The Spiritual Guidance
of Man and of Mankind
BY
DR. RUDOLF STEINER
EDITED BY H. COLLISON
THE AUTHORIZED ENGLISH TRANSLATION
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY H. COLLISON
The copyright, the publishing rights, and the editorial responsibility
for the translation of the works of Rudolf Steiner, Ph.D., with the
exception of those already under the editorial supervision of Max Gysi,
are now vested in Mr. Harry Collison, M.A., Oxon.
PREFACE
In the following pages are reproduced the contents of some lectures
delivered by me at Copenhagen in June last, in connection with the
General Meeting of the Scandinavian Theosophical Society. What is here
set forth was therefore spoken to an audience acquainted with occult
science, or theosophy. A similar acquaintance is assumed in this work.
It is throughout based on the foundations given in my books, “Theosophy”
and “An Outline of Occult Science.” To anyone taking up the present
work who is unacquainted with these premises, it must needs appear the
strange outpouring of mere fancy, but the above-named books point out the
scientific basis of everything stated in this one.
I have completely re-written the shorthand report of the lectures;
nevertheless it has been my intention on publishing them, to preserve the
character given in oral delivery. This is specially mentioned because
it is in general my opinion that the form of work intended for reading
should be quite different from that used in speaking. I have expressed
this principle of mine in all my earlier writings, as far as they were
intended for the press. If in this instance I have worked out my
subject in closer connection with the spoken word, it is because I have
reasons for letting the work appear at this juncture, and an adaptation
completely in accordance with the above rule would take a great deal of
time.
RUDOLF STEINER.
_Munich, August 20, 1911._
The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind
LECTURE I.
A man reflecting on his own nature soon becomes conscious that there is
within him a second and more powerful self than the one bounded by his
thoughts, his feelings and the fully-conscious impulses of his will. He
becomes aware that he is subject to that second self, as to a higher
power. It is true that at first he will feel it to be a lower entity as
compared with the one limited by his intelligent and fully-conscious
soul, with its inclinations towards the Good and True. And at first he
will strive to overcome that lower entity.
But closer self-examination may reveal something else about the second
self. If we often, in the course of our lives, make a kind of survey of
our acts and experiences, we make a singular discovery about ourselves.
And the older we are, the more significant do we think that discovery.
If we ask ourselves what we did or said at a particular period of our
lives, it turns out that we have done very many things which are only
really understood in later years. Seven or eight, or perhaps twenty years
ago, we did certain things, and we know quite well that only now, long
afterwards, is our intelligence ripe enough to understand what we did or
said at that earlier period.
Many people do not make such discoveries about themselves, because they
do not lay themselves out to do so. But it is extremely profitable to
hold such communion frequently with one’s own soul. For directly a man
becomes aware that he has done things in former years which he is only
now beginning to understand, that formerly his intelligence was not ripe
enough to understand them,--at a moment such as this, something like the
following feeling arises in the soul: The man feels himself protected by
a good power, which rules in the depths of his own being; he begins to
have more and more confidence in the fact that really, in the highest
sense of the word, he is not alone in the world, and that everything
which he understands, and is consciously able to do, is after all but a
small part of what he really accomplished in the world.
If this observation is often made, it is possible to carry out in
practical life something which is very easy to see theoretically. It is
easy to see that we should not make much progress in life if we had to
accomplish everything we have to do, in full consciousness, with our
intelligence taking note of every circumstance affecting us. In order
to see this theoretically, we have only to reflect as follows: In what
section of his life does a human being perform those acts which are
really most important as regards his own existence? When does he act most
wisely for himself? He does this from about the time of his birth up to
that period to which his memory goes back when in later life he surveys
his earthly existence. If he recalls what he did three, four or five
years ago, and then goes farther and farther back, he comes at last to
a certain point in childhood, beyond which memory cannot go. What lies
beyond it may be told by parents or others, but a man’s own recollection
only extends to a certain point in the past. That point is the moment
at which the individual felt himself to be an ego. In the lives of
people whose memory is limited to the normal, there must always be such
a point, but previously to it, the human soul has worked in the wisest
possible manner on the individual, and never afterwards, when man has
gained consciousness, can he accomplish such vast and magnificent work on
himself as he carries out, from subconscious motives, during the first
years of childhood.
