The So-Called Dangers of Initiation

However, many of the concerns are not directed at the general public; there is a sense that something special is afoot. It is therefore permissible to speak publicly about what may be causing such concerns and talk of dangers. First of all, we must not forget one thing: something that is supposed to have an effect, that is supposed to have meaning and power in the world, affects different people in different ways. It has an effect in the way that people allow themselves to be influenced and impressed by it. Now, theosophy and the secret science are something like a cleansing storm in our spiritual atmosphere, and will increasingly become so. What fills this spiritual atmosphere? It is filled with all kinds of confident and optimistic judgments, which appear all the more confident the less deeply they introduce us to the nature of things. In particular, it is materialistic thinking and feeling, the materialistic attitude, which, with an enormous opinion of its own infallibility, with enormous arrogance and conceit, today considers itself the only doctrine that can bring salvation and pours scornful laughter on everything that points to the spiritual world, as if it were only a matter of fantasies.