In the lecture series, True and False Paths of Spiritual Research, Rudolf Steiner deals with the fundamental aspects of human consciousness, and the methods of examination of the spiritual realms which surround and permeate our sense-experienced physical world.  He describes how our relationship to the higher worlds is determined by our soul-physical constitution, citing how the ancient Chaldeans of the middle-east saw, thought and felt about the spiritual world in comparison to our own conditioned outlook.

He proceeds to describe changes that have occurred in the evolutionary course of time since this period and how approaches to the spiritual changed accordingly, bringing us eventually into our own period which is characterised by the emergence and development of the Consciousness Soul since the early 15^th century, and more specifically, since the beginning of the Age of Michael in 1879 with its strong solar influences.

He describes the importance of using our own independent generative soul forces, our solar forces, and our Consciousness Soul clarity of mind, to develop the faculties whereby we consciously ascend into the higher cognitive realms, the spiritual worlds.  He stresses the importance of meditative exercises as contained in How to Know Higher Worlds to give regularity and balance in the development of the inner organs of soul and spirit necessary to perceive the higher worlds in an appropriate and healthy way.

In contrast he points out the dangers of retreating into earlier modes of consciousness, moon states of consciousness, where the human being, like the moon, offers itself passively as a reflector to other forms of consciousness.  Such lunar states are found in such things as mediumism/channelling, hypnotism, somnambulism (sleepwalking), and any state where sovereignty over one’s own soul is compromised for the sake of experiencing psychic/spiritual phenomena. He points out how such activities, apart from giving unreliable knowledge, invite the activities of beings who are actively opposed to the Michaelic sun forces which are available to humanity in this epoch and which humanity needs for its healthy evolution.