The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Continuation of the Second Contemplation: Hindrances and helps to the Michael Forces in the dawning age of the Spiritual Soul.

[ 1 ] The incorporation of the Spiritual Soul also brought about a disturbance throughout the whole of Europe in men's inner relation towards the articles of religious faith and the ritual of worship. This disturbance announces itself unmistakably, at the turn of the eleventh to the twelfth centuries, by the sudden appearance on the scene of Proofs of the Existence of god (in particular with Anselm of Canterbury). The existence of god was to be proved by arguments of reason. Such a desire could only arise when the old method of knowing God—by direct realization through the soul's inherent forces—was already passing away. What one knows by direct living experience, one does not prove by logic.

[ 2 ] The earlier method had been a direct perception by the soul of the life-forms of the individual Intelligences, up to the highest Godhead. The new method now became, to work out intellectually a system of thoughts about the ‘First Causes’ of the universe. For the first method, there had been the powers of Michael in the spiritual region immediately adjoining the earthly one—powers which, behind the thinking-forces directed to the externals of sense, equipped the soul with other faculties, that could behold within the universe the life-forms of Intelligent Being. The second method required that the soul's link with the Michael Powers should be first fully developed.

[ 3 ] What happens in the field of religious worship is that, far and wide, from Wycliffe in England (15^th century) to Huss in Bohemia, over broad ranges of religious life amongst men, a doctrine so central as that of the Sacrament of the Communion begins to waver. In the Sacrament of the Communion, Man could find individual human union with the spirit-world which Christ had opened to him; for therein he could so unite himself with the being of the Christ, that the fact of sensible union was at the same time a spiritual one.

[ 4 ] The consciousness of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul was able to picture such a communion for this Soul still possessed ideas, both of Spirit and of Matter, which were closely akin to each other, so that the one could be conceived passing over into the other—Matter into Spirit. But such ideas must not be intellectual ones, of the kind that demand proofs for the existence of god. They must be such as still have something of Imagination in them; for here can be felt in Matter the active Spirit at work within it, and in the Spirit, the striving after Matter. Ideas of such a kind have the cosmic force of Michael behind them.

[ 5 ] If we only consider how much it was, of which the foundations were shaken in men's minds at that time, how much of all that was involved in their most sacred, innermost life! There were persons, in whom the very essence of the spiritual Soul shot forth its brightest rays, who, by the constitution of their souls, were united to the Michael Forces with a strength which for others would only come centuries later. Individualities such as Huss, Wycliffe and others came on the scenes. Following Michael's voice in their hearts, they used the ripeness of their Spiritual Soul to soar to a comprehension of the profoundest mysteries of religion. The intellectual power, now coming in with the Spiritual soul, must—they felt—be able to bring within the range of their ideas what in ancient times had been sought and reached through Imagination.

[ 6 ] In contrast to all this was the old historic position of the human soul, as traditionally handed down, which throughout large circles of mankind had lost all inner staying power. What is historically known as the Disorder of the Faith, which occupied the great reforming councils in the age when the Spiritual soul first began to be active, is all involved with the life of those human souls who neither as yet felt the Spiritual Soul within them, nor could any longer draw from the traditional life of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul anything to give them inner strength and security.

[ 7 ] Such historic currents of inner human life and feeling as come to light in the Councils of Constance and Bâle, may really be said to shew: above, in the spirit-world, the down-pouring of the cosmic Intellectuality, trying to find its way into Man, and below, in the earthly region, an Intellectual of Mind-Soul which is no longer suited to the times. Between the two hover the Michael Forces, looking back to their past union with the divine spirit-world, and looking down upon the world of Man, once united by the same bond, but which now has passed unavoidably into a sphere where Michael must send his aid from the spirit, but with which he himself must enter into no inner union. In this struggle of Michael's—necessary in the cosmic evolution, yet signifying in the first instance a disturbance of the cosmic balance—are to be found the grounds of all that mankind had to go through at this period, even in respect of their most cherished and sacred truths.

[ 8 ] We look deep into the peculiar characteristics of this age, if we fix our eyes on Cardinal Nicholas Cusanus. (See what is said about him in my ‘Mysticism and Modern Thought.’) The personality of Cusanus is like a monument of his age. Everywhere he seeks to give effect to such views as would rectify the abuses of the physical world, not be combating them in a high-flown spirit of fanaticism, but rather by endeavouring, through sound human sense, to guide what has gone wrong, into the right track again. This is directly observable, if one watches the way in which his influence was exerted at the Council of Bâle, and in general amongst his ecclesiastical community.

[ 9 ] If in this respect Cusanus shows himself all inclined towards the change coming into evolution with the development of the Spiritual Soul, one sees him, on the other hand, displaying views which bear shining witness to the forces of Michael. He translates into his own times the good old Ideas, which once had guided the soul and mind of Man to the evolution of faculties by which he could perceive the living forms of the Intelligences in the Cosmos—in that age, when Michael still was regent of cosmic Intellectuality. The ‘Learned Ignorance’ of which Cusanus speaks, is an active comprehension, which lies above the passive perceptions directed to the world of Sense—a comprehension which carries Thought above and beyond Intellectuality, the common form of ‘Knowing,’ into a region where in Unknowingness or ‘Ignorance,’ but with the vision of living realization, the Spiritual is actually grasped.

[ 10 ] So in this Cardinal of Cusa we have a person who in his own soul-life experiences the disturbance brought by Michael into the cosmic balance, and intuitively tries to do his utmost towards directing this disturbance to the welfare of mankind.

[ 11 ] In between all which thus came, spiritually, to the open surface, there was something else which led a hidden life. There were, here and there, persons who had a sense and understanding for the position held by the Michael Powers in the universe, and who devoted themselves to so training the powers of their own souls, that they could find conscious access to that spiritual region bordering on the earthly one, in which Michael carries on his labours on Man's behalf.

[ 12 ] They sought to quality themselves for this spiritual enterprise by behaving externally, in their daily calling and the general affairs of life, in such a way that their ordinary existence was not distinguishable from that of other people. In this manner-by fulfilling their duties in the normal way, in all love towards the things of earth—they were enabled to apply their inner man freely to the spiritual task above mentioned. What they did in this direction was their own concern and that of those with whom they associated ‘in secret.’ In respect of what occurred on the physical plane, the world was not, to immediate appearance, in any way affected by these spiritual pursuits. And yet it all was necessary, in order to bring human souls into the needful connection with Michael's world. There was no question here of ‘secret societies’ in any bad sense—nothing that haunts the dark because it shuns the light of day. It was a case of people coming together, who in the actual coming together would convince themselves that every one of them had a fitting consciousness of the Michael Mission. Those who are working together in this way, do not then talk of their work before persons who from lack of understanding might only spoil the tasks on which they are engaged. These tasks, as we have seen, belonged to spiritual streams which do not run within the borders of earthly life, but in the neighbouring spirit-world—although they send their impulses across into this earthly life.

[ 13 ] The spiritual work to which allusion is here made is that of men who stand within the physical world, but work in union with beings of the spirit-world—with beings who themselves do not enter the physical world, do not incarnate in it. We here allude to what is referred to in the world at large—in very little accordance with the facts—as the ‘Rosicrucians.’ True Rosicrucianism lies along the same line of actions as that pursued by the Michael Mission. It assisted on earth to prepare the spirit-work of Michael, which it was his will to prepare for a later age.

[ 14 ] What this made possible, we can best estimate from the following considerations.

[ 15 ] The difficulties—impossibilities indeed—which Michael meets with, as already described, in conveying his impulses to the souls of men, are connected with the fact that he himself will not bring his own being into any sort of contact with the physical Present of earth-life. His will is to abide by the same interconnection of forces which existed for spirits of his kind—and also for men—in the Past. Any contact with that element with which Man, being situated in present physical earth-life, of necessity comes in contact could only be felt by Michael as a defilement of his being. Now in ordinary human life, as we know, what the soul realizes in her spiritual life, works on from thence into her physical earth-life; conversely, the physical earth-life reacts upon the other: a reaction which, in particular, finds its expression in a man's tone of mind, and in his inclination towards some particular feature of earthly life. Some such interaction of the two things is more especially the case—as a rule, though not always—with persons in public life. That is why, with many of the reformers, the obstacles to Michael's work were really very great.

[ 16 ] The Rosicrucians overcame this side of the difficulty by carrying on their external life with its earthly duties quite apart from whatever they did in Michael's work. When Michael came with his impulses to the soul of a Rosicrucian and met with what was there prepared for him, he in no way found himself exposed to the danger of coming upon earthly matter. For this was kept at a distance by the very thing which brought the Rosicrucian into union with Michael—the specially prepared constitution of his soul.

[ 17 ] In this manner, Rosicrucian will and purpose made for Michael a road upon earth, by which he could find the way to his own approaching earthly mission.

Leading Thoughts

[ 18 ] At the beginning of the Age of the Spiritual Soul, the emancipated intellectual power in Man begins to busy itself in examining the truths of religious faith and worship. Man's soul-life is thereby inevitably thrown into uncertainty. Essential realities which men had formerly realized in the inner life of the soul, they now seek to prove logically. Contents of religious ritual, which should be grasped in Imaginations, they now try to grasp by logical deduction—and even to determine the forms accordingly.

[ 19 ] This is all connected with the fact, that Michael under all circumstances is resolved to avoid every contact with the present earth-world, on which Man is obliged to set foot; but that nevertheless Michael has to remain with the stream of Cosmic Intellectuality, of which he was regent in the past, and to conduct it further within Man. Hereby there arises through the Michael Forces—necessarily for the progress of human evolution—a disturbance of the cosmic equilibrium.

[ 20 ] The difficulty of Michael's mission is lightened by certain persons—the genuine Rosicrucians—who so arrange their external way of life on earth that it exerts no sort of influence upon the inner life of their souls. By this means they are able, in their inner-life, to develop forces by which they can work with Michael in the spiritual field, without Michael's incurring the danger of becoming involved with the present doings of earth-life—which, for him, would be impossible.

Third Contemplation: Michael's sorrow over the evolution of mankind, before the time of his earthly regency.

[ 1 ] With the further progress of the Age of Consciousness, the possibility more and more ceases of direct connection between Michael and the generality of human kind. Into Man's being enters in triumph the new, humanized power of Intellectuality and out of it vanish those imaginative conceptions of the mind, which shew Man the living forms of the Cosmic Intelligence. For Michael, any possibility of approaching Man does not begin until the last third of the nineteenth century. Before then, approach can only be attempted by such roads as were those of the genuine Rosicrucians.

[ 2 ] Man looks with his fresh opening intellect at Nature; and what he sees is a physical world, an ether-world, in which he himself is not. Through the great ideas of Copernicus and Galileo he gains a picture of the external, non-human world; but he loses the picture of himself. He looks at himself, and he has no possibility of arriving at any insight as to what he is.

