[Radscha Yoga, Hatha Yoga und Tantrika oder, Weisse und schwarze Magie und Hexerei.]
Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl[1]
Before we engage in a discussion of the laws which are capable of producing magical effects, we must first of all determine what is to be understood by the term “magic.”
Magic (from mag, priest, magnus, great) designates the great and sublime science, which is based on a knowledge of the “spiritual” forces contained in human nature and also in nature on the whole, but for the most part dormant. Since the greatness and grandeur of the human race can only be recognized by a few in our modern state of culture, this great and grand science has also been lost for most, and even the name “magic” has sunk to a meaningless word for the educated rabble, under which he can only imagine the practice of sleight of hand. Only through the reintroduction of “hypnotism,” long known to the ancients, has modern science entered the path that will lead to real magic, but unfortunately only to devilish “black” magic, if not with the progress of science at the same time an ennoblement of the character of those who exercise them will it occur.
The exercise of spiritual powers for utterly unselfish purposes, which have nothing but good in mind, is white magic; but if once awakened divine powers are used for base, selfish or material purposes, then this is called “black magic” and falling into it is the greatest misfortune that can affect a person, since it causes him to separate from the one, true being (God), thereby losing his immortality. In other words, white magic is the result of an elevation of the soul to eternal good and truth, the natural consequence of its union (yoga) with God (Rāja the Lord); black magic, on the other hand, is a depreciation and degradation of divine powers in the service of the personal, ephemeral self, whereby the soul itself is degraded, debased, and deprived of its divine self-awareness. One of the ways to this degradation is through the practice of hatha yoga (the so-called “science of breath”), the other is through the practice of tantra, by which is meant association with “elemental spirits” ([lower] devas, demons, astral corpses, etc.), through which certain effects can be produced. The initial stage of this is modern spiritualism and necromancy and witchcraft, which are fortunately only known to a few.
In order to remove the character of arbitrary assertions from the above explanations and to give them a scientific basis, it is necessary to keep the composition of man and nature (microcosm and macrocosm) in mind once again, and we want to do it in order to get to the point to simplify, only give the three-part classification of the main groups:
- The spirit (Ātma), which fills and pervades everything, but which is not divisible, which no human being can acquire, but which everyone must acquire for themselves if they wish to attain eternal life and the consciousness of its immortality in it.
- The Soul (Buddhi-Manas). The connecting link between the spirit and the body, the all-self-consciousness of the Eternal and True, and the deceptive “self-consciousness” of its personality, which is a transitory delusion and the temporary result of the separateness of its bodily form.
- The body (Maya) [Māyā], and by this we mean not only the sensually perceptible body of flesh and blood, but also what is called “spirit” in ordinary life, namely its astral body [etheric double], its earthly reason, material Intellect, instincts, personal inclinations, etc. All of these are impermanent and have no lasting value.
The spirit is the truth, the one being, but which has no existence for man as long as he does not recognize it; the soul is the light through which man recognizes the truth. The body is the shadow that light casts on matter; but at the same time this matter provides the material for the fire, from which the light draws its nourishment. The body should therefore serve the light as nourishment, i.e., our physical, psychic, and intellectual faculties should work to elevate, strengthen, and render the soul fit for union with the One Divine, but not to limit the light in the body and the powers which God (the impersonal man) possesses belong to sacrifice to the selfish ends of personality. Kāma, i.e., the desire for possessions is to be overcome and in its place the recognition of the true, sole being.
What does material science know about the “holy spirit”? Nevertheless, the whole universe came into being from this Spirit of God,[2] and all we see are the phenomena brought about by it. This spirit is continually at work in nature, and can still create worlds when moved by a truly self-conscious being. But what sets this spirit in motion is the power of the divine will, and this will does not belong to the limited personal human being, but to the divine human being reborn in the spirit of truth. Therefore, the man striving for the possession of magical powers should above all seek to ignite all his selfish desires, desires and thoughts in the fire of divine love, i.e., to the knowledge of God in all things[3]; he should rise to those spheres where there is no “I” and “thou,” no “yours” and “mine,” where selfishness, self-interest and personal interest cease and only unselfish love of the good, the striving for the perfection of the whole remains. The path to this is called “Rāja Yoga.”
There are many works in Indian dealing with the manner of practicing Rāja Yoga; unsurpassed in this is the Bhagavad Gita. However, we do not need to travel across the sea to get to know this path, because it is also contained in the Christian teachings, only with the difference that the latter over the course of time have sometimes been taught so wrongly, sometimes understood so superficially, and consistently so little scientifically founded and explained that they are hardly taken seriously by the educated classes and religion is practiced only as a pastime and as a matter of fashion or for secondary purposes. If you want to delve deeper into the mysteries of the Christian religion, you don’t have to look for explanations in the ceremonies of the church, but in mysticism. However, even in German mysticism, the obstacle stands in his way that the term “God” is used in different senses, because in German we only have the one word “God,” while in Indian it depends on the sense in which it is used is to be understood, there are various designations (Parabrahm, Brahma, Iśvara, Karma, Ālaya, Mahat, Ātma, etc.).
