The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Michael's Experiences and Adventures during the Fulfillment of his Cosmic Mission

[ 1 ] The progression of humanity from the stage of consciousness at which man as a member of the divine-spiritual order, to the present stage, through which he feels himself as an individuality detached from the divine-spiritual with his own use of thought, can be followed from the point of view of humanity. This has been done in the last essay.

[ 2 ] But one can also sketch a picture of what Michael and his followers experience during this developmental current through supersensible vision, i.e. describe the same series of facts from Michael's point of view. This shall be attempted this time.

[ 3 ] There is first of all an earliest time in which one can actually only speak of what happens among divine-spiritual beings. We are dealing with an ongoing action of the gods. Gods accomplish what the impulses of their beings give them; they are correspondingly satisfied in this activity. And what they experience in all of this is the only thing that matters. Only in one corner of the field of this action of the gods is something like humanity noticeable. It is a part of the action of the gods.

[ 4 ] But the spiritual being that has directed its gaze towards humanity from the beginning is Michael. He organizes the actions of the gods in such a way that humanity can exist in a cosmic corner. And the way in which he is active there is related to the activity that later comes to manifestation in man as intellect; only it is active as a force that flows through the cosmos in the order of ideas, causing reality. Michael works in this power. His office is to administer cosmic intellectuality. He wants further progress in his field. And this can only consist in the fact that what works as intelligence through the whole cosmos is later concentrated in human individuality. What comes about as a result is this: a time arrives in world development in which the cosmos no longer lives from its present intelligence, but from its past intelligence. And the present intelligence is in the human developmental current.

[ 5 ] Michael would like to maintain what is developing within humanity as intelligence continuously in connection with the divine-spiritual beings.

[ 6 ] But there is resistance to this. What the gods go through as a development in the line from the detachment of intellectuality from its cosmic activity to its incorporation into human nature, that is open as a fact within the world. If beings are present who have a perceptive faculty through which they can see these facts, they can make use of them. - And such beings are present. They are the ahrimanic beings. They are completely predisposed to absorb everything that detaches itself from the gods as intelligence. They are predisposed to unite the sum of all intellectuality with their own being. They thus become the greatest, the most comprehensive and penetrating intelligences of the cosmos.

[ 7 ] Michael foresees how man, by advancing more and more to the self-use of intelligence, must meet with the ahrimanic beings and how he can then fall prey to them by entering into a union with them. - Therefore Michael brings the ahrimanic powers under his feet, he continually pushes them into a deeper realm than that in which man unfolds himself. Michael, the dragon at his feet, pushing him into the abyss: this is the powerful image of the supernatural facts described here living in human consciousness.

[ 8 ] Development moves forward. Intellectuality, which at first was entirely in the realm of divine spirituality, detaches itself to such an extent that it becomes the animation of the cosmos. What previously radiated only from the gods now shines forth as the revelation of the divine from the starry world. Before, the world was guided by the divine essence itself, now it is guided by the divine revelation that has become objective, behind which the divine essence passes through the next stage of its own development.

[ 9 ] Michael is again the administrator of cosmic intelligence, insofar as it flows through the revelations of the cosmos in the order of ideas.

[ 10 ] The third phase of development is a further detachment of the cosmic intelligence from its origin. In the starry worlds, the present order of ideas no longer reigns as divine revelation; the stars run and organize themselves according to the order of ideas implanted in them in the past. Michael sees how more and more of what he has administered in the cosmos, the cosmic intellectuality, takes the path to earthly humanity.

[ 11 ] Michael also sees, however, how the danger of humanity falling prey to the Ahrimanic powers is growing ever greater. He knows: for himself he will always have Ahriman under his feet; but whether for mankind too?

[ 12 ] Michael sees the greatest earth event occurring. From the realm that Michael himself served, the Christ entity descends into the earth realm to be there when the intelligence will be fully with the human individuality. For it is then that man will feel the strongest urge to surrender to the power that has made itself the bearer of intellectuality in all perfection. But Christ will be there; he will live in the same sphere through his great sacrifice in which Ahriman also lives. Man will be able to choose between Christ and Ahriman. The world will be able to find the way of Christ in the development of humanity.

[ 13 ] This is Michael's cosmic experience of what he has to administer in the cosmos. To stay with the object of his administration, he starts on the path from the cosmos to humanity. He has been on this path since the eighth century after Christ, but did not actually arrive at his earthly office, into which his cosmic office has been transformed, until the last third of the nineteenth century.

[ 14 ] Michael cannot force people to do anything. For compulsion has ceased precisely because intelligence has entered entirely into the realm of human individuality. - But as a majestic, exemplary action, in the supersensible world that initially borders on the visible world, Michael can unfold what he wants to unfold. With an aura of light, with a gesture of a spirit being, Michael can show himself in which all the splendor and glory of the past intelligence of the gods is revealed. He can bring to light how the effect of this past intelligence in the present is even truer, more beautiful and more virtuous than everything in immediate present intelligence, which flows from Ahriman in a seductive glow. He can realize how for him Ahriman will always be the low spirit beneath his feet.

[ 15 ] Those people who see the next supersensible world adjacent to the visible world perceive Michael and his own in what they want to do for people, as described here. Such people see how man in freedom is to be led away from Ahriman to Christ through the image of Michael in the Ahriman sphere. If such people succeed in opening the hearts and minds of other people through their vision, so that a circle of people know how Michael now lives among people, then humanity will begin to celebrate Michael festivals with the right content, at which the souls will revive the power of Michael within themselves. Michael will then work as a real power among men. Man, however, will be free and yet walk his spiritual path of life through the cosmos in intimate communion with Christ.

Further guiding principles sent out by the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (with reference to the previous presentation of the Michael experiences)

[ 16 ] 109. Becoming fully aware of Michael's activity in the spiritual world context means solving the riddle of human freedom out of the cosmic contexts, insofar as the solution is necessary for man on earth.

[ 17 ] 110. For "freedom" as a fact is directly given to every human being who understands himself in the present stage of human development. No one may say, if he does not wish to deny an obvious fact, "freedom is not". But one can find a contradiction between what is actually given and the processes in the cosmos. In the consideration of Michael's mission in the cosmos, this contradiction falls away.

[ 18 ] 111. In my "Philosophy of Freedom" one finds the "freedom" of the human being in the present world time proven as the content of consciousness; in the descriptions of Michael's mission given here, one finds the "becoming of this freedom" cosmically founded.