[ 3 ] In the depths of his being is awakened that which is ordained to be the bearer of his human intelligence. With this, his I combines. Man bears accordingly within him now a threefold being. First, in his spirit-soul, he bears within him, manifested in physical-etheric form, that being which at the very first—in the Saturn and Sun times, and repeatedly ever since—has given him a place in the realm of divine spirit. This is where Man's being and Michael's being can join company. Secondly, Man bears within him his later physical and etheric being—namely that which became his during the Moon and Earth times. All this is the work and workings of divine spirit; but divine spirit no longer lives in it with present being. [ 4 ] It first becomes present again in living being when the Christ passes through the Mystery of Golgotha. In that which works spiritually in Man's physical and etheric body, may be found the Christ. Thirdly, Man has in him that part of his spirit and soul which during the Moon and Earth times has acquired a new form of being. In this part, Michael has remained active; whereas in the part turned to the Moon and Earth, he has grown ever more inactive. In the former, it is he who has preserved to Man Man's divine images.

[ 5 ] This Michael could do until the dawn of the Age of Consciousness. And then the entire spirit-and-soul element in Man sank, so to speak, down into the physical and etheric, in order to fetch forth the Spiritual Soul.

[ 6 ] Luminously there arose in Man's consciousness all that his physical body and his ether-body could tell him about the physical and etheric in Nature. There sank from before his vision what astral body and I could tell him about himself.

[ 7 ] A time arises, when amongst mankind there begins to stir a feeling that their insight no longer brings them to themselves. There begins a search after the Knowledge of the Human Being. Men fail to satisfy their seeking by anything which the Present can supply. They go back in history to earlier times. ‘Humanism’ makes its appearance in the evolution of the human mind. Humanism becomes men's ideal object, not because they possess the human being but because they have lost him. So long as they still possessed him, their soul which animated the work of Erasmus of Rotterdam and others would have worn a very different colour from anything that their Humanism could give it.

[ 8 ] In Faust, later on, as re-discovered by Goethe, is the figure of a man who has utterly lost the human being. [ 9 ] Ever intenser becomes this search after Man. For men have only two alternatives: either completely to blunt themselves to the awakening inner sense of their own being; or else to pursue this longing search for Man, so that this search becomes an inherent element of their soul.

[ 10 ] Until the nineteenth century, in the spiritual life of Europe the best men in every field are engaged in the pursuit of every variety of idea—historic, scientific, philosophic, mystic—all representing the endeavour in the intellectualized aspect of the World to discover Man.

[ 11 ] Renaissance, spiritual New Birth, Humanism—all are rushing, storming indeed, after spirituality in a direction where spirituality is not to be found. In the direction where it is to be sought, impotence, illusion, bemazement. And everywhere, through it all, the Michael Forces breaking through, in art, in learning, into the life of man, only not as yet into the young, rising forces of the Spiritual Soul. A tottering of all spiritual life; Michael, with all his forces reaching back in cosmic evolution, in order to find strength to keep in balance the Dragon under his feet. Under these powerful exertions of Michael there arise the great works of the Renaissance. Yet these are still a revival, by Michael's power, of the old life of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul—not yet a working of the new soul-forces.

[ 12 ] One can see Michael, full of anxiety as to whether, after all, he will be in a position to keep the Dragon permanently in check, when he perceives how men are engaged in the one field only, trying to obtain from the picture they have just obtained of Nature a similar picture of Man. Michael sees the way in which men are observing nature and trying, out of what they call Natural Law, to construct an image of Man. He sees how they depict it in their minds: This peculiarity in some animal becomes perfects; that combination of organic functions becomes more nicely adjusted; and so, there ‘arises’ Man. But before the spirit-eye of Michael, what arise is not Man at all. What they think of as growing ever more perfected and more nicely adjusted, is just a thought thing; no one can see it actually growing into fact because the actual facts are otherwise.

[ 13 ] And thus men live with such thoughts of Man in unsubstantial pictures, in illusions that have no being. They pursue an image of Man; they think they possess it; but in truth there is nothing within their range of sight. ‘The power of the Spirit-Sun shines upon their souls; Christ is at work; but as yet they cannot heed Him. The power of the spiritual Soul is strong in their bodies, but into their souls it still will not enter.’ So may one hear the Inspiration which Michael utters in his dire anxiety. May not this force of Illusion in men give the Dragon so much power after all, that it will be an impossibility for him—for Michael himself—to maintain the balance?

[ 14 ] Other individuals again endeavour with more inwardly artistic power to find the union between Nature and Man. Grandly ring the words of Goethe, when describing in a noble book the work of Winkelmann: “When the powers of Man's nature are at work in whole and healthful unison; when he feels himself in the World as in one grand, fair, worshipful and worthy whole; when the well-being of harmonious attunement fills him with a pure and free delight—then would the Universe, were it conscious of itself, shout with joy at the attainment of its goal, and marvellingly acclaim the crown of its own life and being.” The same impulse which inspired the mind of Lessing with flame of fire, which ensouled the world-wide vision of Herder, rings through these words of Goethe. And the whole of Goethe's own creative work is like a universal demonstration on all sides of this saying of his. Schiller in his “letters on Aesthetics' has drawn the picture of an Ideal Man—one (as it rings in the words of Goethe) who bears the whole Universe within himself, and realizes it actually in social co-operation with other men. But where is this Picture of a Man drawn from? It shines like the morning sun over the Spring earth. But it has entered into men's feelings from contemplation of ancient Greek Man. Men cherished the picture with all the strong inner impulse of Michael; but they could find no form to give to this impulse, except by turning their soul's gaze back towards a bygone age. Goethe went, as we know, through the severest conflicts with the Spiritual Soul when he tried inwardly to realize Man. He thought that for the first time he really had a glimpse of him, when on his Italian tour he had his first sight into Greek life and being. He hastened away from the Spiritual Soul, striving forward in Spinoza, to what, in the end, was but the dying embers of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul; only that Goethe succeeds in bringing an endless amount of this latter into the Spiritual Soul, in his all-embracing view of Nature.

[ 15 ] Gravely Michael watches these endeavours too to find Man. He sees something, it is true, that is to his own mind, entering here into the evolution of the human spirit. It is that same Man, who once beheld the life-forms of Intelligent Being, in the times when Michael ruled from the Cosmos without. Yet eventually, if it be not grasped by the spiritualized power of the Spiritual Soul, this too must end by falling from Michael's range of action into the dominion of Lucifer. That Lucifer might gain the ascendancy in the rocking of the cosmic balance—this is the other dire anxiety in Michael's life.

[ 16 ] The preparation for Michael's mission at the end of the nineteenth century roll on in cosmic tragedy. Beneath upon earth, there often reigns the profoundest satisfaction over Man's picture of Nature and its effective working; whilst in the region where Michael is at work there is nothing but tragedy over the obstacles which prevent the true picture of Man from finding its way into life.

[ 17 ] There was a time when in the beams of the sun, in the flush of morning skies, in the sparkling of the stars, there lived the keen, clear spirit-love of Michael. The dominant note this love had now taken, was one of sorrow, aroused on gazing on mankind.

[ 18 ] Michael's position in the Cosmos became one of tragic difficulty, but one that was also urging towards a solution, just at the period preceding his mission upon earth. Men could maintain their power of intellect only in the domain of the body, and there only in the domain of the senses. They accordingly admitted nothing into their range of mental vision, except what their senses told them. Nature became a field of sense-revelation—a revelation quite materially conceived. In Nature and all her forms, men no longer saw the work of divine spirit, but something which has come into existence without spirit, and of which they nevertheless assert that the spiritual life which Man leads is born of it. Of the spirit-world, on the other hand, men would only accept so much as was still told of in the historic records. Any real seeing of the creative spirit in the past was as severely taboo'd, as was the seeing of the spirit in the present.

[ 19 ] All that now remained living in men's souls came from that region of the external present world into which Michael does not enter. Man was glad to be standing upon ‘secure’ ground. He fancied the ground secure because he abstained from looking for any Thoughts in Nature, in which he would at once have suspected the unreliability of a spontaneous fancy. But Michael was not glad. He was obliged to remain on the far side, aloof from men, and carry on the war in his own region against Lucifer and Ahriman. Hence came the great and tragic difficulty; for Lucifer can approach Man all the more easily, the more Michael—who is also the preserver of his past—is obliged to keep away from him. And so a stormy contest was being waged on Man's behalf, in the spiritual world next to earth, by Michael against Lucifer and Ahriman: whilst Man himself on earthly territory was busying his soul in opposition to the healing forces of his own evolution.

[ 20 ] All this applies of course to the spiritual life of Europe and America. For Asia it would be necessary to speak differently.

Leading Thoughts

[ 21 ] In the very first period of the spiritual Soul's evolution Man began to feel that the picture of Mankind, of his own Human Being, which had hitherto come of itself, imaginatively, was now lost to him. Powerless to find it as yet in his Spiritual Soul, he seeks for it along the paths of Natural Science of History. He would like to revive once more within him the old picture of Humanity.

[ 22 ] By this road, men do not come to the real fullness of the human being; they come only to empty illusions. But they do not see this; they look on these as things that give mankind substantiation and support.

[ 23 ] And so Michael, in the time preceding his earthly regency, can only look with anxiety and sorrow upon mankind's evolution. For men condemn spiritual contemplation in any direction, and thereby cut themselves off from everything that makes a bond with Michael.

[ 1 ] Into our contemplation of the Michael Mystery there shone like a ray of light the Mystery of Golgotha. This arose of itself, from the fact that Michael is the power that guides Man in the most helpful and wholesome way to the Christ.

[ 2 ] But Michael's mission is of a kind which repeats itself in rhythmic succession during the cosmic evolution of mankind. Its beneficent influence had been repeatedly exerted upon mankind on earth, before the Mystery of Golgotha. Then, it was engaged in everything that the Christ Power—being then still outside the earth—required to manifest in acts for the education of mankind to earthly life. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, it serves in aid of that which must be accomplished by the Christ amongst men on earth. It appears in its repetitions each time in an altered and advanced form—but in repetition.

[ 3 ] In contrast to this, the Mystery of Golgotha is a unique all-overreaching cosmic event, that only takes place once in the course of mankind's whole cosmic evolution.

[ 4 ] So soon as mankind has progressed to the development of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, there comes for the first time into full force the ever constant danger of that occurring, for which indeed the predispositions had been laid in the beginning of time, namely, that the Being of Mankind would separate and fall away from the Divine, Spiritual Being.

[ 5 ] And in the same measure as the human soul loses her fellowship with the life of the divine, spiritual beings, there emerges round about her what to-day we call the world of Nature.

[ 6 ] Man no longer sees his own living humanity in the divine and spiritual Cosmos, he sees the lifeless work of divine spirit in the earthly world. He sees it at first, not in the abstract form in which we see it to-day, as sensibly physical begins and events, held together by that abstract thread of ideas which we call Natural Law; he sees it as an ocean of divine, spiritual being. In all that he beholds—in the rise and wane of life in the creatures of the animal world, in the growth and budding of the plants, in springing fountain and flowing stream, in the gatherings of wind and cloud—he sees the heaving and falling billows of this ocean of divine, spiritual Being. All these many shapes of life and doing round about him are to him the gestures, the acts, are to him the language of the gods, of that divine Being which underlies the world of ‘Nature.’

[ 7 ] As, at an earlier time, Man had watched the stations and motions of the stars, and seen therein the gestures, the acts,, of the World-Divinities, and read therein their words, so, now, the ‘facts of Nature’ became the verbal expression for the Earth-Goddess. For the Divinity at work in Nature was pictured in woman's form.

