I have been quoting Tomberg a lot on the threads lately, but still haven't scratched the surface of clear and practical spiritual insights he has to offer. Therefore I decided to dedicate a thread to some of them. I will try to provide my own brief comments as well, as a sort of crude synopsis, so I am not only copying and pasting his writing.
On the urgent need for humanity to ascend from the zero point of amorality
Here, Tomberg provides a useful context for understanding the entire manifest world, including our own soul life. It is the intersection of two invisible powers proceeding from the sub-sensible and super-sensible, respectively. We could use many conceptual labels for these invisible streams, such as the subconscious and supra-conscious, the elemental and archetypal, the evil and the good, the immoral and the moral. Modern human thinking generally straddles these powers in the 'zero point' of amorality. That is why we normally feel our thought life to be isolated, dry, prosaic, dead, and go seeking for power in one direction or another. Our feeling and will is activated from two directions - either from the shadowy life of instincts, desires, passions, sensuous pleasures, or from the lucid life of inspiring ideals. In the former direction we fine a power which possesses us, whereas in the latter direction we find a power which enlightens us.
***
When we look at a human being’s ordinary consciousness, his or her knowledge and capacity, we must admit that at first it usually commands very little force. It moves almost exclusively in the abstract—in abstract thoughts and ideas, in subjective feelings, in personal wishes. It is excluded from the workings of the forces of world existence; that is to say the nature forces as well as creative spirit powers work outside human consciousness. Human consciousness can well use the forces of the outer world, but it cannot take them into itself. So it must, in spite of all technical achievements, admit that it is powerless.
So people yearn for a way out of this powerlessness. They would like to enter into the power-being of the world itself. For then they would lose the homunculus glass walls that separate them from the world of powerful being, then they would share in the world-power.
Human beings at present have arrived at the zero point of consciousness—all has become abstract in them. And just as on one side of zero the sequence of positive numbers is found, and on the other side the sequence of negative numbers, so above human abstraction the concrete super-human spirit world is found, and below abstraction, the concrete sub-natural world. Once it has stepped over the boundary of abstraction, the actual entry of human consciousness into the power sphere of the world of gods—or else of anti-gods—can happen either through enlightenment or through possession. In both cases human consciousness attains the quality it had yearned for; namely power, which it previously lacked. But only in the first case is this power bestowed on the ‘I’; in the second case the ‘I’ becomes the slave of a foreign power.
Human beings are only weak so long as they remains in themselves; whenever they step out of themselves, cross the boundary of their personalities, they get strong through the cosmic forces that surround them. For this strength they can thank the generous powers of heaven—or else the suctional forces of the inner earth. Either way, power enters into them. Before, as people of the earth’s surface, participating neither in the life of heaven nor that of earth, they did not have this power. The yearning for being possessed is, then, the striving for strength—this is the ‘will to power’, for power, however, which one prefers not to climb up to, but rather to slide down to.
This sliding-down is an attitude of Western spiritual life that has, since the fading of the Medieval era, actually increased in ever greater measure. It was to counteract this sliding down into the realm of sub-nature that Rudolf Steiner inaugurated the spiritual movement that these articles strive to serve. Anthroposophy is not meant to satisfy a few non-conformists, as is thought among ‘tolerant’ people in the world; it is an urgent measure of aid for humanity that is sliding down into the abyss of subhumanness. For modern human beings, having come to an amoral world-conception, are threatened by the grave danger of sliding down into an anti-moral world.
Humanity cannot permanently remain at the zero point of amorality. The mood of moral indifference (which reigns today in most modern manifestations of culture, as it does in science, politics, and economics) can be nothing more than a transition. Amorality slides over into antimorality. This transition can be clearly observed in science, politics, and economics, for they increasingly sever their connection from the oft-mentioned ‘moral prejudices of an outmoded world-conception.’ Thereby, however, they become paths that can lead to possession. Two possibilities face humanity standing at the zero point: either to take the way toward being possessed, or the way toward enlightenment. Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science points the way to that state of human consciousness called’ ‘enlightenment’, which in the sense of the above considerations is the opposite pole to ‘possession’. As the sliding-down through materialism breaks through the boundary of abstract present-day consciousness into a sub-material world found beneath this boundary, so enlightenment can lead human consciousness over and beyond this boundary of abstract present-day consciousness into the world of spirit. Spiritual science leads to an experience of real—that is, active—spirit. Through this experience the abstraction of present-day consciousness is overcome. The yearning for spirit life thus finds its fulfillment.
Spiritual Insights from Valentin Tomberg
Spiritual Insights from Valentin Tomberg
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
Re: Spiritual Insights from Valentin Tomberg
On Christianity as the free reconciliation of consciousness and life
The main objection from spiritually-minded people to thinking as spiritual activity is that our thoughts are stale, dry, merely reflective, without the force of life. There is a clear opposition sensed between what we experience as thinking beings, absorbed in contemplation of outer appearances and remote ideals, and what we are in the depth of our emotions and will impulses where the spiritual life vaguely stirs. As long as this opposition remains in our experience, there can be no bridge between the normal course of life within the Earthly context and the spiritual ideals of the Cosmos. We remain dualized being who must choose one at the expense of the other. Since we cannot continue living apart from the Earthly context, however, the forced choice always leads us further and further into the life of personal desires, feelings, impulses, and pleasures. We can take temporary reprieves in the form of philosophy, theology, science, art, imaginative activity, meditation, mystical contemplation, etc., but the Spirit thus experienced is then brought back down into the personal sphere of lower impulses and can only be understood by thinking in that context. A true understanding of the incarnate Christ Being reveals to us how this forced opposition between life and thinking consciousness is no longer our destiny; that the forces of life can be rhythmically worked into our thinking conscience from the unsuspected background of our 'I' and the two can be made Whole again, in complete freedom. The precise way in which this Christ deed manifests for modern humanity is to be sought through spiritual science.
***
What we have here expressed abstractly can be made more vividly comprehensible by stating: the human organism is the arena for life-processes and consciousness processes. The life-processes are unconscious, the consciousness processes are lifeless.
For me, my activity of digestion is unconscious, whereas my activity of thinking is conscious. Further, through my digestive process my organism is built up, whereas through my thinking my organism is broken down. While I am thinking, a death process takes place in my organism. An effect takes place that works contrary to the life-processes. Every process of consciousness means the conquest of the life forces in an area in the organism—however small it may be. Where the life forces are inhibited so that a space empty of life is made in the organism, consciousness lights up.
So human beings, as long as they live, stand within this contradiction: Death-bringing consciousness and consciousness-extinguishing life. This contradiction between light of consciousness and darkness of life is described in a dramatic manner at the beginning of St John’s Gospel: ‘and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.’ And all the words in this Gospel that follow contain a description of the solution to this contradiction of light and darkness.
The fact that St John’s Gospel is oriented toward this contradiction is not surprising, because its existence has the greatest possible moral significance. It is to this contradiction in the moral life that St Paul spoke such fiery words in the Epistle to the Romans, stating there that the darkness in human beings has power of life, while the light in them, though it makes visible the evil in darkness, lacks the power to overcome it. ‘The good that I would do, I do not; but the evil which I would not do, that I do,’ said Paul, thus pointing to the archetypal problem of moral life; namely, the question: How can moral insight, once gained, work with the same natural force as the instinctive urges work? How can the power of the good be added to the insight into goodness?
This question has been asked by all striving people. Schiller’s Aesthetic Letters, Goethe’s Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, Dostoevsky’s whole life-work, the drama, Four Apocalyptic Beasts, by Albert Steffen—all these works have as the central question: How can consciousness gain the power of life, and how can life shine with the clarity of consciousness?
What is actually meant by this question? An answer can be found if we consider certain results of Anthroposophical research into the human being. According to this knowledge, human beings can be viewed as a duality consisting of one part that withdraws during sleep, and one part that remains lying in bed. During sleep a division occurs: the ‘I’ and astral body separate from the life body and physical body. On awakening, both parts join together into a unity once more. But the polarity between the two parts is not reconciled through this unification. On the contrary, it actually gains a more intense reality, for the processes of consciousness of the astral body come right up against the life-processes of the life body. Thus within the awake human being, the contradiction arises which we have described above.
And when now the striving ‘I’ of the human being has gained moral insight so that it ‘wants the good’, then this insight is there, shining brightly and lighting up the initially independent life stream, which, nevertheless goes its own way. What Paul meant by the tragic contradiction between the ‘law’—‘the good, that I would do’—and the power of evil in human nature—‘the evil, which I would not do’—is an experience of the fact that the human ‘I’ can work on the astral body, but that it has not the power to substantially transform the life body and physical body. The contradiction between the moral law that throws its light on evil (thereby making it visible) but is then powerless to overcome it, and the elemental power of the dark urges of evil—this is the contradiction carried over into the moral realm of the ‘I’ and astral body on the one hand and of the life body and physical body on the other.
What is it, then, that gives the good, once seen, the power to be not only a process of consciousness, but also to become a life process? What is this power, capable of carrying moral qualities over into the biological realm so that it may work with a vital strength? Or, in other words, what is it that can give the ‘I’ the power to work not only on the astral body, but also deeper, into the life body; yes, and even right down into the physical body? The answer given by Paul is: Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus is that power who can give strength to the good in human beings, enabling it to work in that region of human beings where life and death battle each other.
But this working of Christ Jesus should not be thought of as coming from without, like the working of natural forces. Although the Christ-power in human beings works with elemental force, it does not work in the same way as nature forces, for it works through the human ‘I’—whereas nature processes take place outside the human ‘I’. Natural processes compel the human being; the Christ force does not compel, but works without infringing upon human freedom in the slightest degree.
