Anthroposophical Guidelines

Rudolf Steiner

Translation: Frank Thomas Smith

Previous Guidelines

79. One can spiritually approach the third hierarchy (Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi) when one becomes so acquainted with thinking, feeling and willing that he sees in them the spirit being active in the soul. At first thinking places only images in the world, not something real. Feeling moves in this imagery, speaking for reality in man, but cannot fully manifest it. Willing unfolds a reality, which requires the body, but which does not act consciously in its formation. What is essential in thinking in order to make the body the basis of this thinking, what is essential in feeling to make the body a participant in a reality, what is essential in willing in order to consciously participate in the body�s formation � lives in the third hierarchy.��

80. One can spiritually approach the second hierarchy (Exusiai, Dynameis, Kyriotesis) when one envisions the facts of nature as manifestations of the living spirit in them. The second hierarchy, then, has nature as its residence, in order to work in it on souls.�

81. One can spiritually approach the first hierarchy (Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones) when one envisions the facts of nature and human life as the deeds (creations) of the spirit acting in them. The first hierarchy, then, has the natural and human realms as the scene of its activity � in which it develops.

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82. Man gazes up at the star-worlds; what he sees is merely the external manifestation of the spiritual beings and their deeds, of which we spoke in the previous considerations as the beings of the spiritual realms (hierarchies).

83. The earth is the stage for the three realms of nature and the human realm, insofar as they manifest the deeds of spiritual beings to the external senses.

84. The forces which work into the earthly realms of nature and humanity by spiritual beings reveal themselves to the human spirit through true, spiritual knowledge of the star-worlds.

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The State of the Human Soul before the Michael Age

Today we will add a consideration of the ideas which relate to �At the Dawn of the Michael Age�. The Michael age has arisen in the evolution of humanity after the predominance of intellectual thinking on the one hand and that of human perception directed towards the external sense-world � the physical world � on the other.

Thinking is not essentially a development towards materialism. The world of ideas, which in older times had come to man as inspiration, became the property of the human mind in the period which preceded the Michael age. It no longer receives ideas �from above�, from the spiritual content of the cosmos, but conceives them from man�s own spirituality. For the first time man has become sufficiently mature to contemplate his own spiritual being. Previously he had not penetrated so deeply into his own nature. He saw himself as a drop separated from the spiritual cosmic sea in order to live on earth and eventually to be reunited with that cosmos.

This process of thought formation now constitutes an enhancement of human self-knowledge. Viewed supersensibly it looks like this: The spiritual powers, which we may designate as �Michael�, govern the ideas in the spiritual cosmos. Man experienced these ideas in that his soul participated in the Michael-world. This experiencing has now become his own. A temporary separation from the Michael-world has therewith occurred. Previously by means of inspired thoughts man received at the same time the spiritual cosmic content. When this inspiration ended, he became dependent upon the senses in order to have content for his thoughts. Therefore the content of the spirituality he had obtained had to be suffused with materialism. He fell into the materialistic viewpoint at a time when his own spiritual being advanced to a higher stage than the previous one.

This is easily misunderstood; one can consider only the �fall� into materialism and rue it. But whereas perception during this age had to be limited to the external physical world, within the soul a purified, self-subsisting �spirituality developed as experience. In the Michael age the experience no longer needs to be unconscious, but can become conscious of its nature. This means the entrance into the human soul of the Michael essence. During a certain time man filled his spirit with the material content of nature; he should now fill it again with the cosmic content of his original spirituality.

Thinking lost itself for a while in the materiality of the cosmos; it must find itself again in the cosmic spirit. Warmth, being-filled spirit-reality can enter into the cold, abstract thought-world. This characterizes the Dawn of the Michael Age.

It was only by separation from the universal thinking essence could consciousness of freedom develop in the depths of the human soul. What came from the heights had to be rediscovered in the depths. Therefore, the development of this consciousness of freedom was originally oriented only to knowledge of external nature. While man was unconsciously learning to mould purity of ideas within his spirit, his senses were directed outward towards the material world, which in no way affected the tender seed germinating in his soul.