[ 8 ] Remnants of this kind of mental picturing remained as an imaginative content of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, and occupied men's souls until late into the Middle Ages.

[ 9 ] Those ‘who knew,’ the ‘savants,’ talked of the acts of the Goddess, when they wanted to bring the ‘process of Nature’ to men's comprehension. Only with the gradual ascendance of the Spiritual Soul did this view of a living, inwardly soul-endowed Nature grow incomprehensible to mankind.

[ 10 ] The whole manner of viewing such things during the age of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, recalls to mind the Myth of Persephone and the Mystery on which it is founded.

[ 11 ] Persephone, daughter of Demeter, is forced by the God of the Underworld to accompany him down into his kingdom. This is finally settled in the form that she spends half of the year only in the underworld, and dwells in the upper world during the other half.

[ 12 ] Grandly and powerfully does this myth still express the manner in which men once—in ages long gone past—had looked into the waxing, waning life of the earthly world and read what was behind it.

[ 13 ] All active impulses in the world proceeded in ancient times from the cosmic environment round about the Earth. The Earth herself was only just coming into being. she built up her life-form amidst the cosmic evolution from the forces at work in her surroundings. The divine Spirit-Beings of the Cosmos were the active shapers of Earth's being.

And when the Earth was far enough advanced to become a self-existing cosmic body, then divine spiritual being descended upon her from the universal Cosmos, and became earthly divinity. This was a cosmic fact, perceived and recognized by the dreamlike clairvoyance of ancient Man. Of this perceptive science there has remained the Myth of Persephone. But what also has remained is the manner in which deep into the Middle Ages, men endeavoured with their science to penetrate the secrets of ‘Nature.’ For they directed their gaze then, not as later, towards the impressions of the senses, that is, towards what shows upon the surface of the earthly world, but rather towards those active forces that work up on to the surface from the Earth's inner depths. And these forces of the Deep, these ‘Powers of the Underworld,’ they saw acting in alternation with the action of the Stars and the elemental forces of the Earth's environment.

[ 14 ] There they see the Plants, growing in all their manifold forms, displaying themselves in their gay show of many colours. There, through it all, are at work the forces of Sun, Moon and Stars in conjunction with the forces of the Earth's depths. The foundation is laid by the Minerals; their whole form of being bears the character of earthly descent from World-Beings. The stony rock thrusts itself up from the ‘underworld’ by the strength alone of earthly forces, that once were heavenly ones. The Animal world has not borrowed from Earth the forces of ‘the Depths.’ It is brought into life solely by the World-Forces that work from round about, out of the earth's surroundings. Its beginnings, its growth, its fresh-fledged life, its faculties of nourishment, its powers of motion—all these it owes to the forces that rain from the Sun without upon the Earth within. It propagates its kind under the influences of the Moon-forces which fall from without upon the Earth. It makes its appearance in many shapes and kinds, because of the Stars, which from their different positions in the wide universe work from without upon animal life and give it form. But the animals are merely set down by the universe upon earth. Only with their dim, dull life of consciousness do they take any part in the earthly world; in their beginnings, their growth, in all that they are, so as to perceive and move about, they are no creatures of the earth.

[ 15 ] This grandly constructed idea of the making of the earth was once living amongst men. From what still remains of it, towering over into the Middle Ages, it is only possible to gain but a very faint notion of the grand lines of the structure. To arrive at a true notion of it one must go back, and see with the knowledge of vision into very ancient times. For even with the physically existent documents, what existed in the souls of men is perceptible to him alone, who can read them with the eye of the Spirit.

[ 16 ] Now Man is not in a position to keep so far aloof from the earth as do the creatures of the animal world. To say this is to touch upon the mystery both of mankind and of animal-kind. These mysteries are reflected in the animal-worship of the ancient peoples, more especially of the Egyptians. They saw in the animals beings who are guests upon earth, in whom may be visibly beheld the being and doing of that other, spiritual world which borders on the earthly one. And in the combination of the human with the animal form, as represented in their images, they brought presently before them the figures of those intermediate beings of the elemental world, who are on the road to humanity in the course of the world's evolution, but who never enter the earth-region, so that they may not become men. These intermediate elemental beings actually exist. The Egyptians were only reproducing what they saw, when they made images of them. Such beings however have not the full Self-consciousness of Man.

[ 17 ] To attain to this Self-consciousness, it was necessary for Man to set foot so thoroughly in the terrestrial world that he took up something of the earth's being into his own being. It was necessary for him to be exposed to the fact that in this earthly world he as before him the work wrought by those divine spiritual beings with whom he is associated—but their wrought work only. And because it is only the wrought work—the finished work, detached from its origin—the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Beings have access to it. The result is that Man is under the necessity of making this finished work of the Gods, pervaded as it is by Lucifer and Ahriman, the place in which to lead a portion—namely the earthly portion—of his own existence.

[ 18 ] This is only possible without permanently breaking the tie between the human world and its divine spiritual origin, so long as Man has not yet reached the point of developing his Intellectual or Mind-Soul. At this point there takes place in Man a corruption of his physical, his etheric and his astral bodies. The science of an earlier time recognized this corruption as something actually existent in the human being. It was known to be a necessary element, in order that Consciousness may progress in Man to Self-consciousness. In the science cultivated in those places which were a form of Aristotelian teaching which rightly understood, contains in it this element of corruption as a vital part of its psychological doctrine; only that such ideas, later on, were no longer penetrated in their inner essence.

[ 19 ] During the ages until the development of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, Man was nevertheless still so closely involved with the forces of his divinely spiritual origin that these forces were able, from their places in the cosmos, to hold in balance the powers of Lucifer and Ahriman by which he was beset on earth. On the part of Man himself, enough was done to help keep this balance, when in the ritual ceremonies of the Mysteries a picture was displayed of the Divine Spirit-Being's descent into the realm of Lucifer and Ahriman and his triumphant resurrection. In the times preceding the Mystery of Golgotha, we find accordingly, in the religious rites of the different peoples, pictorial representations of what then became—in the Mystery of Golgotha itself—a reality.

[ 20 ] But when the Intellectual or Mind-Soul was evolved, nothing but the reality itself could any longer preserve Man's Being from separation from those divine Spirit-Beings to whom he belongs. Into the Intellectual or Mind-Soul so organized as to draw its life, whilst on Earth, from the earthly realm, the Divine must enter—even within this earthly realm—in very reality of Being. This was accomplished through the Divine Spiritual Logos, the Christ, who for the sake of mankind united His cosmic destiny with the Earth.

[ 21 ] Persephone descended into the earthly realm to deliver the plant-world from being condemned to form itself out of the earthly realm only. This is the descent of a divine, spiritual being into earthly Nature. Persephone too has a kind of resurrection, but yearly, in rhythmic succession.

[ 22 ] Over against this event, taking place as a cosmic process upon earth, there is the Descent of the Logos to save Mankind. Persephone comes down in order to bring the natural world into its original relation to the skies. What here takes place is based on Rhythm, for Nature's events proceed in rhythm. The Logos came down into Mankind. This happens but once during the evolution of Mankind. For this evolution forms one part only of a gigantic World-Rhythm, in which Mankind, before its life ‘as Man,’ was something quite different from Mankind, and afterwards will again be different. Whereas plant-life repeats itself as such, over and over again in short rhythms.

[ 23 ] This is the light in which the Mystery of Golgotha must be seen; and men henceforth have need so to see it, now that the Age of Consciousness has begun. For even in the age of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, there was already the danger of Man losing his link, had not the Mystery of Golgotha intervened.

In the age of the Spiritual Soul, a complete darkening of the spiritual world would come over Man in his consciousness, if the Spiritual Soul could not gather sufficient strength to look back, in insight, to her divine, spiritual origin. But if the Soul can look back, then she finds in the World-Logos the Being who can lead her back. And she is filled through and through with the mighty image, revealing what took place on Golgotha.

[ 24 ] And the beginning of this understanding is a loving comprehension of the World-Christmas, which every year is celebrated in Remembrance. For the Spiritual Soul, that beings with the reception of cold intellectuality, goes on to gather the needful strength, when into this Intellect, that warm Love, of which the stream flows most nobly and purely when it is turned towards the Child Jesus, who in the World's Christmas Holy-Night appears on Earth. Then Man has opened his soul to the influence of the highest of all spiritual facts on Earth, which is also a physical fact. He has set out on the way that ends by receiving the Christ into himself.

[ 25 ] In the world of Nature, a true Science will behold in Persephone—or that being to whom men's eyes still turned in the early middle ages, when they spoke of ‘Nature’—the natural revelation of that primal and eternal divine spiritual power, out of which the natural world arose, and continuously arises as the groundwork of Man's earthly existence.

[ 26 ] In the world of Man, a true Science will behold in Christ the human revelation of that primal and eternal Logos, who in the realm of the Divine Spiritual Being, with whom Man is in his origin united, works for the evolution of the Spirit-Being of Man.

[ 27 ] To turn the human heart in Love towards these great cosmic connections—this is the real celebration of that Feast of Remembrance which meets Man every year, when he gazes on the World's Christ-Mass, the Holy Night. When Love such as this dwells in human hearts, it fires with its warmth the Spiritual Soul's cold element of Light. Were the Spiritual Soul condemned to remain unwarmed by such fire, Man could never attain to its transformation in the Spirit. He would either perish in the cold of intellectual consciousness, or would be condemned to remain in a form of spiritual life which never progresses to the evolution of the Spiritual Soul. He would then stop short with the evolution of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul.

[ 28 ] But the Spiritual Soul is not, of its own being, cold. It only appears so at the beginning of its evolution; because at the beginning it can only display the Light-element that is in it, and not as yet the World-Warmth, from which it nevertheless proceeds.

[ 29 ] To feel Christmas and inwardly to keep it in this fashion, can make present in the soul how the Glory of the divine Spirit Beings, who reveal their image in the star-expanses, is proclaimed before Man, and how the deliverance of Man is accomplished in the fields of Earth from those powers who would draw him away from his source and origin.

Leading Thoughts

[ 1 ] That form of activity, which is introduced by the Michael Forces into the evolution of the World and Man, repeats itself rhythmically—though each time in altered and progressive form—both before and after the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 1 ] The Mystery of Golgotha is the unique, only once occurring, greatest event in the course of human evolution. It is impossible here to speak of any rhythmic repetition. For although this human evolution is part of a gigantic world-rhythm, yet it is only one single, widely drawn out part of this gigantic rhythm. Before it became this single part, Mankind was something else, essentially other than Mankind. Afterwards, Michael will again be something else. In the course of human evolution, therefore, many Michael Events take place, but only one Event of Golgotha.

[ 1 ] In the swift, rhythmic repetition of a year's cycle, the process of Nature is accomplished by that divine Spirit-Being who descended into the depths of Earth in order to carry the spirit into this natural process. This Being represents the ensouling of the natural world with those primal and eternal forces which must continue to work in Nature, even as the Christ in His descent represents the ensouling of Mankind with the primal and eternal Logos, whose work shall never cease its efficacy for Mankind's salvation.

[ 1 ] In the spatial cosmos there stand in opposition to one another: World Expanse, and Earth-Centre. In the World-Expanse, strewn abroad as it were, are the Stars. From the Earth-Centre, forces radiate forth in all directions to the World-Expanse.

