Knowledge of the Higher Worlds E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 285

Beschreibung

Rudolf Steiner's fundamental handbook for spiritual and personal development has grown more modern as time has passed, although his methods remain clearly distinguishable from the many others now in circulation. For one thing, Steiner's path of spiritual growth is based on the clarity of thought normally associated with scientific research. Rather than denying clear thinking, his aim is to extend it beyond its present limitations. Secondly, Steiner recognizes - as all genuine disciplines always have - that the path to spiritual experience is an arduous and dangerous one, calling for self-control in thought, word and deed. Human beings comprise a unity, and we cannot develop knowledge without a corresponding development in feeling and will. Rudolf Steiner foretold that humanity would begin to experience a longing for forms of experience that transcended intellectual, materialistic thinking. More than one hundred years after the first publication of this book in 1904, there are countless means to achieve such experience, such as eastern meditation, channelling, remote viewing and astral projection. In addition, there has been a huge growth in people reporting extrasensory perceptions of various kinds, such as near-death experiences and meetings with angels. In this context, Steiner's key spiritual workbook - reproduced here in the classic Osmond/Davy translation - is needed more than ever, given its unique, precise instructions for inner training, its protective exercises, and its indications for grounding and centring. Knowledge of the Higher Worlds begins with the conditions required for personal development, and guides us through the stages of initiation, its practical aspects and its effects.

Leseprobe

RUDOLF STEINER (1861–1925) called his spiritual philosophy ‘anthroposophy’, meaning ‘wisdom of the human being’. As a highly developed seer, he based his work on direct knowledge and perception of spiritual dimensions. He initiated a modern and universal ‘science of spirit’, accessible to anyone willing to exercise clear and unprejudiced thinking.

From his spiritual investigations Steiner provided suggestions for the renewal of many activities, including education (both general and special), agriculture, medicine, economics, architecture, science, philosophy, religion and the arts. Today there are thousands of schools, clinics, farms and other organizations involved in practical work based on his principles. His many published works feature his research into the spiritual nature of the human being, the evolution of the world and humanity, and methods of personal development. Steiner wrote some 30 books and delivered over 6000 lectures across Europe. In 1924 he founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world.

KNOWLEDGE OFTHE HIGHER WORLDS

HOW IS IT ACHIEVED?

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

Translation revised by D.S. Osmond and C. Davy. Re-edited by Rudolf Steiner Press for this special edition to mark the 150th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s birth.

Rudolf Steiner PressHillside House, The SquareForest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2012

First published in English in a single volume in 1923

Originally published in German under the title Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten? (volume 10 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. This authorized translation is based on the 20th edition, and is published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

Translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978 1 85584 294 6

Cover by Andrew Morgan DesignTypeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan

Contents

Foreword by Matthew Barton

Preface to the eighth edition (Berlin, 1918)

Preface to the fifth edition (Berlin, 1914)

Preface to the third edition (Berlin, 1909)

