Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl^{[1] [2] [3]}

 

“Let no one be alike, but let everyone be alike towards the highest.

How to do that? Everyone is complete in themselves.”

 

There is probably no book in the world that is held in such high regard by all who know it, as the Bhagavad Gītā, the song of the Deity, which consists of the teaching of human perfection in divine existence. The more one reads it, the more elevated one feels affinity towards the regions of the Light of Truth; The more one penetrates into the spirit of this teaching, the more one approaches the knowledge of the divine basis of all existence to a depth which remains an inscrutable mystery to only superficial natural research, which moves among the realm of phenomena. Viewed in the light of the Bhagavad Gītā, the world appears to us to be something very different and much more sublime than when we look at it only from the point of view of material science. Here, instead of lifeless space, we see space full of light and life; nature no longer appears to us as a composite patchwork of living and inanimate things, but as a unity, as an all-encompassing organism of invisible forces, a living universe, permeated by the divine spirit, which strives for revelation in all things, and we recognize man himself as a supernatural being, bound to an earthly body, whose constitution has developed in the course of evolution to that perfection which was necessary to enable an awakening of the divine spirit in him and to enable man to finally recognize the Deity Himself as the ground or basis of his own true nature, and as the inner cause of man’s existence.

          With the awakening of this consciousness, however, his life also acquires a completely different and previously incomprehensible purpose. He finds that neither the possession of external things, nor the amusement of his senses, nor the gratification of his scientific curiosity, but rather the knowledge of his own divine existence, and the consequent realization of his immortality, is the true purpose of his existence. When the inner eye of the spirit is opened to him by understanding the teachings of the Bhagavad Gītā, he finds that just as his earthly being is related to all other beings on earth, so too can his spiritual being associate with the inhabitants of the spirit realm. He finds that he is in fact already in heaven, because “heaven” or the “over-world” is the underlying cause of external phenomena and creatures, and without the existence of the soul there could be no manifestation of the soul in visible forms. Through the awakening of inner knowledge he reaches beyond the realm of theory and is instructed by his own experience; the divine spirit which has awakened to self-awareness in him recognizes his own spiritual being and thus also the supernatural world of the spirit that he inhabits.

          But this awakening of the spirit is not achieved without hard struggles. The divine light of truth certainly penetrates into the soul of man without him being able to aid the light; but a multitude of obstacles stand in the way of this penetration in the form of lusts and passions, wrong conceptions and wrong notions, and the Bhagavad Gītā teaches who these enemies are and how to overcome them. In it, the struggle between the immortal and the mortal part of man is described and the way to the victory of the divine over the animal in man is revealed.

          [In the Bhagavad Gītā], Arjuna [Arjuna] (man) is found on the battlefield (the field of action) between the two hostile armies, of which one signifies the higher (Pandavas) [Pāṇḍavas]), the other of which is the lower soul forces (Kurus).

          There stands the son of Kunti (the soul) in opposition to his relatives, the sons of Dhritarāshtra [Dhṛtarāṣṭra] (material existence), and is threatened by selfishness, self-will, self-conceit, self-delusion and its desires, lust, passion, hatred, anger, etc.; but there are mighty warriors on his side too; there is above all Himself, the will to do good, submission (Yudhistira) [Yudhiṣṭhira], love of truth, higher self-confidence or self-consciousness (trust in God), the power of conviction (faith), sublimity, sense of duty, constancy, sincerity, sense of justice, self-control, etc. Arjuna [Arjuna] realizes that the enemies he is to fight are, if not his own self, then his closest relatives, friends and teachers (for passions also teach man) and such as parts of his lower self. Then he loses the courage to fight and drops his bow (the will).

          Now Krishna [Kṛṣṇa], the indwelling divine man (Christ), appears and teaches Arjuna [Arjuna] about the true nature of man and his relation to God. He explains to him that what the personal man takes to be his “self,” is but a delusion in that all states, desires, and passions arising from this delusion are also only temporary phenomena, and that man comes to salvation by overcoming them and uniting himself with God, the immortal Self of all beings. The Bhagavad Gītā thus teaches the highest of all sciences, the union of man with God (yoga) and the path to immortality.

          As with all sacred and truly religious things, when considered and superficially judged from the point of view of the common brute and narrow mind, they are thereby dragged down into the realm of meanness, ignorance and error, and misconstrued, so it often fared with the Bhagavad Gītā in the hands of linguists and book scholars. Outwardly and superficially, it represents an episode during a battle described in the Mahābhārata, a part of the Vedas. The age of the teachings laid down in the Vedas is estimated at least 25,000 years, according to the astrological data contained therein, and scholars among the Brahmins [Brahmins] are also divided as to the time at which the battle between the Kurus and Pandavas [Pāṇḍavas] took place when the theologians of the Middle Ages disagreed about when Adam bit the “apple,” where “paradise” was located, etc. We can safely leave it to the philologists, theologians and historians to come to an understanding about this matter, which is of no great interest to us; we are not dealing with empty words and forms, but with the spirit of the teachings contained in the Vedas, which is the spirit of truth and consequently also of true Christianity. The grandeur of these teachings is now also beginning to be widely recognized in Europe. They even excited the grumpy and embittered A. Schopenhauer; for when he translated them, in part, in a Persian-Latin translation called the “Oupnekhat,” [Persian (Book of the Secret)] i.e., “the secret to be kept,” he wrote the following:

“How deeply he is moved by that spirit (of the Vedas) who has become fluent in the Persian-Latin of this incomparable book through diligent reading! How is each line so full of serious, definite, and consistently coherent meaning! Deep, original, sublime thoughts emerge from every line, while a high and sacred earnestness hovers over the whole. Everything here breathes Indian air and original, nature-related existence. And oh, how the spirit is washed clean here from all the early inoculated Jewish superstition and all this indulgent philosophy! It is the most instructive and uplifting reading possible in the world (excluding the original text); it has been the consolation of my life, and will be that at my death.” (Parerga II, p. 427). Wilhelm von Humboldt, however, says that he thanks God for letting him live long enough to get to know this work.

          The fact that the long conversation between Krishna [Kṛṣṇa] and Arjuna [Arjuna] takes place on the battlefield at the beginning of the fight, which is indeed no place for extended philosophical discussions, and that “the capital city of Hastinapura” means the kingdom of heaven, one might think, have suggested to certain learned expositors of the Bhagavad Gītā that here, as indeed in the Bible and other writings of a mystical nature, it is about spiritual things, and not about isolated historical events, although they are presented in the form of narratives in order to bring the truth closer to being understood.

          There is no talk of things that once happened and are now in the past; but from the continuing operation of the laws of the spirit in nature. Just as a tree does not grow just once, but trees keep growing, so also the battle between the Kurus and Pandavas [Pāṇḍavas] is constantly being repeated in each and every human being striving for spiritual development, and also in the life of humanity as a whole, their development is the result of the sum of the development of all individuals. In the same way, the great work of redemption, which must be an inward one if it is to redeem the inner man, is constantly taking place. Now, as well as millions of years ago, when the human form was developed enough to receive the light of divine thought, the spiritual light pours into him; and accordingly just as often as man becomes conscious of it, the Redeemer, the knowledge of his divine existence, is born in him.

          The Christian saints and mystics also knew and confessed this, and the Christian doctrine of the spiritual rebirth of man is nothing other than the doctrine of the reawakening of God-consciousness in man, which is symbolically represented in the “New Testament.” Everybody is Arjuna [Arjuna]; each has his own chariot; i.e., his nature endowed with mystical powers, and in the same instances his spiritual guide (Krishna [Kṛṣṇa]) has his seat and gives advice to the earthly man. When man becomes one in consciousness with the Redeemer who dwells in him, we see Arjuna [Arjuna] and Krishna [Kṛṣṇa], Adam and Christ are one in this union, and the chariot becomes the temple of the Spirit of God who resides in us; for Arjuna [Arjuna] is the earthly thinking man, Christ is the knowing God-man, “the other man who came from heaven” (Ephes. IV, 6), who dwells in earthly man and also above him; and only through union with the God-man, who is truth, can earthly man come to perfection and receive redemption from his accounts of error and sin.

          This struggle between the divine and the animal-intellectual human nature is symbolically represented in all major religious systems. In Christianity, for example, we find the struggle between the archangel Michael (the higher Self) and the dragon (the representative of the apparent self), whose jaws are greed, whose breath is passion, and whose wings are self-will and megalomania. In every being the light wrestles with the dark; in every form the Spirit of God in nature seeks revelation; but it is only in man where he finds an assistant who can help him with consciousness and intelligence to overcome darkness and error.

          The key to understanding the Bhagavad Gītā, as well as the Bible and other theosophical writings, is the recognition of the dual nature of man and the ability to discern the immortal in man from what is mortal in him, and the Bhagavad Gītā teaches us how that knowledge and discernment can be attained. A merely theoretical knowledge of the twofold nature of man, or a blind faith in it, is of little use; for neither in the one nor in the other does that true knowledge exist which can only be attained through experience.

          A knowledge of this teaching, even if only theoretical, is undoubtedly of great value, because it can prompt man to search for the higher power within himself; but the study of a path on a map is of no real use until it is used, and we only really get to know the path when we walk it ourselves; or just as the study of a menu cannot fill us up if we do not get anything to eat by what is written on the menu, so the study of the Bhagavad Gītā only serves its purpose when the teachings given within it are followed in everyday life and be exercised.

          Of external things which we have never perceived, we can have nothing other than merely theoretical knowledge, which exists only in our own imagination, and this knowledge is imperfect so long as it is not established by our own knowledge. It is the same in the spirit. True knowledge does not consist in knowing what is in the Bhagavad Gītā or in the Bible, but in an awakening of the spirit, whereby the truth itself becomes manifest in man and becomes a part of his being. Only then does he become aware of himself.

          In every human being there is a spark of divine Self-knowledge; he is “the seed of immortal existence,”^[4] which, seized by the flame of divine love, becomes the light in which all changeable conceits and fantasies and opinions can disappear, and eternal reality is revealed in its glory. One has to be Arjuna [Arjuna] oneself and to struggle with one’s self-delusion, self-conceit, prejudices, desires, passions and errors in order to know what this struggle means; one must have felt the presence of Krishna [Kṛṣṇa] within oneself to have an inkling of what the union of God and man is.