For we know that at birth man takes into the physical world what he
has brought with him as the result of his former earthly lives. When
he is born, his physical brain, for instance, is but a very imperfect
instrument. The soul has to work a finer organization into that
instrument, in order to make it the agent of everything which the soul
is capable of performing. In point of fact the human soul, before it is
fully conscious, works upon the brain so as to make it an instrument for
exercising all the abilities, aptitudes, qualities, etc., which appertain
to the soul as the result of its former earthly lives. This work on a
man’s own body is directed from points of view which are wiser than
anything which he can subsequently do for himself when in possession of
full consciousness.
Moreover, man during this period not only elaborates his brain
plastically, but has to learn three most important things for his earthly
existence. The first is the equilibrium of his own body in space. The
man of the present day entirely overlooks the meaning of this statement,
which touches upon one of the most essential differences between man and
animals. An animal is destined from the outset to develop its equilibrium
in space in a certain way; one animal is destined to be a climber,
another a swimmer, etc. An animal is so organized from the beginning as
to be able to bear itself rightly in space, and this is the case with
all animals up to and including the mammals most resembling man. If
zoologists would ponder this fact, they would lay less emphasis on the
number of similar bones and muscles in man and animals, etc., for this is
of much less account than the fact that man is not endowed at the outset
with the complete equipment for his conditions of equilibrium. He has
first to form them out of the sum total of his being. It is significant
that man should have to work upon himself, in order to make, out of a
being that cannot walk at all, one that can walk erect. It is man himself
who gives himself his vertical position, or his equilibrium in space.
He brings himself into relation with the force of gravitation. It will
obviously be easy for anyone taking a superficial view of the matter to
question this statement, with apparently good reason. It may be said
that man is just as much organized for his erect walk as, for instance,
a climbing animal for climbing. But more accurate observation will show
that it is the peculiarity of the animal’s organization that causes
its position in space. In man it is the soul which brings itself into
relation with space and controls the organization.
The second thing which man teaches himself, and that by means of the
entity which proceeds from one incarnation to another as the same being,
is speech. Through speech he comes into relation with his fellow-men.
This relation makes him the vehicle of that spiritual life which
interpenetrates the world primarily through man. Emphasis has often been
laid, with good reason, on the fact that a human being removed, before he
could speak, to a desert island, and kept apart from his fellows, would
not learn to talk. On the other hand, what we receive by inheritance,
what is implanted in us for use in later years and is subject to the
principles of heredity, does not depend on a man’s dwelling with his
fellows. For instance, his inherited conditions oblige him to change
his teeth in his seventh year. If it were possible for him to grow up
on a desert island, he would still change them then. But he only learns
to talk, when his soul’s inner being, i.e., that which is carried on
from one life to another, is stimulated. The germ, however, for the
development of the larynx must be formed during the period at which man
has not yet acquired his ego-consciousness. Before the time to which his
memory goes back, he must plant the germ for developing his larynx, in
order that this may become the organ of speech.
And then there is a third thing: It is not so well known that man learns
this of himself, from that part of his inner being which he carries on
from one incarnation to another. It is the life within the world of
thought itself. The elaboration of the brain is undertaken because the
brain is the instrument of thought. At the beginning of life, this organ
is still plastic, because the individual has to form it for himself as
an instrument of thought, in accordance with the intention of the entity
which is carried on from one life to another. The brain immediately
after birth is, as it was bound to be, in accordance with the forces
inherited from parents and other ancestors. But the individual has to
express in his thought what he is as an individual being, in accordance
with his former earthly lives. Therefore he must re-model the inherited
peculiarities of his brain, after birth, when he has become physically
independent of his parents and other ancestors.
We thus see that man accomplishes momentous things during the first
years of his life. He is working on himself in the spirit of the highest
wisdom. In point of fact, if it were a question of his own cleverness,
it is possible that he might not accomplish what he does without
that cleverness during the first period of his life. Why is all this
accomplished in those depths of the soul which lie outside consciousness?
This happens because the human soul and entire being are, during the
first years of earthly life, in much closer connection with the
spiritual worlds of the higher hierarchies than is afterwards the case.
A clairvoyant who has gone through sufficient spiritual development to
be able to witness actual spiritual events, sees something exceedingly
significant at the moment when the ego acquires consciousness, _i.e._,
the earliest point to which the memory of later years goes back. Whereas
what we call the child’s aura floats round it in its earliest years
like a wonderful human and superhuman power, and, being really the
higher part of the child, is everywhere continued on into the spiritual
world,--at the moment to which memory goes back, this aura sinks more
into the inner being of the child. A human being is able to feel himself
a continuous ego as far back as that point of time, because then that
which was previously in close connection with the higher worlds, passed
into his ego. Henceforward the consciousness is at every point brought
into connection with the external world. This is not the case with a very
young child, to whom things appear only as a surrounding world of dreams.
