The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Michael-Christ Experience of Man

[ 1 ] Whoever will take into his mind the inner view of Michael's nature and deeds, borne by thorough perception, will come to the right understanding of how a world is to be taken by man, which is not of divine essence or revelation or efficacy, but the work of the gods. To look into this world with recognition means to have forms, shapes before you which everywhere speak loudly of the divine; but in which self-living divine being is not found if you do not indulge in any illusion. And one must not merely look at the recognition of the world. This is probably where the configuration of the world that surrounds people today is revealed most clearly. More essential for everyday life, however, is feeling, willing and working in a world that can be perceived as divine in its design, but cannot be experienced as divinely animated. Bringing real moral life into this world requires the ethical impulses that I have outlined in the "Philosophy of Freedom".

[ 2 ] In this world of works, Michael's essence and present world of deeds can shine for the genuinely sentient human being. Michael does not enter the physical world as an apparition. With all his activity he remains within a supersensible region which, however, is directly adjacent to the physical world of the present phase of world development. Thus the possibility can never arise that through the impressions which men receive from the Michael-being, they might lead their view of nature into the fantastic, or that they might form the moral-practical life in a world shaped by God, but not animated by God, as if impulses could be there which need not be carried ethically and spiritually by man himself. One will always have to approach Michael, whether thinking or willing, by placing oneself in the spiritual.

[ 3 ] Thus one will live spiritually in the following way. One will accept knowledge and life as they have had to be accepted since the fifteenth century. - But one will keep to the Michael revelation; one will let this revelation shine as a light into the thoughts one receives from nature; one will carry it as warmth in the heart when one must live according to the divine world of work. - One will then not only observe and experience the present world, but also visualize that which Michael conveys, a past world state, a world state which Michael brings into the present through his being and his deeds.

[ 4 ] If it were otherwise: if Michael worked in such a way that he brought his deeds into the world, which man must presently recognize and experience as physical, then man would experience in the present from the world that which in reality is not in it, but was. If this happens, then this illusory grasp of the world leads the soul of man from the reality that is appropriate to it into another, namely into a Luciferian one.

[ 5 ] The way in which Michael brings the past into effect in the present human life is that which is held in the sense of the right spiritual progress of the world, which contains nothing Luciferic. It is important that a correct conception of how everything Luciferic is avoided in Michael's mission lives in the conception of the human soul.

[ 6 ] Having this position in relation to the light of Michael rising in human history also means being able to find the right path to Christ.

[ 7 ] Michael will give the right orientation when it comes to the world that surrounds man for his cognition or for his actions. One will have to find the way to Christ within.

[ 8 ] It is quite understandable that in the time in which the knowledge of nature has the form that the last five centuries have given it, the knowledge of the supersensible world has also become as mankind is currently experiencing it.

[ 9 ] Nature must be recognized and experienced in such a way that everything is empty of gods. In this way, man no longer experiences himself in his relationship to the world. In so far as man is a supersensible being, the position of himself in relation to nature appropriate to the age gives him nothing about his own being. Even if he only has this position in mind, he cannot live ethically in a way that is appropriate to his humanity.

[ 10 ] This is the reason for not allowing this way of knowing and living to flow into anything that relates to the supersensible human being, indeed to the supersensible world in general. This area is separated from that which is accessible to human cognition. A non-scientific or superscientific area of the revelation of faith is claimed over the cognizable.

[ 11 ] But this is contrasted with the purely spiritual work of Christ. The Christ has been accessible to the human soul since the Mystery of Golgotha. And their relationship with him need not remain an indeterminate, darkly mystical one; it can become a completely concrete one that can be experienced deeply and clearly in human terms.

[ 12 ] But then what the human soul should know about its own supersensible being flows into it from its life together with Christ. The revelation of faith must then be felt in such a way that the living experience of Christ continually flows into it. Life will be able to be permeated by the fact that in Christ the being is felt which gives the human soul the view of its own supersensuousness.

[ 13 ] So it will be possible to stand side by side: Michael-experience and Christ-experience. Through Michael, man will find the right way into the supersensible in relation to external nature. The view of nature will, without being distorted in itself, be able to stand alongside a spiritual view of the world and of man, insofar as he is a world being.

[ 14 ] Through the right attitude towards Christ, man will experience that which he could otherwise only receive as a traditional revelation of faith in the living communication of the soul with Christ. The inner world of the soul's experience will be experienced as spiritually illuminated, just as the outer world of nature can be experienced as spirit-bearing.

[ 15 ] If the human being were to want to gain insight into his own supersensible entity without living together with the Christ entity, this would lead him out of his own reality and into the ahrimanic one. Christ carries within himself the future impulses of humanity in a cosmically justified way. For the human soul to unite with him means to absorb its own future germs in a cosmically justified way. Other beings, who already show forms in the present that are cosmically justified for human beings only in the future, belong to the ahrimanic sphere. Connecting with Christ in the right way also means protecting oneself from the ahrimanic in the right way.

[ 16 ] There is an unconscious fear among those who strictly demand the preservation of the revelations of faith from the influx of human knowledge that man could enter into ahrimanic influences in such ways. This must be understood. But it should also be understood that it is to the glory and true acknowledgement of Christ when the grace-filled influx of the spiritual into the human soul is attributed to the experience with Christ.

[ 17 ] So in the future Michael-experience and Christ-experience can stand side by side; thereby man will find his right path of freedom between the Luciferic aberration in illusions of thought and life and the Ahrimanic allurement in future formations which satisfy his pride but which cannot yet be his present ones.

[ 18 ] To fall into Luciferic illusions is not to become fully human, not to want to progress to the stage of freedom, but to want to remain at too early a stage of development - as God-man. To fall into ahrimanic temptations is not to want to wait until the right cosmic moment has come at a certain degree of humanity, but to want to anticipate this degree.

[ 19 ] Michael-Christ will stand in the future as the word of direction at the beginning of the path on which man can reach his cosmic goal between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic powers.

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Further guiding principles sent out by the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (with reference to the preceding presentation of the Michael and Christ experience through man)

[ 20 ] 115. Man walks his path through the cosmos in such a way that his retrospective view of the previous world can be falsified by Luciferic impulses and his forward thinking into the future can be deceived by Ahrimanic enticements.

[ 21 ] 116. man finds the right position to the Luciferic falsifications through the penetration of his attitude for knowledge and life with the Michael entity and the Michael mission.

[ 22 ] 117. In this way, however, man also protects himself from the Ahrimanic temptations, because the spirit-path into the outer nature, which is stimulated by Michael, leads to the right position towards the Ahrimanic, because the right experience with Christ is found.