[ 2 ] As Man stands to-day in the world, in the present cosmic age, the Stars in their shining, and the Earth-forces in their working, can only appear to him collectively as the accomplished work of the divine spiritual beings, with whom his link is in the inner man.

[ 3 ] But there was once an age of cosmic history when this shining of the stars and these earth-forces were still a direct spiritual revelation of the divine spiritual beings actively at work within his own being.

[ 4 ] Then came another age. The Star-Heaven separated as a corporeal existence out of the divine spiritual tide of activity. There arose what may be called World-Spirit and World-Body. The World-Spirit is a multiplicity of divine Spirit-Beings. They send their influences, in the earlier age, from the places of the stars upon the earth within. What there rained down in light from the regions of the world-expanse, what radiated forth as forces from the earth-centre, was in actuality the Intelligence and the Will of those divine spirit-beings who were shaping Earth and Earth's Manhood.

[ 5 ] In the alter cosmic epoch—after the evolution of Saturn and Sun—this Intelligence and Will of the divine Spirit-Beings became ever more spiritually inward in its workings. What they had actively been present in, present with their very Being, became now the ‘World-Body,’ an harmonious ordering of the stars in cosmic space. Looking back upon these things in spirit, comprehending them in a spiritual world-conception, one may express it thus: Out of the original Spirit-Body of the world-creative Beings there arose World-Spirit and World-Body. The World-Body marks in stellar order the stellar movement the way in which the Gods were working, long long ago in their Intelligence and Will. For the present age of the Cosmos, what once lived in the stars as freely moving, freely shaping divine intelligence and will, is now set fast in them as fixed Law.

[ 6 ] What shines therefore from out of the star-worlds to-day, to Man upon earth within, is not the immediate expression of divine will and divine intelligence, but a sign, left stationary, to mark what this divine will and intelligence were long ago, even in the stars. In the marvelous star-configuration of the heavens, waking wonder in the human soul, we may behold therefore a past manifestation but not the present manifestation of the Gods.

[ 7] But what is thus ‘past’ in the glory of the shining of the stars, is ‘present’ in the world of the spirit. And Man lives with his own being in this ‘present’ world-spirit.

[ 8 ] In the evolving forms of the world, we must look back upon an ancient epoch of cosmic history, when world-spirit and world-body worked together as a unity. We must keep before our eyes the intermediate epoch, during which they develop as a duality. And we must think forward into the future—into the third epoch, when the world-spirit will once more absorb the world-body into its sphere of action.

[ 9 ] For the ancient epoch there could have been no ‘calculating’ the constellations and the courses of the stars, for they were an expression of the free intelligence and the free will of divine spiritual beings. In the future, there will again be no calculating them.

[ 10 ] ‘Calculation’ only has any meaning for the intermediate epoch of the Cosmos.

[ 11 ] This, which is true of the constellations and the courses of the stars, applies also to the action of the forces which radiate from the earth-centre into the world-expanse. What there spring forth ‘from the depths’ also becomes ‘calculable.’

[ 12 ] Everything tends from the earlier cosmic epoch towards the intermediate one, when the worlds of Time and space become ‘calculable,’ and when Divine Spirit, in its manifestations as Intelligence and will, must be sought ‘behind’ the ‘Calculable.’

[ 13 ] This intermediate epoch alone affords the conditions under which Mankind can progress from a dull, dim consciousness to a clear, free consciousness of Self—to free intelligence and free will of his own.

[ 14 ] There had to come the time when Copernicus and Kepler ‘calculated’ the world-body; for the cosmic forces that served to bring about this moment were necessary to that development of human Self-consciousness. The disposition for this Self-consciousness was laid in an older age; then came the time when it was advanced so far as to be able to calculate the distant world-expanses.

[ 15 ] ‘History’ begins to be played out upon earth. There would have been no History, had not the world-expanse with all its stars become set in ‘fixed’ constellations and orbits. In the ‘course of history’ upon earth, we have a reproduction—though a quite transformed one—of what, once on a time, was ‘heavenly history.’

[ 16 ] The peoples of olden time continued to carry this ‘heavenly history’ still in their consciousness, and turned their eyes rather upon this than upon ‘earthly history.’

[ 17 ] In Earthly History there lives the intelligence and will of Man, at first in connection with the cosmic, divine will and divine intelligence, and then independently.

[ 18 ] In Heavenly History there lived the intelligence and will of the divine spirit-beings connected with mankind.

[ 19 ] Looking back over the spiritual life of the various peoples one finds, in the far remote past, such a consciousness amongst men of their being together and willing together with the divine spirit-beings, that their own human history is still a heavenly history. In his narration of first ‘origins,’ man's tale is not of earthly proceedings but of cosmic. Indeed, even for his own times—the times in which he is presently concerned—that which goes on in his earthly surroundings seems to him so insignificant in comparison with what is going on in the Cosmos, that he disregards the former and only pays attention to the latter.

[ 20 ] There was an age when the consciousness of mankind beheld the Heaven's history in mighty impressions, in which the divine spirit-beings themselves stood before Man's soul. The divine Beings spoke, and Man heard their speech in dream-like Inspiration; they revealed their forms, and Man beheld them in dream-like Imagination.

[ 21 ] This Heavenly History, which for a long while filled men's souls, was followed by Mythical History, now for the most part regarded as old poetic fiction. This Mythical History links together heavenly doings and earthly doings. ‘Heroes’ for instance came upon the scene—super-human beings. These are beings who stand higher than men in their evolution. Men at a particular time, for instance, have only developed the different parts of Man's being as far as the Sentient Soul. The Hero however has already evolved what will one day take its place in Man as ‘Spirit-Self.’ The Hero cannot directly incarnate in a physical body under earthly conditions; but he can do so by going down into the physical body of a human being, and thus enabling himself to work as a man amongst men. In the ‘Initiates’ of earlier ages we have beings of this kind.

The actual fact, with regard to all these things which occurred in the course of the world, is not simply that mankind in the successive periods of history ‘pictured’ things in one way or another in their own minds. What actually took place between the more spiritual, ‘incalculable’ world and the corporeal ‘calculable’ one, itself underwent a change. Only this much may be said: long after the actual conditions had changed in the world, human consciousness, in one or another other of the peoples, still clung to a ‘view of the world’ which corresponded to a far earlier reality. At first it was so, that human consciousness—which does not keep pace with the progress of cosmic events—still really saw the things of old. Then came a time when spiritual sight grew dim, and the old things were only maintained by tradition. Thus in the Middle Ages people still traditionally ‘pictured in their minds’ an intervention of the heavenly in the earthly world, which was no longer seen, since the power of pictorial vision no longer existed.

[ 22 ] Moreover, the evolution of the various peoples in the earthly sphere is such that they retain one or other view of the world, with its corresponding picture, for varying lengths of time; so that there are living alongside one another, views of the world which by their essential character should be living after one another.

The different views of the world however, existing amongst the different peoples, did not proceed only from this, but also from the fact that these different peoples, according to their dispositions, saw different things. Thus the Egyptians saw that world in which there are beings who long ago stopped short on the road to human evolution and never became earth-men; and they saw Man, after his earth-life, in all that he had to do with beings of this kind. The Chaldean peoples saw rather, how spiritual beings—both good and evil—from beyond the earthly sphere entered into earth-life to influence its course.

[ 23 ] To the ancient Heavenly History, properly speaking, which extends over quite a long period of time, there then succeeds the Mythological History, which is shorter, but still long in comparison to the subsequent period of ‘history proper.’

[ 24 ] As I described, men in their consciousness leave go but reluctantly of the old views, in which gods and men are pictured as fellow-actors in a common field. Proper, earthly history had long been in existence—ever since the development of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul—whilst men were still ‘thinking’ in the sense of what had been in former times. Only with the first opening flower of the Spiritual Soul did men begin to turn their eyes upon ‘history’ in the proper sense.

[ 25 ] Now in the human spirit working in earthly history, loosed from its tie with the Divine Spirit, men have the possibility to realize within themselves free intelligence and free will.

[ 26 ] So the weaving of the world-process in which Man is interwoven moves on, between the altogether calculable and the workings of free intelligence and free will. Under the joint action of both, the world-process is manifested—in every variety of shade betwixt the two.

[ 27 ] In his life as he leads it between birth and death, Man has ready-laid for him in the Calculable, as a foundation, the bodily groundwork upon which to unfold the free Incalculable of his inner, spiritual soul-life. His life between death and new birth is passed in the Incalculable—yet in such a way that in his inner life of soul and spirit, the Calculable is revealed to him in thought. Thereby—out of this Calculable—he becomes the architect of his next earth-life.

[ 28 ] In ‘history,’ the Incalculable is played out on earth—an Incalculable with which however the Calculable is interwoven, if only in feeble measure.

[ 29 ] Against this order established between Calculable and Incalculable by the divine spiritual beings who have been associated with Man from the beginning of all things, against their harmonizing of the Cosmos through ‘Measure, Number and Weight,’ stands the opposition of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Beings. Lucifer can combine with his own form of being, as he has made it, nothing calculable. His ideal is the cosmic unconditioned action of intelligence and will.

[ 30 ] This Luciferic tendency is one fitly suited to the world's order in those fields where freedom should rightly rule events. And there Lucifer is justly the spiritual helper of Mankind in their evolution. Without his aid, freedom would never make its way into Man's spiritual and soul life, built as it is upon a calculable, bodily basis. But Lucifer would like to extend this tendency to the whole Cosmos. And here his activity becomes a war against that divine spiritual order to which Man originally belongs.

[ 31 ] Here Michael intervenes. With his own being he stands in the Incalculable; but he dresses the balance between the Incalculable, and that Calculable which he bears within him as a World-thought received from his Gods.

[ 32 ] The Ahrimanic Powers stand otherwise in the world. They are the complete opposite of the divine spirit-beings with whom Man is originally connected. These latter are at the present day purely spiritual beings, who bear within themselves perfectly free intelligence and perfectly free will, but who create, in this their free intelligence and will, a wise insight into the necessity of the Calculable and Unfree, as a World-Thought from whose sheltering lap Man may grow up into a free being. And with all the Calculable, with this World-Thought of the cosmos, they are united in Love. This Love streams from them throughout all the universe.

[ 33 ] In complete opposition to all this is the grasping greed of the Ahrimanic powers, in which lives cold Hate of everything expanding in freedom. Ahriman's aim and endeavour, in all that he pours forth into world-space, is to make a cosmic machine. His ideal is, ‘simply and solely,’ Measure, Number and Weight. He was called into the Cosmos prepared for the service of human evolution, because it was necessary that this, his special department—Measure, Number and Weight—should be developed.

[ 34 ] He who comprehends the world as everywhere Spirit-in-body, he alone really comprehends it. This must be carried down into the world of Nature with regard to the powers at work there, such as the Divine Spiritual Powers who work in Love, and the Ahrimanic Powers who work in hate. In the natural, universal warmth, as it sets in with the spring and tends on into summer, we must behold the natural love of the Divine Spirit-Beings. In the freezing blasts of winter we must recognize the workings of Ahriman.

[ 35 ] In the height of midsummer, Lucifer mingles his power with the Love, the Warmth of Nature. At Christmas-tide, the Divine Spirit-Beings with whom Man is from his origin united turn their power against the frozen Hate of Ahriman. And ever more and more towards the springtime, Natural Divine Love is mildly at work, mitigating Natural Ahrimanic Hate.

