Tomberg and Anthroposophy

[Federica]

Then what is Tombergs own Catholic project?
What is the appropriate role of the RCC according to Tomberg, according to you?

That still remains mostly a mystery to me. Rodriel has presented some interesting ideas about that, which I am still contemplating. The more I contemplate it, the more it feels like a complex and layered karmic dynamic that cannot be easily summed up, as either a pure continuation or rejection of the Michaelic impulse. As Cleric said, it is clear that he was sincere and idealistic in his hope that deeper spiritual rods would shoot forth from the trunk of the Church, although it's not clear how he imagined this would happen. I will share a quote by Bamford from his introduction to Christ and Sophia (one of VT's core Anthroposophical works), which seems helpful to gain a bit of orientation in this domain:

Well, this introduction doesn't present things in keeping with the possibility that Tomberg experienced any clear epiphany about the RCC in particular, his calling to it, and its appropriate mission. Rather, it makes it look like he was a lost soul begging for sacraments, and had the Orthodox Church accepted to give him the sacraments, he would have remained under Orthodox protection. At least, it seems clear that however aptly he refined the a-posteriori conception, the initial pull he felt towards conversion was not motivated by an ideal of the RCC in particular, but by a deep-routed appeal toward "Church", without denomination.

[AshvinP]

Regarding the sentences of yours which I have bolded, I'm a little perplexed at why we keep coming back to this. I tried to make it clear that the "Catholic project," as it's now being referred to here, is not intended primarily for our benefit, but for our brothers and sisters who are flatly non-receptive to spiritual science (although this isn't to say that it doesn't benefit us in any way). We know spiritual science as it was transmitted to us by Steiner, and it's in this form that it has imparted what I'm sure we'd each describe as immeasurable value. And no one can take away what has been learned. Please don't take the following analogy to be an insinuation of some kind of superiority: an expert bowler will get a strike regardless of whether the bumpers have been left up or not. Likewise, taking the John stream into the Peter stream doesn't cause John to lose his progress. It is simply a matter of John becoming a visible example for Peter (leaning upon the breast of the Lord at table), in the company of Peter.

The sober fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of people incarnated on earth today, if approached with spiritual science in its original form, will have close to zero chance of benefiting from it.

Rodriel, I am wondering if you can elaborate a bit more on how you view 'spiritual science in its original form'. Does this include the early epistemological-phenomenological works? Or rather, do you see VT's mission and the Catholic Project, which I suppose are practically synonymous for you, as a renewal of precisely that phenomenological approach, which then mostly steers clear of the more detailed spiritual scientific communications and allows those to eventually emerge from within?

I ask partly because we have had some similar discussions on other threads, and I want to see if you can relate to what was expressed there. For example, on the topic of 'saving the materialists', we had discussed whether another non-introspective approach is needed to serve as a bridge for souls who have become accustomed to modern intellectual gestures and therefore seem unprepared to delve right into phenomenological exploration. Particularly, Federica had expressed:

We have seen from concrete cases how the phenomenology of spiritual activity is hard to grasp, precisely because it requires an immediate jump into spiritual action, rather than the third-person rationalization the human mind is so ambiguated with.

A part of my response to this was to highlight how we are only on safe experiential ground when we stick with what worked for us. Why should we assume a dichotomy between how we (and VT) attained the immeasurable value of spiritual depth through spiritual scientific exploration (beginning with and expanding upon phenomenological exploration) and how it should unfold for other hypothetical souls? In other words, weren't we these other hypothetical souls before we came across PoF and spiritual science? Perhaps it even seemed like we would have zero chance of benefiting from such an exploration, that we would be flatly non-receptive to it, when considered from within that past perspective. Yet we know that eventually a leap is always required from the familiar gestures to the unfamiliar and unknown. Only from the other side of that leap can we appreciate how the chances of spiritual fructification were much higher than we previously suspected.

I also pointed out the following:

At a phenomenological level, we know that to speak of such difficulties for others we need to inhabit their perspective, or more likely for us, a general intellectual perspective, and feel how we would find certain things too inconvenient, too demanding, too requiring of blind trust, too many unfamiliar words-concepts, too much of a jump into action, and so on. We are always imagining those obstacles from our own perspective and its underlying soul context.

In that sense, experientially speaking, the 'sober fact' of other souls and their states always coincides to some extent with the sober facts of our present soul state, and the difficulties we feel are implicit in that state. If we begin to externalize such difficulties on another stream of souls, then we are like the materialist who begins to speak of mindless 'forces' in the natural world while forgetting that such forces can only be conceived because they are inwardly experienced as the movement and dynamics of spiritual activity and its constraints. There is a concrete reason why we started thinking about these other soul streams and their difficulties with the 'original form' of spiritual science, and we should try to remain as attuned as possible to how those reasons relate to our present soul state. Of course, that doesn't mean the difficulties aren't real for other souls as well, as I have also pointed out a few times on this thread.

[Rodriel Gabrez]

Yes. Your contention was:

One must remember that Steiner's earthly work was done a century ago, when conditions were quite different than today. They are of course the same in many respects, and the overarching movements of world evolution are still the same; but many of the details have indeed changed. In Steiner's time, there was as of yet little danger of the intellectual soul becoming atrophied like we are beginning to see today. For the consciousness soul to unfold properly, it must occur atop a fully developed, intellectual soul. We of course find quotes like the following from Steiner on this point:

Essential as it is first of all to undergo the discipline of sound, reasoned thinking before attempting to enter the higher worlds, it is equally essential to rise above this ordinary thinking to immediate apprehension. And just because it is necessary to have this faculty of immediate apprehension in the higher world, the preparatory training in logical thinking is essential, for otherwise our feelings would quite certainly lead us into error. With ordinary intellectual thinking we are incapable of judging rightly in the higher world, but equally we are incapable of judging rightly in that world if we have not first trained our intellectual thinking in the physical world, and then, at a suitable moment, are able to be oblivious of it. Some people consider that this characteristic quality of the higher kind of thinking, the thinking of the heart, is a reason for discarding ordinary logic altogether. They say that as it has eventually to be forgotten there is no need to assimilate it first of all. But in saying this they disregard the fact that logical thinking is a training for making oneself a different man. In logical thinking we experience above all a kind of conscience, and by developing that we establish in the soul a certain sense of responsibility towards truth and untruth, without which nothing can be achieved in the higher worlds.

So while, yes, it is true that the intellectual soul which seeks keep the soul forever in its own element is regressive, forces which work to erode the intellectual soul are equally regressive in a different way. Rome is the primary defender of the intellectual soul in our day, in a time when this faculty is being eroded from all sides. The situation has changed, and we can't simply take every word Steiner ever said about the world of the 1910s as a rock solid guide to our current world. And even when we do take Steiner's statements in isolation, we also must remember that a critique of something is not an argument for the absolute rejection of that thing but an invitation for its change/transformation.

