The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The pre-Michaelian and the Michael Way

[ 1 ] It will not be possible to see in the right light how the Michael impact penetrates into the development of humanity if one forms the idea of the relationship of the newer world of ideas to nature that is generally accepted today.

[ 2 ] There one thinks: outside is nature with its processes and beings; inside, there are the ideas. These represent concepts of natural beings or so-called laws of nature. The main concern of thinkers is to show how to form the ideas that have the right relationship to natural beings or that contain the true laws of nature.

[ 3 ] In doing so, little importance is attached to how these ideas relate to the person who has them. And yet we will only understand what is important if we first and foremost pose the question: What does man experience in the newer scientific ideas?

[ 4 ] You will arrive at an answer in the following way.

[ 5 ] Today man feels that ideas are formed in him through the activity of his soul. He has the feeling that he is the creator of ideas, while only perceptions from outside reach him.

[ 6 ] Man did not always have this feeling. In older times he did not perceive the content of ideas as something self-made, but as something received by inspiration from the supersensible world.

[ 7 ] This feeling went through stages. And the stages depended on the part of man's being with which he experienced what he now calls his ideas. Today, in the age of the development of the consciousness soul, what is written in the previous guiding principles applies without restriction: "Thoughts have their actual seat in the etheric body of man. But there they are living-substantial forces. They imprint themselves on the physical body. And as such 'imprinted thoughts' they have the shadowy nature in which ordinary consciousness knows them."

[ 8 ] We can now go back to times when thoughts were experienced directly in the "I". But then they were not shadowy as they are today; they were not merely living; they were soulful and spiritualized. This means, however, that man did not think thoughts; rather, he experienced the perception of concrete spiritual entities.

[ 9 ] A consciousness that thus looks up to a world of spiritual entities will be found everywhere in the prehistory of peoples. What has been preserved historically is today called myth-forming consciousness and is of no particular value for grasping the real world. - And yet man stands with this consciousness in his world, in the world of his origin, while with today's consciousness he stands out of this his world.

[ 10 ] Man is spirit. And his world is that of spirits.

[ 11 ] A next stage is that where the mental is no longer experienced by the "I" but by the astral body. Here the immediate spirituality is lost for the spiritual sight. The mental appears as an animated living being.

[ 12 ] At the first stage, the perception of the concrete spiritual essence, the human being does not have a strong need to bring what is perceived to the world of the sensually perceived. The sensory phenomena of the world reveal themselves as the acts of the supersensible; but there is no need to form a special science of that which is immediately visible to the "spiritual gaze". Moreover, what is seen as the world of spiritual beings is of such abundance that attention rests above all on it.

[ 13 ] This is different in the second stage of consciousness. Here the concrete spiritual beings are concealed; their reflection, as animated life, appears. One begins to bring the "life of nature" to this "life of souls". The effective spiritual beings and their deeds are sought in the natural beings and natural processes. In what later emerged as the alchymistic search, the precipitation of this stage of consciousness can be seen historically.

[ 14 ] Just as man, by "thinking" spiritual beings in the first stage of consciousness, lived entirely in his being, so in this second stage he is still close to himself and his origin.

[ 15 ] This, however, rules out the possibility of man having an inner drive of his own for his actions in the true sense at both levels.

[ 16 ] The spiritual, which is of his own kind, acts within him. What he seems to do is the revelation of processes that take place through spiritual beings. What man does is the sensual-physical manifestation of an underlying real divine-spiritual event.

[ 17 ] A third epoch of the development of consciousness brings the thoughts, but as living ones, to consciousness in the etheric body.

[ 18 ] When Greek civilization was great, it lived in this consciousness. When the Greek thought, he did not form a thought through which he looked at the world as if it were his own construct; rather, he felt excited life within himself, which also pulsated outside in things and processes.

[ 19 ] Then the longing for freedom of action arose for the first time. Not real freedom yet, but the longing for it.

[ 20 ] Man, who felt the rain of nature stirring within himself, was able to develop the longing to detach his own activity from the activity perceived as alien. But in the outer activity, the final result of the effective spirit world, which is of the same kind as the human being, was still felt.

[ 21 ] Only when the thoughts took on their imprint in the physical body and consciousness extended only to this imprint did the possibility of freedom arise. This is the state that existed in the fifteenth century after Christ.

[ 22 ] In the development of the world it does not matter what significance the ideas of the present-day view of nature have for nature; for these ideas have not assumed their forms in order to provide a certain picture of nature, but in order to bring man to a certain stage of his development.

[ 23 ] When the thoughts took hold of the physical body, spirit, soul, life were eradicated from their immediate content; and the abstract shadow that clings to the physical body has remained alone. Such thoughts can only make the physical-material the object of their cognition. For they themselves are only real in the physical-material body of man.

[ 24 ] Materialism did not arise because only material beings and processes can be perceived in external nature, but because man had to go through a stage in his development that led him to a consciousness that is initially only capable of seeing material revelations. The one-sided shaping of this human need for development resulted in the view of nature of modern times.

[ 25 ] Michael's mission is to bring into the human ether-bodies the powers through which the thought-shadows will again gain life; then souls and spirits of the supersensible worlds will incline themselves to the animated thoughts; the liberated human being will be able to live with them, as formerly the human being lived with them, who was only the physical image of their activity.

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Further guiding principles sent out by the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (based on the above)

[ 26 ] 103. In the development of humanity, consciousness descends the ladder of thought unfoldment. There is a first stage of consciousness: there the human being experiences the thoughts in the "I" as spiritualized, animated, animate beings. In a second stage the human being experiences the thoughts in the astral body; there they only represent the ensouled and animated images of the spirit beings. At a third stage, the human being experiences thoughts in the etheric body; they only represent an inner activity like an echo of the soul. In the fourth, present stage, man experiences thoughts in the physical body; they represent dead shadows of the spiritual.

[ 27 ] 104. To the same extent that the spiritual-soulful-living recedes in human thinking, man's self-will revives; freedom becomes possible.

[ 28 ] 105. It is Michael's task to lead man along the pathways of the will back to where he came from, since he has descended along the pathways of thinking from the experience of the supersensible to that of the sensible with his earthly consciousness.