Man works on himself by means of a wisdom which is not within him. That
wisdom is mightier and more comprehensive than any conscious wisdom of
later years. The higher wisdom becomes obscured in the human soul, which
in exchange receives consciousness.
The higher wisdom works from out of the spiritual world deep into the
bodily part of man, so that man is able by its means to form his brain
out of spirit. It is rightly said that even the wisest may learn from
a child, for in the child is working the wisdom which does not pass
later into consciousness. Through that wisdom man has something like
telephonic connection with the spiritual beings in whose world he lives
between death and re-birth. From that world there is something still
streaming into the aura of a child, which is, as an individual being,
immediately under the guidance of the entire spiritual world to which
it belongs. Spiritual forces from that world continue to flow into a
child. They cease so to flow at the point of time to which memory goes
back. It is these forces which enable a child to bring itself into a
definite relation to gravitation. They form the larynx, and so mould the
brain that it becomes a living instrument for the expression of thought,
feeling and will.
What is present in childhood to a supreme degree, so that the individual
is then working out of a self which is still in direct connection with
higher worlds, continues to some extent even in later years, although
the conditions change in the manner indicated above. If at a later stage
of life we feel that we did something years before which we are only
now able to understand, it is just because we previously let ourselves
be guided by higher wisdom, and only after the lapse of years have we
attained to an understanding of the reasons of our conduct.
From all this we can feel that, immediately after birth, we had not
escaped so very far from the world in which we were before entering
upon physical existence, and that we can never really escape from it
wholly. Our share in higher spirituality enters our physical life and
accompanies us throughout it. We often feel that what is within us is not
only a higher self which is gradually being evolved, but is something
higher which is there already, and is the motive cause of our so often
developing beyond ourselves.
All ideals and artistic creations which man is able to produce, as well
as all the natural healing forces in his own body, by means of which he
is continually able to adjust the injuries that befall him in life,--all
these powers do not proceed from ordinary intellect, but from those
deeper forces which in our earliest years are at work on our equilibrium
in space, on the formation of our larynx and on the brain. For these
same forces are still at work in man in later years. When sickness
attacks us, it is often said that external forces cannot help us, but
that our organism must develop the healing powers latent within it:
by this is meant that there is a profoundly wise activity present in
humanity. Moreover, it is from the same source that proceed these best
forces whereby knowledge of the spiritual world is attained, _i.e._, true
clairvoyance.
The question now suggests itself, why do the higher forces which have
been described work upon human nature only during early childhood?
One-half of the answer may be easily given as follows: If those higher
forces went on working in the same way, man would be always a child.
He would not attain the full ego-consciousness. From within his own
being must proceed the motive power which previously worked on him from
without. But there is a more important reason, which explains still more
about the mysteries of human life than what has just been said, and that
is the following:
It is possible to learn through occult science, that the human body, as
it exists at its present stage of evolution, must be regarded as having
arrived at its present form under different circumstances. It is known to
the occultist that this evolution was effected by means of the working
of various forces on the sum-total of man’s being; certain forces worked
on the physical body, others on the etheric, others on the astral body.
Human nature has arrived at its present form through the action of those
beings whom we call the Luciferic and Ahrimanic. By their means it has,
in a certain way, become worse than it need have been if those forces
only had been active within it which proceed from the spiritual rulers
of the cosmos who desire to evolve man along straight lines. The causes
of sorrow, disease and even of death are to be sought in the fact that,
besides the beings who are evolving man in a straight line forwards,
there are also ruling the Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits, who are
continually crossing the line of straightforward, progressive development.
There is something in what man brings into existence at birth, which is
better than what he can make out of it in later life. This is so, because
the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces have but little influence over man
during early childhood; they are virtually only operative in what man
makes out of himself by his conscious life. If he were to retain in full
force beyond early childhood that part of his being which is better than
the rest, he would be unable to endure its influence, because his whole
being is weakened by the opposite forces of Lucifer and Ahriman. Man’s
organism in the physical world is so constituted that it is only when
he is, so to speak, as soft and pliable as a child, that he can endure
within him those direct forces of the spiritual world which operate
within him during early childhood. He would be shattered, if during
his later life there were still directly working in him those forces
which underlie the faculty of equilibrium in space, and the formation
of the larynx and the brain. Those forces are so tremendous that, if
they were to go on working, our organism would pine away under the
influence of their holiness. Man must only have recourse to such forces
for the purpose of that kind of activity which brings him into conscious
connection with the supersensible world.
