Philosophical Speculations

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Oct 19, 2025 12:12 am Right, so it seems to me that, as a practical matter, the spiritual life for many souls will always be mediated through an organization of some form, even including the Anthroposophical Society. For those souls who are not partaking in deep supersensible research, the Society will act much in the same way as an academic or religious organization, giving a firm support structure within a community of like-minded souls. Even for those of us who avoid joining/converting/affiliating with any such organization, for our supersensible knowledge to be planted as a seed in the broader cultural landscape, we will need to utilize the existing institutions to do so, whether in the domain of science, art, or religion. It seems that this is implicit in the very nature of the Anthroposophical-Michaelic impulse as well. For example, why is there no Waldorf University or Waldorf graduate school? After the young soul and mind have been appropriately shaped in keeping with supersensible insight into the developmental stages, the soul must go out and insinuate itself into the wider World of existing institutions, and hopefully begin contributing to their spiritualization in some way. As a practical matter, a double life will be led for some time, just by the fact that we won't be 'casting pearls before swine' at every opportunity. Some aspects of inner experience we will keep quite close to the chest.

I spoke concretely about religious institutions. It is clear that organizations and institutions will be part of the human social structure for a long time. But at the turn of the twentieth century, something new makes its appearance. To understand this, we should bear clearly in mind that religions are tightly related to the threshold of death. There’s revealed knowledge (that cannot be simply gathered from the senses and synthesized by the intellect) which concerns the existence of man beyond birth and death. The role of religion has been to guard and transmit that knowledge, thus giving proper direction of terrestrial life that is aligned with the higher-order curvature (which could only be known of through revelation). Through the impulse of initiatic science, we enter an age where the human being can reach in full consciousness within this life beyond birth and death. For example, Steiner’s Christianity as a Mystical Fact has been precisely an attempt to show that the revealed knowledge of the past can now be reached independently of tradition. We should also be very clear that this new ‘reaching’ doesn’t negate revelation. Every discovery of the initiate is still of the nature of revelation, in the sense that it is not simply an intellectual synthesis of past facts or intuitive guessing. Thus, the inspirations and intuitions are still something that we can only accept to flow within us, from above, through grace. It is not up to our intellectual decision to simply reach out and collect anything we want. Nevertheless, through inner development, we can make ourselves into vessels that are prepared to accommodate these inflows. And most importantly, it is the higher beings’ will to flow into human beings. They want to reveal themselves in the human soul.

In this way, we’re entering an age where this higher knowledge seeks its entry in the human soul, thus what in the past could have been revealed only in exceptional cases should become a reality for the human beings of the new age. And even if not everyone today would experience personally these revelations, the very sense that we're surrounded by them and they knock on our soul's door, already places us differently in the flow of existence. This is where religion and its institutions come in conflict with the age. The Church is opposed to SS not so much because it sees in it an alternative religion that is additional competition on the souls market, but because it has the audacity to claim that it leads the human being to the Sources of their own revelations. If religions are to continue their existence as they are, they need to actively deny that man has reached that stage, just like the Hebrews had to deny the Incarnation if they were to continue expecting the Messiah in the future. And note that this denial is not out of some obvious wickedness. In fact, the religions feel that they are protecting the Truth. In their view, through SS, man has fallen into a great temptation and has become monstrously prideful, to the extent that he believes he can reach individually in the Sources. And just to be clear, it’s not that the religious practices have suddenly become unnecessary for the souls who may need them. It’s the maintaining that the spiritual world is out of reach and human souls can only be guided through the revealed knowledge of the past. It is in this sense that Steiner saw the impossibility of the Church being the carrier of the new impulse (just as BD, who had constant enemies in the face of the Orthodox Church, who actively tried to blacken him and even succeeded at one point putting him in internment).

