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  THE WAY OF INITIATION


  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  INITIATION AND ITS RESULTS

  a sequel to the

  "WAY OF INITIATION"

  By
  RUDOLF STEINER, Ph.D.

  Translated from the German by Clifford Bax


CONTENTS


     A FOREWORD

  I. THE ASTRAL CENTERS (CHAKRAS)

 II. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE ETHERIC BODY

III. DREAM LIFE

 IV. THE THREE STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

  V. THE DISSOCIATION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY DURING INITIATION

 VI. THE FIRST GUARDIAN OF THE THRESHOLD

VII. THE SECOND GUARDIAN OF THE THRESHOLD

     SELECTED LIST OF OCCULT WORKS

In same clear print and rich binding as this book

PRICE $1.00 PREPAID




  THE WAY OF INITIATION

  OR

  HOW TO ATTAIN KNOWLEDGE OF THE HIGHER WORLDS

  BY RUDOLF STEINER, Ph.D.

  FROM THE GERMAN
  BY
  ~MAX GYSI~

  WITH SOME BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES OF THE AUTHOR BY
  ~EDOUARD SCHURE~

  FIRST AMERICANIZED EDITION

  MACOY PUBLISHING AND MASONIC SUPPLY CO.
  NEW YORK, U.S.A.


  Copyright 1910
  BY
  MACOY PUBLISHING
  AND
  MASONIC SUPPLY CO.

  45-47-49 JOHN ST.
  New York, U.S.A.




CONTENTS.


                                                           PAGE

The Personality of Rudolf Steiner and His Development         7

   I. The Superphysical World and Its Gnosis                 33

  II. How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds           50

 III. The Path of Discipleship                               65

  IV. Probation                                              81

   V. Enlightenment                                          93

  VI. Initiation                                            117

 VII. The Higher Education of the Soul                      135

VIII. The Conditions of Discipleship                        149

List of Occult and Kindred Books                            165




Transcriber's Note: Words printed in bold are noted with tildes;
~bold~. There is no corresponding anchor for footnote number 5.




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 SCHURE[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.

          [1] Translated by kind permission of the author from the
          introduction to _Le Mystere Chretien et les Mysteres
          Antiques_. Traduit de l'allemand par Edouard Schure,
          Librairie academique, Perrin & Co., 1908, Paris.

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 is the primordial Force.

The occultist, on the other hand, discovers, studies, and contemplates
this same Divine outpouring given forth in diverse portions, endowed
with force, and multiplied to infinity in Nature and in Humanity.
According to the profound saying of Paracelsus: _he sees in all beings
the letters of an alphabet, which, united in man, form the complete and
conscious Word of life_. The detailed analysis that he makes of them,
the syntheses that he constructs with them, are to him as so many
images and forecastings of this central Divine, of this Sun of Beauty,
of Truth and of Life, which he sees not, but which is reflected and
bursts upon his vision in countless mirrors.

The weapons of the mystic are concentration and inner vision; the
weapons of the occultist are intuition and synthesis. Each corresponds
to the other; they complete and presuppose each other.

These two human types are blended in the Adept, in the higher Initiate.
No doubt one or the other, and often both, are met with in the founders
of great religions and the loftiest philosophies. No doubt also they
are to be found again, in a less, but still very remarkable degree,
among a certain number of personages who have played a great part in
history as reformers, thinkers, poets, artists, statesmen.

Why, then, should these two types of mind, which represent the highest
human faculties, and were formerly the object of universal veneration,
usually appear to us now as merely deformed and travestied? Why have
they become obliterated? Why should they have fallen into such
discredit?

That is the result of a profound cause existing in an inevitable
necessity of human evolution.

During the last two thousand years, but especially since the sixteenth
century, humanity has achieved a tremendous work, namely, the conquest
of the globe and the constitution of experimental science, in what
concerns the material and visible world.

That this gigantic and herculean task should be successfully
accomplished, it was necessary that there should be a temporary eclipse
of man's transcendental faculties, so that his whole power of
observation might be concentrated on the outer world. These faculties,
however, have never been extinct or even inactive. They lay dormant in
the mass of men; they remained active in the elect, far from the gaze
of the vulgar.

Now, they are showing themselves openly under new forms. Before long
they will assume a leading and directing importance in human destinies.
I would add that at no period of history, whether among the nations of
the ancient Aryan cycle, or in the Semitic civilizations of Asia and
Africa--whether in the Graeco-Latin world, or in the middle ages and in
modern times, have these royal faculties, for which positivism would
substitute its dreary nomenclature, ever ceased to operate at the
beginning and in the background of all great human creations and of all
fruitful work. For how can we imagine a thinker, a poet, an inventor, a
hero, a master of science or of art, a genius of any kind, without a
mighty ray of those two master-faculties which make the mystic and the
occultist--the inner vision and the sovereign intuition.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Rudolf Steiner is both a mystic and an occultist. These two natures
appear in him in perfect harmony. One could not say which of the two
predominates over the other. In intermingling and blending, they have
become one homogeneous force. Hence a special development in which
outward events play but a secondary part.

