Rudolf Steiner: "How can we fail to realize that evolution is a reality? Goethe has shown with such beauty that in each plant, green leaf, petal, calyx, stamen, and pistil are a unity, and yet progress is clearly to be observed — from the green leaf to the petal and the fruit. Progress in the spiritual life is still more clearly perceptible. It would be pure abstraction to say that the path of the mystic has everywhere been the same, among all peoples and in all ages. If one were content with cheap persuasion it would be quite easy to tell people that the mystical experience of a yogi has never differed from that of a Christian saint. But such a statement would not be based upon knowledge of the facts — not even of the external facts. The experiences of a yogi and those of a Christian mystic like St. Teresa, for example, differ fundamentally and essentially! Is it not casting all sense of truth to the winds to compare the experience of an Indian yogi with experiences that are permeated through and through with the Christ Principle — or with the Jesus Principle in the case of St. Teresa? As true as there is a difference between the red petal of the rose and the green leaf on its stalk, so is it true that there is a difference between experiences arising in the practice of yoga and those of a later age. There is a fundamental difference and a progression as well. Even if many lapses occur, it can be perceived, nevertheless, and the progress outruns and overcomes the lapses."
Related post: 44 years at the Himalayan Institute
Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive June 20, 1912
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