[ 36 ] The yearly sign of this Divine Love, new-manifested as it is year by year, is the time of Remembrance, when we recall how with the Christ the free element of God entered into the calculable element of Earth. Christ works in perfect freedom within the Calculable. In so doing, He renders harmless that which craves the Calculable only—Ahriman and his forces.

[ 37 ] The unique Event of Golgotha is the free, cosmic act of Love within Earth's history. It is to be comprehended too only by the Love that Man brings to its comprehension.

Leading Thoughts

[ 38 ] The cosmic process with which the evolution of mankind is interwoven, and which reflects itself in human consciousness as History (in the most comprehensive sense,) may be distinguished into: a lengthy period of Heavenly History; a shorter one of Mythological History; and the comparatively short Earthly History.

[ 39 ] This cosmic process, at the present time, falls apart into: the ‘not-to-be-calculated’ working of divine spirit-beings, who freely create in free Intelligence and Will, and the ‘calculable’ processes or the world-body.

[ 40 ] To the Calculable of the world-body are opposed the Luciferic Powers; to the creating in free intelligence and free will, the Ahrimanic Powers.

[ 41 ] The unique Event of Golgotha is a free cosmic act, which originates in World-Love and can only be comprehended by Man's Love.

[ 1 ] In the last contemplation we followed the course of human life as a whole by directing the soul's observation to the series of successive earth-lives. The other point of view, putting what the first reveals into a still clearer light, will be to study the successive lives between death and the new birth.

[ 2 ] Here again it will be observed that the content of these lives, as it is in the present age, only goes back to a certain point of time in the earth's evolution. The content of life between death and new birth in the present age is conditioned—as we know—by the fact that Man carries that inward power of Self-consciousness, which he has acquired in earth-life, on with him through the gates of death. Man thereby holds his ground as an individuality, even amongst those divine spiritual beings into whose midst he comes.

[ 3 ] It was not so in a period that preceded this one. There, Man was not yet far advanced in the development of his Self-consciousness. The power then acquired upon earth was not yet sufficient to carry his detachment from the divine spiritual world to the extent of an individual existence between death and new birth. Although Man was no longer within the divine spiritual beings themselves, he was still so much within their sphere of action that his willing was essentially their willing, not his.

[ 4 ] Before this period is another, in which, on looking back, we do not meet with Man at all, such as he is in his present constitution of spirit and soul, but with the world of divine spirit-beings within whom is Man, still in an embryonic state. These beings are the Primeval Powers (the Archai.)

[ 5] Moreover, when we trace back the life of one man, we meet not with one divine spirit-being, but with all the beings belonging to that hierarchy.

[ 6 ] In these divine spirit-beings lives the will that Man should be; and in the coming into being of every single man, the will of them all has a part. Through the conjoined labours of the whole Choir of these beings runs a world-aim and object: the naissance of the human form. For Man lives unformed as yet in the spirit-world.

[ 7 ] It seems strange perhaps, that even for one man alone the whole choir of divine spiritual beings should be working together. But so, before them, has worked the Hierarchies of the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim—throughout the Moon, Sun and Saturn evolutions to bring Man into being.

[ 8 ] What had before resulted—a kind of Pre-Man, on Saturn, Sun and Moon—had no uniform shape. There were some pre-men of this kind with whom the organization tended more towards a limb-system—with others again, more towards a breast system—with others again, more towards the head. These were real men, nevertheless; they are only called pre-men here, to distinguish them from the alter stage, in which all the systems are seen blended together in the human form. The differentiation in these pre-men goes even further; one might speak of ‘heart-men,’ ‘lung-men,’ and so one.

[ 9 ] The Hierarchy of Primeval Powers regard it as their especial task to lead over into one common human form all these pre-men, whose soul-life corresponded also to their one-sided formation. [ 10 ] They take Man over from the hands of the Exusiai. In Thought, the Exusiai had already made out of the multifariousness of Man a unity. But with them this unity was still an Ideal form, a World-Thought-form. From this, the Archai shaped the ether-form, but in such a way that in this ethereal form were ready-contained the forces for the future development of the physical form.

[ 11 ] A tremendous prospect opens up in contemplation of these facts: Man is of Gods the ideal, of Gods the end and aim. But the contemplation of this can be for Man no source of arrogance or pride. For Man can only count his own, as coming from himself, what he has made of himself self-consciously during his earth-lives; and this, expressed in cosmic proportions, is but little, compared with that substructure upon which his personal being rests—which the Gods have created, out of the Macrocosm that they are, to be the Microcosm that he is. The divine spirit-Beings hold the balance, one with another, in the Cosmos. The visible expression of their mutual balance is the form of the starry Heavens. What they are there, all together, they willed to create as a single unity.

[ 12 ] Rightly to understand what it was that the Hierarchy of Archai accomplished when in choir they created the human form, it must be remembered that a very great difference exists between this Form and Man's physical body. ‘Physical body’ is all that goes on by way of physical and chemical processes in the human being. With the man of the present age, all this goes on within the lines of the human Form. But this human Form itself is through and through a thing of Spirit. Strange indeed, and solemn! With physical senses in the physical world to behold a Spirit-thing in Man's Form! To anyone who possesses spiritual sight, this human Form appears in fact as a real Imagination, come down into the physical world. To see Imaginations, one must go out of the physical into the neighbouring spiritual world; and then one sees how similar the human Form is to these Imaginations.

[ 13 ] The emergence of this Human Form marks the first period in the retrospect, when the human soul looks back over its lives between death and new birth. At the same time is revealed the depth of the relation which exists between Man and the Hierarchy of the Archai.

[ 14 ] Even at this period, one can already speak of at least the intimation of a difference between earth-life and life between death and new birth. The Hierarchy of Archai work rhythmically, in alternating epochs, at the making of Man's Form. In doing so, they at one time direct the thoughts by which the will of each of them is directed, more towards the Cosmos outside of the Earth. Another time they gaze down upon the Earth. And the combined influence of what comes from the Earth, and what comes from the Cosmos outside the Earth, gives shape to the human Form, which is thus an actual expression of Man's being at the same time a terrestrial and an extra-terrestrial cosmic being.

[ 15 ] The human Form here described, as created by the Hierarchy of the Archai, includes however not merely the exterior contours of the figure and the surface-modeling as marked by the boundary of the skin, but also all the lines of force involved in the man's carriage, in the adjustment of his powers of movement to the conditions of earth, and in his ability to make his body an organ of expression for the life within.

[ 16 ] That Man can assume an upright posture under earthly conditions of gravitation; that he can preserve his balance amidst them, whilst moving freely; that he can release his arms and hands from the weight of gravitation, and use them in freedom—all this and much else, which lies inside, but yet is Form, Man owes to the creation of the Archai Hierarchy. It was all prepared by them beforehand in the life which, even for this early period, may be called life between death and new birth. All was there being prepared in such a way that in the third period—namely our present age—Man himself has the ability, during this life between death and new birth, to take part in working out this Form for his coming life on Earth.

Leading Thoughts

[ 17 ] The lives between Death and new Birth also shew three periods. In the first period Man lives entirely within the Hierarchy of the Archai. By them the preparations are laid for his future human Form in the physical world.

[ 18 ] The Archai thereby prepare the human being at the same time for the development, later on, of free Self-consciousness. For free Self-consciousness can only grow up in beings whose Form, thus created, gives them the means to bring this Self-consciousness from an inward impulse of the soul to outward expression.

[ 19 ] Thus it is seen how the first seeds of those properties and powers in Man which come to light in our present age were predisposed long ago, in past ages of the world, and how the Microcosm grows out of the Macrocosm.

[ 1 ] In a second period, Man passes from the domain of the Archai into that of the Archangels. With these, however, he is not bound up in such a bodily-spiritual manner as he was with the Archai. With the Archangel Hierarchy his connection is a more spiritual one. It is nevertheless so intimate that one still could not speak at this period of Man's being in any way detached from the spiritual world.

From the Archangel Hierarchy Man receives for his ether-body what, in this body, corresponds to the Form in the physical body, which he owes to the Archai. Even as the physical body is adapted by its form to the Earth, to be the vehicle on Earth for Man's Self-consciousness, so is the ether-body adapted to the conditions of extra-earthly, cosmic forces. In the physical body lives the Earth; in the ether-body lives the Star-world. All that Man bears within him of inner forces, so that, while being upon Earth, he yet frees himself from the Earth in posture, movement and gesture—all this he owes to the creation of the Archangels in his ether-body. As the Earth-forces live, by means of its formation, in the physical body, so in the ether-body there live those forces, which from all sides, from the circumference of the cosmos, stream in towards the Earth. The Earth-forces that live in the physically apparent formation of the body are such as make the form a comparatively fixed and final one. The outlines of the man remain—with some subordinate changes—fixed for this entire earth-life; his aptitudes for movement harden into set habits, and so on. With the ether-body, all is in continual motion, reflecting the changes in the constellations of the Stars during human earth-life. Even with such changes in the heavens as day-and-night, the ether-body adapts its form accordingly; but also in accordance with the particular changes which take place between its own birth and death.

[ 2 ] The adaptation of the ether-body in this manner to the heavenly forces is in no contradiction to what has been spoken of elsewhere as the gradual detachment of the starry heavens from the divine Spirit-Powers. It is true that in very olden times there dwelt in the stars the living will of Gods, the living intelligence of Gods, whereas in later times all this passed over into the ‘Calculable.’ The gods no longer act directly upon Man through what has now become their finished work. Man however gradually comes through his ether-body into a relation of his own with the stars; just as through his physical body he comes into a relation of his own with the gravity of earth.

[ 3 ] What Man collects and fits into himself when he comes down out of the spirit-world to be born upon earth—his ether-body, which gathers into itself the cosmic forces from beyond the earth, was created by the Archangel Hierarchy during this second period.

[ 4 ] A very important thing which Man acquires through this hierarchy, is that he belongs to a group of people upon earth. Men are differentiated over the face of the earth. When one looks back into this second period, one does not find the differentiation of to-day, into races and nations, but a somewhat other and more spiritual one, arising from the fact that upon various parts of the earth the star-influences fall in various constellations. In the relative distribution of land and water, in climate, in vegetation, etc., the starry heavens are living and acting upon earth.

In so far as Man has to adopt himself to these relations—which are heavenly relations upon earth—the necessary adaptations belong to his ether-body, and the formation thus given to it is the creation of the choir of Archangeloi.

[ 5 ] This however is the very time—during the second period—when the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Powers come into Man's life, and in a special way. It is necessary for them to come into it, although at first sight it appears as though Man would thereby be driven down, below the level of his manhood.

[ 6 ] For Man to develop the consciousness of Self in earth-life, he must become much more thoroughly detached from the divine spiritual world which gave him his origin, than can be done by that world of itself. It takes place during the time when the Archangels are at work upon him, because his link with the spiritual world is then no longer such a strong one as it was during the time when the Archai were at work. Lucifer and Ahriman are more of a match for the purely spiritual forces which proceed from the Archangels than for the sturdier forces of the Archai.

