Federica wrote: ↑Sat Sep 27, 2025 1:47 pm
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.