In order to understand how this is possible, we have to imagine that the human ‘I’ has a ‘front’ and a ‘back’. In front of the human ‘I’ is spread the whole world of appearances that the ‘I’ beholds and also influences. Behind the human ‘I’ is a background that is at first unknown to it. Out of this background the ‘I’ receives promptings, just as from the foreground percepts impress themselves on the ‘I’. The effects of nature proceed from the foreground, while the effects of the Christ-power stream from the other side of existence, from the background.
The Christ-power streams from the background fundaments of existence into the human ‘I’, fills it, and thus bestows on it a strength that it does not have of itself—namely, the strength to bring the good, as an elemental force, down into the being of the world. This working of the Christ-power—offered to the human ‘I’ as a gift, inwardly fulfilling, leaving it free—was called by Paul ‘grace’ (charis). Thus grace is a process through which the ‘I’ in its strivings toward goodness receives the strength to achieve more than it could with its own forces alone.
Tomberg, Valentin; Wetmore, James. Russian Spirituality and Other Essays: Mysteries of Our Time Seen Through the Eyes of a Russian Esotericist (pp. 77-78). Sophia Perennis. Kindle Edition.
The main objection from spiritually-minded people to thinking as spiritual activity is that our thoughts are stale, dry, merely reflective, without the force of life. There is a clear opposition sensed between what we experience as thinking beings, absorbed in contemplation of outer appearances and remote ideals, and what we are in the depth of our emotions and will impulses where the spiritual life vaguely stirs. As long as this opposition remains in our experience, there can be no bridge between the normal course of life within the Earthly context and the spiritual ideals of the Cosmos. We remain dualized being who must choose one at the expense of the other. Since we cannot continue living apart from the Earthly context, however, the forced choice always leads us further and further into the life of personal desires, feelings, impulses, and pleasures. We can take temporary reprieves in the form of philosophy, theology, science, art, imaginative activity, meditation, mystical contemplation, etc., but the Spirit thus experienced is then brought back down into the personal sphere of lower impulses and can only be understood by thinking in that context. A true understanding of the incarnate Christ Being reveals to us how this forced opposition between life and thinking consciousness is no longer our destiny; that the forces of life can be rhythmically worked into our thinking conscience from the unsuspected background of our 'I' and the two can be made Whole again, in complete freedom. The precise way in which this Christ deed manifests for modern humanity is to be sought through spiritual science.
***
What we have here expressed abstractly can be made more vividly comprehensible by stating: the human organism is the arena for life-processes and consciousness processes. The life-processes are unconscious, the consciousness processes are lifeless.
For me, my activity of digestion is unconscious, whereas my activity of thinking is conscious. Further, through my digestive process my organism is built up, whereas through my thinking my organism is broken down. While I am thinking, a death process takes place in my organism. An effect takes place that works contrary to the life-processes. Every process of consciousness means the conquest of the life forces in an area in the organism—however small it may be. Where the life forces are inhibited so that a space empty of life is made in the organism, consciousness lights up.
So human beings, as long as they live, stand within this contradiction: Death-bringing consciousness and consciousness-extinguishing life. This contradiction between light of consciousness and darkness of life is described in a dramatic manner at the beginning of St John’s Gospel: ‘and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.’ And all the words in this Gospel that follow contain a description of the solution to this contradiction of light and darkness.
The fact that St John’s Gospel is oriented toward this contradiction is not surprising, because its existence has the greatest possible moral significance. It is to this contradiction in the moral life that St Paul spoke such fiery words in the Epistle to the Romans, stating there that the darkness in human beings has power of life, while the light in them, though it makes visible the evil in darkness, lacks the power to overcome it. ‘The good that I would do, I do not; but the evil which I would not do, that I do,’ said Paul, thus pointing to the archetypal problem of moral life; namely, the question: How can moral insight, once gained, work with the same natural force as the instinctive urges work? How can the power of the good be added to the insight into goodness?
This question has been asked by all striving people. Schiller’s Aesthetic Letters, Goethe’s Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, Dostoevsky’s whole life-work, the drama, Four Apocalyptic Beasts, by Albert Steffen—all these works have as the central question: How can consciousness gain the power of life, and how can life shine with the clarity of consciousness?
What is actually meant by this question? An answer can be found if we consider certain results of Anthroposophical research into the human being. According to this knowledge, human beings can be viewed as a duality consisting of one part that withdraws during sleep, and one part that remains lying in bed. During sleep a division occurs: the ‘I’ and astral body separate from the life body and physical body. On awakening, both parts join together into a unity once more. But the polarity between the two parts is not reconciled through this unification. On the contrary, it actually gains a more intense reality, for the processes of consciousness of the astral body come right up against the life-processes of the life body. Thus within the awake human being, the contradiction arises which we have described above.
And when now the striving ‘I’ of the human being has gained moral insight so that it ‘wants the good’, then this insight is there, shining brightly and lighting up the initially independent life stream, which, nevertheless goes its own way. What Paul meant by the tragic contradiction between the ‘law’—‘the good, that I would do’—and the power of evil in human nature—‘the evil, which I would not do’—is an experience of the fact that the human ‘I’ can work on the astral body, but that it has not the power to substantially transform the life body and physical body. The contradiction between the moral law that throws its light on evil (thereby making it visible) but is then powerless to overcome it, and the elemental power of the dark urges of evil—this is the contradiction carried over into the moral realm of the ‘I’ and astral body on the one hand and of the life body and physical body on the other.
What is it, then, that gives the good, once seen, the power to be not only a process of consciousness, but also to become a life process? What is this power, capable of carrying moral qualities over into the biological realm so that it may work with a vital strength? Or, in other words, what is it that can give the ‘I’ the power to work not only on the astral body, but also deeper, into the life body; yes, and even right down into the physical body? The answer given by Paul is: Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus is that power who can give strength to the good in human beings, enabling it to work in that region of human beings where life and death battle each other.
But this working of Christ Jesus should not be thought of as coming from without, like the working of natural forces. Although the Christ-power in human beings works with elemental force, it does not work in the same way as nature forces, for it works through the human ‘I’—whereas nature processes take place outside the human ‘I’. Natural processes compel the human being; the Christ force does not compel, but works without infringing upon human freedom in the slightest degree.
In order to understand how this is possible, we have to imagine that the human ‘I’ has a ‘front’ and a ‘back’. In front of the human ‘I’ is spread the whole world of appearances that the ‘I’ beholds and also influences. Behind the human ‘I’ is a background that is at first unknown to it. Out of this background the ‘I’ receives promptings, just as from the foreground percepts impress themselves on the ‘I’. The effects of nature proceed from the foreground, while the effects of the Christ-power stream from the other side of existence, from the background.
The Christ-power streams from the background fundaments of existence into the human ‘I’, fills it, and thus bestows on it a strength that it does not have of itself—namely, the strength to bring the good, as an elemental force, down into the being of the world. This working of the Christ-power—offered to the human ‘I’ as a gift, inwardly fulfilling, leaving it free—was called by Paul ‘grace’ (charis). Thus grace is a process through which the ‘I’ in its strivings toward goodness receives the strength to achieve more than it could with its own forces alone.
Tomberg, Valentin; Wetmore, James. Russian Spirituality and Other Essays: Mysteries of Our Time Seen Through the Eyes of a Russian Esotericist (pp. 77-78). Sophia Perennis. Kindle Edition.
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
Re: Spiritual Insights from Valentin Tomberg
Ashvin,
Thank you for this brilliant idea!
These insights provide needed exercises that it's useful to read again and again, to gauge the strength of one's mobilizing capabilities.
I remember that soon after gaining a rough idea of the wisdom enclosed in the works of Steiner, I felt the wish to see how the teachings of Anthroposophy were echoed, worked through, and lived up to by its students, down to our present time. Today I can say without any doubts, with the large variety of thinkers presented and discussed here, within and without Anthroposophy, that wish has been fulfilled multiple times over.
Thank you for this brilliant idea!
These insights provide needed exercises that it's useful to read again and again, to gauge the strength of one's mobilizing capabilities.
I remember that soon after gaining a rough idea of the wisdom enclosed in the works of Steiner, I felt the wish to see how the teachings of Anthroposophy were echoed, worked through, and lived up to by its students, down to our present time. Today I can say without any doubts, with the large variety of thinkers presented and discussed here, within and without Anthroposophy, that wish has been fulfilled multiple times over.
In this epoch we have to be fighters for the spirit: man must realise what his powers can give way to, unless they are kept constantly under control for the conquest of the spiritual world. In this fifth epoch, man is entitled to his freedom to the highest degree! He has to go through that.
Re: Spiritual Insights from Valentin Tomberg
Federica wrote: ↑Fri Jun 09, 2023 10:07 am Ashvin,
Thank you for this brilliant idea!
These insights provide needed exercises that it's useful to read again and again, to gauge the strength of one's mobilizing capabilities.
I remember that soon after gaining a rough idea of the wisdom enclosed in the works of Steiner, I felt the wish to see how the teachings of Anthroposophy were echoed, worked through, and lived up to by its students, down to our present time. Today I can say without any doubts, with the large variety of thinkers presented and discussed here, within and without Anthroposophy, that wish has been fulfilled multiple times over.
I'm glad you appreciate them, Federica. I also feel that it is most helpful to revisit and reread these texts again and again. Sharing these quotes help me do that as well. Most of my spiritual insight lately has come from exactly that - familiarizing myself with these inherently unfamiliar and unusual ideas, and exploring them from the many angles offered to us now. That reminds me of what Steiner writes:
Often when the difficulty and incomprehensibility of anthroposophy is spoken of, it is not because the understanding itself is so difficult, but because the modern world of thought feels alienated by what is said by the anthroposophists. And then the listeners or readers don’t say that these things are unusual for them, but they simply say: we don’t understand this.