1.  How is Knowledge of the Higher Worlds Achieved?

Conditions

Inner Tranquillity

2.  The Stages of Initiation

Preparation

Enlightenment

Control of Thoughts and Feelings

3.  Initiation

4.  Practical Aspects

5.  The Conditions of Esoteric Training

6.  Some Effects of Initiation

7.  Changes in Dream Life

8.  Continuity of Consciousness

9.  The Division of the Personality during Spiritual Training

10.  The Guardian of the Threshold

11.  Life and Death. The Great Guardian of the Threshold

Appendix to eighth edition

Notes

Further Reading

Foreword

Originally written as a series of articles for the magazine Lucifer-Gnosis between 1904 and 1905, the first version of this book was published a little over a hundred years ago in 1905—thus immediately after Theosophy and four years before his compendious work Occult Science. Subsequently—as the various prefaces show—Steiner carefully reworked it with great care and attention, in a way he rarely did or had time to do, to improve its ‘clarity and definition’. One of the points of clarification, in Steiner’s own words, is to emphasize the importance of our ‘direct relationship to an objective spiritual world’ rather than to the ‘personality of a teacher’. The tumultuous events of the First World War were just beginning as he wrote this. Ultimately they were to cast doubt on all kinds of past assumptions about social structures and class hierarchies, including people’s previously unquestioning reliance on ‘authorities’ such as leaders and teachers. Less apparent but perhaps of equal concern to Steiner was the need to take back the whole domain of ‘spiritual development’ from certain somewhat sinister and secretive quarters, and place it full square in the midst of ordinary human life. Between Steiner’s third and fifth Preface to this book, for instance, the Order of Teutons was founded (1911) and would later develop into the Thule Society—a breeding ground for Nazism founded on occult beliefs and practices. Somewhat earlier, in 1904, as Steiner was just starting to write this book, a ‘disembodied voice’ had dictated The Book of the Law to Aleister Crowley, the prime tenet of which was ‘Do as thou wilt’. Many such leading figures in secret, occult societies—which also at the same time sought to be influential power bases—had megalomaniacal ideas of their own status as highly spiritually advanced adepts or even prophets (though they were often fuelled by drugs, alcohol and libertine sexual practices).

Against this background Steiner—who even in the view of a critically detached commentator was a ‘mild, gentle, good, kindly man’*—was at pains to counteract the cult of personality. Instead, in this book, he stresses our ‘healthy faculty of judgement’, ‘healthy feeling’ and the need to balance the exercises he gives to create ‘harmony in the soul’. He sees such down-to-earth and unsensational beginnings as a vital foundation for a path of development whose benefits for ourselves are less important than for, firstly, our social milieu, and ultimately for the whole progress of humanity. This is why, perhaps, he also sees little difference ‘between occult knowledge and the rest of our knowledge and skills’ except in the quality of devotion and veneration with which we can prepare a ‘worthy reception’ for such knowledge. Unlike Crowley, for instance, who spoke of the masses in haughty and disparaging terms, Steiner urges us to look for the good in all things and people, continually reiterating that ordinary daily life is the place where our practice starts, and warning against distancing ourselves from everyday concerns.

Quite apart from the alarming self-belief of deranged gurus and political leaders, it was no doubt increasingly hard at the beginning of the twentieth century for human beings to consider that there was something ‘higher than ourselves’— an absolutely fundamental stance of Steiner’s. It appeared to many instead that, as highly evolved apes, we were the pinnacle of evolution, the cock on the dunghill if you like, and that it was therefore our right to crow. Equally, the faith of materialism suggested, at least subliminally, that everyone must fight their own corner and get what (material) benefits they could for themselves. Hand-in-glove with this outlook was the sense that a highly developed critical, analytic faculty alone was the proper vehicle of all knowledge. Though he always fully and properly valued the critical faculty, Steiner is very radical in suggesting here the deep connection between humility or devotion and perception, stating that the world will only disclose itself to us if we open ourselves deeply to it rather than battling to impose our (even unconscious) prejudices. If we allow what we experience to echo in the stillness, he says, ‘every flower, every animal, every action, will then unveil ... secrets undreamed of’. Such a phrase seems to connect with Wordsworth’s ‘recollection in tranquillity’—we might recall the daffodils dancing on his ‘inward eye’—yet carries this forwards from subjective experience to the possibility of a new, liberating, objective mode of perception.

The book bears the word ‘knowledge’ in its title. We can only gain and possess knowledge by combining something within us with something beyond us, by enlarging ourselves, our perception, to include something that initially seems not to be part of us. This isn’t easy and immediately takes us to the threshold of the comfort zone of knowing what we like and liking what we know. The exercises in this book are gentle yet—or one might also say therefore—have transformative potential. They require patience, openness, attentiveness, focus and increasing subtlety of perception. Yet those attributes are also, at the same time, what the exercises themselves can engender in us if we stay with them. Steiner frequently emphasizes that sudden, radical alterations of perception or short-cuts to enlightenment are not at all likely or even desirable. On the other hand persistence and humility will very slowly change the way we see, taking us beyond a confining subjectivity to an ever deeper, fuller and—the important thing—more real and fruitful engagement with all life. Thus the soul harmony which Steiner advocates involves developing an inward receptivity in which we can—for moments at least—silence the clamouring of our own self to meet other, both human and spiritual realities around us. The delicate changes that occur may to begin with simply be ‘a dim feeling that we are on the right path’, yet attending to such apparently unimportant hunches and intuitions is the beginning of clearer sight. Poets such as Robert Frost—‘a poem begins as a lump in the throat, a homesickness, a lovesickness’—know the importance of hearkening to an inarticulate realm of intuition that has not yet found any clear words or ways to be formulated. Also reminiscent of Frost, whose poems frequently took their point of departure from the actual, natural world around him, is the way Steiner does not discount the physical world but instead urges us to recognize that ‘in what I see, something I do not see lies hidden’. In fact, so down-to-earth is he that he compares this path of self-development with any course of professional training, with its particular stages and disciplines, that can be accomplished by slow, steady persistence. The ultimate aim of this path is not for us to ‘create visions’, with all the attendant risks of fantasy this suggests, but to let reality itself create vision within us so that ‘higher worlds begin to fashion your eyes of soul and ears of spirit’.