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Oct 19, 2025 12:12 am So in that sense, I don't think 'the plan', from the perspective of VT and Christian Hermeticism at least, is anything super complicated. It's simply trying to sow the seeds of higher spiritual life within the existing institutions of culture, taking opportunities to spiritualize the latter whenever they present themselves, in a strategic and somewhat cautious way. Of course, this should lead to ever-expanding results that become more noticeable in the functioning of such institutions over time. The question for me is how much the existing Church institution can transform in the direction of something more like the Christian Community. It would still maintain a definite structure based on tradition with its concrete rituals, sacraments, and dogma. But can we also imagine gradual leeway entering into this structure such that it becomes more open-roof and souls within it feel like they are free to develop their inner forces further, and that they can openly think and speak about the inner realities, without the threat of excommunication or damnation hanging over them? I suppose Rodriel has been trying to draw our attention to slivers of leeway that are opening up here and there, for example, in the recent post where he pointed out the RCC won't expel souls for their beliefs in reincarnation.

As said, I have nothing against anyone trying to plant the seeds of higher life anywhere, in any institution and organization, including religious. What concerns me is (at least that’s what I get from Rodriel’s view, and not directly from something I’ve read from VT) that the new impulse has to be planted within the RCC, and this is where it needs to grow and flourish. Note the difference. In one case, the impulse grows unhindered and, so to speak, can have ‘missions’ here and there to plant seeds. In the other case, it has to enter the envelope of the RCC and hopefully, gradually push it outwards from within. In other words, the impulse is not simply meant to help the RCC, but it is directly tied to its fate. It is as if it says, “Without the RCC I have no body. I have to enter that body and quietly push it from within, until it becomes flexible enough for the free expression of my inner nature and no longer acts like a hindrance.”

To me, this is truly problematic. The main argument has been that the SS impulse in its raw form is too inaccessible and would leave the majority of the souls behind. But that’s why I reminded that this impulse has already manifested in different forms and no soul has been left without the means to ‘catch the wave’, so to speak. I’m sorry to say, but ‘the plan’ (not about helping others but about the new impulse growing from within the RCC) borders on wishful thinking. And most importantly, it puts the more advanced souls that should secretly work from within, in a continuous waiting mode. Every step is dependent on the RCC catching on. And the main problem is that at its traditional core, the RCC doesn’t want to catch on to anything! This could probably be justified if there were no other alternatives for the religiously oriented souls, but there are. Christ’s hand has reached down for everyone who feels the calling of the new culture. What about those who haven’t heard that call yet? Well, they can follow any tradition they karmically feel tied to, but this should be no reason for everyone else to arrest humanity's development and wait for everyone to make up their minds before moving forward.

Cleric wrote: ↑Sun Oct 19, 2025 8:26 am

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Oct 19, 2025 12:12 am Right, so it seems to me that, as a practical matter, the spiritual life for many souls will always be mediated through an organization of some form, even including the Anthroposophical Society. For those souls who are not partaking in deep supersensible research, the Society will act much in the same way as an academic or religious organization, giving a firm support structure within a community of like-minded souls. Even for those of us who avoid joining/converting/affiliating with any such organization, for our supersensible knowledge to be planted as a seed in the broader cultural landscape, we will need to utilize the existing institutions to do so, whether in the domain of science, art, or religion. It seems that this is implicit in the very nature of the Anthroposophical-Michaelic impulse as well. For example, why is there no Waldorf University or Waldorf graduate school? After the young soul and mind have been appropriately shaped in keeping with supersensible insight into the developmental stages, the soul must go out and insinuate itself into the wider World of existing institutions, and hopefully begin contributing to their spiritualization in some way. As a practical matter, a double life will be led for some time, just by the fact that we won't be 'casting pearls before swine' at every opportunity. Some aspects of inner experience we will keep quite close to the chest.

