XIII. Before the Door of the Spiritual Soul

All that now remained living in men's souls came from that region of the external present world into which Michael does not enter. Man was glad to be standing upon ‘secure’ ground. He fancied the ground secure because he abstained from looking for any Thoughts in Nature, in which he would at once have suspected the unreliability of a spontaneous fancy. But Michael was not glad. He was obliged to remain on the far side, aloof from men, and carry on the war in his own region against Lucifer and Ahriman. Hence came the great and tragic difficulty; for Lucifer can approach Man all the more easily, the more Michael—who is also the preserver of his past—is obliged to keep away from him. And so a stormy contest was being waged on Man's behalf, in the spiritual world next to earth, by Michael against Lucifer and Ahriman: whilst Man himself on earthly territory was busying his soul in opposition to the healing forces of his own evolution.