Angels exist whether we believe in them or not, according to Steiner. Certainly, people of old experienced them as we can surmise from the many artifacts of antiquity that would otherwise make no sense. The realms of the angels of the Third Hierarchy, which we’ve discussed over the last year, can be referred to by the names we know from long ago: Angels, Archangels, and Archai. Steiner refers to them using many names.
He sometimes refers to Angels as Sons of Life or Sons of Twilight, to Archangels as Spirits of Fire, and Archai as Spirits of Personality or Time Spirits. As we learn more about these higher Beings, we see how these other names are fitting.
We no longer have direct experience of the angels and many of us no longer believe in them—or the spiritual world—at all. We are thus unable to fully understand ourselves or the world. Steiner says one way we can see ourselves is that our physical body is just 1/3 of us and our soul and spirit comprise the larger percentage, the other two-thirds. Yet, we toil away serving the physical world day in and day out for approximately 2/3 of every 24-hour period. Then we spend the remaining 1/3 of that time unconscious. Huh. What would our world look like if we spent some of our conscious time contemplating and working on our soul and spirit?
Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:
Look at the modern, materialistic world with all its commotion of people hurrying to and fro from morning till night, judging and measuring everything in terms of material worth: they do not suspect that, behind all this, the spirit lives and weaves. People go to sleep of an evening, never imagining that they are anything but unconscious and that they will wake to another day on the physical plane. People go to sleep, oblivious, after another rushed working day without considering life’s meaning. The spiritual seeker who has heard the word of spirit will know something that is not theory or doctrine: they know that they are given soul warmth and soul light. They also know that, during the day only to take in images of physical life, their lives would become desiccated and barren and any gains would perish. When you lie down to sleep at night you enter a world of spirit, diving down with all your soul powers into a realm of higher spiritual beings, towards whose stature your very being is intended to grow. On waking, you return, newly strengthened from a spiritual world and—consciously or unconsciously—divine spiritual vitality spills out over everything you receive from the physical plane. Out of eternity do you every morning rejuvenate what is temporal in your existence.
We transform the word of the spirit into the feeling we can have at evening: I am not only departing into unconsciousness, but I am immersing myself in a world where the beings of eternity dwell and among whose ranks my own being is intended to belong. I go to sleep with the feeling: Onwards into spiritual worlds! And I awake with the feeling: Forth from the spirit! We will then be filled with the feeling into which spirit word is transformed when tended here from day to day, from week to week, in a life dedicated to spiritual knowledge. Then will the spirit become life in us, then will we go to sleep and wake up differently.
Excerpt from: Lecture by Rudolf Steiner, Dec. 21, 1909, Berlin.
The words Steiner uses above—desiccated and barren—are ominous. These words call forth images of the cracked and lifeless earth of former lakes and rivers; they are the very words that refer to drought. We know we cannot survive without water, so these images rouse a fear for the future. Fortunately, some people are creatively working on this problem by collecting rainwater, using drip irrigation, and harvesting water from the air using solar power that could produce water even in desert climates. We didn’t always need to do this, but we must meet the reality of a changing world.
Spiritual science reveals that the human being is also changing, and what once met our spiritual needs in prior times is no longer sufficient. Steiner wants us to see that the drought in our spiritual lives needs to be addressed, not ignored; he says that it is urgent that we do so. We may not feel the urgency of this spiritual drought yet, especially with all our compelling distractions. Once we set aside these diversions though, we are faced with the state of our own spirit; our subconscious thirst for spiritual renewal suddenly becomes manifest.
As we learn about the many beings and laws of the spiritual world in earnest, we will be surprised how even our initial efforts are transformational, like water to a parched throat or an arid land. We need to hydrate.