The Rudolf Steiner Archive

42. The Spiritual Guidance of Humanity II

[ 1 ] In the next few lectures, I would like to speak to you about a subject that is important to human beings both in relation to ordinary, everyday life and in those exceptional circumstances of life where fate seems to impose very special trials upon us; it is also important for everything we call the “higher life”—the development of the human soul into the spiritual worlds. For everything—the regular and the extraordinary aspects of daily life, as well as the higher life extending into the spiritual worlds—ultimately points us toward something we can call, in the broadest sense, the spiritual guidance of the individual and of all humanity.

[ 2 ] In this day and age, it is not exactly easy to make oneself fully understood when discussing this spiritual guidance of humankind. For we live in an age in which people do not even like to hear that they are “guided” and that it is part of human nature to submit to “guidance,” as it were, to a higher power. People today would all too gladly be a “leader” in this or that regard—a leader—but someone who is “led”? That seems to run counter to everything people today think about their dignity, their independence, and their freedom. Nevertheless, there is a very simple self-experiment for the human soul, from which it can initially emerge with complete clarity how a person is subject to a guidance that, even if we must initially call it “unknown.”

[ 3 ] This simple experiment involves, as you grow older and older, taking the time more often in your life to reflect a little on what you have experienced and done, to think back a bit on what you may have done in your youth, what you did or said later in life, how you perceived this or that event that affected you, and so on. If one thinks about this—thinks about it more often, thinks about it constantly—once a few more years have passed, one can make a remarkable discovery. This discovery is not made merely by the person who is immersed in ordinary life, but to an even greater extent by the person who has already undergone some spiritual development. And to an even greater extent, the initiated person makes the same experience. We make a curious discovery here. When we ask ourselves: What did you do or say during this or that period of your life?—it very often turns out that we’ve done a whole host of things—we do indeed come across such things—that we actually only understand now. Seven or eight years ago, or perhaps twenty or twenty-one years ago, one did things about which one now knows quite precisely: “Only now has your understanding actually reached the point where you can comprehend the things you did back then!”

[ 4 ] Many people do not make such self-discoveries because they do not seek them out. But it is extremely important for people to take time for such introspection more often. Because there comes a moment when a person realizes: You actually did things in earlier years that you’re only now beginning to understand; back then, your mind wasn’t yet mature enough to understand those things; back then, you did them—and even talked about them.

[ 5 ] In such a moment, when one makes such discoveries, something emanates from the human soul: one feels as if one is protected by a benevolent power that flows through one. One begins to gain more and more confidence in the fact that, in the highest sense of the word, one is not alone in the world after all, and that what one understands and what one is capable of is, in essence, only a small part of what one has to accomplish in the world.

[ 6 ] If one makes this observation frequently, one can elevate something that is, in theory, very easy to understand into a way of life. It is theoretically easy to see: If everything a person must do in order to live were left to his own reason, to his own intelligence, he would not get very far—truly not very far at all. For we need only answer this question theoretically in the following way: When does a person actually perform the most artistic acts in relation to himself? When do they act with the greatest wisdom toward themselves? They do so roughly up to the point that they can still recall when, later in life, they look back on the years gone by. When you look back on what happened three, four, five years ago, and so on, your memory takes you only so far; it doesn’t go any further. Then your parents or those who were present during your earlier life can tell you what you accomplished as a child; but your own memory only goes back to a certain point. This is also the point at which a person has learned to feel themselves as an “I.” For people who can recall their past in normal life, this occurs at the age of three or three and a half years. Before this time, however, the human soul has accomplished the wisest of deeds within the person themselves, and never later, when they come to consciousness, can a person achieve anything as magnificent and powerful within themselves as what they accomplish unconsciously in the very earliest years of their childhood. For we know that through our birth we bring into the physical plane what we have brought with us as the fruits of previous incarnations. And when we are born, our external brain, for example, is still a very imperfect instrument. The human soul must now work within it to develop its finer structures. But during this time, it is not only necessary for us to finely shape our brain in a malleable way; we also learn three of the most important things before we come to consciousness. First, we learn to orient our own physicality in space. Modern humans do not pay proper attention to what this implies; for therein lies one of the most essential differences between humans and animals, in that animals are predetermined from the outset to develop their equilibrium in space. One animal is a climber, another a swimmer, and so on. Animals are organized from the outset in such a way that they position themselves correctly within space, and this is true even of the mammals most similar to humans.

