sesses exactly those characteristics which he has learned to recognize
by means of infallible intuition.

-------------------------------------

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 w