Anthroposophy and Knowledge of the Spirit

But then again, the people who could say such things — and this goes right back to our present-day religious beliefs and world views, without people being aware of it —, then again the people had to tune down the functions of their physicality in relation to the robust outer life, they had to develop a hypersensitivity to this life, to loneliness, to hermitage. The old path of asceticism, which has also been corrupted today, is not suitable for modern man. Through such asceticism, man first of all makes himself alien to reality, in which we must fully place ourselves today, but he also makes himself unfit for his actions, he makes himself unfit for working for the benefit of his fellow human beings. But we can still look at the two paths by which people once struggled to gain an insight into the supersensible worlds.