The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] We must now turn our attention more closely to the third aspect of the supersensible world: the consciousness that prevails in the supersensible world. Now, if we wish to consider consciousness without an object in the supersensible world, we must first become acquainted with something that every human being possesses from the outset, but which not everyone usually observes properly: namely, ordinary consciousness in this world here, that consciousness which is internally synthesized in the human being through the fact that the human being becomes aware of his or her “I”; becomes aware that they are a being existing in and of themselves, aware of the other objects and beings around them.

[ 2 ] This consciousness is the element of our life that we must examine with particular care when it comes to occult observation. For one may well say that this consciousness—or one could also say this human sense of self—is, for the occultist, the element of life that is most in danger of being lost during the transition into the supersensible worlds, and to which the person who wishes to enter these supersensible worlds must pay particular attention. This special attention to ordinary, everyday consciousness—let us call it earthly consciousness—is so necessary on the occult path because the loss of this consciousness, the letting go of and overcoming this consciousness, is just as necessary as it is dangerous. So, there is both a danger here and a necessity.

[ 3 ] If you now reflect a little on the nature of this sense of self, you will have to admit: This consciousness is, in fact, what allows you to be within yourself spiritually, what enables you to withdraw into yourself spiritually. Even when you are not using your senses, you still have—at least while you are awake—the ability to be with yourself in your consciousness. This consciousness is only plunged into darkness when a person falls asleep.

[ 4 ] Now you won’t have to think long before you realize: What people are accustomed to calling the divine or the unified principle of the world cannot, strictly speaking, be included in this consciousness that a person loses every evening upon falling asleep. For every morning a person rediscovers the contents of their consciousness; everything they had when falling asleep in the evening has remained, and they can, so to speak, pick up the thread of their inner, spiritual life upon waking up right where they left off when falling asleep. So everything has remained, from falling asleep to waking up; it is just that the person was unaware of themselves while they were asleep. The unified divine foundation of the world, which sustains everything, must therefore also have sustained his consciousness; it must thus be completely independent of the human state of sleep, must, as it were, watch over human nature when the person is awake and also when he is asleep.

[ 5 ] From this you can see that human beings, at least while they are within this earthly consciousness, must conceive of the divine foundation of the world as existing outside of this earthly consciousness. And this conception of the world-ground outside of earthly consciousness necessitates that human beings, through their own consciousness—that is, through this consciousness which encompasses their ego—can initially know nothing at all about the world-ground. This circumstance has, of course, always meant that it was necessary for the things pertaining to the foundation of the world to come to ordinary earthly consciousness not through an effort of this earthly consciousness, but through what is called revelation. Revelations, especially religious revelations, have always been given to human beings for the simple reason that they cannot find them within their own consciousness, insofar as this consciousness is earthly consciousness. Therefore, if human beings wish to establish a relationship with the primordial ground, they must allow themselves to be enlightened about the nature of this primordial ground; they must receive a revelation. This is, after all, what has always happened throughout the entire development of humanity. If we look back to the ancient pre-Christian times, we find the various great religious teachers, who are called Bodhisattvas in the language of the Buddha, for example, but are designated in other ways by other peoples. These teachers, so to speak, placed themselves among humanity and communicated to them that which they could not attain through their earthly consciousness.

[ 6 ] You may well ask, then, how did these religious teachers come to possess knowledge of the things that lie beyond human consciousness? You know, of course, from various lectures and theosophical communications, that there was an initiation, the so-called initiation, and that all the great religious teachers ultimately had to undergo initiation themselves, that is to say, they ultimately had to ascend to a certain occult path, or they had to be instructed by other initiates who had ascended to the occult path—that is, by those who did not grasp the Divine with their earthly consciousness, but with the consciousness that had placed itself outside of earthly consciousness.

[ 7 ] This is where the ancient religions come from. All the messages and revelations that the peoples received in pre-Christian times from great teachers of humanity ultimately trace back to the founders of the great religions—who were initiates, who had experienced in supersensible states what they communicated to humanity,

[ 8 ] And so the relationship between the religious person and his God has always remained such that man forms a mental image of his God as a being outside his world, as a transcendent being from whom revelation can come to him only through special means.

