In everyday speech the word "fantastic" often arises. When something is properly described as fantastic, one really means that it is supernatural or miraculous and that it is something which does not depend on natural laws. In a fairy tale everything is possible. There can appear fairies with magic wands with which miracles are performed, or the genie of the lamp who makes its owner master of any situation. There appear witches and wizards who also have supernatural powers by which they are able to persecute people and avenge themselves or in the same way are able to help them if they so wish. There are elves and wood-sprites, gnomes and pixies and the most incredible events take place which amuse both children and adults. Perhaps the children do believe that it is all true but the adults will say that it is just imagination and invention, having no foundation in the world of reality.

But from where, then, arise all the extraordinary thoughts and the whole circle of fantasy which is met in fairy tales? One could say that it is the product of the writer's imagination. Of course, Hans Christian Andersen created a long list of wonderfully imaginative stories and the old folk-tales - passed down by word of mouth for centuries before being collected and written down in our day - these are without doubt also originally produced by people full of imagination. Yet imagination is not the full explanation of those happenings in the fairy tale sphere of consciousness. We can say that the world of the fairy tale does not exist at all in the same way as the physical world. The world of the fairy tale is created and narrated by people. But from where do the writers get those ideas of supernatural beings and events - do they just catch them out of thin air?

The physical phenomena in fairy tales are based on the writer's impressions from his physical surroundings. When he makes people good or evil, full of kindness or of hate, it is just something which he knows about from his daily life. He did not invent good or evil but only those variations of love and hate which he expresses in a fairy tale. The principle of so-called good and evil does not originate from the writer but is something which has always been and always will be. If a writer relates only those events which are commonplace in the physical world, and nothing in his narrative relates to supernatural phenomena, then his story is not a fairy—tale but a short-story or a novel. In a product of this kind the writer has juggled freely with events and characters he has met and experienced himself within the scope of his physical horizon. He has used his imagination as well, of course, but only to depict physical relationships in particular variations. A fairy tale, however, is a combination of physical facts and a certain variety of spiritual facts which make up a story where two different perspectives are overshadowing each other. One of the perspectives is of the physical world and the other is of the spiritual. The psychic, or spiritual, world is just as little a discovery or an invention of the writer as the physical one. Only the variations and the different combinations he gives to the two worlds in a fairy tale can be called his discovery or his invention, being obviously of a more or less high quality.

The less materially developed people are, the more their literature appears in the form of fairy tales, which means a number of stories infiltrated by phenomena both from the physical and the spiritual worlds. But the more materialistically developed people are, the less there is in their literature of supernatural or spiritual matters. This is to say, then, that as people gradually become more and more attracted to material things, something gets lost on the way. One of the two perspectives which at one time vibrated in the consciousness of mankind does not work anymore, while the other develops at its own cost. Modern man's physical perspective has expanded so that it embraces much more than just this world. He observes far-off globes through powerful telescopes and measures distances to the sun and calculates the pathways of distant heavenly bodies far into the future. His physical perspective has also expanded to take in the world of matter which is observed through microscopes and worked out with mathematical calculations. Meanwhile Man's spiritual perspective has shrunk and his psychic abilities have degenerated so that in the materialistic man of today they only exist as rudiments without energy. For those people attuned to material things, all that has to do with psychic phenomena is a "fairy tale" or "make believe", and they can tolerate these phenomena only in connection with stories where fairies can make themselves invisible, for instance, or witches can move mountains or bewitch princes and princesses, turning them to stone or into animals, and so forth. But that the accounts in fairy tales - as in novels and narratives having their roots in a real physical world - should in any way have their roots in a real world of psychic or spiritual facts, this they will categorically deny, just as they deny that people live on after death, yes, and also even deny that there is a God. These people consider the concept that there is a God, or that someone continues to live after the physical body has gone, as belonging to the nursery, together with the elves and pixies in fairy tales.

Just as in fairy tales there can be exaggerations and distortions of psychic reality which make the story imperfect to a certain extent, so can there just as well be exaggerated and distorted concepts in the materialistic setting which make that imperfect also. This imperfection consists mostly in the denial of psychic or spiritual facts, in other words, of the existence of a psychic horizon. But this imperfect setting for life's phenomena will not continue to be the dominating one among people on earth. The sphere of the fairy tale will once again have entry into the mind of man, but it will not be as superstition, witchcraft or magic, it will be as spiritual knowledge through which people will achieve an insight into the greatest of all existing fairy tales - the fairy tale of life itself.