But in perceiving the exterior material world, experiencing the spirit and therewith spiritual seeing can be introduced in a new way. What has been learned about nature under the sign of materialism can be spiritually grasped by the inner life of the soul. Michael, who spoke �from above�, can be heard �from within�, where he will now take up residence. Speaking imaginatively this can be expressed thus: the sun-quality, which man for a long time only received from the cosmos, will shine from within the soul. He will learn to speak of an �inner sun�. In life between birth and death he will of course be no less an earth-being; but he will recognize his developing being as guided by the sun. He will feel as truth that an essence shines a light on him from within, but one which is not kindled there. At the Dawn of the Michael Age it may still seem as though all this is far beyond humanity; However, it is near �in the spirit�; it must only be �seen�.

Immeasurably much depends upon this fact: that man�s ideas are not merely �thought�, but are also �seen�.�

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85. During the present cosmic era, man experiences himself in waking consciousness. This experiencing conceals from him the presence of the third hierarchy within his wakefulness.

86. In dream consciousness, man experiences his own being united with the spiritual essence of the universe in a chaotic way. If Imagination is placed as the other pole to this dream consciousness, man would realize that the second hierarchy is present in his experience.

87. In the consciousness of dreamless sleep man experiences his own being united with the spiritual essence of the universe, but without his conscious knowledge. If Inspiration is placed as the other pole to this consciousness of dreamless sleep, he would realize that the first hierarchy is present in his experience.��

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Aphorisms

from a lecture for members given on August 24, 1924 in London

At the present stage of its development human consciousness develops three forms, the waking, the dreaming and the dreamless sleeping consciousness.

Waking consciousness experiences the sensory outer world, forms ideas about it and can create from these ideas those which depict a purely spiritual world. Dreaming consciousness develops images which transform the outer world � for example, the sun shining on the bed can become a great fire with many details. Or it presents one�s inner world in symbolic pictures to the soul � for example a strongly beating heart in the image of an overheated oven. Memories also appear transformed in dream consciousness. The content of such images, which do not derive from the sensory but from the spiritual world, nevertheless do not provide the possibility to knowledgably penetrate into the spiritual world because their dimness does not allow them to be completely raised to waking consciousness, and because what does get through cannot be readily grasped.

It is possible, however, directly upon waking from the dream world, to grasp enough to recognize that it is the imperfect impression of a spiritual experience that pervades sleep, but which for the most part evades waking consciousness. In order to see this clearly it is only necessary to shape the moment of waking so that it doesn�t invoke the outer world to the mind in one beat, but so that the mind, without looking outward, concentrates on the inner experience.

Dreamless sleep consciousness lets the soul pass through experiences which in memory appear as only undifferentiated events in time. One will speak of these experiences as being non-existent as long as one does not access them through spiritual-scientific investigation. If this is done however, one develops imaginative and inspired consciousness, as described in anthroposophical literature, for the pictures and the inspirations of experiences from previous earth lives rise to the surface. And then one can comprehend the content of dream consciousness. It is a content which is incomprehensible to waking consciousness, for it applies to the world in which man sojourns as a disembodied soul between two earth lives.

If one learns what is hidden in dream and sleeping consciousness during the contemporary stage of world evolution, then the way will be opened to knowledge of the evolutionary forms of human consciousness during previous stages. On cannot, however, achieve this by means of external research. For the evidence thus obtained only indicates the aftereffects of human consciousness�s prehistoric experiences. Anthroposophical literature provides information on how to achieve a vision of such experiences through spiritual research.

This research finds that in ancient Egyptian times dream-consciousness was much closer to waking consciousness than is the case today. Memories of the dream experiences streamed into waking consciousness, which presented not merely the sensory impressions in clearly contoured thoughts, but also, united with these thoughts, the spirit which acts in the sensory world. In this way man and his consciousness existed instinctively in the [spiritual] world which he had abandoned during his earthly incarnation and which he would again enter upon passing through the portal of death.

Objective study of the writing in monuments and elsewhere clearly indicates the existence of such a consciousness, which belonged to a time when external records did not exist.

Sleep-consciousness in ancient Egyptian times contained dreams of the spiritual world in a way similar to the present-day dreams which contain elements derived from the physical world.

One finds, however, still another consciousness in other peoples. Sleep streamed its experiences into wakefulness in such a way that a vision of previous earth lives was instinctively present. Ancient people�s traditional knowledge of repeated earth lives originated from this form of consciousness.

One finds again in developed imaginative cognition what in ancient times was a dimly instinctive dream-consciousness. But now it is a fully waking consciousness.