[ 9 ] If a person does not raise themselves to the level of initiation, then this religious relationship must remain such that the person feels themselves standing here on earth, feels that they survey the objects of the earth with their consciousness, and through the founders of religion learns something about things that lie beyond the sensory world and beyond the world of the intellect—indeed, beyond the world of human consciousness at first. This was the case with all religions, and in a certain sense it has remained so with religions to this very day.

[ 10 ] We know, for example, that Buddhism can be traced back to the great religious founder, the Buddha. But whenever the founding of Buddhism by the Buddha is discussed, it is always emphasized that the Buddha attained enlightenment—the higher vision—while sitting beneath the Bodhi tree, which is merely a special expression of the fact that, at the age of twenty-nine, he had become capable of looking into the spiritual world and revealing what he had experienced there.

[ 11 ] What is revealed is not the most important thing. What is revealed depends on what can be received. Take ancient Greece, for example: Insofar as its religious mental images were shaped by Pythagoreanism, we are once again reminded that Pythagoras underwent an initiation and was thereby able to bring down from the spiritual worlds what he, out of consideration for the people of that time, had to incorporate into human consciousness.

[ 12 ] This characterizes the relationship of the religious person to the spiritual world, and this relationship is such that it cannot be conceived of as anything other than a confrontation between humanity and the divine world. Whether this divine world is viewed as a pluralism, a multitude of beings, or a unity; whether polytheism or monotheism is taught—these details are of little consequence to us in this matter. The most important thing is that human beings find themselves, as human beings, confronted with the divine world, which must be revealed to them.

[ 13 ] This is also the reason why theology is so insistent that human knowledge should not be allowed to influence religious mental images. For as soon as human knowledge enters into religious mental images, it is a knowledge that must be attained by human beings in superphysical states through an ascent into the spiritual worlds. It is a kind of intrusion into the realms that theology—not religion as such—wishes to exclude entirely from influencing humanity’s religious mental images. This is why theologians so carefully teach that there are two paths of error that theology must avoid. One of these deviations is when theology degenerates into theosophy, because thereby the human being seeks, as it were, to rise up to his God, whom he should, however, face only as a human being. That theology must not degenerate into theosophy is, after all, taught everywhere by theologians.

[ 14 ] Theologians say that the second form of degeneration is mysticism, even though they themselves sometimes venture into theosophical or mystical territory. Thus, we can quite clearly distinguish between merely religious people and mystics, for the mystic is something different from the merely religious person. The religious person is characterized by the fact that he stands here on earth and establishes a relationship with a God who lies beyond his consciousness.

[ 15 ] Now we have seen that there are other elements present in human soul life. We have seen that, in addition to what we have discussed today, human soul life includes the life of thought—the life that makes use of the brain as an instrument. Since human beings possess ordinary consciousness, they naturally also have their brains, and they also have their world of thoughts. All of this is intertwined. One cannot exist without the other. Therefore, what we might call human consciousness, thoughts, and the experiences you have when you make use of the brain as an instrument all play a role.

[ 16 ] Religions will therefore always be interwoven with ideas that make use of the brain as an instrument, for if one is a revelator or a founder of a religion, one might say that one clothes divine revelations in such forms that people can understand them when they make use of the brain as an instrument. Thus, religion can be clothed in mental images of the brain. But it can also be clothed in mental images that make use of the instrument of the heart, so that religion can speak either more to the brain or more to the heart. When we therefore compare the various religions with one another, we find that some speak more to the intellect, to the human experiences bound to the brain, while others speak more to the mental images and feelings of the heart and to the life of the soul.

[ 17 ] This difference can certainly be observed within individual religions. But what characterizes all religions is that human beings maintain their sense of self, that human beings remain conscious of themselves as human beings. Here on Earth, the sense of self is at work, and from the outside, that which essentially belongs to the divine-supernatural world is at work.

