Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts
GA 26
13. Third Study: Michael is Suffering Over Human Evolution Before the Time of His Earthly Activity
[ 1 ] As the new Age of Consciousness proceeds, it grows less and less possible for Michael to connect himself with the existence of mankind in general. Intellectuality has become human and is now entering humanity. From it the Imaginative conceptions, which could reveal to man the Divine Being and Intelligence in the Cosmos, are vanishing. The possibility for Michael himself to approach man begins only with the last third of the nineteenth century. Before that time it was only possible by those paths which were sought for in the true Rosicrucian sense.
[ 2 ] With his own budding intellectuality, man looks out into Nature. He sees there a physical and etheric world, in which he himself is not contained. Through the great ideas of men such as Copernicus and Galileo, he attains a picture of the world external to man. But he loses the picture of himself. When he gazes on himself he has no possibility of reaching any insight as to what he truly is.
[ 3 ] In the depths of his being, that which is destined to bear and sustain his intelligence is being awakened in him. With this, his Ego becomes united. Thus man now bears a threefold nature within him: first, in his spirit-and-soul being, manifesting as physical-etheric, that which originated once upon a time, in the old Saturn and Sun epochs, and then ever and again placed him within the kingdom of the Divine-Spiritual. It is here that the Human Being and the Michael Being go together. Secondly, man bears within him his later physical and etheric nature, that which evolved in him during the Moon and Earth epochs. All this is the work and active working of the Divine-Spiritual. But the Divine-Spiritual itself is no longer living and present within it. [ 4 ] It only becomes fully living and present once more when Christ passes through the Mystery of Golgotha. In that which is at work spiritually in the physical and etheric body of man, Christ can indeed be found.
Thirdly, man has within him that part of his soul and spirit which received new being in the Moon and Earth epochs. Here Michael has remained active (whereas in the part of man that is inclined towards the Moon and Earth, he has become more and more inactive.) In the former Michael has preserved, for man, his picture of Man and the Gods together.
[ 5 ] He was able to do this until the dawn of the new age of Consciousness—the age of the Spiritual Soul. Then the spirit and soul of man sank down, as it were, entirely in the physical-etheric nature, in order to draw forth from there the Spiritual Soul.
[ 6 ] Radiantly there arose in the consciousness of man what his physical and his etheric body could tell him about the physical and etheric in the world of Nature. And what his astral body and Ego had been able to tell him about himself vanished away from his vision.
[ 7 ] In the age which now began, there arose in man the feeling that with his own insight he could no longer reach himself. Thus there began a search for knowledge of the human being. Man could no longer find satisfaction for this quest in what the present was able to provide. He went back to earlier ages of history. Humanism arose in the evolution of the spiritual life. Humanism became the object of men's striving, not because they had grasped Man in his essential nature, but because they had lost him. As long as they possessed this knowledge, Erasmus of Rotterdam and others would have worked from a trend of soul quite different from anything that Humanism could give them.
[ 8 ] In Faust, Goethe discovered at a later time a figure representative of the man who had completely lost hold of his essential being.
[ 9 ] This quest of the human being grows more and more intense as time goes on. For man has now no other alternative: he must either make himself blunt and insensitive as regards his own being, or else the longing for it must come forth as an essential element in his soul's life.
[ 10 ] Right into the nineteenth century, the best minds in the spiritual life of Europe evolve ideas in the most varied fields and in the most different ways—ideas historical, scientific, philosophical, mystical, all of which represent the striving to find, in what has now become an intellectualistic world-conception, the human being himself.
[ 11 ] Renaissance, spiritual re-birth, humanism, are striving restlessly—even tempestuously—for a spiritual element in a direction in which it is not to be found. And, in the direction in which it should be sought, there is impotence, illusion, bewilderment of consciousness. And yet everywhere—in Art, in Knowledge—the Michael-forces are breaking through into the human being, though not as yet into the newly-growing forces of the Spiritual Soul. It is a critical time for the spiritual life. Michael turns all his forces towards the past in cosmic evolution so that he may gain the power to hold the ‘Dragon’ balanced and constrained beneath his feet. It is under these mighty exertions of Michael that the great creations of the Renaissance are born. Yet they still only represent a renewal by Michael of Intellectual or Mind-Soul forces. They are not yet a working of the new soul-forces.
[ 12 ] We can behold Michael filled with anxiety. Will he really be able to master the ‘Dragon’ in the long run? He perceives human beings in one region trying to gain a picture of Man out of the newly-acquired picture of Nature. He sees how they observe Nature and then seek to form a picture of Man from what they call the ‘Laws of Nature.’ He sees them forming their conceptions:—‘This animal quality becomes more perfect, that system of organs more harmonious, and man “arises”!’ But before the spirit-gaze of Michael man does not arise. For in effect, what is thus thought of as being harmonised, perfected, is there only in thought. No one can see it evolving in reality, for nowhere does this happen in actual fact.
[ 13 ] And so, with these their conceptions about Man, men live in empty pictures, in illusions. They are forever running after a picture of Man which they only imagine that they have, while in real truth there is nothing in their field of vision. ‘The power of the spiritual Sun shines upon their souls. Christ Himself is working; but they are not yet able to perceive His presence. The power of the Spiritual Soul holds sway in the body; but it still will not enter into their souls.’ That is approximately the inspiration one can hear of what Michael says in great anxiety. Is it possible that the forces of illusion in man will give the ‘Dragon’ so much power that it will be impossible for Michael to maintain the balance?
