Lecture I

Now it is obvious that we shall first have to come to an understanding together of what these three words mean. When we speak of occultism, then for the majority of the educated world today we are speaking of something totally unknown. For ordinary everyday life occultism, in its original and proper form, has always been something secret and hidden. Occultism starts, indeed, from the idea that in order to come to a knowledge and experience of his own being, man cannot remain at the kind of vision that ordinary consciousness affords, but must go forward to an altogether different vision, an altogether different kind of knowledge.