6. The Innate Capacities of the Nations of the World

In order for anyone to attain to real occultism, thus serving the whole of humanity, he must outgrow his folk character. He must in a certain sense—here we may be permitted to use the Indian expression—become a “homeless” person; in the innermost nature of his soul he must not consider himself as belonging to any one people. He must not have impulses that serve only a single people if he desires to advance in genuine occultism. But the kind of occultism that desires to serve a single people in a limited way arrives at a special experience when confronting the Guardian of the Threshold. Thus, in the case of all those who seek for an occult development within the societies of the English-speaking peoples, what becomes manifest in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold is that they discover at the moment when they desire to cross the Threshold those forces living in the depths of human nature. These become manifest when one enters the super-sensible world and are of the same character as the destructive forces in the universe. This is what they behold in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold. When they are guided in such a society to the point of crossing the Threshold, they then become acquainted with the evil powers of disease and death, of everything that paralyzes and destroys. When the same destructive forces that cause death in nature—and they work within us also—bring about knowledge, it is this knowledge that comes to light in those societies. Most assuredly one does enter the super-sensible world, but one must pass the Guardian of the Threshold. It is necessary to pass by the Guardian of the Threshold in such a way, however, that one has the experience of learning to know death in its true form, as it dwells in us and also in outside nature.