The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Future of Humanity and Michael's Activity

[ 1 ] What is man's relationship to Michael and his own at his stage of development today?

[ 2 ] Man is confronted with a world that was once entirely of divine-spiritual essence. Such a divine-spiritual entity to which he himself also belonged as a member. At that time, therefore, the world belonging to man was of divine-spiritual beingness. In a subsequent stage of development it was no longer so. There it was a cosmic revelation of the divine-spiritual, and its essence hovered behind this revelation. But it was weaving and living in the revelation. A starry world was already there. In its shining and moving the divine-spiritual weaved and lived as revelation. One can say: as a star stood or moved at that time, the activity of the divine-spiritual could be seen directly therein.

[ 3 ] In all this, as the divine spirit worked in the cosmos, as man in his life was a result of the activity of the divine-spiritual in the cosmos, Michael was still in his element without resistance. He mediated the relationship between the divine and man.

[ 4 ] Other times came. The starry world ceased to carry the divine-spiritual activity within itself. It lived and moved by persistently continuing what such activity used to be in it. The divine-spiritual no longer lived in the cosmos as revelation, but only as activity. A clear duality had arisen between the divine-spiritual and the cosmic. Michael stayed with the divine-spiritual because of his own nature. He sought to keep the human being as close to this as possible. He continued to do so. He wanted to protect man from living too strongly in a world that is only the effectiveness of the divine-spiritual, not essence and not revelation.

[ 5 ] Michael counts it to his deepest satisfaction that he has succeeded in preserving the starry world through man still directly connected with the Divine-Spiritual in the following way. When man, after he has completed the life between death and a new birth, sets out again on the path to a new earthly existence, he seeks to establish a harmony between the starry course and his earthly lives as he descends to this existence. This harmony, which was naturally there ages ago because the divine-spiritual worked in the stars, in which human life also had its source: it would not be there today, where the starry course merely continues the effectiveness of the divine-spiritual, if man did not seek it. He brings his divine-spiritual, preserved from an earlier time, into a relationship with the stars, which only have their divine-spiritual in them as an after-effect of an earlier time. Thus a divine comes into the relationship of man to the world which corresponds to earlier times but appears in later times. And this deed gives him such deep satisfaction that in this satisfaction he has a part of his life-element, his life-energy, his sunlike will to live.

[ 6 ] Today, however, when he turns his spiritual eye to the earth, he sees still another essentially different fact. During his life in the physical, between birth and death, man is surrounded by a world which no longer shows directly the activity of the divine-spiritual, but only something that has remained of this activity; one can say, only the work of the divine-spiritual. This work is definitely of a divine-spiritual nature in its forms. For the human eye, the divine shows itself in the forms, in the natural events; but it is nothing more than the living in it. Nature is this divine work of the divine and is everywhere an image of divine activity.

[ 7 ] Man lives in this sunlike divine, but not livingly divine world. However, as a result of Michael's work on him, as a human being he has retained the connection with the essence of the divine-spiritual. He lives as a God-infused being in a world that is not God-infused.

[ 8 ] Into this God-emptied world, man will carry what is in him, that which his essence has become in this age.

[ 9 ] Humanity will unfold into a world development. The divine-spiritual, from which the human being originates, can, as a cosmically expanding human entity, illuminate the cosmos, which is only present in the image of the divine-spiritual.

[ 10 ] The same entity that once was the cosmos will no longer shine through humanity. In its passage through humanity, the divine-spiritual will experience a being that it did not reveal before.

[ 11 ] The Ahrimanic powers are opposed to the development taking this course. They do not want the original divine-spiritual powers to illuminate the universe in its further progress; they want the cosmic intellectuality they have absorbed to shine through the entire new cosmos and for man to continue to live in this intellectualized and ahrimanized cosmos.

[ 12 ] With such a life, man would lose the Christ. For he has entered the world with an intellectuality that is entirely as it once lived in the divine-spiritual, when this still formed the cosmos in its being. If we speak today in such a way that our thoughts can also be those of the Christ, we oppose the ahrimanic powers with something that prevents us from falling prey to them.

[ 13 ] To understand the meaning of Michael's mission in the cosmos means to be able to speak in this way. Today we must be able to speak about nature in the way demanded by the developmental stage of the consciousness soul. One must be able to absorb the purely scientific way of thinking. But one should also speak about nature - that is, learn to feel it as it is according to Christ. We should learn the language of Christ not just about redemption from nature, not just about the soul and the divine, but about the cosmos.

[ 14 ] That our human connection with the originally divine-spiritual may be preserved in such a way that we understand how to cultivate the Christ-language through the cosmos, we will come to this when we, in an inner heartfelt feeling, completely immerse ourselves in what Michael and His own are among us with their deeds, with their mission. For understanding Michael today means finding the way to the Logos that Christ lives among people on earth.

[ 15 ] Anthroposophy appreciates in the right way what the scientific way of thinking has learned to say about the world for four to five centuries. But in addition to this language, it speaks another language about the nature of man, about the development of man and about the becoming of the cosmos; it wants to speak the Christ-Michael language.

[ 16 ] For if both languages are spoken, then the development will not be able to break off and pass over to the Ahrimanic before the original divine-spiritual is found. The merely scientific way of speaking corresponds to the detachment of intellectuality from the original divine-spiritual. It can pass over into the ahrimanic if the mission of Michael is not respected. It will not if the intellect that has become free finds itself again, through the power of Michael's example, in the original cosmic intellectuality that is detached from man and has become objective towards him, which lies in the source of man and which has essentially appeared in Christ within the human realm after it had departed from man to unfold his freedom.

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

[ 17 ] 112. The Divine-Spiritual comes into its own in the cosmos in the following stages in different ways: 1. through its very own beingness; 2. through the revelation of this beingness; 3. by the effectiveness, when the entity withdraws from the revelation; 4. by the work, when in the appearing universe the divine is no longer, but only its forms.

[ 18 ] 113. In the present view of nature, man has no relation to the divine, but only to its work. With that which communicates itself to the human constitution of soul through this view, one can unite as man with both the Christ-powers and the ahrimanic powers.

[ 19 ] 114. Michael is imbued with the endeavor to incorporate the relationship to the cosmos preserved in man from the times of divine manifestation and revelation in such a way, through his freely working example, into the human-cosmic development that what the view of nature, which relates purely to the image, the form of the divine, says, runs into a higher, spirit-like view of nature. This will indeed be present in man; but it will be precisely a human after-experience of the divine relationship to the cosmos during the first two stages of cosmic development. Anthroposophy affirms in this way the view of nature of the age of consciousness; but it also supplements it with one that arises from the view of the spiritual eye.