Interesting reflections by Valentin Tomberg for upcoming Pentecost. Tomberg was born into a Lutheran family in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1900. He entered the Russian Christian esoteric tradition at an early age, strongly influenced by Vladimir Soloviev and a personal
experience of the spiritual being Sophia at a Cathedral in Holland. Under the auspices of the Anthroposophical Society (which he left around 1940), he lectured in Holland and England and wrote works based on his esoteric understanding of the Bible and Christianity. He later converted to Catholicism, resided in England, and worked for the BBC while devoting his time to meditation and writing. He died in 1973.
We took this text from Tomberg’s Christ and Sophia. Anthroposophic Meditations on the Old Testament, New Testament and Apocalypse . Because this book comes from Tomberg’s so called Anthroposophic period, we added links to articles explaining some terms the author used in the spirit of Anthroposophy. We hope that it will make it easier to understand the text.
We already publish a fragment of Tomberg’s text (about Christian Hermeticism). He was also mentioned by the Rev. Prof. Rudnicki in the interview available on our blog.
The theme of the Old Testament is the preparation and realization of the advent of Christ in the human body; that of the New Testament is the advent of Christ in the human “I.” The “new law” is, in fact, no law, but the formation of the essence of a free human “I.” This cannot happen unless the human “I” absorbs the being that is the “new law.” This absorption must involve something that does not arise externally, but that comes from the depths of the world in which the human “I” is rooted. A plant receives its sap from the soil in which it is rooted, and likewise the being of the Christ impulse should enter the human “I” from the “soil” in which the “I” is rooted. The means to effect this in the disciples is the essence of Christs farewell speeches as recorded in chapters 8 to 17 of John’s Gospel. The gist of what was said is this: I was with you as your master; now I go to the Father, so that I may be in you, as the Father is in me. Consequently, the point was that the “I” being of Jesus Christ would pass into the “I” being of others; the “I” that lived in the one human form must find a way to the inner “I” of others without encroaching, in the slightest, on the freedom of those others’ “I” being.
Passing into the being of another “I” is possible only through the sphere that is the primal cause and the original dwelling of all human “I” being—the realm of the Father. From the Father, all human “I” being originated; and only from the Father realm can any influence be exercised within human “I” that is in keeping with the principle of freedom. This is why Christ had to take the path that leads, by way of the Father, into the human “I.” Outwardly, this path was that of death; inwardly, however, it meant complete union with the Father. The path of death led to the resurrection; the Father path, however, led to the Pentecost. Death and the Father are two aspects of a single mystery; similarly, the resurrection and the Pentecost were two aspects of the Mystery of Golgotha. Indeed, the resurrection was the victory over Ahriman in the body, and the Pentecost was the victory over Lucifer in the soul. The resurrection meant a resurrection of the body, and the Pentecost meant resurrection of the soul.
Pentecost was resurrection of the soul in the sense that it brought to life wisdom that had united with the soul. Soul life did not arise out of mere feelings, but from powerful perceptions of the Christ mystery—perceptions that arise from the deepest ground of the heart. The real meaning of heart can be understood by studying the Pentecost; the common understanding of heart has the same relationship to the hearts experience of Pentecost as the Moon does to the Sun. The twilight of the hearts hopes and fears was replaced by the shining daylight of knowing love. The imperturbable inner certainty that the apostles possessed concerning the Christ mystery was not based on the authority of either the outer or the inner senses, but on their experience of the reality of love. Because the apostles experienced this reality in their souls, they also knew ways and means by which it had and would continue to influence the world. They knew, too, that what they now felt in their souls was the same experience that lived in Jesus Christ when he preached the Sermon on the Mount and performed the healings. They knew, likewise, that this force should live, through the Mystery of Golgotha, in human beings and overcome loneliness and death.
Out of this experience, the apostles spoke to those bystanders; and they all heard the disciples speak in their own language. This was possible because, in the apostles’ speech, the divisions brought about by Lucifer had been overcome. Because Lucifer was vanquished during Pentecost, it was possible to speak in a way that was a kind of resurrection of original human speech. It was the risen soul that spoke; it used th^language not of divided nations, but the language of the human soul. To understand the nature of the Pentecostal language, it is not enough to have a general idea of the victory over the divisions brought about by Lucifer. The true nature of the process by which that new language became possible in the human organism must be comprehended in a concrete way.
