Tomberg and Anthroposophy

[AshvinP]

With respect to this:

The way of Hermeticism, solitary and intimate as it is, comprises authentic experiences from which it follows that the Roman Catholic Church is, in fact, a depository of Christian spiritual truth, and the more one advances on the way of free research for this truth, the more one approaches the Church. Sooner or later one inevitably experiences that spiritual reality corresponds—with an astonishing exactitude—to what the Church teaches:

We should note that Steiner expresses similar things in a few places. For example:

When a subject, such as the present, is considered from the standpoint of spiritual science, there is no question of adopting as a basis of discussion, some record or other handed down in the course of human evolution, with a view to throwing light on the accumulated facts, on the authority of this documentary evidence. This is not the method pursued by spiritual science. On the contrary, spiritual science investigates the facts and occurrences of human evolution independently of all documents. The spiritual investigator does not refer to documentary evidence until he is in a position to investigate and truly describe the things in question by means which are independent of documents and traditions. If he then turns to documentary evidence, it is to examine if the latter corroborates the results of his own independent research. Thus, no statement is made in these lectures, regarding any particular event, merely on the strength of biblical evidence; only the results of occult investigation are given — investigation independent of the Gospels. But, at every opportunity, attention will be called to the fact that whatever can be ascertained and observed by the spiritual investigator is reproduced in the Gospels and particularly in the Gospel of St. John (GA 112) .

...

I am hardly exaggerating when I claim that there will come a time when the general opinion will be that people who have learned to understand and appreciate the content of the gospels through spiritual science will see them as scriptures intended for the guidance of humanity and that their understanding will do the Bible more justice than anything else has so far. It is only through understanding our own inner being that we can come to see what lies hidden in these profound scriptures. Now, if we find in the gospels what is so completely part of our own being, it follows that it must have entered the scriptures through the people who wrote them. Thus, what we have to admit concerning ourselves—and the older we get, the more often we have to admit it—namely, that we do many things we don't understand fully until many years later: this must also be true for the writers of the gospels. They wrote out of the higher self that works on all of us in childhood. Thus, the gospels originate in the same wisdom that forms us. The spirit is revealed physically in the human body as well as in the writing of the gospels. (GA 15)

What will fall away from the Church and religion more broadly is the completely theoretical form of its teachings, taken on its own authority, since initiated souls will become more and more familiar with the intuitive curvatures of beings which originally inspired such teachings. It is true that certain hardened forms of the teachings, for example that we only live one life followed by the eternal judgment, will also fall away, but one can also trace how such forms took shape from the original inspirations and are not completely without reason or truth value (and Steiner had done that). There will come a time on the initiatory path, after all, when we only experience ourselves living through a unified stream of metamorphic development. What will fall away, therefore, is our terribly discursive and intellectualized perspectives on the teachings.

[Rodriel Gabrez]

Right, so I suppose that we agree when it comes to souls like us, i.e., who are prepared for spiraling together, the Petrine thinking shouldn't be pursued as something parallel to John thinking. Instead, any teachings we glean from the Church should only serve as symbolic anchor points for our independent intuitive process that steps into the unfamiliar supersensible.

Yes, exactly.

If that's the case, then the other question is, what is our source of confidence that the Petrine institution, in its thinking dimension, will serve as the sepal health system for lagging souls? I think Thomistic theology would have certainly addressed these conundrums of materialistic life for the intellectual soul many centuries ago, perhaps even 200 years ago, but I have little confidence that it can serve the same function now. Again, that lack of confidence stems from an intimate experience of how these mental pictures click together in the imaginative domain and a sense of how deeply they are capable of penetrating into the life of feeling and will. Can you really imagine such theological arguments holding back the wave of transhumanist enthusiasm for the average soul today?

