Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts
GA 26
4. Michaels Task in the Sphere of Ahriman
[ 1 ] When man looks back on his evolution, and calls up before his inner eye the special characteristics which his spiritual life has assumed for the last five hundred years, he cannot help recognising, even within the ordinary consciousness and if but faintly, that since this period the whole earthly evolution of man stands at a significant and critical point.
[ 2 ] In the last study I referred from one point of view to this significant turning-point. One looks up from this point into the distant past of evolution; one sees how the soul-force in man which today is active as the force of intelligence, has changed in the course of time.
[ 3 ] In the present period, thoughts—dead abstract thoughts—make their appearance in the field of human consciousness. These thoughts are bound up with the physical body of man; man is obliged to recognise that they are of his own generating.
[ 4 ] In primitive times, when man turned his soul in the direction in which today his thoughts are revealed to him, he saw Divine-Spiritual Beings. He knew himself bound to these Beings in his whole nature, even down to the physical body; he was obliged to recognise himself as their offspring. But he not only owed his being to them, he also owed them what he accomplished. Man had no will of his own. What he did was a manifestation of Divine Will.
[ 5 ] By degrees, as described in the last study, man attained to a will of his own, at a period which dawned about five hundred years ago.
[ 6 ] But this stage was far more different from all those which preceded it than any of them from one another.
[ 7 ] When the thoughts pass over into the physical body, they lose their livingness. They are dead forms, spiritually dead. Previously, though belonging to man, they were at the same time organs of the Divine-Spiritual Beings to whom man belonged. They were actual will in man. And through them the man felt himself in living union with the spiritual world.
[ 8 ] With his dead thoughts he felt himself cut off from the spiritual world. He felt himself entirely removed to the physical world.
[ 9 ] But this means also that he is now in the sphere of the Ahrimanic spirituality. The Ahrimanic spirituality had no great power in the regions in which the Beings of the higher Hierarchies retained man as in their own sphere—when as in primitive ages the higher Beings themselves acted directly in man, or when, as in later times, they worked in him through their ensouled or living reflection. As long as this working of supersensible Beings within the doings of man continued—that is until about the fifteenth century—the Ahrimanic powers had, within the evolution of mankind, only a faintly echoing power, if one may express it so.
[ 10 ] The description of Ahriman's activity given in the Persian religion is not in contradiction with this statement. For that religion refers to Ahriman's activity, not within the human soul, but in a world bordering directly upon the world of the human soul. Ahriman's action, as there described, does indeed affect the world of the human soul from a neighbouring spirit-world, but it does not directly interfere.
[ 11 ] This direct interference has only become possible in the space of time which began about five hundred years ago.
[ 12 ] Thus man is at the close of a stream of evolution within which his nature has developed out of a divine spirituality which finally dies to itself in the abstract intelligence of man.
[ 13 ] Man has not remained in the divine-spiritual spheres in which he originated.
[ 14 ] What began five hundred years ago for the consciousness of man had already taken place for a wider sphere of his whole being at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place on the Earth. It was then that, imperceptibly to the consciousness of the majority of human beings at that time, human evolution gradually glided out of a world in which Ahriman has little power, into one in which his power is great. This gliding into a different stratum of the world was completed in the fifteenth century.
[ 15 ] Ahriman's influence upon man in this stratum of the world is possible and can act so destructively because the activity of the Gods related to man has died in this sphere. But man could not develop free-will in any other way than by entering a sphere in which the Divine-Spiritual Beings connected with him from the very beginning were not alive.
[ 16 ] Considered cosmically, the Mystery of the Sun is contained in the nature of this evolution of humanity. The Divine-Spiritual Beings connected with his origin were united with that which—up to that important turning-point in his evolution—man was able to perceive in the Sun. These Divine-Spiritual Beings have separated from the Sun and have left there only the part of them that has died, so that the bodily nature of man can now receive through the Sun only the power of dead thoughts.
[ 17 ] But these Beings have sent Christ from the Sun to the Earth, For the welfare of humanity Christ has united His being with the dead part of divine-spiritual existence in Ahriman's kingdom. Thus two things are possible for man, and through this possibility his freedom is guaranteed:—to turn to Christ consciously in the spiritual frame of mind which he possessed subconsciously during the descent from the vision of supersensible spirit-existence to the use of intellect; or to wish to feel his severance from spirit-existence and thus fall in the direction taken by the Ahrimanic powers.