But out of this there arises a thought which is of great significance,
if rightly understood. It is expressed in the New Testament in the words
“Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter into the Kingdom
of Heaven.” What then becomes manifest as man’s highest ideal, if what
has just been said be rightly received? Surely this,--the drawing ever
nearer and nearer to what we may call a conscious relation to the forces
which work in man unknown to him during early childhood. Only it must be
borne in mind that man would collapse under the power of those forces,
if they were at once to operate in his conscious life. For this reason,
careful preparation is necessary for the attainment of those faculties
which induce the perception of supersensible worlds. The object of such
preparation is to qualify man to bear what he is unable to bear in
ordinary life.
* * * * *
Now the passing of the individual through successive incarnations is of
importance for the collective evolution of the human race. The latter has
advanced through successive lives in the past, and is still advancing,
and parallel with it the earth too is moving forwards in its evolution.
The time will come when the earth will have reached the end of its
career. Then the earthly planet will fall away as a physical entity from
the sum-total of human souls, just as the human body falls away from the
spirit at death, when, in order to continue living, the soul enters the
spiritual realm which is adapted for it between death and re-birth. When
once this is realized, it must appear as man’s highest ideal to have
progressed far enough at earthly death, to be able to reap all possible
benefits which may be obtained from earthly life.
Now those forces which prevent man from being able to endure the forces
working upon him during early childhood come out of the substance of
the earth. When this has fallen away from a human being, the latter,
if he has attained the aim of his life, must have advanced far enough
to be able actually to give himself up, with his whole being, to the
powers which at present are only active in man during childhood. Thus
the object of evolution through successive earthly lives is gradually to
make the whole individual, including therefore the conscious part, into
an expression of the powers which are ruling in him under the influence
of the spiritual world,--though he does not know it,--during the first
years of his life. The thought which takes possession of the soul after
such reflections as these, must fill it with humility, but also with a
due consciousness of the dignity of man. The thought is this: man is
not alone; there is something living within him which is constantly
affording him proof that he can rise above himself to something which is
already growing beyond him, and which will go on growing from one life to
another. This thought can assume more and more definite form; and in that
case it affords something supremely soothing and elevating, at the same
time filling the soul with corresponding humility and modesty. What is it
that man has within him in this way? Surely a higher, divine human being,
by whom he is able to feel himself interpenetrated, saying to himself,
“He is my guide within me.”
From such a point of view, it is not long before we arrive at the thought
that by all the means in our power we should strive to be in harmony with
that within our being which is wiser than conscious intelligence. And
we shall be referred on from the directly conscious self to an enlarged
self, in the presence of which all false pride and presumption will be
extinguished and subdued. This feeling develops into another, which
opens the way to accurate understanding of the nature of present human
imperfection; and the consciousness of this leads to the knowledge that
man may become perfect, if once the larger spirituality ruling within him
is allowed to bear the same relation to his consciousness which it bore
to the unconscious life of the soul in early childhood.
If it often happens that memory does not go back as far as the fourth
year of a child’s life, it may nevertheless be said that the influence
of the higher spirit-sphere, in the above sense, lasts through the first
three years. At the end of that span of time a child becomes capable of
linking its impressions of the outer world to the ideas of its ego. It is
true that this coherent ego-conception can only be reckoned as existing
as far back as memory extends. Yet we must say that _virtually_ memory
extends to the beginning of the fourth year, only it is so weak at the
beginning of distinct ego-consciousness as to be imperceptible. It may
therefore be granted that those higher powers which dispose of a human
being in the early years of childhood can be operative for three years;
therefore man, during the present middle period of the earth, is so
organized that he can receive these forces for _only_ three years.
Supposing a man now stood before us, and that some cosmic powers could
cause his ordinary ego to be removed. (For this purpose we must assume
that it would be possible to remove from the physical, etheric and astral
bodies the ordinary ego which has gone through the incarnations with the
man.) And now suppose that an ego could then be introduced into the three
bodies which is working in connection with spiritual worlds, what would
happen to a person thus treated? At the end of three years his body would
necessarily be shattered. Something would occur, through cosmic karma,
which would prevent the spirit-being which would be in connection with
higher worlds, from living more than three years in that body.[1] Only
at the end of all his earthly lives will man have that within him which
will enable him to live more than three years with that spirit-being. But
then, it is true, man will be able to say to himself, “Not I, but that
Higher One within me, Who was always there, is now working in me.” Till
that time comes, he is not able to say this. The most he can say is that
he feels that higher being, but has not yet progressed far enough with
his real, actual human ego, to be able to bring the other to full life
within him.