“Put away everything from your nature that is not divine, and only the divine essence remains,” says Meister Eckhart. “God is one and the same as I am, God’s nature is my life; therefore what of God must be mine, and God’s substance must be my substance. Where God and Spirit have lost their distinctiveness, there I am the Son of God, whom God gave birth from eternity; where I am, there is God, and where God is, I am. There is no inner union than that between God and the soul.” (590, 32. – 267, 4.)
Similar are the teachings of other German mystics; but from man’s personal existence to the Absolute, from his deceptive “I” to Nirvana, is a long leap, and the teachings of Eckhart Boehme, Paracelsus, Thomas Aquinas, Kempis, etc. will not be properly followed until they are properly understood, and the key to understanding them is offered by Indian occult philosophy.
Without this understanding of the connection of things in invisible nature, few people will be able to devote themselves to that higher emotional life from which knowledge springs, and without this feeling of truth in the heart all religiosity consists only of dreams and enthusiasm. There are two ways that lead to the knowledge of truth, the way of reason and the way of feeling.[4] Both complement each other. Practice is preceded by theory, without which it would be but a groping in the dark, and theory alone is useless if practice does not follow.
The practice of Rāja Yoga therefore consists in the selfless search for truth, in the study of nature and the physical, psychological, spiritual and divine forces that prevail in it, but above all in keeping the mind pure, clarity of thought and firmness of will, which are called the life-giving “faith” by the mystics. This belief has nothing to do with religious opinions, ideas, or ecclesiastical dogmas, but consists in the perception of truth through inward feeling. “We should,” says Eckhart, “not be satisfied with mere ideas, but learn in the school of the Holy Spirit, where heaven (the higher self-confidence) is the school, the book is a pure heart, eternity is the lesson, the uncreated light the teacher is; where one does not have to look outside of oneself for what will further one to eternal happiness, but rather experiences all truth within oneself” (616, 11.) The consequence of this belief is the renunciation of everything that belongs to the kingdom of deception and none that remains has value, and the surrender (entering) into the will of the divine I (Ātma – Buddhi). In this I is contained the knowledge of truth, and by entering into and feeling one with this divine light, the spiritual man (manas) participates in this knowledge. This is the “scientific” explanation, why by faith, which is one with love, knowledge arises.
The Bhagavad Gita explains this in the following words:
“The Lord (Iśvara), who dwells in the heart of all, constantly brings forth all things by His omnipotence according to eternal immutable laws. Take refuge in Him with your whole being. Then, through his spirit, you will attain supreme peace, divine existence.”[5]
The human being who has attained inner enlightenment, in whom spiritual life has awakened, recognizes himself as an inhabitant (of the higher world) of light and looks down on his personality as his shadow walking on earth. But this “shadow” is also his earthly dwelling and the fertile ground from which he draws his strength for further development. Like everything physical, this body is a crystallized spirit, so to speak, and it contains the germs of all the forces that belong to the divine human being. These germs are like “magnets” that attract corresponding forces from nature; similar to how every plant absorbs what corresponds to its nature from its environment. Whoever walks the path of Rāja Yoga strives towards the sun of divine wisdom and rises to it through the power of divine love, just as the flowers of the field, enlivened by the heat, open their cups to the influence of the light of the earthly sun, And just as plants grow through the action of air and light without their own doing, so also through the influence of the divine light the germs and magical powers unfold of themselves in those who surrender to the influence of the divine spirit without personal considerations.
But since the body contains all these germs, it is also possible to bring some of them to artificial development, albeit at a low level, and on this is based the misuse, fortunately little known in Europe, of using magical powers can be driven. The science dealing with it is “Hatha Yoga” (hatha — breath) and it leads on the way to “black magic” which must end with the loss of spiritual individuality. Rāja Yoga is the path on which matter is spiritualized and ennobled through spiritual means; Hatha Yoga the path to the materialization and abasement of the spirit through material means whereby the soul incarnates and, torn from its divine stock, faces annihilation.
