Gottfried Mayerhofer was born in Munich in November, 1807 as the son of a high-ranking Bavarian officer. After completing his studies, which were mainly devoted to mathematics, the young Mayerhofer followed in his father’s footsteps and entered a military career. When the Bavarian Prince Otto was chosen to become King of Greece and moved to Athens in 1833, Mayerhofer followed him as Major à la suite. There he married Aspasia D’Isay, the daughter of a wholesale merchant in Athens.

However, his stay in Greece was of short duration. About the year 1837, Mayerhofer’s father-in-law transferred his business, and moved his family to Trieste; Mayerhofer, urged by his wife (who was very much attached to her father), decided, after resisting for some time, to quit the service and move to Trieste, too. Since the Greek government did not pay pensions in foreign countries, this change of residence was regrettable insofar as he was now fully dependent financially on his wife’s fortune. Mayerhofer lived in Trieste for forty years until his death in 1877. During this period of retirement, he initially devoted himself to his favorite studies of music and painting. Gradually, however, his interest in spirituality came to the forefront.

This inclination for religious and spiritual knowledge found its rewards in Jakob Lorber’s writings, with which Mayerhofer became acquainted while in Trieste. The more Mayerhofer became engrossed with the writings of the Styrian mystic, whom he never met personally, the more his enthusiasm grew for the revelations through the Inner Word, and the more inward and devout his nature became. Thanks to his spiritual intensification, Mayerhofer soon attained the state of spiritual awakening. In March, 1870 he heard for the first time the Lord’s Voice within him. For the next seven years, he served this Voice as a faithful "Scribe."

How the Inner Word came to Mayerhofer is remarkable. Before he felt within him the urge to write, the subjects to be dealt with usually appeared early in the morning before his spiritual eyes in the form of pictures of magnificent clarity.

Some of Mayerhofer’s explanations regarding the Inner Word are contained in a letter to a friend. He writes: "Concerning the last revelations which did not appeal to you as much as those on ‘Light, Life and Love,’ you must bear in mind that my friends here are not at all on the same level of spiritual unfoldment and cannot be compared to yourself. The Lord in His grace often gives me what is only partly comprehensible to my friends here and partly is perhaps meant one day — who knows when and through whom — to serve in consecutive order for a step-by-step education. Thus I often receive dictations that do not give anything new, but present earlier revelations in a different way. For I am always quite passive when I receive these communications; usually I do not even know what it is all about. I am generally seized by an inexplicable unrest; I have to sit at my desk, and only when I take up the pencil do I learn what the Lord wants, and even then I know neither beginning nor sequel nor end, not even one word earlier than the next. Thus for instance, It (His Word) tells me: ‘Take the Gospel of John, chapter 3, verse 7!’ I, who have little or no knowledge of the Bible, do not know anything about the contents of this chapter or verse. I look it up, sit down, and write what is dictated to me about it. This is the way I receive my dictations, having no will of my own, not knowing why and wherefore; just so, and in no other way."

These explanations by Mayerhofer indicate that what he wrote is true inspiration and not just the product of his own imagination. This is also supported externally by Mayerhofer’s original manuscript which was written extremely fast and flowingly, and only contains a few corrections by his own hand.