The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind

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.

The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind

LECTURE I.

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.