Guidance means to guide and indicate the way. Divine guidance has several stages or several types. One form of guidance is the general, divine guidance that covers all beings. This guidance is formative, general, and universal. All creatures are guided with this kind of guidance. The instinct that causes an ant or a bee to build a house and live in a community comes from the divine guidance that exists in all creatures. This kind of guidance is not what we wish to discuss here, because this guidance is something that comes with our existence and our creation. There is another type of guidance that is specific to human beings. It is the guidance based on a human being’s inner nature. There is a feeling in the spirit and being of a person, an unconscious feeling, a hidden understanding that guides a person to the essence of God’s existence and to some religious teachings. You know God using your own intellect, and you should know Him. There is no other way to know God apart from one’s inner nature and intellect. This is what the guidance of human intellect is. But this is not our objective either.
Imam Khamenei
May 1, 1991
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