XXI. Knowledge of the Higher Worlds II

Today we are obliged to introduce a further circle without such preparation and to speak of the elementary teachings of occultism. I have often explained the reasons why spiritual teaching is proclaimed before all people. Do not think that what we are allowed to proclaim of these occult teachings is the whole teaching of occultism. It is the very first. And the times will not come for a long time yet when the deeper teachings can be communicated. But these too will come, when it will also be possible to open up higher spiritual worlds. Today it is only necessary to proclaim and introduce people to as much as the course of time requires of us. Those who are sitting here have, for the most part, been here often, and for this reason assertions and communications can be made here all the time, which appear grotesque and paradoxical to those on the outside, to those who come to a public lecture, fantastic, if not crazy. But the deeper truths, especially those that constitute the very nerve of life, the deepest laws of world knowledge, these teachings appear at first to those who are only captivated by external sensuality and to what is otherwise said to them about the spiritual world as illusory, as paradoxical. For those who penetrate deeper and deeper into today's world, it is precisely what our senses teach us in our ordinary lives and what our minds can convey to us that appears as an illusion. Now, for centuries, humanity has lost the power to truly distinguish between spiritual things, and that, my esteemed audience, is something you consider to be essential in the introduction to today's lecture, that humanity's powers of discernment have somewhat diminished over the last four centuries.