Icons of St. Catherine's Monastery
The chapter in the book Knowledge of Higher Worlds: How is it Achieved? that is expressly devoted to the process of initiation begins with a description of the three 'trials' that serve to develop certain soul-qualities within the pupil which are absolutely necessary if initiation is to be passed through in the right way. It is, moreover, not difficult to feel that the most suitable period in the cycle of the year for these inner trials is the time after the festival of Michael and, in particular, the first three weeks of Advent.
The first 'trial' which is spoken of in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How is it Achieved? is called "the trial by fire'. Through this the true spiritual foundations of all earthly things are revealed to the pupil: first ... lifeless things, then of plants, animals and human beings.61 It is as though a shroud falls away from all the objects and beings of the world around him and 'they then lie disclosed- naked before the beholder ... land this is connected with a process known as "spiritual burning-away". 62
The moral qualities that are being spoken of here are frequently developed by those who have passed through a stern school of life. 'Such people,' writes Rudolf Steiner, 'have passed through manifold experiences of such a kind that their self-confidence, courage and fortitude have been enhanced in a healthy way, and they learn to bear sorrow, disappointment and failure in undertakings with greatness of soul, and above all with equanimity and unbroken strength." 63 These words summon before one's inner eye the image of a person who is able in all life's storms and tribulations to remain inwardly upright, who does not bend beneath the pressure of life but preserves an unshakeable inner trust in the power of the higher justice that invisibly rules the world and sends him sorrows, disappointments and failures' as trials.
The first 'trial' which is spoken of in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How is it Achieved? is called "the trial by fire'. Through this the true spiritual foundations of all earthly things are revealed to the pupil: first ... lifeless things, then of plants, animals and human beings.61 It is as though a shroud falls away from all the objects and beings of the world around him and 'they then lie disclosed- naked before the beholder ... land this is connected with a process known as "spiritual burning-away". 62
The moral qualities that are being spoken of here are frequently developed by those who have passed through a stern school of life. 'Such people,' writes Rudolf Steiner, 'have passed through manifold experiences of such a kind that their self-confidence, courage and fortitude have been enhanced in a healthy way, and they learn to bear sorrow, disappointment and failure in undertakings with greatness of soul, and above all with equanimity and unbroken strength." 63 These words summon before one's inner eye the image of a person who is able in all life's storms and tribulations to remain inwardly upright, who does not bend beneath the pressure of life but preserves an unshakeable inner trust in the power of the higher justice that invisibly rules the world and sends him sorrows, disappointments and failures' as trials.
If the pupil manages to endure this trial, there will in Rudolf Steiner's words- be revealed to his soul 'the signs of the occult script', which are none other than 'the happenings and beings of the spiritual world! 64 And he adds: 'The language of things is learnt through these signs.' 65 Through this language, each thing and every being reveals to the pupil the secret name of its origin, that part of the archetypal cosmic Word that once created our world which rests upon its particular foundation. Hence this experience gradually becomes for the pupil the beginning of a penetration into the mystery of the cosmic Word, the divine Logos, and this, in turn, leads him gradually to the next 'trial. For now the pupil learns to be ruled in his actions not by his own egoistic wishes but by world-justice, by the divine purposes of the cosmos which he has been able to recognize through the secret Word that has been revealed to him. This first trial corresponds in its inner character to the spiritual content of the first week of Advent.
The second trial bears the name of 'trial by water 66 and is a direct continuation of the first. "This is to prove whether he can move with freedom and certainty in the higher worlds.' The pupil must now carry out a certain action, the substance of which he can come to know only through the inner language which he has learnt, in what he has gleaned at the previous stage, of the 'secret script'. Rudolf Steiner describes the essence of this trial as follows: Should he, in the course of his action, introduce any element of his own wishes, opinions, and so forth, or should he for one moment evade the laws he has recognized to be right in order to indulge his own arbitrary will, the result would be altogether different from what should properly come about. 67 According to Rudolf Steiner, this is largely a matter of developing the quality of self-control. But this will be achieved to the highest degree by someone who in everyday life... has acquired the faculty of following high principles and ideals while setting aside personal predilections, who is capable of always performing his duty when inclinations and sympathies are only too ready to divert him from it ..,68 of particular importance at this stage, adds Rudolf Steiner, is the mastery of one further quality, . an absolutely healthy and reliable faculty of judgement.':69
It is not difficult to see that these two basic requirements have a close correspondence with the inner qualities associated with the second week of Advent: temperance and prudence. Thus the development of the first of these is made possible through overcoming personal wishes and opinions, whims and egoistic arbitrariness in the fulfilment of higher duties, while the development of the second quality of prudence is dependent on a reliable faculty of judgement. Both of these together enable the pupil to endure this second trial.
If he succeeds in this, the third 'trial' awaits him. Here he has no feeling of a goal. Everything is left in his own hands. He finds himself in a situation where nothing prompts him to act. He must find his way quite alone, from out of himself.
