Rudolf Steiner:
One who tries to carry this knowledge into the direct practice of everyday life furthers the advance of the coming evolution of humanity. It is extremely important for us to learn more and more to put into practice what exists as the conception of spiritual science.
So you see, the Spiritual Movement has a quite definite goal, namely, to mould future humanity in advance. And the goal can be reached in no other way than through the acceptance of spiritual wisdom. This is the thought that lives in the mind of one who conceives spiritual science as the great task of mankind. He thinks of it as inseparable from evolution and he regards it not as an object of desire but as a task and duty that is laid upon him. And the more we acknowledge this, the more rapidly do we approach the future form of humanity in the Sixth Age. As at that time in ancient Atlantis, in the neighborhood of modern Ireland, the advanced human beings were drawn to the East in order to found the new civilizations, so have we now the task of working towards the great moment in the Sixth Age when humanity will undertake a great spiritual ascent.
We must endeavor to come out of materialism again, and societies with a spiritual aim must undertake to guide humanity, not from motives of arrogance and pride but as a task and duty.
So a certain group of people must join together in order to prepare the future. But this union is not to be conceived of geographically. All ideas of locality have then lost their meaning because it is no longer a question of racial relationships. The point will be for people over the whole Earth to find each other spiritually, in order to fashion the future in a positive way. For this reason, 400 years ago, when our epoch plunged the deepest into matter, the Rosicrucian Brotherhood emphasized that practical spiritual science which contains an answer to all problems of everyday life.
Here you have the ascending evolution following the descending. Just as old knowledge acts as a disintegrating force, as is shown in Mauthner's Criticism of Language, so the spiritual current of thought seeks the unifying bond of spiritual wisdom. Hence arises the new school of initiation which is directly concerned with leading humanity over into a new cycle of time.
Thus with the principle of human evolution is connected the concept of initiation.
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Source: June 5, 1907. GA 99
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