          Of what use is it to me if I read in the Bible where someone had said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life”; or when I know that in the Bhagavad Gītā it says: “I am supreme in all things. I am the light in all things that have light. I am the source of everything. I am the beginning, the middle and the end,” etc.; if I do not know what this means, which is in everything, and consequently also in me, the light and the highest, my beginning and my end, but regard it as something alien and unapproachable to me? However, I will never find my divine Self as long as I look for it outside of myself and not within myself; for God cannot be found through the telescope, nor through the microscope; but whoever has found his true divine I, the I of all beings in himself, also recognizes it in everything. “Whoever recognizes God in himself and in everything is the right seer.” The way to this realization is taught in the Bhagavad Gītā.^[5] It is the way of truth, leading us out of the sea of ​​delusions which surround us, towards immortal existence in immortal reality. It leads us all to the goal, provided that we actually enter it and do not just indulge it in our imagination.

          Truth is reality. Everything else are only fleeting appearances. Truth is imperishable, therefore what is real in us cannot perish; while that which is not true and not eternal in us perishes. Also, that which is eternal and immortal in us acquires no real value for us until we recognize it; for the matter of which a stone or a piece of wood is made is also immortal; nothing of it is ever lost from the universe; but an immortality of which one is unaware would be just as pointless as the possession of wealth of which one is ignorant.

          “But,” some will say, “we find the way to salvation is already given in the Bible. Why do we need the writings by the Indian sages?” — Whoever understands the secret meaning of the Bible no longer needs either the Bible or the Bhagavad Gītā; but for those who do not understand it, the Bhagavad Gītā serves him to get to know it. We do not despise the Bible, but cherish it all the more because, when properly translated, it contains for the most part a rendering of the teachings found in the Indian Vedas; but the scientific justification for them, which can be found in the Vedas, is missing. The Bible was originally written for the initiated; i.e., for those who felt and recognized the omnipresence of the divine spirit within themselves, and therefore needed no proofs of its existence. But when the Bible became common property, and the key to its holy mysteries was lost among the unholy, then ignorance took hold of them too; a delusion of the letter was substituted for the knowledge of the spirit, and resulted in wrong interpretations, which, as is well known, led to the greatest errors.

          That is why we still see today that, despite all the so-called religious instruction, “religion” lacks a reasonable basis, and that it therefore often degenerates into fanaticism and superstition; while philosophy, and especially medical “science,” lacks the most necessary basis of all true knowledge, which springs from the self-knowledge of eternal truth, and which can be attained only through the power of love, transcending all egoism, all-encompassing; because without this elevation, science cannot step out of the sphere of its limitations and short-sightedness and develop to that spiritual greatness which is necessary in order to arrive at that higher world view which sees the universe as a whole, the unity of the essence of all things, and recognizes the intimate connection between all creatures.

          The enlightened mystic Thomas von Kempen says: “Blessed is he in whom wisdom teaches; not by perishable works, but as it is in its essence.” “But there are many who are capable of knowledge and cannot come to it only because the world of error has strewn their eyes with sand, and they cannot erase it from themselves.” For such the Bhagavad Gītā is written. Happy is he who is already so imbued with the power of faith, and whose soul is so firmly rooted in the knowledge of truth, that he needs no scientific support to hold it; but many need that support, just as a young tree needs support lest it be torn down by gale force winds.

          Many are the enemies which prevent the awakening of man’s soul. Good for those who know them and their origin. It’s easy to preach, “Catch thy lusts, dear God, conquer thyself”; but this advice is difficult to follow for one who does not know the nature of his desires, and why he should not satisfy them, who does not know where to find God, and is unfamiliar with the nature of the self he is meant to overcome. In order to master oneself and one’s nature, it is good to get to know them first. Once the self is truly recognized as a delusion, it is already overcome. To love God one must know him; for who can truly love that of whose existence he feels nothing and knows nothing? In order to master one’s nature and to use it towards one’s service, it is advisable to get to know its laws and to know what position man can and should assume in the universe. It is this sacred science which is contained in the Bhagavad Gītā, and it takes precedence over other “holy scriptures,” in which this teaching can only be found piecemeal and hidden behind parables and allegories.

          It is therefore primarily a question of attaining a correct conception of the inner being of man and of nature; and that this cannot be attained through the agency of external observation goes without saying. Internal truths cannot be known by the external senses, and conclusions from such observations are always of a dubious nature. The truth, on the other hand, requires no other proof than its knowledge, and so long as we have not come to this knowledge ourselves, it is of the greatest value to heed the teachings of the wise who have known the truth, all the more so when they teach us and show the way as to how we can reach this knowledge ourselves, which is the ultimate goal of human existence.

 

II. The Animal and the Heavenly Man.^[6]

[II. Der irdische und der himmlische Mensch.]

 

In order to fully appreciate the content of the Bhagavad Gītā, it is necessary to study it in connection with the other books of the Vedas; for the divine wisdom contemplated within it pertains not to a single part or class of objects in nature, but to the whole. The knowledge of the essence of a single thing is conditioned by the knowledge of the essence of the whole, and only to those who recognize the whole unity of the essence in everything does their manifestation in the individual forces, forms and appearances become clear. The teaching of the Bhagavad Gītā applies to everything; regarding God, heaven and earth, or in other words, to the sole Deity and its multiplicity of manifestations in the invisible and visible nature, the origin of the world and the evolution of its forms, the realm of the gods and demons, as well as the beings which inhabit the invisible middle region of the “astral plane.” It deals with the sevenfold constitution of the universe and man, his heavenly descent, the purpose of his existence, the path he has to walk if he wants to reach his goal, the necessary reincarnations in earthly bodies and the law of karma or necessity, which guides his destinies and consequently he always reaps what he sows; until he, redeemed by the divine love which has become a power in him, becomes free from his transitory “self” and thus also from its infirmities. It teaches us the origin of evil, the immortal existence of good, and the necessity of evil, since only by overcoming it can one come to the knowledge of good, just as one could not appreciate the value of light if there were no darkness to distinguish it from the light.

          But, as is always the case, the question is asked how the truth of these teachings can be proved, the answer is: “Above all, through reason which has come to know the truth.” A knowledge of the divine mysteries in nature is only possible for the spirit-born God-man, and when the truth is known, it is self-evident and needs no further proof. Yet all of nature is also full of testimonies of truth to those who know how to read them. But the most reliable testimony must be sought and found within oneself, and the way to it is shown in the Bhagavad Gītā. It consists in overcoming error and above all in overcoming the delusion of the self. When error is overcome, truth is revealed in its clarity, just as the sun emerges when the clouds that hid it part away. When the delusion of selfness is overcome, the true Self is revealed.

          What is this true Self? — The Bhagavad Gītā answers: “It is Brahmā, the one, indivisible Self of all things; the supreme being which never perishes.” It cannot be shown to anyone who is not able to see it; the supreme existence is finally proved only by coming to the consciousness of one’s own divine existence. One cannot prove the existence of life to a dead man, or the possibility of waking to a sleeping man; only when one awakens to the consciousness of the divine existence is it recognized and then no longer needs proof. The child in the womb, even if it were capable of thinking, could not imagine life outside its prison; the adult man does not long for this condition.

          What prevents man from recognizing God, his true Self, is the delusion of personal self-delusion, which keeps him imprisoned. No recognition of God is possible without overcoming this delusion. As a snail cannot by any effort obtain the light of the sun, or move about so long as it is encased in its narrow shell, so the light of God-knowledge cannot reach the consciousness of those imprisoned in the limitations that inflict them to imposed self-conceit. Brahm is indivisible. The eternal I of all beings is not divided into beings. The Eternal Truth itself, revealed in an infinite multiplicity of appearances, cannot be analyzed and dissected into pieces. Anyone who wants to recognize them must abandon their individuality; he cannot draw her down to him; the big has no place in the small, freedom in limitations. Anyone who wants to recognize Brahm must enter into divine existence; he must grow out of the snail shell of his personal self-confidence into the light of knowledge of God. But this does not happen through the play of imagination or scientific imagination, but through the dissolving power of the love of good in all, which is the power of good and the spirit of true knowledge.

          The personality of man is the living, thinking and feeling form in which the real, spiritual, knowing man develops into an individual existence; but it is not the real man himself, but only his appearance, the mask (persona), behind which the real man is hidden. He who only knows his personal existence, and to whom all this is, cannot recognize his true Self (God). For him, a cessation of personality is a dissolution into nothingness; but for the sage who has come to true consciousness, this renunciation is an entry into the all-consciousness of the divine spirit in the universe (nirvana).

          In the Bhagavad Gītā it is said: “Consecrate your heart to me, worship me, bow down your self-will to me, and you will come to me. Whoever worships me and recognizes my holy spirit can become one with me.” — He who speaks thus is not an external or ecclesiastical god, not a being separate from man, not concerned with the personal affairs of men, nor one who can be persuaded to change his will by pleas and arguments, but that which is dormant in unenlightened man-God consciousness, which has awakened in the enlightened human being and through which the human being comes to the realization of his true divine existence. It is the same God who says in the Bible: “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden; I want to refresh you.” Anyone who gives up his selfhood and finds refuge in true self-awareness also leaves all suffering and tribulations with his own selfness and finds peace and bliss in the infinite “I.”

          As a rule, people are only satisfied when they forget themselves. Therefore, he looks for distraction and pastime, and tries to forget himself and what is bothering him. But a distraction is not an entry into a higher level of knowledge. This is not achieved through distraction, but through inward concentration and elevation.