As we discussed, the intellectual soul is sculpted by various broadly universal, external influences. So everyone receives this formation basically by default. But conscious personal development of the intellectual soul is carried out by relatively few. This is the case both within and outside the Church. Inside the Church, members go through catechesis, which provides the minimum threshold for apprehending religious life at the level of the intellectual soul. For most people, though, whose soul life is centered mostly in the sentient soul, there is little attempt to go beyond the bear minimum, and the intellectual tradition of the Church remains an external authority to appeal to for rightly ordering their moral lives. These are the people that, like you've mentioned, approach religious life on a more strictly devotional level. They simply accept what is proclaimed institutionally and live into these teachings in their life of feeling. As an institution the Church consistently develops the intellectual tradition, and the Vatican publishes doctrinal and theological updates regularly. These publications, which I have shared with you on occasion (if I remember correctly) are logically airtight and morally sound, insofar as morality can be worked out conceptually. They are remarkably in keeping with insights gained on the same subjects through spiritual scientific means. For instance, the recent doctrinal expansion around the right use of technology, specifically AI. All that said, the RCC is extremely wary of transhumanism in all its forms. Transhumanist objectives don't easily pass through the Thomistic filter. And the laity (the real laity - not those who are Catholic by birth but don't attend Mass) overwhelmingly accepts what is taught. Nonetheless, these intellectually uninclined people, as we've discussed, find themselves bombarded at every turn by soul-degrading forces, just like the rest of humanity. The difference is that they have the anchor of the Church. This is why this anchor must be fructified by the John stream. The Church is the population in which the bulwark against total degradation is being maintained. But they don't speak the language of Anthroposophy, nor should they (at least not at first). "Unknown friends" should approach them (especially the intellectual inclined among them) with gifts wrapped in familiar packaging but bearing living forces which will grow through personal awakening.

[AshvinP]

Right, so I suppose that we agree when it comes to souls like us, i.e., who are prepared for spiraling together, the Petrine thinking shouldn't be pursued as something parallel to John thinking. Instead, any teachings we glean from the Church should only serve as symbolic anchor points for our independent intuitive process that steps into the unfamiliar supersensible.

Yes, exactly.

If that's the case, then the other question is, what is our source of confidence that the Petrine institution, in its thinking dimension, will serve as the sepal health system for lagging souls? I think Thomistic theology would have certainly addressed these conundrums of materialistic life for the intellectual soul many centuries ago, perhaps even 200 years ago, but I have little confidence that it can serve the same function now. Again, that lack of confidence stems from an intimate experience of how these mental pictures click together in the imaginative domain and a sense of how deeply they are capable of penetrating into the life of feeling and will. Can you really imagine such theological arguments holding back the wave of transhumanist enthusiasm for the average soul today?

As we discussed, the intellectual soul is sculpted by various broadly universal, external influences. So everyone receives this formation basically by default. But conscious personal development of the intellectual soul is carried out by relatively few. This is the case both within and outside the Church. Inside the Church, members go through catechesis, which provides the minimum threshold for apprehending religious life at the level of the intellectual soul. For most people, though, whose soul life is centered mostly in the sentient soul, there is little attempt to go beyond the bear minimum, and the intellectual tradition of the Church remains an external authority to appeal to for rightly ordering their moral lives. These are the people that, like you've mentioned, approach religious life on a more strictly devotional level. They simply accept what is proclaimed institutionally and live into these teachings in their life of feeling. As an institution the Church consistently develops the intellectual tradition, and the Vatican publishes doctrinal and theological updates regularly. These publications, which I have shared with you on occasion (if I remember correctly) are logically airtight and morally sound, insofar as morality can be worked out conceptually. They are remarkably in keeping with insights gained on the same subjects through spiritual scientific means. For instance, the recent doctrinal expansion around the right use of technology, specifically AI. All that said, the RCC is extremely wary of transhumanism in all its forms. Transhumanist objectives don't easily pass through the Thomistic filter. And the laity (the real laity - not those who are Catholic by birth but don't attend Mass) overwhelmingly accepts what is taught. Nonetheless, these intellectually uninclined people, as we've discussed, find themselves bombarded at every turn by soul-degrading forces, just like the rest of humanity. The difference is that they have the anchor of the Church. This is why this anchor must be fructified by the John stream. The Church is the population in which the bulwark against total degradation is being maintained. But they don't speak the language of Anthroposophy, nor should they. "Unknown friends" should approach them (especially the intellectual inclined among them) with gifts wrapped in familiar packaging but bearing living forces which will grow through personal awakening.

I find myself really hoping that would you write above is the case, and I can imagine the Church still serves that function for quite a few souls who are intellectually inclined and enthusiastic to accept its teachings. I am curious though, how you are evaluating this - "And the laity (the real laity - not those who are Catholic by birth but don't attend Mass) overwhelmingly accepts what is taught"? How can we know what the real laity accept in their hearts, rather than at the surface of their intellectual life which gets expressed in answers to polls or in casual conversation with other members of the Church? There may be a lot of pressure to repeat back what has been taught, but it's difficult to translate that directly into true acceptance which will hold up when the surrounding environment inevitably pressures their "I" in the other direction.