And one is also aware through inspired cognition of the ancient instinctive insight which still saw something of repeated earth lives. Present day historical scholarship does not take note of this development of human forms of consciousness. It prefers to believe that contemporary consciousness forms were present as long as earthly humanity existed.

And evidence of such different consciousness forms as is contained in myths and fairy tales they take to be the result of an outflow of ancient man�s poetic fantasy.

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88. In the waking consciousness of present times man experiences himself as standing within the physical world. This experience hides from him the fact that within his own being the effects of a life between death and birth are active.

89. In dreaming consciousness man experiences his own being unharmoniously united with the spiritual being of the universe in a chaotic way. Waking consciousness cannot grasp the essential content of this dreaming consciousness. Imaginative and inspired consciousness reveals that the spiritual world, through which man lives between death and birth, participates in the formation of his inner being.

90. In the consciousness of dreamless sleep man experiences his own being � without conscious knowledge � as infused with the results of previous earth-lives. Inspired and intuitive consciousness progresses towards the revelation of these results and sees the activity of previous lives in the pattern of destiny (karma) in the present life.

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91. The will enters normal consciousness only through thoughts in the present era. This normal consciousness can only relate to what is sensibly perceptible however. It grasps only what is perceptible through the senses about its own nature. In this consciousness man knows about his impulses of will only by the thinking observation of himself, as he knows of the outer world only by observing it.�

92. Karma, which is active in the will, is an inherent attribute in it from previous earth lives. It cannot, therefore, be grasped by ideas derived from sensory existence, which are only oriented towards contemporary earth life.

93. Because these ideas cannot grasp karma, they relegate what is unintelligible about human will impulses to the mystical obscurity of the bodily constitution, whereas it is really the effect of past earth lives.

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94. Man stands in the physical world with ordinary conceptualization which is imparted through the senses. In order to incorporate this physical world into his consciousness, karma must be silent. In a manner of speaking man, as a thinker, forgets his karma.��

95. Karma acts in manifestations of will. But its activity remains in the unconscious. By advancing to Imagination what is unconsciously active in the will, karma is grasped. One feels his destiny internally.

96. Once Inspiration and Intuition join Imagination, in addition to the impulses of the present, the effect of former earth lives is also perceptible in the activity of the will. The past life actively manifests itself in the present one.

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97. A cruder description might say: thinking, feeling and willing live in the human soul. A subtler one must say: thinking always contains an undercoating of feeling and willing, feeling of thinking and willing, willing of thinking and feeling. It is just that the thinking aspect predominates in thought, as do feeling and willing in their respective domains.

98. The feeling and willing of thought-life contain the karmic results of past earth lives. The thinking and willing of feeling-life determine character in a karmic way. The thinking and feeling of willing-life wrench the current earth-life from its karmic connections.

99. In the feeling and willing of thinking man lives out the karma of the past; in the thinking and feeling of the will he prepares the karma of the future.

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100. Thoughts have their actual seat in the human etheric body. But there they are living essential forces. They impress themselves on the physical body. And as such �impressed thoughts� they have the shadowy quality through which normal consciousness knows them.

101. What lives in thoughts as feeling comes from the astral body, what lives as willing comes from the �I�. In sleep the human etheric body definitely radiates with one�s thoughts; only the person does not participate, for he has extracted � from the etheric and physical body [sic] � the feeling of thoughts with the astral body, and the willing of same with the �I�.

102. At the moment during sleep in which the astral body and the I sever their relation to the etheric body�s thoughts, they enter into relation with �karma� � to envisioning the events throughout repeated earth-lives. This envisioning is not open to normal consciousness; a supersensible consciousness, however, enters.

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�The Pre-Michaelic and the Michael Path

One will not be able to see in the right light how the Michael impulse entered into human evolution if one thinks about the relationship between the new ideas and nature in the way which is usual today.

One thinks: out there is nature with its processes and beings; within - there are the ideas which describe concepts about nature or also the so-called laws of nature. For the thinkers it�s all about how the ideas are formed which have a correct relation to nature or contain the true laws of nature.

Little importance is given to how these ideas relate to the person who has them. Nevertheless, one will only understand what is important when the question is asked: What does man experience in the new natural-scientific ideas?

The answer may be found in the following way.

Today man considers that his ideas have arisen through the activity of his soul [mind]. He feels that he is the architect of his ideas, whereas only the perceptions come to him from without.