          To make this clear it is necessary to know that man is capable of entering into different states of consciousness, both higher and lower, and this leads us to a consideration of the sevenfold constitution of man:

          According to the Indian doctrine, the origin of which can be traced back to the ancient Atlanteans, the whole world is a revelation of the divine universal consciousness, which is manifested in different ways on the different planes of existence, depending on the conditions that it finds in the existing forms. But as every mystic knows, the little world called “man” is a true reflection of the macrocosm, or the world at large, and therefore these different forms of consciousness, “planes of existence” or worlds can also be distinguished in it. Also, these states of consciousness are entirely different from each other; such as, for example, life during a dream is quite different from that during waking, and the consciousness of an intelligent human being unlike that of a plant, which also has irritability, sentience, and consequently consciousness of its own kind, even if it does not have the ability to think for itself. These states of consciousness do not exist side by side in man at the same time, but are comparable to the steps of a ladder which man himself is and on which he can climb and descend. When he enters one state of his consciousness, he leaves the other; “when the eye of the spirit opens in him, the sense world disappears; when the outer world draws into his consciousness through his sense perceptions, the eye of God closes in him.” The foot of the ladder on which he stands rests in the dirt of the material; its upper part extends into the realm of the ideal, which, however, when it reaches the highest level, ceases to be a mere ideal and is recognized as the only real. As long as this level of knowledge is not reached by the researcher himself, the ideal belongs only to the realm of imagination, despite all ideas and proofs.

          Sankaracharya [Śaṅkarācārya], the Indian master, distinguishes four such stages of consciousness or worlds:

1. The Absolute Consciousness or God World (Parabrahm.)
2. The relative divine consciousness or the heavenly world. (Brahmā.)
3. The astral consciousness, the middle region or “spirit world.”
4. The personal consciousness or material world, the outward manifestation of which is visible man and the realm of physical phenomena.

          In these four stages of existence, the personal consciousness is a reflection of the consciousness of the soul, the consciousness of the soul is a reflection of the celestial spirit, and the spiritual consciousness is a reflection of the Absolute in the celestial. It follows that in order to rise from personal consciousness to God one must first rise from one stage to another, and that when a man imagines he has come to the knowledge of God without first having passed the intermediate stages, this is a mistake and a play of the imagination.^[7] Imagination has wings by means of which it can soar to any height; but the evolution of man does not leapfrog, but just as the earthly form of man first had to develop from the mineral and plant kingdoms to the king of the animal kingdom, like a reptile from a worm, a bird from a reptile, a mammal from a bird and finally — not man — but the human form came into being,^[8] the inner man indwelling this form must work his way up from one level of consciousness to another, always using the lower level as a base to reach the higher; provided that there is talk of a real self-conscious ascension to a higher existence.^[9]

          Further, the Secret Doctrine teaches us that there can be distinguished in human nature, seven principles or forces combined into one being, namely:

 

The immortal part.	1. The divine mind (Ātma).
	2. The Heavenly Soul (Buddhi).
	3. The enlightened mind	}	higher    and lower soul powers	}	(Manas).
The mortal part. (The personality.)	4. The earthly mind
	5. The Astral Body (Kāma).
	6. The life force (Prāna).
	7. The etheric material body, the outward manifestation of which is the visible body.

 

          As we see, in this mystical classification, the gross material body of man is not included at all, because it is only the house in which man lives and without this inhabitant he has no life or consciousness of his own.

          Of these seven principles, the top three pertain to the God-man. They form the indivisible trinity of knowledge, knower and known, the “holy trinity.” The divine spirit belongs to the God world, the celestial soul and enlightened mind to the heavenly world, the lower soul forces and the astral body to the middle region (astral plane) and the life force (a reflection of the spirit) and the material body to the material world. But the mind and intellect constitute the human soul, and here the struggle takes place between the higher and lower soul forces, the Kurus and Pandavas [Pāṇḍavas], which is described in the Bhagavad Gītā. In the uppermost part of the soul (consciousness) has Krishna [Kṛṣṇa ], the godman, his throne, the lower part is inhabited by the “Pharisees and literalists” of prejudices, animal instincts and desires, asuras and demons. But the more the mind approaches the divine light, the more it becomes enlightened and takes share in his immortality. If he enters into this light, this entering is not a “dissolution into nothingness” but a dawning of the knowledge of God in him, without his losing his individuality as a result; just as a man can only gain reason by coming to reason. There is only one reason, but there are many unreasonable people.

          There will be a lot of questions here which cannot be answered within the space allowed; but the more the desire for true self-knowledge awakens, for which the means are indicated in the Bhagavad Gītā, the more all of the above will become clear to him without much explanation.

          We know that the terrestrial man is not a separate and aloof being from the great nature. His body is essentially one with the nature of the earth in which he inhabits, and is formed of the elements of that nature. Only during his life on earth does he present a phenomenon that appears different from the rest of the products of nature. When he dies, the elements which made up this appearance go back to their origin and then come back into being in other forms. Similarly, man’s self-deception, which man who has not come to the knowledge of the truth takes for his “self-consciousness,” is an error; for this delusion springs from his perception of the multiplicity of appearances in which he does not recognize the being which binds them all into one. If he enters into true knowledge, he does not thereby lose his spiritual individuality, which he has won with great effort, but he recognizes himself as a unit within unity; One in consciousness with God, distinct from other divine beings in appearance. The divine illusion of selfhood only ceases when, at the end of a kalpa, man, who has become fully God, returns to his origin (to himself).^[10]

          There can only be talk of a “self” separate from other “selves” as long as there are separate bodies, whether material or transfigured, in which the divine consciousness is at work. But the consciousness of God itself is only One; it is the all-Consciousness in the universe which achieves true Self-awareness in spiritually enlightened people.

          Sankaracharya [Śaṅkarāchārya] distinguishes five such “bodies” or “sheaths” (koshas) [kośas], which clothe the divine spirit in man:

1. Annamaya Kosha [Annamaya-kośa]. The material appearance.
2. Pranamaya Kosha [Prāṇamaya-kośa]. The life Appearance.
3. Manomaya Kosha [kośa]. The “mind body.”
4. Vijnānamaya Kosha [Vijñānamaya-kośa]. The “sheath of knowledge.”
5. Anandamaya Kosha [Ānandamaya-kośa]. The form of blissful existence.^[11]

          “Maya” is something like “image” or “imagination.” Our own personality, as Schopenhauer pointed out, is a product of the will and conception of our indwelling “I.” “Koscha [kośa]” means “sheath” or “cover.” So long as there is an idea of ​​“self,” even if it were in heaven, so long as that idea produces an image, a being, an appearance, though these bodies are very different from our earthly ones, and according to the nature of the planet they inhabit or the level of existence they are on. Of these five “bodies” the first belongs to the earthly world, the second and third to the astral world, the fourth and fifth to the heavenly world or plane of consciousness. But in the highest absolute consciousness (the world of God) there is no form that everyone can convince themselves of when they immerse themselves in their innermost consciousness, where all ideas cease. In the pure original source of all things, everything is One; he himself is everything, he is the knower and the known and the knowledge in one. There is nothing outside it, and what appears to be outside it is only an appearance; but he is the essence.

          Each of these levels of existence has its own faculty of perception and sensitivity, which has nothing to do with that of the others; and what one perceives in any of these states appears as reality so long as one is in it. In the waking state we recognize the delusions of our dreams; While dreaming we take the dream ideas for reality and cannot form any idea of ​​the waking state, because we have lost our reason for judgement. The soul in heaven knows nothing of everything that is happening on earth, but it is all the glory with which she sees herself surrounded and which she has created through her good thoughts and deeds is a reality for her. Nor do the inhabitants of the astral plane know of us any more than we do of them, unless certain “earthbound spirits,” who are in a dream state similar to that of man between sleeping and waking, are enticed by some desire attracted to our material plane and connecting with human beings, as evidenced by the often misunderstood phenomena of spiritualists. That few of these spiritistic phenomena come from deceased people may be mentioned in passing; but a discussion of the various causes by which they are produced belongs on another page. On the other hand, the one who has attained union with his divine Self no longer finds himself bound to the states of his personal “I”; he is free in the self-knowledge of the truth and his consciousness is independent of the consciousness of his personality, whether it is asleep or awake. From his divine height he can see all the lower planes of existence, just as a man standing on the top of a mountain can see the heights and valleys below; while the one below can well imagine what it might look like from above; but still knows nothing certain about it until he has reached the summit himself.

          As already said, each of the principles in the constitution of man corresponds to and is nourished by its corresponding principle in the great nature. Man’s material body is born of material nature and receives nourishment from it. When he is hungry, he seeks to satisfy his hunger, and nature opens her treasury and satisfies his needs. Man’s life is sustained by life in nature; his instincts and passions are those which prevail in nature and are represented in the animal kingdom. They are not the products of his body, although the body is the instrument for their manifestation. Greed, anger, envy, love, and so forth, are the same forces in a dog as in a man; there is but one urge, to steal or to kill, and it can manifest itself in a cat as well as in a man. These forces belong to the astral plane and the astral man, and the passion of the individual is awakened and nourished by the sum of the corresponding forces in the soul of the world; which is confirmed, among other things, by the fact that moral contagions and epidemic crimes occur as easily as physical contagions and epidemic diseases; although medical science has not yet discovered the mental “bacillus” in question.

          The same is true on the intellectual level. The mind of man gives birth to thoughts, but does not create them. The mind, hungry for knowledge, collects ideas and combines them into new thoughts. Ideas come to him who seeks them, just as passion comes to those who give themselves in to it. The organization of the thought principle in man is a product of the thought world from which it is born. Ideas are taken up as germs in the mind of man, grow and become great and bear fruit. The world of thoughts of the individual person is nourished by the world of thoughts as a whole. The disbelief of scholars as to the long-distance effect of thought is a vanquished point of view nowadays. The thought hatched in the brain of one person can have an effect on the brain of another and come to fruition there if it finds fertile ground there. Inventors know how to tell. We know when a thought “comes to mind,” but where our thoughts come from and where they’re going isn’t always easy to pinpoint.

