Rudolf Steiner
Mystics of the renaissance
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Table of contents
Foreword
Introduction
Meister Eckhart
Friendship With God (Tauler, Suso And Ruysbroeck)
Cardinal Nicholas Of Cusa
Agrippa Von Nettesheim And Theophrastus Paracelsus
Valentine Weigel And Jacob Boehme
Giordano Bruno And Angelus Silesius
Afterword
Foreword
The matter
which I am
laying before the public in this book formed the content of lectures
which I delivered during last winter at the Theosophical Library in
Berlin. I had been requested by Grafin and Graf Brockdorff ‘to
speak upon Mysticism before an audience for whom the matters thus
dealt with constitute a vital question of the utmost importance. Ten
years earlier I could not have ventured to fulfil such a request. Not
that the realm of ideas, to which I now give expression, did not even
then live actively within me. For these ideas are already fully
contained in my
philosophy of Freedom (Berlin,
1894. Emil Felber). But to give expression to this world of ideas in
such wise as I do today, and to make it the basis of an exposition as
is done on the following pages— to do this requires something quite
other than merely to be immovably convinced of the intellectual truth
of these ideas. It demands an intimate acquaintance with this realm
of ideas, such as only many years of life can give. Only now, after
having enjoyed that intimacy, do I venture to speak in such wise as
will be found in this book.Any
one who does not approach my world of ideas without preconceptions is
sure to discover therein contradiction after contradiction. I have
quite recently (Berlin, 1900. S. Cronbach) dedicated a book upon the
world conceptions of the nineteenth century to that great naturalist,
Ernst Haeckel, and closed it with a defence of his thought-world.In
the following expositions, I speak about the Mystics, from Master
Eckhart to Angelus Silesius, with a full measure of devotion and
acquiescence. Other "contradictions,” which one critic or
another may further count up against me, I shall not mention at all.
It does not surprise me to be condemned from one side as a "Mystic”
and from the other as a “ Materialist.” When I find that the
Jesuit Father Muller has solved a difficult chemical problem, and I
therefore in this particular matter agree with him unreservedly, one
can hardly condemn me as an adherent of Jesuitism without being
reckoned a fool by those who have insight.Whoever
goes his own road, as I do, must needs allow many a misunderstanding
about himself to pass. That, however, he can put up with easily
enough. For such misunderstandings are, in the main, inevitable in
his eyes, when he recalls the mental type of those who misjudge him.
I look back, not without humorous feelings, upon many a “ critical”
judgment that I have suffered in the course of my literary career. At
the outset, matters went fairly well. I wrote about Goethe and his
philosophy. What I said there appeared to many to be of such a nature
that they could file it in their mental pigeon-holes. This they did
by saying: “A work such as Rudolf Steiner’s Introduction
to Goethe s Writings upon Natural Science may,
without hesitation, be described as the best that has been written
upon this question.”When,
later, I published an independent work, I had already grown a good
bit more stupid. For now a well meaning critic offered the advice:
“Before he goes on reforming further and gives his Philosophy
of Freedom to
the world, he should be pressingly advised first to work himself
through to an understanding of these two philosophers [Hume and
Kant].’’The
critic unfortunately knows only so much as he is himself able to read
in Kant and Hume; practically, therefore, he simply advises me to
learn to see no more in these thinkers than he himself sees. When I
have attained that, he will be satisfied with me.Then
when my Philosophy
and Freedom appeared,
I was found to be as much in need of correction as the most ignorant
beginner. This I received from a gentleman who probably nothing else
impelled to the writing of books except that he had not understood
innumerable foreign ones. He gravely informs me that I should have
noticed my mistakes if I had “made more thorough studies in
psychology, logic, and the theory of knowledge” ; and he enumerates
forthwith the books I ought to read to become as wise as himself: “
Mill, Sigwart, Wundt, Riehl, Paulsen, B. Erdmann.”What
amused me especially was this advice from a man who was so
“impressed” with the way he “understood” Kant that he could
not even imagine how any man could have read Kant and yet judge
otherwise than himself. He therefore indicates to me the exact
chapters in question in Kant's writings from which I may be able to
obtain an understanding of Kant as deep and as thorough as his own.I
have cited here a couple of typical criticisms of my world of ideas.
Though in themselves unimportant, yet they seem to me to point, as
symptoms, to facts which present themselves to-day as serious
obstacles in the path of any one aiming at literary activity in
regard to the higher problems of knowledge. Thus I must go on my way,
indifferent, whether one man gives me the good advice to read Kant,
or another hunts me as a heretic because I agree with Haeckel. And so
I have also written upon Mysticism, wholly indifferent as to how a
faithful and believing materialist may judge of me. I would only
like— so that printers’ ink may not be wasted wholly without
need— to inform any one who may, perchance advise me to read
Haeckel’s Riddle
of the Universe, that
during the last few months I have delivered about thirty lectures
upon the said work.I
hope to have shown in this book that one may be a faithful adherent
of the scientific conception of the world and yet be able to seek out
those paths to the Soul along which Mysticism, rightly understood,
leads. I even go further and say: Only he who knows the Spirit, in
the sense of true Mysticism, can attain a full understanding of the
facts of Nature. But one must not confuse true Mysticism with the “
pseudo-mysticism” of ill-ordered minds. How Mysticism can err, I
have shown in my Philosophy
of Freedom (page
131 et seq.).Rudolf
Steiner
Introduction
There
are certain magical formulas which operate throughout the centuries
of Man’s mental history in ever new ways. In Greece one such
formula was regarded as an oracle of Apollo. It runs: “Know
Thyself.” Such sentences seem to conceal within them an unending
life. One comes upon them when following the most diverse roads in
mental life. The further one advances, the more one penetrates into
the knowledge of things, the deeper appears the significance of these
formulas. In many a moment of our brooding and thinking, they flash
out like lightning, illuminating our whole inner being. In such
moments there quickens within us a feeling as if we heard the
heart-beat of the evolution of mankind. How close do we not feel
ourselves to personalities of the past, when the feeling comes over
us, through one of their winged words, that they are revealing to us
that they, too, had had such moments!
“
“
“
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