Not pre-education, but open-mindedness is what is often lacking in this respect. For anthroposophy says nothing that is not in fact deeply inscribed in every human soul. And to bring that out, it is not scholarship that is needed, but goodwill above all.
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
Re: Spiritual Insights from Valentin Tomberg
On the passive-active coordination of the lower 'I' and the higher 'I'
Tomberg provides a simple, yet useful metaphor for how we relate the spiritual striving of our normal 'I' consciousness, which unfolds within the Earthly context, with that of our higher 'I' consciousness which unfolds within the Cosmic context. To avoid material or mystical reductionism, these two need to work together in rhythmic harmony. That is the overarching task of our current age in which we can bring the consciousness soul to completion and begin incarnating the Spirit Self, or 'manas-consciousness'. This form of consciousness responds to our patient and enduring upward striving, our astral catharsis, with downward revelation. Of course, it should always be remembered these are all only spatial symbols for inner qualitative relationships and orientations.
***
Now all the above considerations (as also those of the previous essay) can give rise to the following question: Is the manas-revelation, such as it is characterized in these essays, not a kind of mediumism? Does not this characterization give the impression that here is merely passive suffering and waiting until the revelation comes ‘of itself’ one day?
Before this question can be answered, it is necessary to clarify the concepts of ‘passivity’ and ‘activity’ as applied to spiritual life. The ordinary meaning of these concepts is this: ‘activity’ refers to a consciousness in the state of ‘doing’, and ‘passivity’ refers to a consciousness in the state of ‘suffering’. This standpoint is entirely justified and useful when one has in mind the horizontal, the relationship of the human consciousness to its surroundings. However, if one is considering the vertical, that is, the relation of the incarnated human being to the spiritual world, then this standpoint is no longer valid. Then the opposite is true: the receptive attitude toward the spiritual world, the suffering and waiting, is the active side of the vertically upright consciousness, while the efforts of the will for the purpose of this or that exercise or task of cognition are the passive side. So, for instance, the words Christ Jesus spoke during the hour of Gethsemane: ‘Not my will, but Thy will be done,’ signify the highest possible activity of the vertically-directed consciousness. But this activity is not visible on the horizontal plane of life; there it appears as passive.
Therefore, the essential requirement for the occurrence of manas-cognition is not the submergence of ‘I’ consciousness (even in sacrificial devotion), but rather its coordination with the ‘higher I’. Unfortunately, there exists much unclarity about the nature of the relationship between the ‘higher and lower I’. The ‘lower I’ is usually imagined as a chalice that is filled from above by the ‘higher I’. This may suffice for awhile as a picture, but it is not a fitting concept. For a moment comes—and it comes when life itself demands clarification in this area—when one cannot do anything with this image.
Another image—although it may at first seem strange—can be very fruitful and helpful in this regard. Consider the relationship of the ‘higher I’ to the ‘ordinary I’ as like that of a pair of eyes. However, here the eyes are not placed to ‘right’ and ‘left’, that is, in the horizontal, but ‘above’ and ‘below’, in the vertical. The ‘higher I’ is the human being’s eye in the spiritual world; the ‘ordinary I’, which is the focal point of the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the consciousness soul, is the organ of perception in both the physical world and the elemental world. The true and healthy relation of the two poles of the human being consists in both ‘eyes’ being coordinated; that is, they must be able to see together in just the same way as do the horizontally placed physical eyes. And the functioning of manas-consciousness is essentially nothing other than the fact of the human being’s ‘upper I’ and ‘lower I’ seeing in concert. The line upon which the two ‘eyes’ are coordinated is actually the manas-organization about which we spoke above, and which, after the purification and transformation of the astral ‘vertebral column’ of pride, works from above downward as revelation of the spirit self.
If this relationship comes about, then the ‘lower I’ can learn from the ‘higher I’, while the higher can also learn from the lower. For only the ‘lower I’ can have the great experience of human love on earth, and only the ‘higher I’ can endure the experience of the divine love of the spiritual world. Further, when divine love is coordinated with human love, then the relationship of the two ‘eyes’—of the heavenly and earthly ‘eyes’—which was broken by the Fall, is restored again. Then there is the basis for a cognition that has not the remotest resemblance to any form of mediumship, but is the result of the fusion of two experiences: of spiritual and earthly experiences. This is the task of humanity in general.
Tomberg, Valentin; Wetmore, James. Russian Spirituality and Other Essays: Mysteries of Our Time Seen Through the Eyes of a Russian Esotericist (pp. 251-253). Sophia Perennis. Kindle Edition.
Tomberg provides a simple, yet useful metaphor for how we relate the spiritual striving of our normal 'I' consciousness, which unfolds within the Earthly context, with that of our higher 'I' consciousness which unfolds within the Cosmic context. To avoid material or mystical reductionism, these two need to work together in rhythmic harmony. That is the overarching task of our current age in which we can bring the consciousness soul to completion and begin incarnating the Spirit Self, or 'manas-consciousness'. This form of consciousness responds to our patient and enduring upward striving, our astral catharsis, with downward revelation. Of course, it should always be remembered these are all only spatial symbols for inner qualitative relationships and orientations.
***
Now all the above considerations (as also those of the previous essay) can give rise to the following question: Is the manas-revelation, such as it is characterized in these essays, not a kind of mediumism? Does not this characterization give the impression that here is merely passive suffering and waiting until the revelation comes ‘of itself’ one day?
Before this question can be answered, it is necessary to clarify the concepts of ‘passivity’ and ‘activity’ as applied to spiritual life. The ordinary meaning of these concepts is this: ‘activity’ refers to a consciousness in the state of ‘doing’, and ‘passivity’ refers to a consciousness in the state of ‘suffering’. This standpoint is entirely justified and useful when one has in mind the horizontal, the relationship of the human consciousness to its surroundings. However, if one is considering the vertical, that is, the relation of the incarnated human being to the spiritual world, then this standpoint is no longer valid. Then the opposite is true: the receptive attitude toward the spiritual world, the suffering and waiting, is the active side of the vertically upright consciousness, while the efforts of the will for the purpose of this or that exercise or task of cognition are the passive side. So, for instance, the words Christ Jesus spoke during the hour of Gethsemane: ‘Not my will, but Thy will be done,’ signify the highest possible activity of the vertically-directed consciousness. But this activity is not visible on the horizontal plane of life; there it appears as passive.
Therefore, the essential requirement for the occurrence of manas-cognition is not the submergence of ‘I’ consciousness (even in sacrificial devotion), but rather its coordination with the ‘higher I’. Unfortunately, there exists much unclarity about the nature of the relationship between the ‘higher and lower I’. The ‘lower I’ is usually imagined as a chalice that is filled from above by the ‘higher I’. This may suffice for awhile as a picture, but it is not a fitting concept. For a moment comes—and it comes when life itself demands clarification in this area—when one cannot do anything with this image.
Another image—although it may at first seem strange—can be very fruitful and helpful in this regard. Consider the relationship of the ‘higher I’ to the ‘ordinary I’ as like that of a pair of eyes. However, here the eyes are not placed to ‘right’ and ‘left’, that is, in the horizontal, but ‘above’ and ‘below’, in the vertical. The ‘higher I’ is the human being’s eye in the spiritual world; the ‘ordinary I’, which is the focal point of the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the consciousness soul, is the organ of perception in both the physical world and the elemental world. The true and healthy relation of the two poles of the human being consists in both ‘eyes’ being coordinated; that is, they must be able to see together in just the same way as do the horizontally placed physical eyes. And the functioning of manas-consciousness is essentially nothing other than the fact of the human being’s ‘upper I’ and ‘lower I’ seeing in concert. The line upon which the two ‘eyes’ are coordinated is actually the manas-organization about which we spoke above, and which, after the purification and transformation of the astral ‘vertebral column’ of pride, works from above downward as revelation of the spirit self.
If this relationship comes about, then the ‘lower I’ can learn from the ‘higher I’, while the higher can also learn from the lower. For only the ‘lower I’ can have the great experience of human love on earth, and only the ‘higher I’ can endure the experience of the divine love of the spiritual world. Further, when divine love is coordinated with human love, then the relationship of the two ‘eyes’—of the heavenly and earthly ‘eyes’—which was broken by the Fall, is restored again. Then there is the basis for a cognition that has not the remotest resemblance to any form of mediumship, but is the result of the fusion of two experiences: of spiritual and earthly experiences. This is the task of humanity in general.
Tomberg, Valentin; Wetmore, James. Russian Spirituality and Other Essays: Mysteries of Our Time Seen Through the Eyes of a Russian Esotericist (pp. 251-253). Sophia Perennis. Kindle Edition.
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
Re: Spiritual Insights from Valentin Tomberg
On the musically harmonizing influence of the human self in attunement with the Cosmic Self
What follows is a really helpful metaphorical angle on the fourfold convolution of our Earthly state of consciousness. It can be understood as deviations from the overarching rhythm of the World, or the levels of indirection that Cleric has illustrated in various places, such as here.
Tomberg presents this progressive descent from the archetypal Time-mirror in the framework of the Genesis days of creation (which are essentially the eons of existence), through which sin, sickness, and death arose in humanity but also the possibility for inner freedom and re-harmonization with the archetypal rhythms. He then compares the sevenfold days of creation to the sevenfold miracles of Christ Jesus in the Gospel of St. John, the latter standing for acts of healing the temporal disharmony through the creative and loving I-consciousness of humanity. The 7th day of creation - the day of 'rest' - associates with the 1st miracle, the 6th day with the 2nd miracle, the 5th day with the 3rd, and so forth. Below he is discussing the 4th day and 4th miracle, but I am only presenting the portion which relates to the general principle at work (not the details of the miracle).
