Steiner's two directions of esoteric schooling: the mystic descends into his own inner being, the occultist pours himself outward into the manifold of the spiritual world.
The Mystic Path and the Occult Path in Anthroposophy is Rudolf Steiner's name for the two opposite directions esoteric schooling can take, set out in Copenhagen in June 1910 and published as Paths and Goals of the Spiritual Human Being, GA 125. The mystic descends into his own inner being, through the layer of passion, desire and instinct, until the I stands concentrated at its narrowest point. Because that descent uncovers everything unworthy in a person, the mystic arms himself with humility and carries a Master or an ideal down with him, the gesture Steiner reads in Tauler, in Eckhart, and in Paul's words, not I, but the Christ in me. The occultist travels the other way, outward through the gate of sleep into the manifold of the spiritual world, and must eliminate the personality rather than deepen it. Steiner held that the two directions arrive at one goal, and anthroposophical training has kept both movements inside one discipline ever since.
The mystic path and the occult path are the two roads Steiner distinguished for a soul that wants to reach the spirit deliberately rather than by accident. One runs inward, through the trials the medieval mystics recorded. The other runs outward, into the multiplicity met at the moment of falling asleep. Steiner taught them as a pair, never as alternatives.
In Steiner's Own Words
For anyone who enters into his own inner being must be prepared to experience terrible things. Stories of tragic experiences take place in the inner world of the person who dares to venture into the depths of his own being. A Tauler, a Eckhart, a Paulus can tell of it. And how was the help that these sought against the dangers? Paul says: Not I, but the Christ in me wants to act. Take with you the Master, the Ideal, but feel with it that the ego must be driven out. Not from your own ego should all feeling, all willing, all thinking be done. Your unworthy ego had to be driven out. This feeling is very similar to the sense of shame in the ordinary man. Wanting to be another, wanting to organize another into your own soul, that is the way of mysticism.
What it Means Today
Steiner names three witnesses for the inward road, Johannes Tauler, Meister Eckhart and the Apostle Paul. Bernard McGinn's The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany, the fourth volume of his history The Presence of God, published by Crossroad in 2005, treats Eckhart, Tauler and Henry Suso as one Dominican school and names its central move: the mysticism of the ground, in which the soul lets go of its possessive selfhood so that the divine ground can act in it. Eckhart's word for that letting go is Gelassenheit. McGinn's historical emptying of the appropriated self is Steiner's practical driving out of the unworthy ego, the Master carried down with you. Paul's formula, not I but Christ lives in me, is Galatians 2:20, and both readings turn on it.
Thalira synthesis: McGinn shows the mystic path has a documented lineage; Steiner's contribution is to say it was only ever half the schooling, since a soul that can empty itself inwardly still has to stay itself when poured out into the manifold. Inward exercise without an outward discipline of exact observation grows lopsided, which is why the School of Spiritual Science he founded at the Goetheanum in Dornach in 1924 held both movements in one training.
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