traced upon the image of his double. Anyone who, by means of his own
powers of judgment, has made himself acquainted with the evolution of the
universe, and the development of the human race, and who is aware that at
a particular epoch of this development the powers of Lucifer penetrated
into the human soul, will have little difficulty in enduring the sight of
the image of his own individuality when he knows that it includes those
Luciferian powers and all their accumulated effects.

This will suffice to show how necessary it is that no one should demand
admission into the spiritual world before having learned to understand
certain truths concerning it; learning them by means of his own judgment,
as developed in this world of the physical senses. All that has been said
in this book previous to the chapter concerning "Perception of the higher
worlds," should have been assimilated by the student in the course of his
regular development, by means of his ordinary judgment, before he has any
desire to seek entrance himself into the supersensible worlds.

Where the training has been such as to pay little heed to firmness and
surety of judgment, and to the life of feeling and character, it may
happen that the student will approach the higher world before being
possessed of the necessary inner capacities. The meeting with his double
would in this case overwhelm him. But what might also happen is that the
person introduced into the supersensible world then would be totally
unable to recognize this world in its true form, for it would be
impossible for him to differentiate between what he sees in the things,
and what they really are. For this distinction becomes possible only when
a person himself has beheld the image of his own being and becomes able to
separate from his surroundings everything which proceeds from his inner
being.

In respect to life in the world of physical sense, man's double becomes at
once visible through the already mentioned feeling of shame when man nears
the psycho-spiritual world, and in so doing, it also conceals the whole of
that world. The double stands before the entrance as a "guardian," denying
admission to all who are as yet unfit, and it is therefore designated in
occult science as the "guardian of the threshold of the psycho-spiritual
world." However, we may call it the "lesser guardian," for there is
another, of whom we shall speak later.

And besides this meeting with his double on enterin