Here's why I don't think this line of reasoning is ideal. It has to do with the difference between intellectual soul and one of its modes of thinking: sound logical thinking.

As I understand it, Cleric proposed that Tomberg’s identity is an elevated expression of the intellectual soul, expanded in the astral world, like Hegel is an elevated expression of the same intellectual soul expanded in the physical-etheric world. This illustrates what Steiner laid out in Theosophy: how the intellectual soul can express thinking in various gradations, from mere overlay to the instincts (because the intellectual soul is still drenched in them), to intellectual sense-bound, to sense-free.

Now what you quoted above from Steiner is not a reference to the intellectual soul at large, but only to one of its possible modes of thinking. He is warning that, as a preparation for the supersensible, sound logical thinking needs to be strengthened, as for example in the first subsidiary exercise, in which a physical object and its logical extensions come into focus. He doesn’t say that the intellectual soul needs consolidation in order to ascend to the supersensible, but that logical thinking gestures should be properly developed, on the support of the sensory spectrum, so that later a similar logic and sense can manifest, to protect the student from illusion in the supersensible, when the direct feedback of sensation is missing.

By contrast, the intellectual soul, as expressed in an individual, can be larger than the mere capacity of sound thinking, or smaller, when it remains undeveloped and coincident with the sentient soul, in instinct-driven individuals. And there is also a broader collective dimension to it. In this collective dimension in particular, the intellectual soul still has a fateful dynamic, as I understand it. That is, its trajectory in the destiny of humanity doesn't necessarily only depend on the will and spiritual activity of specific individuals. The intellectual soul has come, and keeps coming to man, through the activity of higher beings, as a gift. As if someone gifted you drawing paper and pastels to encourage you to draw. In this way, the intellectual soul has now established itself, and cannot be compromised just because there is intellectual erosion within certain human groups. Rather, it is now available ‘out there’, to serve as fruitful foundation for those who will purposefully nourish it, to enable its expansion as consciousness soul. In this sense, the current erosion of sound thinking you speak of - it’s clear there is one - is not an erosion of the intellectual soul.

Yes, because development inevitably happen by streams, many will have to follow at a later stage. But my point is that the shriveling of thought in certain groups does not compromise the emergence of the consciousness soul in other groups, on the solid foundation of the intellectual soul. Therefore, the role of an organization that works for the spirit today should be to fuel the transformation of soul along the path of knowledge, by appealing to the ones who are able to listen, who are karmically ready, not to preserve and institutionalize a supposedly endangered intellectual soul. That foundation is there, ready to play its function for those who can leverage it. But to deprive those souls of the sparkle they may need, through the action of a regressive Church, would lead to failure on the whole front: the eroded souls would not listen anyway, and the ones who have potential to move further would be lulled, and held back, rather than stimulated and encouraged.


PS: As a side note, Steiner didn't only speak on the basis of the social and historical dynamics prevailing in his time. Rather, he was able to clairvoyantly map the potential ahead, and foresee possible future dynamics.

Regarding the bolded: that an organ or member - as a general endowment of mankind - once unfolded cannot be compromised is not the case, especially in the newer soul members. You correctly identify that the Intellectual Soul has its substantiality in the higher beings who imparted it to human beings and that this substantiality is secure. Members unfold "in due season" (to use Gospel terminology), meaning that the large majority of individuals undergo the particular stage of their development within the same window of cosmic time. However, in all cases the plan for this member has been laid down in the spiritual world far longer ago. When the "due season" comes around, the particular physical, psychic, and spiritual conditions of planetary evolution have reached a suitable point for incarnating the member. Then there are the "first fruits", after which the majority follows, usually after a lengthy intervening period. As soon as the angelic substantiality for the member becomes incarnated in human beings, compromised unfolding and retrogression becomes possible. The success of the "transfer" from higher worlds, so to speak, is now dependent on human action. One should never assume that success is guaranteed. To your point, success can happen in one group of people while failure happens in another. But failure, which can be pictured as a kind of rot, has a tendency to spread. And the fulfillment of human destiny is constantly threatened by this spread.

If a member is compromised, the member which is to proceed atop this foundation is threatened as well. When the season changes again, so to speak, the divinely ordained unfolding of the new member (which of course is only new on earth and has been prepared far in the past by spiritual beings) is at risk. In other words, the integrity of the former member is crucial. And - importantly, that integrity is a measure of its incarnated form, not its spiritual substantiality. In its incarnated form, the member maintains its integrity during the incoming season by remaining fully functional in its original element. Now, in the concrete case of the emergence of the Consciousness Soul from the Intellectual Soul, the original element of the Intellectual Soul is brain-based thinking. The Intellectual Soul, as the working of the 'I' into the life of thought, came about and was developed via the instrument of the brain. So long as human physiology retains its structural-functional relationship with the Intellectual Soul, the Intellectual Soul must remain healthy and operative at the level of brain-based thinking. A degradation in brain-based thinking (your "sound logical thinking" in contradistinction to the "Intellectual Soul at large") is a degradation of the incarnated Intellectual Soul, and this is a threat to the unfolding of the Consciousness Soul, whose season is now.

The Roman Catholic Church, as it has evolved to function in earth evolution, first arose in tandem with the Intellectual Soul and thus became a kind of extension of this member at the level of the collective social organism. The Church can now serve to maintain the crucial integrity of this member while the new member develops from out of it. If one looks carefully into the situation that presents us today, one will be hard pressed to find any other social organization serving this function. Anthroposophy is not capable of doing it on its own, either through the Anthroposophical Society or some other realization of it.

[Rodriel Gabrez]

Rodriel, I am wondering if you can elaborate a bit more on how you view 'spiritual science in its original form'. Does this include the early epistemological-phenomenological works? Or rather, do you see VT's mission and the Catholic Project, which I suppose are practically synonymous for you, as a renewal of precisely that phenomenological approach, which then mostly steers clear of the more detailed spiritual scientific communications and allows those to eventually emerge from within?

I ask partly because we have had some similar discussions on other threads, and I want to see if you can relate to what was expressed there. For example, on the topic of 'saving the materialists', we had discussed whether another non-introspective approach is needed to serve as a bridge for souls who have become accustomed to modern intellectual gestures and therefore seem unprepared to delve right into phenomenological exploration. Particularly, Federica had expressed:

We have seen from concrete cases how the phenomenology of spiritual activity is hard to grasp, precisely because it requires an immediate jump into spiritual action, rather than the third-person rationalization the human mind is so ambiguated with.

