There are naturally many other forms of religious or spiritual vanity and naivety than those mentioned above, but an absolute characteristic of all of them is the fact that they to a great extent concentrate on blackening other religious and occult endeavours, their leaders and founders, while their positive spiritual work is most often plagiarism and reiteration of the knowledge and manifestations of leading authorities, indeed, even of the works of those beings that they persecute. That this, where it all too clearly shows personal indignation or anger, can be only injured vanity is established as a fact through the circumstance that true occultism or highly intellectual idealism, which they pretend to represent, cannot possibly make use of or manifest itself in the primitive manifestations of consciousness of these children of Nature who lack intelligence and feeling.
      And the result is then not unselfish idealism but a purely primitive, animal drive for self-preservation. They now try to blacken the reputation of the real authorities, so that their stronger light will not make their own light pale too much in comparison. The candle competes with the sun. We can safely assume that it is evident for every normal human being that it will not be the candle that will win the battle. Pride is thus in its worst manifestation the same as the "candle" that wants to pass itself off as nothing less than the sun, this being the reason why it has to struggle to blacken the reputation of the light of the sun, a light that is far too dangerous and compromising for the "candle". That the "candle" fails to a greater extent the more it fights for its vanity – so that not only its flame becomes quite insignificant in the strong light of the sun, but also its physical body melts in an unnatural way and then flows away from the wick thus destabilising its light more and more and making it flicker – is the law of nature that determines that "pride inevitably goes before a fall". And it is this "fall" that leaves "humility", that is, absolute self-knowledge of one's own imperfection, in the individual's consciousness. It is this self-knowledge that makes the "prodigal son" return to his "father", which means, return to a normal estimation of himself and thus to a natural attitude to life or his "neighbour". Without this "fall" there would be no self-knowledge, and without self-knowledge no experience of the real or absolute truth, and without knowledge of the absolute truth one would still wander around in "nothing but one's shirt" as in the fairy tale, more or less exposed to laughter, scorn and ridicule from one's surroundings.