[ 18 ] When a person becomes a mystic, the mystic’s development indeed begins most radically by turning against everything connected with ordinary earthly consciousness. What religion as such carefully preserves, as long as it remains religion—namely, that the human being, as a human being, finds himself left to his own devices, that he sets his entire earthly consciousness in opposition to the divine world—this is what mysticism breaks through. All mystics, both pre-Christian and post-Christian, have always strived to break through this human consciousness. They always strove to ascend into the supersensible worlds, that is, to emerge from ordinary human earthly consciousness, to overcome it. This is the defining characteristic of mysticism: the overcoming of ordinary consciousness, the entering into a state where self-forgetfulness occurs. And when the mystics have gone far enough, this self-forgetfulness is to extend to self-annihilation, to self-extinction. The actual mystical states, the raptures, the ecstasy, aim at extinguishing what human beings call the limitations of their earthly consciousness, in order thereby to grow into the higher.

[ 19 ] Because mysticism takes so many forms and there are so many different kinds of it, it is difficult to form a clear mental image of its nature without referring to specific examples. That is why it is helpful to refer to specific examples here as well.

[ 20 ] Let us suppose that, based on what we have just said, the mystic initially feels called upon to suppress and shut down his ordinary sense of self, and in this way transcend himself. In doing so, as you can easily imagine, he retains what people otherwise experience as their soul experiences when they make use of the brain and the heart. The mystic wants to switch off consciousness, but in doing so he does not switch off the experiences mediated by the brain and the heart. This alone gives you all possible shades of mystics. Let us clarify what nuances are possible. To make them clear to ourselves, we will list them here in a clear and organized manner:

Experiences of the Mind
Experiences of the Heart
Experiences of Consciousness.

[ 21 ] A mystic can thus have experiences of the mind and experiences of the heart. But consciousness is extinguished in him. Then the mystic appears to us in such a way that we can say he steps outside of himself in ecstasy; but the thoughts and feelings are such that we recognize he has not yet switched off what is thought and felt through the instrument of the brain and the heart. Such mystics, who have experiences of the heart and the brain, we actually find only if we go quite far back in history; and we find them among those mystics who, after Christianity was established, attempted to ascend mystically to the divine Self with the help of Greek-Platonic philosophy. These include, for example, the Neoplatonists Iamblichus and Plotinus. The mystic Scotus Erigena also belongs to this group. And if one does not adhere strictly to this distinction but includes a mystic in whom intellectual experiences predominate and heartfelt experiences are less prominent, one could also count Meister Eckhart among this group of mystics. This would be, so to speak, Class A: the mystics with both heartfelt and intellectual experiences.

[ 22 ] A. Experiences of the heart, experiences of the mind => Neoplatonists, Scotus Erigena, Meister Eckhart.

[ 23 ] A second type of mystic would be those who exclude not only their consciousness but also their mental experiences, retaining only those mental images that arise when one uses solely the instrument of the heart. Such mystics generally present themselves to us in such a way that they do not love anything that is merely thought. They also wish to exclude thoughts from consciousness. Only what can be attained through the instrument of the heart is, in their view, personally useful for human development. Thus, there would be mystics who exclude both cerebral experiences and experiences of consciousness, and who attempt to transcend human consciousness by ecstatically stepping out of this consciousness, yet maintain a connection to humanity by grounding their relationship to the environment in the experiences of the heart.

[ 24 ] A second type of mystic would be those who exclude not only their consciousness but also their mental experiences, retaining only those mental images that arise when one uses solely the instrument of the heart. Such mystics generally present themselves to us in such a way that they do not love anything that is merely thought. They also wish to exclude thoughts from consciousness. Only what can be attained through the instrument of the heart is, in their view, personally useful for human development. Thus, there would be mystics who exclude both cerebral experiences and experiences of consciousness, and who attempt to transcend human consciousness by ecstatically stepping out of this consciousness, yet maintain a connection to humanity by grounding their relationship to the environment in the experiences of the heart.

[ 25 ] A second type of mystic would be those who exclude not only their consciousness but also their mental experiences, retaining only those mental images that arise when one uses solely the instrument of the heart. Such mystics generally present themselves to us in such a way that they do not love anything that is merely thought. They also wish to exclude thoughts from consciousness. Only what can be attained through the instrument of the heart is, in their view, personally useful for human development. Thus, there would be mystics who exclude both cerebral experiences and experiences of consciousness, and who attempt to transcend human consciousness by ecstatically stepping out of this consciousness, yet maintain a connection to humanity by grounding their relationship to the environment in the experiences of the heart.

