The Spiritual Guidance
of Man and of Mankind
BY DR. RUDOLF STEINER
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.
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.
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.