          And like the other principles, the knowledge of God in man is nourished and strengthened by the spirit of wisdom in the universe. The divine man in the outward man is born of and nourished by God no less than the outward man is born of and nourished by earthly nature of which you are fed. He who hungers for the knowledge of the truth finds it; whoever hungers for God will find him if he looks for him in the right place. This is why the Bhagavad Gītā says: “Feed the Divine and let it nourish you. Sacrifice yourselves to him. If in this way the one nourishes the other, you will attain the highest good.”^[12]

          The same law operates in all kingdoms of nature. Just as air flows into an empty vessel as soon as it finds access; so too the sunshine enters the calyx as soon as the blossom opens; Just as sorrow and dissatisfaction enter the soul of one who is not closed to them, and lofty thoughts come to one who is able to receive them, so too the love of God, from which springs knowledge, flows into the hearts of those who move towards her and receive her with love. This is how the old saying of the Zohar proves itself, which says: “As it is below, so it is above. Everything that exists in the world has its spiritual model in the overworld, and there is nothing so insignificant on earth that it is not dependent on something higher, so that when the lower stirs, the higher stirs against it.”^[13]

          And as every thing is born of the nature to which it belongs, so every thing returns to that from which it was born; the body of man to the elements, the life force to the life force in nature, his instincts and passions to the world of desires (Kama loca) [Kāma-loka], his thoughts to the thought world, his heavenly part to Heaven (Devachan), his divine being to God. That part, however, with which he identified himself through his will during life, will keep him in the level to which he belongs even after death, until he has cast it off. “All worlds,” it says, “even Brahmā loca [loka], return to their origin.

          But whoever attains to Me will not be born again”^[14]; and elsewhere the Bhagavad Gītā says, referring to the ungodly: “Devoted to selfishness and violence, full of pride, lust and anger, these blasphemers hate me both in their own nature and in the nature of others. These my enraged enemies, the unholy and ungodly, I cast into the bosom of the asuras (demons).”^[15]

          These are, in brief, the outlines of the doctrine of man’s dual nature with which Arjuna [Arjuna] deals with, being placed between two poles of his being, good and evil, between the eternal and the transitory, and now between, to choose battle and eternal life, and powerlessness and death. It will be difficult to find anything contrary to common sense in this doctrine, once it is grasped, and even science, when enlightened, will hardly find anything objectionable in it. However, this teaching is not yet known to everyone; but it has often happened that something which was not known during one century, or which was taken as a superstition, was recognized as a high truth in the next century.

 

III. The Universe.^[16]

[Das Weltall.]

 

If, as the Bhagavad Gītā teaches us, the whole world is one in essence and appears different only in its forms, it follows that even in the smallest part and in every form the forces of the whole, whether latent or developed, are included. That is why we find the sevenfold constitution of the universe and of man present in all of nature and in every being in it, from a solar system down to a grain of sand in the sea or even in the atom. However, a pebble is not capable of thinking; but this proves nothing more than that the thought principle which is contained in it and in the whole of nature, has not yet reached its activity in this form, because the conditions for the development of the ability to think are not found in a pebble like in a human being. Even if we don’t yet see it spiritually, logic tells us that if God (Brahm) is the essence of everything, then He must also be in a piece of wood, in a stone, in the air, in a plant, in an animal, etc. as well as existing in man. And so too it is with the divine forces which are contained in all organisms, if not active, at least like the latent heat in a block of ice. Every principle is expressed in it but only when the organism is sufficiently developed for its manifestation. The mineral kingdom also has its kind of sensation, for otherwise there would be no chemical affinities in it; the plants have sentience, for otherwise they would not respond to the stimulus of the light; but in minerals and plants the development of form is not so far advanced that self-consciousness as we know it can be manifested in them. Also, every thing has its life, and there is nothing truly dead in nature, for nature itself, in all its forms, is a manifestation of the life of God in the universe. Plants have their instincts and inclinations, though these are not so clearly evident in them as they are among animals. This proves that the Kāma [desire] principle is unlocked in them. Also, each thing has its etheric or astral body; for without it there would be no visible body, which is the external image or reflection of the etheric body.

          Thus, the seven principles are also contained in all things. Brahm is the supreme in every thing; he is “the soul seated in the heart of every creature,”^[17] and when the sage “pray,” he does not pray to a god distant from himself, but fixes his mind upon the higher Self which is within him and is everywhere. And because God is omnipresent, therefore His glory is manifest everywhere in nature, in every place, according to the degree in which that revelation can take place according to the circumstances of the form. “If a thing is glorious, excellent, or mighty, know that all that is excellent in it came forth from my power.”^[18] But this teaching is incomprehensible to those who do not know God and do not want to know him, but hold to a base and perverted world view and their prejudices. “It is not intended for those who do not exercise self-control, do not worship me, and do not want to hear my voice. Nor is it for the obstinate and blasphemous.”^[19]

          The ancient mystics designated these seven principles by the names of the “seven planets,” partly to veil this sublime doctrine from the unholy and scoffers, and partly because in the constitution of the celestial bodies so named, actually the forces which are designated by their names play an excellent role. So, for example, as the “Secret Doctrine” asserts, the planet Mars is the symbol of fiery power, in nature as well as in man, Venus is the symbol of love, Mercury is that of wisdom, etc., and the degree to which the inhabitants of a planet have influence, depends mainly on the degree of development of that principle which is dominant on the planet in question. The material element ♄, that is, has the function of the mind wandering in the dark, of the dull, brooding intellect, as the supreme role, while the sun is the symbol and also the source of all life. The visible planets in our solar system are, so to speak, its organs, and each of them has its specific purpose. Similarly, each of the organs in the human body represents the seat of one or the other principle as a center for its action. So, for example, the brain is the seat of the thought principle (manas), the heart is the center of vital activity, etc.

          But this is not the place to digress into that field of occult science, which is so grand that even a superficial consideration of this occult science would fill a folio; Rather, it is necessary, above all, to bring the human understanding nearer to the knowledge of God; for “he who knows the One who is the essence of all, understands all; whoever knows many things knows nothing.”

          The Bhagavad Gītā is accused by the ignorant of teaching “pantheism,” and by “pantheism” they mean the belief that everything we see is God. But this is not the case, for everything we see is not God, but only a revelation of the power of God in nature, originally emanating from the innermost being; and nature itself is not essence but appearance. But whoever cannot distinguish within himself between essence and appearance or revelation, cannot do so either when considering external nature. Nature is just as little God as the dream which a man dreams is man himself; nevertheless, dreaming takes place within man and not outside his being. Similarly, one could say, comparatively, that the whole of creation is a dream dreamed by God, and in which everything takes place according to eternal laws, which, however, are so magnificent that the limited human mind cannot comprehend them. When Brahm awakens from his dream, this great illusion disappears with all its appearances, and then there is nothing left but God. Consciousness is the mind; the world of appearances comes about through the creative imagination. In man, his ideas do not take on any tangible, visible forms, because as a result of his humiliation and materiality he has lost the creative power of the will, which he must first regain by struggling up out of matter. The first step is to distinguish between spirit and nature. “The knowledge of matter and spirit is true knowledge.”^[20] The two are not two separate entities, as the adherents of “dualism” believe; but the spirit (Brahm) is the essence and all, the power, the kingdom and the glory; the “matter,” the appearance, is nothing in itself.

          Nature is full of symbols and representations of internal forces and invisible processes. The temporal is a reflection of the eternal. A veil forms in the blue ether of the heavens, which condenses into clouds and finally into rain and solid ice. Cosmic mists form in outer space and condense into the sun and planets on which life appears in living forms. In the All-Consciousness of God arises the idea of ​​selfhood, the “Word”; from this the heavenly world with its inhabitants, the “gods” (devas) and heavenly forces; From this, at the end, the human spirit which embodies itself in earthly bodies; and all this is nothing without God; for God is the essence of gods, the essence of man, the essence of all. Clouds and heavenly bodies are unthinkable without space; they are themselves “space,” corporeal, comprehensible, and objective. Likewise, a human being or a god would be nothing without the essence, the Deity. And just as infinite space, although we are in it, is something incomprehensible and unthinkable, but nevertheless exists for itself, so too the God of the universe is nothing to man, as long as it has not taken shape in man himself and entered his existence and consciousness. For us, space is nothing without light; the divinity in the universe is nothing for man without the light of knowledge. Both require form in order to be revealed. But the form is not the spirit, but only the vessel for its revelation. This is why the Bhagavad Gītā says: “These bodies are called vessels. The consciousness within is the spirit. Know that I, the Spirit, am contained in all material things. The knowledge of matter and spirit is true knowledge.”^[21]

          It should be noted, however, that “substance” does not mean “matter” which can be perceived by the senses, and “consciousness” does not mean the mental activity in man brought about by becoming conscious. This would be confusing the effect with the cause. The spirit is the consciousness of God itself, the absolute consciousness, or in other words, the divine wisdom. Matter is the result of the idea of ​​selfhood generated by the imagination. Intellectual activity is the special consciousness, the ability to perceive, the sense organs, etc., which arises from the effect of the spirit in the material world. One could say: “material” is the will; “Spirit” is wisdom. The desire for specialness contained in the eternal will forms a contracting force, whereby the material being is formed. The German shoemaker and theosophist, who was utterly unfamiliar with Indian philosophy but possessed an enlightened mind, describes all this in his own way, consistent with the teachings of the Upanishads:

“To create means to grasp in the will what is in the figure in the will. For if a carpenter wants to build a house, he must first plant in his will a model of how he wants to build it, then he builds according to the model of his will.”^[22]

          But since Brahmā is everything, there is nothing out of which he could create a world or a human being but himself; and he creates this by his will from his own idea. “He created all things by his will in his eternal wisdom.” Thus he also created nature; first the thought world (heaven) and then the material world (earth), and only after nature was in place could the work of evolution (of creating the omnipresent power of spirit in nature) begin, just as it does today which is still happening everywhere and at every moment.

“The first quality is covetousness (for one’s existence); it is like a magnet, as the comprehensibility of the will; Since the will wants to be something and yet has nothing to make something out of, it composes itself into something (the “self”) and the something is nothing but a magnetic hunger, a harshness, like a hardness, from which also hardness, coldness and character arise.”^[23]

          This thing, which gives things their materiality, is the idea of selfhood, which even in things which have no self-consciousness and no intelligence is nevertheless contained in its “will”; for it is a fundamental quality of the will in nature, and the will to exist, though unconscious of itself, is the basis of life in nature.

