The Mission of Esoteric Science in Our Time

In our time, this strict separation between clairvoyants and initiates cannot be carried out at all. Today, it is necessary that everyone who has reached a certain degree of initiation be given at least the opportunity to attain a certain degree of clairvoyance. The reason for this is that in our time, it is not possible to establish complete trust between people. Today, everyone wants to know and see for themselves. The deep, devoted faith that once prevailed between people made it possible for there to be a special kind of clairvoyant from whom one could hear what they perceived in the higher worlds. Others then systematically organized what they had perceived. Today, a kind of harmony has been created in the development of the abilities of the initiate and the clairvoyant. Therefore, a third, adeptship, can recede very strongly today. Our time is highly hostile to this adeptship. You can get an idea of the difference between an adept and an initiate if you form the mental image of the following: Imagine an area where there are railroads, and you have seen them. Now I ask you, having gained the positive conviction through your own observation that such a thing as a railroad exists, can you also build one? In order to be able to build one, practice and many other things are necessary. Now, someone who, through exercises that people today have hardly a mental image of, has acquired not only visual knowledge of the spiritual world, but also practice in handling the spiritual forces that underlie the outer sensory world, is, in contrast to a clairvoyant, an adept. This requires much longer preparation than even becoming a clairvoyant. Moreover, our present cultural development is even more hostile to teaching the use of spiritual forces than to the endeavor to penetrate the spiritual world through knowledge.