70 "All that is necessary is that the pupil should quickly be able to come to terms with his own nature, for here he must find his "higher self' in the truest sense of the word. He must instantly decide to listen in all things to the inspiration of the spirit. There is no time for doubt or hesitation ... Whatever keeps him from listening to the voice of the spirit must be boldly overcome. It is essential in this situation to have presence of mind, and the training at this stage is concerned with the full development of this quality." 71 Here again, ordinary earthly life can be a good occult schooling: Individuals who have reached the point of being able to come to a swift decision, without hesitation or much deliberation, when faced with tasks suddenly devolving upon them--for such individuals life itself is a training in this sense. 72
If we now recall that just at this time the pupil begins to experience the first consequences of the splitting apart of thinking, feeling and willing, we will understand the deeper meanings of the words, 'developing presence of mind'. This is none other than the constant and fully conscious guidance of the three divided soul-forces by the higher self; while the inner virtue, without which this guidance would not exist (thus making it impossible to pass rightly through this particular trial), is that of courage, of fearlessness. Only an individual who has developed this virtue to a high degree within himself can, 'without losing himself,73 accomplish the task which he has set himself. For in the third trial .. he can find the single firm point to which he can hold only within his own being. 74 To endure such an ever-growing isolation and not to lose, in so doing, the capacity for action, for inner activity this indeed requires fortitude, the development of which is greatly furthered by a conscious experience of the spiritual content of the third week of Advent, the essence of which is distilled in the words: 'Whatever keeps [the pupil] from listening to the voice of the spirit must be boldly overcome.' In accordance with the terminology of The Philosophy of Freedom, we could also say that in this trial one is to accomplish a deed out of the purest impulses of moral imagination.
It is not difficult to see the connection of these trials with all that was said in the chapter 'The Trial by Solitude' about the gradual withdrawal from the individual of the ruling wisdom of the Archai, Archangeloi and Angeloi. For his partial separation from the hierarchic beings who are closest to him is the esoteric reality that stands behind the corresponding trials. Thus the beings of the Hierarchy of the Archai, who passed through their human stage on Old Saturn in bodies of fire and have on Earth risen to the stage of Spirit Man, that of the transformed physical body, gradually withdraw from the rulership of someone who has successfully borne the 'trial by fire'. Similarly, the beings of the Hierarchy of the Archangels, who bear within themselves the fully evolved Life Spirit the transformed etheric body, whose physical reflection on Earth is the element of water-withdraw from the individual who has passed successfully through the 'trial by water'. And finally, the beings of the Hierarchy of the Angels, who have an evolved Spirit Self that is, a transformed astral body whose physical reflection on Earth is the element of air withdraw their guidance when the 'trial by air' has been successfully withstood.
Thus as he stands, in the final experience of total solitude, at the threshold of the spiritual world, man shows himself as what he has become through the personal efforts which he has directed towards his individual development. For only as he is in reality can he enter the temple of higher knowledge.
Chapter 7 of The Cycle of the Year as a Path of Initiation by Sergei O. Prokofieff (Temple Lodge Publishing, 2014)
Footnotes:
62. It needs to be emphasized here that the mission of Vidar with respect to mankind had at that time already passed far beyond the scope of a single human individual, even one as outstanding as the Gautama-Bodhisattva (Gautama Buddha). Here the description that follows characterizes only one of the aspects of the activity of this high Spirit. This would be a way of referring to the connection described above (p. 310) between Vidar and John the Baptist. For both of them- John the Baptist on Earth and Vidar in the spiritual worlds embody at once the relationship of, and also the transition from, the old cosmos of the Father to the new cosmos of the Son, or, within the context of external history, from the pre-Christian to the Christian epoch. For John the Baptist, the last Old Testament prophet and the first to meet the Christ on Earth, recognizes Him and calls Him the Son of God (John 1:34), and Vidar is the only one of the pre-Christian or 'pagan' gods to survive the 'Twilight of the Gods' and thereby forms in the spiritual worlds the transition from the past to the future and appears there as does John the Baptist on the Earth- as the great servant and proclaimer of the end of the old aeon and the beginning of the new.
63. GA 15, Chapter 3.
64. Regarding the particular connection of old atavistic clairvoyance with the development of the sentient soul and, hence, its rapid extinction in the epoch of the intellectual or mind soul, see for instance Rudolf Steiner's article of 15 February 1925 under the title of 'Gnosis and Anthroposophy' (GA 26).
65. GA 116, lecture of 25 October 1909. In the same lecture Rudolf Steiner also says that only a part of the task of developing the consciousness soul within mankind devolved upon Gautama Buddha. The other part rested with another Bodhisattva who was venerated among the ancient Greeks under the name of Apollo-Orpheus.
66. Ibid. The Bodhisattva was, therefore, able to develop the consciousness soul already in this epoch because at that time he was -uniquely, for his part - incarnated in the physical body, whereas in all his previous incarnations he had been only partially connected with it.
67. It is in this sense that one should understand what Rudolf Steiner says about finding direct inspirations of Gautama Buddha in the works of such European thinkers as Schelling, Leibnitz, Solovier and Goethe (GA 130, see the lecture of 18 September 1911).
68. See further regarding the new task of the Archangel Wotan in: Sergei O. Prokofieff, Die geistigen Aufgaben Mittel- und Osteuropas, Domach 1993.
69. See GA 191, the lecture of 1 November 1919, and also GA 193, the lectures of 27 October 1919 and 4 November 1919.
70. It becomes apparent from Rudolf Steiner's later lectures that the expression 'signs of the time' is an occult term for the rulership of Michael in our time. (See, for example, the lecture of 17 February 1918, GA 174a, and also S.O. Prokofieff, Rudolf Steiner and the Founding of the New Mysteries, the chapter entitled 'The Christmas Conference of 1923-24%.)
71. GA 121, lecture of 17 June 1910.
72. In the lecture of 14 October in Karlsruhe, Rudolf Steiner says: 'In order to understand this event the New Advent of Christ] in the full light of day, man must be prepared. It is for this purpose that the world-view of Anthroposophy is disseminated in our time so that man might be prepared on the physical plane or on higher planes (that is, after death].' (GA 131, lecture of 14 October 1911.)
73. This clairvoyance, according to Rudolf Steiner, can, as it approaches the Christ, at best call forth no more than 'an hallucination of Christ'. (See GA 191, the lecture of 1 November 1919.)
74. See Rudolf Steiner's words quoted on p. 175.