***
Thus the fifth day is that of the coming into being of ensouled movement, which was originally in harmony, in accord with the whole. The third miracle of St. John’s Gospel is the healing act of restoration of this harmony in the case of the paralysed man, who through sin had fallen into disaccord with the harmony of ensouled movement in the world. This harmony of the individual movements of the multiplicity of beings, each of which moves on his own accord, we can comprehend best by way of comparison with a conducted orchestra. For in an orchestra each member plays his own instrument and has his own music score, and yet the result is not dissonance, but harmony. This happens, it is true, due to indications of time and tempo given by the conductor who—equally with the piece of music itself—leads the playing of the orchestra, standing before it.
In this sense the fourth day of creation “stands before” the “play” of the many kinds of spontaneous movement of the fifth day and “leads” it. For the fourth day of creation is that of the coming into being of those principles of the world orchestra that direct “time and tempo”—the creation of the “sun, moon, and stars”: “And God made two great lights (luminaria): the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night; he made stars also; and God set them in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years” (Genesis i, 14, 16–17). What are these other than organs of direction, i.e., conductors of time and tempo for the world orchestra, in accordance with the music score of the stars?
The fourth day of creation is the genesis of that all-embracing world rhythm, in which all beings partake and that unifies them into a world-embracing community (communio). Consider, by way of analogy, human consciousness. It does not become chaotic through the strife of wishes, desires, whims, moods, notions, and countless impulses from without and within—from fantasy and from memory. Rather, it arranges itself around a central point, the self, which represents the center of gravity of the soul life, i.e., the permanency of the identity of the personality. Moreover, aided by the light of reason it works in such a way as to bring order even into the “night” of the subconscious, leading the whole soul life (conscious and unconscious, or “day” and “night”) in the direction of the ideals. (Ideals can be likened to “stars,” enabling orientation and pointing the way.) Analogously, in the macrocosm there is an active midpoint—a center, a “sun”—which radiates forth light, warmth, and life, representing the community-building principle of the awake world of “day,” while its reflected light (“moon”) is the community building principle of the unconscious, sleeping world of “night.” This “sun” leads and supports the whole—the “day world” and also the “night world”—in harmony with the world of stars. The sun (or rather the inner nature of the sun) in the great world corresponds to the creative, leading, and ordering role of the self in the “small world” of the human soul. The moon in its inner nature corresponds to the rational capacity for reflection, which casts an evaluating light on the irrational urges of the soul life. The inner nature of the stars in the great world correspond to the ideals that give direction to human soul life.
Valentin, Tomberg. Lazarus, Come Forth!: Meditations of a Christian Esotericist on the Mysteries of the Raising of Lazarus, the Ten Commandments, the Three Kingdoms & the Breath of Life . SteinerBooks. Kindle Edition.
What follows is a really helpful metaphorical angle on the fourfold convolution of our Earthly state of consciousness. It can be understood as deviations from the overarching rhythm of the World, or the levels of indirection that Cleric has illustrated in various places, such as here.
Cleric wrote:Another eon of existence commences with another act of delamination. The previous eon is one of purely ideal existence. There’s no life, no nutrition, no personal life of desires. It’s a mirror of intuitive ideal existence. Now this new delamination further differentiates our intuitive life. In certain sense, everything that has been going on before, continues also now but through this differentiation a kind of indirection is introduced. Previously, our space-like aspect was a perfect mirror of time, while now our metamorphoses through time are one degree removed from that mirror, so to speak. It is almost as if there’s a certain leeway between our space-like mirror and our present intuitive activity, much like a double pendulum becomes more difficult to control.
Tomberg presents this progressive descent from the archetypal Time-mirror in the framework of the Genesis days of creation (which are essentially the eons of existence), through which sin, sickness, and death arose in humanity but also the possibility for inner freedom and re-harmonization with the archetypal rhythms. He then compares the sevenfold days of creation to the sevenfold miracles of Christ Jesus in the Gospel of St. John, the latter standing for acts of healing the temporal disharmony through the creative and loving I-consciousness of humanity. The 7th day of creation - the day of 'rest' - associates with the 1st miracle, the 6th day with the 2nd miracle, the 5th day with the 3rd, and so forth. Below he is discussing the 4th day and 4th miracle, but I am only presenting the portion which relates to the general principle at work (not the details of the miracle).
***
Thus the fifth day is that of the coming into being of ensouled movement, which was originally in harmony, in accord with the whole. The third miracle of St. John’s Gospel is the healing act of restoration of this harmony in the case of the paralysed man, who through sin had fallen into disaccord with the harmony of ensouled movement in the world. This harmony of the individual movements of the multiplicity of beings, each of which moves on his own accord, we can comprehend best by way of comparison with a conducted orchestra. For in an orchestra each member plays his own instrument and has his own music score, and yet the result is not dissonance, but harmony. This happens, it is true, due to indications of time and tempo given by the conductor who—equally with the piece of music itself—leads the playing of the orchestra, standing before it.
In this sense the fourth day of creation “stands before” the “play” of the many kinds of spontaneous movement of the fifth day and “leads” it. For the fourth day of creation is that of the coming into being of those principles of the world orchestra that direct “time and tempo”—the creation of the “sun, moon, and stars”: “And God made two great lights (luminaria): the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night; he made stars also; and God set them in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years” (Genesis i, 14, 16–17). What are these other than organs of direction, i.e., conductors of time and tempo for the world orchestra, in accordance with the music score of the stars?
The fourth day of creation is the genesis of that all-embracing world rhythm, in which all beings partake and that unifies them into a world-embracing community (communio). Consider, by way of analogy, human consciousness. It does not become chaotic through the strife of wishes, desires, whims, moods, notions, and countless impulses from without and within—from fantasy and from memory. Rather, it arranges itself around a central point, the self, which represents the center of gravity of the soul life, i.e., the permanency of the identity of the personality. Moreover, aided by the light of reason it works in such a way as to bring order even into the “night” of the subconscious, leading the whole soul life (conscious and unconscious, or “day” and “night”) in the direction of the ideals. (Ideals can be likened to “stars,” enabling orientation and pointing the way.) Analogously, in the macrocosm there is an active midpoint—a center, a “sun”—which radiates forth light, warmth, and life, representing the community-building principle of the awake world of “day,” while its reflected light (“moon”) is the community building principle of the unconscious, sleeping world of “night.” This “sun” leads and supports the whole—the “day world” and also the “night world”—in harmony with the world of stars. The sun (or rather the inner nature of the sun) in the great world corresponds to the creative, leading, and ordering role of the self in the “small world” of the human soul. The moon in its inner nature corresponds to the rational capacity for reflection, which casts an evaluating light on the irrational urges of the soul life. The inner nature of the stars in the great world correspond to the ideals that give direction to human soul life.
Valentin, Tomberg. Lazarus, Come Forth!: Meditations of a Christian Esotericist on the Mysteries of the Raising of Lazarus, the Ten Commandments, the Three Kingdoms & the Breath of Life . SteinerBooks. Kindle Edition.
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
Re: Spiritual Insights from Valentin Tomberg
On the truth that every sufferer suffers for all
Unfortunately, since Tomberg wrote the essay below, the cynical disposition towards suffering has grown even starker in the West. Suffering is something to be avoided at all costs, rather than solemnly endured for the benefit of all. We see that manifested clearly in various sociopolitical movements, but also in digital technologies such as ChatGPT and the transhumanist striving towards 'eternal [physical] life'. The core problem is that, absent a concrete communion with the living forces of spiritual reality, it's nearly impossible for us to discern how Earthly suffering is transmuted into something beneficial for our own individual evolution over incarnations and, as a corollary, the World evolution. We have lost all consciousness of how or why we are suffering in body and soul, apart from flattened philosophical and theological concepts. That is made worse when the virtues, skills, and capacities gained from suffering even within a single lifetime - courage, resilience, faith, etc. - are no longer valued to the same extent they were valued even a few decades ago. In some circles, fostering these are considered pathological ambition or a form of mental illness.
Those of us on a path of spiritual striving will no doubt encounter this abhorrence for suffering along the way, in many different forms. We will often get annoyed, frustrated, disappointed, etc. with enduring the repeated dedications it takes to grasp spiritual scientific writings and fruitfully engage in meditative efforts. It is a sort of conundrum because the fruit of meditation and the grasping of spiritual science is exactly the greater insight that lends increasing support to our faith that our suffering is not in vain, but rather that it does make a critical difference in the progression of World evolution. So the hardest part is taking the initial 'leaps of faith' towards the higher Spirit who seeks to incarnate through our living thinking, feeling, and will. It is sacrificing our old habits of thinking, where only outer striving for worldly things appears to be rewarded, and cultivating the 'hunger and thirst for righteousness', where inner striving takes on a whole new unsuspected dimension of significance. Ultimately, it is attuning to the archetypal Sufferer who, through the Mystery of Golgotha, inspires heavenly joy through our voluntary (fully conscious), sacrificial suffering for all.
***
A FEW YEARS AGO a major American film magazine addressed its readers with a call to take part in a competition for new ideas for films. Among the various conditions the applicants had to fulfill, there was especially one which, if not adhered to, would make any idea unusable. This was the stipulation for a ‘happy ending’. Every film story had to end happily, otherwise it could not hope for success—it would not suit the taste of an American audience.
Similar requirements for a similar competition were made by another American magazine, only there it was a question of stories, of ‘true stories’. And it was not only required that the stories be true, but also they must have a ‘happy ending’, because the American reader cannot bear stories which, although true, have an unhappy ending.