Everything which has been discovered by physical research during the last century is the commencement of the most wonderful fairy tale which will surpass by far every one of the fairy tales writers have created. All those figures in fairy tales with their supernatural powers and abilities could never appear in the imagination of writers if they were not in one way or another in accordance with those psychic realities which affect the physical world. In our time people have actually begun to experience the world of the fairy tale and its physical fulfilment without having the ability yet to see the fantastic in all that is now gradually growing up around them. Nevertheless, in our world of to-day there does exist both the "flying carpet" and the "genie of the lamp" as found in "The Arabian Nights" although in another form from that used by the imaginative writers of old. What is the modern aeroplane but the realization in physical material of the old dream or idea that men should be able to fly through the air and move with speed from one place to another? Most certainly it is not supernatural or miraculous that man can nowadays fly through the air; on the contrary, it is just because he has gradually learned to know the laws of nature in greater and ever greater measure and to make himself their master. And mankind will gradually come to realise that the fairy tale is not supernatural but follows universal laws which still have not been thoroughly understood. Are not the scientific knowledge and the technical skill which are manifesting themselves in many places in the world exactly like "genies of the lamp", providing help which can make people steadily more superior in more and more difficult situations? With the help of a scientifically constructed technique, people can, so to say, "move mountains", and they can throw a bridge across to the world of the unseen with the technical use of rays and waves. Thus is science recognizing an unseen world, although it does not perceive it in the same way as did the writers of fairy tales. There has never been anyone who has seen an atom, neither can rays or sound waves be seen directly, only their effects are visible, so they are indeed unseen realities, and in fact the modern world could not exist at all as it does, if man had not in so many respects learned to know the invisible world and to use its powers.

The psychic powers known by the terrestrial man of to-day which make up the world of rays and waves are really just a modest introduction to all the fantastic things which will occur when Man is morally mature enough to be able to unfold a much greater creative ability than he has at present. As long as Man continues to use the powers extracted with his intelligence from Nature's very source in order to kill and destroy for the benefit of a few and to the hurt of many, so will there still remain the "guardian of the threshold" in every single person's own mind, an element which holds it back - from a cosmic point of view - a dead state of materialism and narrow-mindedness. It is this condition which is symbolized in the old fairy tale where the prince and princess are turned to stone. But, just as in the fairy tale, when the ones turned to stone are turned back again to real life because the spell has been broken, so will mankind - at present "turned to stone" - gain experience of the psychic or spiritual horizon which has become lost through materialism, and then - the spell being broken - life's own fairy tale will show itself in a new, continuous and ever more wonderful perspective.

Spiritual science is the main factor through which mankind will regain the lost horizon, cleansed from all superstition and false concepts. Through my cosmic analysis, terrestrial man can learn to know himself and his cosmic position on the ladder of evolution. He will learn to see and understand why his fate is in many ways dark and sad, and that it is he himself who has sown the seed of it all in earlier lives and must now reap the effects. But at the same time he has the possibility of beginning to sow a new seed through his thinking and his behaviour whereby he can begin to create a new future for himself which is a part of the future for all mankind. By practising what he has grasped through spiritual science, terrestrial man will be able to overcome the above-mentioned "guardian of the threshold" in his mind and through a balance between feelings and intelligence - which will be the result of overcoming it - he will begin to develop the ability to experience intuitively. The impact of intuition into the consciousness of mankind is thus the same as regaining the lost horizon.

Before terrestrial man lost the ability to experience the psychic world, it was, on the contrary, not intuition but instinct and primitive feelings which connected him with spiritual realities. Everybody had - as certain people still have -what are called psychic faculties. People were, either more or less, all clairvoyants or mediums, or they could hear voices or tell omens and so forth. Some even used their gifts for black magic and were therefore really a kind of witch or wizard. It was a sort of "second sight" the old story-tellers had that created the psychic side of fairy tales. But as it was based on their instincts and feelings, they were not able to recognize the psychic realities behind what they were "seeing". Their imagination worked and filled out what the lack of knowledge and insight could not fill out, and thus there arose in people's consciousness the sphere of the fairy tale. One believed that sprites and pixies, or whatever one would now call these psychic beings, actually lived in rocks and mountains, as if there were actual caves in there, for it was considered that those beings were very nearly physical. What happened was that they quite often materialized when they came near to ordinary people and dematerialized again a short time after, and therefore it was thought that they had disappeared into the rocks.

There are still places in the world where, conditions permitting, such events can occur, for example in Iceland in a district where there live only a few families spread over wide mountain valleys miles away from the centre of civilization. Here the atmosphere is still completely free from people's impure vibrations. This pure unsullied atmosphere cannot be spoilt by a single person, it can, in the worst case, only be influenced as much as could a drop of dirty water affect the Atlantic ocean. In this pure atmosphere certain beings and phenomena in the spiritual world vibrate so strongly that sometimes they can be sensed by the people who live there. These people, born in that solitude, are children of nature's purity and have preserved much of their ability for psychic sensing, and that is why they often experience manifestations from the spiritual world mixed in with the physical one. Besides, these people very often possess an excess of what in my analysis is called A-matter, a substance which everyone possesses to greater or lesser degree. When spiritual beings come near these people, they can draw out this A-matter and with it materialize themselves. But as it lasts only a short time, they soon disappear again, thus manifesting the combination of physical and psychic experiences we have in fairy tales.

But it is not mediumism or emotionally-based clairvoyance or other forms of those abilities which at one time were dominant in everyone that are going to re-develop so that terrestrial man can find the happiness and peace for which he is longing. All those abilities are as pools of water remaining behind on the beach when the tidal waters recede. Intuition will be the power, as I have said, through which a person will experience consciousness of, and obtain full insight into, psychic realities, and this will lead to "cosmic consciousness" for those people who in all things wish to follow the words of the World Redeemer: "I have not come into the world to be served, but to serve."