Supposing then that, at some time in the middle earth-period, a human
organism were to come into the world, and later in life be freed from his
ego by the action of certain cosmic powers, receiving in exchange the ego
which usually only works in man during the first three years of life,
and which would be in connection with the spiritual worlds in which man
exists between death and re-birth: how long would such a person be able
to live in an earthly body? About three years. For at the end of that
time, something would arise through cosmic karma, which would destroy the
human organism in question.
What is here supposed is, however, a historical fact. The human organism
which stood in the river Jordan at John’s baptism when the ego of Jesus
of Nazareth left the three bodies, contained, after the baptism, in
complete conscious development, that higher Self of humanity which
usually works with cosmic wisdom on a child without its knowledge. At the
same time, the necessity arose that this Self which was in connection
with the higher spirit-world could only live for three years in the
appropriate human organism. Events had then to take place which brought
the earthly life of that being to a close. The outer events in the life
of Christ Jesus are to be interpreted as absolutely conditioned by the
inner causes just set forth, and present themselves as the outward
expression of those causes.
We are now able to see the deeper connection existing between that which
is man’s guide in life, which streams in upon our childhood like the dawn
and is always working below the surface of our consciousness as the best
part of us, and that which once upon a time entered the whole of human
evolution and was able to dwell for three years in a human frame.
What then is manifested in that “higher” ego, which is in connection with
the spiritual hierarchies, and which in due time entered the body of
Jesus of Nazareth? This entrance being symbolically represented by the
sign of the Spirit descending in the form of a dove, and by the words,
“This is my well-beloved Son, to-day have I begotten him” (for so stood
the words originally). If we fix our eyes upon this picture, we are
contemplating the highest human ideal. For it means nothing else than
that the history of Jesus of Nazareth is a statement of this fact: “The
Christ can be discerned in every human being.” And even if there were no
Gospels and no tradition, to tell us that once a Christ lived on earth,
we should yet learn through knowledge of human nature that the Christ is
living in man.
The recognition of the forces working in human nature during childhood is
the recognition of the Christ in man. The question now arises, does this
recognition lead to the further perception of the fact that this Christ
once really dwelt on earth in a human body? Without bringing forward
any documents, this question may be answered in the affirmative. For
genuine clairvoyant knowledge of self leads the man of the present day
to see that powers are to be discovered in the human soul which emanate
from the Christ. These powers are at work during the first three years
of childhood without any action being taken by the human being. In later
life they _may_ be called into action, if the Christ be sought within the
soul by inner meditation. Man was not always able, as he is now, to find
the Christ within himself. There were times when no inner meditation
could lead him to the Christ. This again we learn from clairvoyant
perception. In the interval between that past time when man could not
find the Christ in himself, and the present time when he can find him,
there took place Christ’s earthly life. And that life itself is the cause
of man’s being able to find the Christ in himself in the manner that has
been pointed out. Thus to clairvoyant perception the earthly life of
Christ is proved without any historical records.
It is just as if the Christ had said, “I will be such an ideal for you
human beings as, raised to a spiritual level, will show you that which
is fulfilled in each human body.” In his early childhood man learns from
the spirit how to walk physically, _i.e._, he is shown by the spirit his
way through earthly life. From the spirit he learns to speak, _i.e._,
to form _truth_; or in other words, he develops the essence of truth
out of sound during the first three years of his life. And the _life_
too, which man lives on earth as an ego-being, obtains its vital organ
through what is formed in the first three years of childhood. Thus man
learns to walk, _i.e._, to find “the way,” he learns to present “truth”
through his physical organism, and he learns to bring “life” from the
spirit into expression in his body. No more significant re-interpretation
seems possible of the words “Except ye become as little children, ye
cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” And momentous is that saying
in which the ego-being of the Christ comes into expression thus, “I am
the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Just as, unknown to a child, the higher
spirit-forces are fashioning its organism to become the bodily expression
of the way, the truth and the life, so the spirit of man, through being
interpenetrated with the Christ, gradually becomes the _conscious_
vehicle of the way, the truth and the life. He is thereby making himself,
in the course of his earthly development, into that force which bears
sway within him as a child, when he is not consciously its vehicle.
This saying about the way, the truth and the life is capable of opening
the doors of eternity. It sounds to man out of the depths of his soul, if
his self-knowledge is true and real.