[ 7 ] If zoologists were to reflect on this fact, they would place less emphasis on the fact that, for example, humans and animals have such-and-such a number of similar muscles and so on, because such considerations are far less significant than the fact that humans are not born with a natural sense of balance; rather, they must first achieve it on their own. It is immensely significant that humans must work on themselves to transform themselves from a creature that crawls on the ground into one that can walk upright. It is humans themselves who establish their vertical position, their state of balance in space, and who place themselves in relation to gravity.

[ 8 ] I can only hint at this here, and I am well aware that zoologists have raised objections to such ideas—and continue to do so today. But in the future, even zoologists will find that it is correct that human beings [themselves] develop their balance in relation to gravity during early childhood.

[ 9 ] The second thing that human beings teach themselves—truly from that individuality which passes from incarnation to incarnation, from embodiment to embodiment—is language, through which they learn the truth from their fellow human beings and can express it themselves. Those educators who look more deeply into the workings of the human mind know very well that a person who were transported to a deserted island and were not together with other people would not learn language. What we inherit, what is implanted for later years so that it is subject to the principles of heredity, does not depend on a person being together with their fellow human beings. For example, we are predisposed from the very beginning, through hereditary factors, to lose our baby teeth in the seventh year. We could be out on a deserted island; as long as we have the opportunity to grow up, we will lose our baby teeth. But we learn to speak only when our soul being as such is stimulated—when that which we carry from life to life is awakened. We must form the seed for the development of our larynx during that period when we do not yet have our sense of self. Before the time we can recall, we must lay the seed for the formation of our larynx so that it can become a speech organ.

[ 10 ] And then there is a third aspect, about which it is less well known, that human beings learn through themselves, through what lives within them from incarnation to incarnation: This is life in thought itself. We therefore set about working on the brain because the brain is the instrument of thought. The brain is initially so inflexible because human beings must first shape it, and because it is the instrument of their thinking—that is, of the life that human life on Earth can be; for human beings must live with their fellow human beings in thought, and only then do they truly live. And if their life of thought were to wither away, human life on Earth would not be complete.

[ 11 ] Why are we able to learn so much in the very first years of our lives? If it depended solely on our intelligence, we truly could not accomplish what we accomplish in our early years without relying on it—what we accomplish in those very first years, still drawing from the unconscious, yet no less from our soul and our individuality. Why are we able to do all this? Well, we are able to do it because, in the first years of our lives, we are much more closely connected through our soul—through our entire individuality—to the spiritual worlds of the higher hierarchies than we are later on. For the clairvoyant who has undergone spiritual development to the point of being able to observe the actual spiritual processes, something of immense significance occurs at the moment when a human being attains self-consciousness. While what we call the “childlike aura” hovers around the child in the first years of life like a wonderfully golden, human-superhuman intelligence—[indeed] in such a way that this childlike aura, the actual higher part of the human being, extends everywhere into the spiritual world, at the time when the child learns to say “I” to itself, this aura penetrates deeper into the inner self.

[ 12 ] Human beings learn to perceive themselves as an “I,” to recognize themselves as an “I,” as that which was previously connected to the higher worlds enters into their “I.” From that point on, they learn everything through their consciousness and learn to connect themselves with the outside world in every situation. They did not do this before. In the past, things were as if they hovered above him like a wondrous dream world. But he also acted from the spirit inward, acting so deeply into his physicality that he could shape his brain from the spirit. I have already pointed out that it is not without reason that people say: “Even the wisest person can still learn from a child.”—The greatest masters can learn from children. Why? Because—if I may use the trivial expression—in what surrounds the child as an aura, there is something like a “telephone line” connecting it to the spiritual hierarchies, to the spiritual world. Something flows from the spiritual worlds into the child’s aura, into the human being, and the human being is thereby immediately, as an individual being, subject to the guidance of the entire spiritual world. The spiritual forces from the entire spiritual world flow into the human being. It is these forces that raise him up, that bring him to the point where he overcomes gravity; it is these forces that shape his larynx, that shape his brain so that it becomes a living organ for thoughts, feelings, and morality. Thus, the entire spiritual world works its way into the human being.