[ 18 ] Humanity has been in this situation since the beginning of the fifteenth century. It was prepared—for everything takes place gradually in evolution—after the Mystery of Golgotha, which, as it is the greatest event that has happened on the Earth, is destined to rescue man from the destruction to which he must be exposed because he is to become a free being.
[ 19 ] Now we may say that what has hitherto been done by humanity itself within this situation has taken place half unconsciously. It has led to what is good in the modern Nature-conception which lives in abstract thought, and it has led to many practical principles of life, equally good.
[ 20 ] But the age in which man could unfold his life thus unconsciously in the dangerous sphere of Ahriman has come to an end.
[ 21 ] It is the duty of the investigator into the spiritual world to draw the attention of humanity to the spiritual fact that Michael has taken over the spiritual guidance of human affairs. Michael does what he has to do in such a way that he does not thereby wield an influence over human beings; but they may follow him in freedom, in order with the Christ power to find the way out of that sphere of Ahriman which they were obliged to enter.
[ 22 ] One who honestly, out of the deepest being of his soul, can feel himself one with Anthroposophy, understands this phenomenon of Michael truly. And Anthroposophy would like to be the message of this mission of Michael.
Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society
[ 23 ] 106. Michael goes upward again along the paths by which mankind descended, stage by stage in the evolution of the Spirit, down to the exercise of the Intelligence. Michael, however, will lead the Will upward, retracing the paths by which the Wisdom descended to the final stage of Intelligence.
[ 24 ] 107. From this moment onward in world-evolution, Michael merely shows his way, so that man may follow it in perfect freedom. This distinguishes the present guidance by Michael from all preceding guidances of the Archangels, including even those of Michael himself. For the former guidances did not only reveal their working. They worked themselves out in man. Hence in the working of his own life man could not be free.
[ 25 ] 108. To see and understand that this is so: this is the present task of man. For then he will find, with all the forces of his soul, his spiritual path within the Age of Michael.
Michaels Aufgabe in der Ahriman-Sphäre
[ 1 ] Wenn der Mensch auf seine Entwickelung zurückblickt und dabei die besondere Eigenheit sich zur geistigen Anschauung bringt, die sein Geistesleben seit fünf Jahrhunderten angenommen hat, so muß er schon innerhalb des gewöhnlichen Bewußtseins wenigstens ahnend erkennen, daß er seit diesen fünf Jahrhunderten an einem bedeutsamen Wendepunkte der ganzen irdischen Entwickelung der Menschheit steht.
[ 2 ] In der letzten Betrachtung habe ich, von einem Gesichtspunkte aus, auf diese bedeutsame Wendung hingewiesen. Da kann man hinauf blicken in die Vorzeit der Entwickelung. Man schaut, wie sich im Menschen die Seelenkraft gewandelt hat, die gegenwärtig als die Kraft der Intelligenz tätig ist.
[ 3 ] Jetzt erscheinen Gedanken, tote, abstrakte Gedanken im Felde des menschlichen Bewußtseins. Diese Gedanken sind an den physischen Menschenleib gebunden; der Mensch muß sie als die von ihm erzeugten anerkennen.
[ 4 ] In der Urzeit schaute der Mensch, wenn er seinen Seelenblick in die Richtung wendete, in der ihm heute die eigenen Gedanken sich offenbaren, göttlich-geistige Wesenheiten. An diese Wesenheiten fand der Mensch sein ganzes Sein, bis zum physischen Leib, gebunden; er mußte sich als das Erzeugnis dieser Wesenheiten anerkennen. Aber als solches Erzeugnis nicht nur sein Sein anerkennen, sondern auch sein Tun. Der Mensch hatte keinen eigenen Willen. Was er tat, war Erscheinung des göttlichen Willens.
[ 5 ] Stufenweise, wie dies geschildert wurde, ist es bis zum eigenen Willen gekommen, dessen Zeit vor ungefähr fünf Jahrhunderten eingetreten ist.
[ 6 ] Aber die letzte Etappe unterscheidet sich von allen vorangehenden viel stärker als diese untereinander.
[ 7 ] Indem die Gedanken an den physischen Leib übergehen, verlieren sie die Lebendigkeit. Sie werden tot; geistig tote Gebilde. Sie waren vorher, indem sie dem Menschen angehörten, noch immer zugleich Organe der göttlich-geistigen Wesenheiten, zu denen der Mensch gehört. Sie wollten im Menschen wesenhaft. Und dadurch fühlte sich der Mensch durch sie mit der geistigen Welt lebendig verbunden.
