IX. Errors of Spiritual Research

Let us now take the idealist's point of view. He wants nothing to do with materialism; he has formed ideas and feelings that only lead him into spiritual spheres. It would certainly not occur to him to apply what has been said to himself, but the one-sidedness of the idealistic point of view is evident precisely in these points. If the idealist, who rejects matter, applies the method mentioned yesterday to himself and gains access to the spiritual world, his way of thinking and feeling, his whole attitude, confronts him there; he carries it into this world, and the result is that this person can enter the spiritual world, but he sees everything through the spectacles of his opinions and ideas, and [he sees] that there are a great many such beings in the spiritual world that are called demonic natures, which do not appear in the external world but live in the spiritual world. These beings are too insignificant for our world – and who distract man from the world to which he nevertheless belongs, since he is born as a human being in a physical body; so the idealist, if he is narrow-minded, is very easily driven into certain methods in the world that we call demonic. He is so firmly rooted in this that, whereas he used to understand nothing of matter, so to speak, he now shuns it. People then end up in all kinds of false ascetic directions. He wants nothing more to do with matter, and his error leads him to an estrangement from the world to which he really belongs. He falls into loneliness.