THE FIRST GUARDIAN
OF THE THRESHOLD
AMONG the important
experiences that accompany an ascent into the higher worlds is that of
“Meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold.” In reality there is not only
one such Guardian, but two; one known as “the Lesser,” the other as “the
Greater.” The student meets with the former when, in the manner described in
the last chapter, he begins to loosen the connection between the volitions,
the thoughts, and the feelings so far as they concern the etheric and astral
bodies. The meeting with the Greater Guardian occurs when this loosening of
the links further extends to the physical body (that is to say, the brain).
The Lesser Guardian
of the Threshold is an independent being. It did not exist before the
individual had arrived at this particular point in his evolution. It is the
individual's creation. Only one of its essential functions can be here
described,— indeed it were no easy matter to furnish a complete description.
First of all, let us
present in narrative form the meeting of the occult student with the Guardian
of the Threshold. Only by means of this meeting does the former become aware
of the separation of the threads that connected his thoughts, his volitions,
and his feelings.
A terrible spectral
creature, in truth, is this that confronts the student. The latter needs all
the presence of mind and all the faith in the security of his way to wisdom
which he could acquire during his previous training.
The Guardian
proclaims his significance in something like these words:—“Hitherto, powers
which were invisible to you have watched over you. They worked so that in the
course of your life your good deeds brought their reward, your evil actions
their disastrous results. Through their influence your character formed
itself out of your experiences and your thoughts. They were the instruments
of your fate. It was they that ordered the measure of joy and pain which was
meted out to you in any one of your incarnations, according to your conduct
in earlier lives. They ruled you by the all-binding law of Karma. Now they
shall free you from a part of their constraint, and a portion of that which
they have accomplished for you must you now accomplish for yourself. In the
past you have borne many hard blows from Fate. Did you not know wherefore?
Each was the effect of a pernicious deed in a life gone by. You found joy and
gladness, and you partook of them. They, too, were the fruits of earlier
deeds. In your character you have many beautiful qualities, many ugly flaws;
and both of these you have woven for yourself out of your bygone experiences
and thoughts. Till now you did not know of this; only the effects were
revealed to you. But they, the Karmic Powers, beheld all the deeds of your
former lives, all your obscure thoughts and feelings; and thus have they
determined what you now are and the manner in which you now live.
“But the hour has
come when all the good and the evil aspects of your bygone lives shall be
laid open before you. Till now they were interwoven with your whole being;
they were in you, and you could not see them, even as with physical eyes you
cannot see your own physical brain. Now, however, they detach themselves from
you; they emerge from your personality. They assume an independent form which
you can observe, even as you observe the stones and flowers of the external
world. And I — I am that very being which has found for itself a body wrought
of your noble and your ignoble deeds. My spectral robe is woven according to
the entries in your life's ledger. Hitherto you have borne me invisibly
within yourself, yet it was well for you that this should be, for the wisdom
of the destiny which was hidden even from yourself has therefore worked
hitherto toward the extinguishing of the hideous stains that were upon my
form. Now that I have emerged, that hidden wisdom also departs from you. It
will henceforth trouble itself no more concerning you. It will now leave the
work in your hands alone. It is for me to become a complete and splendid
being, if I am not, indeed, to fall into decay. If this, the latter, should
occur, then should I drag you also down into a dark and ruined world. If you
would avoid this, then let your own wisdom become so great that it can take
over to itself the task of that other wisdom which was hidden from you, and
is now departed. When you have passed my threshold I shall never leave your
side for a single moment. From henceforth, when you do or think anything that
is evil, you will straightway discern your guilt as a hideous, demoniacal
distortion of this that is my form. Only when you have made good all your
bygone evil deeds and have so elevated yourself that further evil becomes a
thing impossible to you, — only then will my being be transformed into
glorious beauty. Then, too, shall I again unite myself with you in one being
for the helping of your further activity.
“My threshold is
constructed out of every feeling of fear to which you are still accessible,
out of every shrinking from the power which will take over to itself the
complete responsibility for all your deeds and thoughts. So long as you have
still any fear of that self-government of your fate, all that belongs to this
threshold has not yet been built into it; and so long as a single stone is
there found missing, you must remain standing as one forbidden entrance, or
else must you stumble. Seek not, then, to pass my threshold until you feel
yourself liberated from all fear, ready for the highest responsibility.
