented to us in such a way that one can see how [these views] were lived out everywhere and how this is to be understood in each case merely as individual aspects of a primordial religion.

[ 43 ] He, for his part, sought this primordial religion, this primordial revelation, in such a way that he regarded all forms of religion merely as modes of expression; thus, in Apollonius of Tyana, we have before us a figure who strove to find the primordial religion. Essentially, we find such a figure in Philo as well. Too little has been handed down to us from Apollonius. With Philo, however, we can affirm that he deepened the insights as they came to him in his own way, leading them to an even deeper level of consciousness, so that they can thus be regarded as the preparatory philosophy of the West, which then reemerged as Christian doctrine in the various Christian communities.

[ 44 ] Philo’s philosophy made it possible to explore Christian doctrine in a philosophical manner; Philo’s philosophy made it possible, in fact, to turn one’s gaze away from an [inadequate] way of exploring the mysteries, so that human beings were thereby directed toward life itself.

[ 45 ] And now we will see how, under the influence of such feelings—as expressed in the transformation of the Jewish symbol of father, mother, and child into the image on Golgotha—this development continues. We will see how Jesus and Philo use parables to express what they have to say.

[ 46 ] It is partly what is hidden, and partly what they attained in the mystery schools.

Q&A:

[ 47 ] The Gospel According to Matthew. The First Descendant of David. “Behold, a son will be born to you, and his name will be Emmanuel, which means ‘God with us.’”

[ 48 ] Here we have the contrast between inner truth and outer truth. The Gospel can only be understood once one has realized that two perspectives are interwoven within it. On the one hand, we see what actually presents itself. When we are in the intermediate stage, Christ appears to us as the one who emerges from the deeper background. That is why Matthew depicts the Crucified One on the cross (the Christian symbol).

[ 49 ] [Stenographer's note:] In the next sentence, he reflects on the mystical symbol of that time.

[ 50 ] Logos.

[ 51 ] The second Logos is mutual interpenetration. The third Logos is that which lies on the other side of perspective. The second Logos is the Son. The Gospel of John is merely another interpretation of the Philonian worldview.

[ 52 ] The picture I have painted can be historically justified. This is also true of Jewish mysticism. However, it is not as obvious as the other teachings. Without Jewish mysticism, a true understanding of Christianity is not possible.

[ 53 ] Jewish mysticism is often attributed to Assyrian and Persian influences, isn't it?

[ 54 ] In its symbols, yes, but in terms of its actual emotional foundations, it cannot be traced back to this Persian symbolism. One must imagine that the actual, deeper meaning has the same origin as Buddhism. Philo himself denies the Indian origin, but it is all already present there. He received everything from them. They were symbolic images. Their meaning was forgotten and then rediscovered.

[ 55 ] Goethe. The Eternal Feminine corresponds to the Greek fundamental concept of seeking a deeper state of consciousness. The mother is both male and female. The shadow figure is the child. The symbol of the serpent is unmistakable in Goethe’s work. It is the guide who leads to self-sacrifice.

[ 56 ] The will-o'-the-wisps represent mere cognition, empty philosophical concepts.

[ 57 ] The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

[ 58 ] It's no wonder. It only makes sense when viewed against an esoteric backdrop. Being born of the Virgin Mary is a symbol of a higher natural process.