XXII. Men's Freedom and the Michael Age

> 1. In mental conception, Man is living with his Spiritual soul not in Real Existence, but in Picture-Existence—in Non-Existence. Thereby he is freed from experiencing a common life with the Cosmos. Pictures do not compel. Only real existence compels. And if Man nevertheless suits his actions to the pictures, it is done quite independently of the pictures, that is to say, in freedom from the world. > 2. At the instant of any such act of mental conception, the only thing that links Man to the real existence of the world, is what he himself has grown to be from the Past, through his previous earth-lives and lives between death and new birth. > 3. This is a leap, as regards the Cosmos, over Non-Existence—a leap which Man is only enabled to achieve through the action of Michael and through the Christ-Impulse.