1. First Steps towards Imaginative Knowledge

From the very way in which I have tried to describe the passing over of thinking into the experience of an actual force within one, you will realise how little sense there is, where genuine spiritual development is concerned, in saying, for example, that anyone who wishes to enter the spiritual world by this path is merely indulging in fantasy or yielding to auto-suggestion. For it is the first reaction of many people to say: “Anyone who talks of the higher worlds in connection with a training of this kind is simply picturing what he has suggested to himself.” Then others take up the refrain, perhaps saying: “It is even possible that someone who loves lemonade has only to think of it and his mouth immediately begins to water, just as though he were drinking lemonade. Auto-suggestion has such power!”