There are at the present time very clear thinkers who can understand the anthroposophical view of the world in an intellectual way. How is it that it is sometimes just these people who have such difficulty in reaching clairvoyance? — Those who are not clear thinkers find it comparatively easy to become clairvoyant, and they are then apt to feel themselves superior to the thinkers, whilst the latter find it difficult to become clairvoyant at all. Here is the point — distant by a hair’s breadth only — where a certain arrogance in disguise begins to assert itself. There is indeed hardly anything that breeds and fosters pride so much as a clairvoyance which has not been illumined with thought, and that is why it is so dangerous, because the clairvoyant does not as a rule consider himself proud at all, but very humble. He has no notion of the pride that consists in undervaluing the activity of thought and laying the chief emphasis on inspirations. It is a terrible form of pride, a masked pride.
To be continued
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 117 – The tasks and aims of spiritual science – Stuttgart, 13th November 1909
Translated by D. S. Osmond
Previously posted on December 9, 2014
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