These examples of American tendencies shed light symptomatically on the American’s relationship to suffering. Suffering is for the American something that actually should not exist in life. It has no right to exist. It should be eliminated from life. And if it continues to be there, if it still haunts all the dark corners of life, that must be because civilization is not yet advanced enough. However, there will come a time when the progress of civilization will put an end to suffering. Human beings will then all be materially secure. They will all be either healthy, or, if they experience illness, will be entirely free of pain by means of anesthetics, narcotics, etc., and will also enjoy a long life. However, as long as this has not yet been achieved, one should be ashamed of pain, as one is ashamed of the necessary lower life processes of the body. For the presence of suffering is an offence.
...However, one of the secrets of existence as such is the fact that everything essential has its polarity somewhere. Every being has its antipode, every ideology its counter-ideology, every culture its opposite culture. So also does Americanism have its antipode within humankind. Simultaneously with the arising of American culture, there arose in another place on earth its polarity. This is the culture developing in East Europe.
Russianism and Americanism are polar opposites. And hardly anywhere else does this polarity show itself so clearly as in their conception of suffering. For as suffering is negated in America, so is it affirmed in Russia. We attempted to describe this affirmation of suffering in Russia from one point of view recently in the article, ‘The Saga of the Holy City of Kitezh’. We looked at suffering as it came to expression in connection with this legend. But a fuller, more conscious expression of the ‘wisdom of suffering’ can be found in the works of that excellent representative of Russian spirituality—the fiftieth anniversary of whose death we are at present celebrating—namely, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.
The great literary work of Dostoevsky brings certain views to expression. All his works are means for placing before humankind, vividly and clearly, certain truths that were deeply rooted in his soul. And these truths which Dostoevsky had to present to humankind were not merely his personal convictions. Rather he made conscious the wisdom that is anchored in the depths of the Russian folk-soul by putting it into words.
Now these truths consisted in a specific conception of suffering and of guilt. Suffering is for him something that should not be avoided. It is valuable. And all who suffer gain something from that suffering. It gives one more worth. The Staretz Sossima kneels down before Dimitri Karamazov when he realizes what sufferings are in store for Dimitri (The Brothers Karamazov). The holy man kneels before the undisciplined, passionate young person because he has reverence for his future suffering. And something further is in this wonderful deed of Sossima’s. It contains, in addition, an expression of gratitude on behalf of all people for everything that Dimitri will suffer. For every sufferer—even a criminal—suffers for all. All humanity is sick, and this sickness comes to a crisis in a particular individual, through whom the burden is removed from the others. Just as in an abscess all the poison in the organism is concentrated in one place so that the organism as a whole is freed from poison (for through one part of the organism concentrating into itself much poisonous matter, the organism as a whole is benefitted), so every sufferer—yes, even those overcome by the dark forces of evil, those possessed by evil—represent a place within humanity where poison is concentrated for the benefit of all. Therefore the ‘kneeling’ gratitude of Sossima was appropriate, for in Dimitri, the poison of the Karamasovs was coming to a head.
It is thus with all suffering. Suffering is never merely a ‘personal problem’ of one individual, it is the concern of all humankind. The first thesis of Dostoevsky’s conception of suffering is, then: Every sufferer suffers for all.
Now there exists a suffering that is deserved: that which is inflicted as punishment, or is the result of aberrations; and there is a suffering that—like birth-pangs—heralds the dawn of something new. People can suffer because of their crimes, or suffer through the greatness of what is passing through their souls. There is a difference between suffering the bitter dregs from the cup of passion, and that pain of sacrificing something lower so that something higher may arise.
Dostoevsky shows how these two types of suffering can become one. He shows how every punishment can actually be transformed into birth pangs of a higher life. Every punishment is unjust, is a martyrdom, so long as the person has not recognized his or her guilt. If it has been recognized, however, it is already an awakening to a higher life, and then the punishment is no longer punishment, but rather the process of birth, in pain, of a higher human being. Justice can only exist when the guilt has been recognized and the punishment is freely willed. When this happens, however, there intervenes a process of grace from the spiritual world; and then justice becomes irradiated by the light that begins to shine from within the human being. As the moon vanishes by day in the sunlight, so the just reprisal vanishes in the eclipsing light of the sun of grace that always shines in the depths of humaneness.
...
Now this power is just as much there for all human beings as suffering and guilt are there for them. This power, which makes all suffering holy, which can transform every punishment into sacrifice, which is the sun of the conscience, the light ‘which lighteth every man that cometh into the world’—this power is Christ. Christ is for Dostoevsky neither a dogma nor an ideal. He is actually present wherever suffering is felt in such a way that one wishes to kneel before it, wherever punishment suddenly, through the miracle of inner transformation, begins to shine as a sacrifice for all humanity. When light falls on hidden tendencies of your own soul that make you co-responsible for things and deeds that you would have otherwise immediately turned away from—then Christ is present. And this is the final and most central thesis of Dostoevsky’s ‘wisdom of suffering’: All suffering can be experienced as the breath of Christ’s spirit in human souls.
Tomberg, Valentin; Wetmore, James. Russian Spirituality and Other Essays: Mysteries of Our Time Seen Through the Eyes of a Russian Esotericist (pp. 150-154). Sophia Perennis. Kindle Edition.
Unfortunately, since Tomberg wrote the essay below, the cynical disposition towards suffering has grown even starker in the West. Suffering is something to be avoided at all costs, rather than solemnly endured for the benefit of all. We see that manifested clearly in various sociopolitical movements, but also in digital technologies such as ChatGPT and the transhumanist striving towards 'eternal [physical] life'. The core problem is that, absent a concrete communion with the living forces of spiritual reality, it's nearly impossible for us to discern how Earthly suffering is transmuted into something beneficial for our own individual evolution over incarnations and, as a corollary, the World evolution. We have lost all consciousness of how or why we are suffering in body and soul, apart from flattened philosophical and theological concepts. That is made worse when the virtues, skills, and capacities gained from suffering even within a single lifetime - courage, resilience, faith, etc. - are no longer valued to the same extent they were valued even a few decades ago. In some circles, fostering these are considered pathological ambition or a form of mental illness.
Those of us on a path of spiritual striving will no doubt encounter this abhorrence for suffering along the way, in many different forms. We will often get annoyed, frustrated, disappointed, etc. with enduring the repeated dedications it takes to grasp spiritual scientific writings and fruitfully engage in meditative efforts. It is a sort of conundrum because the fruit of meditation and the grasping of spiritual science is exactly the greater insight that lends increasing support to our faith that our suffering is not in vain, but rather that it does make a critical difference in the progression of World evolution. So the hardest part is taking the initial 'leaps of faith' towards the higher Spirit who seeks to incarnate through our living thinking, feeling, and will. It is sacrificing our old habits of thinking, where only outer striving for worldly things appears to be rewarded, and cultivating the 'hunger and thirst for righteousness', where inner striving takes on a whole new unsuspected dimension of significance. Ultimately, it is attuning to the archetypal Sufferer who, through the Mystery of Golgotha, inspires heavenly joy through our voluntary (fully conscious), sacrificial suffering for all.
***
A FEW YEARS AGO a major American film magazine addressed its readers with a call to take part in a competition for new ideas for films. Among the various conditions the applicants had to fulfill, there was especially one which, if not adhered to, would make any idea unusable. This was the stipulation for a ‘happy ending’. Every film story had to end happily, otherwise it could not hope for success—it would not suit the taste of an American audience.
Similar requirements for a similar competition were made by another American magazine, only there it was a question of stories, of ‘true stories’. And it was not only required that the stories be true, but also they must have a ‘happy ending’, because the American reader cannot bear stories which, although true, have an unhappy ending.
These examples of American tendencies shed light symptomatically on the American’s relationship to suffering. Suffering is for the American something that actually should not exist in life. It has no right to exist. It should be eliminated from life. And if it continues to be there, if it still haunts all the dark corners of life, that must be because civilization is not yet advanced enough. However, there will come a time when the progress of civilization will put an end to suffering. Human beings will then all be materially secure. They will all be either healthy, or, if they experience illness, will be entirely free of pain by means of anesthetics, narcotics, etc., and will also enjoy a long life. However, as long as this has not yet been achieved, one should be ashamed of pain, as one is ashamed of the necessary lower life processes of the body. For the presence of suffering is an offence.
...However, one of the secrets of existence as such is the fact that everything essential has its polarity somewhere. Every being has its antipode, every ideology its counter-ideology, every culture its opposite culture. So also does Americanism have its antipode within humankind. Simultaneously with the arising of American culture, there arose in another place on earth its polarity. This is the culture developing in East Europe.
Russianism and Americanism are polar opposites. And hardly anywhere else does this polarity show itself so clearly as in their conception of suffering. For as suffering is negated in America, so is it affirmed in Russia. We attempted to describe this affirmation of suffering in Russia from one point of view recently in the article, ‘The Saga of the Holy City of Kitezh’. We looked at suffering as it came to expression in connection with this legend. But a fuller, more conscious expression of the ‘wisdom of suffering’ can be found in the works of that excellent representative of Russian spirituality—the fiftieth anniversary of whose death we are at present celebrating—namely, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.
The great literary work of Dostoevsky brings certain views to expression. All his works are means for placing before humankind, vividly and clearly, certain truths that were deeply rooted in his soul. And these truths which Dostoevsky had to present to humankind were not merely his personal convictions. Rather he made conscious the wisdom that is anchored in the depths of the Russian folk-soul by putting it into words.
