Lecture VI

At this particular time there is one thing, however, to which we must call attention. Our present age has a certain peculiarity connected with the whole character of the world-cycle in which we live. It has an academic, theorising tendency, and no matter how much we strive to get rid of it, it still remains engrained in the souls of present-day men. For this reason, when it is a question of rising into higher worlds, they expect before everything to be told how, in such circumstances, each person should act whose soul is desirous of reaching super-sensible worlds. But in comparison with the real experience of super-sensible life, into these descriptions that may be said to give a normal path, a normal “line of march” for a quick ascent into higher worlds, there always seems to enter what, in a certain respect, might be called an element of the doubtful.