Dr. Steiner was born in Upper Austria in 1861. His earliest years were
passed in a little town situated on the Leytha, on the borders of
Styria, the Carpathians, and Hungary. From childhood his character was
serious and concentrated. This was followed by a youth inwardly
illuminated by the most marvellous intuitions, a young manhood
encountering terrible trials, and a ripe age crowned by a mission which
he had dimly foreseen from his earliest years, but which was only
gradually formulated in the struggle for truth and life. This youth,
passed in a mountainous and secluded region, was happy in its way,
thanks to the exceptional faculties that he discovered in himself. He
was employed in a Catholic church as a choir boy. The poetry of the
worship, the profundity of the symbolism, had a mysterious attraction
for him; but, as he possessed the innate gift of _seeing souls_, one
thing terrified him. This was the secret unbelief of the priests,
entirely engrossed in the ritual and the material part of the service.
There was another peculiarity: no one, either then or later, allowed
himself to talk of any gross superstition in his presence, or to utter
any blasphemy, as if those calm and penetrating eyes compelled the
speaker to serious thought. In this child, almost always silent, there
grew up a quiet and inflexible will, to master things through
understanding. That was easier for him than for others, for he
possessed from the first that self-mastery, so rare even in the adult,
which gives the mastery over others. To this firm will was added a
warm, deep and almost painful sympathy; a kind of pitiful tenderness to
all beings and even to inanimate nature. It seemed to him that all
souls had in them something divine. But in what a stony crust is hidden
the shining gold! In what hard rock, in what dark gloom lay dormant the
precious essence! Vaguely as yet did this idea stir within him--he was
to develop it later--that the divine soul is present in all men, but in
a latent state. It is a sleeping captive that has to be _awakened from
enchantment_.

To the sight of this young thinker, human souls became transparent,
with their troubles, their desires, their paroxysms of hatred or of
love. And it was probably owing to the terrible things he saw, that he
spoke so little. And yet, what delights, unknown to the world, sprang
from this involuntary clairvoyance! Among the remarkable inner
revelations of this youth, I will instance only one which was extremely
characteristic.

The vast plains of Hungary, the wild Carpathian forests, the old
churches of those mountains in which the monstrance glows brightly as a
sun in the darkness of the sanctuary, were not there for nothing, but
they were helpful to meditation and contemplation.

At fifteen years of age, Steiner became acquainted with a herbalist at
that time staying in his country. The remarkable thing about this man
was that he knew not only the species, families, and life of plants in
their minutest details, but also their secret virtues. One would have
said that he had spent his life in conversing with the unconscious and
fluid soul of herbs and flowers. He had the gift of seeing the vital
principle of plants, their etheric body, and what Occultism calls the
elementals of the vegetable world. He talked of it as of a quite
ordinary and natural thing. The calm and coolly scientific tone of his
conversation still further excited the curiosity and admiration of the
youth. Later on, Steiner knew that this strange man was a messenger
from the Master, whom as yet he knew not, but who was to be his real
initiator, and who was already watching over him from afar.

What the curious, double-sighted botanist told him, young Steiner found
to be in accordance with the logic of things. That confirmed an inner
feeling of long standing, and which more and more forced itself on his
mind as the fundamental Law, and as the basis of the Great All. That is
to say: _the two-fold current which constitutes the very movement of
the world_, and which might be called _the flux and reflux of the
universal life_.

We are all witnesses and are conscious of the outward current of
_evolution_, which urges onward all beings of heaven and of earth--stars,
plants, animals and humanity--and causes them to move forward towards
an infinite future, without our perceiving the initial force which
impels them and makes them go on without pause or rest. But there is in
the universe _an inverse current_, which interposes itself and
perpetually breaks in on the other. It is that of _involution_, by
which the principles, forces, entities and souls which come from the
invisible world and the kingdom of the Eternal infiltrate and
ceaselessly intermingle with the visible reality. No evolution of
matter would be comprehensible without this occult and astral current,
which is the great propeller of life, with its hierarchy of powers.
Thus the Spirit, which contains the future in germ, _involves_ itself
in matter; thus matter, which receives the Spirit, _evolves_ towards
the future. While, then, we are moving on blindly towards the unknown
future, this future is approaching us consciously, infusing itself in
the current of the world and man who elaborate it. _Such is the
two-fold movement of time, the out-breathing and the in-breathing of
the soul of the world, which comes from the Eternal and returns
thither._

From the age of eighteen, young Steiner possessed the spontaneous
consciousness of this two-fold current--a consciousness which is the
condition of all spiritual vision. This vital axiom was forced upon him
by a direct and involuntary seeing of things. Thenceforth he had the
unmistakable sensation of occult powers which were working behind and
through him for his guidance. He gave heed to this force and obeyed its
admonitions, for he felt in profound accordance with it.

This kind of perception, however, formed a separate category in his
intellectual life. This class of truths seemed to him something so
profound, so mysterious, and so sacred, that he never imagined it
possible to express it in words. He fed his soul thereon, as from a
divine fountain, but to have scattered a drop of it beyond would have
seemed to him a profanation.

Beside this inner and contemplative life, his rational and philosophic
mind was powerfully developing. From sixteen to seventeen years of age,
Rudolf Steiner plunged deeply into the study of Kant, Fichte and
Schelling. When he came to Vienna some years after, he became an ardent
admirer of Hegel, whose transcendental idealism borders on Occultism;
but speculative philosophy did not satisfy him. His positive mind
demanded the solid basis of the sciences of observation. So he deeply
studied mathematics, chemistry, mineralogy, botany and zoology. "These
studies," he said "