“Hitherto I have
only emerged from your personality when Death recalled you from an earthly
life, but even then my form was veiled from you. Only the powers of destiny
who watched over you could behold me, and they were able, in accordance with
my appearance, to build in you, during the interval between death and a new
birth, all that power and that capacity wherewith in a new terrestrial
existence you could labor at the glorifying of my form for the assurance of
your progress. It was an account of my imperfection, indeed, that the powers
of destiny were driven again and again to lead you back into a new
incarnation upon earth. If you died, I was yet there; and according to me did
the Lords of Karma fashion the manner of your re-birth.
“Only when through
an endless procession of lives you have brought me to perfection shall you no
longer descend among the powers of death, but, having united yourself
absolutely with me, you shall pass over with me into immortality.
“Thus do I stand
before you here to-day visible, as I have always stood invisible beside you
in the hour of death. When you shall have passed my threshold you will enter
those kingdoms which else would have opened to you only at physical death.
You will enter them with full knowledge, and henceforth, when you wander outwardly
visible upon the earth, you will also move through the kingdom of death,
which is the kingdom of eternal life. I am indeed the angel of Death; yet at
the same time I am the bringer of an imperishable higher life. Through me you
will die while still living in your body, to be reborn into an immortal
existence.
“The kingdom that
you now enter will introduce you to beings of a superhuman kind, and in that
kingdom happiness will be your lot. But the first acquaintance to be made in
that world must be myself, I that am your own creation. Erstwhile I lived
upon your life, but now through you I have grown to a separate existence and
here stand before you as the visible gauge of your future deeds, perhaps,
too, as your constant reproach. You were able to form me, but in so doing you
have taken up the duty of transforming me.”
What has been here
presented in a narrative form one must not imagine to be merely something
allegorical, but realize that it is an experience of the student which is the
highest degree actual. [ Note 1 ]
The Guardian will warn him not to go further if he does not feel in himself
the power necessary for the fulfilment of those demands which have been set
forth in the preceding speech. Although the form of the Guardian is so
frightful, it is yet nothing but the effect of the student's own past lives,
his own character, risen out of him into an independent life. This awakening
is brought about by the mutual separation of the volitions, the thoughts, and
the feelings. It is an experience of the deepest significance when one feels
for the first time that one has produced a spiritual being. The next thing to
be aimed at is the preparation of the occult student so that he can endure
the terrible sight without a vestige of timidity, and at the moment of the
meeting really feel his power to be so increased that he can take it upon
himself to effect with full realization the glorifying of the Guardian.
A result of this
meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold, if successful, is that the next
physical death of the student is an event entirely different from what death
was before. He consciously goes through the death whereby he lays aside the
physical body, as he lays aside an outworn garment or one that is grown
useless an account of a sudden rent. This — his physical death — is now only
an important fact, as it were, to those who have lived with him, whose
perceptions are still restricted to the world of the senses. For them the
occult student “dies,” but for himself nothing of importance in his whole
environment is changed. The entire superphysical world into which he steps
already stood open to him before death, and it is the same world that after
death confronts him.
Now, the Guardian of
the Threshold is also connected with other matters. The individual belongs to
a family, a nation, a race. His deeds in this world depend upon his
relationship to this greater unit. His individual character is likewise connected
with it. The conscious deeds of a single person are by no means the sum of
all he must reckon with in respect of his family, stock, nation, and race.
There is a destiny, as there is a character, pertaining to the family or the
race or the nation. For the person who is restricted to his senses these
things remain as general ideas, and the materialistic thinker will regard the
occult scientist contemptuously when he hears that for the latter the family
or national character, the lineal or racial destiny, becomes just as real a
being as the personality which is produced by the character and destiny of
the individual. The occultist comes to know of higher worlds in which the
separated personalities are discerned as members, like the arms, legs, and
head of an individual; and in the life of a family, of a nation, or a race,
he sees at work not only the separate individuals, but also the very real
souls of the family, nation, or race. Indeed, in a certain sense, the
separate individuals are only the executive organs of this family or racial
spirit. In truth, one can say that the soul of a nation, for example, makes
use of an individual belonging to that nation, for the execution of certain
deeds. The national soul does not descend to sensible reality. It dwells in
higher worlds, and in order to work in the physical world makes use of the
physical organs of a particular person. In a higher sense it is as when an
architect makes use of a workman for executing the details of a building.
