I. The Difference Between Man and Animal

To put it differently. From about 1413, for the 2160 years that the epoch of the consciousness soul lasts, mankind in one incarnation or another will have to pass the Guardian of the Threshold and, if only partly, go through what can be experienced in connection with the Guardian. Man can be forced by materially minded men to pass by unconsciously or he can in freedom make the resolve to listen to Spiritual Science and thus experience something in passing the Guardian of the Threshold, either through his own vision or through sound human understanding. And in thus going by the Guardian of the Threshold something will be experienced that enables men to form correct, pertinent conceptions about the concrete supersensible world—above all conceptions enabling them to direct this conceiving, this thinking, in a certain free, unprejudiced direction conducive to reality.