[ 13 ] This is the same world from which comes what we also feel later on when we are confronted with this reality: Sometimes you say things that are better than what you could actually say based on your reason and wisdom—you say something that even you yourself can hardly understand!

[ 14 ] Then one truly feels: When one entered the physical world at birth, one had not yet completely slipped away from the world one had left behind upon entering physical existence; [one] was still connected to it. Then what we possess as a part of our spiritual nature enters our physical form and follows us. But we often feel that what is within us is not merely a higher self that is to be gradually developed, but rather something that is already there and often leads us to rise above ourselves.

[ 15 ] In the course of these lectures, we will see that what surrounds us in early childhood and then enters into the human being later on stands in a very remarkable relationship to our body and our entire outer being. Everything a person can produce in the way of ideals and artistic creations, but also everything they can produce in the way of natural healing powers within their own body, does not come from ordinary intellect, but from the deeper forces that work in the early years to shape our constitution and form the larynx; for these are the same forces that remain within us later on—for example, when we say: “External forces can no longer help us now; our own body must draw forth the deeper healing powers that lie dormant deep within our organism.”

[ 16 ] And it is also from there that the greatest powers come to us when we wish to ascend into the spiritual world and transform our soul into a clairvoyant organ.

[ 17 ] Now a question may naturally arise: Why does this light that we have received from higher powers remain in our bodies for no more than three to three and a half years—why, then, does it want things to be different?

[ 18 ] You can easily figure out half of the answer yourself; for it lies in the following. If those higher forces continued to act in the same way, we would remain children forever; we would never attain self-awareness. That which previously acted from the outside must now enter within. But there is a more significant reason that can shed even more light on the mysteries of human life than what has just been said, and it is this: Through the theosophical teachings you have come to know from previous lectures or elsewhere, we learn that the human body, as it is today, is something that has come into being—that it has undergone an evolution in earlier times. We also know that it underwent this evolution in such a way that various forces acted upon it—acting upon the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body—which shaped the human physical body and also the etheric body differently than they would have been shaped had the forces of those entities we call the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic not acted upon them. The human body has emerged from forces that, in a certain sense, have shaped it less favorably than it would have been had only one kind of force been at work—namely, those originating from the good, divine beings who advance humanity. This is, after all, the cause of suffering and illness—and also of death—namely, that those other forces—the Luciferic and Ahrimanic ones—have also been at work. What we bring into existence through birth is better than anything else about us; it does, however, contain forces of the highest spirituality.

[ 19 ] And if it were to act within the human physical body for longer than three to three and a half years—taken as an average—the human being would not be able to endure such an influence. For the human physical body is organized in such a way that, given the manner in which the human being acts upon it from the spiritual world, it can tolerate such an influence for only three to three and a half years at most. The human body would break down if those forces—which, in the early years of childhood, when the body is still malleable, shape the organism so that it becomes a being capable of walking and standing—were to continue acting in this way for any longer. These forces are so immense that, if they were to continue acting later on, our organism would have to break down under the might of these forces. After three to three and a half years, the time comes when these forces—which act within the human being during the early years of childhood—would, in essence, have a destructive effect.

[ 20 ] But this gives rise to a thought that can have great practical importance—a thought that, as you know, is expressed in the [New] Testament, in the Gospel; there, that saying takes on a very concrete form: “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven!” For what would be the highest ideal for human beings if what has just been said were true? To draw ever closer to the point where one consciously learns to master what one masters unconsciously in the early years of childhood! This is indeed the highest thing a person can set as an ideal for themselves: to bring into conscious life—and to allow to work in a conscious way—what is at work in the early years of childhood. This is a great ideal, such a great ideal that a person can say the following to themselves when they reflect quite seriously on themselves.