[ 7 ] The Luciferic Powers give the ether-form, in all its tendencies, a much stronger inclination towards the star-world than it would have if only those divine spirit-Powers were at work, who were connected with Man from his origin. And by the Ahrimanic Powers the form and configuration of the physical body becomes more deeply entangled with the weight of earth than would be the case if these Powers were unable to exert an influence.

[ 8 ] Hereby the seed is laid in Man of future full Self-consciousness and free will. For though the Ahrimanic Powers detest free will, yet their effect upon Man, by tearing him away from this proper world of divine spirit, is to implant the first seed of free will in him.

[ 9 ] The immediate result, however, is that in this second period all that has been accomplished in Man by the various hierarchies—from the Seraphim to the Archangeloi—is pressed more deeply into the physical and ether-bodies, than could have been done without the influence of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Powers. But for their influence, the action of the hierarchies would remain more in the astral body and the I.

[ 10 ] Thus the grouping of Mankind which arises on earth is not that more spiritual one for which the Archangels are striving.

[ 11 ] Impressed into the physical body, the spiritual forces are turned into their opposite. Instead of the more spiritual one, comes the differentiation into races and nations.

[ 12 ] Were it not for the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences, men would see themselves and one-another upon earth differentiated from the heavens above. The various groups would live, one with another, in the relation of beings who share in love a spiritual treasure, freely giving and freely taking, each from each. In races and nations is seen the down-drag of earth, manifested in Man's body. In that other spiritual grouping there would have been seen a reflected image of the divine spiritual world.

[ 13 ] Yet along with all this the first dispositions had to be laid in human evolution for the future, full consciousness of Self. This again meant that—mitigated, it is true, but still with a certain distinctness of form—those original, primeval differentiations of mankind were retained, which had existed when in ancient days Man passed over from the Hierarchy of the Exusiai to that of the Archai.

[ 14 ] Man went through this stage of his evolution as through a cosmic school, alive to it all in a state between feeling and seeing. He had not as yet evolved any conscious knowledge that this was all an essential preparation for his own future Self-consciousness; but the ‘feeling vision,’ at that period, of the forces engaged in his evolution was nevertheless important for the engrafting of Self-consciousness in the astral body and the I.

[ 15 ] In respect to Man's Thinking, what happened at that time was that the Luciferic Powers gave him a bent which inclined him still to remain immersed in the old forms of spiritual life, and not to adapt himself to its new forms. For Lucifer's endeavour is always to preserve for Man the earlier forms of life.

[ 16 ] And so it came about in the development of Man's Thinking. Little by little, in his life between death and new birth Man evolved and elaborated the faculty which in primeval times had endowed his inner life with Thoughts. In those primeval times, this faculty had been able to behold the Spiritual in things, though it was very like the way man now takes hold of the world in mere sense-perception. For in those days the Physical wore the Spiritual on its surface. To-day, however, this Thinking faculty conserved from the earlier age can only act like sense-perception. The faculty to rise in the act of thought to the spirit gradually declined and died away. And this became fully manifest when in the age of the Spiritual Soul the spiritual world became veiled for Man in complete obscurity. So then it came about that in the nineteenth century the best of the natural scientists, who could not become mere materialists, said to themselves: ‘Nothing remains for us, but to explore that world alone which admits of being explored by the senses and in terms of measure, number and weight. We have however no right to deny the existence of a spiritual world behind this sensible one.’ They were thus indicating that there may be a world of light, unknown to Man, where he is staring into darkness only.

[ 17 ] As Man's Thought was put out of time and place by Lucifer, so by Ahriman his Will. This latter became endowed with a tendency to a kind of freedom to which it should only have attained later. Freedom of this sort is no real freedom, but only the illusion of it. Mankind lived for a long while in this illusion of freedom. It gave men no possibility of evolving the true spiritual idea of freedom in their minds. They wavered to-and-fro between the various opinions, that Man is free or that he is caught in the meshes of hard and fast necessity. And when with the dawning Age of Consciousness the real freedom came, men failed to understand it, because their understanding had been too long engaged with the illusion of freedom.

[ 18 ] Everything which had implanted itself in Man's inner being during the evolution of his lives between death and new birth in this second stage, was carried on by him as a cosmic memory into the third stage, in which he is still living in this present time. In this stage he holds a relation to the Hierarchy of Angeloi, similar to that which he held in the second to the Archangeloi. Only, the relation to the Angeloi is one which enables him to attain to complete, self-dependent individuality. For the Angeloi—not now the whole choir, but one Angelos for one man—confine themselves to effecting a right connection between his lives between death and new birth and his earth-lives.

[ 19 ] A fact here worthy of notice is that in the second stage of Man's evolution during the lives between death and new birth, the whole hierarchy of Archangeloi are at work for each single man. Later on, the guidance of the various nations and tribes devolves upon this hierarchy; and here, for one nation there is one Archangel, as Spirit of the Nation. In the races of men, the Primeval Powers (the Archai) remain active. Here again, for one race, there is one being at work out of the hierarchy of the Archai, as Spirit of that Race.

[ 20 ] Thus the man of the present age retains within him, during the life also between death and new birth, a cosmic memory of what he has learnt from this life in its previous stages. And even where, in the physical world, spiritual guidance manifests itself in such a form as in races and nationalities, there too this cosmic memory is plainly present.

Leading Thoughts

[ 21 ] In a second period of evolution in the lives between death and new birth, Man passes into the domain of the Archangeloi. During his period the seed of later Self-consciousness is planted in the human soul, the predisposition for it having already been created in the first period, in the shaping of the human Form.

[ 22 ] Man, during the second period, is driven by the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences deeper into the physical world than would have happened without their influence.

[ 23 ] In the third period, Man comes into the domain of the Angeloi, whose influence however is only exerted in the astral body and the I. This period is the present. What took place in the first two periods lives on in human evolution, and explains the fact that in the age of the Spiritual Soul—during the nineteenth century—Man is left staring into the spiritual world as into total darkness.

[ 1 ] The successive stages in the growth of the Cosmos and Mankind have been regarded in these studies from the most various aspects. It has been seen that the forces of his being come to Man from the extra-terrestrial Cosmos, all except those which give him his consciousness of Self; these he has from the Earth.

[ 2 ] This gives at once the significance of the Earth-world for Man. To this now comes the question: what significance has the Earth-world for the Macrocosm?

[ 3 ] To arrive at any answer to this question, we must look back at the previous observations.

[ 4 ] The Macrocosm is seen by the clairvoyant consciousness of the seer in every greater fullness of life, the farther back his vision penetrates into the past. Its life in a remote past is such that at a certain point all calculability of its life-manifestations ceases. From this fullness of life Man is gradually separated out. The Macrocosm passes over more and more into the sphere of the Calculable.

[ 5 ] Therewith however, it slowly dies out. In the same measure as Man, the Microcosm, emerges as an independent being out of the Macrocosm, the Macrocosm died.

[ 6 ] The cosmic Present shows an extinct Macrocosm. But in the process not only Man has arisen; out of the Macrocosm has arisen also the Earth.

[ 7 ] Man, who draws from the Earth the forces for his own Self-consciousness, is inwardly much too close to the Earth to have a clear perception of its essential character and being. In all their active development of Self-consciousness during the age of the Spiritual Soul, men have accustomed themselves to turn their attention to the size of the Universe in space, and to look upon the Earth as a grain of dust, of no significance in comparison with the physical spatial Universe.

[ 8 ] It may therefore at first seem strange, when spiritual observation of the facts discloses the true cosmic significance of this supposed ‘grain of dust.’

[ 9 ] The substructure of the Earth is the mineral world, in which the other kingdoms of Nature, the vegetable and animal worlds, are as it were embedded.

[ 10 ] Through the whole, run those living forces which manifest themselves during the course of the year in its successive phenomena. If we look at the Vegetable world: in autumn and winter it manifests forces of physical decay and death. The consciousness of the seer recognizes in this form of manifestation the inner being of those forces which have brought about the decay of the macrocosm. In spring and summer, the life of the plant-world is a manifestation of growing, sprouting forces. Clairvoyant consciousness recognizes in this growing, sprouting life, not only the green bounty of the revolving year, but a surplus. The surplus is one of young seed-force. The plants bear within them more young seed-force than they can use for the growth of leaves and flowers and fruit. This excess of young seed-force can be perceived with spiritual sight, streaming forth beyond the earth-world into the macrocosm outside it.

[ 11 ] So too an excess of force streams from the Mineral kingdom into the Cosmos beyond the Earth. It is the task of this excess of mineral force to carry the forces from the plants to their allotted places in the macrocosm. Under the influence of the mineral forces, the plant-forces shape themselves into the new image of an ordered macrocosm.

[ 12 ] Again, there are forces which go forth from the Animal world. These forces do not however act like the mineral and vegetable ones, radiating outward form the Earth, but in such a way that all that is carried out from the plant-world by the mineral forces into the Universe, to take shape there is held together in a sphere (a globe) so as to present the aspect of a macrocosm rounded in on all sides and self-contained.

[ 13 ] Such is the true character and being of Earth, as seen to spiritually perceptive consciousness. It stands as a source of new life in the midst of the dead and dying Macrocosm.

[ 14 ] As out of the little plant-seed—in space so small and insignificant—the large and perfect plant grows up again when the old one is dead and fallen, so out of that ‘grain of dust,’ the Earth, a new Macrocosm will grow up, while the old one dies and falls to pieces.

[ 15 ] A true view of the Earth, in its real character and being, sees everywhere in it's the springing life-seed of a forth-coming World. Thereby alone can one arrive at an understanding of the natural world and its kingdoms, by learning to recognize in them all this seedling life.

[ 16 ] Man's earthly existence is carried on in the midst of this new-upspringing life. He has his part in the up-springing of the new, as well as in the life that is extinct and dead. From the dead, he has his Thinking forces. So long as, in the past, these Thinking forces came from the still living macrocosm, they gave no basis for Self-conscious Man. They lived as forces of Growth, in Man who had as yet no consciousness of Self. The forces of Thought must have no inherent life of their own, if they are to afford a basis for Man's free Self-Consciousness. They, with the dead and dying macrocosm, must remain dead shadows of what was living in an earlier cosmic age.

[ 17 ] On the other hand Man has his part in the Earth's new, upspringing life. From this he has his Will-forces. These are very life; but just because of this, Man cannot partake in their real being with his Self-consciousness. They send forth their beams in the interior of the human being, radiating into the Thought-shadows. With them mingles the stream of shadows; and in this mingled stream, where free human Thought unfolds amid the new, upspringing life of Earth, during the Age of the Spiritual Soul there grows to full free life in Man the consciousness of his human Self.

[ 18 ] The Past casting Shadows, the Future holding Seeds of new reality, meet in the being of Man. And their meeting is the human life of the Present.

[ 19 ] That this is the case, becomes clear at once to the consciousness of the seer when turning to that region of the spirit-world which directly adjoins the physical, and which is also the scene of Michael's labours.

[ 20 ] The life of the whole earthly world grows plain when, underlying it all, one recognizes the life-seed of a new universe. Every plant in its variety, every stone, appears in a new light to the human soul which learns to perceive how every one of these forms of being—through its special life, though its special shape—contributes to make the entire Earth the embryo-seed of a new, reviving Macrocosm.

[ 21 ] Let anyone but once try to make the thought of these facts alive within himself, and he will feel what such a thought can signify for the human heart and mind.

