The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind

by Rudolf Steiner

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.