"I am the light of the world"

 

“I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”  — John 8:12

Rudolf Steiner: 

Of all these Archangels, the number of whom is seven, six have to a very considerable extent (not entirely — Gabriel most of all — but even he not altogether) — six, as I said, have to a very considerable extent resigned themselves to the fact that man is faced with Maya, with the great illusion, because, in his quality which no longer accords with his original pre-destination, he has in fact descended from his first stature. Michael alone, Michael is the only one (I say again, I am forced to use banal expressions) Michael is the only one who would not give in. Michael — and with him those who are the Michael spirits even among men — continues to take this stand: I am the Ruler of the Intelligence. And the Intelligence must be so ruled that there shall not enter into it any illusion nor false fantasy, nor anything that would restrict the human being to a dark and vague and cloudy vision of the world.

My dear friends: to see how Michael stands there as the greatest stalwart in the ranks of the Archangels is an unspeakably uplifting sight — overpowering, magnificent! And every time a Michael Age returned, it happened upon Earth too that Intelligence as a means to knowledge became not only cosmopolitan, as I have already said, but became such that men were filled through and through with the consciousness: We can after all ascend to the Divinity.

Source: August 1, 1924