man life then adapts itself to these new faculties, and can no
longer use the old ones properly.

There were individuals, however, who began in full consciousness to add to
the powers of intelligence and feeling already gained, the development of
other and higher powers, which made it possible for them once more to
penetrate into the psycho-spiritual world. To this end they were obliged
to set to work in a different way from that in which the pupils of the old
Initiates had been trained. The latter had not been obliged to take into
account those faculties of the soul which were developed only in the
fourth period. The method of occult training which has been described in
this work as that of the present age, began in its first rudiments in the
fourth period. But it was then only in its beginning, it could not attain
real maturity until the fifth period (from the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries onward). Those who sought to rise into supersensible worlds in
this manner could learn something of the higher regions of existence
through the exercise of their own imagination, inspiration, and intuition.
Those who went no further than the development of the faculties of reason
and feeling could learn only through tradition what had been known to
ancient clairvoyance. This was handed on, either by word of mouth or in
writing, from generation to generation.

Neither could those born later know anything of the real nature of the
Christ-event save by such traditions, if they did not rise to the level of
the supersensible worlds. Certainly there were such Initiates who still
possessed the natural faculties of supersensible perception and yet who,
through their development, had ascended into the higher worlds, in spite
of their disregard of the new powers of intelligence and feeling. Through
them a transition was effected from the old method of Initiation to the
new. Such persons lived in later times as well. The essential
characteristic of the fourth period is that, by the exclusion of the soul
from direct communion with the psycho-spiritual world, the human faculties
of intelligence and feeling were thereby strengthened and invigorated. The
souls whose powers of intelligence and feeling had at that time developed
to a great extent as the result of former incarnations, carried over with
them the fruits of this development into their incarnations during the
fifth period. As a compensation for this exclusion from the higher worlds,
m