Anthroposophical Guidelines

Third Contemplation: Michael’s anxiety about human evolution before the time of his earthly activity

During the development of the Consciousness Soul age the possibility of a connection between Michael and humanity in general gradually ceased. Humanized intellectuality intervened. Imaginative ideas, which could show man the essential intelligence in the cosmos, faded away. The possibility for Michael to approach humanity only began during the last third of the nineteenth century. Previously this could only happen on the path to true Rosicrucianism.

Man looked at nature with his budding intellect. He saw there a physical and an etheric world in which he was absent. Through the great ideas of Copernicus and Galileo he acquired an image of the external world - but lost his own image. He looked at himself and had no insight into what he is. In the depths of his being the bearer of his intelligence - his “I” awakened. Thus man contained a triplicity. Firstly, that which originally placed his soul-spiritual being - as a physical-etheric entity - in the ancient

Saturn and Sun times and thereafter again and again in the domain of divine spirituality. That is where the human being and Michael could walk together. Secondly, man carried within him his later physical and etheric being, that which he became during the ancient Moon and Earth epochs. All that was the work and activity of divine spirituality - which, however, was no longer actively present.

It would only become actively present when Christ passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ can be found in what works spiritually in the physical and etheric bodies of man. Thirdly, man had within him that part of his soul-spiritual being which had taken on new being during the ancient Moon and the earth epochs. In this being Michael remained active, whereas in the part which tended towards the ancient Moon and the earth he became less active. Within the new being he [Michael] preserved for man his man-god image.

He was able to do this at the dawn of the Consciousness Soul age. Then man’s entire soul-spirit reality sank into the physical-etheric in order to extract the Consciousness Soul from it. Man’s consciousness rose up brilliantly in respect to what his physical and etheric bodies could tell him about the physical and etheric in nature. His vision diminished, however, concerning what his astral body and his I could tell him about himself.

A time came in which man felt that he could no longer have insight about himself. A search for knowledge of humanity began. What the present offered did not satisfy him, so he went back in time historically. Humanism arose in cultural development. People looked towards humanism not because they knew man, but because they had lost him. If Erasmus of Rotterdam and others had known man, they would have taken quite a different approach than through what humanism meant for them.

Later in Faust Goethe created a human figure who had completely lost the meaning of humanity.

This search for the “human being” became more and more intense. The only choices were either to dampen one’s sense of self; or to develop the desire for it as an element of the soul.

Up into the nineteenth century the best people in European culture developed ideas - historical, natural scientific, philosophical, mystical - which indicated efforts to discover the human within a worldview that had become intellectual.

Renaissance, spiritual rebirth, humanism hastened, even stampeded in striving for spirituality in a direction in which it was not to be found; and only impotence, illusion and stupefaction were found in the direction in which it must be sought. Along with this came the breakthrough of the Michael forces in man - in art, in knowledge, only not yet in the renewing forces of the Consciousness Soul - which meant instability for spiritual life. Michael was directing all his strength backward in cosmic evolution to gain the power needed to hold the “dragon” in equilibrium under his feet. It was just then during Michael’s striving for power that the great renaissance creations took place. But they were a renewal by Michael of the Comprehension or Sensitivity Soul elements, and not the result of new soul forces.

Michael was full of anxiety as to whether he would be able to do battle with the “Dragon” for very long when he saw the attempt to add an image of man similar to the one newly acquired in respect to the natural realm. Michael saw how nature was observed and how people wanted to form an image of man according to what they called “natural law”. He saw how it was thought that as animal characteristics became more perfect, the organ system more harmonious, man “came into being”. But it was not “man” that came into being in Michael’s spiritual view, because what was thought about perfection and harmony was merely “thought”; nobody could observe that it was real because it had never happened anywhere.

And thus people lived with thoughts about man in unreal images, in illusions; they hunted for an image of man which they only thought to have found; but in reality their field of vision was empty. “The spiritual sun’s force illumines their souls, Christ acts, but they cannot yet see it. Consciousness Soul forces are active with love, but not yet in souls.” Inspiration can hear something like this as Michael speaks with great anxiety: What if the strength of illusion in man could give the “dragon” so much power that it would not be possible for him - Michael - to maintain the equilibrium?

