XXI. Knowledge of the Higher Worlds II

Today I would like to continue our examination of the things we began eight days ago. Not long ago, one of our Theosophical friends showed me a letter written in response to an invitation from a southern German pastor to the Theosophical friend. Our friend thought it might be a good idea to invite the gentleman in question to the lecture on the wisdom teachings of Christianity because he believed that the gentleman was actually preaching Theosophy and that a connection could be made between Theosophy and the pastor's understanding of Christianity. The answer given by the person concerned was interesting. He refused to come that evening. He was prevented by external circumstances. But he said that he had studied Theosophy and had also tried to read some issues of “Lucifer - Gnosis” and that he could see from them that the purpose of Theosophy is to renew certain old Gnostic ideas. He could not really see anything special in all these efforts, because he preferred to gain a direct relationship with his God and not to be satisfied with a relationship with divinity that was mediated by many intermediate beings. This is a very characteristic answer, which I mention because it is given by so many people today. A great many people say this, and I say this not as a criticism of our contemporaries, but simply as an observation, for the phenomenon is as justified as can be. It arises entirely from our sense of the times. I say that this answer is given frequently today. People think that one is actually doing something that does not quite correspond to today's consciousness and feelings if one assumes, in addition to the sensual world in which we live and the divinity that permeates the world, a whole series of intermediate beings, let us say gods or spiritual entities. For four centuries, humanity has been educated in this view. It is therefore not surprising that such a feeling has become general today, and that people believe that Theosophy has a little too much to do with all the different spirits and spiritual entities, with a whole hierarchy of spiritual entities between people, and of which one can have no consciousness, but only an inkling.