[ 21 ] There must be a purpose to passing through successive incarnations. We have passed through successive incarnations in the past; we will continue to do so as the Earth progresses in its development through future incarnations. Then the time will come when the Earth will have reached the end of its course, when the rest of the Earth will be cast off by all human souls, just as the human body is cast off at death, when the human soul, in order to continue living, enters a spiritual realm to live the life between death and a new birth. And there, our highest ideal may appear to be that we have then progressed so far through all the teachings and through the work of our incarnations that we become aware of that which has taught us to master our entire body and our whole being—that which works into the body during the first years of childhood, so that through it we first become fully human. That is indeed our highest ideal: that we learn to make ourselves into whole human beings, just as we do unconsciously in the first years of life with the help and power of the spiritual hierarchies. Then a thought arises before our soul that fills us with humility—but also with a true awareness of human dignity—the thought: We are not alone. Something lives within us that can always provide us with proof: We can, as human beings, rise above ourselves, rise to something that already transcends us and that will grow with us from incarnation to incarnation; this lives within us, as truly as we are human! — This is the ideal becoming real within us, which will lift us above ourselves. This thought can take on an ever more definite and concrete form, providing us with something immensely soothing and uplifting—but also with a corresponding humility and modesty. —What do we have within us? Truly, a higher, more divine human being, of whom we can feel vividly: He is within us!

[ 22 ] Then the moment will likely come when we say to ourselves in life: The best we can do is when we devote ourselves—with everything within us, with our wisdom, and even with the morality we have already attained—to the better human being, sacrificing ourselves for that better human being—and eradicating and subduing all pride and all arrogance within us in the face of what reigns within us! —Then we feel that there is something within us that truly lives in the first three years of childhood and makes us human. And when we reflect on what has just been said, we realize: As human beings are today, they are imperfect and cannot consciously carry within themselves what reigns within them during the first years of life; they must first become more perfect so that they can consciously carry within themselves what is now unconsciously at work within them during the first three years of childhood.

[ 23 ] If a person were standing before us and some cosmic forces could cause the ordinary “I” to be removed from that person—we would therefore have to assume: It were possible to remove this ordinary “I,” which has accompanied the person through the incarnations, from [the] physical body, [the] etheric body, and [the] astral body, and we could instill within them an “I” that acts in connection with the spiritual worlds—what would happen to such a person? After three years, their body would have to break down! Something would have to happen through world karma that would prevent him from living in this body for more than three years! Only at the end of the Earth’s cycle will a human being be able to feel within himself what enables him to live longer than three years. But then the human being will also say to himself: It is not I, but this Higher Being within me—which has always been there—that is now working within me. - For the time being, he cannot yet say that; at most, he could say: He senses it, but he has not yet reached that point with his true, real human “I.”

[ 24 ] I now ask you—and let each of you answer this question for yourselves: Suppose that at some point in time, while the Earth period has not yet come to an end, a human organism were placed into the world, and in a certain year, certain world forces were to cause the “I” to be removed as it has developed, and that “I” which is active during the first three years of childhood were later to act in such a way that it would be connected to the spiritual worlds, to the hierarchies—in other words, were it to act just as the divine “I” itself does—how long could such a human being live? Three years! For then something would have to occur that would cause world karma to destroy this body.

[ 25 ] That was indeed there—was there when a human organism stood at the Jordan during the baptism of John, when the “I” of Jesus of Nazareth—of whom it can truly be said that one must become like little children in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven—when this old “I” departed, and when the higher “I” sank into the three bodies. But this created a necessity—since such a “I” can live only three years—that the entire course of events had to unfold in such a way that, after three years, this earthly life would come to an end.

[ 26 ] Here you have the entire profound connection between what the Leader is within the human being—that which shines into our childhood as if in the twilight, that which is always at work beneath the surface of our consciousness as the very best within us—and that which once entered into the entire evolution of humanity, so that it could remain in a human form for three years.

[ 27 ] What did this “I”—which is connected to the spiritual hierarchies and which entered the human body of Jesus of Nazareth at that time—teach, such that its entry is symbolically represented under the sign of the descending Spirit in the form of a dove, with the words: “This is my beloved Son; today I have begotten him!”—for that was the original wording—that is, does it mean that the true Son of Man, who otherwise appears only as a shadowy, twilight figure during the first three years of childhood, is now being lowered into a human body?

[ 28 ] When we hold this image before us, we are at the same time holding the highest human ideal before us. For it means nothing other than what is told to us: Christ is recognizable in every human being! — And even if no Gospels or sacred writings were to say that a Christ once lived, we would recognize through our own nature that Christ lives within us. Even if all records had been lost and nothing had been handed down from them, we would still recognize—because we correctly assess what lives within us during the first three years of our childhood—that Christ was there. We need no records or documents, for Christ can be recognized through the laws of nature.

