2. Initiation and Mysteries

And people will no longer mock at “initiation” any more than they mock at the demand that anyone who wants to research the life of the smallest organisms must first learn how to use a microscope. Research requires the fulfillment of certain preconditions. For the aspiring mystic, these conditions are not those of external technique, but rather the cultivation of a certain direction of the life of the soul. Through this cultivation, the sense is opened for truths that do not speak of the transitory, but rather of that of which – in Goethe's words – the transitory is “only a simile”. — In the womb of human existence, higher abilities rest, as the fruit rests in the womb of the flower. — And therefore no being should have the presumption to say that there is something exhaustive, finished in its world. If a person has such presumption, he is like the worm that considers the world of his senses to be the circumference of existence.