He did not always feel this way. In older times he did not feel that the content of ideas was self-made, but rather something received as inspiration from the supersensible world.

This feeling came by stages. And the stages depended upon which part of his being experienced what he calls his ideas today. In today�s age of consciousness soul development, what is stated in the previous guidelines is unreservedly valid: �Thoughts have their actual seat in the human etheric body. But there they are living essential forces. They impress themselves on the physical body. And as such �impressed thoughts� they have the shadowy quality through which normal consciousness knows them.�

One could go back to the time when thoughts were directly experienced in the �I�. Then they were not shadowy as today; they weren�t merely living; they were ensouled and thoroughly spiritualized. But that means: Man did not think thoughts; rather he experienced the perception of actual spiritual beings.

Everywhere in antiquity one would find a consciousness which looked up to such a world of spiritual beings. What has been historically retained of this is called myth-building consciousness today, and no particular value is attributed to it for understanding the real world. Yet man stands with this consciousness in his world, in the world of his origin, while he extracts himself from this, his world with today�s consciousness.

Man is spirit. And his world is that of the spirits.

A next stage is where thinking was no longer experienced by the �I�, but by the astral body. Here direct spirituality was lost to the mind�s view. Thought appeared as an ensouled living thing.

During the first stage, that of seeing actual spiritual beings, man did not strongly feel the need to relate what was spiritually seen to the sense-perceptible world. Although the sensory phenomena manifested themselves to him as supersensible acts, there was no necessity to create a special science for what the �spiritual view� directly perceived. Furthermore, the spiritual beings� world was of such magnitude that attention was directed there above all.

It was different during the second consciousness stage, when the actual spiritual beings hid themselves from view; their reflection, as ensouled life, appeared. One began to associate the �life of nature� with this �life of soul�. One sought the active spiritual essence and its deeds in nature and natural phenomena. What later appeared as alchemy is to be seen as an historical echo of this consciousness stage.

Just as man �thought� spirit-beings during the first consciousness stage, living completely in his being, in this second stage he was still close to himself and his spiritual origins.

It was quite impossible at both stages for him to really arrive at his own inner impulse to action.

A spirituality which is of his own nature acted in him. What he seemed to do was the manifestation of processes which occurred through spiritual beings. What the person did was the sensory-physical emergence of a real divine-spiritual occurrence behind it.

A third epoch of consciousness evolution brought thoughts to consciousness, but as living ones in the etheric body.

When the Greek civilization was great it lived in this consciousness. When the Greek thought he did not form a thought through which he, as if of his own shaping, looked at the world. Rather he felt a life evoked which also pulsated externally in things and processes.

Therewith the desire for freedom of his own actions arose for the first time; not yet true freedom, but the desire for it.

Man, who felt the actions of nature within him, was able to develop the desire to emancipate his own activity from an activity he perceived to be a foreign to him. Nevertheless, he still felt the last vestiges of the spirit-world � which is of the same nature as man � in exterior activity.

It was only once the thoughts impregnated themselves in the physical body and consciousness only extended to this limit, was the possibility of freedom realized. This was the situation during the fifteenth century.

The evolution of the world does not depend on the what importance the current ideas about nature may have; for these ideas have not taken the form they have in order to deliver a certain image of nature, but to bring humanity to a certain stage of development.

When thoughts captured the physical body - spirit, soul and life were excised from their content; and the abstract shadows which clung to the physical body alone remained. Such thoughts can only make physical-material elements the objects of their cognition. For they themselves are only real in the physical-material body of man.

Materialism did not arise because only material beings and processes are perceivable in nature, but because man had to pass through a stage in his evolution which led him to a consciousness in which he was initially only capable of seeing material manifestations. This necessary one-sided organization of human evolution resulted in the modern conception of nature.

Michael�s mission is to bring the forces to human etheric bodies through which the shadow-thoughts can regain life; then the souls and spirits of the supersensible world will be drawn towards the invigorated thoughts; liberated man will be able to live with them, as formerly man, who was only the physical reflection of their activity, lived with them.�

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103. In the evolution of humanity, consciousness descends the ladder of thought development. During the first consciousness stage man experienced thoughts in the �I� as spiritual, ensouled, enlivened essence. During the second stage, man experienced thoughts in the astral body; they manifested there only a greater degree of the ensouled and enlivened spiritual essence. During the third stage, man experienced thought in the etheric body; they manifested only an inner activity, like an echo of soul. During the fourth, contemporary stage, man experiences thoughts in the physical body; they manifest dead shadows of the spiritual.