Leading Thoughts

[ 22 ] In the beginning of the age of the Spiritual Soul, men have accustomed themselves to direct their observation to the physical proportions of the Universe in Space, and to regard primarily its bigness in this respect. Accordingly, they speak of the Earth as a grain of dust in the midst of this, to physical appearance, so gigantic Universe.

[ 23 ] To the consciousness of the seer, this ‘grain of dust’ reveals itself as the first life-seed of a newly arising Macrocosm; whilst the old Macrocosm can be seen to have died out. It was necessary for it to die and become extinct, in order that Man might separate himself out from it in full Self-consciousness.

[ 24 ] In the present cosmic age, Man takes part in the dead and dying Macrocosm with his Thinking forces, which give him freedom; whilst with his Will-forces, whose real being is hid from him, he takes part in the young Macrocosm that is springing up as Earth-born seed into new life.

[ 1 ] Sleep and Waking has been a theme frequently discussed in our anthroposophical studies, and from various points of view. But with the facts of life such as these, the understanding of them requires to be carried to a new depth every time, after studying a different aspect of the world. All that has been said about the Earth as life-seed of a new rising Macrocosm, makes it possible now to bring a deepened understanding to our views of sleeping and waking.

[ 2 ] In this waking state, Man lives in the thought-shadows cast by a dead and dying world, and in will-impulses into whose inner being he as little sees in ordinary consciousness, as he sees what is going on in deep dreamless sleep.

[ 3] With the inflow of the sub-conscious will-impulses into the thought-shadows arises the free, self-directed consciousness of the individual Self. In this Self-consciousness lives the I.

[ 4 ] Whilst Man is in this state, awake to the life of the world around him, through all the feelings that inwardly arise in him there run non-earthly, cosmic impulses that reach from a far distant cosmic Past into the Present. He is not conscious of this. A being can be conscious of that alone, in which it takes part through its own dying forces, not through the forces of growth which feed its life. Thus Man comes to Self-realization through the loss from his mind's eye of that which is the very basis of his own inner being. This however is precisely what enables him, whilst in the waking state, to feel himself utterly immersed in the thought-shadows. No flicker of life disturbs the inner state of participation in the world of the dead and dying. This ‘life amid the dead and dying’ conceals however the essential characteristic of the Earth-world, namely that it is the life-seed of a new Universe. Man in his waking state does not perceive the Earth as the Earth truly is; her first beginnings of new cosmic life escape him.

[ 5 ] So Man lives in that which the Earth gives him as basis for his Self-consciousness. He loses sight in his mind's eye of the true form of his own inner impulses, during this age of self-conscious Ego-development; and loses sight, too, of the true form of his surroundings. But it is just in this hovering above the stable reality of the World that Man realizes the stable reality of his I, realizes himself as a self-conscious being. Above him is the non-earthly, extra-terrestrial Cosmos; beneath him, in the Earth-region, is a world whose real being remains concealed; between the two the free being of the I becomes revealed, radiant in the fullness of perceptive knowledge and free will.

[ 6 ] In sleep it is otherwise. Here Man lives in his astral body and I amid the young seed-life of Earth. The most intense ‘will to life’ is all about Man during his dreamless sleep. Through his dreams also runs this stir of life; though not so strongly but that the man can be aware of them in a sort of half-consciousness. And in this half-conscious dream-panorama are seen the forces by whose means the human being is woven out of the Cosmos. In the passing flash of the dream can be seen the astral power as it flows into the ether-body and quickens the man to life. In the surging life and light of dreams, Thought is living still. Only after awakening, is Thought hemmed in by those forces which bring about its death—reduce it to a shadow.

[ 7 ] This connection between the dream-picture and the waking thought is of great significance. Man thinks with the same forces as those which enable him to grow and to live; only, for Man to become a Thinker these forces must be every dying.

[ 8 ] Here is the point where true understanding may dawn upon the mind, of why it is that Man in his Thinking grasps reality. He has in this thoughts the dead likeness of that by which he himself is formed and created out of a living, life-giving reality.

[ 9 ] The dead likeness! But this dead likeness is the life-work of the greatest of all painters, the Cosmos itself. From the likeness the life indeed is gone. Were the life not gone, Man's I could not evolve. Nevertheless this likeness contains the whole content of the Universe in all its glory.

[ 10 ] So far as was possible at the time, within the general lines of the book, I pointed out this inner relation between Thinking and World-Reality long ago, in my ‘Philosophy of Freedom;’ {Published in English under the title ‘The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity’} it is indicated in the place where I speak of a bridge leading from the depths of the thinking I to the depths of Nature's reality.

[ 11 ] The reason why sleep acts upon the ordinary consciousness as an extinguisher, is because it leads into the teeming life of Earth, shooting and sprouting up into the new, growing Macrocosm. When the Imaginative consciousness puts an end to this extinguishing action of sleep, the Earth which then presents itself to the human soul is not one of sharp outlines, in mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms; it is rather a living process that the soul has then before her—a living process kindled in the Earth and flaming out into the Macrocosm.

[ 12 ] Thus Man has to raise himself with the reality of his own ‘I am’ out of the world's reality in his waking state, in order to arrive at free and independent self-consciousness. In his sleeping state he unites himself once more with world-reality.

[ 13 ] Such, at the present cosmic moment, is the rhythm of Man's earthly life; outside the inner being of the world, but with the conscious experience of his own being; and within the inner being of the World, whilst the consciousness of his own being is extinguished.

[ 14 ] In the state between death and a new birth, the I of Man is living within the beings of the spirit-world. There, everything comes to consciousness, that escaped consciousness during the waking life of earth. There the macrocosmic forces pass across the scene, from all their fullness of life in the far distant Past, down to their dead and dying existence in the Present. But the Earthly forces too display themselves, which are the life-seed of the growing Macrocosm that is to be. And Man looks there into his sleeping states, as during Earth-life he looks at the Earth shining in the sunlight.

[ 15 ] Only because the Macrocosm, such as it is in the present, has become a thing of the dead, is it possible for the human being between death and new birth to lead a life which, compared to the waking life on Earth, signifies a higher awakening—an awakening which enables man completely to master the forces of which but a transitory flicker is seen in dreams. These are forces filling the whole Cosmos. They permeate everything. From them the human being draws the impulses with which, on his descent to Earth, he fashions his own body—the masterpiece of the macrocosmic artist.

[ 16 ] What in dreams is but a brief sun-abandoned glimmer, lives in the spirit-world transfused with spiritual sunlight, waiting until the beings of the higher Hierarchies, or Man himself, shall call it forth in creative work to the moulding of new life and being.

Leading Thoughts

[ 17 ] In the waking state, in order to gain living knowledge of himself in full and free Self-consciousness, Man is obliged to forgo the living knowledge of Reality, in its true form, both in his own existence and in Nature's. He lifts himself out of his sea of Reality, so that in his Thought-shadows he may make his own I his own real experience.

[ 18 ] In the sleeping state, Man lives with the life of the Earth around him, but this life extinguishes his consciousness of Self.

[ 19 ] In dreams, there flickers up in half-consciousness that forceful World-Reality of which Man's being is woven, and from which he fashions his body when he comes down out of the Spirit-world. In Earth-life this forceful World-Reality is reduced to death in shadow-thoughts, since only thus can it give the basis for Self-conscious Man.

[ 1 ] At the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was consummated, Gnosis was the form which Thought took amongst that portion of mankind who at the time were able to understand with knowledge and not merely with dim feeling this, the greatest impulse in Man's earthly evolution.

[ 2 ] To understand what was the peculiar disposition of soul in which the Gnosis lived within men, we must keep in sight, that the age of this Gnosis was the age when the Intellectual or Mind-Soul was being developed.

[ 3 ] In this fact we may also find the reason why the Gnosis vanished almost entirely out of human history. That it should thus have vanished, is perhaps—until the cause be understood—one of the most amazing occurrences in the whole progress of mankind.

[ 4 ] The development of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul was preceded by that of the Sentient Soul, and this again by the development of the Sentient Body. So long as the facts of the world are being perceived through the Sentient Body, all Man's knowledge lives in his senses. The world is seen coloured, heard sounding, and so on; but in the colours, in the sounds, in the varying states of warmth, a ‘material’ substance, presenting certain appearances of colour, warmth, and so on, there is no question; men talk of spiritual beings who reveal themselves through what the senses perceive.

[ 5 ] In this age, there is as yet no special exercise of an ‘understanding’ that exists in Man alongside of and distinct from sense-perception. Man either yields himself up with his whole human being to the outer world, and then the Gods reveal themselves to him through his senses. Or else he draws back from the outer world within his own soul-life, and then feels in his inner man a dull, indistinct sense of life.

[ 6 ] A notable change sets in when the Sentient Soul begins to develop. The revelation of the divine world through the senses begins to fade. In its place begins an outward perception of sense-impressions, so to speak god-divested, of colours, states of warmth, and so on. Meanwhile, within, the divine world reveals itself in spiritual form, in picture-ideas of the mind. Man now perceives the world from two aspects—from without through the impressions of sense, and from within through the spiritual impressions of the mind, in the form of Ideas.

[ 7 ] Man must next learn to have as distinct, as clearly formed a perception of these inner spiritual impressions, as he had before of the god-informed impressions of the senses. So long as the reign of the Sentient Soul Age lasts, he can do this; for out of his own inner being the Idea-pictures rise up in full and vivid form. His mind is filled from within by a sense-free spirit-content, which is a copy of the World-content. If formerly the Gods revealed themselves to him robed in sense-vestments, they now reveal themselves in spirit-vestments.

[ 8 ] This was essentially the time when the Gnosis came into being and when it flourished. A wonderful living lore is there, in which Man knows himself a partaker when he unfolds his inner being in purity so that the divine content may be revealed within it.

From the fourth down to the first millennium before the coming of the Mystery of Golgotha, this Gnosis was prevalent throughout the portion of mankind who had advanced farthest in the way of knowledge.

[ 9 ] Then begins the age of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. Now the World-images of Gods no longer rise up of themselves out of the inner man. Man himself must exert inward power in order to evoke them from his soul. The outer world with its sense impressions becomes a question. Man, when he exerts the inward power and evokes the divine World-images, obtains answers.

[ 10 ] But the images are pale in comparison with their earlier form. It is this phase of the human soul which comes to such marvelous expression in Ancient Greece. The Greek felt himself in the midst of the outer world which strikes the senses; and he felt in the outer world the magic which could arouse his own inner power to the unfolding of World-pictures. On philosophic ground, this phase of the human soul found its development in Platonism.

[ 11] But in the background, behind all this, was the world of the Mysteries. Here was faithfully treasured and preserved all that had come over as Gnosis from the age of the Sentient Soul.

Human souls were trained to be its faithful treasurers. The Intellectual or Mind-Soul developed in the ordinary course of evolution. The Sentient Soul was quickened by special training. And so, behind the ordinary religious and social life of the day, there flourished—more particularly in this age of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul,—a Mystery life of a very richly developed form.

[ 12 ] Here the divine World-images continued to have life, inasmuch as they were made the spiritual content of cult and ritual. Look into the inner side of these Mysteries, and one sees the world pictured in the most wonderful ceremonies and rituals.

