Valentin Tomberg and Anthroposophy

Valentin Tomberg and Anthroposophy

James Morgante

In his recent book Valentin Tomberg and Anthroposophy, Sergei O. Prokofieff cites a letter written by Tomberg towards the end of his life that supposedly proves his final, negative assessment of Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy (this same letter is also reproduced in the 2005/3 issue of News for Members).

The recently published second volume of Tomberg’s biography[1] takes up this letter in detail (written to the anthroposophist Willi Seiss[2] but never sent) and provides a comprehensive biographical picture that is helpful for evaluating Prokofieff’s claims.What becomes evident is the need to distinguish between Valentin Tomberg’s positive assessment of Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy on the one hand, and his critique of “spiritual science” on the other, which is closely linked to criticism of anthroposophists.The critique of “spiritual science,” however, occurs against a background of Tomberg’s transition from a scientific framework to the form and content of his masterwork Meditations on the Tarot.In this work Tomberg’s Platonic identity comes to full expression.His identity as a Platonist is an important key (among others) to understanding his criticisms, as well as the significance of the controversy surrounding him within the history of the anthroposophical movement.

But first a brief summary of the criticisms in the Seiss letter: There is no “spiritual science” because of an intellectual and deadening tendency [that is antithetical to the life of the spirit]; there can never be such a spiritual science because of the lack of verifiability and universal or general validity; spiritual science can only be convincing on the basis of faith and trust in the so-called spiritual researcher.To these criticisms can be added another, namely an implicit criticism of Rudolf Steiner as the founder of Anthroposophy and primary representative of spiritual science.In the course of his treatment of the Seiss letter, Prokofieff goes so far as to say that Tomberg “condemns” Rudolf Steiner, and that Tomberg “no longer wished to have anything to do with Rudolf Steiner.”[3]Prokofieff needs to defend these claims.Such sentiments are nowhere found in the Seiss letter, and they could not be further from the truth.

Valentin Tomberg and Rudolf Steiner

The claim of a final, negative assessment of Rudolf Steiner is fairly simple to refute.

His biographers point to the conclusion of the Ten Commandments essay (in Covenant of the Heart[4]), completed a full year later than the Seiss letter.[5]Virtually at the end of the essay, Tomberg introduces an extensive paean to Rudolf Steiner for reviving and deepening knowledge about the heavenly hierarchies throughout his various works.[6]

Tomberg’s biographers also note that in his opus magnum Meditations on the Tarot (completed several years before the Covenant of the Heart essays and the Seiss letter), he refers to Rudolf Steiner many times,[7] an indication of the high esteem in which he held Steiner.They also point to a passage in the Lazarus Miracle essay (written concurrently with the Seiss letter and also found in Covenant of the Heart) where Tomberg praises Rudolf Steiner as one of three thinkers presenting world history as the path to a goal (in Steiner’s case as the path to incarnating the Christ impulse).[8]

One can add that in the introduction to Lazarus, Tomberg devotes an entire, lengthy paragraph to “Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Anthroposophical Movement” as a prime representative of knowledge based on intuition (the stream represented by the essay).[9]These remarks show Tomberg in complete solidarity with Rudolf Steiner, as mutual representatives of intuitive spiritual knowledge.

Thus at literally both the beginning and end of his last major writings (the introduction to Lazarus and the final remarks of the Ten Commandments), Tomberg has nothing but praise and affirmation for Rudolf Steiner and his legacy Anthroposophy.

Critique of “Spiritual Science”

How, then, to understand his criticism of “spiritual science?”On the one hand this is linked to criticism leveled against anthroposophists, a concern going back to the first chapter of his Anthroposophical Studies of the Old Testament:

When grown-up children of anthroposophist parents turn their backs on anthroposophical teaching—which not infrequently occurs ... we should ask ... was the Anthroposophy of the parents sufficiently convincing for the children? If the question is put thus, we shall realise that only so much anthroposophical teaching as has been apprehended by the hearts of one generation can pass over to the next. Anthroposophy of the head has no place in the current of anthroposophical life which must flow on through the generations—for this, the Anthroposophy of the heart alone avails.[10]

Words such as these contributed to unleashing the Tomberg controversy some 70 years ago.