Related to that, based on inner experience, the acceptance of what is taught in this way runs contrary to PoF, ethical individualism, and the Christ Impulse. The reason being that it inevitably fosters a certain resentment in the increasingly individuated and freedom-seeking "I", even if the souls are completely unaware of that and feel pretty satisfied with what they are doing at the surface. I am sure you have heard all of the usual metaphors before, i.e., an indentation in rubber pushing back out, and so on. For those of us who have been prepared to spiral together, I think we should remain faithful to our intuitive process and to integrate what we learn from our increasing sensitivity to the inner dynamics. For me, that has precisely been becoming more sensitive to how doing things I don't deeply want to do (or not doing things I still deeply want to do) leads to a seething undercurrent of frustration and resentment.

That doesn't mean I should give in to all my momentary impulses in the name of "freedom", not at all. We can only make progress if we take incremental steps to resist the usual curvatures. But I should also remain honest about what is being renounced out of love for the spiritual life and what is still being renounced out of the momentum of accepting the teachings of spiritual authorities or wanting to fit in with my community, remaining fully lucid of how the latter can lead to a dangerous bounce back in the other direction if I am not vigilant. The problem I see is that there is no basis for the laity to likewise become conscious of these inner tensions and guard against the potential bounce back from accepting the moral teachings of the Church, especially if they are accepting such teachings as a matter of course without any critical examination. Such an examination is not meant to be arbitrarily doubtful or skeptical, but to move our imaginative activity against the grain of outer impressions and conceptions so we can become more sensitive to how they are influencing us at deeper scales.

[Federica]

With respect to this:

The way of Hermeticism, solitary and intimate as it is, comprises authentic experiences from which it follows that the Roman Catholic Church is, in fact, a depository of Christian spiritual truth, and the more one advances on the way of free research for this truth, the more one approaches the Church. Sooner or later one inevitably experiences that spiritual reality corresponds—with an astonishing exactitude—to what the Church teaches:

We should note that Steiner expresses similar things in a few places. For example:

When a subject, such as the present, is considered from the standpoint of spiritual science, there is no question of adopting as a basis of discussion, some record or other handed down in the course of human evolution, with a view to throwing light on the accumulated facts, on the authority of this documentary evidence. This is not the method pursued by spiritual science. On the contrary, spiritual science investigates the facts and occurrences of human evolution independently of all documents. The spiritual investigator does not refer to documentary evidence until he is in a position to investigate and truly describe the things in question by means which are independent of documents and traditions. If he then turns to documentary evidence, it is to examine if the latter corroborates the results of his own independent research. Thus, no statement is made in these lectures, regarding any particular event, merely on the strength of biblical evidence; only the results of occult investigation are given — investigation independent of the Gospels. But, at every opportunity, attention will be called to the fact that whatever can be ascertained and observed by the spiritual investigator is reproduced in the Gospels and particularly in the Gospel of St. John (GA 112) .

...

I am hardly exaggerating when I claim that there will come a time when the general opinion will be that people who have learned to understand and appreciate the content of the gospels through spiritual science will see them as scriptures intended for the guidance of humanity and that their understanding will do the Bible more justice than anything else has so far. It is only through understanding our own inner being that we can come to see what lies hidden in these profound scriptures. Now, if we find in the gospels what is so completely part of our own being, it follows that it must have entered the scriptures through the people who wrote them. Thus, what we have to admit concerning ourselves—and the older we get, the more often we have to admit it—namely, that we do many things we don't understand fully until many years later: this must also be true for the writers of the gospels. They wrote out of the higher self that works on all of us in childhood. Thus, the gospels originate in the same wisdom that forms us. The spirit is revealed physically in the human body as well as in the writing of the gospels. (GA 15)

Steiner is not expressing similar things in these quotes. The Church and the Scriptures are quite different things, we should note? Not as wild as what you did here, but fearless statement still.

What will fall away from the Church and religion more broadly is the completely theoretical form of its teachings, taken on its own authority, since initiated souls will become more and more familiar with the intuitive curvatures of beings which originally inspired such teachings. It is true that certain hardened forms of the teachings, for example that we only live one life followed by the eternal judgment, will also fall away, but one can also trace how such forms took shape from the original inspirations and are not completely without reason or truth value (and Steiner had done that). There will come a time on the initiatory path, after all, when we only experience ourselves living through a unified stream of metamorphic development. What will fall away, therefore, is our terribly discursive and intellectualized perspectives on the teachings.

Maybe the one life theory will fall away, I don't know, but is it a truth? I would rather call it your current opinion.

To be honest, my imagination is not rich enough to imagine the Pope standing and saying, "Listen, my children, we're gradually phasing in the doctrine of Karma and Reincarnation." It is for this reason that I simply cannot comprehend how the CC (or EOC for that matter) could be a suitable host for the ongoing evolutionary impulse.