[ 13 ] The human beings in whose inner life this had been awakened were those who were able to penetrate the Mystery of Golgotha, at the time when it was consummated, in its profound, cosmic significance. But it was a Mystery-life which kept quite aloof from the external world and its affairs in order to cultivate the Spirit-picture-world in purity. And it became ever harder for men's souls to call forth the pictures.

[ 14 ] Then, in the highest places of the Mysteries, Spirit-beings descended out of the spiritual Cosmos, to aid struggling men in their efforts after knowledge. So the impulses of the Sentient Age were continued and further developed under the influence of the Gods themselves. There arose a Gnosis of the Mysteries, of which none but a very few had even the faintest conception. Alongside this Mystery-Gnosis, was what men could take in with the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. This was the exoteric Gnosis, of which fragments have come down to posterity.

[ 15 ] In the exoteric Gnosis of the Mysteries men became ever more incapable of rising to the development of the Sentient Soul. And so this esoteric wisdom passed over more and more into the care and cultivation of the Gods alone. This is one of the deep secrets in the historic evolution of mankind: ‘Divine Mysteries,’ so to speak, were at work in it from the first centuries of Christianity down into the Middle Ages.

[ 16 ] In these Divine Mysteries, the treasure which men could no longer preserve, was preserved in earthly life by Angelic beings. And so the Gnosis of the Mysteries lived on whilst the exoteric Gnosis was being diligently exterminated.

[ 17 ] The World-Image-content, treasured in a spiritual way by spiritual beings, preserved in the Gnosis of the Mysteries so long as it was needed for the advancement of mankind, could not indeed be made accessible to the conscious understanding of men's souls. But the feeling-content could be preserved, so that at the right cosmic moment, when men were fitly prepared, it might be given to them and bring them the warmth of soul with which the Spiritual Soul might—later on and in a new way—penetrate into the kingdom of the Spirit. Thus Spirit-beings built the bridge between the old World-content and the new.

[ 18 ] There are indications to be found in this mystery of human evolution. The Holy Vessel of the Grail, the Cup of Jasper used by Christ when He broke the Bread, in which Joseph of Arimathea caught the Blood which flowed from the pierced side of Jesus—the Cup, that is, which held the Mystery of Golgotha—was taken, so legend says, into the custody of Angels, until the Castle of the Grail had been built by Titurel, and it could descend upon those human beings who were duly prepared to receive it.

[ 19 ] Spirit-beings treasured the World-Images in which lived the Mystery of Golgotha. And when the time was come they sent down, not indeed the Imaginative content—that was not possible—but the feeling-content into the minds of men.

[ 20 ] It can be but a stimulus, this feeling legacy of an ancient knowledge, implanted in the hearts of men. Yet it is a very powerful stimulus, from which in our age—out of the Spiritual Soul—there may grow up, by the light of Michael's agency, a new and full understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 21 ] Anthroposophy is striving after this new understanding. From the description given, it is clear that Anthroposophy cannot be a revival of the Gnosis, for this was the mode of knowledge of the Sentient soul; whereas Anthroposophy has to draw a no less rich content of knowledge out of the Spiritual Soul, and in a totally new way.

Leading Thoughts

[ 22 ] The Gnosis develops in its characteristic form in the age of the Sentient Soul (fourth to first millennium before the incidence of the Mystery of Golgotha.) “The Divine' reveals itself in this age of Man inwardly, as a spiritual content of the mind, whereas in the previous period—the Age of the Sentient Body—it had revealed itself in and with the sense-impressions of the outer world.

[ 23 ] In the Age of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, ‘the Divine,’ as spiritual content, has faded from the inner life, and can be realized but faintly. The Gnosis is preserved in sternly guarded Mysteries; and when men can preserve it no longer, because they are no longer able to requicken the Sentient soul, Spirit-beings take charge of it and carry over into the Middle Ages, not indeed the knowledge-content but the feeling-content of it. (this is indicated in the legend of the Holy Grail.) Meanwhile the exoteric Gnosis, which found its way into the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, is being forcibly exterminated.

[ 24 ] Anthroposophy cannot be a revival of the Gnosis; for Gnosis was connected with the development of the Sentient Soul. The work of Anthroposophy is, by the light of Michael's agency, to evolve out of the Spiritual Soul a new form of understanding of Christ, and the World. Gnosis was the old form of knowledge, preserved from earlier times—the one best able, at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, to convey this Mystery to men's understanding.

[ 1 ] In the human faculty of Remembrance, there lives the reproduction in personal form of a cosmic power which once worked at the formation of Man's being, as was described in the last few letters. The same cosmic power continues however to be active at the present time. It works as the force of growth, as life-giving impulse, behind the scenes of human life. Here it expends the greater part of its force. Only one little part is separated off, to become a function of the Spiritual Soul. There it works as the power of Memory or Remembrance.

[ 2 ] One must look at this power of Remembrance in the proper light. When Man to-day, in the present age of cosmic evolution, perceives through his senses, this ‘perceiving’ is a momentary lighting-up in consciousness of world-images. The lighting-up comes when the sense is directed upon the outer world; it illumines the field of consciousness, and disappears when the sense ceases to be turned upon the outer world. But what here lights up in the human soul, can have no duration. For unless Man could dismiss it promptly from his consciousness, he would become merged in this content of his consciousness, and lose himself. He would no longer be himself. Only for a brief time—in the so-called after-images, which so much interested Goethe—may this lighting-up from a sense-perception have life in the consciousness. Neither must this content of consciousness become set, or harden into real existence; it must remain image. It must no more become real than the image in the looking-glass can become real.

[ 3 ] With anything that ended by making itself a reality in his consciousness, Man would no less lose himself, than with something that of itself was permanent. Here again, he could no more be himself.

[ 4 ] Sense-perception of the outer world is, then, an inward painting of the human soul. A painting without paints; a painting in spirit-waxing and spirit-waning. As in Nature the rainbow comes and goes again and leaves no trace behind, so too all sense-perception comes and passes away, without itself—of its own nature—leaving any memory behind.

[ 5 ] But with every perception, there is at the same time another process transacted between the human soul and the world outside. It is a process that goes on in the background, in remoter parts of the soul's life—there, where the forces of growth, the life-impulses are at work. And in this part of the soul's life, not a transitory image merely, but a real and lasting reproduction is imprinted with each act of perception. This Man can bear, for it is a real World-content, playing in part in Man's existence. It can take place without his losing himself, any more than he loses himself when without his own full consciousness he grows, or is nourished by his food.

[ 6 ] When Man now calls up his memories from the inner depths, it is an internal perception of what was permanently left by this second process that accompanies the external perception. [ 7 ] Again the soul paints; but now she paints the Past that is living in her own human inner being. And again with this painting, no lasting reality must be formed within the consciousness, but only an image that comes and goes.

[ 8 ] Such is the connection, in the human soul, between the forming of mental conceptions—mental images—in the moment of perception, and remembrance.

[ 9 ] The forces of remembrance have however a constant tendency to become more than they can be, if Man is not to lose himself as a self-conscious being.

[ 10 ] For these forces of remembrance are remnants of the Past in Man's evolution, and as such they fall under the dominion of Lucifer. It is Lucifer's endeavor to give substance in Man to the impressions of the outer world and to condense them, so that they may continue to shine on as lasting mental conceptions in his conscious life.

[ 11 ] This endeavor of Lucifer's would be crowned with success, were it not released by the Michael-forces. These will not let what is painted in the mind's inner light harden into real existence, but keep it coming and going as a fleeting picture.

[ 12 ] The excess of power which thus streams up—but through Lucifer—out of the inner man, will be changed in the Michael Age into Imagining power. For, little by little, the power of spiritual Imagination will make its way into the general intellectual consciousness of mankind. That ‘present instant’ consciousness however, which Man now possesses, will not be thereby burdened with any weight of lasting reality. It will continue to live in pictures that come and go. But with his Imaginations Man rears himself aloft into a higher spirit-world; even as with his Remembrances he reaches inward, into this own human being. Man does not retain the Imaginations within himself; they are engraved in permanent cosmic-existence; and thence he can reproduce them ever afresh in the passing pictures of his mental life.

[ 13 ] That which is saved by Michael from becoming fixed and hardened in the inner life of Man, is in this way received by the spiritual world. All that Man realizes of the power of conscious Imagining is converted at the same time into World-content. That this is possible, is a result of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ-Power imprints Man's Imagination upon the Cosmos—the Christ-Power which is united to the Earth. So long as this power was not united to the Earth, but worked from without upon the Earth as a Sun-Power, all impulses of growth and life went into the inner man. Man was built up and maintained by them out of the Cosmos. Since the Christ-Impulse has entered into the life of Earth, Man is given back once more to the Cosmos in his self-conscious being.

[ 14 ] Man, from being a World-being, has become an Earth-being. It lies in him to become a World-being once more after having as Earth-being become himself.

[ 15 ] In this fact—namely that Man, in his momentary acts of mental conception (in the forming of mental images) is living not in real existence, but only in a reflection of real existence. In a picture-existence, lies the possibility of evolving Freedom. All real existence in the consciousness has compelling power. Only pictures cannot compel. Anything that may take place through the impression made by a mere picture, will be quite independent of the picture itself. Man becomes free, when with his Spiritual Soul he lifts himself out of the realm of real Existence and emerges in a non-existent Picture-realm.

[ 16 ] The momentous question then arises: Does not Man lose real existence when with one part of his being he lets go of it and hurls himself into a realm of non-existence?

[ 17 ] Here again is a point where we are faced by one of the great problems in the contemplation of the world.

[ 18 ] What is experienced in consciousness in the act of mental conception—in the forming of mental images—originated in the Cosmos. As regards the Cosmos, Man plunges into non-existence. He frees himself in the act of mental conception from all forces of the Cosmos. He paints the Cosmos, being himself outside of it.

[ 19 ] If this were all, then for one cosmic instant a flash of freedom would light up in the human being; but at the same instant human being itself would be dissolved. Whilst however in his mental conceptions Man finds freedom from the Cosmos, he is nevertheless, in his non-conscious soul-life, grafted into the whole of his previous earth-lives and lives between death and new birth. As conscious man he is in Picture-existence, while he maintains himself in spiritual Reality with his unconscious part. Whilst in the I of the present moment he awakens to freedom, his I of the past holds him firm in real existence.

[ 20 ] In respect of real existence, Man, when forming a mental conception, is wholly reliant upon what he has become in the course of his cosmic and earthly past.

[ 21 ] In human evolution, the path here points to that Abyss of Nothing over which Man leaps in the moment of becoming a free being. Michael's action and the Christ-Impulse make the leap possible.

Leading Thoughts

[ 22 ] In mental conception, Man is living with his Spiritual soul not in Real Existence, but in Picture-Existence—in Non-Existence. Thereby he is freed from experiencing a common life with the Cosmos. Pictures do not compel. Only real existence compels. And if Man nevertheless suits his actions to the pictures, it is done quite independently of the pictures, that is to say, in freedom from the world.

[ 23 ] At the instant of any such act of mental conception, the only thing that links Man to the real existence of the world, is what he himself has grown to be from the Past, through his previous earth-lives and lives between death and new birth.

[ 24 ] This is a leap, as regards the Cosmos, over Non-Existence—a leap which Man is only enabled to achieve through the action of Michael and through the Christ-Impulse.