Over and over Steiner explained that it was not the intent of the higher powers that any human being should be deprived of knowledge of the Mysteries, but rather that such knowledge was beyond the reach or capabilities of those who had not yet found it. The first chapter of his vital Occult Science (OS), entitled “The Character of Occult Science,” shows it to be open to any who is willing to meet its substantial requirements. Clearly Christ expressed the same. See Mt 7,6, especially in the light of Jn 16,12, Heb 9,5 and Is 6,9-13. While these passages show that most were not yet ready in that “generation,” after Christ had dismissed the crowds he said to his disciples, “there is nothing hid, except to be made manifest; nor .. . secret, except to come to light” (Mk 4,22; Lk 8,17). Immediately following both of these passages Christ stressed the importance of how his hearers “heard” (Mk 4,23; Lk 8,18), a clear recognition of Isaiah’s message, Is 6,9. A typical Steiner presentation on this is from The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad Gita (BG), Lect. 8, as follows:

The summits of spiritual life have at all times been concealed from the wide plain of human intelligence. So it has remained, in a certain sense, right up to our present age. It is true that one of the characteristics of our age, which is only now dawning .. . will be that certain things hitherto kept secret and really known to but very few will be spread abroad into large circles. That is the reason why you are present here, because our movement is the beginning of this spreading abroad of facts that until now have remained secret from the masses. . . . The anthroposophical view . . . came precisely from the feeling that certain secrets must today be poured out into all people. Until our time .. . these facts remained secret not because they were deliberately kept so, but because it lay in the natural course of man’s development that they had to remain secret. It is said that the secrets of the old Mysteries were protected from the profane by certain definite, strictly observed rules. Far more than by rule, these secrets were protected by a fundamental characteristic of mankind in olden times, namely, that they simply could not have understood these secrets [thus, Jn 16,12]. This fact was a much more powerful protection than any external rule could be.

Anthroposophy shows that the Christ Event was the enactment, “Once for All,” of the ancient Mysteries on the stage of world history (see CMF, The Gospel of St. Matthew [GSMt], Lect. 9, esp. p. 151; From Jesus to Christ [JTC], Lects. 4, p. 73 and 6, pp. 102-105). In the GSMt lecture, Steiner said,

In the book Christianity as Mystical Fact I have explained the sense in which secrets of the ancient Mysteries come to light in the Gospels, and that the Gospels, fundamentally, are repetitions of the descriptions of Initiation in the Mysteries. Why, in relating events in the life of Christ, was it possible to describe the processes enacted in the Mysteries? It was possible because everything that took place in the Mysteries in the inner life of the soul, had become historic fact: because the Christ-Jesus-Event was a re-portrayal of symbolic rites enacted during the process of the old Initiation, but fulfilled now at the higher level of full Ego-consciousness. This fact must always be kept in mind. The similarity of episodes in Christ’s life—as narrated in the Gospels—with procedures in the Mysteries will certainly be realized by those who are convinced that such procedures became historic reality through His coming, although they were enacted on an entirely different level of consciousness.

The following could also be said.—Those destined to witness the Christ Event in Palestine observed the fulfillment of the Essene prophecy and were aware of the Baptism by John, the Temptation and what followed it, the Crucifixion, and the ensuing happenings. They could say to themselves: Here is a life lived through by a sublime Being in the body of a man. What are the all-important points in this life? Certain things take place as external events and they are identical with experiences undergone in the Mysteries by candidates for Initiation. We need therefore simply turn to the canon of a Mystery-rite and there we should find the prototype of a process that may now be described as an historical fact!

Here, then, is the great secret. What had formerly been shrouded in the darkness of temple-sanctuaries, perceptible—but only in its effects—to those in the outer world possessed of spiritual vision, was now enacted as the Christ Event on the stage of world-history itself. It must of course be realized that in the days of the Evangelists, no biographies were produced of the kind familiar to us today. In a biography, let us say, of Goethe, of Schiller, or of Lessing, every detail of their lives is probed into and every scrap of information collected, usually resulting in a mass of unimportant data purporting to convey the essentials of a life-history. Whereas all these details hinder one from discerning the points that really matter, the Evangelists were content to describe what was of central and fundamental importance in the life of Christ Jesus, namely that in this life there was a repetition of the process of Initiation—but enacted here in the great setting of world-history.

What was taught in the Mysteries was “to a great extent .. . the same as what we have come to know today as anthroposophy. It differed only in that it was adapted to the customs of that time and imparted according to strict rules” (The Gospel of St. John and its Relation to the Other Gospels [Jn-Rel], Lect. 6, p. 102). Steiner’s work contains many other descriptions of these ancient Mysteries.⁵

Just as there were many in Jesus’ day (“generation”) not yet prepared to receive the deeper wisdom in the Mystery of Golgotha, while his closest disciples were urged to “enter by the narrow gate” (Mt 7,13), so also in our own time are there two paths. Most will walk the wider and easier one, and their pathway to the wisdom in the Mystery of Golgotha will be the one of evolutionary “Perfect(ion)” over many lives and eras—always exposed to the dangers of “destruction” which beset that path. Only “few” will “find” in our day the higher path. It is “narrow” and “hard.” Steiner has shown us this path in his Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment (KHW).⁶ In his preface to the third edition, Steiner says “It would be an error to imagine these disclosures . . . to be valueless for one who lacks the inclination or the possibility⁷ to pursue this path himself, . . . [for it can give a basis for] confidence in the communications of the person who has done so. . . . [It will] help those who want their sense of truth and feeling for truth concerning the supersensible world strengthened and assured.”

The study of this term “Mysteries” cannot be considered complete without considering also other closely related terms and phrases herein, such as “Three Days’ Journey,” “Widow’s Son,” and “Under the Tree,” to mention only some of the more important.

Bearing in mind the evolutionary development of humanity that runs as a central theme through this entire anthroposophical work, let us now look at the extensive Biblical references to the Mysteries under the terms “mystery” (including “mysterious” and “mysteries”), “hid” (including “hidden” and “hide”), “secret,” “remember” (including “remembered”; notably nothing applicable is found under “memory”), as well as some other indicative passages. One thing becomes clear as we go through them. The irony in today’s religious lemming-like chant that the occult is sinister is that few themes are more pervasive in the Bible than this indicator of its occult nature.