The Essence of Anthroposophy

And so, dear attendees, there are two pitfalls that anthroposophical research must avoid. The first is mere mental work, which wants to be left to its own devices, philosophical speculation about the supernatural and the beyond, which leads into uncertainty and even into nothingness. The other is mysticism, which, although it believes it is penetrating to the divine-spiritual through immersion in one's own inner self, nevertheless has nothing to do with anything other than what the human being has first led down into his soul through observation of nature, through observation of the external sense world, and what he then later brings up again.