Most High, Almighty, and Merciful Lord!
Yours be praise, glory, honor, and every blessing.
They are due to You alone;
no human is worthy to name You.

Praised be God, the Lord, and all creatures,
above all our noble brother, the sun,
which brings about the day and shines upon us with its light.
It is beautiful and radiant in its great splendor;
it is a symbol of You, O Lord.

Praised be God, the Lord,
for the sake of our sister, the moon,
and also for the sake of all the stars;
which He has formed in the heavens
and causes to appear in beauty and brightness.

Praised be God, the Lord,
for the sake of our brothers, the wind,
the air, and the clouds,
for the sake of the clear weather and all seasons,
through which He sustains all creatures.

Blessed be God, the Lord,
for the sake of our sister, water,
which is so useful and humble
and also precious and chaste.

Praised be God, the Lord,
for the sake of our brother, fire,
through which he illuminates the night for us,
and which is so beautiful and joyful
and so strong and powerful.

Praised be God, the Lord,
for the sake of our mother, the earth;
through whom we receive food and strength
and also many kinds of fruit
and the rich colors of all flowers and herbs.

[ 26 ] You see, here everything has emerged from self-consciousness, and one can therefore say that it is the intoxicating emotional power of the heart, permeated by that which neither the eye nor the senses can perceive—for the person in question is a mystic—but rather by what the soul feels when it does not become part of its experience to merge with the divine in nature. But when this becomes a part of a person, then they can have that sense of nature of which Goethe speaks so beautifully in *Faust*:

Sublime Spirit, you gave me, gave me everything,
That I asked for. You did not in vain
Turn your face toward me in the fire.
You gave me the magnificent natural world as my kingdom,
The power to feel it, to enjoy it. You do not
do you permit me only to gaze coldly as a visitor,
but grant me to look into its deep bosom
as into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the procession of the living
past me and teach me to know my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water...

[ 27 ] Here you have a hint of the very feeling whose mystery has just been unveiled. And when we consider Faust, this becomes a part of his inner life. Here, however, you also have the mystic, in whom this one aspect, this one element of human experience, outshines everything else, and who relates to nature in such a way that the sun becomes his brother, the moon his sister, water his sister, fire his brother, and the earth his mother—that he feels its spiritual essence in this way. Here you have the stepping out of ordinary human consciousness and, at the same time, the preservation of all those soul experiences that can be experienced through the instrument of the heart. This is the mystic whom you all know: Francis of Assisi.

[ 28 ] In him we have a very special example of a mystic who truly behaved in such a way that he rejected all theology as external knowledge, as well as all knowledge of supernatural things, for the incarnation in which Francis of Assisi lived at that time. What therefore emerges so grandly and powerfully in him is the merging with the spirit of nature. Only it is not like a pantheistic spirituality, which always has something of a refined sentiment, of affectation; not in the sense that he raves and sings of a general spirit in nature, but of the concrete feelings of a childlike, brotherly, sisterly nature that permeate his soul when he stands before the beings of nature.

[ 29 ] B. Spiritual Experiences => Francis of Assisi.

[ 30 ] People who seek ecstasy—that is, the loss of their self-awareness or the obscuring of their self-awareness—and who, for certain states, exclude those spiritual experiences that make use of the heart as an instrument, but instead retain thoughts and cerebral experiences—such people are often not referred to as mystics in common parlance, because a mystic is usually expected to have experiences of things that are imbued with feeling. You can easily imagine why this is so. Imagine a person who has pushed all personal self-awareness out of their soul experiences. Then it is precisely the case with this person that what most people find interesting in other people is absent in them, namely personality. People are interested in one another because of their personality.

[ 31 ] Now, what we call “experiences of the heart” still have such a personal character—when they present themselves to us as they did to Francis of Assisi—and such a compelling power over the universal human condition, that our consciousness remains alert; so that with him, one still goes along with interest, but not so readily with the will. This is also appropriate for ordinary life, especially in the present, for not everyone in the present can become like Francis of Assisi. The universal aspect of the heart—that which can be made conscious through him—nevertheless overwhelms people, even if the personal aspect is dulled. This suppression and extinguishing of consciousness, this dullness in a mystic such as Francis of Assisi, leads in him, on the one hand, as you know, to a radicalism, and on the other hand, it deters people—even if they are interested in him—from imitating him. People usually do not want to step outside their consciousness because they feel that they lose the ground beneath their feet when they step outside their consciousness.

