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This Classic work is now copyright expired and therefore in the public domain. An Outline of Occult Science by Rudolf SteinerV. KNOWLEDGE OF THE HIGHER WORLDS
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In his intuition, therefore, the occult student possesses something which shows him the pure, clear reality of the psycho-spiritual world. And if he applies this recognized test to all that meets his observation in the realm of psycho-spiritual realities, he will be well able to distinguish appearance from reality. He may also feel sure that the application of this law provides just as effectually against delusions in the spiritual world as does the knowledge in the physical world that an _imaginary_ piece of red-hot iron cannot burn him.
It is obvious that this test applies only to our own experiences in the supersensible world, and not to communications made to us which we have to apprehend by means of our physical understanding and our healthy sense of truth. The occult student should exert himself to draw a distinct line of demarcation between the knowledge he acquires by the one means, and by the other. He should be ready on one the hand to accept communications made to him regarding the higher worlds, and should seek to understand them by using his powers of judgment. When, however, he is confronted by an "experience," which he may so name because it is due to personal observation, he will first carefully test the same to ascertain whether it possesses exactly those characteristics which he has learned to recognize by means of infallible intuition.
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The meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold being over, the occult student will have to face other new experiences, and the first thing that he will become aware of is the inner connection which exists between this Guardian of the Threshold and that soul-power we have already characterized, when describing the cleavage of personality, as being the seventh power to resolve itself into an independent entity. This seventh entity is, indeed, in certain respects no other than the double, or Guardian of the Threshold itself, and it lays a particular task upon the student. Namely, that which he is in his lower self and which now appears to him in the image, he must guide and lead by means of the new-born higher self. This will result in a sort of battle with this double, which will continually strive for the upper hand. Now to establish the right relationship to it, to allow it to do nothing except what takes place under the influence of the new-born ego, this is what strengthens and fortifies man's forces.
This matter of self-cognition is, in certain respects, different in the higher worlds from what it is in the physical sense-world. For whereas in the latter, self-cognition is only an inner experience, the newly born self immediately presents itself as an outward psycho-spiritual apparition. We see our new-born self before us like another being, yet we cannot perceive it in its entirety, for, whatever the stage to which we may have climbed on our journey to the supersensible worlds, there will always be still higher stages which will enable us to perceive more and more of our "higher self." It can therefore only partially reveal itself to the student at any particular stage. Having once caught a glimpse of this higher self, man feels a tremendous temptation to look upon it in the same manner in which he is accustomed to regard the things of the physical sense-world. And yet this temptation is salutary; it is indeed necessary, if man's development is to proceed in the right manner. The student must here note what it is that appears as his double, as the Guardian of the Threshold, and place it by the side of the higher self, in order that he may rightly observe the disparity between what he is and what he is to become. But while thus engaged in observation he will find that the Guardian of the Threshold will assume quite a different aspect, for it will now reveal itself as a picture of all the _obstacles_ which oppose the development of the higher ego, and he then becomes aware of what a load he drags about with him in his ordinary ego. And should the student's preparation not have rendered him strong enough to be able to say: "I will not remain at this point, but will persistently work my way upward toward the higher ego," he will grow weak and will shrink back dismayed before the labor that lies before him. He has plunged into the psycho-spiritual world, but gives up working his way farther, and becomes a captive to that image which, as Guardian of the Threshold, now confronts the soul. And the remarkable thing here is that the person so situated will have no feeling of being a captive. He will, on the contrary, think he is going through quite a different experience, for the image called forth by the Guardian of the Threshold may be such as to awaken in the soul of the observer the impression that in the pictures which appear at this stage of development he has before him the whole universe in its entirety--the impression of having attained to the summit of all knowledge, and of there being, therefore, nothing left to strive after. Therefore, instead of feeling himself a captive, the student would believe himself rich beyond all measure, and in possession of all the secrets of the universe. Nor need this experience fill one with surprise, though it be the reverse of the facts, for we must remember that by the time these experiences are felt, we are already standing within the psycho-spiritual world, and that the special peculiarity of this world is that it reverses events--a fact which has already been alluded to in our consideration of life after death.
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