Ahriman vs Michael

Intellectualism vs Heart-thinking

Michael fighting Ahrimanic forces

In the section The Experiences of Michael in the Course of His Cosmic Mission we see human evolution through the eyes of the Archangel Michael. We again read how Michael, the ruler of Cosmic intelligence, initially works with his intellect in the world and in man, which is visible for man as revelations. Then the working of Michael's intellect in the world becomes invisible for man: intellect reemerges inside him:

And he wills the further progress in his domain, which consists in this:—that that which works as intelligence throughout the whole Cosmos should later become concentrated within the human individuality. As a result the following takes place:—there comes a time in the evolution of the world when the Cosmos subsists no longer on its own present intelligence, but on the cosmic intelligence belonging to the past. For the present intelligence must then be sought in the stream of human evolution.

Humans are offered the gift of intellect, in order to experience individuality and freedom. Freedom and individuality comes with the risk of isolation. With good and bad choices. We can choose to stay in connection with our spiritual roots, or to deny them. Our intellect can become ignorant of the spiritual, and only focused on the physical. Or we can acknowledge our roots, and Michael:

What Michael desires is to keep the intelligence, which is developing within humanity, permanently in connection with the Divine-Spiritual Beings.

But in this he is meeting with opposition. What the Gods accomplish in their evolution, in that they release the cosmic intellectuality so that it may become a part of human nature, stands revealed as a fact within the world. If there are beings with power to perceive this fact, then they can take advantage of it. And such beings do indeed exist. They are the Ahrimanic beings. It is their nature to absorb into themselves all that comes forth from the Gods as intelligence. They have the capacity to unite with their own being the sum-total of all intellectuality, and thus they become the greatest, the most comprehensive and penetrating intelligences in the Cosmos.

‘the sum-total of all intellectuality', this sounds like AI (in this article Paul Kingsnorth, not an Anthroposophist, connects Ahriman with the internet etc) … Our intellect, when not used in the right way, can diverge us from the spiritual, and bring us further into materialism. This is an important notion when studying Anthroposophy, because initially it can be an intellectual endeavour for some of us, specially when meeting Anthroposophy from the philosophical perspective. In other lectures Steiner describes that the intellect used in modern science, already 100 years ago, is Ahrimanic and driving us away from the spiritual:

"Now, in order that his incarnation may take the most profitable form, it is of the utmost interest to Ahriman that people should perfect themselves in all our illusory modern science, but without knowing that it is illusion. Ahriman has the greatest possible interest in instructing men in mathematics, but not in instructing them that mathematical-mechanistic concepts of the universe are merely illusions. He is intensely interested in bringing men chemistry, physics, biology and so on, as they are presented today in all their remarkable effects, but he is interested in making men believe that these are absolute truths, not that they are only points of view, like photographs from one side. If you photograph a tree from one side, it can be a correct photograph, yet it does not give a picture of the whole tree. If you photograph it from four sides, you can in any case get an idea of it. To conceal from mankind that in modern intellectual, rationalistic science with its supplement of a superstitious empiricism, one is dealing with a great illusion, a deception—that men should not recognize this is of the greatest possible interest to Ahriman. It would be a triumphant experience for him if the scientific superstition which grips all circles today and by which men even want to organize their social science, should prevail into the third millennium. He would have the greatest success if he could then come as a human being into Western civilization and find the scientific superstition.”¹

So here we are in the third millennium. Here and there, marginally, the science superstition is showing cracks. But in the mainstream, specially since religion has lost its influence there, our politicians but also our universities, are still more and more guided by the kind of intellectualism driving us away from the spiritual. This has become worse since science started to rely more and more on observation in the physical world, and less on theory, to become an empirical science. Whereas Steiner makes clear in his 'Theory of Knowledge (GA02)’ that knowing only occurs when the idea (theory) and the observation (the empirical) integrate, in modern science theory becomes less and less important. As the philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes:

“Not long ago, Chris Anderson—the editor-in-chief of Wired—published a provocative article entitled “The End of Theory.” In it, he claimed that the inconceivably large volumes of data now available have made theoretical models entirely superfluous: ‘Today companies like Google, which have grown up in an era of massively abundant data, don’t have to settle for wrong models. Indeed, they don’t have to settle for models at all.’ Instead, they analyze data for patterns of affinity or dependency. The hypothetical models of theory are to be replaced with the direct comparison of data. Correlation is more important than causality: 'Out with every theory of human behavior, from linguistics to sociology. Forget taxonomy, ontology, and psychology. Who knows why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.’