Now these truths consisted in a specific conception of suffering and of guilt. Suffering is for him something that should not be avoided. It is valuable. And all who suffer gain something from that suffering. It gives one more worth. The Staretz Sossima kneels down before Dimitri Karamazov when he realizes what sufferings are in store for Dimitri (The Brothers Karamazov). The holy man kneels before the undisciplined, passionate young person because he has reverence for his future suffering. And something further is in this wonderful deed of Sossima’s. It contains, in addition, an expression of gratitude on behalf of all people for everything that Dimitri will suffer. For every sufferer—even a criminal—suffers for all. All humanity is sick, and this sickness comes to a crisis in a particular individual, through whom the burden is removed from the others. Just as in an abscess all the poison in the organism is concentrated in one place so that the organism as a whole is freed from poison (for through one part of the organism concentrating into itself much poisonous matter, the organism as a whole is benefitted), so every sufferer—yes, even those overcome by the dark forces of evil, those possessed by evil—represent a place within humanity where poison is concentrated for the benefit of all. Therefore the ‘kneeling’ gratitude of Sossima was appropriate, for in Dimitri, the poison of the Karamasovs was coming to a head.
It is thus with all suffering. Suffering is never merely a ‘personal problem’ of one individual, it is the concern of all humankind. The first thesis of Dostoevsky’s conception of suffering is, then: Every sufferer suffers for all.
Now there exists a suffering that is deserved: that which is inflicted as punishment, or is the result of aberrations; and there is a suffering that—like birth-pangs—heralds the dawn of something new. People can suffer because of their crimes, or suffer through the greatness of what is passing through their souls. There is a difference between suffering the bitter dregs from the cup of passion, and that pain of sacrificing something lower so that something higher may arise.
Dostoevsky shows how these two types of suffering can become one. He shows how every punishment can actually be transformed into birth pangs of a higher life. Every punishment is unjust, is a martyrdom, so long as the person has not recognized his or her guilt. If it has been recognized, however, it is already an awakening to a higher life, and then the punishment is no longer punishment, but rather the process of birth, in pain, of a higher human being. Justice can only exist when the guilt has been recognized and the punishment is freely willed. When this happens, however, there intervenes a process of grace from the spiritual world; and then justice becomes irradiated by the light that begins to shine from within the human being. As the moon vanishes by day in the sunlight, so the just reprisal vanishes in the eclipsing light of the sun of grace that always shines in the depths of humaneness.
...
Now this power is just as much there for all human beings as suffering and guilt are there for them. This power, which makes all suffering holy, which can transform every punishment into sacrifice, which is the sun of the conscience, the light ‘which lighteth every man that cometh into the world’—this power is Christ. Christ is for Dostoevsky neither a dogma nor an ideal. He is actually present wherever suffering is felt in such a way that one wishes to kneel before it, wherever punishment suddenly, through the miracle of inner transformation, begins to shine as a sacrifice for all humanity. When light falls on hidden tendencies of your own soul that make you co-responsible for things and deeds that you would have otherwise immediately turned away from—then Christ is present. And this is the final and most central thesis of Dostoevsky’s ‘wisdom of suffering’: All suffering can be experienced as the breath of Christ’s spirit in human souls.
Tomberg, Valentin; Wetmore, James. Russian Spirituality and Other Essays: Mysteries of Our Time Seen Through the Eyes of a Russian Esotericist (pp. 150-154). Sophia Perennis. Kindle Edition.
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
Re: Spiritual Insights from Valentin Tomberg
Thank you, Ashvin!
In this epoch we have to be fighters for the spirit: man must realise what his powers can give way to, unless they are kept constantly under control for the conquest of the spiritual world. In this fifth epoch, man is entitled to his freedom to the highest degree! He has to go through that.
Re: Spiritual Insights from Valentin Tomberg
On 'laws' as the immanent and evolving kinship of spiritual beings
We have often spoken here about mystical and material reductionism, which could also be called one-sided realism and nominalism. The former loses sight of the reality of individual beings in the domain of abstract forces, laws, principles, and archetypes, while the latter loses sight of the reality of the overarching ideas and ideals in the domain of particular beings. These two can only be reconciled, first in abstract thought and then in concrete experience (and then further in living thought, and so forth), when we discern the depth structure through which relational communities of individual beings manifest as laws, principles, and archetypes. Likewise, the manifested laws feed back into the relational structuring of particular beings within their overarching context. The laws unfold according to a certain rhythmic temporal structure, which is observed as regular and to some extent predictable, but they never remain static. New and unsuspected laws, as expressions of evolving structural kinship of spiritual beings, continually manifest in spatiotemporal experience as fulfillments and redemptions of the old laws. Before these new laws are broadly understood and recognized, i.e. when they are still in the early stages of fulfilling the old laws, the events which flow from them are called "supernatural" or "miracles". The teachings which flow from them will often be called "heresies" or "superstitions". In all cases they are greatly resisted by the masses accustomed to the old way of doing things. Over time, however, they are gradually recognized as integral facets of Earthly evolution within broader human culture, first in abstract art, religion, philosophy, and science, and later in the living and heartfelt thinking experience of individuals. The broad transition from the law of spiritual involution (physical evolution) to the law of spiritual evolution (physical involution) is that of human beings competing to accumulate maximum spiritual experience, i.e. 'survival of the fittest', to that of human beings seeking to put the spiritual experience so acquired in service to other beings in need of such experience.
***
Christian Hermeticism is the friend of realistic nominalism, in so far as this form of nominalism aspires to mystical experience of the communion of beings through love, as well as of idealistic realism, in so far as the latter aspires to the Logos. Christian Hermeticism itself can only be knowledge of the universal which is revealed in the particular. For Hermeticism there are no “principles”, “laws” and “ideas” which exist outside of individual beings, not as structural traits of their nature, but as entities separated and independent from it. For Hermeticism there is neither a “law of gravitation” nor a “law of reincarnation”; there is only the attraction and repulsion of beings (atoms are beings also) in so far as gravitation is concerned, and only the attraction of beings to earthly life, with its joys and sorrows, in so far as reincarnation is concerned. But on the other hand, if there were no such entities in the world as the laws of gravitation and reincarnation, there is certainly the universal desire of beings—great and small—to associate with one another, to form together molecules, organisms, families, communities, nations…It is a desire or universal structural need which manifests itself as “law”. “Laws” are immanent in beings, as logic is immanent in thought, being part of the very nature of thought. And true progress, true evolution, is the advance of beings from life under one law to life under another law, i.e. the structural change of beings. It is thus that the law “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” is in the process of being gradually replaced by the law of forgiveness. It is thus again that the law “the weak serve the strong, the people serve the king, the disciple serves the master” will one day give way to the law shown by the Master through the act of the Washing of the Feet. According to this higher law, it is the strong who serve the weak, the king who serves the people, the master who serves the disciple—just as it is in heaven, where Angels serve human beings, Archangels serve Angels and men, Principalities serve Archangels, Angels and human beings, and so on. And God? He serves all beings without exception.
Thus the “law” of the struggle for existence that Darwin observed in the domain of biology will one day cede its place to the law of cooperation for existence which exists already in the cooperation of flowering plants and bees, in the cooperation of different cells in an organism, and in cooperation in the human social organism. The end of the “law” of the struggle for existence and the future triumph of the law of cooperation for life has been foretold by the prophet Isaiah:
"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, A
And the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
And the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
And a little child shall lead them." (Isaiah xi, 6)
This will be, because the new “law”—i.e. a profound change in the psychic and physical structure of beings—will replace the old “law”, firstly in consciousness, then in desires and affections, then lastly in the organic structure of beings.
“Laws” succeed one another and change. They are not immutable metaphysical entities. It is the same with respect to “principles” and “ideas”. “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath” (Mark ii, 27-28)—here is the relationship between beings, on the one side, and laws, principles and ideas, on the other. Are laws, principles and ideas therefore not real?
They are certainly real, but their reality is not that of an existence separate from beings, i.e. that of metaphysical entities populating a world or plane—a world of laws, principles and ideas—proper to themselves. The spiritual world is not a world of laws, principles and ideas; it is a world of spiritual beings—human souls, Angels, Archangels, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim and the Holy Trinity: the Holy Spirit, the Son and the Father. What, then, is the reality of laws, principles and ideas?
It is in their structural kinship—spiritual, psychic and corporeal. All beings manifest a universal kinship and bear witness to their common origin and their common archetype. Now, this common archetype—that the Cabbala calls “Adam Kadmon”—is the law, the principle and idea of all beings. “The image and likeness of God” in Adam is the law by virtue of which God “let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth” (Genesis i, 26). Adam is the law, the principle and the idea of all the beings of Nature, because he is their prototype-synthesis.
Realism is right when it affirms the reality of universals, for they are the structural features of the archetype for all particular beings. Also, nominalism is right when it teaches that there are no other realities in the world than individual beings and that universals are not to be found amongst these beings. Hermeticism regards the Logos who became man as the archetypal universal become the perfect particular being. The controversy between realism and nominalism does not exist for Christian Hermeticism.
Anonymous . Meditations on the Tarot (pp. 207-208). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
We have often spoken here about mystical and material reductionism, which could also be called one-sided realism and nominalism. The former loses sight of the reality of individual beings in the domain of abstract forces, laws, principles, and archetypes, while the latter loses sight of the reality of the overarching ideas and ideals in the domain of particular beings. These two can only be reconciled, first in abstract thought and then in concrete experience (and then further in living thought, and so forth), when we discern the depth structure through which relational communities of individual beings manifest as laws, principles, and archetypes. Likewise, the manifested laws feed back into the relational structuring of particular beings within their overarching context. The laws unfold according to a certain rhythmic temporal structure, which is observed as regular and to some extent predictable, but they never remain static. New and unsuspected laws, as expressions of evolving structural kinship of spiritual beings, continually manifest in spatiotemporal experience as fulfillments and redemptions of the old laws. Before these new laws are broadly understood and recognized, i.e. when they are still in the early stages of fulfilling the old laws, the events which flow from them are called "supernatural" or "miracles". The teachings which flow from them will often be called "heresies" or "superstitions". In all cases they are greatly resisted by the masses accustomed to the old way of doing things. Over time, however, they are gradually recognized as integral facets of Earthly evolution within broader human culture, first in abstract art, religion, philosophy, and science, and later in the living and heartfelt thinking experience of individuals. The broad transition from the law of spiritual involution (physical evolution) to the law of spiritual evolution (physical involution) is that of human beings competing to accumulate maximum spiritual experience, i.e. 'survival of the fittest', to that of human beings seeking to put the spiritual experience so acquired in service to other beings in need of such experience.
