עברית The Age of Michael will only begin when humans will be found who are on fire to learn the science and art of the mysteries of community building, that Rudolf Steiner also called the building of “the chariot of Michael”.
96 years ago, today, Rudolf Steiner said these words to the young people in the last lecture of the cycle entitled "The Younger Generation", which has already a strong testamentary tone about it. (15.10.1922, GA 217). In 4 years, it will be a whole century, when even the very last remnants of the life force that Rudolf Steiner gave in the physical world will finally entirely die out. And Rudolf Steiner’s words to the young in heart, soul and spirit continue to loom large for more than hundred years: what would it take for the age of Michael to begin?
Now that's a worthy challenge for the present and future hours, days, weeks, months and years: What must we do now in the midst of the terrible decline of humanity accelerating and intensifying for more than a century? In all my lectures and books, I emphasize this fact again and again: We are at the end of the second decade of the 2nd Michaelic century, which is the middle and crucial century, the middle of the so short three Michaelic centuries: how would the age of Michael finally begin?
From my experience, the answer can only be: When humans will be found who are on fire to learn the science and art of the mysteries of modern community building, that is, embodying anthroposophy until they begin to become young again, building the needed community vessel, that Rudolf Steiner also called in the same lecture, the building of “the chariot of Michael”, that can be built, however, only from of the purest life forces of the young in heart, soul and spirit.
But what does it mean really to become young in real anthroposophical practice? It means to do consciously with spiritual science what the body does unconsciously with the foods we consume:
“If one penetrates the human organic bodily process, permeated as it is with soul and spirit, one sees how matter is completely destroyed and then created anew. In the human organism we have a continual process of destruction of matter so that matter within the human organism can be newly created. Matter is continually being changed into nothingness and newly created in us”.
Only this new created spiritual substance and life can make us young again. Only what is created anew in this way is real anthroposophy not as idea and ideal, feeling or sentiment, but as a whole human force. What was at first dead must consciously be annihilated, and then consciously resurrected, becoming real, embodied, anthroposophical life substance and force, that flows in the physical and etheric veins as real life blood, fired with the greatest enthusiasm; and only this becoming young again is the life force from which the chariot of Michael, the mystery of community building, is happening as a real spiritual-human Event, because “this chariot reveals itself as coming forth from the young, growing human being...”.
When we place these words at the heart of the whole human being and the whole human development (enlarging the scope of the specific teacher-child context in which they were spoken in this occasion), they will begin to direct our attention to the future mysteries of community building, in the right way:
“For, in fact, if the educator is a complete human being he receives as much from the child [in oneself] as he gives to the child. Whoever cannot learn from the child what he brings down from the spiritual world, cannot teach the child about the mysteries of earthly existence. Only when the child becomes our educator by bringing his message to us from the spiritual world will the child be ready to receive from us tidings of earthly life”.
This must be our real contribution to the present and future development of humanity in the 21st century: to create a self-intensifying living stream between an older generation, that embodies spiritual science as a whole human creative force, which means becoming younger again, and a physically younger generation, that can experience the older as truthfully young. And if this living mutual exchange between the two kinds of young souls will begin, we can create the foundation of a living intensification of anthroposophy through time, from one generation to the next, from one decade to the coming one...
We must build the chariot, the vehicle for Michael
15th October, 1922 | Stuttgart| GA0217
Last lecture to the younger generation
How can you really find within a book what is Spirit? For the spiritual is something living. The spiritual is not like bones. The spiritual is like the blood. And the blood needs vessels in which to flow. What we recognize as spiritual needs vessels. These vessels are growing human beings. Into these vessels we must pour the spiritual in order that it may hold together. Otherwise we shall have the spirit so alive that it immediately flows away. We must so preserve our knowledge that it can flow into the developing human being.
Then we shall make the chariot for Michael, then we shall be able to become Michael's companions. And what you seek, my dear friends, you will best attain through being conscious of wishing to become companions of Michael. You must once again be able to follow a purely spiritual Being who is not incarnated on the earth.
For Michael needs, as it were, a chariot by means of which to enter our civilization. And this chariot reveals itself to the true educator as coming forth from the young, growing human being, yes, even from the child. Here the power of the pre-earthly life is still working. Here we find, if we nurture it, what becomes the chariot by means of which Michael will enter our civilization. By educating in the right way we are preparing Michael's chariot for his entrance into our civilization.
We must no longer nurture the dragon by cultivating a science with thoughts unconcerned with penetrating into the human soul, into man, so as to develop him. We must build the chariot, the vehicle for Michael. This needs living manhood, a living humanity such as flows out of supersensible worlds into the earthly life and manifests there, precisely in the early periods of human life. But for such an education we must have a heart. We must learn — speaking pictorially — to make ourselves allies of the approaching Michael if we want to become true teachers. More is accomplished for the art of education than by any theoretical principles, if what we receive into ourselves works so that we feel ourselves Michael's confederates, allies of the spiritual being who is entering the earth, for whom we prepare a vehicle by carrying out a living art of education of the young. Far better than all theoretical educational principles is to lift up our eyes to Michael who, since the last third of the nineteenth century, has been striving to enter our outworn dragon-civilization...
Man's participation in spirituality has been wrested from him.
Spirituality, but now in full consciousness, must become living again, that we do not merely experience what can be perceived by the senses but experience once more what can be perceived by the spirit. The age of Michael must begin. In fact, everything that has fallen to man's lot since the fifteenth century has come to him from outside. In the age of Michael, the human being will have to find his own relation to the spiritual world. And learning, knowledge, will acquire a quite different kind of value.
Now in the ancient Mysteries what was in the libraries was more of the nature of monuments upon which was inscribed what was intended to pass into man's memory. These libraries contained what cannot be compared in any way with our books. For all leaders in the Mysteries directed their pupils to another kind of reading. They said: Yes, there is a library — but they did not call it so — and this library is out there in the human beings walking about. Learn to read them! Learn to read the mysteries that are inscribed in every man. We must return to this. Only we must come to it, as it were, from another side so that as teachers we know: All accumulation of learning, of knowledge, is worthless. As such it is dead and gets its life only from the dragon. We should have the feeling that in wishing “to know,” knowledge cannot be stored up here or there, for then it would at once fall apart. In literature, what is Spirit can only be touched upon lightly.
How can you really find within a book what is Spirit? For the spiritual is something living. The spiritual is not like bones. The spiritual is like the blood. And the blood needs vessels in which to flow. What we recognize as spiritual needs vessels. These vessels are growing human beings. Into these vessels we must pour the spiritual in order that it may hold together. Otherwise we shall have the spirit so alive that it immediately flows away. We must so preserve our knowledge that it can flow into the developing human being.
Then we shall make the chariot for Michael, then we shall be able to become Michael's companions. And what you seek, my dear friends, you will best attain through being conscious of wishing to become companions of Michael. You must once again be able to follow a purely spiritual Being who is not incarnated on the earth...
For, in fact, if the educator is a complete human being he receives as much from the child as he gives to the child. Whoever cannot learn from the child [in oneself] what he brings down from the spiritual world, cannot teach the child about the mysteries of earthly existence. Only when the child becomes our educator by bringing his message to us from the spiritual world will the child be ready to receive from us tidings of earthly life.