104. To the degree that the spirit-soul enlivened thinking retreats, man�s self-will comes to life � and freedom becomes possible.

105. Michael�s task is to lead man back on the pathway of will from whence he came, for he descended on the pathway of thinking from super-sensory experience to sensory experience with his earthly consciousness.�

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Michael�s Task in the Sphere of Ahriman

When man looks back upon his evolution and the special attributes which brought him to the spiritual vision which his spiritual life has taken on during the past five hundred years, he must, even with normal consciousness, at least recognize that since these five hundred years he has stood at an important turning-point in the earthly evolution of humanity.

In the previous consideration, I pointed to this important turning-point from one point of view � the observation of evolution in antiquity. One sees how the soul-force in man developed to the point where it is now active as the force of intelligence.

Dead, abstract thoughts now appear in the field of human consciousness. These thoughts are bound to man�s physical body, and he must recognize that they are of his own making.

In antiquity man saw divine-spiritual beings when directing his vision to where his own thoughts originated. He found his whole being, down to the physical body, bound to these beings; he had to recognize himself as their creation - but as such creation not only recognize his being, but also his deeds. Man had no will of his own. What he did was the manifestation of divine will.

In stages, as has been described, he has come to have his own will, beginning approximately five hundred years ago.

But the last stage is far more different from all the others than they are amongst themselves.

In that thoughts pass over to the physical body, they lose life. They become dead; spiritually dead structures. Previously, as they belonged to man, they were simultaneously organs of the divine-spiritual beings to whom man belonged. They willed in man. And therefore through them man felt himself united with the spiritual world.

With dead thoughts he feels himself detached from the spiritual world. He feels himself completely displaced to the physical world.

He is thus displaced to the sphere of ahrimanic spirituality. This has no strong power in the areas in which the beings of the higher hierarchies keep man in their sphere, in which they either act in man themselves, as in antiquity or, as later, through their ensouled or living reflection. As long as supersensible beings acted in human affairs, that is until the fifteenth century, the ahrimanic powers had only a weakly suggestive power within human evolution.

The Persian worldview did not contradict this when describing Ahriman�s work. For that worldview did not imply Ahriman working within human soul-evolution, but in one directly bordering on the human soul-world. Ahriman�s machinations may have run over from a neighboring spirit-world into the human soul-world, but did not directly intervene.

Direct intervention only became possible in the period that began approximately five-hundred years ago.

Thus man stands at the end of an evolutionary stream in which his being, derived from such a divine-spirituality, finally dies out, as such, in his abstract intelligence.

Man has not remained in the divine-spiritual spheres which constitute his origin.

What began five-hundred years ago for human consciousness had already taken place to a larger extent for his whole being when the Mystery of Golgotha took place on earth. Imperceptibly for the consciousness of most people, human evolution had gradually slipped out of a world in which Ahriman had little power into one in which he had much. This slipping into a different world-stratum reached its completion in the fifteenth century.

Ahriman�s influence on humanity during that world-stratum was possible and could have had devastating consequences, because in that stratum man�s relation to divine activity had died out. But man could not develop free will in any other way than by making his way into a sphere in which the divine-spiritual beings that had been united with him from the very beginning were not living.

Seen cosmically, the Sun-Mystery is in the essence of human evolution. Up until the important turning-point of his evolution, man was able to perceive that divine-spiritual beings were conjoined with his origin. They have however detached themselves from the sun and left only what is dead behind. So that man in his corporality can now only receive dead thoughts through the sun.

But those beings have sent Christ from the sun to the earth. He has united his being with the mortality of the divine-spiritual existence in Ahriman�s realm for the healing of humanity. Thus humanity has two possibilities that guarantee his freedom: to consciously turn to Christ with the spiritual disposition he subconsciously held during the descent from the vision of super-sensory spirituality up until the use of the intellect; or to complete the detachment from this spirituality and therewith become addicted to the orientation of Ahrimanic powers.

Humanity has been in this situation since the beginning of the fifteenth century. This has been in preparation � with evolution everything happens gradually � since the Mystery of Golgotha which, as the earth�s greatest event, is intended to rescue man from the corruption he is necessarily exposed to, because he is meant to be a free being.