***
Christian Hermeticism is the friend of realistic nominalism, in so far as this form of nominalism aspires to mystical experience of the communion of beings through love, as well as of idealistic realism, in so far as the latter aspires to the Logos. Christian Hermeticism itself can only be knowledge of the universal which is revealed in the particular. For Hermeticism there are no “principles”, “laws” and “ideas” which exist outside of individual beings, not as structural traits of their nature, but as entities separated and independent from it. For Hermeticism there is neither a “law of gravitation” nor a “law of reincarnation”; there is only the attraction and repulsion of beings (atoms are beings also) in so far as gravitation is concerned, and only the attraction of beings to earthly life, with its joys and sorrows, in so far as reincarnation is concerned. But on the other hand, if there were no such entities in the world as the laws of gravitation and reincarnation, there is certainly the universal desire of beings—great and small—to associate with one another, to form together molecules, organisms, families, communities, nations…It is a desire or universal structural need which manifests itself as “law”. “Laws” are immanent in beings, as logic is immanent in thought, being part of the very nature of thought. And true progress, true evolution, is the advance of beings from life under one law to life under another law, i.e. the structural change of beings. It is thus that the law “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” is in the process of being gradually replaced by the law of forgiveness. It is thus again that the law “the weak serve the strong, the people serve the king, the disciple serves the master” will one day give way to the law shown by the Master through the act of the Washing of the Feet. According to this higher law, it is the strong who serve the weak, the king who serves the people, the master who serves the disciple—just as it is in heaven, where Angels serve human beings, Archangels serve Angels and men, Principalities serve Archangels, Angels and human beings, and so on. And God? He serves all beings without exception.
Thus the “law” of the struggle for existence that Darwin observed in the domain of biology will one day cede its place to the law of cooperation for existence which exists already in the cooperation of flowering plants and bees, in the cooperation of different cells in an organism, and in cooperation in the human social organism. The end of the “law” of the struggle for existence and the future triumph of the law of cooperation for life has been foretold by the prophet Isaiah:
"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, A
And the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
And the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
And a little child shall lead them." (Isaiah xi, 6)
This will be, because the new “law”—i.e. a profound change in the psychic and physical structure of beings—will replace the old “law”, firstly in consciousness, then in desires and affections, then lastly in the organic structure of beings.
“Laws” succeed one another and change. They are not immutable metaphysical entities. It is the same with respect to “principles” and “ideas”. “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath” (Mark ii, 27-28)—here is the relationship between beings, on the one side, and laws, principles and ideas, on the other. Are laws, principles and ideas therefore not real?
They are certainly real, but their reality is not that of an existence separate from beings, i.e. that of metaphysical entities populating a world or plane—a world of laws, principles and ideas—proper to themselves. The spiritual world is not a world of laws, principles and ideas; it is a world of spiritual beings—human souls, Angels, Archangels, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim and the Holy Trinity: the Holy Spirit, the Son and the Father. What, then, is the reality of laws, principles and ideas?
It is in their structural kinship—spiritual, psychic and corporeal. All beings manifest a universal kinship and bear witness to their common origin and their common archetype. Now, this common archetype—that the Cabbala calls “Adam Kadmon”—is the law, the principle and idea of all beings. “The image and likeness of God” in Adam is the law by virtue of which God “let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth” (Genesis i, 26). Adam is the law, the principle and the idea of all the beings of Nature, because he is their prototype-synthesis.
Realism is right when it affirms the reality of universals, for they are the structural features of the archetype for all particular beings. Also, nominalism is right when it teaches that there are no other realities in the world than individual beings and that universals are not to be found amongst these beings. Hermeticism regards the Logos who became man as the archetypal universal become the perfect particular being. The controversy between realism and nominalism does not exist for Christian Hermeticism.
Anonymous . Meditations on the Tarot (pp. 207-208). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
Re: Spiritual Insights from Valentin Tomberg
On the fourfold nature of memory
Modern humans are caught halfway between the mostly animalistic stage of automatic memory and the fully human stage of moral/vertical memory. We can sense pretty clearly these days how the intellect is always threatened to be dragged out of the logical memory sphere into the sphere of automatism, if it simply rests comfortably in the former and fails to strive towards higher ideals. That is especially the case since our modern technological environment is practically structured at every turn to play to our automatic memory through hedonistic desires and other selfish interests. Our consciousness then becomes mired in its past evolutionary stages, enslaved to maladaptive habits, blinded to the flow of new ideal impulses that reopen the archetypal spirit worlds for the realization of its higher potential. As Tomberg shows below, we can explore the nature of memory through a purely phenomenological analysis, rather than imposing metaphysical postulates that invariably favor mystical or material reductionist theories. Cleric also did a phenomenological investigation of memory here, as spiritual gestures we perform through ever-increasing degrees of freedom. It is helpful to also keep that in mind when contemplating what follows.
***
In other words, how and why do we remember the past, how and why do we wake in the morning, and how and why do we live several decades? In the first place, let us disregard the enormous literature where these questions are dealt with and endeavour to undertake a meditative work, i.e. to think directly about the subject which occupies us, without the intermediary of what may be borrowed from sources other than our immediate experience and understanding. To meditate is to think with a view to attaining certainty in the inner forum of consciousness, renouncing all pretension of arriving at things of general validity (i.e. things which may be a contribution to science). In meditation—and these Letters are only meditations—it is a matter above all of the question, posed in all honesty to our own conscience and answered in all honesty by our own conscience: “What do I myself know?”, and not the question: “What is generally known?”
Let us disregard for the moment, dear Unknown Friend, what is generally known and said on the subject of the ties between the soul and the body, and let us endeavour to take account—just for ourselves—of what we know and are able to know about it.
Firstly, let us consider the domain of forgetting and remembering—the memory. Memory is the magic, in the subjective domain, which effects the evocation of things from the past. It renders past things present. Just as a sorcerer or necromancer evokes the spirits of the dead by making them appear, so does memory evoke things of the past and make them appear to our inner mental vision. The present remembrance is the result of a magical operation in the subjective domain, where one has succeeded in evoking from the black void of forgetfulness a living image from the past. A living image from the past…imprint? symbol? copy? phantom? It is all of these at once. It is an imprint in so far as it reproduces an impression received in the past; it is a symbol in so far as it makes use of my imagination to represent a reality which goes beyond its imaginary representation; it is a copy in so far as it only aims at reproducing the original from the past; it is a phantom in so far as it is an apparition from the black abyss of forgetfulness and in so far as it recalls to life the past in making it present to my inner vision.
What is the force at work in the subjective magical operation of remembering? There are four types of memory that one experiences: mechanical or automatic memory, logical memory, moral memory and vertical or revelatory memory.
Mechanical or automatic memory hardly makes any demand on the act of recall. The remembrance simply happens. It takes place in an automatic way according to the laws of association—i.e. resemblances, affinities and alliances between things—which effect recall without my taking any other part than that of an observer. This sort of memory supplies me, on the occasion of each impression that I receive, with a host of images of the past from which I can choose. Thus when I see a pipe, I can choose between images of the past which present themselves to my mind, e.g. “an old sea-dog whom I saw at B. in 19…”; “a book on Red Indians where it was a matter of the peace-pipe ritual”, “my friend S. who used to put everyone to flight when he lit his pipe of tobacco cultivated and prepared by himself at the time of the last war when there was no tobacco for sale”, etc.
In so far as logical memory is concerned, I am more active than in the case of automatic memory. Here I have to think in order to remember things. Thus, for example, if I want to remember the Hindu Trinity, amongst whom I have forgotten one of the three terms, I ask myself: If there is a Creator and a Destroyer, Brahma and Shiva, which third principle ought to be found between the Creator and the Destroyer? I concentrate on the empty place between the two and I make an effort to fill it logically. “Ah, it is the Conserver principle—this is Vishnu—of course!” I say to myself. In logical memory there is less automatism and more conscious effort.
With respect to moral memory, there is hardly any automatism. Here the remembrance is no longer something which happens but rather it is an authentic magical act, although subjective. It is love which is at work in moral memory when it recalls things from the past. Here it is admiration, respect, friendship, gratitude, affection and a thousand other things which have deeply moved you, which render things from the past unforgettable, i.e. evocable at each instant. The more one has loved, the more one remembers through moral memory.
As a general rule young people possess a very strong mechanical memory. It becomes feebler with age and it is logical or intellectual memory which comes to its assistance. This demands an effort to think, an intellectual effort. People who have failed to develop a taste for thinking and intellectual effort will have difficulties with their memory in mature age. Mechanical memory will fail them more and more, and logical memory, called to supplement it, will also be lacking.
With respect to moral memory, it is above all in old age that it replaces more and more not only mechanical memory but also logical and intellectual memory. It is the heart then which supplies the energy which nourishes and maintains memory and which supplements the growing lapse of mechanical memory and intellectual memory. Senile lapse of memory is due to the fact that the person who suffers from it failed to replace in time the functions of intellectual memory—without mentioning mechanical memory—by those of moral memory. People who know how to and are able to give everything a moral worth and to see a moral sense in everything will not forget anything; they will have a normal, if not excellent, memory to a very advanced age.