[ 14 ] Other persons try with more inward artistic power to feel Nature at one with man. Mighty are the words in which Goethe described Winkelmann's work in a beautiful book: ‘When the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as in a great, beautiful, majestic and worthy whole, when harmonious case gives him pure, free delight; then would the Universe, if it were conscious of itself, shout aloud for joy, as having reached its goal, and marvel at the climax of its own development and being.’ That which stimulated Lessing with fiery spirit and ensouled Herder's wide outlook on the world, rings out in these words of Goethe. And the whole of Goethe's own work is like a many-sided revelation of these his own words. In his ‘Aesthetic Letters’, Schiller has described an ideal human being who, in the sense described in the above words, bears the Universe within himself and realises it in social intercourse with other human beings. But whence comes this picture of Man? It shines like the morning sun over the Earth in spring. But it has entered into human feeling from study of the ancient Greeks. It arose in men with a strong inward Michael-impulse; but they could give form to this impulse only by turning the mind's eye to days of yore. When Goethe wished to experience ‘Man,’ he felt himself in the greatest conflict with the Spiritual Soul. He sought for Man in Spinoza's philosophy; but only during his tour in Italy, when he studied the nature of Greek art, did he feel that he had a glimpse of him. He went away finally from the Spiritual Soul, which is striving upwards in Spinoza, to the Intellectual Soul or Mind-Soul which was gradually dying out. However, with his far-reaching conception of Nature he was able to carry over an infinite amount from the Intellectual Soul into the Spiritual Soul.
[ 15 ] Michael also looks with earnestness upon this search for Man. What is in accordance with his idea is indeed entering here into the spiritual evolution of man:—it is that human being who once beheld the Divine Being and Intelligence when Michael still ruled it from the Cosmos. But if this were not laid hold of by the spiritualised force of the Spiritual Soul it would in the end inevitably slip away from Michael's control and come under the sway of Lucifer. The other great anxiety in Michael's life is, lest in the oscillation of the cosmic spiritual state of balance Lucifer might gain the upper hand.
[ 16 ] Michael's preparation of his Mission for the end of the nineteenth century flows on in cosmic tragedy. Below, on the Earth, there is often the greatest satisfaction in the working out of the new picture of Nature; whereas in the region where Michael works there is a tragic feeling regarding the hindrances to the coming of the picture of Man.
[ 17 ] Formerly Michael's austere, spiritualised love lived in the sun's rays, in the shimmering dawn, in the sparkling of the stars; this love had now acquired most strongly the note of looking down at humanity with awakening sorrow.
[ 18 ] Michael's situation in the Cosmos became tragically difficult, but it also pressed for a solution just at the period of time which preceded his earthly mission. Men were able to keep intellectuality only in the sphere of the body and there only in the sphere of the senses. On one hand, therefore, they received into their views nothing that the senses did not tell them; Nature became the field of the revelations of the senses, considered quite materially. The forms of Nature were no longer perceived as the work of the Divine-Spiritual but as something devoid of spirit, and yet something of which it is affirmed that it brings forth that spiritual element in which man lives. On the other hand, as regards a Spirit-world, men would now accept only what the historical accounts narrated. Direct vision of the Spirit working in the past was discredited, as was the vision of the Spirit in the present.
[ 19 ] In the soul of man there now lived only that which came from the sphere of the present, which Michael does not enter. Man was glad to stand on ‘sure’ ground. He believed he possessed this because in ‘Nature’ he sought no thoughts, in which he might have had to fear the presence of arbitrary fancies. But Michael was not glad. In his own sphere, beyond man, he had to wage war with Lucifer and Ahriman. This resulted in tragic difficulty, because Lucifer is able to approach man the more easily, the more Michael—who indeed also preserves the past—is obliged to keep himself away from man. And thus a severe battle for man took place between Michael and Ahriman and Lucifer in the spiritual world immediately bordering upon the Earth, while on the Earth itself man kept his soul in action against what was beneficial to his evolution.
[ 20 ] All this applies of course to the spiritual life of Europe and America. We should have to speak differently with respect to that of Asia.
Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (in connection with the above Third Study: Michael's suffering over Human Evolution before the Time of his earthly Activity)
[ 21 ] 134. In the very earliest time of the evolution of the Spiritual Soul, man began to feel that he had lost the picture of Humanity—the picture of his own Being—which had formerly been given to him in Imagination. Powerless as yet to find it in the Spiritual Soul, he sought for it by way of Natural Science or of History. He wanted the ancient picture of Humanity to arise in him again.
[ 22 ] 135. Man reaches no fulfilment in this way. Far from becoming filled with the true being of Humanity, he is only led into illusions. But he is unaware that they are so; he thinks they have real power to sustain Humanity.
[ 23 ] 136. Thus, in the time that went before his working upon Earth, Michael had to witness with anxiety and suffering the evolution of mankind. For in this time men eschewed any real contemplation of the Spirit, and thus they severed all the links that connected them 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.