[AshvinP]

Steiner is not expressing similar things in these quotes. The Church and the Scriptures are quite different things, we should note?

How could I guess this would be your response?

You simply need to try and understand what Tomberg is communicating here. Don't focus so much on "RCC", which we know immediately evokes antipathy, but look at what comes after the colon, the spiritual realities he is saying that we come back into contact with through the intuitive path and which undoubtedly have been expressed and emphasized through the Church in various traditional ways. This is what Steiner has also emphasized over and over again and, if he ever claimed none of this was embodied in the RCC (he didn't), he would be wrong.

We have often heard that in olden times men had not only that instinctive wisdom of which I have spoken: they had beings as teachers who never descended into physical bodies—higher beings who occupied etheric bodies only, and whose instruction was imparted to men not by speaking, as we speak today, but by transmitting the wisdom in an inner way, as though inoculating the etheric body with it. People knew of the existence of these higher beings, just as we know that some physical teacher is present; but they also knew that these beings surrounded them in a strictly spiritual state. Everything connected with that “primordial wisdom,” recognized even by the Catholic Church—the primordial wisdom that once was available, and of which even the Vedas and the sublime Vedanta philosophy are but faint reverberations—all this can be traced back to the teaching of these higher spiritual beings.

[Federica]

Steiner is not expressing similar things in these quotes. The Church and the Scriptures are quite different things, we should note?

How could I guess this would be your response?

You simply need to try and understand what Tomberg is communicating here. Don't focus so much on "RCC", which we know immediately evokes antipathy, but look at what comes after the colon, the spiritual realities he is saying that we come back into contact with through the intuitive path and which undoubtedly have been expressed and emphasized through the Church in various traditional ways. This is what Steiner has also emphasized over and over again and, if he ever claimed none of this was embodied in the RCC (he didn't), he would be wrong.

Surely because you are incredibly smart and can read people like a book?
You should try with yourself too, instead of deliberating things in such a sickening voice. Clearly, you don't realize how you have begun to sound in all your posts, especially lately.

[AshvinP]

Not as wild as what you did here, but fearless statement still.

Well, I was accused of spreading falsities for saying Steiner links outer beauty to health, and that's exactly what he does in the quote. So, case closed.

Maybe the one life theory will fall away, I don't know, but is it a truth? I would rather call it your current opinion.

When we transform our thinking to become more flexible and imaginative, we begin to see how truth is expressed differently along the scale spectrum. For the intellect, this often appears as a discursive opposition, as in, "if one life is true, then reincarnation is false, or vice versa" (or if motor nerves transmit will impulses, then they can't also function as perceptive instruments of the soul). As Rodriel also suggested, this is what Tomberg was an unparalleled artist at doing - helping the reader, who approaches the imaginative content as a spiritual exercise, to begin seeing how the Church teachings (and also philosophical frameworks and scientific theories) can speak to many different truths as experienced within higher folds of the integrated flow. As long as we are only interested in some kind of abstract debate between discursive oppositions which tries to reach absolute conclusions that the intellect can feel as "true" - reincarnation vs. one life, Steiner vs. Tomberg, etc. - we will completely miss the transformative value of such content. Then we are only dreaming of what Steiner and Tomberg were up to, who were playing a much different 'game' than the intellect is used to.

And that's the only thing I have the patience to discuss at this point. I simply have no interest in such abstract debates that carry zero potential for expanding inner orientation and development.

[Federica]

Tomberg's writing style in his Catholic-period works is an ingeniously crafted method of speaking two languages at once, as it were. What he explicitly says is aligned with Petrine thinking, while a Johannine message is conveyed for those who know how to see it. Johannine readers are given tools for ordering their own speech and conduct for the benefit of others, while Petrine readers are provided an opportunity to expand into living thinking. This is precisely what Tomberg does time and time again in his various "critiques" of Steiner. You'll notice that he has gone to painstaking lengths of care in MoT to elucidate his views on reincarnation. He holds fast and firm to his personal conviction of reincarnation as a spiritual fact. This conviction, which he clearly feels is important, is however something that he makes equally clear must be personally attained. Nowhere does he directly rebuke Steiner for having made reincarnation public. Rather, he very carefully questions the manner in which this knowledge has been adopted and practiced. Tomberg's highly nuanced, non-dialectical, dual-language view is that Steiner's impulse, in the specific manner in which it was communicated, was necessary for a specific time as a trumpet blast to be heard by certain souls. He does not question this. He is simply providing what he feels are the tools and path for continuing Steiner's work. That he doesn't say this explicitly is integral to his method. He wants the reader to come to see it themselves, for this is the way Anthroposophy will continue. His entire Catholic-period oeuvre is a strategy designed to get people (specifically those in the John stream) to see this and to join him as "unknown friends." I've mentioned it before, but it's worth repeating: "unknown friend" is an extremely important term meant referring to the Lazarus-John mystery and what it means for Christianity.

