Initiation or Consecration

And now consider the difference between the dry, abstract concepts presented to you in mathematics or idealistic writings, and this imagination, where we ascend through the animal to the human and again up to further future stages of humanity. When we place such a picture of the future before our soul, then, if we are capable of thinking, feeling, and sensing the spirit, we will accompany this imagination with our feelings and sensations. We will not only see this development in our minds, we will feel and sense it. The development in the universe will appear great and powerful to us when we grasp it in this way, not in abstract terms. In this way, the whole universe, with all its mysteries, was presented to the student of occultism. This engaged not only their thinking, but also their feelings and sensations. It was as if his whole soul went out and lived itself into everything around him. Just as Goethe's archetype creates something in us that lives in all plants and animals, so too, when our developed feelings lift us out of ourselves, it is as if we feel the world soul flowing as a force through all beings.