The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind

by Rudolf Steiner

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.