ke with regard to it, its form will change.
Pictures, therefore, at first present not only something independent and
external to man, but they reflect also what man himself is. These pictures
are permeated through and through with man's own being. This falls like a
veil over the other beings. In this case man, even if confronted by a real
being, does not see this, but sees what he himself has created. Thus he
may have something true before him, and yet see what is false. Indeed,
this is not only the case in respect to what man has observed concerning
his own being, but everything that is in him impresses itself upon the
spiritual world.

If, for example, a person has secret inclinations, which owing to
education and character are precluded from revealing themselves in life,
those inclinations will, nevertheless, take effect in the psycho-spiritual
world, which is thus colored in a peculiar way, due to that person's
being, quite irrespective of how much he may or may not know of his own
being. And in order to be able to advance beyond this stage of
development, it becomes necessary that man should learn to distinguish
between himself and the spiritual world around him. It is necessary that
he should learn to eliminate all the effects produced by his own nature
upon the surrounding psycho-spiritual world. This can be done only by
acquiring a knowledge of what we ourselves take with us into this new
world. It is therefore primarily a question of self-knowledge, in order
that we may become able to perceive clearly the surrounding
psycho-spiritual world. It is true that certain facts of human development
entail such self-knowledge as must naturally be acquired when one enters
higher worlds. In the ordinary world of the physical senses man develops
his ego, his self-consciousness, and this ego then acts as a point of
attraction for all that appertains to man. All personal propensities,
sympathies, antipathies, passions, opinions, etc., possessed by a person,
group themselves, as it were, around this ego, and it is this ego likewise
to which human Karma is attached. Were we able to see this ego unveiled,
it would also be possible to see just what blows of fate it must yet
endure in this and future incarnations, as a result of its life in
previous incarnations and the qualities acquired. Encumbered as it is with
all this, the ego must be the first picture that presents itself to the
human soul, when ascending into the psycho-spi