Socrates can be considered as the ideal of spiritual director among his followers, but Plato also guided his students with personal advice and comfort through their learning process.
Other examples can be found in Cynics, Epicureans—who used epistolary form for this purpose (e.g., Metrodorus)— or Stoics —like Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Musonius Rufus or Epictetus in his Discourses—who actively practiced spiritual direction.
Philodemus' work On Frank Criticism showed that spiritual guidance should be based on freedom of speech (parrhesia) and mutual respect between master and pupil.
A physician like Galen, not affiliated to any school of philosophy, recommended to follow spiritual guidance from an aged and experienced man before attempting self-examination.
Additionally, Acts of the Apostles chapter 9 describes Ananias helping Paul of Tarsus to grow in his newfound experience of Christianity.
[citation needed] Theologian John Cassian, who lived in the 4th century, provided some of the earliest recorded guidelines on the Christian practice of spiritual direction.
The original Greek term geron (meaning 'elder', as in gerontology) was rendered by the Russian word starets, from the Old Church Slavonic starĭtsĭ, 'elder', derived from starŭ, 'old'.
Such writers as Nikolay Gogol, Aleksey Khomyakov, Leo Tolstoy and Konstantin Leontyev sought advice from the elders of this monastery.
A more modern example of a starets is Archimandrite John Krestiankin (1910–2006) of the Pskov Monastery of the Caves, who was popularly recognized as such by many Orthodox living in Russia.
The doctrine states that from pre-existence till pre-eternity, there shall always remain a Qutb or a Universal Man upon the earth who would be the perfect manifestation of God and at the footsteps of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.