I spoke concretely about religious institutions. It is clear that organizations and institutions will be part of the human social structure for a long time. But at the turn of the twentieth century, something new makes its appearance. To understand this, we should bear clearly in mind that religions are tightly related to the threshold of death. There’s revealed knowledge (that cannot be simply gathered from the senses and synthesized by the intellect) which concerns the existence of man beyond birth and death. The role of religion has been to guard and transmit that knowledge, thus giving proper direction of terrestrial life that is aligned with the higher-order curvature (which could only be known of through revelation). Through the impulse of initiatic science, we enter an age where the human being can reach in full consciousness within this life beyond birth and death. For example, Steiner’s Christianity as a Mystical Fact has been precisely an attempt to show that the revealed knowledge of the past can now be reached independently of tradition. We should also be very clear that this new ‘reaching’ doesn’t negate revelation. Every discovery of the initiate is still of the nature of revelation, in the sense that it is not simply an intellectual synthesis of past facts or intuitive guessing. Thus, the inspirations and intuitions are still something that we can only accept to flow within us, from above, through grace. It is not up to our intellectual decision to simply reach out and collect anything we want. Nevertheless, through inner development, we can make ourselves into vessels that are prepared to accommodate these inflows. And most importantly, it is the higher beings’ will to flow into human beings. They want to reveal themselves in the human soul.

In this way, we’re entering an age where this higher knowledge seeks its entry in the human soul, thus what in the past could have been revealed only in exceptional cases should become a reality for the human beings of the new age. And even if not everyone today would experience personally these revelations, the very sense that we're surrounded by them and they knock on our soul's door, already places us differently in the flow of existence. This is where religion and its institutions come in conflict with the age. The Church is opposed to SS not so much because it sees in it an alternative religion that is additional competition on the souls market, but because it has the audacity to claim that it leads the human being to the Sources of their own revelations. If religions are to continue their existence as they are, they need to actively deny that man has reached that stage, just like the Hebrews had to deny the Incarnation if they were to continue expecting the Messiah in the future. And note that this denial is not out of some obvious wickedness. In fact, the religions feel that they are protecting the Truth. In their view, through SS, man has fallen into a great temptation and has become monstrously prideful, to the extent that he believes he can reach individually in the Sources. And just to be clear, it’s not that the religious practices have suddenly become unnecessary for the souls who may need them. It’s the maintaining that the spiritual world is out of reach and human souls can only be guided through the revealed knowledge of the past. It is in this sense that Steiner saw the impossibility of the Church being the carrier of the new impulse (just as BD, who had constant enemies in the face of the Orthodox Church, who actively tried to blacken him and even succeeded at one point putting him in internment).

Yes, but it feels like something is still being missed here. You are describing the poles of our current age, along which the modern soul is stretched, so to speak. That implies that there must exist a gradient between these poles. The new doesn't come in as if we have ascended to the next floor of a building and left the old on the previous, but rather, more of the whole building starts to grow around the current floor. This is a persistent theme of the Gospels as well, that the old and the new are coming into dynamic tension, and the former should seek loving and creative ways of accommodating the latter.

At this stage of evolution, it almost becomes irrelevant to sharply distinguish religious organizations from other organizations. That is why I was focusing on the functions of such organizations, from the perspective of the seeking soul. The fact is that many organizations serve as mediators, guardians, etc., of revealed knowledge of the past for such souls. In a short time, we can also speak of the Society as guarding revealed knowledge of the past, on which souls are dependent for their inner orientation. Yes, it will speak to these souls of the future epochs and their developments, but that will sound almost as nebulous as the 'second coming', the 'millennial kingdom', the 'final judgment', and so on, for those souls who fail to develop direct 'lines of communication' with the spiritual worlds. These non-religious organizations that we feel have moved on from all the shortcomings of the religious ones, will soon be in a similar position to the Churches and therefore in need of spiritual enlivenment if they aren't to rigidify and degenerate completely.

For sure, as long as any institution actively denies the here and now possibilities of the new man, it can't serve as a proper support, let alone the exclusive carrier, of the new Impulse. The Churches have a long way to go in that respect. Yet they aren't going to simply disappear from the face of the Earth any time soon. They will remain central hubs that attract religiously-inclined souls for much of the new age. What good does it serve to ignore this fact or to ignore the opportunities for transforming such hubs from the inside-out? Yes, it often seems difficult to imagine how this will happen. But at the same time, I am often surprised by what I read in the daily news. Things are not unfolding in any strictly linear or predictable way. If we axiomatically rule out all such possibilities from the beginning, then we simply make it more difficult for such institutions to be leveraged in the service of the new man.