Every person gets his work assigned him, in the truest sense of the words, by
the soul of the family, the nation, or the race. Now the ordinary person is
by no means initiated into the higher scheme of his work. He works
unconsciously toward the goal of the nation or race. From the moment when the
occult student meets the Guardian of the Threshold, he has not merely to
discern his own tasks as a personality, but must also work consciously at
those of his nation or his race. Every, extension of his horizon implies an
extension of his duties. As a matter of fact, the occult student joins a new
Body to those finer vehicles of his soul. He puts on another garment.
Hitherto he went through the world with those coverings which clothed his
personality. That which he must accomplish for his community, his nation, or
his race, is managed by the higher spirits which utilize his personality. A
further revelation which is now made to him by the Guardian is that
henceforth these spirits will withdraw their hands from him. He must get
quite clear of that union. Now, if he did not develop in himself those powers
which pertain to the national or racial spirits, he would completely harden
himself as a separate creature and would rush upon his own destruction.
Doubtless there are many people who would say, “Oh! I have entirely freed
myself from all lineal or racial connections; I only want to be man and
nothing but man.” To these one must reply, “Who, then, brought you to this
freedom? Was it not your family who gave you that position in the world where
you now stand? Was it not your ancestry, your nation, your race, that have
made you what you are? They have brought you up; and if you are now exalted
above all prejudices, if you are one of the light-bringers and benefactors of
your Clan, or even of your race, you owe that to their education. Indeed,
when you say of yourself that you are nothing as a person, you owe the very
fact that you have so become to the spirit of your community.” Only the
occult student learns what it means to be cut off entirely from the family,
the Clan, or the racial spirit. He alone realizes the insignificance of all
such education in respect of the life which now confronts him, for everything
that has gathered around him falls utterly away when the threads that bind
the will, the thoughts, and the feelings are sundered. He looks back on all
the events of his previous education as one must regard a house of which the
stones have fallen apart in pieces and which one must therefore build up
again in a new form.
It is more than
merely a figure of speech to say that after the Guardian of the Threshold has
uttered \ his first communications, there rises up from the place where he
stands a great whirlwind, which extinguishes all those lights of the spirit
which had hitherto illumined the pathway of life. At the same time an utter
blackness engulfs the student. It is only broken a little by the rays that
stream forth from the Guardian of the Threshold, and out of that darkness
resound his last admonitions:—“Step not across my threshold before you are
assured that you can illuminate the blackness by yourself: take not a single
step forward unless you are certain that you have a sufficiency of oil in
your lamp. The lamps of the guides which hitherto you have followed will now,
in the future, be absent.” After there words the student has to turn round
and direct his gaze back-ward. The Guardian of the Threshold now draws away a
veil that before had hidden deep secrets. The lineal, the national, the
racial spirits are revealed in their complete reality, and the student now
sees clearly how he had been guided so far, but it also dawns upon him that
henceforth he will have no such guidance. This is a second warning received
at the threshold from its guardian.
No one can attain to this vision unprepared;
but the higher training, which generally makes it possible for a person to
press an to the threshold, puts him simultaneously in a position to find at
the right moment the necessary power. Indeed, this training is of so
harmonious a kind, that the entrance into the new life can be made to lose
its exciting and tumultuous character. The experience at the threshold is,
for the occult student, attended by a foreshadowing of that bliss which is to
form the keynote of his newly awakened life. The sensation of a new freedom
will outweigh all other feelings; and together with this sensation the new
duties and the new responsibilities will seem as something which must needs
be undertaken by a person at a particular stage in his life.
(Rudolf Steiner, Initiation and Its Results - On-line since: 8th March, 2013)
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