udent undergoes prior to his entering that world is in itself calculated
to accustom him to exclude himself--even in matters appertaining to the
physical world--when making his observations, thus allowing things and
occurrences to speak for themselves. Any one who has sufficiently
practiced these preparatory exercises may await this meeting with the
Guardian of the Threshold in all tranquillity; by this meeting he will be
definitely tested whether he is now really capable of putting aside his
own being even when confronting the psycho-spiritual world.

In addition to this there is another source of delusion. This becomes
apparent when we place the wrong interpretation upon an impression we
receive. We may illustrate it by means of a very simple example taken from
the world of the physical senses. It is the delusion we may encounter when
sitting in a railway carriage; we _think_ the trees are moving in the
reverse direction to the train, whereas in fact we ourselves are moving
with the train. Although there are many cases in which such illusions
occurring in the physical world are more difficult to correct than the
simple one we have mentioned, yet it is easy to see that, even within that
world, means may be found for getting rid of those delusions if a person
of sound judgment brings everything to bear upon the matter which may help
to clear it up.

But as soon as we penetrate into the psycho-spiritual world such
elucidations become less easy. In the world of sense, facts are not
altered by human delusions about them; it is therefore possible to correct
a delusion by unprejudiced observation of facts. But in the supersensible
world this is not immediately possible. If we desire to study a
supersensible occurrence and approach it with the wrong judgment, we then
carry that wrong judgment over into the thing itself, and it becomes so
interwoven with the thing, that the two cannot be easily distinguished.
The error then is not in the person and the correct fact external to him,
but the error will have become a component part of the external fact. It
cannot therefore be cleared up simply by unprejudiced observation of the
fact. This is enough to indicate an extremely fertile source of illusion
and deception for one who would venture to approach the supersensible
world without adequate preparation.

As the occult student has now acquired the faculty to exclude those
illusions originating from the coloring of the supersensib