Other personalities tried with artistic inner strength to experience nature at one with man. Powerful were Goethe’s words when he described Winckelmann’s work in a great book: “When man’s healthy nature acts as a whole, when he feels himself as in a great, beautiful, majestic and worthy whole, when harmonious contentment provides him with pure, free delight; then the universe, if it could feel itself as having reached its goal, would exult and marvel at its own becoming and essence.” What Lessing celebrated with passionate spirituality, what ensouled the great worldview in Herder - resounded in Goethe’s words. And all of Goethe’s creativity is like a many-sided manifestation of these words. In his “Aesthetic Letters” Schiller described a perfect man who, as is reflected in these words, contains the universe and realizes it in social contact with others. But from where does this image of man originate? It blazes like the morning sun over the earth in springtime. But for humanity it originated in the Greek idea of man. It was cultivated with a strong inner Michael-impulse; but people could only realize this impulse by looking back into the past. Goethe felt an extremely strong conflict with the Consciousness Soul when he tried to experience “man”. He sought him in Spinoza’s philosophy; but it was during his Italian journey when he looked into the Greek essence that he felt he could correctly sense him. He hurried away from the Consciousness Soul to which Spinoza aspired, and finally arrived at the fading Comprehension or Sensitivity Soul. But he was able to inject into his comprehensive view of nature an unlimited amount of that latter soul into the Consciousness Soul.

Michael earnestly observed this quest for man. But what he meant did enter into human spiritual development: the human being who once saw the essential intelligence when Michael still administered it from the cosmos. However, if it were not grasped with the spiritualized force of the Consciousness Soul, it would have to be extinguished and fall into the clutches of Lucifer’s power. Michael’s other great fear was that Lucifer could gain the upper hand if cosmic spirituality lost its equilibrium.

Michael’s preparation for his mission at the end of the nineteenth century was in danger of becoming a cosmic tragedy. On earth great satisfaction reigned because of what had been learned about nature. But in Michael’s domain a sense of tragedy existed because of the barriers to the introduction of the contrary image.

Previously Michael’s austere, spiritualized love lived in the sun’s rays, in the shimmering dawn and in the twinkling stars; now this love took on a note of deep sorrow when he observed humanity. Michael’s situation in the cosmos became a difficult and tragic one, but also one which required an urgent solution at the moment when his earthly mission was imminent. Intellectuality could only be applied by humans to the body and its senses. They therefore had no insight into what their senses didn’t tell them; their field of sense revelation was nature, but only thought of as matter. On the one hand they no longer witnessed divine spirituality in natural forms, but rather something spiritless, which was nevertheless presumed to bring forth the spirit in which man lives. On the other hand, they only wanted to accept from the spiritual world what was revealed in historical accounts. Spiritual observation of the past was just as scorned then as it is now.

Only what pertained to the present, where Michael did not enter, still lived in human souls. People were glad to stand on “solid” ground. They believed this because they did not have to look for what they feared were fantastic assumptions about nature. But Michael was not happy; he had to fight against Lucifer and Ahriman in his own domain. That resulted in great tragic difficulty because Lucifer could approach people that much easier to the extent that Michael, who was also protecting the past, had to keep his distance from them. Thus a mighty battle for humanity took place in the spiritual world immediately bordering the earth between Michael and Lucifer and Ahriman, while on earth man acted contrary to what was beneficial for the development of his soul. Of course all this is applicable to European and American spiritual life. For Asia one would have to speak differently.

Goetheanum, December 14, 1924

Further Guidelines, relating to the previous Third Contemplation

134. At the very beginning of the Conscious Soul times, man felt that the previous imaginative image of the human being, his own essence, had been lost. Incapable of finding it in the Consciousness Soul, he sought it in natural science or history. He wanted the old image of man to arise in him once again.
135. He did not, however, arrive at a true feeling for the human being, but rather to illusions. But he did not realize this and saw in them something substantial.
136. Therefore, during the time previous to his earthly activity, Michael observed human evolution with sorrow and pain. For man scorned all spiritual contemplation and therewith cut himself off from what bound him to Michael.