[ 32 ] But now imagine if there were a mystic who were to completely exclude all personal consciousness and, moreover, the experiences of the heart. Such a person would offer humanity nothing but pure thoughts—thoughts and mental images that make use only of the brain as an instrument. As a rule, a person will not be able to live in such a state. One can be a Francis of Assisi to a great extent, because what is experienced as heartfelt experiences is truly applicable in a universally human way. Someone who, in addition to their consciousness—their personal sense of self—also suppresses the experiences of the heart and lives solely in thought, expressing in thought only what is bound to the human brain, will need to devote themselves to this pursuit only at certain, one might say, solemn moments of their life. For life constantly calls one back to the personal on Earth; and someone who would live only in thoughts, who would make use only of the brain, could not perform any earthly activity at all. Therefore, it can only be for a short time, only for those moments when one can make use exclusively of the brain. But for other people, it will be the case with such a person that they will not even spend a moment with him, but will run away from him altogether. What interests people most are personal experiences. But he suppresses them. He also gives up the overwhelming nature of heartfelt experiences. And so people flee in droves; that is, they have absolutely no desire to approach him.

[ 33 ] One such mystic is the philosopher Hegel, whom I have already mentioned to you. What he offers is intended quite deliberately to exclude all personal, conscious viewpoints as well as all emotional experiences. It is meant to be mere contemplation of thought, so that we must name Hegel as an example of a mystic with purely intellectual experiences in the most eminent sense. Such a person leads us, so to speak, up into the purest ethereal heights of thought. For while in ordinary life a person has only thoughts that are rooted in personal interest and self-consciousness and are permeated and saturated by them, precisely this must be excluded in such a philosophical mystic. And such a mystic also excludes that which makes the spiritual desirable by playing into the experiences of the heart. He devotes himself, in majestic resignation, to the course of mere mental experiences. He therefore has, of all that the human heart can experience, only thoughts.

[ 34 ] This is what annoys most people about Hegel: that he has nothing that evokes the experiences of the heart, but instead presents everything solely in mental images. Most people feel cold and desolate when they find that what they love in their hearts has crystallized in Hegel into the coldness of thought. And that in which the personality is rooted, that which anchors the human being in earthly life—self-consciousness, ego-consciousness—Hegel has it only as a thought. Hegel naturally devotes his attention to the “I” as well, because it is the concept of a particularly important experience, the experience of the “I.” He does so. But it remains a mental image, and Hegel is not imbued with the vitality and immediacy of the human personality, which is rooted in self-consciousness.

[ 35 ] C. Experiences of the mind => Hegel.

[ 36 ] Then there is another type of mystic. This would be the mystic who excludes all three things: earthly consciousness, experiences of the heart, and experiences of the brain. Thus we would have mystic D, who would exclude all human earthly experiences of the soul. You can form a mental image of how difficult this is. It is something that is, of course, a matter of course for the occultist—and we will speak of this in detail in the coming days—that he elevates himself into states where everything is excluded that is bound to the instrument of the brain and also to the instrument of the heart, insofar as these are derived from earthly forces and insofar as they make use of consciousness. This is a matter of course for the practical occultist who ascends into the higher worlds. But there the practical occultist begins to live and experience in the supersensible world; and while he has extinguished everything that connects him to the world surrounding earthly human beings, he has the higher world around him. He thus steps out of one thing and into another. The mystic, however, who excludes all three of these experiences that make use of earthly instruments, will not enter into anything that can fall into his consciousness. He does not, of course, enter into nothingness, for beyond our consciousness lies the divine-spiritual supersensible world. But he also does not enter it in the same way as the occultist, to whom the ineffable Word, the supersensible light, then dawns; rather, he suppresses his consciousness, he suppresses all the forces within him, and ultimately feels only how, after suppressing all these human experiences, he is united with something and is then within it.

[ 37 ] Then something begins that actually seems to him like the obliteration of consciousness, like the obliteration of all earthly experiences, like a union with something that is felt and sensed, that is absorbed in a state of intoxication, with which one unites in rapture and ecstasy, but about which no communication is possible, because it is not experienced in a specific way, not in concrete experiences.

