XII. Before the Door of the Spiritual Soul

The difficulties—impossibilities indeed—which Michael meets with, as already described, in conveying his impulses to the souls of men, are connected with the fact that he himself will not bring his own being into any sort of contact with the physical Present of earth-life. His will is to abide by the same interconnection of forces which existed for spirits of his kind—and also for men— in the Past. Any contact with that element with which Man, being situated in present physical earth-life, of necessity comes in contact could only be felt by Michael as a defilement of his being. Now in ordinary human life, as we know, what the soul realizes in her spiritual life, works on from thence into her physical earth-life; conversely, the physical earth-life reacts upon the other: a reaction which, in particular, finds its expression in a man's tone of mind, and in his inclination towards some particular feature of earthly life. Some such interaction of the two things is more especially the case—as a rule, though not always—with persons in public life. That is why, with many of the reformers, the obstacles to Michael's work were really very great.