[ 8 ] Mit den toten Gedanken fühlt er sich abgelöst von der geistigen Welt. Er fühlt sich ganz versetzt in die physische Welt.
[ 9 ] Damit aber ist er in die Sphäre der ahrimanischen Geistigkeit versetzt. Diese hat keine starke Macht in den Gebieten, in denen die Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien den Menschen so in ihrer Sphäre halten, daß sie entweder, wie in Urzeiten, selbst im Menschen wirken oder, wie später, durch ihren beseelten oder lebendigen Abglanz. Solange dieses ins Menschenwirken hereingehende Wirken übersinnlicher Wesenheiten besteht, das heißt bis etwa zum fünfzehnten Jahrhundert, haben innerhalb der Menschheitsentwickelung die ahrimanischen Mächte nur eine - man möchte sagen - leise anklingende Macht.
[ 10 ] Was die persische Weltanschauung von dem Wirken Ahrimans schildert, ist damit nicht im Widerspruche. Denn diese Weltanschauung meint nicht ein Wirken Ahrimans innerhalb der menschlichen Seelen-Entfaltung, sondern ein solches in einer an die menschliche Seelenwelt unmittelbar angrenzenden Welt. Ahrimans Weben spielt da wohl herüber aus einer benachbarten Geistwelt in die menschliche Seelenwelt, aber es greift nicht unmittelbar ein.
[ 11 ] Dieses unmittelbare Eingreifen ist eben erst in der Zeitspanne möglich geworden, die vor etwa fünf Jahrhunderten begonnen hat.
[ 12 ] So steht der Mensch am Ende einer Entwickelungsströmung, innerhalb welcher sein Wesen aus solcher göttlicher Geistigkeit geworden ist, die zuletzt für sich in der abstrakten Intelligenz-Wesenheit des Menschen erstirbt.
[ 13 ] Der Mensch ist nicht in den Sphären verblieben, in denen er als in dieser göttlichen Geistigkeit seinen Ursprung hat.
[ 14 ] Was vor fünf Jahrhunderten für das Bewußtsein des Menschen begonnen hat, es hatte sich für einen weiteren Umfang seiner Gesamtwesenheit schon vollzogen zur Zeit, als das Mysterium von Golgatha in die irdische Erscheinung getreten ist. Da war es, daß unwahrnehmbar für das damals bei den meisten Menschen vorhandene Bewußtsein, allmählich die Menschheitsentwickelung aus einer Welt, in der Ahriman wenig, in eine solche hineinglitt, in der er viel Macht hat. Dieses Gleiten in eine andere Weltschichte erreichte ihre Vollendung eben im fünfzehnten Jahrhundert.
[ 15 ] Ahrimans Einfluß auf den Menschen in dieser Weltschichte ist deshalb möglich und kann verheerend wirken, weil in dieser Schichte das dem Menschen verwandte Götterwirken erstorben ist. Aber der Mensch konnte zur Entfaltung des freien Willens gar nicht auf eine andere Art kommen als dadurch, daß er sich in eine Sphäre begab, in der die vom Urbeginn mit ihm verbundenen göttlich-geistigen Wesen nicht lebendig waren.
[ 16 ] Kosmisch angesehen liegt in dem Wesen dieser menschlichen Entwickelung das Sonnen-Mysterium. Mit dem, was der Mensch bis zu dem bedeutsamen Wendepunkte seiner Entwickelung in der Sonne wahrnehmen konnte, waren die göttlich-geistigen Wesenheiten seines Ursprungs verbunden. Diese haben sich von der Sonne losgelöst und auf dieser nur ihr Erstorbenes zurückgelassen, so daß der Mensch in seine Leiblichkeit durch die Sonne nurmehr die Kraft toter Gedanken aufnehmen kann.
[ 17 ] Aber diese Wesenheiten haben den Christus aus der Sonne zur Erde gesandt. Dieser hat sein Wesen zum Heile der Menschheit mit der Erstorbenheit des göttlich-geistigen Seins in Ahrimans Reich verbunden. So hat die Menschheit die zweifache Möglichkeit, die die Gewähr ihrer Freiheit ist: zu Christus sich wenden in der Geistgesinnung, die beim Heruntersteigen aus der Anschauung des übersinnlichen Geistdaseins bis zum Gebrauche der Intelligenz unterbewußt vorhanden war, jetzt in bewußter Art; oder sich erfühlen wollen in der Losgelöstheit von diesem Geistdasein und damit verfallen in die Orientierung, die die ahrimanischen Mächte nehmen.