Another criticism attributes the preoccupation of German anthroposophists with two-fold or three-fold evil as having “clipped the wings of the anthroposophical movement.”[11]As his biographers note, he appears to hold them in particular responsible for the failure of the movement.[12]

This last criticism, which involves a kind of intellectualized “misuse” of the contents of spiritual science, relates more clearly to the Seiss letter.This same train of thought, however, is expressed in much more detail in a letter written by Tomberg to Bernhard Martin in 1956.[13]Key points in the letter are:

• Anthroposophy is only “scientific” to the extent that it expresses supersensible experience in clear and unambiguous—i.e. intellectualized—concepts.
• It differs from religion by making salvational truths into objects of knowledge (at the same time providing knowledge inaccessible to science, which science relegates to faith or superstition).
• One effect is that knowledge is encouraged at the expense of faith.
• Another effect: faith is invested in the teacher (unless one has direct access to supersensible knowledge oneself) who can appear as an infallible “anti-pope” in competition with church and religion (the usual repository of faith); authority is thereby not cast off but merely replaced.
• Intellect (normally reflective and “moon-like) replaces the normally sun-like role of faith, leading to impudence and lack of restraint (facile characterizations like: the West—Ahrimanic, the East—Luciferic, Middle Europe—Christian; thus Americanism—Ahrimanic, Bolshevism—Luciferic, and Germanism—Christian).
• Intellectualization of the supersensible becomes an obstacle to direct spiritual experience and can lead to a conceptual or “occult imprisonment;” this is true for Hegelians and Marxists—and even anthroposophists.

At this point Tomberg introduces an important caveat missing from the Seiss letter, namely that spiritual science leads to such harmful effects unless “the concepts themselves are viewed and treated as symbols”[14] [my italics].He then begins to speak about the relative merits of “ambiguous symbols” for imparting spiritual knowledge compared to the “unambiguous concepts” of spiritual science.

Before outlining these merits, it is important to emphasize that the critique of spiritual science indicated above is qualified and not absolute.Nor could it be for someone who had dedicated his early life to Anthroposophy and who retained a life-long respect for Rudolf Steiner and his works.

In contrast to the “unambiguous” concepts of spiritual science, symbols (such as those found in the Tabula Smaragdina, the Apocalypse, Cabbala and the Tarot) are:

• Directional stimuli leading to direct experience of the supersensible reality toward which they point.
• Inexhaustible—concepts can be developed from them, but the potential for developing concepts is never exhausted.
• Liberating—they leave people free because they are ambiguous and open to interpretation; they can only be utilized in a manner and measure corresponding to the individual, and actually make people more free, i.e. more creative.
• The speech of the unconscious—an important scientific discovery of C. G. Jung; symbols such as the mandala have an important therapeutic and healing effect.
• Pathways leading to the threshold of the mysteries themselves, and to an attitude of learning and humility.

Tomberg concludes this section of his letter to Bernhard Martin by returning to the potentially negative effects of spiritual science:

This is the exact opposite of how anthroposophists proceed.First they have a world of formulated concepts and then try to arrive at experience.But the concepts hold them shut within their world: the spiritual world remains silent, because they are the ones talking about the spiritual world; they don’t let it speak.It’s otherwise with people [like Jung]; in silence they let the spiritual world speak.And the spiritual world speaks in symbols—i.e. in mystery speech—today just like before.[15]

Note that the primary concern—despite the criticisms—is allowing the spiritual world to speak.All of Tomberg’s criticisms unfold within this context—a concern for personal, direct experience of the spiritual world and the enlivening effects of such a primal experience.

His biographers cite a passage in the Lazarus essay that adds another important clarification to his critique of spiritual science.Reflecting on historical attempts “to allow the ‘logic of the Logos’ to hold sway in human consciousness” (as expressed by the saying: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”), Tomberg indicates that Hegel was only able to reflect the dimension of truth.Rudolf Steiner had more success by creating not just a “thought system” but also a “path of spiritual and soul-development ... the way and the truth.”Tomberg continues:

Alas it happened, however, for reasons which we need not go into here, that Rudolf Steiner gave his work the form of a science, so-called “spiritual science”. Thereby the third aspect of the indivisible threefoldness of the Way, the Truth, and the Life—namely Life—was not given enough attention. For the scientific form into which the logic of the Logos had to be cast, and by which it was limited, left little room for pure mysticism and spiritual magic, that is, for Life. So there is in Anthroposophy a magnificent achievement of thought and will—which is, however, unmystical and unmagical, i.e. in want of Life. Rudolf Steiner himself was conscious of this essential lack. Therefore it was with a certain amount of hope that he indicated the necessary appearance of a successor (the Bodhisattva)[16] who would remedy this lack and would bring the trinity of the Way, the Truth, and the Life to full fruition.[17]

What particularly comes to expression in this passage is an emphasis on the dimension of “life.”Spiritual science is criticized to the extent that it is deficient of life, as related to the fullness of “Logos logic.”His biographers point out that Tomberg does not say that life is totally absent from spiritual science, only that it is deficient in a mystical and magical sense.[18]

All of the above indications may be no less controversial.But they put the remarks of the Seiss letter into a much broader context.They especially highlight Tomberg’s concern for life and living spiritual experience, concerns that he consistently represented throughout his life.

