Anthroposophical Guidelines

The Future of Humanity and Michael’s Activity

At this stage of his evolution, what is man’s relation to Michael and his collaborators?

Man stands within a world which was once totally of divine-spiritual essence, to which he also belonged. At that time the world to which man belonged was divine-spiritual being. During a following stage of evolution this was no longer the case. Then it was the cosmic revelation of the divine-spiritual, and its being hovered behind this revelation. But it was in motion and lived in that revelation. A star-world already existed. The divine-spiritual lived in its brilliance and motion as revelation. One can say: where a star stood or moved, the activity of the divine-spiritual could be seen.

In all this: how the divine spirit worked in the cosmos, how man’s life was a result of a divine-spiritual act in the cosmos - Michael was there, unopposed in his own element. He mediated the relationship of the divine to humanity.

Other times came. The star-world no longer directly contained divine-spiritual activity. It lived and moved persisting in the continuation of what it had previously contained. The divine-spiritual no longer lived in the cosmos as revelation, but now only as the effectiveness of its acts. A clear differentiation appeared between the divine-spiritual and what was cosmic. Michael, because of his own nature, remained with the divine-spiritual. He tried to keep humanity as close as possible to this element. He has continued to do so. He wanted to protect humanity from living too intensely in a world which is only the effect of the divine-spiritual, but not its being, and not revelation.

Michael finds it deeply satisfying that he has been able, through humanity, to keep the star-world directly united with the divine-spiritual in the following way. When a human being, once he has completed the life between death and a rebirth, again treads the path towards a new earthly existence, he seeks to create a certain harmony between the star patterns and his earthly life as he descends to this existence. This harmony was self-evidently present in older times because the divine-spiritual was active in the stars, in which human life also had its source. Today though, when the movement of the stars merely continues the effects of divine-spiritual activity, it will not be there if man does not seek it. Man brings the divine-spiritual elements he has retained from older times into a relation with the stars, which themselves contain only the aftereffects of the past. Thus a divine element enters into man’s relation to the world which corresponds to earlier times, yet emerges in later times. That this is so is Michael's deed. And this deed gives him such deep satisfaction that a part of his life-element, his life-energy, his living sun-filled will is contained in this satisfaction.

But today, when he directs his spiritual eye towards the earth, he sees a quite different situation. During his life in the physical realm between birth and death, man is immersed in a world which no longer shows the effects of the divine-spiritual, but only what remains of these effects; one can say that what remains is only the divinespiritual’s works. These works are completely divine-spiritual in their forms. The divine shows itself to human vision in the form of natural phenomena; but it is no longer an enlivening element in these phenomena. Nature is a divine work and is everywhere a reflection of divine activity.

Man lives in this sun-filled divine, but not actively living divine world. However, as a result of Michael’s effect on him, he has retained his connection with the essence of the divine-spiritual. He lives as a being who is permeated by God in a world which is not permeated by God.

To this God-vacated world man will bring what is in him - what his being has become in the present age.

Humanity will continue to develop in the evolution of the world. The divine-spiritual from which humanity originates can radiate through the cosmos - which only exists at present in the image of the divine-spiritual - as a cosmically proliferating humanity.

The being which was once cosmos will no longer be the one which now radiates through humanity. In its progression through humanity, the divine-spiritual will experience a being which it had not previously revealed.

The Ahrimanic powers are opposed to this evolutionary progression. They do not want the original divine-spiritual powers to illumine the universe in its progression; they want the cosmic intellectuality which they have absorbed to radiate through the entire new cosmos and that humanity continue to live in this intellectualized ahrimanic cosmos.

By living in this way man would lose Christ. For he has entered the world with an intellectuality which once existed totally in the divine-spiritual, when it was still, in its essence, shaping the cosmos. If we speak today in a way that makes our thoughts also those of Christ, we place something in opposition to the Ahrimanic powers that protects us from succumbing to them.

To understand the sense of the Michael-mission in the cosmos means to speak in this way. One must be able to speak today about nature as the Consciousness Soul evolutionary stage demands. One must absorb the purely natural scientific way of thinking. But one should also learn to speak about nature - meaning to feel - in a way which is appropriate to Christ. We should not learn the Christ-language merely about the redemption of nature, not merely about souls and divinity, but about the cosmos.

We will be able to maintain our connection with the primordial divine-spiritual and understand how to cultivate the Christ-language about the cosmos, if we completely, with all our hearts, adjust ourselves to the acts of Michael and his collaborators among us. For to understand Michael means to find the way to the logos, the Christ who lives on earth among men.

Anthroposophy correctly values what the natural scientific way of thinking has learned about the world over the past four to five hundred years, and speaks of it. But it also speaks about the nature of man, about the evolution of man and the cosmos; anthroposophy wishes to speak the language of Christ-Michael.

Both languages will then be spoken and evolution will not be defeated and succumb to the Ahrimanic before finding the divine-spiritual. To speak merely in the natural- scientific way corresponds to the separation of intellectuality from the original divine-spiritual. It can succumb to the Ahrimanic if Michael’s mission is ignored. It will not succumb if the liberated intellect rediscovers itself through the force of Michael’s example in the primordial cosmic intellectuality, which lies at the source of humanity and has appeared within the human domain through Christ after it abandoned man in order that his freedom could be realized.

Goetheanum, October 25, 1924

112. The divine-spiritual takes effect in the cosmos in various ways in the following stages:
     1. through its own primordial essence;
     2. through the revelation of this essence;
     3. through its effects, when the essence retreats from the revelation.
     4. through the work, when the divine is no longer in the visible universe, but only its forms.
113. In the contemporary view of nature, man has no relation to the divine, but only to its effects.
114. Michael constantly strives to embody human-cosmic evolution by being a freely active example of the divine essence and the revelatory relation to the cosmos retained by humanity from ancient times in order that what the image, the form of what the divine says about nature, may flow into a higher, spiritual consideration of nature. Although this will certainly be present in man, it will nevertheless be a reminiscence of the divine relation to the cosmos during the first two stages of cosmic evolution. In this way anthroposophy affirms the view of nature corresponding to the Consciousness-Soul age; it also completes it however, with what the eye of the spirit reveals.