In my experience the work of IIH resembles alchemy in the fact that its a hands on, do it yourself experience. You can read all the alchemy manuscripts and directions you want, but in the end you have to do the experiment yourself, and by doing that the manuscripts make sense and you get what the experiment was really about. So, theory and speculations aside, if we ( well, I dont at least ) dont know what its like to experience a certain spirit and be exposed to it, how can we really know what lessons well learn from the experience? Then you can ask, well if your omnipotent, then you dont gotta learn nothin. To me that seems a little odd, Mr. Mistelle ( think i mangled the poor guys name ) himself is always saying in his writings that hes still a learner and has never adopted the guru teacher niche. Maybe, because we have never experienced the state of being omnipotent, we have the wrong idea of it. Sure, it could be something like " I know that bob had a bagel for breakfast, tim sleeps with a nightlight on, and sally has pink panties on " but I think the state of being omnipotent might be such a vast, all inclusive state, that to understand and process all of the information would be quite a feat. The spirits seem to be much more specific and specialised. As for the validaty of Bardon's work, all I can say is that just through step One i've experienced more growth as a person than during any time in my life I can remember, and that alone has been worth practicing for me.