A part of my response to this was to highlight how we are only on safe experiential ground when we stick with what worked for us. Why should we assume a dichotomy between how we (and VT) attained the immeasurable value of spiritual depth through spiritual scientific exploration (beginning with and expanding upon phenomenological exploration) and how it should unfold for other hypothetical souls? In other words, weren't we these other hypothetical souls before we came across PoF and spiritual science? Perhaps it even seemed like we would have zero chance of benefiting from such an exploration, that we would be flatly non-receptive to it, when considered from within that past perspective. Yet we know that eventually a leap is always required from the familiar gestures to the unfamiliar and unknown. Only from the other side of that leap can we appreciate how the chances of spiritual fructification were much higher than we previously suspected.

I also pointed out the following:

At a phenomenological level, we know that to speak of such difficulties for others we need to inhabit their perspective, or more likely for us, a general intellectual perspective, and feel how we would find certain things too inconvenient, too demanding, too requiring of blind trust, too many unfamiliar words-concepts, too much of a jump into action, and so on. We are always imagining those obstacles from our own perspective and its underlying soul context.

In that sense, experientially speaking, the 'sober fact' of other souls and their states always coincides to some extent with the sober facts of our present soul state, and the difficulties we feel are implicit in that state. If we begin to externalize such difficulties on another stream of souls, then we are like the materialist who begins to speak of mindless 'forces' in the natural world while forgetting that such forces can only be conceived because they are inwardly experienced as the movement and dynamics of spiritual activity and its constraints. There is a concrete reason why we started thinking about these other soul streams and their difficulties with the 'original form' of spiritual science, and we should try to remain as attuned as possible to how those reasons relate to our present soul state. Of course, that doesn't mean the difficulties aren't real for other souls as well, as I have also pointed out a few times on this thread.

The number of people in the world today who are interested in having the kinds of conversations we're having in this forum is exceedingly small. I take it as a somewhat obvious fact that our "type" is uncommon. However, certain characteristics of our type were part of the broader social atmosphere of the early 20th century. We are therefore predisposed, whether conceived of karmically or otherwise, toward immediate receptivity to spiritual science in its original form, meaning in the manner that Steiner expressed it. To be clear, I don't think or claim that VT's work does the same thing as Steiner's. Like I mentioned in my last post to Cleric, its function is different, and this is so due to the changed conditions of the world since Steiner's passing. The narrow opening has become even narrower in certain significant respects, and extra work is now needed - as well as a change of approach - to get souls back to the point of being receptive to perceiving supersensible realities. Once they are at that point, you are exactly right: the extremely demanding requirements of spiritual development will still face these people as an inescapable barrier. But we do our brothers and sisters a terrible disservice by making the barrier simply insurmountable through approaching them with a language that they are not inclined to learn. Tomberg provides an example of a "bridge language," which after learning the aspirant is then ready to have certain things "whispered into their ear." Will that whispering be the content of Steiner's lectures exactly? Most likely not. It will be up to the ones doing the whispering, in cooperation with the spiritual world, what the precise sound of the words will be.

[AshvinP]

The number of people in the world today who are interested in having the kinds of conversations we're having in this forum is exceedingly small. I take it as a somewhat obvious fact that our "type" is uncommon. However, certain characteristics of our type were part of the broader social atmosphere of the early 20th century. We are therefore predisposed, whether conceived of karmically or otherwise, toward immediate receptivity to spiritual science in its original form, meaning in the manner that Steiner expressed it. To be clear, I don't think or claim that VT's work does the same thing as Steiner's. Like I mentioned in my last post to Cleric, its function is different, and this is so due to the changed conditions of the world since Steiner's passing. The narrow opening has become even narrower in certain significant respects, and extra work is now needed - as well as a change of approach - to get souls back to the point of being receptive to perceiving supersensible realities. Once they are at that point, you are exactly right: the extremely demanding requirements of spiritual development will still face these people as an inescapable barrier. But we do our brothers and sisters a terrible disservice by making the barrier simply insurmountable through approaching them with a language that they are not inclined to learn.

This is quite problematic from my perspective, because there is no way of proving that the interest will exist within a soul beforehand. We may only feel that way in our own particular case because we have gone through the development, and now we look back and say, "Of course, I must have had that rare configuration of soul circumstances that made me receptive to the phenomenology of spiritual activity and motivated me to delve into it, but I doubt very many other souls do, rather it seems like they are completely shut off to this path and need something else." Yet, I think that, if we look back carefully within that process of development, we will find that the interest itself was cultivated through a leap into the phenomenological content. If we make a loose analogy to modern technology, it's like getting a brand new phone. At first, we may feel like it's just like any other phone, and therefore our interest in this device is not much greater than our interest in the previous phone. But once we begin messing around with the buttons, the apps, the camera, and so on, we start to feel excited about the expanded functional possibilities of this new device, which were previously unsuspected. Each new button we press and app we install leads to unsuspected degrees of freedom for using the device in support of our tasks, and thus our interest expands further.

Certainly, some karmic factors need to be in place to bring us into the vicinity of such idealistic aims and to be somewhat open to cultivating new inner skills in the pursuit of such aims (which is where the tech analogy falls short), and these may be quite rare in the general stream of human intellectual development. But to extrapolate from that observation to conclude an entire parallel path of development for other souls is necessary, seems quite unwarranted, and if adopted broadly, could end up as a self-fulfilling prophecy, i.e., the conditions for souls to develop interest in the phenomenological path become even worse because they have been led down this parallel path of fortifying the intellectual soul gestures. Now the old device feels so monolithically adequate for our daily tasks that we don't want to even hear about any new devices to invest our time and effort in. It is one thing to observe that there are lagging streams that may need to wait for future incarnations to reach the tipping point where the intellectual soul bleeds into the spiritual soul. But it is another thing to institutionalize that observation and make a general program out of it.

The fact is that we didn't develop our inner orientation in the 1910s but in the last few years or decades, so the initial conditions for receptivity of these other souls may not be so far apart from ours, as we imagine them to be. That being said, I generally agree with:

Tomberg provides an example of a "bridge language," which after learning the aspirant is then ready to have certain things "whispered into their ear." Will that whispering be the content of Steiner's lectures exactly? Most likely not. It will be up to the ones doing the whispering, in cooperation with the spiritual world, what the precise sound of the words will be.

It has always been my sense that the content of MoT tracks quite closely with the content of Steiner's early works and many of his later works as well, in terms of the inner functions they help serve, even if the precise sound of the words is quite different. They both help the aspirant become conscious of their inner movements in the process of working through the content in a meditative way, to feel themselves participating in the spiritual processes of imagination, feeling, and volition that are described by the conceptual content. Generally, though, I think most people who approach the content without the benefit of an explicit phenomenological orientation, a concrete shift toward approaching all content as recursive testimonies to what is being done in the process of contemplation, will fail to realize its deeper value, instead fitting it into a conceptual framework of correspondences between the Hermetic sciences and what they are familiar with from other traditions. This is why I would say MoT is complementary to PoF-spiritual science, but not a substitute for the latter.

[Rodriel Gabrez]

Yet, I think that, if we look back carefully within that process of development, we will find that the interest itself was cultivated through a leap into the phenomenological content.

How do you propose, then, that people be guided to willingly take that leap? The number of people in my life who I have persuaded to take serious interest in spiritual science in the manner of Rudolf Steiner is, sadly, zero. Whereas I have turned quite a few people onto Tomberg.

It has always been my sense that the content of MoT tracks quite closely with the content of Steiner's early works and many of his later works as well, in terms of the inner functions they help serve, even if the precise sound of the words is quite different. They both help the aspirant become conscious of their inner movements in the process of working through the content in a meditative way, to feel themselves participating in the spiritual processes of imagination, feeling, and volition that are described by the conceptual content. Generally, though, I think most people who approach the content without the benefit of an explicit phenomenological orientation, a concrete shift toward approaching all content as recursive testimonies to what is being done in the process of contemplation, will fail to realize its deeper value, instead fitting it into a conceptual framework of correspondences between the Hermetic sciences and what they are familiar with from other traditions. This is why I would say MoT is complementary to PoF-spiritual science, but not a substitute for the latter.

I completely agree about MoT being complementary to PoF-spiritual science but not a substitute. What I'm suggesting is 1) that a bridge (such as MoT) is now necessary for most souls, and 2) that PoF-spiritual science itself would benefit from new forms of expression. Steiner's work is of course still there and easily accessible for anyone who feels called to pursue it.

I understand the resistance to pegging the continuation of Anthroposophy to an institution that seems to work at cross purposes to it. All of this, however, is prefigured in the historical events which contain the impulses for our time. Allow me to refer again to the story of St. Joan. She received spiritual communication leading to personal certainty. Knowing it to be true, this was something that could not be taken from her. However, in order for her message and mission to flow out into the world, she had to demonstrate her moral spotlessness to that organ of the social organism whose function it is to vouchsafe the authenticity of the spirit to those who cannot see into the spiritual world, namely the Roman Catholic Church. (Note that Rudolf Steiner himself led a morally unreproachable life). This did not go well, and she was burned at the stake and vindicated only later. If and when an invisible Johannine order enters the protective stream of Peter, it will do so not without a certain degree of danger, but also under the auspices of the inaugurator of the Consciousness Soul. That stream will also surely leverage the fact that Christ Jesus specifically told Peter to focus on his own task at hand and to allow John to do his work unhindered (John 21:22).

[Cleric]

Federica, Rodriel, Ashvin, I won’t be able to write separate posts, so I’ll write in one place, and I hope I’ll be able to touch upon all the raised questions.

Cleric, could you please clarify what you mean that you have no problem seeing Tomberg as deliberately “stepping back” from Devachan, and “stripping down” that layer for a better fit to the existing stream, in relation to that:

I only see it that he could not reach the tipping point from the Hermetic tradition to the new influx of Michaelic Inspiration. He absorbed as much as he could from spiritual science, but in the end, it felt fragmentary compared to the alive and warm unity of the Arcane asanas in soul space encircling the central mystery. In that way, he could not reach actual consciousness of the Devachan, where we can only know ourselves as a spirit embedded in the superimposed flow of multiplicity of spirits. As such, at the upper edge of the Imaginative world, he could only anticipate the Logos in mystical fervor.

I admit that I have expressed rather black and white above. Then, when prompted, I added more resolution. If we take it as purely black and white, it would seem that VT couldn’t experience anything at all of the world of Inspiration and Intuition. Then the decision would have been one of complete weakness, of inability. What I have no problem with, is that Tomberg had his Inspirations and Intuitions, and based on them, the deliberate decision was made. The big question is: how complete was that growing intuition? I’ll return to this.

Regarding the sentences of yours which I have bolded, I'm a little perplexed at why we keep coming back to this. I tried to make it clear that the "Catholic project," as it's now being referred to here, is not intended primarily for our benefit, but for our brothers and sisters who are flatly non-receptive to spiritual science (although this isn't to say that it doesn't benefit us in any way). We know spiritual science as it was transmitted to us by Steiner, and it's in this form that it has imparted what I'm sure we'd each describe as immeasurable value. And no one can take away what has been learned. Please don't take the following analogy to be an insinuation of some kind of superiority: an expert bowler will get a strike regardless of whether the bumpers have been left up or not. Likewise, taking the John stream into the Peter stream doesn't cause John to lose his progress. It is simply a matter of John becoming a visible example for Peter (leaning upon the breast of the Lord at table), in the company of Peter.

Rodriel, thank you for the above. I was about to ask such a question as a follow-up. Now with that cleared, we should really distinguish two sides (I see that Ashvin has addressed that above too). One is that VT wanted to rescue the Catholic souls and thus sought ways to gently raise them into a more spiritual, Johnian existence, without overwhelming them with too many details emerging from initiatic science. I don’t think anyone can have anything against this. For my part, I also would like to refine bridges that can help the scientifically minded souls of our age to find a secure path to phenomenological reality.

The second side, however, goes further. It’s not only about helping Catholic souls out, but about a vision where the RCC takes again (as it had in the past) a political and governing role. I hope everyone here clearly senses that this lies on a completely different level compared to helping souls in a given community.

This returns us to the big question. For VT to pursue such a vision, in his inspirative and intuitive life, he must have felt that this is actually the movie continuation that the hierarchies of the ascending path intend.

Let’s face it: at a certain point, VT must have thought: “There are things which Steiner couldn’t see in full or that were simply not yet possible to see in his time.”

I hope we can grasp this with complete equanimity. I’m not suggesting that VT was prideful or something like that. As a matter of fact, we too have had the audacity to question here certain things said by Steiner, such as our talks about the motor and sensory neurons, except that we question more the technical details, and not the deeper intuitions which turn out to be immensely valuable. In VT’s case, however, we’re dealing with a major shift. There’s no doubt Steiner had a very clear and unchangeable view about the fact that the RCC (or any religious institution for that matter) would act to keep man back at the stage of the intellectual soul. VT, on the other hand, feels that not only this is not the case, but it is in fact the best rootstock in which the spiritual soul can be grafted.

There are different ways in which we may rationalize this. For example, we may say that things must have changed in the few decades after Steiner’s death, and the supersensible ‘weather’ became different. This would read like VT saying, “It’s not that Steiner had an incomplete grasp on the evolutionary dynamics, but only that he didn’t live to witness the following transformations on Earth and in the supersensible. The guiding beings have shifted intents in response to the unfolding historical events. It may have indeed been intended that man had to develop as a free being, directly from within the refined intellectuality of the age, but things went for the worse, and as such, the guiding beings have activated ‘plan B’: to prevent catastrophic results, the RCC would be granted authority once again, and it will have the task to gradually lead souls into spiritual conception and experience of reality. If Steiner had lived, he would have himself sensed these changing weather patterns in the invisible. He was right in his time, but the intents of the gods shifted.”

I’m sure this can sound plausible to many ears. As a bonus, it avoids posing any disaccord between VT and Steiner. After all, if Steiner had lived for a few decades more, he would have experienced the same truths.

Yet, today, it is up to us to seek the Truth. We cannot take any of these positions on the basis of authority. Steiner explicitly emphasized on this point, and I’m sure that VT must have too. So this returns us to the fact that we must ourselves seek the Inspirations and Intuitions. This is not easy, because, at least speaking for myself, as regular folk, we generally lack the panoramic intuition that these human souls working on the frontline of evolution have been integrating incarnation after incarnation. Nevertheless, we can exercise intuitive thinking and tediously and tirelessly probe every idea, every potential movie stream, from as many sides as possible. So we have roughly these three possibilities:

1. Steiner was mistaken from the get-go. Since his lawful mission was to bring spiritual science to the World, this acted a little like a magnifying glass and warped his intuitions. In other words, he overestimated the capability of the free human being to strip down the layers of conditioning and discover its spiritual core within Earthly thinking, from whence the integration with Cosmic reality begins. That is, the guiding beings had intended the role of the RCC even then, but he was a little too preoccupied with his own trajectory and thus didn’t recognize that it was only a building block in the higher-order RCC evolutionary curvature.

2. The second is what was described earlier: that plan B has been initiated a few decades after Steiner’s death.

3. And the third is that it was VT who was a little more sensitive to the intents of certain beings that inspired in him the vision of the RCC-as-world-structure continuation of the movie.

Now, how do we get out of this one? It’s obvious that we cannot rely simply on what feels most sympathetic. It is precisely such layers of astral conditioning that we need to peel away if we are to approach more unbiased contemplation of the intuitive curvatures within which humanity’s movie unfolds. For this reason, what we can do here is quietly and respectfully present different probing points and try to expand our intuitive spheres, always seeking the harmony of the facts. We’ll hardly have any success by arguing directly about “Who was the greater clairvoyant?” because this still secretly implies that we seek whose authority is more trustworthy. Yet, in this case, we need to assess the intuitive points for ourselves.

I am curious, though, outside of Steiner, would you point to anyone else whose writing can be traced to the Michaelic spiritual-scientific impulse? For example, would we find it in Scaligero or Kuhlewinde? What would that look like exactly?

One direction to approach this mystery is through Ashvin’s question, which was basically “What are the signs of the Michaelic impulse?” This is a vast question, and we shouldn’t expect that a satisfying answer can be fitted into a few sentences.

Very simply put, the Michaelic impulse inspires the new Imaginative-thinking-language, which not only allows us to communicate but also to have clear cognition of the invisible. Even terms like ‘curvatures’, ‘movie continuations’, and so on – as long as we experience them not as abstract mental images but as metaphoric reflections of differentiable aspects of our living inner experience – can be thought of as adding something in that direction. Yet, it is also true that our human existence is not only science. Souls also seek the full Life. True, spiritual science leads to that Life, but not everyone is constituted such that they can easily discover it through the lucid awakening of the spirit. The same point Rodriel raises: are all those other souls to be left behind? Of course not. So the question is how can souls be led in a simpler way, such that the direction of their development is nevertheless colinear with the evolutionary trajectory of humanity? This is a broader question and doesn’t concern only what the signs of the Michaelic cognition are, but also the signs of the new man as a whole. In other words, what are the distinguishing traits of man of the sixth cultural epoch?

Probably one of the most important things to consider is that the development of the new man is a conscious endeavor. We can make a comparison with ordinary education. Up to high school, teenagers often feel that they go there because they are expected to, or even forced. In most cases, continuing for a degree in the university is an individual choice, which arises from more or less expanded orientation within Earthly life. In a similar sense, the development of the new man can only proceed from individual initiative. In a way, we can think of it as an even higher education (although, of course, it doesn’t need to follow sequentially after the university). This education needs even sterner individual initiative to initiate. In other words, we must completely part with the idea that we can ‘trick’ a soul into this higher education, let alone carry it all the way through. Of course, this doesn’t preclude the fact that we need to be gentle. Many souls, even if predisposed to this education, may still be drowsy, and like drowsy people, they may be irritable, grumpy, and so on. But after their ‘first coffee’, we should be able to tell whether that soul is called upon the higher education. Mechanically pushing it in that direction or tricking it there, can never lead to good results. The soul will feel like a rebellious teenager forced into school, and unsurprisingly, they’ll drop off at the first opportunity.

So this is the first thing. We’re dealing with souls, which may not be intellectually sharp, but nevertheless feel that they are here to learn, to study, to develop their gifts and skills (with ‘not being intellectually sharp’ I don’t imply stupid, but only that they still think more dreamily, they do not find the experience of lucid thought-transformations inspiring). So an important trait of the new man is that he’s fully conscious of being a student, a disciple in the great school of Life, not merely in an external sense, but in the full spectrum of body, soul, and spirit. The soul should have at least some inkling that there’s much more to existence than what the senses present, and that we are here to develop these not-yet-developed faculties. In other words, a critical virtue of the new man is humility – we should feel that there’s infinite headroom that we are to grow into. So even if the soul is not introduced to terms like intellectual and spiritual soul, these can be intuitively felt when the intellect lives in humility and anticipates that there could be unimaginable new perceptions and capabilities awaiting to be awakened and developed. Thus, even without knowing the terms, the intellectual soul already consciously opens up and is ready to accommodate the spiritual, thus affirming that this process can only proceed fully consciously by individual initiative.

Now, another important characteristic is that the idea of continued existence must come to the forefront. Without this, the whole idea of the above-described development can never be taken to heart. Not teaching reincarnation as a dogma, but being open to it. The idea presses into our consciousness as soon as we experience doubt about the necessity of our development. In a one-shot scenario we always have a secret excuse to set the bar at whatever height we want. Why push so hard when after death I’ll have all eternity to explore the possibilities of my soul? So we see that the idea of reincarnation comes naturally, not as something that lures us, but as the only logical thing that makes our striving for development sensible.

The next thing, directly related to the previous, is that we’re not developing only for ourselves, but we develop together with the whole Earthly and Cosmic context as an organic whole. When this idea is internalized, we gradually understand that our efforts are not merely for our personal well-being, but we’re actually working in a meaningful direction for the overall unfoldment of the Cosmic scenario.

Next is the understanding that the inner Cosmos is filled not only with human souls (both incarnated and disincarnated), animals, plants, minerals, and elementals, but also with higher beings, and they all strive at different scales to unfold the creation in a musical harmony with the Godhead. This is the idea known as the Universal White Brotherhood. Spiritual beings that, out of freedom, pursue the high ideal of the Cosmic Symphony. Here the Christ has an important place. Even though a Divine Being, he is nevertheless closest to human beings. It is easier to know the Christ in Intuition, than an Angel. This is because the Christ shares with us the uniquely human experience – going through death. An Angel can give us all its love and compassion, but we, as humans often say, can respond with “yeah, but you don’t know what it is like to …” Well, the Christ knows all of it, and better than all of us. That’s why he is the being that is easiest to Love with all our hearts. There’s no being that better understands and shares in our human destiny than he.

Then, the feature of the new man is that he seeks this inner communion with the Divine and all the spiritual world directly in his soul and in the whole of the surrounding living Nature. There should be nothing standing between our “I” and the higher being. This in itself means that in our inner spiritual life, we cannot look upon the intermediary of religious institutions.

This understanding also naturally leads to the idea of brotherhood and sisterhood. The new man sees in his fellows spiritual beings of the same essence. Blood ties, nation, race, are seen as temporary shells within which we develop and unfold our higher goals.

These are only some of the core signs that I could think of right now, but from that point onward, practically every aspect of our Earthly life must be touched and transformed. The way we eat, the way we breathe, move, love one another. The new man practically rediscovers everything from Earthly life anew – now embedded in a spiritual dimension. But probably one of the most important characteristics is that the new man develops the understanding that we’re here on Earth to study and work for a Divine idea. This is one of the critical differences with life in the fifth cultural epoch. In the latter, the orthogonality between the spiritual and the incarnated life is very strong. And this includes also the religious life. Man basically feels that he must pass horizontally through Earthly existence, while resisting certain temptations, cherishing certain deep feelings, and then life proceeds in a quite different way. This gives the sense of “I’m here for a while only”. For this reason, our Earthly destiny, our profession, interests, and so on, also feel quite orthogonal to the spiritual. This becomes different for the new man, where our Earthly life is bound to feel more and more as a colinear aspect of the greater Cosmic life. In other words, our goals, interests, professions, more and more become the work of spiritual beings that meaningfully contribute to the Great Work.

All of this is completely clear for anyone who has deepened their life through spiritual science. But what about those souls who are not presently adapted for this path? The suggestion is that the RCC can provide the best conditions for the emergence of the new man. Yet, even on a first glance, it is clear that there are more than a few points above which do not fit well in the presently established picture. So the conclusion is that the RCC itself must first transform if it is to help souls become proper members of the sixth culture.

I want to indicate that there is a stream of Johnian Christianity that has emerged at the same time as the work of Steiner, and it is in fact adapted precisely to the needs of the souls that have a certain religious momentum and thirst for a deeper and more encompassing spiritual life, yet do not have a finely intellectually sharpened and emancipated ego. More specifically, this stream is connected with the mission of Slavdom, which esoterism sees as becoming the torch-carrier of the sixth cultural epoch.

Others are aware, but Rodriel probably is not familiar with the work of the master Beinsa Douno, which practically covers all the above points, yet in a way, if I may say so, ‘softer’ than spiritual science. The best way I can describe it is that the life of the master and his word serve as a living example of the man of the coming sixth epoch. In that way, the method of teaching is more akin to the way the baby learns language and absorbs its habits, skills, knowledge, and way of thinking from the parents. Thus, the talks of the master seemingly lack the sharp focus and clear linear development of a given topic, which we witness in every lecture of Steiner. Instead, they feel more spread out, more simple, (even maybe boring for the intellectually sharpened mind that is used to strong concentrates). But on the flip side, such teaching gives precisely that which SS is often accused of lacking – Life. With simple words, and not in any particular order, all of the major points above are covered. This doesn’t negate the necessity that the soul must still have this determination to learn, to grow into new and unsuspected spheres of existence. The teaching also doesn’t replace spiritual science. The master doesn’t develop these fine and intricate details, nor the phenomenology of thinking, but nevertheless the soul is led into the Cosmic volume in full. Also, it does that without sparing any truths. Something peculiar about the Catholic project is that we, who carry the impulse from the outside, feel to be playing a double game. In a sense we 'infiltrate' the community and work from within with the hope that one day, without noticing, the souls will be led where we intend. Since the teaching emerges on its own grounds, there's no need for such a double game. The truths are given directly, simply because we need to set our aims high right from the start.

As said, all those essential points, the hallmarks of man in the sixth cultural epoch, the epoch of dawning of the spiritual soul, are there. Not only as concepts but as living currents that stream in all practical, artistic, and religious aspects of life. This life can be tasted right now, there’s no institution that first must be reformed. The master didn’t found a sect, he didn’t make an institution with a particular organization. He simply disseminated a living example of what the new man should strive for, how his understanding and ideals should change, and how study and serving the Divine All are the new walk of life.

Here’s just one example . The book can be browsed more or less randomly to get the flavor, because it doesn’t follow a particular thematic order (although the quotes are chronological within the period where the events take place).

Just like with Steiner, we shouldn’t expect that these teachings will feel right for everyone. But can’t the same be said about VT? In these discussions, we get the impression that he makes the John path universally accessible, but is it really so? MoT, for example, is a high bar on its own, and to be honest, I think that those who have the capacity to go through it, unless they have some special emotional bias, should have no particular cognitive difficulty in going through a SS book either.

I’m not writing all of this as an announcement of the ‘one and only true path of human evolution’ but I think that if we are to have a more complete picture of the greater flow, we cannot afford to dismiss such intuitive points. Many anthroposophists are well aware of this stream, most notably Robert Powell and Harrie Salman. Some more info here. It is interesting that VT, especially considering his Slavic origin, would have probably found a lot of what his soul was thirsting for in the master’s teaching. Especially the Life and the Word that speaks more directly to the heart and soul. However, as far as I know, there are no indications whether VT was aware of the existence of this stream.

[AshvinP]

Just like with Steiner, we shouldn’t expect that these teachings will feel right for everyone. But can’t the same be said about VT? In these discussions, we get the impression that he makes the John path universally accessible, but is it really so? MoT, for example, is a high bar on its own, and to be honest, I think that those who have the capacity to go through it, unless they have some special emotional bias, should have no particular cognitive difficulty in going through a SS book either.

I’m not writing all of this as an announcement of the ‘one and only true path of human evolution’ but I think that if we are to have a more complete picture of the greater flow, we cannot afford to dismiss such intuitive points. Many anthroposophists are well aware of this stream, most notably Robert Powell and Harrie Salman. Some more info here. It is interesting that VT, especially considering his Slavic origin, would have probably found a lot of what his soul was thirsting for in the master’s teaching. Especially the Life and the Word that speaks more directly to the heart and soul. However, as far as I know, there are no indications whether VT was aware of the existence of this stream.

Thank you, Cleric, there is so much to explore and chew on in those essential points for the new man. I know we have touched on them in various ways throughout this thread already, but it is quite helpful to have them summarized so clearly and concisely.

I am also glad that you mentioned this potential connection of VT to BD (at least implicit in their approach, if not an explicit connection). I have been thinking the last few days about VT and BD. It occurred to me that your way of presenting the essential truths has generally reminded me to be somewhat of a cross between Steiner and BD/OMA, and now that I have thought about it, so does VT's presentation in MoT! That is probably why I felt that your summary above could have been almost a quotation of passages in MoT. I realize that simply having many concepts that overlap in a general way does not mean they are being expressed out of the same spirit(s), but in this case, I believe they actually are. To pick one of many passages that could be seen as highlighting the core principles of the new man and also perhaps illustrating something of this Steiner-BD cross:

Practical Hermeticism therefore applies itself to educating thought and imagination (or memory) to keep in step with the will. This is why it requires constant effort of thought and imagination combined in order to think, meditate and contemplate in symbols—symbolism being the sole means of rendering thought and imagination capable of not being suspended when the will submits to revelation from above and enabling them to unite with it in its act of receptive obedience, so that the soul not only has a revelation of faith but also participates in this revelation with its understanding and memory. This is the principal point of practical Hermeticism and, at the same time, its contribution to Christian mysticism. I say Christian mysticism and not Christian mystical theology, because theology rationalises the material of mystical experience in deriving rules and laws, whilst Hermeticism wants thought and imagination to participate in this experience. Its aim is found in the experience itself, not in the domain of explaining it or accounting for it. Meanwhile, the Hermeticist is also a “Hanged Man”. For him, too, faith predominates at the beginning and for a long time subsequently. This is because it is a difficult task, exacting inner asceticism for a long time, to render thought and imagination capable of being present and upright by the altar where the fire of faith is kindled and burns. But with time the gap between the certainty of faith and that of knowledge becomes narrower and narrower. Thought and imagination become more and more capable of participating in the revelation of faith to the will—until the day arrives when they participate in it on equal footing with the will. This is then the spiritual event that is designated Hermetic initiation.

Even on this topic of reincarnation being arrived at as the only logical thing that makes our striving and our experience sensible:

Science is at present confronted with the problem of the transmission by way of heredity of characteristics acquired through experience. This problem, such as it is presented today, is due to the paradoxical contradiction between what is known of the law of heredity and what is known about evolution and progress in general. Notably, it has been found that acquired characteristics do not transmit themselves by heredity and, on the other hand, the sum-total of facts concerning general evolution provides evidence of progress. In order to resolve the contradiction between heredity, which only reproduces, and general evolution, which demonstrates creativity, it is necessary to have recourse to a further dimension, i.e. to add the vertical dimension to that of horizontal continuity in time—the latter dimension being that of heredity, which connects successive generations. It has to be admitted that acquired characteristics are accumulated somewhere else other than by way of the mechanism peculiar to heredity, and that between “heredity” and “acquired characteristics” (which latter do not disappear but are simply relegated “somewhere else”) there is an active tension which manifests itself in education and self-education, as well as in the arising of intellectual and moral geniuses as fruits of a mediocre line of forefathers. This tension between the mechanism of heredity and characteristics acquired through experience—and accumulated “somewhere else”—leads in the long run to the prevalence of the latter, and a kind of “eruption” of acquired characteristics takes place in the hereditary mechanism. The fruits of past experience, so to say, “reincarnate”.

It is thus that one is led to postulate the principle of reincarnation. And when modern depth psychology of the school of Jung adds sufficient material concerning the resurgence of past experiences in dreams, vision, and in the life of fantasy, of people who—in their normal consciousness—know nothing about it (and thus, for example, the rituals and symbols of the ancient mysteries reappear in the full light of day of the twentieth century), then the postulate necessary to explain the possibility of progress ceases to be solely a postulate, but becomes a conclusion, based on experience and endowed with a high degree of probability.

It is true that Jung designated the realm where past experiences are buried as the “collective unconscious”. But why collective? Why not individual unconscious? Is it simply because experiences of the past, which arise from the depths of consciousness, have much in common?…that they resemble one another? But it is human beings in whom these experiences of the past arise. It is therefore quite natural that they have much in common—in fact, as much in common as human beings have in common. For this reason alone, is it necessary to postulate the collectivity of subconscious (or superconscious) memory that spans millennia? Is it not more simple and natural to conclude that the one who remembers an experience is also the one who experienced it?
...
But for the inner forum of consciousness—and I remind you, dear Unknown Friend, that these Letters are addressed only to your inner forum, and that on principle they do not aim to advance doctrines of general, i.e. scientific, validity—it is the experience within the depths of your own soul which has the last word on the problem of individual reincarnation, and it is to this that the task falls of transforming the possibility and probability of reincarnation into certainty…certainty in the inner forum of consciousness, of course.

In any case, I am sure Rodriel would have some more details and insights to add here as well. I have Salman's biography on VT sitting on my shelf, upon his recommendation, but I have not gone through it yet. Perhaps there are some further details on the VT-BD connection, if any, in there.

[Cleric]

In any case, I am sure Rodriel would have some more details and insights to add here as well. I have Salman's biography on VT sitting on my shelf, upon his recommendation, but I have not gone through it yet. Perhaps there are some further details on the VT-BD connection, if any, in there.

Thanks Asvhin,

When I looked at the link above, I saw that HS has also published a joint biography of RS and BD, it seems in 2023. I was not aware of it. Ordered a copy to take a look.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, two great spiritual teachers stepped forward into public life in Europe. They were the heralds of a new culture: the Austrian Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), founder of the Anthroposophical Movement, and the Bulgarian Peter Deunov (1864-1944), founder of the School of the White Brotherhood. They taught inner development based on the universal values of humanity. Their teachings stood in the tradition of esoteric Christianity-the Christianity of the inner path. Rudolf Steiner and Peter Deunov brought inspiration for a future global culture of love and brotherhood. This book follows in their footsteps, showing that, with their help and guidance, the time has come to transform today's one-sided intellectual and materialistic culture into a culture that combines the intellectual with the spiritual.

Motto

The new man, who is now being created, I call the man of light.
Wherever he goes, he illuminates things with the light he radiates.
With his subtle senses he can feel the internal life of nature and
communicate with the intelligent beings that govern it. The new
man is sustained only by positive thoughts and feelings. He lives in
joy. He is cheerful, generous, and easily overcomes difficulties. The
new man is a hero with a generous soul, using everything wisely
and needing little to be happy.

The new man is more helpful. He is less selfish and acts in harmony
with intelligent life, with all intelligent beings with whom he is one.
He is the man of truth and freedom who has found himself. He is
also just and wise, with new views on life and new relationships
with other people. His consciousness transcends the limits of
the family, of the nation, even of humanity. He considers himself a
citizen of the boundless universe. The new man and the new world
are being born. The future belongs to him.
Peter Deunov

While seeking some info I also stumbled on and revisited this essay by RP and HS.

Love stands above nationality.
Love stands above any religion.
Love itself creates the religious.
There are no religions in the divine world. There exists only Love. The atmosphere
of the divine world is Love. Therein everything breathes Love. Religions appear
because Love cannot manifest itself on earth.
If you wish to do the will of God, by all means, replace religion with Love. Then
everyone who loves you will be priests and ministers in your temple.
The greatest thing in the world is to come to know God as Love.
The beauty of our life is in our connection with God, who is Love.
Love contains within itself all conditions, all possibilities, all methods by which the
human soul might develop to its fullness.
Only Love can awaken within the soul its hidden potentialities. Science and art
cannot be the stimuli for the awakening of the human soul. This is temporary
knowledge. The only true work in the world is the science of Love. It is the great
object of learning for the soul….
When the first ray of Love shines out for you, you will experience within your soul
such indescribable bliss, such light, such a mighty impulse in your mind, and such a
striving of your will, that all obstacles of the world will begin to melt before you.
A few moments of existence within Divine Love are infinitely more precious than a
thousand years of ordinary human life spent in great pleasures and enjoyments.
In loving, we seek God. We have to love God in order to receive and experience Him.
In receiving Him, we experience His wisdom.
It is written in the Scripture: “Thou shalt Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.”
This is the only law that manifests itself in three worlds.
Loving God, you are in the divine world.
Loving yourself, your soul, you are in the spiritual world.
Loving your neighbor, you are in the physical world.
If humans adhere to this law, there will be no power in the world that can resist
them, no thought that will not be subject to them and that will not help them to
attain their ideal.

Note: in BD's vocabulary, he often speaks of the three worlds (physical, soul/astral, spiritual/devachan) as physical, spiritual, and divine.

[Federica]

Apologies for jumping in the middle of all the subtlety with a few pointy questions. But I think they are important.


1/ Who are the beings intuited by Tomberg in Spirit world?

I am asking because I don’t understand the deliberate gesture of stepping back from the Spirit World, once one has lived in it to some extent. What I don’t understand are not the reasons why one would do that, but the gesture itself. To be clear, this is not the gesture of conceiving a second path for other souls, but the gesture of oneself stepping back after thinking together with certain spirits whose form must have expressed: “Un-know me now! Get outta here! For the sake of Life itself”? I don’t understand that.

Because it’s crystal-clear that VT didn’t say, spiritual science is great, but for certain souls it’s too complicated. No. He was not playing a double game. What he said is, spiritual science (SS) is the mill of death, and the Valentin Tomberg who abided by spiritual science is not who I am; that person has another name(!). Now I’ve just googled “mill of death”. The expression has stuck with me. And it might be just a coincidence, for those who believe in coincidences, but for my part I'm petrified by Google AI's response: “"Mill of death" most likely refers to the post-war Allied documentary "Death Mills", which graphically depicted the Nazi concentration camps to German civilians.” We know what SS means in general language. And we can imagine how much more than today the dark WWII aura was still far from dissolved in the years when VT had become critical of spiritual science, to the point of calling it the mill of death. Did VT see something that dangerous in spiritual science? Who are the beings he thought with in the Spirit world?

PS: BD was well acquainted with the scientific mindset of our time, and with the precise knowledge of the Worlds offered by spiritual science, yet he never felt it was relevant to warn people against science. As you say: “The teaching also doesn’t replace spiritual science. The master doesn’t develop these fine and intricate details, nor the phenomenology of thinking, but nevertheless the soul is led into the Cosmic volume in full.”



2/ What is a “Catholic soul”?

Tomberg wanted to rescue the Catholic souls and thus sought ways to gently raise them into a more spiritual, Johnian existence, without overwhelming them with too many details emerging from initiatic science. I don’t think anyone can have anything against this. For my part, I also would like to refine bridges that can help the scientifically minded souls of our age to find a secure path to phenomenological reality.

Are we sure that VT sought ways to gently raise less sharp souls to the spiritual, without overwhelming them with the details of spiritual science? I don’t think so! And this is to Tombergs benefit, as I said. At least he was whole in that: he genuinely thought that spiritual science was against Life, and detrimental, for the “Catholic souls” and for everyone else too, himself included. Of course, I definitely have something against that. But the point is, even if (which I don’t believe) he was trying not to overwhelm simple souls with complications, I still (and even more so) have something against it. This is the duality of paths. It’s the idea itself of creating a double path. This idea, when one tries to accommodate it, then leads to: “For my part, I also would like to refine bridges that can help the scientifically minded souls…” Are you now induced to accept such a duality?

For me this is a dangerous thing. It would be like creating an institutional machine to manufacture a retarded human stream - under the best proclaimed intentions. Not that a stream becomes retarded by various circumstances that couldn't be solved, giving in to external temptations, but rather, from within humanity itself (under the incitation of unknown beings, hence my first question) an impulse is sparkled to sidetrack part of itself institutionally, as if by law! That's disturbing, especially for the new man. As you say: “Something peculiar about the Catholic project is that we, who carry the impulse from the outside, feel to be playing a double game.” This double game is not simply "peculiar". It's really the most disturbing thing, in my view. Of course, there can be various ways to convey concepts, to encourage deeds and attitudes, various spheres of action to have in focus. But the path should be one and whole, in the multitude of efforts everyone brings to it, in order to help oneself and others at the same time, to progress. The “full Cosmic volume” should be in sight. So, who are those “Catholic souls” who deserve such a lovingly tailor-made, collinear baby track? And is the question really: “how can souls be led in a simpler way, such that the direction of their development is nevertheless collinear with the evolutionary trajectory of humanity?” And is the conclusion really: "So the conclusion is that the RCC itself must first transform if it is to help souls become proper members of the sixth culture."?


I have more questions, but I don’t want to dilute these two at this point.