In its gentleness, care for the reader, its sense of human potential, its grounding in both physical and spiritual realities—and indeed the interplay between these—this book is liberating in the truest, most delicate sense. It combines the deepest, strengthening awareness of the value of each person’s inner life with the deepest knowledge of our inter-dependency with our natural, human and spiritual environments. It knows that real inner changes occur unseen in the depths before they ever manifest, that thoughts and feelings are potent realities as much as deeds, and that the inner life of each of us is vital and significant to the world. Above all, perhaps, while staying calm in tone and sober in expression, without any sensational or seductive promises, this is a book that can, by our own efforts and by nothing else, take us to the heart of ourselves where all reality is rediscovered.

Matthew Barton

January 2011

*Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay, HarperCollins 1997.

Prefaces

To the eighth edition

When I came to go through the contents of this book for the new edition, only minor alterations seemed to me to be necessary. On the other hand I have added an Appendix in which I have been at pains to speak with greater precision than before of the foundations of the life of soul upon which the communications made in the book must rest, if they are not to be misunderstood. I believe that what is said in this Appendix may be able to show many an opponent of anthroposophical spiritual science that his judgement had been justified only because he had imagined spiritual science to be something quite other than itself, while he had entirely failed to grasp what it really is.

Rudolf Steiner

May 1918

To the fifth edition

For this new edition of Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, the text often years ago has been worked through in every detail. The need for revision arises naturally in accounts of experiences of the soul and its paths of development such as are given in this book. With every part of such an account the soul of the writer remains intimately connected, and in every part there is something which works continually upon his soul. It was almost inevitable, therefore, that this activity of soul should be bound up with an endeavour to improve the clarity and definition of the earlier presentation.

Here is the origin of what I have tried to do for the present new edition. All essential features, all fundamental themes, remain as they were; but there are some important changes. In many passages I have been able to achieve greater precision in characterizing details. This seemed to me important. If anyone wishes to apply in his own soul-life what is communicated in this book, he needs to be able to grasp the nature of the path of development described with the greatest possible exactitude. Misunderstandings are far more apt to arise with descriptions of inner, spiritual processes than with descriptions of the physical world. They are made possible by many factors: the mobility inherent in the life of soul, the necessity never to forget how different this life of soul is from life in the physical world, and much else. In this new edition I have made a point of identifying those parts of the book where such misunderstandings may arise and have tried to forestall them by redrafting the passages in question.

When I wrote the articles of which the book is comprised many things had to be put differently from what is possible today, when for the last ten years facts based on knowledge of higher worlds have been published. In my books Occult Science—an Outline, The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind, A Road to Self Knowledge, particularly in The Threshold of the Spiritual World, and in other writings, spiritual processes are described whose existence it was necessary to indicate in this book more than ten years ago, but in words different from those that seem appropriate now. At that time I had to say of many things not described in the book that they could be learnt through ‘oral communication’. By now, a great deal that was indicated in this way has been published. These indications, however, did not perhaps completely avert mistaken opinions on the part of readers. The personal relationship of an aspirant for spiritual training to this or that teacher might have been regarded as much more essential than it is. In this new edition I hope that by the way in which many details are presented I have succeeded in emphasizing more sharply that for anyone who is seeking spiritual training in accordance with present-day spiritual conditions a direct relationship to the objective spiritual world is much more important than a relationship to the personality of a teacher. Even in the course of spiritual training the teacher will more and more adopt the position merely of a helper, similar to that adopted, according to modern views, in any other branch of knowledge. I believe I have sufficiently stressed that in spiritual training the teacher’s authority and the pupil’s faith in him should play no other role than that prevailing in any other domain of knowledge or of life. It seems to me that much will depend upon gaining an increasingly right judgement of this relationship of the spiritual investigator to people who become interested in the findings of his research. So I believe I have improved the book in passages where, after ten years, I could see a need for improvement.