On the other hand, he who walks the path of black magic does not worship the Sun of Wisdom, but his own person. The light does not attract him and he does not strive towards the light, he only seeks to make it serve his personal interests or to use it for the personal ends of others. Separated from the light, he dwells a shadow among shadows, abandoned by God, his immortal self, which he left and which is no longer his self. The Rāja Yogi who has attained initiation, i.e., in whom, through the influence of the spirit, the first appearance of knowledge has dawned, recognizes himself and his immortal nature. Death and life are equal to him; he sees that both life and death are only illusions, temporary states of matter affecting the house in which he dwells for short periods of time but not himself. The hatha yogi who seeks personal possession of magical powers can only recognize himself as a mortal man; Life in this world or on the astral plane of goods is highest for him and he tries to prolong it at any price. Surrounded by delusion, itself a delusion, and operating through deception, he cares nothing for the truth and serves the lie when it suits him. He does not value honor or a given word, and he does not hesitate to sacrifice the highest interests of others whenever he thinks there is personal advantage in doing so. While the Rāja Yogi is always ready to sacrifice the life of his body for the good of mankind, the one who strives against the dark forces would not hesitate for a moment to destroy the whole world if it was in his power and he thereby believed to gain the slightest personal advantage. There are many examples of such madmen, and let us only mention the Marshal of France Gilles de Laval de Raiz, who in a few years tortured well over a hundred women and children to death in order to gain magical powers.
It goes without saying that not every Thor who wants to try the “Science of Breath” and whiles the time holding his breath for as long as he can does not become a criminal and a “necromancer”; but prolonged practice of similar experiments increases selfishness, leads to immorality, to physical disturbances in the organism, and finally to insanity and crime. Of those who, as we know personally, engaged in such experiments, all degenerated both physically and morally; two went insane and one ended in suicide. All such practices have no purpose at all, at most to satisfy “scientific curiosity” at disproportionately high costs. All “asceticism” in the ordinary sense of the word, all self-torture, all “sitting for yoga” is worse than useless, for at most it develops mediumistic qualities, which are no more desirable than the plague. They serve to weaken and humiliate true self-confidence instead of strengthening and elevating it.
Rising to a higher level of consciousness and knowledge is living, sinking to a lower level is death. Realizing the ideal within you is the path to immortality; to want to make the ideal subservient to material ends leads to detachment from the ideal and to the annihilation of the immortal man’s self-consciousness in the personality. Nothing is eternal but the truth, because the truth is reality, and what is not real can only be deception and lies and will inevitably perish.
In the philosophy of the Indian sages, the physical body of man (Sthula Sharira) [Sthūla śarīra] plays no role at all; indeed it is not even mentioned in their classification of the principles pertaining to the constitution of man, because it is no more a part of the constitution of real man than the soil on which a plant grows belongs to the nature of that plant. But since the European “Orientalists” as a rule know nothing about it, nor can they understand it, and look at everything from the usual material point of view, countless misunderstandings and wrong claims arise from their translations of Indian works, who bring the teachings of the ancient sages into disrepute in the eyes of the foolish. The Indian wisdom teaching has God (Parabrahm) as its starting point and it illuminates the world of phenomena from this point of view. The European speculation, which calls itself “science,” has as its center and starting point the personal, earthly, transitory man, who is a construction of deception (maya) [māyā], built up by wrong desires, and covered with deceit. The philosophy of the Indian sages seeks to break down the deception, to make imprisonment on earth superfluous and to give true human beings their freedom back. European “science,” on the other hand, seeks to make the whole world subservient to the human cadaver; for them there is nothing higher than what this corpse with its illusory life can sensually comprehend; the well-being and comfort of this corpse, the increase of its pseudo-knowledge, is its highest purpose. Thus the wise man dwells in eternal light; “Science,” however, plays with ephemeral shadows until it returns to the nothing from which it came.
It goes without saying that we are not declaring war on material science, but merely declaring it to be a delusion from the standpoint of eternal and immortal man. Just as man is given physical organs with which to work with in physical life, so too he is also given a brain with which to think and to preserve and make pleasant the existence of his body on earth. Whoever thinks, and strives only for the well-being of his earthly existence, who regards this transient life as the end purpose of his existence, does not recognize his higher nature and misses his highest purpose. But if spiritual powers awakening in man are misused for base purposes, then man is on the way to perdition. He creates his center of gravity in the lower (kāma-manas) and breaks his connection with the higher (buddhi-manas).
By employing what is called “hypnotism,” modern science has taken a step in this direction. Such effects paralyze the vibrations of Ātma-Buddhi in the body, the higher self-awareness is paralyzed and finally the connection between true reason and the psychic organism of man is broken, so that the latter becomes only a plaything of forces that are not his own. He then no longer recognizes the will of “God” in him, but only acts according to the will of “hypnotism.” However, this weakens his own spiritual will in him (the spirit of his will) to such an extent that he becomes accessible to influences other than those of “hypnotism,” and then his self-control will also come to an end. Admittedly, such an influence of the will has some apparently good things, since it can remove certain obstacles out of the way. The purpose of life, however, is not to avoid obstacles but to overcome them; not to avoid the fight but to win; not postponing the consequences of our karma until they return with redoubled vigour, but bearing them patiently until they are exhausted; not ignoring evil, but learning to be above it.
