Now we come to one of the most terrible forms of the dwellers on the threshold.  Suppose a case in which a man during the past has steadily identified himself with the lower part of his nature and has gone against the higher, paralysing himself, using higher powers for lower purposes, degrading his mind to be the mere slave of his lower desires.  A curious change takes place in him.  The life which belongs to the Ego in him is taken up by the physical body, and assimilated with the lower lives of which the body is composed.  Instead of serving the purposes of the Spirit, it is dragged away for tile purposes of the lower, and becomes part of the animal life belonging to the lower bodies, so that the Ego and his higher bodies are weakened, and the animal life of the lower is strengthened.  Now under those conditions, the Ego will sometimes become so disgusted with his vehicles that when death relieves him of the physical body he will cast the others quite aside.  And even sometimes during physical life he will leave the desecrated temple.  Now after death, in these cases, the man generally reincarnates very quickly; for, having torn himself away from his astral and mental bodies, he has no bodies with which to live in the astral and mental worlds, and he must quickly form new ones and come again to rebirth here.  Under these conditions the old astral and mental bodies are not disintegrated when the new mental and astral bodies are formed and born into the world, and the affinity between the old and new, both having had the same owner, the same tenant, asserts itself, and the highly vitalised old astral and mental bodies will attach themselves to the new astral and mental bodies, and become the most terrible form of the dweller on the threshold.

These are the various forms which the dweller may assume, and all are spoken of in books dealing with these particular subjects, though I do not know that you will find anywhere in a single book a definite classification like the above.  In addition to these there are, of course, the direct attacks of the Dark Brothers, taking up various forms and aspects, and the most common form they will take is the form of some virtue which is a little bit in excess in the yogi.  The yogi is not attacked through his vices, but through his virtues; for a virtue in excess becomes a vice.  It is the extremes which are ever the vices; the golden mean is the virtue.  And thus, virtues become tempters in the difficult regions of the astral and mental worlds, and are utilised by the Brothers of the Shadow in order to entrap the unwary.

I am not here speaking of the four ordinary ordeals of the astral plane:  the ordeals by earth, water, fire and air.  Those are mere trifles, hardly worth considering when speaking of these more serious difficulties.  Of course, you have to learn that you are entirely master of astral matter, that earth cannot crush you, nor water drown you, etc.  Those are, so to speak, very easy lessons.  Those who belong to a Masonic body will recognise these ordeals as parts of the language they are familiar with in their Masonic ritual.