The new edition of this book was already printed when the Great War, which mankind is now experiencing, began. And I have to write this preface while my soul is deeply stirred by these fateful events.

Rudolf Steiner

Berlin, 7 September 1914

To the third edition

The contents of this book appeared originally as a series of essays under the title: How is Knowledge of the Higher Worlds Achieved? A work of this kind, dealing with a way of development that enables man to apprehend the supersensible worlds, should not appear in a new form without some prefatory remarks. Its communications concerning the development of the human soul are intended to meet different needs. In the first place the intention is to give some help to those who feel drawn to the findings of spiritual research and are impelled to ask: whence do those who claim to be able to say something about higher riddles of life obtain their knowledge? Spiritual science has something to say about these riddles. Whoever wishes actually to perceive the facts leading to this claim must rise to the plane of supersensible knowledge. He must tread the path which this book attempts to describe. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the communications of spiritual science are valueless for anyone who has neither inclination nor opportunity to tread this path himself. In order to investigate the facts, a capacity to penetrate into the supersensible worlds is essential. But once they have been investigated and the findings communicated, sufficient conviction of the truth of the communications can be acquired by one who does not himself perceive the facts. A large part of the communications can at once be put to the test by applying to them quite freely a healthy faculty of judgement—provided that this freedom is not hampered by any of the various preconceptions now so abundantly prevalent in human life. It may easily happen, for instance, that someone discovers here or there a statement that seems to him at variance with certain findings of modern science. The truth is that there is no finding of science which runs counter to the results of spiritual research. Nevertheless it is easy to believe that this or that dictum of science conflicts with communications about the higher worlds if the scientific conclusions are not studied from every aspect and without bias. It will be found that the more open-mindedly spiritual science is compared with the positive achievements of modern science, the more perfectly can their full agreement be recognized.

Other statements of spiritual science will admittedly more or less elude a purely intellectual judgement. But those who realize that not only the intellect but also healthy feeling can be a judge of truth will be able without difficulty to come to terms with these statements also. And when this feeling is not impelled to this or that opinion by sympathy or antipathy but, entirely unimpeded by prejudice, allows the fruits of knowledge of the spiritual worlds to work upon it a sound judgement based on feeling will result. And there are still many other ways whereby this knowledge can be substantiated for those who cannot or do not desire to tread the path into the supersensible world. Such people can certainly feel the value of this knowledge for life even though they learn it only from the communications of spiritual investigation. Not everyone can immediately become a seer; but the seer’s knowledge is healthy nourishment for everyone. Everyone can apply this knowledge in life. And whoever does so will soon realize what it can mean in all spheres of life, and what is lacking when it is rejected. When rightly applied in life, knowledge of the supersensible worlds proves not to be unpractical but practical in the highest degree.

However, if someone does not himself wish to tread the path to higher knowledge, he may, if he is drawn to the facts to be observed when it is followed, ask: ‘How does the seer arrive at these facts?’ This book endeavours to give those who are interested in this question a picture of what has to be undertaken in order really to know the supersensible world. It hopes to present the path into the supersensible world in such a way that even a person who is not himself following it may gain confidence in what is said by one who has trodden it. Having become aware of how the spiritual investigator works and having accepted the validity of this method, someone may say: ‘The impression made upon me by the account of the path into the higher worlds enables me to understand why the facts imparted here seem to me enlightening.’ This book may therefore prove to be of service to those who desire added strength and assurance in their sense of truth and feeling for truth with regard to the supersensible world. But the book would no less like to offer something to those who are themselves seeking the path to supersensible knowledge. The truth of what is presented here will best be proven by those persons who make it reality within their own being. Whoever has this aim will do well to remind himself again and again that in any account of the soul’s development more is called for than familiarity with the contents—which is often all that is attempted in the case of other works. Intimate penetration into the text is necessary; it ought to be a stipulation that one particular matter shall not be grasped only through what is said about it specifically but through much that is said about quite other things. In this way it will be realized that the core of the matter does not lie in one truth, but in the harmony of them all. This must be very earnestly borne in mind by those who wish to carry out the exercises. A particular exercise can be correctly understood and also correctly carried out; yet it can have a wrong effect if someone who is practising it does not add to it another exercise which resolves the one-sidedness of the first into a harmony in the soul. Whoever reads this book in such a way that reading becomes an inner experience of his own will not only familiarize himself with the contents but will also have a particular feeling at one place, a different feeling at another; and then he will recognize the import of one or other passage for the development of the soul. He will also discover in what form he should attempt this or that exercise according to his particular individuality. When, as here, descriptions are given of processes that must be experienced, it is necessary to return repeatedly to the contents; for the conviction will arise that a satisfactory understanding of much of what is said can be reached only when it has been tried out, for then, after the attempt, certain subtleties that inevitably escaped one previously will be discerned.