[ 29 ] What can we learn from the laws of nature when we now recall what Christ also said: “I want to be for you, human beings, an ideal that allows you to fulfill in the spirit what you otherwise fulfill in the physical body.” — What do we fulfill in the physical body during the first three years of our lives? We learn to walk—to walk physically from the spirit; that is, the human being finds his way from the spirit. We learn to speak—that is, to express the truth from the spirit—or, in other words: The human being develops the essence of truth from sound during the first three years of his life. And the life that a human being lives on Earth as an “I”-being derives its life force from what is formed during the first three years of childhood. Thus, we learn physically, entirely physically, to walk with our legs. We learn the “path,” we learn the “truth,” and we learn to live “life” in the spirit. There could be no better interpretation of the words, “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” No deeper words could have characterized the I-being of Christ—that very same I who dwelt in life for three years as: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life!”

[ 30 ] Such words, spoken as if coming in through the doors of eternity, coming in from the Spirit to humanity, to admonish people about what is truly real and how they should live their lives as human beings—these words present the entire evolution of humanity before our souls. And if we wish to experience the nature of that spiritual guidance which we can sense when we truly think of the Christ, we need only let our thoughts wander to the magnificent, majestic fact—for that is what it is! —that through the childlike self, the work of the Hierarchies takes effect to teach us how to walk, speak, and think; that is, to give us a goal, to let the truth flow through us, and to show us the right way to live. We can gauge the greatness of this fact by what the Christ ideal makes of us when we live according to it. Then the words, which resound from eternity itself—from the eternal destiny of the human condition—thunder into our very being: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life!” Then we feel that it is unjustified to ask: Why, having already gone through so many incarnations, do we repeatedly enter existence as children? For we know that this imperfection is a perpetual reminder of the Highest that lives within us. And we cannot be reminded of this great truth often enough—at least at the beginning of every life.

[ 31 ] It is not good to define things too much or to speak too much in terms of concepts in Spiritual Science, theosophy, or the occult in general. It is better to characterize things and try to evoke a sense of what is. That is why I tried today to evoke a sense of what is—what exists in the first three years of our lives, of every human life—and what emerges when we allow life to be illuminated by that light which radiates from the light of the Cross on Golgotha. For then we gain a sense, a feeling, of how an impulse runs through human evolution—an impulse about which one can rightly say that the Pauline words “Not I, but Christ in me!” must become truth. Does one need to swear by some “positive” document to achieve this? Do we need some external document to attain this Christ-force? No! We need only know what the human being truly is. Therefore, there is nothing “positively” Christian in this idea of Christ as presented by Theosophy.

[ 32 ] But when one has arrived at this idea of Christ through a true contemplation of humanity and knows: “If you want to discover Christ, you will best discover him within yourself”—and when one then returns to the biblical texts, the Bible regains its great value for such a person. And there is no greater—nor more conscious—appreciator of the Bible than a person who has found this. But that is also what we see in it.

[ 33 ] And if someone knew absolutely nothing about the Bible and were to reflect on human beings in this way, the idea of Christ would live within them. That’s for sure! And it’s conceivable that beings like those who now inhabit Mars—that a being might come down to Earth who had never heard of Christ or his work. Much of what has taken place here on Earth, such a Martian would not understand; much of what interests people today would not interest him. But what would interest him is the central impulse of Earth’s evolution: the Christ-idea, as expressed by the very essence of the human being! — Whoever has grasped this now understands the Bible all the more; for they find what is written in the Bible expressed in a wonderful way in the individual Gospels, and they then say to themselves: I do not need to have been trained to hold the Gospels in special esteem, but rather I approach the Gospels as a fully conscious human being, and through what I have come to know through Theosophy, they appear to me in all their grandeur.