Such reflections as these open up, in a double sense, the vision of the
spiritual guidance of the individual and of collective humanity. As human
beings we are able, through self-knowledge, to find the Christ within us
as the guide Whom, since His life on earth, we can always reach, because
He is always in man. And further, if we apply to the historical records
that we have apprehended without them, we discover their real nature.
They express historically something which is revealed of itself in the
depths of the soul. They are therefore to be accounted as _guiding_
humanity in the same direction as the soul itself is proceeding.
If we thus understand the suggestion of eternity in the words, “I am
the way, the truth and the life,” we cannot feel ourselves justified
in asking, “Why does a person who has passed through many incarnations
always re-enter life as a child?” For it becomes evident that this
apparent imperfection is an ever-recurring reminder of the Highest that
is in man. And we cannot be reminded often enough,--at any rate each time
we enter earthly life is not too often to be reminded,--of the great fact
of what man really is with reference to that Being who underlies all
earthly existence, without being touched by its imperfections.
It is not well to make many definitions or summaries in occult science
or theosophy, or indeed in occultism generally. It is better to give
a description, and to try and call forth a feeling of what really
exists. On this account we are now attempting to induce a feeling of
what distinguishes the first three years of human life, and of the way
in which this is related to the light that streams from the cross on
Golgotha. The meaning of this feeling is that an impulse is passing
through human evolution, and that through this impulse the Pauline
saying, “Not I--but the Christ in me,” will become a fact. We have only
to know what man is in reality, in order to be able to proceed from such
knowledge to insight into the nature of the Christ. When once, however,
we have arrived at the Christ-idea through true observation of humanity,
we know that we discover the Christ in the best way if we first look for
Him in ourselves, and if we then return to the Bible records, these are
for the first time rightly valued. And no one prizes the Bible more, or
more consciously, than one who has found the Christ in this way. It is
possible to imagine a being, let us say an inhabitant of Mars, descending
to earth, without ever having heard of the Christ and His work. Much
that has taken place on earth would be incomprehensible to the Martian;
much that interests people nowadays would not interest him. But it would
interest him to discover the central impulse of earthly evolution,
_i.e._, the Christ-idea, as it is expressed in human nature itself.
One who has grasped this, is able for the first time rightly to
understand the Bible, for he finds expressed there in a marvellous way
what he has previously observed in himself, and he says: It is not
necessary to have been brought up with any special reverence for the
Gospel; they need only be presented to me, a fully-conscious human
being, to stand revealed in all their greatness, by means of what I have
learnt through occult science.
It is indeed not too much to say that a time will come when it will be
recognized by people who have learned through occult science rightly
to appreciate the contents of the Gospels, that these are guides of
the human race in a sense which is more just to those writings than
people have hitherto been to them. It is only through knowledge of human
nature itself that humanity will learn to see what is latent in those
profound records. It will then be said: If there is to be found in the
Gospels that which forms an integral part of human nature, it must have
come from the people who wrote these documents on earth. Therefore what
genuine reflection brings home to us about our own lives,--the more
so the older we grow--must hold especially good with regard to those
writers. We ourselves have done many things which we only understand
years afterwards, and in the writers of the Gospels may be seen people
who wrote out of the higher self which works in man during childhood,
so that the Gospels are writings emanating from the wisdom which moulds
human nature. Man through his body is a manifestation of spirit, and the
Gospels are such a manifestation in writing.
On this assumption the idea of inspiration regains its true and loftier
meaning. Just as higher forces are at work on the brain during the first
three years of childhood, so there were higher forces from spiritual
worlds impressed on the souls of the Evangelists, under the influence
of which they wrote the Gospels. The spiritual guidance of humanity is
expressed in such a fact as this. For the human race must surely be
_guided_, if within it there are people working who write records under
the influence of the same powers that are at work on the moulding of man
in profound wisdom. And just as the individual says or does things which
he only understands at a later period of life, so collective humanity
has produced in the Evangelists means of revelation which can only be
understood by degrees. The farther humanity progresses, the greater will
be the understanding of these records. The individual can feel spiritual
guidance within himself; and collective humanity can feel it in those of
its members who work as did the writers of the Gospels.
The idea thus gained of the guidance of humanity may be extended in many
directions. Let us suppose that a man finds disciples,--a few people
who follow him. Such an one will soon become aware, through genuine
self-knowledge, that the very fact of his finding disciples gives him
the feeling that what he has to say does not originate with himself.