[ 38 ] When we speak of occultism later on, we shall see that it would be disastrous if a person were to uproot all three types of experience—namely, experiences of the brain, the heart, and consciousness—from within themselves all at once. Then he would become a mystic who, after the so-called union [with the Divine], in ecstasy, would be nothing more than a sleeping person who unites with the Divine in sleep but knows nothing of it, not even having a sense that he is united with the Divine. If the mystic wishes to retain at least a vivid sensation and a feeling of union with the Divine, he must successively eradicate these individual personal experiences.

[ 39 ] This brings us to an example of a mystic who can show us this—a figure who actually embarked on this path and, in a sense, recommended it for emulation in his reflections; a figure who first strove with all his might to overcome personal self-consciousness, which was to be suppressed and extinguished. In this process, the powers of the heart and emotions, as well as the intellect, remained active. The next thing to be overcome by this individual were the powers of the intellect, and finally the powers of the heart. The fact that the powers of the heart remained the last to be overcome is what made the entry into the world lying outside of consciousness felt with particular strength and intensity. Thus, things were overcome in this order: first consciousness, then the experiences of the brain, and finally the experiences of the heart.

[ 40 ] It is very telling that this individual, who has actually followed such a mystical path in the most orthodox manner, is a woman. After all, in theosophical circles, one cannot be misunderstood regarding such matters; they must be viewed objectively. In the case of a woman, it is actually easier, for it is, as we shall also learn from other things, a peculiarity of the female nature that it is easier for her to conquer herself—that is, all soul experiences. The woman who has experienced mysticism in the regular manner described, so that she has successively extinguished and eradicated from within herself the soul experiences bound to the instruments of the brain and the heart, and then has perceived the union with the divine Spirit as a marriage, as an embrace, is Saint Teresa.

[ 41 ] D. — => Saint Teresa.

[ 42 ] If you follow the life of Saint Teresa and view it in light of the reflections we have shared today regarding the understanding of mysticism in human beings, you will conclude that such a mystic can only be an extraordinary exception. Rather, what is common is that individual spiritual experiences are not overcome with such purity and strength as in the case of Saint Teresa, but that they are only partially overcome and that some part of them remains.

[ 43 ] This actually gives us three types of mystics. We have those mystics who, while seeking to overcome everything within them that manifests as soul experiences, are left primarily with experiences that are bound to the brain. Such mystics are generally—if one does not take the word too literally—individuals whom one would describe, in the highest sense of the word, as practical, wise people; as people who are well-versed in life because they make use of their intellect, and who, having suppressed the personal to a high degree, also appear sympathetic in their impersonal nature.

[ 44 ] Such mystics exist when the people in question have indeed sought to overcome everything, yet have succeeded only to a small degree in overcoming their heartfelt experiences. Do note the difference between such mystics and mystics like Francis of Assisi, who did not strive to overcome the experiences of the heart, but retained them in their full extent, and thus preserved them in perfect health. This is what is majestic and magnificent about Francis of Assisi: that his heart expanded to encompass his entire spiritual being. I am not, therefore, referring to mystics of this sort who do not strive to overcome the experiences of the heart. Rather, I am speaking of those who actually strive to overcome the experiences of the heart, who struggle with all their might to suppress them, but who do not succeed. In these, one does not find the extraordinary nature of the union with the supersensible-spiritual that we encountered in Saint Teresa. In these mystics, who have striven to rise above all that is personal, human, and earthly, yet have retained to a remarkable degree the experiences bound to the heart, we find that something quite limited in human terms has mingled itself into their striving. It will then truly be the case that this union, this being embraced by the Divine-Spiritual, is very similar to the feelings of love and the instincts of love found in human nature in ordinary life.

[ 45 ] You will find plenty of such mystics—who, so to speak, love their God or their divine world just as one loves anything human—if you ever leaf through the history of the saints, the history of monks and nuns. There you will see how many of these holy mystics, with a wholly human fervor—one might say, with human love—are in love with the Madonna, who becomes for them a veritable substitute for a human woman. Or how nuns are in love with their Christ-Bridegroom with all the feelings of earthly, human love. This is a chapter that is psychologically very interesting, even if it does not always strike a sympathetic chord; it is a chapter on ecclesiastical-religious mystics who strive for what was described earlier but cannot achieve it because human nature holds them back.