Anderson’s thesis rests on a weak and simplistic conception of theory. Theory offers more than a model or a hypothesis to be proven or disproven by means of experimentation. Strong theories such as Plato’s doctrine of Ideas or Hegel’s phenomenology of Spirit are not models that could be replaced by data analysis. They are founded on thinking in the emphatic sense. Theory represents an essential decision that causes the world to appear wholly different—in a wholly different light. Theory is a primary, primordial decision, which determines what counts and what does not— what is or should be, and what does not matter. As highly selective narration, it cuts a clearing of differentiation through untrodden terrain.”²

It is the egoistic intellect driving us away from the spiritual. It is the intellect that is too strongly influenced by the individual point of view, the opinion created by the individual upbringing, culture and education. This intellect was needed to create an identity, but when not transcended can lead to conflict. Steiner was way ahead of his time to show that with alternative facts one can prove anything:

‘The present intellect, lies in a stratum of being where it does not reach down to realities. One can therefore prove something quite strictly, and also prove its opposite. It is possible today to prove spiritualism on the one hand and materialism on the other. And people may fight against each other from equally good standpoints because present-day intellectualism is in an upper layer of reality and does not go down into the depths of being. And it is the same with party opinions. A man who does not look deeper but simply lets himself be accepted into a certain party-circle — by reason of his education, heredity, circumstances of life and State — quite honestly believes — or so he thinks — in the possibility of proving the tenets of the party into which he has slipped, as he says. And then — then he fights against someone else who has slipped into another party! And the one is just as right as the other. This calls forth chaos and confusion over mankind that will gradually become greater and greater unless men see through it. Ahriman makes use of this confusion in order to prepare the triumph of his incarnation and to drive men with increasing force into what they find so difficult to realize — namely, that by intellectual or modern scientific reasoning today, one can prove anything and equally well prove its opposite. The point is for us to recognize that everything can be proved and for that reason to examine the proofs put forward in science today. It is only in natural science that reality is shown by the facts; in no other field can one consider intellectual proofs valid. The only way to escape the danger that threatens if one accepts the lures of Ahriman and his desire to drive men deeper and deeper into these things, is to realize through anthroposophical spiritual science that human knowledge must be sought for in a stratum deeper than that in which the validity of our proofs arises.’³

In another lecture Steiner says ‘Contradictory statements may be reconciled if all the factors are taken into consideration.’ ⁴ . This gives a direction for the intellect that brings us back to the spiritual. It is not a differentiating thinking, it is a reconciling thinking. In this same lecture, Steiner calls this heart-thinking:

“In ordinary thinking everyone knows that reflection is necessary in order to arrive at a particular truth. The mind moves from one concept to another and after logical deliberation and reflection reaches what is called ‘knowledge’. It is different when we want to recognise the truth in connection with genuine symbols or emblems. They are before us like objects, but the thinking we apply to them cannot be confounded with ordinary brain-thinking. Whether they are true or false is directly evident without any reflection being necessary as in the case of ordinary thinking. What there is to say about the higher worlds is directly evident. As soon as the pictures are before us we know what we have to say about them to ourselves and to others. This is the characteristic of heart-thinking.”

This makes me think of the exceptional state as described in the Philosophy of freedom, where thought becomes experience, subject and object merge, and we find a basis of truth that goes beyond intellectual individual opinions. This is also the living thinking Steiner refers to. It’s like thoughts that take root, start to grow by themselves, and this taking root and growing justifies their presence. They take root in the cosmic order, and therefore can be called cosmic intelligence. This is the intelligence Michael wishes us to reach for:

Michael cannot force human beings to do anything. For it is just through intelligence having come entirely into the sphere of the human individuality that compulsion has ceased. But in the supersensible world first bordering on this visible world, Michael can unfold as a majestic, exemplary action that which he wishes to display. He can show himself there with an aura of light, with the gesture of a Spirit Being, in which all the splendour and glory of the past intelligence of the Gods is revealed. He can there show how the action of this intelligence of the past is more true, more beautiful and more virtuous in the present than all that is contained in the immediate intelligence of the present day, which streams to us from Ahriman in deceptive, misleading splendour. He can point out how for him Ahriman will always be the lower spirit, under his feet.

1. The Ahrimanic Deception, GA 193

2. Byung-Chul Han, The Agony of Eros

3. The Ahrimanic Deception, GA 193

4. Macrocosm and Microcosm, GA 119, lecture 9