X. The Three Decisions on the Path of Imaginative Cognition: Loneliness, Fear, Dread

Here too there is a difficult point, for this method is useful; those who stimulate their emotions go forward much more quickly. They enter the spiritual world and have all kinds of experiences—and that is what most people desire. The question with most people is not whether they are entering the spiritual world in the right way but only whether they are entering it at all. The uncertainty that arises here is that if we have not first passed through the Gate of Death but go directly to the Gate of the Elements, we are there prevented by Lucifer from really perceiving the lion, so that before we become aware of it, it devours us. The difficulty is that we are no longer able to distinguish between what is related to us and what is outside in the world. We learn to know spiritual beings, elemental spirits. One can learn to recognize a rich and extensive spiritual world, without having passed through the Gate of Death, but these are spiritual beings who for the most part have the task of maintaining the human blood circulation and the work of the human heart. Such beings are always around us in the spiritual, in the elemental world. They are spirits whose life-element is in the air, in the encircling warmth and also in the light; they also have their life-element in the music of the spheres, which is no longer physically perceptible; these spiritual beings weave and lace through everything that is living. Of course, then, we enter this world. And the thing becomes alluring because the most wonderful spiritual discoveries can be made in this world. If a man—who has not passed through the Gate of Death but has gone directly to the Portal of the Lion without seeing the lion—perceives an elementary spirit whose task is to maintain the activity of the heart, this elementary spirit, who also maintains the heart-activity of other people, may under certain circumstances bring information about other human beings, even about people of the past, or indeed prophetic tidings of the future. The experience may be accompanied with great success, yet it is not the right path because it does not make us free in our mobility in the spiritual world.