The Way of Initiation; or, How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. Rudolf Steiner
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Rudolf Steiner
The Way of Initiation; or, How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664651129
Table of Contents
THE PERSONALITY OF RUDOLF STEINER AND HIS DEVELOPMENT
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Dr. Rudolf Steiner
THE
WAY OF INITIATION
OR
HOW TO ATTAIN KNOWLEDGE OF THE
HIGHER WORLDS
BY
RUDOLF STEINER, PhD.
FROM THE GERMAN
BY
MAX GYSI
WITH SOME BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES OF THE AUTHOR BY
EDOUARD SCHURÉ
FIRST AMERICANIZED EDITION
MACOY PUBLISHING AND MASONIC SUPPLY CO.
NEW YORK, U.S.A.
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
(FOR THE ENGLISH EDITION.)
Being deeply interested in Dr. Steiner's work and teachings, and desirous of sharing with my English-speaking friends the many invaluable glimpses of Truth which are to be found therein, I decided upon the translation of the present volume. It is due to the kind co-operation of several friends who prefer to be anonymous that this task has been accomplished, and I wish to express my hearty thanks for the literary assistance rendered by them—also to thank Dr. Peipers of Munich for permission to reproduce his excellent photograph of the author.
The special value of this volume consists, I think, in the fact that no advice is given and no statement made which is not based on the personal experience of the author, who is, in the truest sense, both a mystic and an occultist.
If the present volume should meet with a reception justifying a further venture, we propose translating and issuing during the coming year a further series of articles by Dr. Steiner in continuation of the same subject, and a third volume will consist of the articles now appearing in the pages of The Theosophist, entitled "The Education of Children."
Max Gysi.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE.
While the pleasant German vernacular is still discernable in the text of this work, we wish to state that it has been Americanized in spelling, phraseology, and definition, to make plainer to the Western mind the wonderful truths experienced by its distinguished author.
The readers, especially Occult, Theosophic, Masonic, and New Thought students, we believe, will appreciate the clearness with which his teachings lead to the simple rich Harmony of Life.
MACOY PUB. & MASONIC SUP. CO.
THE PERSONALITY OF RUDOLF STEINER AND HIS DEVELOPMENT
By Edouard Schuré[1]
Many of even the most cultivated men of our time have a very mistaken idea of what is a true mystic and a true occultist. They know these two forms of human mentality only by their imperfect or degenerate types, of which recent times have afforded but too many examples. To the intellectual man of the day, the mystic is a kind of fool and visionary who takes his fancies for facts; the occultist is a dreamer or a charlatan who abuses public credulity in order to boast of an imaginary science and of pretended powers. Be it remarked, to begin with, that this definition of mysticism, though deserved by some, would be as unjust as erroneous if one sought to apply it to such personalities as Joachim del Fiore of the thirteenth century, Jacob Boehme of the sixteenth, or St. Martin, who is called "the unknown philosopher," of the eighteenth century. No less unjust and false would be the current definition of the occultist if one saw in it the slightest connection with such earnest seekers as Paracelsus, Mesmer, or Fabre d'Olivet in the past, as William Crookes, de Rochat, or Camille Flammarion in the present. Think what we may of these bold investigators, it is undeniable that they have opened out regions unknown to science, and furnished the mind with new ideas.
No, these fanciful definitions can at most satisfy that scientific dilettantism which hides its feebleness under a supercilious mask to screen its indolence, or the worldly scepticism which ridicules all that threatens to upset its indifference. But enough of these superficial opinions. Let us study history, the sacred and profane books of all nations, and the last results of experimental science; let us subject all these facts to impartial criticism, inferring similar effects from identical causes, and we shall be forced to give quite another definition of the mystic and the occultist.
The true mystic is a man who enters into full possession of his inner life, and who, having become cognizant of his sub-consciousness, finds in it, through concentrated meditation and steady discipline, new faculties and enlightenment. These new faculties and this enlightenment instruct him as to the innermost nature of his soul and his relations with that impalpable element which underlies all, with that eternal and supreme reality which religion calls God, and poetry the Divine. The occultist, akin to the mystic, but differing from him as a younger from an elder brother, is a man endowed with intuition and with synthesis, who seeks to penetrate the hidden depths and foundations of Nature by the methods of science and philosophy: that is to say, by observation and reason, methods invariable in principle, but modified in application by being adapted to the descending kingdoms of Spirit or the ascending kingdoms of Nature, according to the vast hierarchy of beings and the alchemy of the creative Word.
The mystic, then, is one who seeks for truth and the Divine directly within himself, by a gradual detachment and a veritable birth of his higher soul. If he attains it after prolonged effort, he plunges into his own glowing centre. Then he immerses himself, and identifies himself with that ocean of life which