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.