[ 34 ] I believe there will come a time when people will say: Those who, through theosophy, have learned to appreciate the content of the Gospels in the proper way—they know how to honor the content of the Gospels in such a way that they hold it in higher esteem than any pope or Church Father ever did—even though they held it in very high regard. Only through an understanding of the nature of the human being will humanity learn what lies within these profound documents. But what will people then come to realize? This, too, is easy to discover through simple reflection. One will say to oneself: If we find the essence of the human being in the Gospels, then it must have come through those who wrote them on Earth, so that what we must say—especially as we grow older—through humble reflection applies particularly to them: We have done many things through which we have transcended ourselves, where the higher human being has made itself known. And it was only through the higher human being reaching into them that those who wrote the Gospels were able to compose these documents! Here the concept of inspiration regains its true meaning. Just as higher forces work into the brain during the first three years of childhood, so too were forces from the spiritual worlds imprinted upon the souls of the Gospel writers, enabling the Gospels to be written. - Now we sense something else besides guidance. Humanity must truly be guided if it is to bring about a situation in which those who wielded the pen when the Gospels came into being did not stand on the same level as what they produced—and what will become more understandable the further humanity progresses. There we learn to feel: In what has been brought forth over the course of time, impulses from the spiritual world are at work; and just as the individual feels a guiding influence within themselves, so too do impulses of spiritual guidance govern the entire development of humanity. And when human beings are placed under spiritual guidance, the best they can do is precisely what they do under that spiritual guidance.

[ 35 ] What, then, will someone say who has found a few disciples, a few people who profess their allegiance to him, when he reflects on what we have just emphasized? Let us suppose he finds followers, disciples in the world, who listen to him and perhaps revere him to a certain degree. If he is not the kind of person—as there are many in a materialistic age—but rather someone who can allow all of this to pass through his heart in its majestic grandeur, then he will say: I have found something, but I cannot give it to any disciple; I cannot pass it on through the ordinary “I” that goes about with these disciples. I don’t really know how to put into words at this moment what the believer can find. I feel that something quite indefinable, something entirely unconscious, is at work within me on the grandest scale! —That is roughly what such a person will say. He will feel as though, as a whole human being, he were an instrument of a higher individuality that shines in from a dim twilight, so that the thought occurs to him: When I was a child, I embodied everything within myself that worked upon me from the spiritual world; and what I can now do as my very best also works upon me from higher worlds; I must not touch it with my ordinary consciousness at all! — Yes, he may say: Something demonic, something like a demon—but the word “demon” taken in the best sense—is at work here.

[ 36 ] This is what Socrates felt; Plato recounts that he spoke of his “daemon,” that which guides and directs him. Many attempts have been made to explain this “daemon” of Socrates. But it can only be explained if one is willing to accept the idea that Socrates could have experienced something like this, as becomes clear from a reflection such as the one we have undertaken today. Then we can also grasp once again that, throughout the three to four centuries during which the Socratic principle was at work in Greece, such a mood—which entered the Greek world through Socrates—could have served as a preparatory force for another great event. The mood that human beings, as they stand, are not entirely what extends from higher worlds—this mood spread far and wide.

[ 37 ] The best among them—those who maintained this spirit—were the ones who later understood the saying best: “Not I, but Christ in me!” - For now they could say to themselves: Socrates still spoke as if under the influence of a demonic force, from the twilight realm of the spiritually active; through the ideal of Christ, it is made clear to us what Socrates himself had spoken of.

[ 38 ] Here we sense once again something of the spiritual guidance of humanity: Nothing can be brought into the world without preparation. Why did Paul find his most devoted followers in Greece of all places? Because there, through Socratism, the ground had been prepared by the atmosphere we have just described. This means: What is happening now leads us back to events that took place there in the past and that prepared people to be open to what was to come later. Do we not sense how far-reaching is the impulse that runs through human evolution, placing the right people at the right moment where they are needed for evolution—an impulse that also lifts us beyond ourselves in certain moments of life, when we attain true self-knowledge, when we strive to rise above the ordinary human being to perceive higher worlds, to attain powers that the ordinary person does not possess. In ordinary life, we often make ourselves sick and so on. Within us are the forces that make us foolish, sick, and unwise; within us are the forces that lead us beyond ourselves and into the world. Thus do the forces reign that govern historical development and that govern the individual. Thus in the life of all humanity—thus in the individual. Let us learn to feel this. Let us feel what passes through human beings as a force and impulse from epoch to epoch, but also from one stage of life to the next.

[ 39 ] The task of the next two lectures will be to show in more detail how this affects the life of the individual—in a wide variety of circumstances.