One can therefore say that what humanity has done in this situation was in semi-consciousness. And in this way it led to what is good in the abstract ideas about nature and to many equally good principles about life in general.

But the time is over when man may still unconsciously evolve in the dangerous Ahrimanic sphere.

The investigator of the spiritual world must draw humanity�s attention to the spiritual fact that Michael has taken over the spiritual leadership of human affairs. Michael does what he must do in a way which does not influence people; but they can follow him in freedom with the Christ-force, in order to find their way out of Ahriman�s sphere in which in was necessary for them to enter.��

Whoever honestly feels one with Anthroposophy from the bottom of his soul will rightly understand this Michael phenomenon. And Anthroposophy would like to be the message of this Michael-Mission.

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106.� Michael goes again upward along the paths which humanity trod downward during the stages of spiritual evolution to the activation of intelligence. But Michael will lead wills upward along the pathways which wisdom trod downward until its last stage: intelligence.

107. In order than man can develop in freedom, from now on in world evolution Michael merely points out his path, which differentiates this Michael leadership from all earlier archangel leaderships, even from all earlier Michael leaderships. The earlier leaderships were active in man � thus man�s own actions could not be free.

108. To recognize this is man�s present task, so that he can find his spiritual path with his whole soul during the Michael era.

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Michael�s Experiences during the Fulfillment of his Cosmic Mission

One can follow the advance of humanity from the consciousness stage when man felt himself to be a member of the divine-spiritual order up until the contemporary stage, where he feels himself to be an individual detached from the divine-spiritual and capable of his own thinking. This was elucidated in the last article.

However, through supersensible vision one can also project a picture of how Michael and his associates experience this stream of evolution; that is, describe the same facts from Michael�s point of view. We will try to do this now.

At first there is an oldest antiquity in which one can only speak of what happened among divine-spiritual beings. It has to do with the deeds of gods alone. Gods accomplish what the impulses of their natures provide; they are correspondingly satisfied with this activity. And only what they experience is taken into consideration. Something like humanity is only noticeable in one area of this godly activity. It is an element of godly activity.

The spiritual being who directed his attention to humanity from the beginning, however, is Michel. He arranges divine activity is such a way that humanity can exist in a cosmic corner, so to speak. And the manner in which he acts there is related to the activity that later is manifested in humanity as intellect; except that it is activated as a force which streams through the cosmos in an ordering of ideas, giving rise to reality. Michael works in this force. His office is to administer cosmic intellectuality. He wishes further advancement in this area. And this can only happen if what streams through the cosmos as intelligence is concentrated later in the human individuality. What occurs thereby is the following: a time comes in world evolution in which the cosmos no longer lives by its present intelligence, but by that of its past. And the intelligence of the present is amidst the stream of human evolution.

Michael would like to ensure that what develops within humanity as intelligence continues to be connected to the divine-spiritual beings.

To this, however, there is resistance. What the gods accomplish as evolution in the line from the separation of intellectuality from their cosmic action up until integration in human nature is an open fact in the world. If beings exist who posses a capacity for perceiving these facts, they can make use of them. And such beings do exist. They are the Ahrimanic beings. They are very much disposed to soak up everything separated as intelligence from the gods. They are disposed to unite the sum of all intellectuality to their own being. Thereby they become the greatest, the most comprehensive and penetrating intelligences in the cosmos.

Michael foresees how man, in that he uses his own intelligence ever more, must encounter the Ahrimanic beings and how he can thus succumb to them. Therefore Michael places the Ahrimanic powers under his feet, he continuously forces them into a deeper region than the one in which man is evolving. Michael, the dragon under his feet, forcing him into the abyss: that is the mighty image of this supersensible fact that lives in human consciousness.

Evolution advances. Intellectuality, which at first was completely in the divine-spiritual domain, is so detached from it that it becomes the ensoulment of the cosmos. What previously radiated only from the gods now blazes forth from the stars as divine revelation. Previously the world was guided through divine being itself, now it is guided through objective divine revelation, behind which divine being continues on the path of its own evolution.

Michael is again the administrator of cosmic intelligence, insofar as it streams through cosmic revelation in ideational form.

