Rudolf Steiner in ‘Knowledge of Higher Worlds’ attempts to describe in narrative form the meeting of the lesser Guardian of the threshold. The ‘truly terrible’ spectral being proclaims it’s significance somewhat in the following words:
“Up until now, you were watched over by powers invisible to yourself. They saw to it that in the course of your lives each of your good deeds brought its reward, and each of your evil deeds was similarly attended by its evil results. Thanks to their influence your character formed itself out of your life-experiences and your thoughts. They were the instruments of your destiny. They ordained that measure of joy and pain you were allotted in your incarnations, according to your conduct in lives gone by. They ruled over you as the all-embracing law of karma. These powers will now partly release you from their constraining influence; and henceforth you must accomplish for yourself a part of the work which they previously performed for you.”
“The karmic powers, beheld all your deeds in former lives, and all your most secret thoughts and feelings, and determined accordingly, your present self and present mode of life. But now all the good and evil sides of those bygone lives shall be revealed to you. Before they were interwoven with your own being; they were in you and you could not see them, But now they become released; they detach themselves from your personality and assume an independent form.”
“Up until now you have borne me invisibly within yourself, and it was well that this was so; for the wisdom of your destiny, so concealed, could thus work freely within you.”
“Now that I have come forth from within, that concealed wisdom, too, has departed from you and it will pay you no further heed; The work is left in your hands alone. I must become a perfect and glorious being, or fall prey to corruption; and should this occur, I would drag you down with me also, into a dark and corrupt world.”
“Once you have crossed my threshold, I will never for an instant leave your side, as this form, now visible. And in the future, whenever you act or think wrongly, straightway you will perceive that guilt as a hideous, demoniacal distortion of my form. Only when you have made good all those bygone wrongs and have so purified yourself that all further evil is, for you, a thing impossible; Only then will my being have become transformed into radiant beauty. Then, too, shall I again become united with you for the welfare of your future development.”
“Yet my Threshold is fashioned out of all the timidity that remains in you; out of all the dread of the strength required to take full responsibility for all your thoughts and actions. As long as there remains within you a trace of fear of becoming the guide of your own destiny, then this Threshold will lack what still remains to be built into it. And as long as a single stone is found missing, then so, must you remain standing as though transfixed; or else stumble.
Seek not, then, to cross this Threshold until entirely free from fear and ready for the highest responsibility.”
“Up until now I only emerged from your personality when death recalled you from an earthly life; but even then my form was veiled from you. Only the powers of destiny who watched over you beheld me and could thus, in the intervals between death and a new birth, build in you, in accordance with my appearance, that power and capacity, thanks to which you could labour in a new earth life at the beautifying of my form.”
“It was I, too, whose imperfection ever and again constrained the powers of destiny to lead youback to a new incarnation upon earth. I was present at the hour of your death, and it was on my account that the Lords of Karma ordained your reincarnation. And it is only by unconsciously transforming me to completion, in ever recurring earthly lives that you could have escaped the powers of death and passed over into immortality united with me.”
“Visible do I stand before you today, just as I have ever stood invisible beside you in the hour of death. When you cross my Threshold, you will enter those realms, up until now you only had access to, after physical death. You would enter them now with full knowledge, and after which, wander outwardly visible upon the earth and at the same time wander in the kingdom of death. For I am indeed the Angel of Death; Through me you will die with your body still living, to be reborn into an imperishable existence.”
And now, the Guardian of the Threshold gives a second warning, revealing that henceforth the overseeing spirits of the ancestors, nation and race will also withdraw their guiding hand:
“Step not across my Threshold until you clearly realise that it will be you yourself tasked to illumine the darkness ahead; take not a single step forward until you are positive that you have sufficient oil in your own lamp. The lamps of the guides whom, up until this point, you followed will now no longer be available to you.”
The Guardian of the Threshold now draws aside a veil which till now had concealed deep life-mysteries. The family, national, and racial spirits are revealed to the seeker in their full activity, so that he perceives clearly on the one hand, how he has hitherto been led, and no less clearly on the other hand, that he will henceforward no longer enjoy this guidance.