As I've mentioned before, Steiner had a similar degree of nuance in his messaging. It was different in key ways, though, of course, his being a very specific impulse in which certain elements needed to be strongly amplified so as to have the greatest impact. I know you don't agree, but I find it plainly obvious that Steiner's views on the RCC weren't a simple rejection. Tomberg of course felt the same way and conveys this in MoT in his discussion on the "egregore" of the Church, where he subtly attempts to explain Steiner's stance. It is this egregore - quite present in the Church even today, I admit - that Steiner was so highly critical of. It's important to be able to recognize the sober reality of life, in which good and bad are complexly interwoven in nearly every phenomenon, without taking a critical examination to be a rejection of the essence of the thing examined. The quote you've provided points to a future that from a Tombergian perspective will come about through the Church via the infusion of the John stream.

Thanks, Rodriel. I’m sure there's much in Tomberg’s work that I'm not able to notice. His figure and stance are in themselves enigmatic (for me) and I can conceive that he may have cultivated the purpose you describe, addressing different souls with different messages, concealed within the same words. One can also wonder why he published MoT anonymously. What do you think about that?

But to add one more thing about what you call the obvious fact that Steiner did not reject the RCC - perhaps “rejection” is not the right word, but what words would you use to describe Steiner’s judgment that the Church, by its rejection of “unbornness”, had been entertaining subtle egoism in man, and moreover a subconscious wish to end the life of the soul at physical death, thereby opening the way for Ahrimanic powers to successfully terminate the affected human consciousness at death? I definitely accept that I may lack subtlety in this matter, and I take your point that good and bad are interwoven in every phenomenon (and in nearly every soul) in complexity. Nevertheless, subtlety can’t become the passkey to turn things around completely. Then, nothing would mean nothing anymore, and anything may mean anything. Isn’t it reasonable to consider that judgments of such intensity are just too smashing to be negotiated “subtly” in such a way that one still ends up saying that MoT is a wholly Anthroposophycal, or Johannine, work?

If we put the two visions side by side, Tomberg means that knowledge of reincarnation is dangerous because it may nurture man’s desires for the next earthly life. The fact or reincarnation has been so abused in practice, according to him. Hence he encourages the reader to examine in conscience whether the spreading of the knowledge of reincarnation has been morally justifiable. There may be additional subtleties, but this is the key contention.

Steiner, on the other hand, called unjustifiable that ignorance of reincarnation (of the unbornness of the soul) had been encouraging man’s wish for mere immortality, barring from them the sense of responsibility that comes with the notion of pre-existence (unbornness). He called out two effects of such detrimental asymmetry: promotion of a subtle egoism of soul (comfortable wish for immortality) and also promotion of a subconscious wish to fully dissolve, as a soul, in Ahriman’s hands at physical death. He even ascribed the rise of materialism to this. He articulated this view repeatedly, in various lectures. One that is quite concentrated, both conceptually and linguistically, is in GA 198, Healing Factors for the Social Organism, Lecture I, Materialism and Religion. I’ll quote a brief passage. I warn that the rest of the lecture contains even tougher words.

just through the fact that in a one-sided way, theoretically, the religious confessions have nurtured the idea of the mere post-mortem life through centuries and millennia, just through that the denial of the supersensible world has been gradually generated, in terms of real logic—just through that, in reality, materialism has been brought about. For even though in the head, one lets oneself be instructed by faith regarding life after death, the subconsciousness strives toward concluding this life with earthly mortality.

Now I don’t exclude that you may convincingly argue for subtleties being concealed in such purposes, but I admit that at this point I don’t see the least possibility to turn this around 180 degrees and make it somehow consistent with Tomberg’s view, so as to say that MoT is a wholly Anthroposophical work. One sees the evil in revealing the symmetry of soul eternity, the other sees the evil in concealing that same symmetry, only to focus on the notion of immortality. I wonder how you read these ideas by Steiner, specifically: that the Church, through dogma, has encouraged the development of the "refined soul instincts" - egoism - as well as the wish for soul termination at death. How would you turn them around 180 degrees? Do you think they are directed to the "egregore" of the Church?