The third phase of evolution is a further separation of cosmic intelligence from its origins. In the star-worlds the present complex of ideas no longer rules as divine revelation; the stars move and arrange themselves according to the arrangement implanted in them in the past. Michael sees how what he administered in the cosmos, cosmic intellectuality, increasingly continues along the path to earthly humanity.

Michael also sees, however, that the danger of humanity succumbing to the Ahrimanic powers is ever greater. He knows: he will always have Ahriman under his feet for himself; but what about man?

Michael sees the greatest earthly event happening. From the domain which Michael himself served, the Christ-Being descends to the earthly sphere in order to be here when intelligence is completely present in the human individuality. This is when man will most strongly feel the pressure to become addicted to the power which has completely and absolutely become the bearer of intellectuality. But Christ will be there; through his great sacrifice he will live in the same sphere in which Ahriman lives. Man will be able to choose between Christ and Ahriman. The world will be able to find the Christ-path in human evolution.

That is Michael�s cosmic experience with what he has to administer in the cosmos. In order to stay with the object of his administration, he travels the path from the cosmos to humanity. He has been on this path since the eighth century, but has only really taken over his earthly office, into which his cosmic office has been transformed, in the last third of the nineteenth century.

Michael cannot force man to do anything. Force has ended due to the fact that intelligence has completely entered the domain of human individuality. But as a majestic exemplary deed in the supersensible world, initially at the frontier of the visible world, Michael can unfold what he wishes. With a light-aura, with a spiritual gesture, Michael can show himself there, in whom all the brilliance and grandeur of the past divine intelligence is manifest. He can make visible how the effect of that past intelligence is truer, more beautiful and virtuous that the present intelligence, which streams in from Ahriman in deceptive, seductive brilliance. He can show that - for him � Ahriman will always be the inferior spirit under his feet.

Those who view the supersensible world which is at the frontier of the visible world perceive, as here described, what Michael and his collaborators wish to do for humanity. Such people see how man is to be led in freedom through Michael�s image in the Ahrimanic sphere from Ahriman to Christ. If by means of their vision such people are able to open other people�s hearts and minds, in order that a circle of people know that Michael now lives among men, then humanity will begin to celebrate Michael festivals with the right contents, during which Michael�s force will revive in their souls. Michael will then work as a real power among men. Man will however be free - and will nevertheless follow his spiritual life-path through the cosmos in inner community with Christ.

Goetheanum, October 19, 1924

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109. To become really conscious of Michael�s activities in his spiritual relationship to the world means to resolve the riddle of human freedom being severed from its cosmic connection, considering that the severance is necessary for earthly man.

110. Because the fact of �freedom� is directly given to every person who understands himself in the present stage of human evolution. No one may say, if he doesn�t want to deny an obvious fact, that �there is no freedom�. But one can find a contradiction between what is factually given and cosmic processes. Considering Michael�s mission in the cosmos, this contradiction disappears.�

111. In my �Philosophy of Freedom�, one finds contemporary human �freedom� proved as a content of consciousness; in what is given here, one finds the development of this freedom cosmically substantiated.

The Future of Humanity and Michael�s Activity

At this stage of his evolution, what is man�s relation to Michael and his collaborators?

Man stands within a world which was once totally of divine-spiritual essence, to which he also belonged. At that time the world to which man belonged was divine-spiritual being. During a following stage of evolution this was no longer the case. Then it was the cosmic revelation of the divine-spiritual, and its being hovered behind this revelation. But it was in motion and lived in that revelation. A star-world already existed. The divine-spiritual lived in its brilliance and motion it as revelation. One can say: where a star stood or moved, the activity of the divine-spiritual could be seen.

In all this: how the divine spirit worked in the cosmos, how man�s life was a result of a divine-spiritual act in the cosmos � Michael was there, unopposed in his own element. He mediated the relationship of the divine to humanity.

Other times came. The star-world no longer directly contained divine-spiritual activity. It lived and moved persisting in the continuation of what it had previously contained. The divine-spiritual no longer lived in the cosmos as revelation, but now only as the effectiveness of its acts. A clear differentiation appeared between the divine-spiritual and the cosmic. Michael, because of his own nature, remained with the divine-spiritual. He tried to keep humanity as close as possible to this element. He has continued to do so. He wanted to protect humanity from living too intensely in a world which is only the effect of the divine-spiritual, but not its being, and not revelation.

Michael finds it deeply satisfying that he has been able, through humanity, to keep the star-world directly united with the divine-spiritual in the following way. When a human being, once he has completed the life between death and a rebirth, again treads the path towards a new earthly existence, he seeks to create a certain harmony between the star patterns and his earthly life as he descends to this existence. This harmony was self-evidently present in older times because the divine-spiritual was active in the stars, in which human life also had its source. Today though, when the movement of the stars merely continues the effects of divine-spiritual activity, it will not be there if man does not seek it. Man brings the divine-spiritual elements he has retained from older times into a relation with the stars, which themselves contain only the aftereffects of the past. Thus a divine element enters into man�s relation to the world which corresponds to earlier times, yet emerges in later times. That this is so is Michael�s deed. And this deed gives him such deep satisfaction that a part of his life-element, his life-energy, his living sun-filled will is contained in this satisfaction.

But today, when he directs his spiritual eye toward the earth, he sees a quite different situation. During his life in the physical realm between birth and death, man is immersed in a world which no longer shows the effects of the divine-spiritual, but only what remains of these effects; one can say that what remains is only the divine-spiritual�s works. These works are completely divine-spiritual in their forms. The divine shows itself to human vision in the form of natural phenomena; but it is no longer an enlivening element in these phenomena. Nature is a divine work and is everywhere a reflection of divine activity.

Man lives in this sun-filled divine, but not actively living divine world. However, as a result of Michael�s effect on him, he has retained his connection with the essence of the divine-spiritual. He lives as a being who is permeated by God in a world which is not permeated by God.

To this God-vacated world man will bring what is in him � what his being has become in the present age.

Humanity will continue to develop in the evolution of the world. The divine-spiritual from which humanity originates can radiate through the cosmos � which only exists at present in the image of the divine-spiritual � as a cosmically proliferating humanity.

The being which was once cosmos will no longer be the one which now radiates through humanity. In its progression through humanity, the divine-spiritual will experience a being which it had not previously revealed.

The Ahrimanic powers are opposed to this evolutionary progression. They do not want the original divine-spiritual powers to illumine the universe in its progression; they want the cosmic intellectuality which they have absorbed to radiate through the entire new cosmos and that humanity continue to live in this intellectualized ahrimanic cosmos.

By living in this way man would lose Christ. For he has entered the world with an intellectuality which once existed totally in the divine-spiritual, when it was still, in its essence, shaping the cosmos. If we speak today in a way that makes our thoughts also those of Christ, we place something in opposition to the Ahrimanic powers that protects us from succumbing to them.

To understand the sense of the Michael-mission in the cosmos means to speak in this way. One must be able to speak today about nature as the consciousness soul evolutionary stage demands. One must absorb the purely natural scientific way of thinking. But one should also learn to speak about nature � meaning to feel � in a way which is appropriate to Christ. We should not learn the Christ-language merely about the redemption of nature, not merely about souls and divinity, but about the cosmos.

We will be able to maintain our connection with the primordial divine-spiritual and understand how to cultivate the Christ-language about the cosmos, if we completely, with all our hearts, adjust ourselves to the acts of Michael and his collaborators among us. For to understand Michael means to find the way to the logos, the Christ who lives on the earth among men.

Anthroposophy correctly values what the natural scientific way of thinking has learned about the world over the past four to five hundred years, and speaks of it. But it also speaks about the nature of man, about the evolution of man and the cosmos; anthroposophy wishes to speak the language of Christ-Michael.

Both languages will then be spoken and evolution will not be defeated and succumb to the Ahrimanic before finding the divine-spiritual. To speak merely in the natural-scientific way corresponds to the separation of intellectuality from the original divine-spiritual. It can succumb to the Ahrimanic if Michael�s mission is ignored. It will not succumb if the liberated intellect rediscovers itself through the force of Michael�s example in the primordial cosmic intellectuality, which lies at the source of humanity and has appeared within the human domain through Christ after it abandoned man in order that his freedom could be realized.

Goetheanum, October 25, 1924

112. The divine-spiritual takes effect in the cosmos in various ways in the following stages:

1. through its own primordial essence;

2. through the revelation of this essence;

3. through its effects, when the essence retreats from the revelation.

4. through the work, when the divine is no longer in the visible universe, but only its forms.��

113. In the contemporary view of nature, man has no relation to the divine, but only to its effects.�

Continued in the next SCR