          Herein lies the key to understanding reincarnation or re-embodiment. The innermost reason of every being is the will. As long as the desire for a life in appearance (selfhood) is present in the will, albeit unconsciously, this desire will always lead to the formation of a new form when the old one has become useless. “Just as a man who has shed his old clothes puts on a new robe, so also when the torn coverings are shed, the self reveals itself in other, newly forming bodies.”^[24] But the unselfish, the spirit, is eternal. “It is never born and never dies. It does not arise and will never arise. Unborn, imperishable, infinite, it does not die when the body is killed.”^[25] But this also means that man is only completely free and redeemed from death and rebirth and the suffering associated with it when he has come to the realization of selflessness, i.e., come to the consciousness of Allness through the power of selfless love.

          Now, however, there will hardly be a person who can soar from animal egoism to perfect knowledge of God in a single short existence on earth. Reincarnation is therefore a natural necessity, and if rightly understood, the logic of material science cannot object to this teaching. That which reincarnates is neither the divine spirit (the absolute), nor is it the personality of man, which appears again on this earth or on another planet, but it is the idea of ​​selfhood underlying human existence, which appears again and again in new personal forms, until finally it is overcome by the unfolding of the true knowledge of God. That which is unselfish in us, and has overcome this delusion of selfhood, is not locked up or incarnated in us now; it is within us and outside us and above us. It is our higher Self which is the “non-self,” and when we succeed in merging our consciousness with that higher “I,” or rather to let our deceptive self-awareness merge into true consciousness, then this divine consciousness is our own and we are then no longer dependent on the life of the body and its feelings and thoughts. This union with the higher Self is called “yoga” (from yog, Sanskrit = to bind). This “unselfishness,” or more correctly, this elevation above one’s own [lower] self, is attained only through the overcoming of error, which requires many experiences for which one existence is not sufficient. Nor is it attained by dreaming; the sublimity above the self is realized only through deeds sublime above all selfishness. Without this realization, all unselfishness is just a dream, an unrealized ideal.

 

Note: ^[26]

It is useless to try to give evidence of reincarnation of the human soul to the ignorant crying for evidence, so long as they do not understand what the “soul” is, nor what it is that reincarnates. It is not primarily a matter of proof of a doctrine, but of understanding it. If the effect of a law is understood, it is self-evident. Knowledge of the truth is its own proof.

          Man’s “soul” is man’s life. The mortal part of his soul forms his animal life, its immortal part his spiritual life, which is an outpouring of divinity. As long as the desire for selfhood is present in his soul, it will also be drawn back to earthly existence and thereby absorb what belongs to it again. We know that in the end every thing returns to its origin. Earth to earth; the passions which were sprung from the astral plane to the realm of desire, the thoughts which could not rise above the earthly to the world of thoughts, the celestial to heaven (Devachan), the divine to God, when the soul (man) descends again from the upper realm into the material, then what belongs to his nature gathers around him again. The powers he acquired in previous lives now form his talents for the new life; Yes, even the same passions to which he made himself particularly susceptible find fertile ground in him again; only what belonged to his physical body no longer returns to him, since it has passed into other forms, just as it is constantly changing into others during his existence through metabolism.

          But the conditions under which a person reappears in a new role on the stage of existence on earth are determined by his karma. “Karma” means “action.” Through his actions man acquires certain qualities, virtues as well as vices; he realizes them in himself through his actions. They thus form a part of his being, and since like is always attracted to like and finds itself together, man will also be attracted to such parents where he belongs according to his nature. Thus a great but dull and stubborn scholar may next be born an idiot, a rich miser in a beggar’s family, a generous beggar a nobleman, etc. “If love of truth prevails in a man at the time of his death, he enters the regions of the good who strived for the highest. If his body dies when the passionate nature is dominant in him, he is born again among selfish people. But if ignorance reigns in his nature, he will be born again among fools.”^[27] It is even conceivable that a human being can gradually degenerate in such a way that when he dies there is nothing divine left in him and only his animal elements reappear in the animal kingdom.^[28] At least one verse in the Bhagavad Gītā hints at this possibility: “The proud, the blasphemers and the ungodly I cast into the bosom of the Asuras. Having arrived in an asura womb, they go from birth to birth as fools. They do not ask me, O Kantejah! They walk the deepest path.”^[29]

          “If, on leaving the body, a person’s whole thinking and willing is directed towards another being, then he enters into that being, whatever it may be; for its nature becomes like the nature of that being. Therefore fix your mind entirely on Me, and you will undoubtedly come to Me.”^[30] “He who consecrates himself to the gods goes to the gods. Whoever consecrates himself to the Manes (Pitris [Pitṛ-s]) goes to them. Whoever sacrifices himself to the ghosts (bhuts [bhūts]) goes to the ghosts; whoever loves me alone goes to me.”^[31] But even the best human being has to return to earth as long as he still has his own will and still possesses self-delusion. “Having arrived in the heaven of the righteous and having dwelt there for untold years, he is born again in the house of a good and noble man, and now he strives further on the path to perfection.”^[32]

          As we see, the only way to freedom is liberation from [the lower] “self,” the unselfishness attained through loftiness above self, which is realized through deed. A deed that results from our own personal will cannot be selfless. Only what we do as instruments of the power of good realized within us, or (to use Christian parlance) “in the name of God” is selfless and good. Much of the teaching of the Bhagavad Gītā revolves around this point, and it is one of the most difficult; for as long as man does not know God, he cannot distinguish between what God wants in him and what he himself wants and thinks. In a person in whom God consciousness has not yet awakened, God knows, wants and thinks nothing; only nature wills and works in him. The ignorant man is subject to his nature; he is guided by what nature thinks and desires in him. In the knowing human being, God (the higher Self) is master of his nature. The mystics, Rosicrucians and Illuminati of the Middle Ages recognized this, and their motto, which is still indicated by the letters above the images [J. N. R. J.] of the crucified Christ, was: In Nobis Regnat Jesus, that is, within us is the Ruler Jesus, the Godman, the Higher Self.

          When it says that man should do nothing of his own volition and surrender himself entirely to God, it does not mean that he should sit back and wait for a God whom he does not know to do the work for him rather it means: Do the good for the sake of the good, because it is good and don’t worry about what it brings you. “Let only the work itself be your concern, and do not concern yourself with the advantage or disadvantage it may bring you. But do not indulge in idleness.” — “Everything that you can do on your own authority is worth much less than submission to the divine spirit. Pitiable are those who act in expectation of reward (in spiritual things).”^[33] “Whoever does not begin cannot enter the state of eternal rest. He cannot attain perfection by doing nothing. But he who has subjected his senses to God through fiery love of the Supreme does not act himself. Know that all action has its origin in Brahmā. Therefore Brahmā, the All-Pervading, is ever present in your doings.”^[34]

          This teaching has been misunderstood even among Christians, and has given rise to the perversities of the “quietists,” who honor Michael de Molinos as their teacher but do not understand him. Molinos says: “Thou shalt know that thy soul is the center, dwelling, and kingdom of God, and that in order that the supreme Lord may rest upon the throne of thy soul, thou shalt keep it pure, quiet, free, and peaceful. Free from fear, free from personal affections, desires and thoughts, peaceful in temptations and tribulations.”^[35] Only when one’s own will bows to God’s will can the divine Will reveal itself in man. In the prayer of Christians it says: “Lord! your Will will happen!” But for those who know nothing of God and do not feel his presence, the “Lord” is nothing and the “will of the Lord” is without power. In him, folly, selfishness, or self-will prevent the will of the Lord from happening.

          Like everything in the world, man’s works spring from one of the three fundamental qualities (gunas) in nature, viz. either sattwa guna, i.e., from the knowledge of truth, from rajas guna, i.e., of desire or passion, or from tamas guna, i.e., darkness, stupidity or ignorance. The bright one acts well because he recognizes his actions as good and right; the desiring one acts out of desire to gain advantage for himself or others; the foolish one acts or refrains from acting out of stupidity; but the sage (yogi), who is united with his higher Self, with God, has given up his “selfness.” He no longer acts himself; he is only the instrument of God-consciousness and divine will in him, “He lives, and yet he does not live, but God lives in him,”^[36] and this is also the meaning of the Bible, where it says: “God (the unselfish self), it is he who works in us to will and to do of his good pleasure.”^[37] He who does not know God sees only himself and thinks himself to be the doer, when it is only his nature that impels him to act. “Fools do not know when the spirit goes or comes, but he who has the eye of knowledge can see it. The wise who seek Him see Him who dwells within themselves, but the foolish, caught up in their perversity, do not see Him, though they strive diligently.”^[38]

          The doctrine of the three gunas, or fundamental qualities of nature, is of the utmost importance, and their knowledge and observance would be of the greatest value in everyday life. Most quarrels in human life arise over differences of opinion about words, each party making up a different concept, and it is not considered that each thing can be threefold different according to its origin in one of the three fundamental qualities of nature. So, we find there is one who does not want to know anything about “belief,” then the other sticks to it, and the third does not know what to believe. One gets in each other’s hair about it and does not consider that there are three kinds of belief, according to whether it springs from knowledge, from greed or from stupidity. Faith, which springs from knowledge, needs no proof; it is the inner conviction, the power of knowledge itself. That faith which springs from desire is colored by one’s own desire; for what man desires he is attached to and imagines that what he loves is false, what he loves is true. The faith which springs from stupidity can be nothing but stupidity. The love that comes from knowledge is true. When it springs from the desire for possessions, it is greed. When it springs from stupidity, it is a love of something harmful or useless. So it is with every thing in the world, and one should first of all ascertain its origin. A prayer that springs from true knowledge is the entering into God, and the deeper one enters into God, the more power one gains to accomplish what one desires. A prayer which springs from lust for possession is fanaticism when it is addressed to the God of the universe; for God is not moved or advised by any man. Such a prayer could only be effective in that it would move other creatures, visible or invisible, to render assistance. A prayer which is born of stupidity is a request for something that, if received, would be worthless or harmful. In this way, these three primal forms can be applied to anything.

          As a rule, however, these three properties are mixed in every thing, and it is a matter of recognizing which property is predominant. “When rajas and tamas are defeated, that is, when greed and ignorance are overcome, only sattva, the knowledge of truth, reigns. When rajas and sattva perish, tamas is present; but when tamas and sattva disappear, rajas is active.^[39] Tamas is spiritual darkness. Rajas is the fire of desire. “But when sattva has come to rule in man, the light of knowledge penetrates through all gates.”^[40]

 

IV. Brahmā.^[41]

[IV. Brahmā.]

