The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The State of the Human Soul Before the Dawn of the Michael Age

[ 1 ] I would like to continue with the description of the event in England in the next issue, after it has concluded. Today, I would like to include a reflection here that follows on from the ideas in “The Dawn of the Michael Age,” as found in No. 32. This Michaelic age has emerged in the development of humanity after the predominance of intellectual thought formation on the one hand and the human way of seeing things directed toward the outer sensory world—the physical world—on the other.

[ 2 ] The formation of thought is in its own essence not a development towards the materialistic. That which approached man as inspired in older ages, the world of ideas, became the property of the human soul in the time that preceded the Michael epoch. This no longer receives the ideas "from above" from the spiritual content of the cosmos; it actively brings them up from man's own spirituality. In this way, man has become mature enough to reflect on his own spiritual essence. Previously, he did not penetrate to this depth of his own being. He saw in himself, as it were, the drop that had separated itself from the sea of cosmic spirituality for earthly life in order to reunite with it afterwards.

[ 3 ] The formation of thought taking place in man is a progress in human self-knowledge. Seen in the supersensible, the matter presents itself thus: The spiritual powers, which can be referred to by the name of Michael, administered the ideas in the spiritual cosmos. Man experienced these ideas by participating with his soul in the life of the Michael world. This experience has now become his own. This has led to a temporary separation of man from the Michael world. With the inspired thoughts of prehistoric times, man also received the spiritual contents of the world. When this inspiration ceased and man formed the thoughts through his own activity, he was referred to the perception of the senses in order to have a content for these thoughts. Thus man first had to fill the spirituality he had attained with material content. He fell into the materialistic view in the age that brought his own spiritual being to a level higher than the preceding ones.

[ 4 ] This can easily be misjudged; one can only note the "fall" into materialism alone, and then be sad about it. But while the observation of this age had to confine itself to the outer physical world, a purified spirituality of man, existing in itself, unfolded within the soul as experience. This spirituality must now in the Michael Age no longer remain unconscious experience, but become conscious of its own nature. This means the entry of the Michael-entity into the human soul. For a certain time, man has filled his own spirituality with the materiality of nature; he is to fill it again with his own spirituality as cosmic content.

[ 5 ] The formation of thought lost itself for a while in the matter of the cosmos; it must find itself again in the cosmic spirit. Warmth can enter the cold, abstract world of thought, spirit-reality filled with essence. This represents the dawn of the Michael Age.

[ 6 ] Only in the separation from the thought-being of the world could the consciousness of freedom grow in the depths of the human soul. What came from the heights had to be found again from the depths. That is why the development of this consciousness of freedom was initially connected with a knowledge of nature that was only directed towards the external. While man unconsciously educated his spirit inwardly to the purity of ideas, his senses were directed outwardly only to the material, which in no way interfered with what first shone forth as a tender germ in the soul.

[ 7 ] But the experience of the spiritual and thus the spiritual view can re-enter the perception of the external material in a new way. The knowledge of nature gained under the sign of materialism can be grasped in a spiritual way in the inner life of the soul. Michael, who has spoken "from above", can be heard "from within", where he will take up his new abode. Speaking more imaginatively, this can be expressed in this way: The sun-like, which man absorbed through long ages only from the cosmos, will become luminous within the soul. Man will learn to speak of an "inner sun". He will therefore know himself in his life between birth and death no less as an earth being; but he will recognize his own being walking on earth as sun-led. He will learn to perceive as truth that within him an entity places him in a light which shines on the earthly existence but is not kindled in it. At the dawn of the Michael Age it may still seem as if all this could be quite distant to mankind; but it is near "in spirit"; it only has to be "seen". On this fact, that the ideas of man not only remain "thinking", but in thinking become "seeing", immeasurably much depends.

Further guiding principles sent out by the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 8 ] 85. In the waking day-consciousness man first experiences himself in the present world-age. This experience conceals from him that within wakefulness the third hierarchy is present in his experience.

[ 9 ] 86. In dream consciousness man experiences his own being united in a chaotic way with the spiritual being of the world. If the imaginative is placed opposite the dream consciousness as its other pole, man becomes aware that the second hierarchy is present in his experience.

[ 10 ] 87. In dreamless sleep consciousness, man experiences his own being united with the spiritual being of the world without his own consciousness. If the sleep consciousness is contrasted with the inspired consciousness as its other pole, man becomes aware that the first hierarchy is present in his experience.