[ 46 ] Then we come to a type of mystic similar to Saint Hildegard, who possesses quite beautiful qualities, but also has a touch of ordinary earthly desire, which then mingles with her mystical experience and her mystical sensations. They do indeed enter into an experience that is very similar to the erotic experience, into mystical eroticism, which you can see in the history of the mystics when, in their outpourings of the heart, they speak of their soul’s bride, of their ardent love for the Bridegroom Jesus, or the like.

[ 47 ] Such mystical personalities become most bearable when they have retained a good measure of ordinary human consciousness, when they can, so to speak, always rise above their mystical experiences through their human-personal nature, when a touch of humor and irony enters their consciousness, when they look at themselves and see that they have not overcome everything, but that there is still something human within them. This gives the matter a personal touch and makes it less unsympathetic, because it lacks a certain trait in the aspired-to but unachieved overcoming of all heartfelt experiences. For what is unsympathetic is precisely that the person strives to achieve something but cannot achieve it and is held back precisely by what they themselves most wish to overcome. This gives the whole thing a certain unsympathetic quality that one perceives as a kind of hypocrisy, because it is as if, through a roundabout path of asceticism, the failure to overcome what is lived out in ordinary human instincts is to be replaced. In contrast, when this element of irony and humor is present—where the person in question also has moments in which they make use of their ordinary human consciousness and look at themselves, when they alternate their mystical moments with those in which they speak the truth from the ordinary human standpoint— then the whole thing gains in appeal, as is the case when we follow a mystical figure such as Mechthild of Magdeburg.

[ 48 ] Mechthild of Magdeburg demonstrates this very difference from figures similar to her in that, while she possesses both the passionate-erotic and the divine-spiritual, she also speaks of her divine feminine love—or of divine love in general—with a certain touch of humor, much as one might speak of human love. She does not clothe this in grandiloquent words, but speaks of it in such a way that there is always a touch of irony involved. It is a different matter when we read, by contrast, what Saint Hildegard says in her writings—which, admittedly, are not entirely free of this either—or the writings of mystics who are themselves highly esteemed. This is the difference from such figures who have not yet overcome the human -personal consciousness, that Mechthild of Magdeburg feels herself fervently transported to the very limits of the divine-spiritual and speaks with true sincerity, so that she does not describe that which still contains the eroticism of the heart with the expression of religious ecstasy, but speaks of religious love. For this is likely the same thing when she speaks of the lady of courtly love, by whom she means her divine bridegroom.

[ 49 ] So here, too, there are all sorts of nuances. The last one was a nuance where there are intense heartfelt experiences, but something has also remained that can be called personal consciousness. In short, mysticism is a subject with an immense number of nuances. And yet we have not even touched upon what we will still have to discuss—what is referred to as the oldest Greek mysticism, as you will find it described in my book *Christianity as a Mystical Fact*. With today’s nuances, we have not yet reached that level of mysticism. But one thing today’s nuances have taught us is that all mystics strive to transcend ordinary personal ego-consciousness, to extinguish it, and that if a person does not wish to lose the ground beneath their feet, a different consciousness must emerge. This is the essence of the mystic: that having reached the limits of the spiritual, the divine-spiritual is still experienced as a union, yet one does not enter into the world of the divine-spiritual. The consciousness trained on external objects—which always requires an external object—is cast off. It is the striving of the mystic to cast off this consciousness. The mystic wishes to transcend himself. But if a person wishes to consciously experience what is to be experienced through the experiences of the ineffable Word and the unrevealed Light, it is clear that he must experience this in a new, in a different consciousness. Therefore, if the mystic wishes to become an occultist, he must not only abandon negative striving but also be concerned with developing a different, higher consciousness—namely, consciousness without a conscious object.

[ 50 ] Tomorrow we will discuss further this higher state of consciousness that the occultist must enter.

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A. Experiences of the heart, experiences of the mind => Neoplatonists, Scotus Erigena, Meister Eckhart.
B. Experiences of the heart => Francis of Assisi.
C. Experiences of the mind => Hegel.
D. — => Saint Teresa.