Moral memory—which can comprehend everything without exception—is all the more effective the less one is morally indifferent. Indifference, a lack of moral interest, is the fundamental cause of the lapse of memory which often takes place in old age. The less one is indifferent, the more one remembers of the past and the more one is capable of learning new things.
Beyond the three types of memory—mechanical, logical and moral—of which it is a matter here, there is still the kind of memory that we have designated as “vertical or revelatory memory”. It is not a memory of the past in the sense of the horizontal line: today, yesterday, the day before, etc., but rather in the sense of the vertical line: here, higher, still higher, etc. It is a “memory” which does not link the present to the past on the plane of physical, psychic and intellectual life, but which links the plane of ordinary consciousness to planes or states of consciousness higher than that of ordinary consciousness. It is the faculty of the “lower self” to reproduce the experience and knowledge of the “higher Self” or, if you like, the faculty of the “higher Self” to imprint its experience and knowledge upon the consciousness of the “lower self”. It is the link between the “higher eye” and the “lower eye”, which renders us authentically religious and wise, and immune to the assaults of scepticism, materialism and determinism. It is this also which is the source of certainty not only of God and the spiritual world with its hierarchical entities but also of the immortality of our being and reincarnation, wherever it is a matter of reincarnation. “Dawn is the friend of the muses” and similar popular proverbs—such as Die Morgenstunde hat Gold im Munde (“the morning hour has gold in its mouth”), or Utro vechera mudreye (“morning is wiser than the evening”), or even De morgenstond heeft goud in den mond (the Dutch version of Die Morgenstunde hat Gold im Munde)—relate to the benefits of vertical memory from which one benefits in the morning, after the return of consciousness from the plane of “natural ecstasy” or sleep.
Vertical memory is the more effective to the extent that the three sacred vows—obedience, poverty and chastity—render the lower man capable of listening to, perceiving and receiving things from above without distortion. Vertical memory is fundamentally only moral memory carried in its development to a still higher degree. This is why it is only moral purification, which the practice of the three sacred vows entails, that counts in the case of vertical memory. Intellectual interests, as such, do not count here. This is an outlined inventory of the domain of memory.
Anonymous . Meditations on the Tarot (pp. 344-345). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Modern humans are caught halfway between the mostly animalistic stage of automatic memory and the fully human stage of moral/vertical memory. We can sense pretty clearly these days how the intellect is always threatened to be dragged out of the logical memory sphere into the sphere of automatism, if it simply rests comfortably in the former and fails to strive towards higher ideals. That is especially the case since our modern technological environment is practically structured at every turn to play to our automatic memory through hedonistic desires and other selfish interests. Our consciousness then becomes mired in its past evolutionary stages, enslaved to maladaptive habits, blinded to the flow of new ideal impulses that reopen the archetypal spirit worlds for the realization of its higher potential. As Tomberg shows below, we can explore the nature of memory through a purely phenomenological analysis, rather than imposing metaphysical postulates that invariably favor mystical or material reductionist theories. Cleric also did a phenomenological investigation of memory here, as spiritual gestures we perform through ever-increasing degrees of freedom. It is helpful to also keep that in mind when contemplating what follows.
***
In other words, how and why do we remember the past, how and why do we wake in the morning, and how and why do we live several decades? In the first place, let us disregard the enormous literature where these questions are dealt with and endeavour to undertake a meditative work, i.e. to think directly about the subject which occupies us, without the intermediary of what may be borrowed from sources other than our immediate experience and understanding. To meditate is to think with a view to attaining certainty in the inner forum of consciousness, renouncing all pretension of arriving at things of general validity (i.e. things which may be a contribution to science). In meditation—and these Letters are only meditations—it is a matter above all of the question, posed in all honesty to our own conscience and answered in all honesty by our own conscience: “What do I myself know?”, and not the question: “What is generally known?”
Let us disregard for the moment, dear Unknown Friend, what is generally known and said on the subject of the ties between the soul and the body, and let us endeavour to take account—just for ourselves—of what we know and are able to know about it.
Firstly, let us consider the domain of forgetting and remembering—the memory. Memory is the magic, in the subjective domain, which effects the evocation of things from the past. It renders past things present. Just as a sorcerer or necromancer evokes the spirits of the dead by making them appear, so does memory evoke things of the past and make them appear to our inner mental vision. The present remembrance is the result of a magical operation in the subjective domain, where one has succeeded in evoking from the black void of forgetfulness a living image from the past. A living image from the past…imprint? symbol? copy? phantom? It is all of these at once. It is an imprint in so far as it reproduces an impression received in the past; it is a symbol in so far as it makes use of my imagination to represent a reality which goes beyond its imaginary representation; it is a copy in so far as it only aims at reproducing the original from the past; it is a phantom in so far as it is an apparition from the black abyss of forgetfulness and in so far as it recalls to life the past in making it present to my inner vision.
What is the force at work in the subjective magical operation of remembering? There are four types of memory that one experiences: mechanical or automatic memory, logical memory, moral memory and vertical or revelatory memory.
Mechanical or automatic memory hardly makes any demand on the act of recall. The remembrance simply happens. It takes place in an automatic way according to the laws of association—i.e. resemblances, affinities and alliances between things—which effect recall without my taking any other part than that of an observer. This sort of memory supplies me, on the occasion of each impression that I receive, with a host of images of the past from which I can choose. Thus when I see a pipe, I can choose between images of the past which present themselves to my mind, e.g. “an old sea-dog whom I saw at B. in 19…”; “a book on Red Indians where it was a matter of the peace-pipe ritual”, “my friend S. who used to put everyone to flight when he lit his pipe of tobacco cultivated and prepared by himself at the time of the last war when there was no tobacco for sale”, etc.
In so far as logical memory is concerned, I am more active than in the case of automatic memory. Here I have to think in order to remember things. Thus, for example, if I want to remember the Hindu Trinity, amongst whom I have forgotten one of the three terms, I ask myself: If there is a Creator and a Destroyer, Brahma and Shiva, which third principle ought to be found between the Creator and the Destroyer? I concentrate on the empty place between the two and I make an effort to fill it logically. “Ah, it is the Conserver principle—this is Vishnu—of course!” I say to myself. In logical memory there is less automatism and more conscious effort.
With respect to moral memory, there is hardly any automatism. Here the remembrance is no longer something which happens but rather it is an authentic magical act, although subjective. It is love which is at work in moral memory when it recalls things from the past. Here it is admiration, respect, friendship, gratitude, affection and a thousand other things which have deeply moved you, which render things from the past unforgettable, i.e. evocable at each instant. The more one has loved, the more one remembers through moral memory.
As a general rule young people possess a very strong mechanical memory. It becomes feebler with age and it is logical or intellectual memory which comes to its assistance. This demands an effort to think, an intellectual effort. People who have failed to develop a taste for thinking and intellectual effort will have difficulties with their memory in mature age. Mechanical memory will fail them more and more, and logical memory, called to supplement it, will also be lacking.
With respect to moral memory, it is above all in old age that it replaces more and more not only mechanical memory but also logical and intellectual memory. It is the heart then which supplies the energy which nourishes and maintains memory and which supplements the growing lapse of mechanical memory and intellectual memory. Senile lapse of memory is due to the fact that the person who suffers from it failed to replace in time the functions of intellectual memory—without mentioning mechanical memory—by those of moral memory. People who know how to and are able to give everything a moral worth and to see a moral sense in everything will not forget anything; they will have a normal, if not excellent, memory to a very advanced age.
Moral memory—which can comprehend everything without exception—is all the more effective the less one is morally indifferent. Indifference, a lack of moral interest, is the fundamental cause of the lapse of memory which often takes place in old age. The less one is indifferent, the more one remembers of the past and the more one is capable of learning new things.
Beyond the three types of memory—mechanical, logical and moral—of which it is a matter here, there is still the kind of memory that we have designated as “vertical or revelatory memory”. It is not a memory of the past in the sense of the horizontal line: today, yesterday, the day before, etc., but rather in the sense of the vertical line: here, higher, still higher, etc. It is a “memory” which does not link the present to the past on the plane of physical, psychic and intellectual life, but which links the plane of ordinary consciousness to planes or states of consciousness higher than that of ordinary consciousness. It is the faculty of the “lower self” to reproduce the experience and knowledge of the “higher Self” or, if you like, the faculty of the “higher Self” to imprint its experience and knowledge upon the consciousness of the “lower self”. It is the link between the “higher eye” and the “lower eye”, which renders us authentically religious and wise, and immune to the assaults of scepticism, materialism and determinism. It is this also which is the source of certainty not only of God and the spiritual world with its hierarchical entities but also of the immortality of our being and reincarnation, wherever it is a matter of reincarnation. “Dawn is the friend of the muses” and similar popular proverbs—such as Die Morgenstunde hat Gold im Munde (“the morning hour has gold in its mouth”), or Utro vechera mudreye (“morning is wiser than the evening”), or even De morgenstond heeft goud in den mond (the Dutch version of Die Morgenstunde hat Gold im Munde)—relate to the benefits of vertical memory from which one benefits in the morning, after the return of consciousness from the plane of “natural ecstasy” or sleep.
Vertical memory is the more effective to the extent that the three sacred vows—obedience, poverty and chastity—render the lower man capable of listening to, perceiving and receiving things from above without distortion. Vertical memory is fundamentally only moral memory carried in its development to a still higher degree. This is why it is only moral purification, which the practice of the three sacred vows entails, that counts in the case of vertical memory. Intellectual interests, as such, do not count here. This is an outlined inventory of the domain of memory.
Anonymous . Meditations on the Tarot (pp. 344-345). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"