Initiation or Consecration

When we speak of the spiritual, higher worlds in the sense that we intend to do throughout this series of lectures, the question naturally arises: How does the human being attain knowledge and insight into these higher worlds? Today's consideration of initiation will provide us with at least a preliminary answer — a complete answer can only be given by all the lectures this winter. We must start from the two principles of all Spiritual Science, which we already touched upon in the very first of these lectures: The first is the realization that behind and beyond our world, which can be perceived by the senses and understood by the ordinary mind, there is another or even a series of other worlds, supersensible, superphysical worlds, as we have called them. The second realization is that these worlds, which exist outside our sensory, visible world, can gradually become accessible to human beings, so that it is possible for them to recognize them through their own development. Of course, Spiritual Science naturally provokes opposition from the outset from all those whom we have called in recent lectures the “we” people and the “one” people of the present. “We” people are those who, when talking about these things, most often use the words: ‘One’ cannot or “we” cannot know. This immediately establishes a kind of absolutism of knowledge, a kind of infallibility on the part of the speaker, who makes himself and what he can know the standard measure of all human knowledge. Spiritual science takes exactly the opposite point of view. It takes the view that human beings have abilities and powers of knowledge that lie dormant within them and can be developed higher and higher. It must be admitted that it is quite correct when someone says that they cannot perceive certain higher worlds. But at the same time it must be said that these higher worlds cannot be penetrated with the powers of cognition that they believe they have, and that logically no one has the right to say: My powers of cognition are the only ones that exist; what I perceive represents the limit of all possible knowledge. For in doing so, one rejects the capacity for human development and denies from the outset that human beings can ascend to higher and ever higher levels. However, the fundamental conviction of every person who views the world impartially is that human beings are capable of this, and especially within our German education system, it is easy to work one's way up to the recognition of this principle.