Those readers who do not intend to follow the path here described will find that the book contains much that can be of use for their inner life: rules for the ordering of life, indications of how this or that apparent enigma may be explained, and so on.

And many a one who has certain experiences behind him, and has in many respects become initiated through life itself, will find satisfaction when he discovers a coherent explanation of matters of which he had been aware without connecting them—things of which he was already cognizant without perhaps having brought this knowledge to a stage where he could form a satisfactory conception of it for himself.

Rudolf Steiner

Berlin, 1909

1. How is Knowledge of the Higher Worlds Achieved?

Conditions

In every human being there slumber faculties by means of which he can acquire for himself a knowledge of higher worlds. The mystic, the gnostic, the theosophist have always spoken of a world of soul and a world of spirit which are just as real to them as the world we can see with physical eyes and touch with physical hands. Anyone who listens to them may at every moment say to himself: ‘That of which they speak I too can know, if I develop certain powers which today still slumber within me. It can only be a matter of how to set to work to develop such faculties.’ Guidance on them can be given only by those who already possess such powers. As long as a human race has existed there has always been training, in the course of which individuals possessed of the higher faculties gave guidance to those who were seeking for them. Such training is called esoteric training, and the instruction received is called esoteric or occult instruction. This designation naturally causes misunderstanding. Anyone hearing it may easily be misled into believing that those concerned with this training are a specially privileged class of people who arbitrarily withhold their knowledge from their fellow men. He may also think that perhaps nothing of real importance lies behind such knowledge, for if it were genuine knowledge—so he is tempted to think—there would be no need to make a secret of it; it could be communicated openly and its benefits made accessible to everyone.

Those who have been initiated into the nature of occult knowledge are not in the least surprised that the uninitiated should think in this way, for the secret of initiation can be understood only by someone who has himself experienced, up to a certain stage, this initiation into the higher Mysteries of existence. How, then—it may be asked—is an uninitiated person to develop any human interest in this so-called occult knowledge? How and why should he seek for something of whose nature he can form absolutely no idea? Such a question derives from an entirely erroneous conception of the nature of occult knowledge. There is, in truth, no difference between occult knowledge and the rest of man’s knowledge and skills. This occult knowledge is no more of a secret for the average human being than writing is a secret for one who has not learnt it. And just as everyone who chooses the right way to set about it can learn to write, so can everyone who seeks for the right path become a pupil of occultism—indeed, even a teacher of it. In one respect only do the conditions here differ from those that obtain with regard to external knowledge and skills. The possibility of acquiring the art of writing may be withheld from someone through poverty, or through the state of civilization into which he is born; but for the attainment of knowledge and skills in the higher worlds there is no obstacle for one who earnestly seeks for them.

Many believe that they must search here or there for the Masters of higher knowledge in order to receive enlightenment from them. But there are two possibilities. In the first place, whoever strives earnestly for higher knowledge will shun no exertion, fear no obstacle, in his quest for an initiate who can lead him into the higher Mysteries of the world. On the other hand, everyone may be certain that initiation will come to find him under all circumstances if he gives evidence of earnest and worthy endeavour to attain knowledge. It is a natural law among all initiates to withhold from no man the knowledge he is entitled to possess; but there is equally a natural law which lays down that no occult knowledge shall be imparted to anyone not qualified to receive it. And the more strictly he observes both these laws, the more perfect is an initiate. The spiritual bond embracing all initiates is not an external one, but the two laws here mentioned form as it were strong clasps by which the members of this bond are held together. You may live in intimate friendship with an initiate, yet a gap separates you from his essential self until you yourself have become an initiate. You may win in the fullest sense the heart, the love, of an initiate, but he will confide his secret to you only when you are ready for it. You may flatter him, you may torment him; nothing can induce him to divulge anything which he knows should not be divulged to you because at your present stage of development you do not understand how to prepare in your soul a worthy reception for this Mystery.

