Initiation or Consecration

The principle of initiation has been spoken of throughout all ages of human development. However, the relationship to public activity was different than it must be in our age. Whether we go back to the ancient Indian, Chaldean, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Greco-Roman cultures, or whether we wander through the Middle Ages, through the 16th and 17th centuries to our own time, there have always been initiates and disciples of the initiates. Only, people did not speak about it publicly. Initiated! What was that? There is a difference between an initiate, a clairvoyant, and those who use higher powers in the service of the physical world. But we will not go into these finer distinctions today. A clairvoyant is someone who can see into the supersensible worlds, for whom the worlds that are hidden from ordinary people are open, perceptible worlds. Why was the introduction to such higher worlds carried out in secret, so to speak? Why was it not spoken of publicly in earlier times? Next time we will talk about the dangers of initiation. Today, we will only point out that a certain danger indeed lurks for human beings at the boundary between the sensory-visible world and the invisible-supersensible world, and that those who wish to become initiates must first overcome this danger. This danger consists in the fact that at the boundary between the physical and the superphysical world it is extremely difficult to distinguish illusion from reality, dreams from reality, vision from real perception. In this realm it is very easy to confuse the fantastical constructs of one's own soul with what is real, objective, and true. Various qualities, which will be discussed below, are required in order to maintain a cool head, peace of mind, courage, perseverance, and energy at the border, for if a person were to lose clarity about what is illusion and what is reality at this border, they would have lost their mind and would be a fool instead of an initiate.