to lose
all their value for him. The whole trend of his life of sensation and
feeling was to be changed.

There can be no doubt as to the meaning of such exercises and tests.
The wisdom which was to be offered to the candidate for initiation
could only produce the right effect upon his soul if he had previously
purified the lower life of his sensibility. He was introduced to the
life of the spirit. He was to behold a higher world, but he could not
enter into relations with that world without previous exercises and
tests. The relations thus gained were the condition of initiation.

In order to obtain a correct idea on this matter, it is necessary to
gain experience of the intimate facts of the growth of knowledge. We
must feel that there are two widely divergent attitudes towards that
which the highest knowledge gives. The world surrounding us is to us
at first the real one. We feel, hear, and see what goes on in it, and
because we thus perceive things with our senses, we call them real.
And we reflect about events, in order to get an insight into their
connections. On the other hand, what wells up in our soul is at first
not real to us in the same sense. It is "merely" thoughts and ideas.
At the most we see in them only images of reality. They themselves
have no reality, for we cannot touch, see, or hear them.

There is another way of being connected with things. A person who
clings to the kind of reality described above will hardly understand
it, but it comes to certain people at some moment in their lives. To
them the whole connection with the world is completely reversed. They
then call the images which well up in the spiritual life of their
souls actually real, and they assign only a lower kind of reality to
what the senses hear, touch, feel, and see. They know that they
cannot prove what they say, that they can only relate their new
experiences, and that when relating them to others they are in the
position of a man who can see and who imparts his visual impressions
to one born blind. They venture to impart their inner experiences,
trusting that there are others round them whose spiritual eyes, though
as yet closed, may be opened by the power of what they hear. For they
have faith in humanity and want to give it spiritual sight. They can
only lay before it the fruits which their spirit has gathered. Whether
another sees them, depends on his spiritual eyes being opened or not.

There is something in man which at