 

Having now briefly outlined the main features of the teaching of the Bhagavad Gītā, we may be permitted to dwell on some specific points of it. Many believing Christians feel the same way about the scriptures of the Indians as unbelievers feel about the Bible. One rejects what one does not know because one has a wrong idea of ​​it; but once the truth in a thing is recognized, it is also a self-evident thing. Doubt always arises from ignorance and is the greatest obstacle to knowing the truth. It is a protection against error, but also the enemy of knowledge. “The doubter perishes,” says the Bhagavad Gītā.^[42] If you want to get to know something, you should leave all blind faith and all doubts aside and put yourself in the spirit of the thing, but not cling to the dead letter. When he has gotten to know the thing in question after unprejudiced investigation, he will be in a position to judge according to the degree of his knowledge. The teachings contained in the Bhagavad Gītā and the teachings related to it in the Vedas have sprung from the self-knowledge of the sages. But whether there is such self-knowledge only those who have attained it are entitled to judge. The way to this realization is shown in the Bhagavad Gītā and scientifically explained by Śaṅkarāchārya.^[43] Whether there is another and better source of knowing the truth besides the usual source of research, which has its ground in conclusions and external observations, namely the direct knowledge of it through its own manifestation in the higher human nature, only those who know about it know something specific, in which this higher nature has come to consciousness in the personality and the knowledge of the truth. If the ideal in man becomes reality, he can also bear witness to it; the testimony of the ignorant regarding a matter of which they know nothing is of no value because it does not spring from knowledge (sattva). How could one prove to a man that in his inmost being he is God if he is not able to feel it himself? If he could be made to believe this, it would only increase his conceit; because he cannot distinguish between the lower deceptive self and the true Self of all things. That is why it is also said: “Do not confuse the heads of the fools who cling to their works.”^[44] They who only love their [lower] selfhood will not find the truth.

          From the consideration of the human constitution it follows that he possesses a higher spiritual (Buddhi Manas) and a lower animal intelligence (Kāma Manas). These same concepts are compared in occult writings to the sun and the moon.^[45] As the moon produces no light of its own, but its light is only a reflection of the light of the sun, so too is the light of the intellect of man born on earth being only a reflection of the divine light of wisdom which comes from the heavenly man; and just as the light of the sun creates fantastic shadows under the hills, craters, and valleys of the moon, so the reflection of the light of true reason causes in the earthly part of the mind, misguided by perverted desires and tainted with personal desires, fanciful notions, learned fantasies, and errors of all kinds. But suppose there were a person who only wakes up at night but sleeps during the day, he would consider the moonlight to be the best in the world and one could accordingly not convince him of the existence of the sun just as one can not prove to the animal human mind about the existence of the light of true knowledge.

          In Christian mysticism the true heavenly light is referred to as the Redeemer, the spiritual sun of wisdom, the human mind illumined from above, but as Lucifer, the light-bearer; but the mind, clinging to the earthly is the earth, or the darkness, into which the reflection of the light of wisdom is carried by the light bearer (intuition). As the moon illuminates the earth, the light of the earth is reflected back onto the moon. Clear knowledge is clouded by this mixing the light of earthly thinking with intuition, which also takes place in the microcosm. Mists rise from the earthbound parts and shroud the sky. Imagination, like the eagle, soars above the clouds and delights in the light while the earth is in darkness; but she finds no footing there. On the other hand, the clear-seeking person, whose free gaze is not blinded by selfishness, is instructed by the light of intuition. But there are also a few other people who tower above the realm of error and deception through spiritual greatness and recognize the truth because the sun of knowledge has risen in them; Such are called the “sages” or “mahātmas” (from mahā great and ātma soul).

          The teachings of these wise men, who are rightly described as coming from God because it arose from the Self-knowledge which awakened within them, is called the Wisdom Doctrine and forms the basis of all the great religious systems in the world. It is also called the “Secret Doctrine”; not just because one does not want to communicate it to everyone, but because it is not comprehensible to everyone, and the spiritual light cannot be recognized in the glow of a study lamp or a church light, but only due to its own light. This teaching is as old as the human race. When “the sons of heaven found the daughters of the earth beautiful, and married them”; i.e., when the earthly human forms were sufficiently developed [during the 3rd root-race or Lemurian] to serve as dwelling places for the heavenly men, they brought them the divine teaching as wedding gifts. “Brahmā” (the Divine) taught Vivaswat (the “sun,” symbol of wisdom), Vivaswat [Vaivasvata] taught Manu (the thinker), Manu taught Ikschwaka [Ikṣvāku] (the progenitor of the human race).”^[46] But over the course of thousands of years it got lost more and more, the more base thinking got the better of it and higher knowledge became lost.

          This teaching tells us, among other things, that similar laws prevail in the spiritual development of the world just as it is in the material world. How everything on the outside moves in circles, or more correctly, in endless spirals, as the earth revolves around the sun, and by the progression of which is always guided in spiral motion through space; as sleep and wakefulness, day and night, summer and winter follow one another, so also in man’s progress on the way to the knowledge of truth there are periods of illumination and periods of darkness. For about 25,000 years the sun, with its attendant planets, moves through the signs of the zodiac; Worlds [periods] come and go, and the duration of one such world period is estimated at 4,320,000,000 years. Men as well as nations and whole parts of the world have their birth, infancy, adolescence, period of manhood, old age and death. Periods of depravity follow periods of development, just as high tides are followed by ebbs. But when mankind has reached a certain stage in its spiritual decline, a redeemer (avatar) appears among people to guide them back on the right path: “Every time justice slackens among people and injustice prevails, I beget myself in human form, to protect the good and to destroy the wicked. In order to restore the true faith, I will be reborn among men in different periods of time.”^[47]— “Fools despise me when I appear among them in my human form. They do not recognize my supreme being, who am the Lord of the universe. Vain in their hopes, smug in their doings, foolish in their knowledge and without the knowledge of the truth, their nature is like that of the Rakshasas [Rākṣasas] (demons) and Asuras (wicked spirits).”^[48] But that the ungodly do not see the Divine in such a Redeemer is because only that which is Divine in one man can see the Divine in another. One must have love to know what love is, and likewise one must have holiness within oneself to know what holiness is.

          One such avatar was Krishna [Kṛṣṇa]. The account of his birth, etc., is repeated in that of the New Testament,^[49] and is also found described with more or less variations in other religious allegories. It is not our intention to examine to what extent an historical fact is at the bottom here; on the contrary, it is fitting to point out that, as in every human being, so also in Krishna [Kṛṣṇa] we must distinguish between the divine and the earthly man, between the celestial being and the person in whom it is incarnated and overshadows it have distinguished. Krishna [Kṛṣṇa] (or Christ) as the Word (Logos) is different from merely considering his personal appearance, and therein lies the key to explaining the mystery incomprehensible to all those who are not between the Eternal and the have learned to distinguish between what is ephemeral, and out of whose ignorance countless theological disputes have arisen.

          We must not measure what belongs to the overworld by the standards of our small world. We must distinguish the God-man from the personal appearance in which he manifests himself as well as we distinguish sunshine from the plant which he builds up with the help of the material elements. The sunshine is only one, but the plants are many, and according to their properties it produces different flowers, colors the lily white and the rose red, and acts on each with all its powers, without therefore absorbing all sunlight Universe is enclosed in a single plant. In the same way, the great spirit in the universe can manifest itself with all its powers in a Buddha, avatar or enlightened one, without the god of the universe hiding in a person and withdrawing his omnipresence from the rest of the world. The Adept or Mahatma is like another plant of humanity, but it is a very rare specimen. He is the embodiment of a ray of eternal light, in which all the forces of light are contained. “An eternal ray from Me attracts the five senses and the (earthly) soul, which belongs to nature.”^[50]

          It is, therefore, quite a different matter whether we consider the story of a personality who appeared in the world, and the story of the celestial being embodied in the same being. The outward appearance is only the symbol of the being whose tool it is being used for.

          The inner, spiritual processes are reflected and represented in visible nature. The sun which we see is the visible symbol of the invisible spiritual sun in the realm of the spirit; that is, the symbol of the deity which rises daily for the people and disappears again in the evening. The sun always remains the same, but we change our position towards it. It does not die and is not born, but we approach it, one part of the year and move away from it the other. Our distance brings us winter with its sorrows, our approach springs with its lust. Thus, the winter half of the year symbolizes material life, and the summer half symbolizes heavenly life. When the solstice comes in winter and the earth begins to approach the sun again, then the merry Christmas is celebrated and it is said: “Christ is born again.” But when the power of the sun has overcome the winter in spring, the resurrection festival is celebrated at Easter, the victory of the spirit over the material.^[51]

          Symbols are not arbitrary inventions of the imagination. They would have no meaning if the facts which they represent did not exist. In the spiritual life of the world, too, there is day and night; Periods during which the earth spirit approaches the Sun of Wisdom, and others during which it moves away from it. There are days of creation, during which the world spirit works with its forces in nature, and nights in which it rests withdrawn into itself. In the “Secret Doctrine” these days [periods] are referred to as “Manvantaras” and the duration of one such cycle with the associated “twilight” is given to be 4,320,000,000 of our years, while the “night” is of the same duration.^[52] But within the great circuit, smaller circuits or spirals also take place, and when wisdom is lost among people, one of these rare flowers, a teacher of wisdom, a redeemer of the world, appears to save people. They are all of God [Avatāra from Śambhala, a representative of the Planetary Logos], and it is God who is in some sense embodied in them and teaching through them. Their teaching is not like that of our scholars, pieced together from conjecture and opinion, or invented by themselves. It is the truth that has come to knowledge within them which speaks out about them. That is why Jesus of Nazareth also says in the Bible: “The teachings that I give you are not from myself; but the Father who dwells in me perform the works.”^[53] But the Jews of that time did not understand him any more than the “Jews” (i.e. those without spiritual insight, in whom only the animal mind rules) understand him today; because the materially clinging reason cannot distinguish between the heavenly and the earthly “self.” That is why this teaching is also secret for all who are not “Christians,” i.e., who have not risen above the sea of ​​error into the light of knowledge.