[Rodriel Gabrez]

I find myself really hoping that would you write above is the case, and I can imagine the Church still serves that function for quite a few souls who are intellectually inclined and enthusiastic to accept its teachings. I am curious though, how you are evaluating this - "And the laity (the real laity - not those who are Catholic by birth but don't attend Mass) overwhelmingly accepts what is taught"? How can we know what the real laity accept in their hearts, rather than at the surface of their intellectual life which gets expressed in answers to polls or in casual conversation with other members of the Church? There may be a lot of pressure to repeat back what has been taught, but it's difficult to translate that directly into true acceptance which will hold up when the surrounding environment inevitably pressures their "I" in the other direction.

Related to that, based on inner experience, the acceptance of what is taught in this way runs contrary to PoF, ethical individualism, and the Christ Impulse. The reason being that it inevitably fosters a certain resentment in the increasingly individuated and freedom-seeking "I", even if the souls are completely unaware of that and feel pretty satisfied with what they are doing at the surface. I am sure you have heard all of the usual metaphors before, i.e., an indentation in rubber pushing back out, and so on. For those of us who have been prepared to spiral together, I think we should remain faithful to our intuitive process and to integrate what we learn from our increasing sensitivity to the inner dynamics. For me, that has precisely been becoming more sensitive to how doing things I don't deeply want to do (or not doing things I still deeply want to do) leads to a seething undercurrent of frustration and resentment.

That doesn't mean I should give in to all my momentary impulses in the name of "freedom", not at all. We can only make progress if we take incremental steps to resist the usual curvatures. But I should also remain honest about what is being renounced out of love for the spiritual life and what is still being renounced out of the momentum of accepting the teachings of spiritual authorities or wanting to fit in with my community, remaining fully lucid of how the latter can lead to a dangerous bounce back in the other direction if I am not vigilant. The problem I see is that there is no basis for the laity to likewise become conscious of these inner tensions and guard against the potential bounce back from accepting the moral teachings of the Church, especially if they are accepting such teachings as a matter of course without any critical examination. Such an examination is not meant to be arbitrarily doubtful or skeptical, but to move our imaginative activity against the grain of outer impressions and conceptions so we can become more sensitive to how they are influencing us at deeper scales.

I think you're completely right to raise these points about the danger of resentment or "bounce back" which can arise as a result of deeds done out of duty instead of complete moral freedom. This is a very real phenomenon and not an uncommon one in the Church. (You're right - I'm not able to know exactly what's in others' hearts, but at a bare minimum I can assume that others are experiencing similar struggles to my own.) I would argue that it's an inevitable part of the journey toward the goal of moral creativity, which in its full achievement is a spurring-to-action of the spirit self and therefore something that we should only expect to experience glimpses of today. To truly want what is immensely difficult and self-sacrificing in every situation is an incredibly lofty thing. We know this firsthand through our work with spiritual exercises. While Steiner framed this goal in quite explicitly philosophical terms, it's inherent in the Gospels and is there in the RCC but in a state that has been latent over the course of most of its history, only recently coming to the fore, for instance in the canonization of Joan of Arc in 1920 and in the formalization of the doctrine of personal conscience in 1994. In any case, the fact that this danger of resentment exists is all the more reason for the urgency of the merging of the Peter and John streams. This fructification has the potential to catalyze into full activity what is lying in waiting.

[Rodriel Gabrez]

Thanks, Rodriel. I’m sure there's much in Tomberg’s work that I'm not able to notice. His figure and stance are in themselves enigmatic (for me) and I can conceive that he may have cultivated the purpose you describe, addressing different souls with different messages, concealed within the same words. One can also wonder why he published MoT anonymously. What do you think about that?

But to add one more thing about what you call the obvious fact that Steiner did not reject the RCC - perhaps “rejection” is not the right word, but what words would you use to describe Steiner’s judgment that the Church, by its rejection of “unbornness”, had been entertaining subtle egoism in man, and moreover a subconscious wish to end the life of the soul at physical death, thereby opening the way for Ahrimanic powers to successfully terminate the affected human consciousness at death? I definitely accept that I may lack subtlety in this matter, and I take your point that good and bad are interwoven in every phenomenon (and in nearly every soul) in complexity. Nevertheless, subtlety can’t become the passkey to turn things around completely. Then, nothing would mean nothing anymore, and anything may mean anything. Isn’t it reasonable to consider that judgments of such intensity are just too smashing to be negotiated “subtly” in such a way that one still ends up saying that MoT is a wholly Anthroposophycal, or Johannine, work?