Rāja Yoga is union with God; in other words, the realization of the highest ideal. But the animal man cannot bring the ideal within himself to realization by his own efforts; it is self-realized in him by the power of “obedience,” i.e., by allowing the same to become a reality within himself.
Hatha Yoga knows nothing of the highest ideal and does not recognize the highest being, it is limited to the influence of the five lower Tattvas[6] of our material world, it wants to stamp the ephemeral as the imperishable and thereby pursues an illusion.
The practice of Hatha Yoga is followed by the practice of Tantrika, i.e., the observance of ceremonial magic, more properly “witchcraft.” Anyone who considers the belief in witches in the Middle Ages to be a “scientifically overcome point of view” is simply declaring that the understanding of psychological processes has sunk so low in modern times that the effects of evil will can no longer be scientifically understood. The facts can be ignored but not denied. The occult, i.e., the higher science, which is not for everyone, goes deeper; it recognizes that other creatures exist in cosmic space besides the visible humans and animals, albeit invisible to our senses under ordinary circumstances, and it knows that there are means of contacting these beings and even them, to that extent they are of a low level of intelligence to make themselves subservient.
The “scientific explanation” for this is that in the human constitution everything is contained “in germ” which is in developed form in the macrocosm, and that like tends to like and attracts one another. He who has good in his heart becomes guided by good and good comes to him, and whoever cultivates the germs of evil in his soul is attracted to evil and becomes a part of evil. The power of the spoken word, through which the feeling is expressed, is known not only to the followers of white magic but also to the black ones, and the worshipers of the tantrika therefore seek themselves through “magic formulas,” chants, music, ceremonies, etc to communicate with this being, to gain her favor and to make her his service. Much of our modern religious practice is a caricature of these tantric practices; for when we want to persuade God through our prayers and ceremonies in the churches to procure or grant us this or that personal advantage, this consists in nothing other than an attempt to convince us of a being who is superior to us and our petty needs to render service. The whole army of hypocrites and profit-seeking bigots who seek to insinuate themselves into the favor of God, who wail and shout, sing and pray, try to persuade him to change his will and submit to their will, differ from the tantrika hero of the “Gentiles” only by not knowing what they are doing, while the “pagans” do it on a scientific basis and with knowledge of cause and effect. The possible consequences of this deva and tantrika worship have already been discussed in no. IV of the “Lotusblüten,” page 129, described by Subba Rao.
Regarding the beings who are the object of invocation and worship of the tantrika, a well-known writer says: “Life is an all-pervading principle, and even from what seems to be dying and decomposing new forms of living beings arise. If the individual drops of water, like the stars in the sky, are inhabited worlds, then natural common sense should suffice to convince us that the infinity surrounding us, which is called “space,” and which separates the earth from the moon and separates the stars, also has its certain living creatures suitable for it. In the drop of water we see monsters which are large and terrible in comparison with others. It is the same with the inhabitants of the air (the astral light). Some of them possess extraordinary wisdom, others are hostile to man and of terrible wickedness, still others are like good messengers between the earth and the heavens.”[7]
For those who are able to regard the whole world with all its manifestations as a revelation of the eternal omnipresent being, the idea that wherever there is world ether there is life is nothing strange, strange or improbable, and that this life manifested in the most varied forms and with the most varied qualities, daily experience teaches us; but all these creatures, from the supreme angel to the semi-intelligent elemental, are but appearances reflecting the refracted rays of the Light of Eternal Wisdom, and above all these stands Man (Manas), one with the Source of Wisdom has become and recognizes itself as such.
Notes
[1] Rāja-yoga, Hatha-yoga and Tantra, or White and Black Magic and Sorcery. [Radscha Yoga, Hatha Yoga und Tantrika oder, Weisse und schwarze Magie und Hexerei. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 2, no. 15 (December 1893), 876-899] {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos. Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2024}
[2] Bhagavad Gita, XIII, 14–34.
[3] Bhagavad Gita, IV, 33–42.
[4] See: “Die Grundlage der indischen Mystik.” zwei Wege.
[5] Chapter XVIII, 61.
[6] {R.H.—The ancient Hindu Sāṃkhya philosophy recognizes 25 Tattvas. Tattva means “thatness, reality, truth.”}
[7] [Edward Bulwer-]Lytton, “Zanoni.” [1842]