42. The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity II

I believe there will come a time when people will say: Those who have learned through Theosophy to appreciate the content of the Gospels in the right way, know how to appreciate the content of the Gospels in such a way that they place it higher than any pope or church father has ever placed it - even though they have placed it very high. Humanity will only learn what lies in these profound documents by recognizing the nature of man. But what will we then recognize? Again, this is easy to find through mere contemplation. One will say to oneself: If we find the essence of man in the Gospels, it must have come into them through those who wrote them on earth, so that what we must say on humble reflection - the older we get, the more - must apply to them in particular: We have done so many things that have moved us beyond ourselves, where the higher man has announced himself. And those who wrote the Gospels were only able to write these documents because of the coming of the higher man! This is where the concept of inspiration regains its meaning. Just as higher powers work into the brain in the first three years of childhood, so powers from the spiritual worlds were imprinted into the souls of the Gospel writers so that the Gospels were written. - Now we sense something else besides guidance. Humanity must be truly guided if it is to realize that those who wrote the Gospels were not on the same level with what they produced - and this will become more understandable the further humanity progresses. There we learn to feel: Impulses from the spiritual world are at work in what has been brought forth in the course of time; and just as man feels a guidance within himself, so impulses of a spiritual guidance are at work in the whole development of mankind. And when people are placed under spiritual guidance, the best they can do happens under spiritual guidance.