A final point is that Tomberg ultimately came to distinguish spiritual knowledge from “scientific” knowledge in a categorical sense.In the introduction to the Lazarus essay he states that what he writes has validity for neither theology nor history.One important reason (among several) is that his conception of truth is based on“intuition [which] is not attained through practical knowledge or intellectual consideration (reflection), but through direct experience of reality ... ‘an evolving revelation from the inner being of man’ ... and ‘a direct grasping of the being of things ....’”[19]He continues:

For those who experience it, this form of knowledge counts as the highest because it is experienced ... as the result of the most profound contemplation and the greatest concentration, in comparison with which that of intellectual consideration and the practical knowledge gained by way of observation appears superficial. However, it does not count in the slightest way as knowledge (let alone as the highest form of knowledge) for the scientific disciplines—which, as such, lay claim to being of general validity. For the scientific approach is not to strive simply for the truth, but rather to strive for that brand of truth which is of general validity, i.e. that which can be comprehended fundamentally by everyone bestowed with healthy understanding and faculties of perception, and which should thus be concurred with. A scientific discipline—whether a spiritual-scientific or a natural-scientific discipline—does not want to, and is not able to, address itself only to those people who are capable of the concentration and inner deepening necessary for intuition. Were it to do so, it would then not be scientific, i.e. generally comprehensible and provable. Rather, it would be “esoteric”, i.e. a matter for an elite group of special people. In this sense theology is also “science” since, assuming the authority of Scripture and the Church are acknowledged, it can be comprehended and tested by all believers.[20]

Not having any claim to scientific or general validity, his book “is written—and could be writtenonly—for those who have the capacity and disposition to make use of the faculty of intuition as the direct sense for truth. Thus , it is addressed to those ‘who have ears to hear and eyes to see.’”[21]

Tomberg’s biographers note that the struggle with the contents in the Seiss letter may have stimulated the evaluation of Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy found in the Covenant essays.Similarly, the Seiss letter may have stimulated further reflection on the relationship between spiritual and scientific knowledge—as two distinct and mutually exclusive categories.The distinction applies not just to “spiritual science,” but to spiritual knowledge in general, in particular direct spiritual knowledge.Direct spiritual knowledge achieved through intuition is personal—never general or universal, i.e. scientific.

On the one hand is a differentiation between scientific and spiritual knowledge; and on the other is the affirmation that intellectualized spiritual knowledge does not and cannot replace—and is in danger of inhibiting—direct, spiritual knowledge.Such considerations are an important part of the wider context in which to understand his critique of spiritual science.

The Transition to Meditations on the Tarot

During Advent toward the end of the year 1957, several events occur which lead Tomberg, in the words of his biographers, to “a deeply moving awakening.”[22]The result is his abandonment of a scientific framework as a modus operandi.[23]This applies not just to leaving behind Anthroposophy and spiritual science, which had largely occurred by the early 1940s.During the war years and on into the late 1940s and early 1950s Tomberg wrote several law works, also in an academic and scientific style.And his first attempts at a “last work” are also described as evincing a scientific style and form.In a manuscript entitled The Seed, Seed Power, and the Tree he had begun to write about science and mystery knowledge and wanted to expose the dangers of a systematized theology and spirituality.But he found that “his manuscript about growth ... was becoming more and more scientific and systematized ... and that he had less and less touched upon what he really wanted to write about: life.”[24]

The awakening he experiences leads him to abandon The Seed manuscript and to embrace the form and content of what becomes the book Meditations on the Tarot.In addition to the use of symbols, it is to be a collection of “life remembrances” or a kind of biography focusing on mystery wisdom.His biographers write:

Such a content requires a special language. In Tomberg’s experience a systematic and scientific presentation excludes itself from the inner being of mystery as much as a society that wants to cultivate and administer such a science. Those who talk about the mysteries can do this in a conceptual system borrowed from science. But those who want to speak out of mystery wisdom speak as intimately, individually, and personally as possible.For the mysteries, according to Tomberg, happen in the sphere of personal experience; they are the treasure of personal certainly, to which deep meditation on spoken or visual symbols can lead.[25]

They continue that this language requires an appropriate form.Because the focus is individual experience (and not what is universal or scientific); and because in his experience letters are the most appropriate form for sharing personal experience as well as “questions, thoughts, and deeper insights,” the form becomes letters addressed to friends.Friendship is the bond, which is particularly significant in light of the Gospel words: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them.”For of central importance to Tomberg is the “‘mystery of the great initiation’ ... a complete transformation of consciousness, whereby head and heart work together and become one” brought about by a living encounter with Jesus Christ—invoked as the master in the book’s very first letter.[26]

Direct and living spiritual experience has been the focus of all of his critiques of spiritual science, and that is what becomes the motivation for turning away from a scientific form.While it is valid to say that this process occurs within the context of negative experiences within the anthroposophical movement, there is a deeper impetus also at work—involving Tomberg’s own unique individuality and identity.