To get a more distinct view of this process, we must begin with the fact that human beings share their outer existence with the mineral world, their organic life with the plant realm, and their movement with the animal world. Nonetheless, human beings are distinguished from those three kingdoms by having speech, the fourth externally manifested attribute. Through this attribute, another member (aside from the physical, ether, and astral bodies) is revealed in human beings: the “I.” This makes it possible for human beings not only to participate in physical existence by living and moving about, but also to speak. Although the human “I” is the actual source of the speech faculty, the existence of language nonetheless depends on the body’s threefold makeup . The astral body is needed to combine the predicative with the attributive, the verb with the adjective; the ether body is needed to connect the verb with the substantive, or noun; and finally, the organs of the physical body are needed to make spoken language sound in the air. The
speech impulse of the “I” passes through these three members of the body to reveal itself as spoken language; in the process, it not only influences those bodies but is also influenced by them. By making it as far as the physical body, the impulse is greatly transformed. In this metamorphosis, the predicative element in the astral body is weakened by the influence of the area of egoistic likes and dislikes, and by the unconscious likes and dislikes in this sphere that exercise a restrictive influence on speech. This restrictive influence then results in the speech impulse in the ether body that takes on a cultural or national tendency, eventually expressed in the sounds of a certain language through the organs of the physical body.
Thus, through the various languages, the original purely human speech impulse becomes a one-sided and relative phenomenon; this is because of Lucifer’s influence in the human organism. If this influence is overcome, however (as it was, for example, at Pentecost), the speech impulse is freed from the restrictive influence of the organism to the degree that it is no longer forced to flow into the current of a single language; rather, it can move freely through the whole circle of human languages. This means that the speech impulse of the human “I” can contact the realm of influence governed by the whole circle of spirits of language (the luciferic archangels) to the extent that it has first acquired the faculty of uniting with the sphere of influence governed by folk spirits (the normal archangels). It was just this union with the whole circle of archangels (or folk spirits) that the twelve apostles established at Pentecost. This was possible because it is the host of archangels that spreads the revelation of the Christ mystery among all nations. What formed the essence of the Pentecostal revelation for human consciousness is poured into the life of the nations by the archangels, distributed according to the several parts or “words.” Since the Pentecost, it has been the task of archangels, as folk spirits, to direct the flow of the Christ influence into the life of nations. The sum of their activity is the full Pentecostal revelation of the Christ mystery as experienced by archangelic consciousness, whereas the sum of the twelve apostles’ knowledge at Pentecost is the full Pentecostal revelation of the Christ mystery as experienced by human consciousness. Hence, it was possible for the circle of apostles to unite with the circle of archangels. The Pentecostal revelation was an event not just in human consciousness, but also in the consciousness of folk spirits. Thus a circle was formed that received the “apostolate” of Christ. Then, just as the earthly human circle formed around one human being (Mary), the circle of archangels enclosed one archangelic being (Sophia).
The circle of human beings below and the circle of fire spirits (archangels) above together form the archetype of what is made real to human beings and nations by the New Testament. It is the true archetype of the ecclesia, the church, whose task is to bind humankind, as well as the beings of the spiritual hierarchies, as a unity in Christ. This unity is not meant to come about by means of organizations and edicts, but through the living flame of Pentecostal revelation. The essence of Pentecostal revelation is not just a comprehensive, intensified knowledge of the Christ mystery, but also the genesis of an archetype of every true community through experience of that knowledge.
Historically, the reality of the Pentecost was behind the idea of the church; that reality (though the impression of it gradually faded) became later the idea for a community of Christians that embraces all nations. The Pentecost was the real experience of freedom in world history—freedom united with the fraternity of humble equality in face of the sublime, all-embracing Christ mystery. Later in world history, however, that experience was no longer an idea, but the distorted caricature disguised as that monstrous human catastrophe, the French Revolution. That revolution was just the opposite of the Pentecost: a community of human beings, aware of their rights (Ie droit humain) gathered around the figure of Glory. What Mary Sophia was for the Pentecost event became the imaginary figure of Glory for the French Revolution; and the complete silence that pervaded the souls of those disciples who had passed through emptiness and loneliness now became a clamorous demand for rights.
The fact that the Pentecost became the object of both abstraction and distortion is simply an expression of its
importance for the whole history of post-Christian times. The Pentecost reveals the true mission of the post-Christian period; everything revolves around the understanding, preparation, and realization of that event, as well as on the fading of its impression and the disguise and distortion of its outline. Because it is the mission of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch (the sixth epoch, the philadelphic, will be based on the Pentecost), it will be the object of every assault from the forces that try to accomplish other purposes. To understand the events of the last great section of world history, it is necessary to know that the Pentecost spirit will continue to wrestle throughout the centuries, constantly engaged in combat with powers that wish to obscure and distort it. This is the fulfillment of the New Testament in the same sense that the advent of Christ in a human body was the fulfillment of the Old Testament. This is because the mission of the New Testament event (the Christ event) is actually to cause the “new law” to shine from within human beings. Christianity is really not a doctrine but an event that will receive its full meaning once it has found a place not only on the arena of world history, but also within human hearts.