[ 18 ] In dieser Situation ist die Menschheit seit dem Beginn des fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts. Vorbereitet ist diese - in der Entwickelung geschieht ja alles allmählich - seit dem Mysterium von Golgatha, das als das größte Erden-Ereignis dazu bestimmt ist, den Menschen vor dem Verderben zu retten, dem er ausgesetzt sein muß, weil er ein freies Wesen sein soll.
[ 19 ] Man kann nun sagen: was von Seite der Menschheit bisher innerhalb dieser Situation geschehen ist, vollzog sich halb-unbewußt. Und in dieser Art hat es zu dem Guten der in abstrakten Ideen lebenden Naturanschauung und zu manchen ebenso guten Prinzipien der Lebenshaltung geführt.
[ 20 ] Aber dieses Zeitalter, in dem der Mensch unbewußt in der gefährlichen Ahriman-Sphäre sein Dasein entfalten darf, ist vorüber.
[ 21 ] Der Erforscher der geistigen Welt muß heute die Menschheit auf die geistige Tatsache aufmerksam machen, daß Michael die geistige Führung der Menschheitsangelegenheiten übernommen hat. Michael vollbringt, was er zu vollbringen hat, so, daß er die Menschen nicht dadurch beeinflußt; aber sie können in Freiheit ihm folgen, um mit der Christus-Kraft den Weg aus der Ahriman-Sphäre wieder herauszufinden, in die sie notwendig kommen mußten.
[ 22 ] Wer ehrlich, aus dem tiefsten Wesen seiner Seele, sich mit Anthroposophie eins fühlen kann, der ist ein rechter Versteher dieses Michael-Phänomens. Und Anthroposophie möchte die Botschaft von dieser Michael-Mission sein.
Weitere Leitsätze, die für die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft vom Goetheanum ausgesendet werden
[ 23 ] 106. Michael geht die Wege wieder aufwärts, welche die Menschheit abwärts auf den Stufen der Geistesentwickelung bis zur Intelligenzbetätigung gegangen ist. Nur wird Michael den Willen aufwärts die Bahnen führen, welche die Weisheit bis zu ihrer letzten Stufe, der Intelligenz, abwärts gegangen ist.
[ 24 ] 107. Wie Michael von diesem Zeitpunkte der Weltentwickelung seinen Weg bloß zeigt, so daß ihn der Mensch in Freiheit wandeln kann, das unterscheidet diese Michael-Führung von allen früheren Erzengel-Führungen, ja von allen früheren Michael-Führungen selbst. Diese Führungen wirkten im Menschen; sie zeigten nicht bloß ihr Wirken, so daß der Mensch in dem seinigen damals nicht frei sein konnte.
[ 25 ] 108. Dieses einzusehen, ist des Menschen gegenwärtige Aufgabe, damit er mit seiner ganzen Seele seinen Weg des Geistes innerhalb des Michael-Zeitalters finden könne.
Michael's task in the Ahriman sphere
[ 1 ] When man looks back on his development and thereby brings to his spiritual view the particular peculiarity which his spiritual life has assumed for five centuries, he must recognize, already within the ordinary consciousness, at least intuitively, that since these five centuries he has stood at a significant turning point in the whole earthly development of mankind.
[ 2 ] In the last observation I referred to this significant turning point from one point of view. There one can look up into the prehistory of development. You can see how the power of the soul has changed in man, which is currently active as the power of intelligence.
[ 3 ] Now thoughts, dead, abstract thoughts appear in the field of human consciousness. These thoughts are bound to the physical human body; man must recognize them as those generated by him.
[ 4 ] In primeval times, when man turned his soul's gaze in the direction in which his own thoughts reveal themselves to him today, he saw divine-spiritual entities. Man found his whole being, up to the physical body, bound to these entities; he had to recognize himself as the product of these entities. But as such a product he had to recognize not only his being, but also his doing. Man had no will of his own. What he did was a manifestation of the divine will.
[ 5 ] In stages, as this has been described, it has come to its own will, the time of which occurred about five centuries ago.
[ 6 ] But the last stage is much more different from all the preceding ones than these are from each other.
[ 7 ] When thoughts pass over to the physical body, they lose their vitality. They become dead; spiritually dead entities. Previously, by belonging to the human being, they were still at the same time organs of the divine-spiritual entities to which the human being belongs. They wanted to be in man. And through them, man felt a living connection with the spiritual world.
