What must be emphasised over and over again is the need there is today for things to be taken with deep seriousness. This goes against the grain. People choose to believe that things will continue in the same way. No, they will not.
If life continues without the stimuli that come from the spiritual world, industry can go on, banks can be in existence and universities where all the sciences are taught, other professions can be developed — but everything will lead to decadence, to barbarism, to the fall of civilisation.
Those who are not willing to apply in practical life what can come out of Spiritual Science are working, not for ascent but for decline. And the majority of people today want decline and simply delude themselves into the belief that an ascent can still come out of it.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 202 – The Search for the New Isis, Divine Sophia – Lecture IV – Dornach, 26th December 1920