          Man, as we see him daily, can be likened to a fish, whose element is water. He may sometimes soar into the air, but not live in it; he immediately sinks back into the water. So also, the earthly man has moments in which divine enlightenment flashes through him like a ray of lightning, and in which he can raise his head to the light of truth; but soon it sinks again into the realm of deceit, and only the god-men who have overcome this realm can breathe and live in it. They live in God and God lives in them. You and the Father are one.^[54] “Whoever, with a heart filled with love, recognizes Me as the Lord of the universe, worships Me, and seeks refuge in nothing but Me, is united with Me and will fully attain Me at the hour of his death.”^[55]

          But what is it that man attains in this? Certainly not the consciousness of another being distinct from himself, but he awakens to the consciousness of his own divine existence; just as a man who has languished for many years in a dark dungeon becomes aware of his freedom when he is freed from it. Not only is he free, but he is in freedom, and the sense of freedom is in him. Once we come to the knowledge of Brahmā, we find that we ourselves are Brahmā. We are in the All, and the All is within us, and that is where the notion of “selfness,” of peculiarity or narrowness, ends. Śaṅkarāchārya calls this state “Satchitanandam,” i.e., the state of bliss, which consists in the knowledge of true divine existence. Like a craftsman, for example, is a shoemaker, a shoemaker, as long as he pursues his craft, but is therefore also a human being, and if he gives up his craft, a shoemaker ceases to exist but does not cease to be a human being, then the human being is also in his innermost Brahm, and when he has come to this knowledge, he no longer says to himself, “I am this or that person,” but in the consciousness of a being awakened to this knowledge there is no more saying “I and you” or “mine and your.” He is everything and knows everything in himself. He has overcome the delusion of existence and is free. Because he has come to know the whole, he no longer needs to make distinctions; the distinctions spring from ignorance and serve to gain knowledge of the properties of the whole. But where the whole with all its properties is recognized as a unit, there is also nothing more to be distinguished in the nature of the unit. He is the “silent spectator,” untouched by the world of appearances which moves in his nature. Worlds arise and pass away in him, he himself is not affected by it. “Whoever recognizes himself as the creator of everything, and also nature with its changes, will not be reborn.”^[56]

          “He will not be born again,” that is, he is no longer under the compulsion of the law of necessity, which compels those who have not yet come to the true knowledge of God to come out again and again on the stage of life in order to continue learning; but it is not excluded that he can voluntarily reincarnate himself for the benefit of mankind in order to show people the lost path to salvation.

          One such savior was Gautama Buddha, i.e., “the enlightened one,” and he describes the state he was in when he attained enlightenment as follows: “I set the mind to the knowledge of previous existences. I remembered many different ways of being as like one life, then two lives, then three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred, then a thousand, then a hundred thousand lives; then to the times during some world origins and worlds passing away. There I was, I had that name, I belonged to that family, that was my status, that was my job, I experienced such weal and woe, that was the end of my life; departed there, I came into being again elsewhere. So, I remembered many different forms of existence, each with their own peculiar characteristics, each with their own peculiar relationships. I had first attained this knowledge in the first hours of the night, dividing the ignorance, gaining the knowledge, dividing the darkness, gaining the light, as I lingered in such eager, earnest toil. And when he had completely overcome his self-delusion, he spoke: “In the redeemed is redemption, this knowledge dawned. Life has dried up, sanctity is complete, the work is done, this world is no more.”^[57]

          Christ is constantly dying for us so that we may live for him; for when the immortal spirit descends into the tomb of matter to incarnate as a person, it loses as a person the high degree of God-consciousness which it possesses as spirit, and must first rise again to it; Krishna [Kṛṣṇa] Himself, as Arjuna [Arjuna], has to rejoin the struggle with the passions in order to become conscious of His Higher Self and realize that He Himself is Krishna [Kṛṣṇa]. But this higher Self is also his teacher, leader and guide, and if man has already come to Self-knowledge in previous lives, he will easily achieve it again in a new embodiment, or, to use Christian language, “he dies the mystical death, and Christ celebrates his resurrection in him, and this ‘Christ’ is himself.”

          Whether and when there were such enlightened ones and saviors of mankind, or whether there are still such, it might be a difficult matter to prove this to someone who has no knowledge and no faith of his own; but the very suggestion of the possibility that such sages lived and left teachings should suffice to move anyone who understands the great importance of the matter to know and understand those teachings. Nor is the study of them for the purpose of imagining them to be true without further concern, nor are they there to satisfy scientific curiosity and then be put aside, nor even for that petty purpose to enable any writer to make a “cultural-historical contribution” and thereby make himself “famous”; but the purpose of these teachings is to give man the means of attaining immortal existence in God.

          There are thousands of people who delight in reading or preaching the teachings of the wise, but who do not follow them; because “among a thousand people there is hardly a single one who strives for perfection, and even among those who strive for it and become more perfect there are only a few who really recognize Me.”^[58]— “Fools indulge in beautiful sayings; they converse with the words contained in the Vedas, and say there is nothing more beautiful than this theory; but their hearts are full of personal desires, they regard revelry on earth and in heaven as the highest good attainable.”^[59] But theory and practice are mutually dependent; the one springs from the other. “The inexperienced talk of knowing and doing as if they were two different things; but not the experienced. Whoever attains one or the other possesses both.”^[60] No theologian has yet attained union with God through knowing everything. This union with the higher Self takes place only by union with it. The lower unites with the upper by growing up to it, and the power that makes this growth possible comes from above. All blessings come from above. “Whoever takes what is given to him without repaying the source from which it flows is a thief. The good, who retain only what is left, after having sacrificed back to good (i.e., doing good for the good’s sake) all the good they have received, are free from sin (from selfishness); but the wicked, who only want to create for themselves, live in sin.”^[61]

          Even in the Christian religion (at least in the Catholic Church) it is not the study of theology, nor even eating and drinking in common, that is regarded as the most sacred and essential, but “holy communion,” the symbol of man’s union with God; even if the ignorant, as is generally the case among scholars in other matters, take the symbol for the essence of the matter and do not know its deep meaning. “Give nourishment to the Divine and be nourished by it. When the one nourishes the other, you will attain the highest good.”^[62]

          The Divine nourishes us by imbibing the Divine Spirit, and we nourish the Divine by surrendering to it. “Offer yourself to Me, and give yourself entirely to God (who is within you and without you), and your sacrifice will be pleasing to God,” says Thomas von Kempen. The more man surrenders his will to his higher Self, the more this higher Self can embody itself in him, communicate his own nature to him and be revealed in him. Divine reincarnation does not just take place at the birth of man, it lasts throughout his life and is only complete when man has been completely permeated by the spirit of God and has come to true knowledge of God. We attract this divine entity to us by surrendering to it.

          But whoever, despite all the divine influences of his higher Self, which constantly affects him, does not want to believe in the presence of God, but sees nothing but himself in his self-conceit, denying the existence of that unitary power, which embraces the whole world and all creatures in love, and in his self-delusion values his transitory self above all else, who also cannot unite with his higher, the infinite Self, which he neither loves nor recognizes. Its origin is in darkness, and it remains bound, imprisoned in it by its own will.

          “There are two natures in this world, the divine and the demonic. The beings who resemble demons know neither their origin nor their end. There is neither purity nor righteousness nor truth in them. They say that there is neither truth nor justice nor divine essence in the world; that the world came into being through a game of chance and exists only for enjoyment. According to this view, these corrupt ones, whose understanding is poor and whose actions are ruthless, are enemies of mankind and intent on the corruption of the world. They never give themselves to satiating desires, they are full of cunning, vanity and folly. Blinded by appearances, they cling to their errors, and their way of life is fit for the impure. Given to selfishness and violence, filled with pride, greed and anger, these blasphemers hate Me both in their own nature and in the nature of others. I cast these wicked into the bosom of demons.”^[63] They cast themselves out. They go where they belong according to the nature they have adopted; they return, like every other thing, to the origins of the nature from which they were born. Since this being from which they arose is the perversity of truth, lies and deception, these beings are in their own nature lying spirits and products of deception and can enter into nothing other than their own ground.

          But Brahmā is the true essence of all things, and whoever recognizes him as the basis of his own nature also enters into him. One who has become completely godlike himself and is filled with goodness cannot be drawn away from absolute goodness by anything, because there is nothing in his nature akin to other forms of consciousness to be drawn away from Brahmā by them. Through the knowledge of the truth he does not lose his individuality, but the illusion of being separate disappears, in that he recognizes the truth as the basis of his own being. He loses the error of mistaking a thing which was not his true essence for his true Self, and finds instead his true infinite Self, which encompasses all. “Whoever recognizes the omnipresent, unique Lord in everything does not harm himself, but attains his highest perfection.”^[64]

 

V. Creation.^[65]

[V. Die Schöpfung.]

 

In the Bhagavad Gītā Brahmā says: “Obedience to my will, my nature brings forth whatever moves and whatever stands still. This is the reason why the world moves.^[66]—Neither the hosts of the gods nor the wise know my origin; for I am the being from which all gods and sages spring. — I am the origin of everything, the whole universe springs from me. The wise, who are made in my image and recognize this, worship me.^[67] — All things dwell in me, but I do not in them. Also, these things are not in my divine self. Behold the great secret. My spirit is the vehicle of all things, but it is not enclosed in them. As the storm wind moves everywhere and yet remains constant in space, so are all beings within me. At the end of a kalpa all things return to my nature, and at the beginning of a kalpa I bring them forth again. But I don’t step out of my composure.”^[68]

          For anyone who can penetrate the depths of his self-awareness, where eternal rest reigns, and from there observe the world of his ideas and thoughts, which are his world around him, his creation, the above sentences need no explanation; for he sees in his own microcosm the mirror image of the processes in the macrocosm of the universe. He sees himself in his inmost sanctuary surrounded by sublime ideas and heavenly sentiments, which further form his gods; then comes the sphere of earthly ideas and thoughts, and finally the outermost region of his realm, in which his will is the ruler: the sensual region, by means of which he is in connection with the outer corporeal world; and all these, his creations are not alien or alien to him, but pertain to his own nature; they have emanated from himself, and yet his inner self is free from everything and behaves like a silent spectator observing what is going on in his surrounding nature. When he sleeps all these things disappear from his consciousness; the spirit withdraws into its own core with all its creation. When he wakes up in the morning, he, and with him his world, emerges from himself again; his creation is back.

