ining.
A strong inclination exists to feel absolutely happy in a world which we
have gradually created for ourselves. And we must be able to obliterate,
in the manner above described, that to which we have previously devoted
ourselves with all our powers. We must efface _ourselves_ in the
imaginative world we have reached. But this effacement is opposed by the
strongest impulses of egoism.

The idea might easily arise that the exercises in spiritual training are
something merely external which have no connection with the moral
development of the soul. In this connection it must be said that the moral
force necessary for the conquest of egoism, as described, cannot be gained
unless the moral condition of the soul is brought to a corresponding
stage. Progress in spiritual training is unthinkable unless moral progress
takes place at the same time. The conquest of egoism is impossible without
moral force. All talk of spiritual training not being at the same time
moral training is certainly contrary to fact.

Only he who passes through such an experience might advance the following
objections: how can one be sure to be dealing with actualities, and not
with mere fancies, visions or hallucinations, when he thinks he is having
spiritual perceptions? Now the matter lies thus: every person, who has
been systematically trained and who has arrived at the stage already
characterized, will be in a position to note the difference between his
own percept and a spiritual reality, just as well as a man endowed with
sound sense knows the difference between the percept of a bar of hot iron
and the actual presence of such a bar that he touches with his hand. The
difference is determined by experience and by nothing else; and in the
spiritual world, too, life is the touchstone. Just as we know that in the
world of the senses an imagined bar of iron, however hot, will burn no
one's fingers, so does the trained occultist know whether he is passing
through a spiritual experience merely in his imagination or whether his
awakened spiritual organs of perceptions are impressed by actual facts or
beings. The precautions to be taken during schooling, in order that the
student may not fall a victim to such delusions will be dealt with in the
following pages.

It is of the greatest importance that the student should have attained to
a certain very definite condition of the soul when the consciousness of
the new-born ego commences. For through his eg