IX. Errors of Spiritual Research

It is correct to not see such a spiritual researcher as a special being. The value of a spiritual researcher does not depend on his ability to see into a spiritual world, but on his moral and intellectual qualities. This is, so to speak, an area of purely human research, because its results are connected with all the hopes and longings of man, and just as one is not held in higher esteem for pursuing mathematical or geometrical science, so one should not be held in higher esteem for being a spiritual researcher. When one peers into the spiritual world, one does not yet need to have a judgment about what is seen; one can look in and see many things and tell the greatest nonsense and the greatest errors from this world. Only then, when one regards the spiritual researcher, so to speak, as nothing more than an instrument through which spiritual truths flow into the world, and then checks for oneself, only then does one have the right relationship to the spiritual world. Otherwise, how could charlatans so easily set themselves up alongside the real spiritual researchers? But those who do not want to examine cannot distinguish between what has been conscientiously gained and what has been gained by false and even fraudulent means.