The ways by which a person is made ready for the reception of a Mystery are laid down with all exactitude. The direction he is to take is inscribed with indelible, external letters in the worlds of spirit where the initiates guard the higher Mysteries. In ancient times, anterior to our ‘history’, the temples of the spirit were outwardly visible; today, when our life has become so unspiritual, they are not to be found in the world open to external sight. But spiritually they are present everywhere, and everyone who seeks can find them.

Only within his own soul can a person find the means whereby the lips of the initiates will be unsealed for him. He must develop certain faculties to a definite and high degree, and then the sublime treasures of the spirit can become his own.

A certain fundamental attitude of the soul must be the starting point. The spiritual investigator calls this fundamental attitude the path of veneration, of devotion to truth and knowledge. Without this fundamental attitude no one can become an occult pupil. Anyone who is experienced in this domain knows what aptitudes are shown already in their childhood by those who later on become occult pupils. There are children who look up with reverent awe to certain venerated persons. Their reverence for these people forbids them, even in the deepest depths of their hearts, to admit any thought of criticism or opposition. Such children grow up into young men and women who feel happy when they are able to look up to anything that fills them with veneration. Many occult pupils come from the ranks of such children. If you have ever stood outside the door of some revered person and on this your first visit had a feeling of awe as you pressed the door-handle to enter the room, which for you was a holy place, a feeling has come to expression within you which may be the seed of your later discipleship. It is a blessing for every maturing human being to have such feelings as foundations within him. But it must not be thought that this will lead to submissiveness and servility. What was once childlike veneration for persons becomes, later on, a veneration for truth and knowledge. Experience teaches that those of free bearing are those who have learnt to venerate where veneration is due; and veneration is due whenever it springs from the depths of the heart.

If we do not develop within ourselves the deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve to a higher stage. The initiate has acquired the strength to lift his head to the heights of knowledge only by guiding his heart to the depths of veneration and devotion. The heights of the spirit can be scaled only by passing through the gateway of humility. You can acquire true knowledge only when you have learnt to respect it. Man has certainly the right to turn his eyes to the light but he must first earn this right. There are laws in the spiritual life just as there are in material life. Rub a glass rod with an appropriate substance and it becomes electrified, that is, it acquires the power to attract small objects. This is a law of nature, known to everyone who has learnt a little physics. Similarly, acquaintance with the elementary rudiments of spiritual science brings the realization that every feeling of true devotion harboured in the soul develops a power which leads sooner or later to a further stage of knowledge.

Whoever has within him feelings of true devotion, or who is fortunate enough to have them inculcated by a fitting education, brings a great deal with him when, later in life, he seeks access to higher knowledge. Failing such preparation, he will encounter difficulties at the very first step unless he undertakes by rigorous self-education to engender within himself this attitude of devotion. In our time it is of the utmost importance that full attention be paid to this. Our civilization tends more to criticism, judgement, condemnation, than to devotion and selfless veneration. Our children already criticize far more than they revere. But every criticism, every adverse judgement passed, dispels the powers of the soul for the attainment of higher knowledge, just as reverent veneration develops these powers. This is not meant to imply anything against our civilization. There is no question here of levelling criticism against it. To this critical faculty, this conscious sense of human judgement, this principle of ‘prove all things and hold fast what is best’ we owe the greatness of our culture. Man could never have developed the science, industry, commerce, civil rights, of our time if he had not everywhere exercised his critical faculty and applied the standards of his judgement. But what we have thereby gained in the way of external culture we have had to pay for with a corresponding forfeiture of higher knowledge, of spiritual life. It must be emphasized that in the domain of higher knowledge it is not a matter of venerating persons, but of venerating knowledge and truth.