The case is rather this,--that spiritual powers in higher worlds wish
to communicate with the disciples, and find in the Teacher the fitting
instrument for their manifestation.
The thought will suggest itself to such a man: when I was a child I
worked on myself by the aid of forces proceeding from the spiritual
world, and what I am now able to give, of my best, must also proceed
from higher worlds; I may not look upon it as belonging to my ordinary
consciousness. Such a man may in fact say: something demonic, something
like a “daimon”--using the word in the sense of a _good_ spiritual
power--is working out of a spiritual world through me on my disciples.
Socrates felt something of this kind. Plato tells us that he spoke of
his “daimon” as of the one who led and guided him. Many attempts have
been made to explain this “daimon” of Socrates, but it can only be
explained by supposing that Socrates was able to feel something like
that which results from the above reflections. Then we are able to
understand that throughout the three or four centuries during which the
Socratic principle was active in Greece, a state of feeling permeated
the Greek world through Socrates, which prepared the way for another
great event. The feeling that man, as he now is, is not the whole of
what comes through from higher worlds,--this feeling went on working.
The best of those in whom it was present were those who afterwards best
understood the words, “Not I, but the Christ in me.” For they could say
to themselves: Socrates used to speak of a being working as a “daimon”
from higher worlds; the Christ-ideal makes clear what Socrates meant.
Only Socrates could not as yet speak of Christ, because in his time no
one was able to find the Christ-nature _within himself_.
Here again we feel something of the spiritual guidance of the race, for
nothing can be established in the world without preparation. Why was it
that Paul found his best disciples in Greece? Because the ground had been
prepared there by the teaching of Socrates and the state of feeling that
has been described. That is to say, what happens in human evolution may
be traced back to events which operated previously, and made people ripe
for what was afterwards to be brought to bear upon them. Do we not feel
here how far the guiding impulse passing through human evolution extends
and how at the right moment it places people where they will be best used
to further evolution? In such facts is manifested the guidance of the
human race in a general way.
[1] The vitality of the human organism is maintained at the transition
from childhood to later life, because the organism is capable of change
at that period. Later in life, it is no longer susceptible of change, and
on this account cannot continue to exist with that other Self.
LECTURE II.
If we turn our attention to what was said by the teachers and leaders
of ancient Egypt about the direction and guidance of the spiritual
life of their country, we may trace a remarkable parallel between what
is manifested in the individual life of man, and what governs human
evolution as a whole. It is related that when a Greek once asked an
Egyptian, who had guided and led his nation from ancient times onwards,
he answered, “In far off times of yore, the gods ruled and taught us, and
only afterwards men came to be our leaders.” The Egyptians named Menes to
the Greeks, as their first leader on the physical plane to be recognized
as a _human_ leader. That is to say, the directors of the Egyptian people
alleged that in earlier times the gods themselves--as Greek records
say--guided and led the Egyptian nation. Such an assertion, coming down
to us from ancient times, must, however, be rightly understood. What did
the Egyptians mean when they said, “Our kings and great teachers were
gods”?
The man who thus answered the question of the Greek meant that if any
one had gone back into the ancient times of the Egyptian nation, and
had asked those people who felt something within them like a higher
consciousness, or wisdom from higher worlds, “Who are really your
teachers?” they would have answered, “If I wanted to tell you about my
real teacher, I should not point to such and such a person and say, ‘That
is my teacher,’ but I should first have to put myself into a clairvoyant
state, (it is known from occult science that this was comparatively
easier in ancient times than it is now,) and then I should find my real
inspirer and teacher, who comes to me only when the eyes of my spirit
are opened.” For in ancient Egypt, beings who were not incarnated in a
physical human body came down amongst men. In those remote ages, it was
the gods who still ruled and taught the Egyptians, and by “gods” they
understood beings who had preceded man in evolution.
According to occult science, the earth passed through an earlier
planetary condition, called the “Moon-state,” before it became “Earth.”
During this condition man was not yet human in the present sense of the
word; but there were on the old Moon other beings, not possessed of the
present human form and differently constituted, who nevertheless were
then at the evolutionary stage which man has now attained on earth. We
may therefore say, that on the ancient Moon-planet which has perished,
and out of which the earth afterwards originated, there lived beings who
were man’s predecessors. In Christian esoteric language they are called
Angel-beings (Angeloi) and the beings immediately above them--Archangels
(Archangeloi). The latter were human at a still earlier period than the
angels. What are called angels or Angeloi in Christian esotericism, and
Dhyanic beings in Eastern mysticism, were “men” during the Moon-period.