[ 8 ] With the dead thoughts, he feels detached from the spiritual world. He feels completely transported into the physical world.
[ 9 ] Thus, however, he is transferred into the sphere of the ahrimanic spirituality. This has no strong power in the regions in which the entities of the higher hierarchies hold man in their sphere in such a way that they either, as in primeval times, work in man themselves or, as later, through their animated or living reflection. As long as this work of supersensible entities entering into human activity exists, that is until about the fifteenth century, the ahrimanic powers have only a - one might say - faintly insinuating power within the development of mankind.
[ 10 ] What the Persian worldview describes of the work of Ahriman is not in contradiction with this. For this worldview does not mean an activity of Ahriman within the unfolding of the human soul, but such an activity in a world directly adjacent to the human soul world. Ahriman's weaving certainly plays over from a neighboring spirit world into the human soul world, but it does not intervene directly.
[ 11 ] This direct intervention has only become possible in the period of time that began about five centuries ago.
[ 12 ] So man stands at the end of a current of development within which his being has become of such divine spirituality that ultimately dies for itself in the abstract intelligence-being of man.
[ 13 ] Man has not remained in the spheres in which he has his origin as in this divine spirituality.
[ 14 ] What began five centuries ago for the consciousness of man had already taken place for a wider scope of his total being at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha entered into earthly manifestation. It was then that, imperceptibly for the consciousness of most people at that time, the development of mankind gradually slipped from a world in which Ahriman had little power into one in which he had much power. This slide into another world history reached its completion in the fifteenth century.
[ 15 ] Ahriman's influence on man in this world history is possible and can have a devastating effect because in this layer the work of the gods related to man has died. But man could not come to the development of free will in any other way than by entering a sphere in which the divine-spiritual beings connected with him from the beginning were not alive.
[ 16 ] Cosmically speaking, the essence of this human development lies in the mystery of the sun. The divine-spiritual entities of his origin were connected with what man could perceive up to the significant turning point of his development in the sun. These have detached themselves from the sun and left behind on it only their first dead, so that man can only absorb into his corporeality through the sun the power of dead thoughts.
[ 17 ] But these beings have sent the Christ from the sun to earth. He has combined his essence with the immortality of the divine-spiritual being in Ahriman's realm for the salvation of mankind. Thus mankind has the twofold possibility, which is the guarantee of its freedom: to turn to Christ in the spiritual attitude which was subconsciously present when descending from the contemplation of the supersensible spiritual existence up to the use of intelligence, now in a conscious way; or to want to feel itself in detachment from this spiritual existence and thus fall into the orientation taken by the Ahrimanic powers.
[ 18 ] Mankind has been in this situation since the beginning of the fifteenth century. It has been prepared - in development everything happens gradually - since the Mystery of Golgotha, which, as the greatest event on earth, is destined to save man from the perdition to which he must be exposed because he is to be a free being.
[ 19 ] It can now be said that what has happened so far on the part of mankind within this situation has taken place half-unconsciously. And in this way it has led to the good of the view of nature living in abstract ideas and to some equally good principles of the attitude to life.
[ 20 ] But this age, in which man is allowed to unfold his existence unconsciously in the dangerous Ahriman sphere, is over.
[ 21 ] The investigator of the spiritual world must draw humanity's attention today to the spiritual fact that Michael has taken over the spiritual leadership of human affairs. Michael accomplishes what he has to accomplish in such a way that he does not influence people through it; but they can follow him in freedom in order to find their way out of the Ahriman sphere again with the Christ-power, into which they necessarily had to come.
[ 22 ] Whoever can honestly, from the deepest essence of his soul, feel at one with anthroposophy, is a true understanding of this Michael phenomenon. And anthroposophy wants to be the message of this Michael mission.
Further guiding principles sent out by the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society
[ 23 ] 106 Michael goes upwards again on the paths which humanity has gone downwards on the stages of spiritual development up to intelligence activity. Only Michael will lead the will upwards along the paths that wisdom has followed downwards to its final stage, intelligence.
[ 24 ] 107 How Michael shows his path only from this time of world development, so that man can walk it in freedom, distinguishes this Michael guidance from all earlier archangel guidance, indeed from all earlier Michael guidance itself. These guides worked in man; they did not merely show their work, so that man could not be free in his own at that time.
[ 25 ] 108. To realize this is man's present task, so that he may find his way of spirit with his whole soul within the Michael Age.