If we put the two visions side by side, Tomberg means that knowledge of reincarnation is dangerous because it may nurture man’s desires for the next earthly life. The fact or reincarnation has been so abused in practice, according to him. Hence he encourages the reader to examine in conscience whether the spreading of the knowledge of reincarnation has been morally justifiable. There may be additional subtleties, but this is the key contention.

Steiner, on the other hand, called unjustifiable that ignorance of reincarnation (of the unbornness of the soul) had been encouraging man’s wish for mere immortality, barring from them the sense of responsibility that comes with the notion of pre-existence (unbornness). He called out two effects of such detrimental asymmetry: promotion of a subtle egoism of soul (comfortable wish for immortality) and also promotion of a subconscious wish to fully dissolve, as a soul, in Ahriman’s hands at physical death. He even ascribed the rise of materialism to this. He articulated this view repeatedly, in various lectures. One that is quite concentrated, both conceptually and linguistically, is in GA 198, Healing Factors for the Social Organism, Lecture I, Materialism and Religion. I’ll quote a brief passage. I warn that the rest of the lecture contains even tougher words.

just through the fact that in a one-sided way, theoretically, the religious confessions have nurtured the idea of the mere post-mortem life through centuries and millennia, just through that the denial of the supersensible world has been gradually generated, in terms of real logic—just through that, in reality, materialism has been brought about. For even though in the head, one lets oneself be instructed by faith regarding life after death, the subconsciousness strives toward concluding this life with earthly mortality.

Now I don’t exclude that you may convincingly argue for subtleties being concealed in such purposes, but I admit that at this point I don’t see the least possibility to turn this around 180 degrees and make it somehow consistent with Tomberg’s view, so as to say that MoT is a wholly Anthroposophical work. One sees the evil in revealing the symmetry of soul eternity, the other sees the evil in concealing that same symmetry, only to focus on the notion of immortality. I wonder how you read these ideas by Steiner, specifically: that the Church, through dogma, has encouraged the development of the "refined soul instincts" - egoism - as well as the wish for soul termination at death. How would you turn them around 180 degrees? Do you think they are directed to the "egregore" of the Church?

One of the most important things I have learned from Anthroposophy is that world evolution in the light of the spirit simply cannot be considered discursively on the level of competing concepts. Spiritual currents and impulses are directed throughout world evolution through the deeds of individualities. Deeds, lying in the domain of action, though they often involve complex sets of definite concepts (like Anthroposophy), involve strategy. Things have to happen in a certain order, in a certain way, and involve certain people - according to what is demanded by the times. The way the spirit unfolds through time is like a choreographed dance. Moreover, this dance has to be continually updated and adjusted in response to material events, which, while they do happen in accordance with broadly determined trajectories are nonetheless the province of freedom and are not set in stone. All that said, I believe one simply must look at Tomberg's work at the level of moral strategy. His project was a series of deeds more than it was a set of concepts. When we look at it this way, with the deeds chiefly in mind, the concepts become illuminated and make perfect sense. We also then see how they are completely and absolutely Johannine and in perfect spiritual unity with Rudolf Steiner.

The way I've tried to explain Tomberg's careful approach to the issue of reincarnation above shows the choreographed dance involved in the manner in which this important but dangerous fact must come to consciousness. Steiner blew his trumpet, and this blast was required at that precise moment in time. It made the impression it needed to make on the karmic stream alive at the time, and the fact is that thanks to the globalization of world culture (which Steiner foresaw) the trumpet blast is now available to anyone and everyone who chooses to listen, including those who find themselves directly called by Lazarus-John. One can learn Anthroposophy on one's own simply through online resources. Most people who chance upon it randomly will write it off as an oddity, but those who are so destined will find it something they need to pursue. Now, the question is whether such people, having learned of reincarnation, should publicly discuss it or teach it. Reincarnation has always been something belonging to the domain of personal certainty. It is best for one discover it on their own, for reasons we have gone over and for which you have supplied supporting quotes from Tomberg. So here is how things stand: now that Steiner has necessarily broken the centuries-long pact of secrecy and communicated the fact of reincarnation to those who needed to hear it, the work of publicly proclaiming reincarnation is over. The impulse has been released and has taken hold. Does this make reincarnation any less integral and important as a temporary spiritual fact? No. It simply changes the manner in which it can and should come to consciousness. And that manner is the John stream entering the Peter stream. The Peter stream has washed the feet of its members. "He that is washed, needeth not but to wash his feet, but is clean wholly." (Jn 13:10). The infusion of the John stream will subtly bring moral creativity to those who have been prepared, and supersensible cognition will be awakened within them, first within a select few individuals, and then more and more slowly over generations. This is at least what Tomberg is saying in his work (not explicitly but implicitly), and this has become my conviction as well.

