Until human beings have developed the organs designed to put them in touch with more exalted

entities in higher, subtler regions, their knowledge will be severely limited. They may talk, write,
explain, criticise and pronounce judgement, but they will always be in error, because they will
know only one side of reality.

If they want to grasp the whole of reality they must practise until they succeed in awakening
other faculties that have always been there, within them, but which are still asleep, waiting until
they are ready to use them.

When astral projection was commonplace

In the far distant past, when humans had not fully taken possession of their physical bodies,
initiatic tradition tells us that they lived mainly out of their bodies, in a state of astral projection.

Later on, when their spirits began to penetrate more deeply into matter, they developed the
faculties that enabled them to work on the material level (the five senses) and neglected their
mediumistic faculties. But they did not lose these faculties; they still possess them.

The age when the invisible world was a reality

Observe the attitude of children: up to the age of about seven they are still not wholly present in
their physical bodies. They reflect the period during which humanity as a whole was at this stage
of evolution.

At that time people spoke with nature spirits and the souls of the dead, they were in touch and
communicated with them and, when they themselves came to die they did not know whether they
were alive or dead. The invisible world, the spirit world, was the reality that was most apparent
and most important to them.

They floated in the atmosphere as though they were immaterial and only entered their physical
bodies every now and then. In these conditions they were totally unprepared to work in the
material dimension.

Some still have an intuition of the spiritual dimension

The evolutionary process, however, demanded that they penetrate this dimension. Modern
human beings are equipped with formidable intellectual powers which enable them to dominate
matter but they have lost something else: they have forgotten the very existence of the spiritual
world; they have completely lost touch with it.

Some, of course, still remember; they still have an intuition of the spiritual dimension, but the
majority have forgotten.

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov