The Michael Mystery
GA 26
XIII. Before the Door of the Spiritual Soul
Third Contemplation: Michael's sorrow over the evolution of mankind, before the time of his earthly regency.
[ 1 ] With the further progress of the Age of Consciousness, the possibility more and more ceases of direct connection between Michael and the generality of human kind. Into Man's being enters in triumph the new, humanized power of Intellectuality and out of it vanish those imaginative conceptions of the mind, which shew Man the living forms of the Cosmic Intelligence. For Michael, any possibility of approaching Man does not begin until the last third of the nineteenth century. Before then, approach can only be attempted by such roads as were those of the genuine Rosicrucians.
[ 2 ] Man looks with his fresh opening intellect at Nature; and what he sees is a physical world, an ether-world, in which he himself is not. Through the great ideas of Copernicus and Galileo he gains a picture of the external, non-human world; but he loses the picture of himself. He looks at himself, and he has no possibility of arriving at any insight as to what he is.
[ 3 ] In the depths of his being is awakened that which is ordained to be the bearer of his human intelligence. With this, his I combines. Man bears accordingly within him now a threefold being. First, in his spirit-soul, he bears within him, manifested in physical-etheric form, that being which at the very first—in the Saturn and Sun times, and repeatedly ever since—has given him a place in the realm of divine spirit. This is where Man's being and Michael's being can join company. Secondly, Man bears within him his later physical and etheric being—namely that which became his during the Moon and Earth times. All this is the work and workings of divine spirit; but divine spirit no longer lives in it with present being. [ 4 ] It first becomes present again in living being when the Christ passes through the Mystery of Golgotha. In that which works spiritually in Man's physical and etheric body, may be found the Christ. Thirdly, Man has in him that part of his spirit and soul which during the Moon and Earth times has acquired a new form of being. In this part, Michael has remained active; whereas in the part turned to the Moon and Earth, he has grown ever more inactive. In the former, it is he who has preserved to Man Man's divine images.
[ 5 ] This Michael could do until the dawn of the Age of Consciousness. And then the entire spirit-and-soul element in Man sank, so to speak, down into the physical and etheric, in order to fetch forth the Spiritual Soul.
[ 6 ] Luminously there arose in Man's consciousness all that his physical body and his ether-body could tell him about the physical and etheric in Nature. There sank from before his vision what astral body and I could tell him about himself.
[ 7 ] A time arises, when amongst mankind there begins to stir a feeling that their insight no longer brings them to themselves. There begins a search after the Knowledge of the Human Being. Men fail to satisfy their seeking by anything which the Present can supply. They go back in history to earlier times. ‘Humanism’ makes its appearance in the evolution of the human mind. Humanism becomes men's ideal object, not because they possess the human being but because they have lost him. So long as they still possessed him, their soul which animated the work of Erasmus of Rotterdam and others would have worn a very different colour from anything that their Humanism could give it.
[ 8 ] In Faust, later on, as re-discovered by Goethe, is the figure of a man who has utterly lost the human being. [ 9 ] Ever intenser becomes this search after Man. For men have only two alternatives: either completely to blunt themselves to the awakening inner sense of their own being; or else to pursue this longing search for Man, so that this search becomes an inherent element of their soul.
[ 10 ] Until the nineteenth century, in the spiritual life of Europe the best men in every field are engaged in the pursuit of every variety of idea—historic, scientific, philosophic, mystic—all representing the endeavour in the intellectualized aspect of the World to discover Man.
[ 11 ] Renaissance, spiritual New Birth, Humanism—all are rushing, storming indeed, after spirituality in a direction where spirituality is not to be found. In the direction where it is to be sought, impotence, illusion, bemazement. And everywhere, through it all, the Michael Forces breaking through, in art, in learning, into the life of man, only not as yet into the young, rising forces of the Spiritual Soul. A tottering of all spiritual life; Michael, with all his forces reaching back in cosmic evolution, in order to find strength to keep in balance the Dragon under his feet. Under these powerful exertions of Michael there arise the great works of the Renaissance. Yet these are still a revival, by Michael's power, of the old life of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul—not yet a working of the new soul-forces.
[ 12 ] One can see Michael, full of anxiety as to whether, after all, he will be in a position to keep the Dragon permanently in check, when he perceives how men are engaged in the one field only, trying to obtain from the picture they have just obtained of Nature a similar picture of Man. Michael sees the way in which men are observing nature and trying, out of what they call Natural Law, to construct an image of Man. He sees how they depict it in their minds: This peculiarity in some animal becomes perfects; that combination of organic functions becomes more nicely adjusted; and so, there ‘arises’ Man. But before the spirit-eye of Michael, what arise is not Man at all. What they think of as growing ever more perfected and more nicely adjusted, is just a thought thing; no one can see it actually growing into fact because the actual facts are otherwise.
[ 13 ] And thus men live with such thoughts of Man in unsubstantial pictures, in illusions that have no being. They pursue an image of Man; they think they possess it; but in truth there is nothing within their range of sight. ‘The power of the Spirit-Sun shines upon their souls; Christ is at work; but as yet they cannot heed Him. The power of the spiritual Soul is strong in their bodies, but into their souls it still will not enter.’ So may one hear the Inspiration which Michael utters in his dire anxiety. May not this force of Illusion in men give the Dragon so much power after all, that it will be an impossibility for him—for Michael himself—to maintain the balance?
[ 14 ] Other individuals again endeavour with more inwardly artistic power to find the union between Nature and Man. Grandly ring the words of Goethe, when describing in a noble book the work of Winkelmann: “When the powers of Man's nature are at work in whole and healthful unison; when he feels himself in the World as in one grand, fair, worshipful and worthy whole; when the well-being of harmonious attunement fills him with a pure and free delight—then would the Universe, were it conscious of itself, shout with joy at the attainment of its goal, and marvellingly acclaim the crown of its own life and being.” The same impulse which inspired the mind of Lessing with flame of fire, which ensouled the world-wide vision of Herder, rings through these words of Goethe. And the whole of Goethe's own creative work is like a universal demonstration on all sides of this saying of his. Schiller in his “letters on Aesthetics' has drawn the picture of an Ideal Man—one (as it rings in the words of Goethe) who bears the whole Universe within himself, and realizes it actually in social co-operation with other men. But where is this Picture of a Man drawn from? It shines like the morning sun over the Spring earth. But it has entered into men's feelings from contemplation of ancient Greek Man. Men cherished the picture with all the strong inner impulse of Michael; but they could find no form to give to this impulse, except by turning their soul's gaze back towards a bygone age. Goethe went, as we know, through the severest conflicts with the Spiritual Soul when he tried inwardly to realize Man. He thought that for the first time he really had a glimpse of him, when on his Italian tour he had his first sight into Greek life and being. He hastened away from the Spiritual Soul, striving forward in Spinoza, to what, in the end, was but the dying embers of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul; only that Goethe succeeds in bringing an endless amount of this latter into the Spiritual Soul, in his all-embracing view of Nature.
[ 15 ] Gravely Michael watches these endeavours too to find Man. He sees something, it is true, that is to his own mind, entering here into the evolution of the human spirit. It is that same Man, who once beheld the life-forms of Intelligent Being, in the times when Michael ruled from the Cosmos without. Yet eventually, if it be not grasped by the spiritualized power of the Spiritual Soul, this too must end by falling from Michael's range of action into the dominion of Lucifer. That Lucifer might gain the ascendancy in the rocking of the cosmic balance—this is the other dire anxiety in Michael's life.
[ 16 ] The preparation for Michael's mission at the end of the nineteenth century roll on in cosmic tragedy. Beneath upon earth, there often reigns the profoundest satisfaction over Man's picture of Nature and its effective working; whilst in the region where Michael is at work there is nothing but tragedy over the obstacles which prevent the true picture of Man from finding its way into life.
[ 17 ] There was a time when in the beams of the sun, in the flush of morning skies, in the sparkling of the stars, there lived the keen, clear spirit-love of Michael. The dominant note this love had now taken, was one of sorrow, aroused on gazing on mankind.
[ 18 ] Michael's position in the Cosmos became one of tragic difficulty, but one that was also urging towards a solution, just at the period preceding his mission upon earth. Men could maintain their power of intellect only in the domain of the body, and there only in the domain of the senses. They accordingly admitted nothing into their range of mental vision, except what their senses told them. Nature became a field of sense-revelation—a revelation quite materially conceived. In Nature and all her forms, men no longer saw the work of divine spirit, but something which has come into existence without spirit, and of which they nevertheless assert that the spiritual life which Man leads is born of it. Of the spirit-world, on the other hand, men would only accept so much as was still told of in the historic records. Any real seeing of the creative spirit in the past was as severely taboo'd, as was the seeing of the spirit in the present.
[ 19 ] All that now remained living in men's souls came from that region of the external present world into which Michael does not enter. Man was glad to be standing upon ‘secure’ ground. He fancied the ground secure because he abstained from looking for any Thoughts in Nature, in which he would at once have suspected the unreliability of a spontaneous fancy. But Michael was not glad. He was obliged to remain on the far side, aloof from men, and carry on the war in his own region against Lucifer and Ahriman. Hence came the great and tragic difficulty; for Lucifer can approach Man all the more easily, the more Michael—who is also the preserver of his past—is obliged to keep away from him. And so a stormy contest was being waged on Man's behalf, in the spiritual world next to earth, by Michael against Lucifer and Ahriman: whilst Man himself on earthly territory was busying his soul in opposition to the healing forces of his own evolution.
[ 20 ] All this applies of course to the spiritual life of Europe and America. For Asia it would be necessary to speak differently.
Leading Thoughts
[ 21 ] In the very first period of the spiritual Soul's evolution Man began to feel that the picture of Mankind, of his own Human Being, which had hitherto come of itself, imaginatively, was now lost to him. Powerless to find it as yet in his Spiritual Soul, he seeks for it along the paths of Natural Science of History. He would like to revive once more within him the old picture of Humanity.
[ 22 ] By this road, men do not come to the real fullness of the human being; they come only to empty illusions. But they do not see this; they look on these as things that give mankind substantiation and support.
[ 23 ] And so Michael, in the time preceding his earthly regency, can only look with anxiety and sorrow upon mankind's evolution. For men condemn spiritual contemplation in any direction, and thereby cut themselves off from everything that makes a bond with Michael.
Dritte Betrachtung: Michaels Leid über die Menschheitsentwicklung vor der Zeit seiner Erdenwirksamkeit
[ 1 ] Im weiteren Fortschritt des Bewußtseinszeitalters hört immer mehr die Möglichkeit der Verbindung Michaels mit der allgemeinen Menschenwesenheit auf. In dieser hält die vermenschlichte Intellektualität ihren Einzug. Aus dieser schwinden imaginative Vorstellungen, die wesenhafte Intelligenz im Kosmos dem Menschen zeigen können. Für Michael beginnt die Möglichkeit, an den Menschen heranzukommen, erst mit dem letzten Drittel des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Vorher kann es nur auf solchen Wegen geschehen, die als die echt rosenkreutzerischen gesucht werden.
[ 2 ] Der Mensch sieht mit seinem aufkeimenden Intellekt in die Natur. Er sieht dann eine physische, eine Ätherwelt, in denen er nicht drinnen ist. Er gewinnt durch die großen Ideen der Kopernikus, Galilei ein Bild der außermenschlichen Welt; aber er verliert sein eigenes. Er sieht auf sich selbst und hat keine Möglichkeit, zu einer Einsicht darüber zu kommen, was er ist.
[ 3 ] In den Tiefen seines Wesens wird das in ihm erweckt, was seine Intelligenz zu tragen bestimmt ist. Mit dem verbindet sich sein Ich. So trägt jetzt der Mensch ein Dreifaches in sich. Erstens: in seinem Geist-Seelenwesen als physisch-ätherisch erscheinend das, was ihn einstmals, schon in Saturn- und Sonnenzeit und dann immer wieder, in das Reich des Göttlich-Geistigen gestellt hat. Es ist dasjenige, wo Menschenwesen und Michaelwesen zusammengehen können. Zweitens trägt der Mensch in sich sein späteres physisches und ätherisches Wesen. Dasjenige, was ihm während Monden- und Erdenzeiten geworden ist. Das ist alles Werk und Wirksamkeit des Göttlich-Geistigen; aber dieses ist selbst darinnen nicht mehr lebendig anwesend.
[ 4 ] Es wird erst wieder voll lebendig anwesend, als der Christus durch das Mysterium von Golgatha schreitet. In dem, was geistig in dem physischen und ätherischen Leib des Menschen wirkt, kann der Christus gefunden werden. Drittens hat der Mensch in sich denjenigen Teil seines Geistig-Seelischen, der in Monden- und Erdenzeiten neues Wesen angenommen hat. In diesem ist Michael tätig geblieben, während er in dem Mond und Erde zugewandten immer untätiger geworden ist. In diesem hat er dem Menschen sein Menschen-Götterbild erhalten.
[ 5 ] Das konnte er bis zum Aufgange des Bewußtseinszeitalters. Dann versank gewissermaßen das gesamte Geistig-Seelische des Menschen in das Physisch-Ätherische, um daraus die Bewußtseinsseele zu holen.
[ 6 ] Dem Menschen stieg leuchtend im Bewußtsein auf, was ihm sein physischer Leib und sein ätherischer Leib über Physisches und Ätherisches in der Natur sagen konnten. Es versank vor seinem Schauen, was ihm astralischer Leib und Ich über sich selbst sagen konnten.
[ 7 ] Eine Zeit steigt herauf, in der in der Menschheit das Gefühl auflebt, sie komme mit ihrer Einsicht nicht mehr an sich selbst heran. Ein Suchen nach der Erkenntnis der Menschenwesenheit beginnt. Man kann dieses nicht befriedigen durch das, was die Gegenwart vermag. Man geht historisch in frühere Zeiten zurück. Der Humanismus steigt in der Geistesentwickelung auf. Humanismus erstrebt man nicht, weil man den Menschen hat, sondern weil man ihn verloren hat. Solange man ihn hatte, hätten Erasmus von Rotterdam und andere aus einer ganz anderen Seelennuance gewirkt, als aus dem, was ihnen der Humanismus war.
[ 8 ] In Faust fand später Goethe eine Menschengestalt auf, die ganz und gar den Menschen verloren hatte.
[ 9 ] Immer intensiver wird dieses Suchen nach «dem Menschen». Denn man hat nur die Wahl, sich abzustumpfen gegenüber dem Erfühlen des eigenen Wesens; oder die Sehnsucht nach ihm als ein Element der Seele zu entwickeln.
[ 10 ] Bis in das neunzehnte Jahrhundert herein entwickeln die besten Menschen auf den verschiedensten Gebieten des europäischen Geisteslebens in verschiedenster Art Ideen - historische, naturwissenschaftliche, philosophische, mystische -, die ein Streben darstellen, in dem, was intellektualistisch gewordene Weltanschauung ist, den Menschen zu finden.
[ 11 ] Renaissance, geistige Wiedergeburt, Humanismus hasten, ja stürmen nach einer Geistigkeit in einer Richtung, in der sie nicht zu finden ist; Ohnmacht, Illusion, Betäubung - nach der Richtung, in der man sie suchen muß. Dabei überall der Durchbruch der Michael-Kräfte, in der Kunst, in der Erkenntnis, in den Menschen herein, nur noch nicht in die auflebenden Kräfte der Bewußtseinsseele. - Ein Schwanken des geistigen Lebens. Michael, alle Kräfte nach rückwärts in der kosmischen Entwickelung wendend, auf daß ihm Macht werde, den «Drachen» unter seinen Füßen im Gleichgewicht zu erhalten. Gerade unter diesen Machtanstrengungen Michaels entstehen die großen Schöpfungen der Renaissance. Aber sie sind noch eine Erneuerung des Verstandes- oder Gemüts seelenhaften durch Michael, nicht ein Wirken der neuen Seelenkräfte.
[ 12 ] Man kann Michael voll Sorge schauen, ob er auch in der Lage sei, den «Drachen» auf die Dauer zu bekämpfen, wenn er wahrnimmt, wie die Menschen auf dem einen Gebiete aus dem neugewonnenen Naturbilde ein solches des Menschen gewinnen wollen. Michael sieht, wie die Natur beobachtet wird und wie man aus dem, was man «Naturgesetze» nennt, ein Menschenbild formen will. Er sieht, wie man sich vorstellt, diese Eigenschaft eines Tieres werde vollkommener, jene Organ Verbindung werde harmonischer und dadurch «entstehe» der Mensch. Aber vor Michaels Geistesauge entsteht nicht «ein Mensch», weil, was in Vervollkommnung, in Harmonisierung gedacht wird, eben nur «gedacht» wird; niemand kann schauen, daß es auch in Wirklichkeit wird, weil das eben nirgends der Fall ist.
[ 13 ] Und so leben die Menschen mit solchem Denken vom Menschen in wesenlosen Bildern, in Illusionen; sie jagen einem Menschenbilde nach, das sie nur glauben zu haben; aber in Wahrheit ist nichts in ihrem Gesichtsfelde. «Die Kraft der Geistessonne bescheinet ihre Seelen, Christus wirkt; aber sie können dessen noch nicht achten. Bewußtseinsseelenkraft waltet im Leibe; sie will noch nicht in die Seele.» So etwa kann man die Inspiration hören, die da Michael spricht aus banger Sorge. Ob denn nicht etwa die Illusionskraft in den Menschen dem «Drachen» soviel Macht geben werde, daß ihm - Michael - die Aufrechterhaltung des Gleichgewichts eine Unmöglichkeit sein werde.
[ 14 ] Andere Persönlichkeiten suchen mit mehr innerlichkünstlerischer Kraft, die Natur mit dem Menschen in eins zu empfinden. Gewaltig klingt das Wort, das Goethe gesprochen hat, als er Winckelmanns Wirken in einem schönen Buche charakterisierte: «Wenn die gesunde Natur des Menschen als ein Ganzes wirkt, wenn er sich in der Welt als in einem großen, schönen, würdigen und werten Ganzen fühlt, wenn das harmonische Behagen ihm ein reines, freies Entzücken gewährt; dann würde das Weltall, wenn es sich selbst empfinden könnte, als an sein Ziel gelangt, aufjauchzen und den Gipfel des eigenen Werdens und Wesens bewundern.» Was Lessing mit Feuergeistigkeit anregte, was in Herder den großen Weltblick beseelte: es klingt in diesem Goethewort. Und Goethes ganzes eigenes Schaffen ist wie allseitige Offenbarung dieses seines Wortes. Schiller hat in den «Ästhetischen Briefen» einen idealen Menschen geschildert, der so, wie es in diesem Worte klingt, das Weltall in sich trägt und es im sozialen Zusammenschluß mit anderen Menschen verwirklicht. Aber woher stammt dieses Menschenbild? Es leuchtet wie die Morgensonne über der Frühlingserde. Aber in die Menschenempfindung ist es aus der Betrachtung des griechischen Menschen eingezogen. Menschen hegten es mit starkem inneren Michael-Impuls; aber sie konnten diesen Impuls nur ausgestalten, indem sie den Seelenblick in die Vorzeit versenkten. Goethe empfand ja, indem er den «Menschen» erleben wollte, die stärksten Konflikte mit der Bewußtseinsseele. In Spinozas Philosophie suchte er ihn; während der italienischen Reise, als er in griechisches Wesen hineinblickte, glaubte er ihn erst recht zu ahnen. Er eilte von der Bewußtseinsseele, die in Spinoza strebt, doch zuletzt zur verglimmenden Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele. Er kann nur unbegrenzt viel von dieser in die Bewußtseinsseele in seiner umfassenden Naturanschauung herübertragen.
[ 15 ] Ernst schaut Michael auch auf dieses Suchen nach dem Menschen. Was nach seinem Sinne ist, kommt ja wohl in die menschliche Geistesentwickelung hinein; es ist der Mensch, der einst das wesenhaft Intelligente geschaut hat, als es Michael noch aus dem Kosmos heraus verwaltet hat. Aber das müßte, wenn es nicht von der vergeistigten Kraft der Bewußtseinsseele erfaßt würde, zuletzt Michaels Wirken entfallen und unter Luzifers Macht gelangen. Daß Luzifer in dem Schwanken der kosmisch-geistigen Gleichgewichtslage die Obermacht gewinnen könne, das ist die andere bange Sorge in dem Leben Michaels.
[ 16 ] Michaels Vorbereitung seiner Mission für das Ende des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts strömt in kosmischer Tragik dahin. Unten auf Erden herrscht oft tiefste Befriedigung über das Wirken des Naturbildes; im Gebiete, da Michael wirkt, waltet Tragik über die Hemmnisse, die sich dem Einleben des Menschenbildes entgegenstellen.
[ 17 ] Ehedem lebte in dem Strahlen der Sonne, in dem Schimmern der Morgenröte, in dem Funkeln der Sterne Michaels herbe, vergeistigte Liebe; jetzt hatte diese Liebe am stärksten die Note des leiderweckenden Hinschauens auf die Menschheit angenommen.
[ 18 ] Michaels Situation im Kosmos wurde eine tragischschwierige, aber auch zu einer Lösung drängende gerade in dem Zeitabschnitte, der seiner Erdenmission voranging. Die Menschen konnten die Intellektualität nur im Bereich des Leibes und da nur der Sinne halten. Sie nahmen daher auf der einen Seite nichts in ihre Einsicht auf, was ihnen nicht die Sinne sagten; die Natur wurde ein Feld der Sinnesoffenbarung, aber diese Offenbarung ganz materiell gedacht. In den Naturformen vernahm man nicht mehr das Werk des Göttlich-Geistigen, sondern etwas, das geistlos da ist und von dem man doch behauptete, daß es das Geistige, in dem der Mensch lebt, hervorbringt. Auf der ändern Seite wollten von einer Geisteswelt die Menschen nur noch das annehmen, wovon die historischen Nachrichten sprachen. Ein Schauen des Geistes nach der Vergangenheit wurde so streng verpönt wie ein solches in die Gegenwart.
[ 19 ] Es lebte nur noch das in des Menschen Seele, das aus dem Gegenwartsgebiete kommt, das Michael nicht betritt. Der Mensch ward froh, auf «sicherm» Boden zu stehen. Den glaubte er zu haben, weil er nichts von Gedanken, in denen er sogleich Phantasiewillkür fürchtete, in der «Natur» suchte. Michael aber war nicht froh; er mußte jenseits vom Menschen, in seinem eigenen Gebiet, den Kampf gegen Luzifer und Ahriman führen. Das ergab die große tragische Schwierigkeit, weil Luzifer um so leichter an den Menschen herankommt, je mehr Michael, der ja auch das Vergangene bewahrt, sich von dem Menschen abhalten muß. Und so spielte sich ein heftiger Kampf Michaels mit Ahriman und Luzifer in der an die Erde unmittelbar angrenzenden geistigen Welt für den Menschen ab, während dieser im Erdbereich selbst gegen das Heilsame seiner Entwickelung seine Seele in Tätigkeit hielt.
[ 20 ] Alles dieses gilt selbstverständlich für das europäische und amerikanische Geistesleben. Für das asiatische müßte anders gesprochen werden.
Goetheanum, 14. Dezember 1924.
Weitere Leitsätze, die für die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft vom Goetheanum ausgesendet werden (MIT BEZUG AUF DIE VORANGEHENDE DRITTE BETRACHTUNG: MICHAELS LEID ÜBER DIE MENSCHHEITSENTWICKELUNG VOR DER ZEIT SEINER ERDENWIRKSAMKEIT)
[ 23 ] 134. In der allerersten Zeit der Bewußtseinsseelenentwickelung erfühlt der Mensch, wie ihm das vorher imaginativ gegebene Bild der Menschheit, seiner eigenen Wesenheit, verloren gegangen ist. Ohnmächtig, es in der Bewußtseinsseele schon zu finden, sucht er es auf naturwissenschaftlichem oder historischem Wege. Er möchte in sich das alte Menschheitsbild wieder erstehen lassen.
[ 24 ] 135. Man gelangt dadurch nicht zu einem wirklichen Erfülltsein mit der menschlichen Wesenheit, sondern nur zu Illusionen. Aber man bemerkt es nicht; und sieht darin etwas die Menschheit Tragendes.
[ 25 ] 136. So muß Michael in der Zeit, die seiner Erdenwirksamkeit vorangeht, mit Sorge und in Leid auf die Menschheitsentwickelung sehen. Denn die Menschheit verpönt jede Geistesbetrachtung und schneidet sich dadurch alles ab, was sie mit Michael verbindet.
Third contemplation: Michael's suffering over the development of humanity before the time of his earthly activity
[ 1 ] In the further progress of the age of consciousness, the possibility of Michael's connection with the general human entity ceases more and more. Humanized intellectuality finds its way into it. Imaginative concepts that can show man the essential intelligence in the cosmos disappear from it. For Michael, the possibility of approaching man only began in the last third of the nineteenth century. Before that, it can only happen in ways that are sought as genuinely Rosicrucian.
[ 2 ] Man looks into nature with his burgeoning intellect. He then sees a physical, an etheric world in which he is not inside. Through the great ideas of Copernicus and Galileo, he gains an image of the extra-human world; but he loses his own. He looks at himself and has no possibility of gaining an insight into what he is.
[ 3 ] In the depths of his being, that which his intelligence is destined to bear is awakened in him. His ego connects with this. Thus man now carries a threefold within himself. Firstly, in his spirit-soul being, appearing as physical-etheric, that which once, already in Saturnian and solar times and then again and again, placed him in the realm of the divine-spiritual. This is where the human being and the Michael being can merge. Secondly, man carries within him his later physical and etheric being. That which has become him during moon and earth times. This is all the work and activity of the divine-spiritual; but this is no longer livingly present in it.
[ 4 ] It only becomes fully alive again when the Christ passes through the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ can be found in that which works spiritually in the physical and etheric body of man. Thirdly, man has within him that part of his spiritual-soul which has taken on a new nature in the times of the moon and earth. In this part Michael has remained active, while in the part facing the moon and earth he has become increasingly inactive. In this he has preserved his image of man-god for man.
[ 5 ] He was able to do this until the dawn of the age of consciousness. Then, as it were, the entire spiritual-soul of man sank into the physical-etheric in order to fetch the consciousness-soul from it.
[ 6 ] What his physical body and his etheric body could tell him about the physical and etheric in nature rose luminously in his consciousness. It sank before his vision what the astral body and ego could tell him about himself.
[ 7 ] A time is dawning in which humanity has the feeling that it can no longer reach itself with its insight. A search for knowledge of the human being begins. This cannot be satisfied by what the present can do. We go back historically to earlier times. Humanism rises in the development of the spirit. One does not strive for humanism because one has man, but because one has lost him. As long as we had it, Erasmus of Rotterdam and others would have worked from a completely different soul nuance than what humanism was to them.
[ 8 ] In Faust, Goethe later found a human form that had completely lost its humanity.
[ 9 ] This search for "the human being" becomes ever more intense. For one only has the choice of becoming numb to the feeling of one's own being; or to develop a longing for it as an element of the soul.
[ 10 ] Until the nineteenth century, the best people in the most diverse areas of European intellectual life developed ideas of various kinds - historical, scientific, philosophical, mystical - which represent a striving to find the human being in what has become an intellectualistic world view.
[ 11 ] Renaissance, spiritual rebirth, humanism rush, even storm after a spirituality in a direction in which it cannot be found; powerlessness, illusion, stupefaction - after the direction in which one must seek it. The breakthrough of the Michael-powers, in art, in knowledge, enters into man everywhere, only not yet into the reviving powers of the consciousness-soul. - A wavering of the spiritual life. Michael, turning all his forces backwards in the cosmic development, so that he may have the power to keep the "dragon" under his feet in balance. It is precisely under these efforts of Michael that the great creations of the Renaissance arise. But they are still a renewal of the soulful mind or spirit by Michael, not a working of the new powers of the soul.
[ 12 ] We can look at Michael with concern as to whether he is also in a position to fight the "dragon" in the long run, when he perceives how people in one area want to gain such an image of man from the newly acquired image of nature. Michael sees how nature is observed and how people want to form an image of man from what they call the "laws of nature". He sees how it is imagined that this characteristic of an animal becomes more perfect, that organ connection becomes more harmonious and thus man "arises". But in Michael's mind's eye, "a human being" does not come into being, because what is conceived in perfection, in harmonization, is only "conceived"; no one can see that it also comes into being in reality, because that is not the case anywhere.
[ 13 ] And so people with this kind of thinking about man live in insubstantial images, in illusions; they chase after an image of man that they only believe they have; but in truth there is nothing in their field of vision. "The power of the spiritual sun certifies their souls, Christ is at work; but they cannot yet recognize it. The power of the soul's consciousness works in the body; it does not yet want to enter the soul." This is how one can hear the inspiration that Michael speaks out of anxious concern. Whether the illusionary power in man will not give the "dragon" so much power that it will be impossible for him - Michael - to maintain the balance.
[ 14 ] Other personalities seek with more inner-artistic power to feel nature as one with man. The words spoken by Goethe when he characterized Winckelmann's work in a beautiful book sound powerful: "When the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as in a great, beautiful, worthy and valuable whole, when the harmonious pleasure grants him a pure, free delight; then the universe, if it could feel itself as having reached its goal, would rejoice and admire the summit of its own becoming and being." What Lessing inspired with a fiery spirit, what inspired the great world view in Herder: it resounds in this word from Goethe. And Goethe's entire oeuvre is like an all-round revelation of this word of his. In his "Aesthetic Letters", Schiller described an ideal human being who, as this word suggests, carries the universe within him and realizes it in social union with other people. But where does this image of man come from? It shines like the morning sun over the spring earth. But it entered human perception from the contemplation of Greek man. People cherished it with a strong inner Michael impulse; but they could only develop this impulse by immersing their soul's gaze in the past. Goethe, in wanting to experience the "human being", felt the strongest conflicts with the soul of consciousness. He searched for it in Spinoza's philosophy; during the Italian journey, when he looked into the Greek being, he thought he sensed it all the more. He hastened from the soul of consciousness, which strives in Spinoza, but ultimately to the fading soul of understanding or mind. He can only transfer an unlimited amount of this into the soul of consciousness in his comprehensive view of nature.
[ 15 ] Michael also looks seriously at this search for man. That which is according to his meaning certainly comes into the human spiritual development; it is the human being who once saw the essentially intelligent when Michael still administered it out of the cosmos. But this, if it were not seized by the spiritualized power of the consciousness soul, would finally have to fall away from Michael's work and come under Lucifer's power. That Lucifer could gain supremacy in the fluctuation of the cosmic-spiritual equilibrium is the other anxious concern in Michael's life.
[ 16 ] Michael's preparation of his mission for the end of the nineteenth century flows along in cosmic tragedy. Down on earth there is often the deepest satisfaction with the work of the image of nature; in the region where Michael works, tragedy reigns over the obstacles that stand in the way of the image of man coming to life.
[ 17 ] In the past, Michael's tart, spiritualized love lived in the rays of the sun, in the shimmering of the dawn, in the twinkling of the stars; now this love had taken on the strongest note of the sadly awakening gaze on humanity.
[ 18 ] Michael's situation in the cosmos became tragically difficult, but also urgent for a solution, especially in the period preceding his mission on earth. People could only maintain intellectuality in the realm of the body and there only in the senses. Therefore, on the one hand, they took nothing into their insight that the senses did not tell them; nature became a field of sensory revelation, but this revelation was conceived entirely materially. In the forms of nature they no longer heard the work of the divine-spiritual, but something that was there without spirit and yet was claimed to produce the spiritual in which man lives. On the other hand, people only wanted to accept what the historical news spoke of as a spiritual world. Looking to the past was as strictly frowned upon as looking to the present.
[ 19 ] The only thing that still lived in the human soul was that which came from the present, which Michael did not enter. Man was happy to stand on "safe" ground. He believed he had it because he sought nothing in "nature" from thoughts in which he immediately feared the arbitrariness of fantasy. But Michael was not happy; he had to fight the battle against Lucifer and Ahriman on the other side of man, in his own territory. This resulted in a great tragic difficulty, because the more Michael, who also preserves the past, has to keep himself away from man, the easier it is for Lucifer to approach him. And so a fierce battle of Michael with Ahriman and Lucifer took place in the spiritual world immediately adjacent to the earth for man, while he kept his soul active in the earth realm itself against the salvation of his development.
[ 20 ] All this naturally applies to European and American spiritual life. It would have to be said differently for Asian life.
Goetheanum, December 14, 1924.
Further Guiding Principles sent out by the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (WITH REFERENCE TO THE PREVIOUS THIRD CONSIDERATION: MICHAEL'S GRIEF ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMANITY BEFORE THE TIME OF HIS EARTHWORK)
[ 21 ] 134 In the very first time of the development of the consciousness soul, man feels how the previously imaginatively given image of humanity, of his own being, has been lost to him. Powerless to find it in the consciousness soul, he searches for it in a scientific or historical way. He wants to recreate the old image of humanity within himself.
[ 22 ] 135 One does not thereby attain to a real fulfillment with the human entity, but only to illusions. But one does not notice it; and sees in it something that sustains humanity.
[ 23 ] 136 Thus, in the time that precedes his earthly activity, Michael must look with concern and sorrow upon the development of humanity. For humanity frowns upon all spiritual contemplation and thereby cuts off everything that connects it with Michael.