As to the anonymous authorship of Meditations, this is a symbolic element pointing to the essence of Tomberg's deed, as it relates to the mystery of Lazarus-John. It's another one of Tomberg's truly masterful moves. The Lazarus-John connection is wholly unique to Anthroposophy. Somehow - and this is hard for me to wrap my head around - nobody throughout Christian history seems to have exoterically discovered the common identity of Lazurus and John. The connection is thus not traditional and therefore likely to be met with hostility within Church circles. But Tomberg makes the connection esoterically (without ever stating it directly), in a manner that draws upon the way this connection is made in John's gospel itself. To recap, in the Gospel of John we hear of Lazarus as "the one Jesus loved", and then after his death and resurrection in chapter 13 we hear of him no more. Instead, we hear of the "beloved disciple" whom tradition identifies as the gospel writer himself. The "beloved disciple" is not directly given a proper name. He is technically anonymous. Tomberg, in following the pattern of Lazarus-John, has plunged himself directly into this stream. He has died to himself and been raised anonymous, as one to whom the fifth gospel is available . The "fifth gospel" is the gospel which arises from clairvoyant perception. It is only available through personal certainty. Anthroposophy was the impulse within our time meant to bring about this ability within individuals, and as such it can't be imposed externally but must be realized within. Rudolf Steiner and his gift of Anthroposophy was thus a kind of Lazarus - a public spectacle which had to die to itself and be raised anonymously, i.e. in the private confines of personal certainty - through "anonymous friends" (Johns) who let Peter go first into the tomb. Meditations on the Tarot is Anthroposophy in its resurrected form.

I will end with an interesting quote from Tomberg's Christ and Sophia, a pre-Catholic work hinting at some of his later ideas:

The moral core of the miracle involving the man born blind was the new impulse to perceive. At the moral center of raising Lazarus, the seventh miracle, is the new impulse to life on the Earth as a whole. Lazarus’ sickness involved a gradual drying up of the life spring within him, until he finally lost all will to live—to such a degree that even his breathing stopped. His death was conditioned by such an absence of life impulse, therefore, that even his breathing lacked any inducement to continue. Etherically, he was “bleeding to death.” The ether body wasted away gradually, and his life forces abandoned the physical body. This was not a disease in the sense that the physical body suffered trauma or poisoning; he was in perfect health. The whole process was brought on by the ether body itself. A complete transformation occurred in Lazarus’ ether body. Instead of working inward and bringing life forces to the physical body, it turned and poured them outward, thus losing the capacity to draw life forces from the natural environment—sunlight, plants, and food. Instead of a body that received, his body only gave. Indeed, it was devotion to the cosmic whole that caused his ether body to radiate out and reduced its capacity to replace what was given by taking from outside. This outpouring of life force was not corrected, and Lazarus languished. This transformation of Lazarus’ ether body was caused by his soul’s devotion to the spiritual world, developed so strongly that it affected his ether body. This process points to the danger that exists when an inner life spring has not developed inwardly that can replace what is given out. A spring, into which a direct stream of life force flows from the spiritual world, was called the “glory of God” (he doxa tou Theou). The phrase “Glory of God” (as used in both the Old and New Testaments) refers to a direct radiation of the Godhead that shines down into the etheric. According to the New Testament, “Glory” (doxa), which not only illuminates but also gives life, is the special function of the Son—God the Son breathes life into what is created by God the Father and revealed by God the Spirit. In this sense, the sickness of Lazarus was “not unto death, but for the glory [radiant activity] of God, that the Son of God might be glorified [revealed as actively radiant] thereby” (John 11:4). This emptiness of life force that afflicted Lazarus had the purpose of being filled with life radiating from the Son. Furthermore, this happened just as Jesus Christ called Lazarus out of the tomb. The cry of Jesus Christ was also a call to Earth, a call to life on Earth. Indeed, something happened even before this cry that points to the path on which the loosened link with Earth could be restored. This is the path indicated in the first part of Goethe’s Faust, when the Easter bells sound and Faust speaks these significant words: “Tears flow—Earth holds me once again.” Flowing tears express the new relationship of faithfulness to the Earth as established by the Easter impulse—established so that the soul remembers, morally, the Earth’s need. In other words, it receives a new life impulse not because of the Earth’s good things, but out of being conscious of its needs.