Anthroposophical Guidelines

Michael’s Experiences during the Fulfillment of his Cosmic Mission

One can follow the advance of humanity from the consciousness stage when man felt himself to be a member of the divine-spiritual order up until the contemporary stage, where he feels himself to be an individual detached from the divine-spiritual and capable of his own thinking. This was elucidated in the last article.

However, through super-sensible vision one can also project a picture of how Michael and his associates experience this stream of evolution; that is, describe the same facts from Michael’s point of view. We will try to do this now.

At first there is an oldest antiquity in which one can only speak of what happened among divine-spiritual beings. It has to do with the deeds of gods alone. Gods accomplish what the impulses of their natures provide; they are correspondingly satisfied with this activity. And only what they experience is taken into consideration. Something like humanity is only noticeable in one area of this godly activity. It is an element of godly activity.

The spiritual being who directed his attention to humanity from the beginning, however, is Michel. He arranges divine activity is such a way that humanity can exist in a cosmic corner, so to speak. And the manner in which he acts there is related to the activity that later is manifested in humanity as intellect; except that it is activated as a force which streams through the cosmos in an ordering of ideas, giving rise to reality. Michael works in this force. His office is to administer cosmic intellectuality. He wishes further advancement in this area. And this can only happen if what streams through the cosmos as intelligence is concentrated later in the human individuality. What occurs thereby is the following: a time comes in world evolution in which the cosmos no longer lives by its present intelligence, but by that of its past. And the intelligence of the present is amidst the stream of human evolution.

Michael would like to ensure that what develops within humanity as intelligence continues to be connected to the divine-spiritual beings. To this, however, there is resistance. What the gods accomplish as evolution from the separation of intellectuality from their own cosmic action up until integration in human nature is an open fact in the world. If beings exist who posses a capacity for perceiving these facts, they can make use of them. And such beings do exist. They are the Ahrimanic beings. They are very much disposed to soak up everything separated as intelligence from the gods. They are disposed to unite the sum of all intellectuality to their own being. Thereby they become the greatest, the most comprehensive and penetrating intelligences in the cosmos.

Michael foresees how man, in that he uses his own intelligence ever more, must encounter the Ahrimanic beings and how he can thus succumb to them. Therefore Michael places the Ahrimanic powers under his feet, he continuously forces them into a deeper region than the one in which man is evolving. Michael, the dragon under his feet, forcing him into the abyss: that is the mighty image of this super-sensible fact that lives in human consciousness.

Evolution advances. Intellectuality, which at first was completely in the divine-spiritual domain, is so detached from it that it becomes the ensoulment of the cosmos. What previously radiated only from the gods now blazes forth from the stars as divine revelation. Previously the world was guided through divine being itself, now it is guided through objective divine revelation, behind which divine being continues on the path of its own evolution.

Michael is again the administrator of cosmic intelligence, insofar as it streams through cosmic revelation in ideational form.

The third phase of evolution is a further separation of cosmic intelligence from its origins. In the star-worlds the present complex of ideas no longer rules as divine revelation; the stars move and arrange themselves according to the arrangement implanted in them in the past. Michael sees how what he administered in the cosmos, cosmic intellectuality, increasingly continues along the path to earthly humanity.

Michael also sees, however, that the danger of humanity succumbing to the Ahrimanic powers is ever greater. He knows: he will always have Ahriman under his feet for himself; but what about man?

Michael sees the greatest earthly event happening. From the domain which Michael himself served, the Christ-Being descends to the earthly sphere in order to be here when intelligence is completely present in the human individuality. This is when man will most strongly feel the pressure to become addicted to the power which has completely and absolutely become the bearer of intellectuality. But Christ will be there; through his great sacrifice he will live in the same sphere in which Ahriman lives. Humanity will be able to choose between Christ and Ahriman. The world will be able to find the Christ-path in human evolution.

That is Michael’s cosmic experience of what he has to administer in the cosmos. In order to stay with the object of his administration, he travels the path from the cosmos to humanity. He has been on this path since the eighth century, but has only really taken over his earthly office, into which his cosmic office has been transformed, in the last third of the nineteenth century.

Michael cannot force man to do anything. Force has ended due to the fact that intelligence has completely entered the domain of human individuality. But as a majestic exemplary deed in the super-sensible world, initially at the frontier of the visible world, Michael can unfold what he wishes. With a light-aura, with a spiritual gesture, Michael can show himself there, in whom all the brilliance and grandeur of the past divine intelligence is manifest. He can make visible how the effect of that past intelligence is truer, more beautiful and virtuous that the present intelligence, which streams in from Ahriman in deceptive, seductive brilliance. He can show that - for him - Ahriman will always be the inferior spirit under his feet.

Those who view the super-sensible world, which is at the frontier of the visible world, perceive, as here described, what Michael and his collaborators wish to do for humanity. Such people see how man is to be led in freedom through Michael’s image in the Ahrimanic sphere from Ahriman to Christ. If by means of their vision such people are able to open other people’s hearts and minds, in order that a circle of people know that Michael now lives among men, then humanity will begin to celebrate Michael festivals with the right contents, during which Michael’s force will revive in their souls. Michael will then work as a real power among men. Man will however be free - and will nevertheless follow his spiritual life-path through the cosmos in inner community with Christ.

Goetheanum, October 19, 1924

109. To become really conscious of Michael’s activities in his spiritual relationship to the world means to resolve the riddle of human freedom being severed from its cosmic connection, considering that the severance is necessary for earthly humanity.
110. Because the fact of “freedom” is directly given to every person who understands himself in the present stage of human evolution, no one may say, if he doesn’t want to deny an obvious fact, that “there is no freedom”. But one can find a contradiction between what is factually given and cosmic processes. Considering Michael’s mission in the cosmos, this contradiction disappears.
111. In my “Philosophy of Freedom”, one finds contemporary human “freedom” proven as a content of consciousness; in what is given here, one finds the development of this freedom cosmically substantiated.