Now these beings, during the present earth-period, are a stage farther
advanced than man,--those of them, that is to say, who completed their
evolution on the Moon. Only at the end of the earth’s evolution will man
have arrived at the stage which those beings had reached at the end of
the Moon-period.
When the earth-state of our planet began, and man appeared on earth,
these beings were not able to appear in an external human form, for the
human body of flesh and blood is essentially a product of earth, and
is only adapted to the beings who are now human. The beings, who are a
stage farther advanced than man, could not be incarnated in human bodies
when the earth was beginning its evolution. They were only able to take
a part in the government of the earth by illuminating and inspiring
people in primeval times in the condition to which these attained when
clairvoyant. Indirectly, then, through these clairvoyant people, the
angels intervened to guide the destinies of earth.
Thus the ancient Egyptians still remembered a condition of things during
which the leading personalities of the nation were clearly conscious of
their connection with what are called gods, angels, or dhyanic beings.
Now what sort of beings were these, who were not incarnated in a human
form of flesh and blood, but influenced mankind in the way we have
described? They were man’s predecessors, who had progressed beyond the
human stage.
There is in these days much misuse of a word which may in this connection
be applied in its true meaning, the word “Superman.” If we really wish
to speak of “Supermen,” it is these beings who may rightly be so called,
who were human during the Moon-period, the planetary stage preceding
our earth and who have now outgrown humanity. They were only able to
appear in an etheric body to clairvoyants. It was thus that they came
down to earth from spiritual worlds, and ruled there even as late as
post-Atlantean times.
These beings had, and still have, the remarkable quality of not being
obliged to think; in fact, we might even say that they cannot think at
all as man does. How then does man think? More or less in this way. He
starts from a certain point and says, “I understand this or that,” and
from that point he then tries to understand various other things. If this
were not the method of human thought, school-life would not be such a
difficult period for many. We cannot learn mathematics in a day, because
we have to begin at a certain point, and go slowly forwards. This takes
a long time. We cannot survey a whole world of thought at a glance, for
human thought runs its course in _time_. A system of thought does not
enter the mind in a flash. We have to make an effort, and have to exert
ourselves, in order to find the sequence of thought. The beings described
above are without this human peculiarity. A far-reaching train of thought
comes into their minds with the same rapidity with which an animal makes
up its mind that it will snatch at something which its instinct tells it
is eatable. Instinct and reflective consciousness are in no wise distinct
in these beings, they are one and the same thing. Just as animals have
instinct at their stage of evolution, in their kingdom, so these dhyanic
beings or angels have direct spiritual thought and conceptions. By virtue
of this instinctive inner life of conception, they are of an essentially
different nature from human beings.
Now we can easily form an idea of the impossibility of the use by these
beings of a brain or physical body such as we have. They have to use an
etheric body, because the human body and brain only allow of thoughts in
_time_, whereas these beings do not develop their thoughts in _time_,
but feel the wisdom that is approaching them blaze forth, as it were,
spontaneously within them. It is impossible for them to think erroneously
in the sense in which man does. The process of their thought is a direct
inspiration. Hence the personalities who were able to come into contact
with these superhuman or angelic beings, were conscious that they were in
the presence of unerring wisdom. Therefore, even as late as in ancient
Egyptian times when the man who was the human teacher or king was in
the presence of his spiritual guide, he felt thus: the command which he
is giving, the truth which he is enunciating, is _literally_ right, and
cannot be wrong. (This was also felt by those to whom the truths were
passed on.)
The clairvoyant guides of the human race were able to speak in such a
manner that in their words people believed they were receiving exactly
what came down from the spiritual world. In short, there was a direct
current down from the higher spirit-hierarchies which were directing
humanity. Thus what works on the individual in early childhood may
be seen working on humanity at large in the form of the next world of
spirit-hierarchies which hovers over human evolution as a whole. This
is the next kingdom of the angels or superhuman beings, standing a
step higher than man, and extending directly into spiritual spheres.
They bring down to earth from those spheres what is worked into human
civilization. In the child, it is on the formation of the body that the
higher wisdom leaves its impress; in human evolution of past ages, it was
civilization that was so matured.
Thus the Egyptians, who described themselves as being in connection
with divinity, felt that the soul of humanity was open to the action of
spirit hierarchies. Just as the soul of a child opens its aura to the
hierarchies up to the time mentioned in the preceding pages, so, through
its work, did the whole of humanity open its world to the hierarchies
with which it was connected.