16. Is Occult Training Advisable?

This question must be answered with an absolute “No”. Occult training, which generally includes the exercises for the attainment of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and so on, is an impediment to inner free development and to genuine spiritual growth. In ancient times, the so-called magicians were understood to be those were among such, once their training had been completed to a satisfactory standard.
 
It is a one-sided groping forward from below upwards, whereby so-called earthly constraints can never be overcome. The experiences gained under these occurrences will be always things of a lower and more baser nature and do not improve individuals from within, but can lead them astray.

Humans can only penetrate into the more ethereal environment that lies next to them, where intelligences are often even more ignorant than people on earth. All this achieves is opening oneself to unknown dangers, which one is protected precisely by not opening oneself.
 
A person who has become clairvoyant or clairaudient through training will often also see or hear things in this lower environment that have the appearance of being high and pure, and yet are far from it. Add to this their own imagination, further stimulated by exercises, which also creates an environment which the pupils then actually see and hear. And this is where the confusion lies. Such individuals, standing on uncertain ground due to artificial training, cannot distinguish, cannot with the best volition draw a sharp line between truth and deception, as well as the thousandfold formative powers in ethereal life. Added to this are the lower influences which are absolutely harmful to them, to which they have voluntarily opened themselves with much effort, and which they cannot oppose against a higher power, and so they soon become a rudderless wreck on unknown seas, which can become dangerous to anything that comes into contact with them.
 
It is exactly like a person who cannot swim. They are perfectly capable of travelling safely in a barge through an unfamiliar element. This is comparable to life on earth. But if he removes a plank from the boat that protects him during the journey, he tears a gap in the protection through which the water enters, depriving him of his protection and pulls him down. This person, unfamiliar with swimming, thereby becomes a victim of the unfamiliar element.
 
Such is the process of occult training. The person only removes a plank of their protecting boat, but does not learn to swim!
 
However, there are also swimmers who call themselves masters. Swimmers in this domain are those who already possess a natural talent and have enhanced it through training to bring it to fruition, and who continually seek to expand it. In such cases, a more or less already complete predisposition will be combined with artificial training. Yet, even with the best swimmers there are always fairly narrow limits. If they venture too far out, their strength will wane and they will finally be just as lost as a non-swimmers unless … help comes to them, as it does to non-swimmers.
 
In the Ethereal World, however, such help can only come from the Luminous Heights, from the Pure Spiritual Realm. This help, in turn, can only be received when the person in danger has reached a certain stage of purity in their spiritual development with which it can connect to form a foothold. Such purity is not achieved through occult training for experimentation, but through the elevation one’s inner true morality by constant looking up to the purity of the Light.
 
Once a person has followed this path, which brings him to a certain degree of inner purity over time, which is then naturally reflected in his thoughts, words and works, he gradually gains connection with the purer heights and from there, in the interaction, also increased strength. He thus has a connection through all the intermediate stages which holds him and to which he can cling. Then it is not long before all that the swimmer strove in vain to achieve is given to him effortlessly. But with a care and caution that lies in the strict Laws of Reciprocal Action, ensuring that he always receives just as much of it as he is able to give in at least the same counterforce strength, whereby every danger is eliminated from the outset. Ultimately, the separating barrier, comparable to the planks of a barge, becomes thinner and thinner until it finally disappears completely. This is also the moment when he feels completely at home in the Ethereal World, like the fish in the water, all the way up to Luminous Heights. This is the only correct path. Anything achieved prematurely through artificial training is misguided. A fish is only truly safe in water because it is ‘in its element’, carrying within itself all equipment that even a trained swimmer can never reach.
 
If a person undertakes training, the beginning is preceded by a voluntary decision, the consequences of which he is then subject to. Therefore, he cannot expect to be helped. He had made a decision of his own free will.
 
However, a person who induces others to undergo such training and exposes them to dangers of the most varied kind, has to accept a large part of the consequences as the guilt for each individual. He becomes ethereally chained to them all. After his death, he must descend irrevocably to those who have gone before him, to those who have been subjected to the dangers, even to those who have sunk the lowest. He cannot ascend until he has helped each one of them back up, until the error of his ways has been erased, and until he has made up for what he missed. The reciprocal action is the compensation and at the same time the path of grace for him to rectify the wrongs and ascend.
 
If such a person has acted not only through the words, but also through the writings, it is even more difficult for him because these writings will continue to cause harm even after his own death. He must then wait in the afterlife until no one else crosses over who has not been misled by his writings, whom he must therefore help back up. Centuries can pass in the process.
 
However, this does not mean that the region of the Ethereal World should be left untouched and unexplored in earthly life!
 
Inwardly mature individuals will always feel at home at the right time, which poses danger to others. They are permitted to perceive the truth and pass it on. But, in doing so, they will also have a clear view of the dangers that threaten those who, through occult training, wish to reach one-sidedly into the lowlands of a region unknown to them. They will never encourage occult training.