(what you say about BD and the Orthodox Church also fits in well with Rodriel's observation/distinction between the latter and the RCC)

Cleric wrote:

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Oct 19, 2025 12:12 am So in that sense, I don't think 'the plan', from the perspective of VT and Christian Hermeticism at least, is anything super complicated. It's simply trying to sow the seeds of higher spiritual life within the existing institutions of culture, taking opportunities to spiritualize the latter whenever they present themselves, in a strategic and somewhat cautious way. Of course, this should lead to ever-expanding results that become more noticeable in the functioning of such institutions over time. The question for me is how much the existing Church institution can transform in the direction of something more like the Christian Community. It would still maintain a definite structure based on tradition with its concrete rituals, sacraments, and dogma. But can we also imagine gradual leeway entering into this structure such that it becomes more open-roof and souls within it feel like they are free to develop their inner forces further, and that they can openly think and speak about the inner realities, without the threat of excommunication or damnation hanging over them? I suppose Rodriel has been trying to draw our attention to slivers of leeway that are opening up here and there, for example, in the recent post where he pointed out the RCC won't expel souls for their beliefs in reincarnation.

As said, I have nothing against anyone trying to plant the seeds of higher life anywhere, in any institution and organization, including religious. What concerns me is (at least that’s what I get from Rodriel’s view, and not directly from something I’ve read from VT) that the new impulse has to be planted within the RCC, and this is where it needs to grow and flourish. Note the difference. In one case, the impulse grows unhindered and, so to speak, can have ‘missions’ here and there to plant seeds. In the other case, it has to enter the envelope of the RCC and hopefully, gradually push it outwards from within. In other words, the impulse is not simply meant to help the RCC, but it is directly tied to its fate. It is as if it says, “Without the RCC I have no body. I have to enter that body and quietly push it from within, until it becomes flexible enough for the free expression of my inner nature and no longer acts like a hindrance.”

To me, this is truly problematic. The main argument has been that the SS impulse in its raw form is too inaccessible and would leave the majority of the souls behind. But that’s why I reminded that this impulse has already manifested in different forms and no soul has been left without the means to ‘catch the wave’, so to speak. I’m sorry to say, but ‘the plan’ (not about helping others but about the new impulse growing from within the RCC) borders on wishful thinking. And most importantly, it puts the more advanced souls that should secretly work from within, in a continuous waiting mode. Every step is dependent on the RCC catching on. And the main problem is that at its traditional core, the RCC doesn’t want to catch on to anything! This could probably be justified if there were no other alternatives for the religiously oriented souls, but there are. Christ’s hand has reached down for everyone who feels the calling of the new culture. What about those who haven’t heard that call yet? Well, they can follow any tradition they karmically feel tied to, but this should be no reason for everyone else to arrest humanity's development and wait for everyone to make up their minds before moving forward.

Yes, that is concerning to me as well. I don't see that working out well. If, at this moment, the RCC were to become the sole arbiter of higher revelations and the sole authority of how such revelations should steer the collective life, that would be a tragic event. I don't see that happening, and I certainly don't see that as VT's plan or hope. It simply doesn't make sense to me that such an individuality's plan would be to speak about reincarnation as a fact, on the one hand, and invest all hope in an institution that actively denies this fact, on the other. Now, if VT were to speak about the RCC becoming the 'head' of all science, art, politics, etc., the sole mediator of all esoteric striving, that would be a different story. But I haven't seen any such indications yet. Instead, we can see that he has lent his praise to a soul (Martin) who remained active within both the RCC and Anthroposophy.

