V. Knowledge of the Higher Worlds—Concerning Initiation

Another very understandable objection may be put forward to the employment of symbolic mental pictures. The building up of such pictures, it may be alleged, is carried out by a dreamlike thinking that makes use of arbitrary fancy, and the result can only be of questionable value. There is, however, no occasion to harbor any such misgiving in regard to the thought-pictures which form the basis of a right and sound spiritual training. Such thought-pictures are expressly chosen with this end in view—namely, that the relation they may have to external reality can be disregarded and their value sought purely in the power with which they work upon the soul when attention has been withdrawn from the outer world, when all sense-impressions and even all the thoughts the mind can entertain in response to sense-impressions have been eliminated.