Federica wrote: ↑Sun Oct 19, 2025 7:03 am

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Oct 19, 2025 12:12 am So in that sense, I don't think 'the plan', from the perspective of VT and Christian Hermeticism at least, is anything super complicated. It's simply trying to sow the seeds of higher spiritual life within the existing institutions of culture, taking opportunities to spiritualize the latter whenever they present themselves, in a strategic and somewhat cautious way. Of course, this should lead to ever-expanding results that become more noticeable in the functioning of such institutions over time.
...
The main thing for me is that, regardless of whether the RCC's pliability in this respect is being overestimated, we don't need to see VT's pursuit as something completely at odds with Anthroposophy and the inner work that always needs the mediation of outer institutions to become more widespread and effective in the face of unfolding events.

Doesn't this risk constituting a projection onto Tomberg's hermeticism of your own desires and views, also given that the other day, when I asked you what you thought the Catholic project from Tomberg's perspective is, you answered: “That still remains mostly a mystery to me"? It is noteworthy that such a scenario for VT's plan happens to deeply accommodate a perspective that coincides with your long-term background, long-term preferences, long-term views on cultural institutions and the rule of law. Perhaps you are now drawing these considerations from your unbiased soul, but isn't it still a strange coincidence that your unbiased self now suddenly finds out (hours after calling it a mystery) that just that one scenario is, of course, the most likely?

Of course, it remains a mystery, as do the karmic missions of all individualities on the front lines of Earthly evolution. The mystery is how the spiritualization of the cultural landscape, including the Churches, will be accomplished. That is what I said in my previous answer to you.

Federica wrote:How not to see this idea other than as plainly naive? You are overlooking the intrinsically political structure of the RCC. Yet, only a few weeks ago, under more neutral overall soul conditions, you were in a very different mood - in what I would call the right mood, in line with Steiner’s expressed vision of community and circle for the future. Whilst now, it seems to me, you are overpowered by the strong pull of the RCC-beings.

If your stance is that such institutional structures are inherently incapable of any transformation, pliability, leeway, etc., then yes, we live in a sad world indeed, and probably all Christian esoteric striving is naivety upon naivety.

Federica wrote:

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Sep 27, 2025 1:15 pmI'd like to imagine that in the near future, the digital space will be utilized more and more as a projection of the 'congregation' of spirit-seeking souls that is taking shape in the supersensible domain, as we try to do here. What we work out through our independent yet shared intuitive process can be continued in the Earthly domain through this space, with the help of the most varied illustrations, metaphors, examples, and lines of reasoning, and hopefully this Impulse will radiate out to other cultural spaces as well. Yet we can't expect such hopes to actualize unless we faithfully invest in the small, humble, and seemingly trivial steps, where a few souls hash out and refine their intuitions for these inner dynamics and mutually support each other in triangulating such intuitions.

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Do you still like to imagine that?

Yes. I never imagined it would or should be the only 'congregation', but the digital space will obviously remain as a critical hub for seeking souls and hopefully it will be utilized as we do here.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Oct 19, 2025 12:50 pm If, at this moment, the RCC were to become the sole arbiter of higher revelations and the sole authority of how such revelations should steer the collective life, that would be a tragic event. I don't see that happening, and I certainly don't see that as VT's plan or hope.

You are overlooking what I quoted before from MoT. And this is in a published book. VT implores the Unknown Friends to ONLY rely on the RCC and no other organizations, associations, or societies whatsoever. Or is there perhaps an hermetic reading of these words that would reverse the meaning by 180 degrees? Rodriel may tell us.

Tomberg wrote:Dear Unknown Friend—you who are reading these lines written in 1965, after nearly fifty years of endeavour and experience in the domain of Hermeticism—I beg you not to regard what is written here as a simple wish made for the progression of Hermetic historicism, but as a testament making you who read these lines a trustee of such a task— if you accept. Therefore, please do all that you judge appropriate, but one thing I implore you not to do: to found an organisation, an association, a society or an order which would take charge of that. For the tradition lives not thanks to organisations, but in spite of them. One should content oneself purely and simply with friendship in order to preserve the life of a tradition; it should not be entrusted to the care of the embalmers and mummifiers par excellence that organisations are, save for the one founded by Jesus Christ.