          According to the teaching of the Vedas, the same thing takes place in the nature of the universe on a large scale, which takes place in this respect in man; man is a miniature image of the great nature. As it has periods of sleeping and waking, so also in nature there are periods of waking, “manvantaras” or days of creation, during which nature is in action, and nights of rest called “pralayas,” during which the divine world-spirit retreats into his innermost being. It is said: “Brahmā sleeps and wakes in periodic alternations”; but this is not to be taken as if God were asleep. In fact, man’s spiritual consciousness is most free when his body is asleep, and it disappears the more the more man is outwardly awake. “When the eye of the soul opens, the eye of the body closes, and when the eye of the body opens and the world of senses draws back into our mind, spiritual waking is over.”^[69] — “What is night for other beings is waking day for one who lives in the light of spiritual knowledge, and what others take for waking is sleep for him.”^[70] Thus man’s sense life is rightly called a dream, and likewise all creation may be regarded as a dream of Brahmā, the world spirit. There is no talk of creation out of nothing; because where nothing is there, nothing can be created either. But as man draws his ideas from his own essence, and what he knows is contained in his essence even if he does not think of everything at once, so too the whole world is contained in the essence of Brahmā, and he draws his thoughts from himself. Reason is the light of man; but it does not illuminate all parts of his mind at once. So also is the wisdom of God expressed in nature, but nature itself is not God or wisdom; nor has the infinite creative power of the divine Will exhausted itself in creation.

          In order to get a picture of the creation story it will be good to look at The Secret Doctrine as handed down to us by H. P. Blavatsky.

          In the mysterious book of self-knowledge, unknown to the learned of the world, it is written:

“The eternal parent wrapped in her ever-invisible robes had slumbered once again for seven eternities.

Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration.

Universal mind was not, for there were no Ah-hi to contain it.

The seven ways to bliss were not. The great causes of misery were no, for there was no one to produce and get ensnared by them.

Darkness along filled the boundless all, for father, mother and son were once more one, and the son had not awakened yet for the new wheel, and his pilgrimage thereon.

The seven sublime lords and the seven truths had ceased to be, and the universe, the son of necessity, was immersed in paranishpanna, to be out-breathed by that which is and yet is not. Naught was.

The causes of existence had been don away with; the visible that was, and the invisible that is, rested in eternal non-being—The one being.

Alone the one form of existence stretched boundless infinite, causeless, in dreamless sleep; and life pulsated unconscious in universal space, throughout that all-presence which is sensed by the opened eye of the dangma.”^[71]

          This poetic description will hardly satisfy any of our blind modern philosophers, whose mind’s eyes are unopened, and who therefore always crave tangible proofs; but occult science is “occult” or “hidden” precisely because its understanding requires a higher level of spiritual knowledge which not everyone has yet attained. Where the imaginable ends, there the hidden begins, and since all efforts to make the unimaginable intellectually imaginable are fruitless, this higher knowledge is also only for those who can rise to the divine and grasp it spiritually. The saying of the Bible proves itself, which says: “Not the spirit of man (the earthly human mind), but the spirit of God in him (the spirit of knowledge) explores the depths of the deity.”^[72]

          How should a creature, which itself has only a conditional (relative) existence, imagine unconditional (absolute) existence; since what is temporal is eternity, what is limited is infinity, and the creature cannot grasp the creator. Only what is eternal in man can comprehend eternity, since it is his own essence; the mind, limited by the delusion of self, is earth-bound; only the Spirit of God, which dwells in (but is not enclosed in) the temple of the human spirit, can know the essence of God, i.e., to know oneself (the “son” the “father”). “No one comes to the Father but through the Son.”^[73,74] No one can comprehend what is holy unless he has holiness within himself. Only he who gets rid of his “self,” the “self,” which is a product of delusion, can know himself in truth in truth.

          The Bhagavad Gītā says: “There are two kinds of entities in this world: the divisible (nature) and the indivisible (mind). The divisible comprehends all living forms, the indivisible is called the ruler of all. But there is another supreme being, the supreme World Spirit (absolute consciousness), which permeates and sustains the threefold world as the eternal Lord. Therefore, because I surpass the divisible, and am even higher than the indivisible, I am celebrated among men and in the Vedas as supreme. Whoever frees himself from error, recognizes me as the highest being, he worships me with his whole being. Anyone who (practically) understands this teaching is a wise man and has nothing to do with the world and its actions.”^[75]

          One admonishes occult science for presenting propositions as true which have yet to be proved; but whether a thing appears true or untrue depends on the degree of [one’s] knowledge, and what is self-evident truth to the knower is an object of ignorance to the ignorant, and that which he has no knowledge of cannot be proved to him either. The unholiness of the scholars and philosophers is the cause of their inability to comprehend the holy (truth); although it is plain to them and presented in every conceivable way in the writings of the enlightened (which few read today).

          And so there are, for example, more than three hundred years which have passed since the German enlightened philosopher Jacob Boehme described all these truths in his own way but nonetheless clearly and distinctly, and still only an infinitesimally small number of our scholars have succeeded in coming to rise to the height of his world view, although he himself gives the instructions to do so; while most either do not know his works or dismiss them as “reveries.”

“I cannot describe to you the whole deity in one circle; for she is immeasurable; but not incomprehensible to the mind which is in God’s love (in the knowledge of the truth). He knows it well, but only in part; therefore grasp one by one, and you will see the whole.”^[76]

          Even the theologians don’t understand it. They believe that God is a temple for man into which they can enter with their selfhood, instead of realizing that man is a temple of God into which deity can enter only when human selfhood disappears from that. When this happens, the spirit of man can, through the power of the divine spirit, know the mysteries of God and his creation; for he accordingly becomes one with the Spirit of God in himself. “Through his union with Me he attains my wisdom, my essence, my greatness, and if he truly knows Me completely, he is also perfect in Me.”^[77]

          Whoever recognizes the Creator^[78] in himself and has become one with him in knowledge, the Creator recognizes himself in him and knows how the world came into being and still comes into being through his will in his wisdom. He needs no scientific evidence for this; but science needs the testimony of divine revelation in nature and probability, because it does not recognize the truth itself. “Not I, who am I, know it, but God (the “not I”) in me knows it,” says Jacob Boehme. But whoever knows only his own [lower] “I,” the product of his self-conceit, will not understand either the writings of Boehme nor the Bhagavad Gītā. That is why these pages are not written for the learned, but for the disciples of wisdom.

          Everyone looks at the world from the point of view on which he himself is positioned. The philosophical ponderer, fantasist, and speculator who knows nothing of self-knowledge regards the writings of the enlightened as the result of philosophical brooding and imagination; the theologian, who regards God as a distant being, and thus as a by-product, holds such writings to be the inspirations of external, invisible beings; if not for the dictates of a God dwelling outside his nature; the sage who sees the omnipresence of God in all beings marvels not that God’s wisdom can be manifest within a man and enlighten man’s mind, and for the non-mystic lies the testimony that there can be an inward revelation in that the teachings of the wise agree, if not in form, at least in substance; as with, for example, a comparison of the writings of Boehme and Paracelsus with those of the Indian Vedas, proves this. The scholar and the theologian speak of God and the world as of something not belonging to them; Jacob Boehme, on the other hand, says: “If we speak of the creation of the world as if we had been there and seen it, no one should be surprised and think it impossible; for the spirit that is in us, and which one person inherits from another (through reincarnation), is from eternity and has seen everything and sees everything in the light of God. . . . And when one speaks of heaven and the birth of the elements, one does not speak of distant things which are far from us, but we speak of things that happen to our body and soul, and nothing is nearer to us than this birth, for we live and soar in it as in our mother; so we only talk about our mother house, and when we speak of heaven, we speak of our fatherland, which the enlightened soul can see, even though it is hidden from the body.”^[79]

          And so, Jacob Boehme does not describe the creation of the world as something unnatural or perverted, but he says: “The whole divine being is in constant and eternal birth (but unchangeable), like the human mind, since thoughts are always born from the mind, and from thought the will and the desire, and from the will and the desire, work,” and the Bhagavad Gītā confirms this permanence of creation by saying: “Nothing needs to be done by me in the three worlds; nothing is attainable for me; yet I move in everything which happens. Were I not continually working without tiring, these worlds would perish.” The creation of the divine spirit in the universe is referred to as an out-breath of Brahma, and by other mystics as an utterance of the divine Word (Logos). The Christian teacher Meister Eckhart also confirms the above when he says: “If God should refrain from speaking his word for even a moment, heaven and earth would perish.”^[80] The Bible says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was in God, and the Word was God.^[81] Everything is made by the same, and without the same nothing is made that is made.” The Indian teaching says the same thing in other words: “The universe lives in Brahmā, arises from Brahmā and returns to Brahmā.” The modern philosopher arrives and makes the startling discovery that God is “space.” Unfortunately, in doing so, he forgets the consciousness, the deity within. However, this distinguishes material rationalistic philosophical speculation from Theosophy in that one recognizes only the material side of the universe, while the other recognizes the spirit working in it [the metaphysical]. Mere knowledge without the feeling of truth is an inanimate thing; it fills the mind with fantasies and leaves the heart empty. Science is nothing without the knowledge of truth, space is nothing without light, God is nothing without consciousness, and heaven is nothing without love. Love without understanding is blind, and understanding without love is folly. As in the small things, so it is in the big ones, and that is why God did not make the world out of unknowing love, but out of his divine love, which is wisdom, through his divine free will.

          Material science deals with dead forms, true occult science with the living spirit. In the occult doctrine the universe is not viewed as a godless thing ruled by a god living outside it, but as an organic whole whose visible body is the corporeal world, whose soul is the kingdom of spirits, whose life is divinity; the sky is the mind and the stars are the thoughts of the world spirit, the sun is the great heart, the beats of which send currents of life through the organism; but the creative word is the expression of the divine thought that is in God and a part of his being. The eternal process of becoming and passing away in the world of forms is referred to as a breathing process of the world spirit. God breathes-out his Spirit into nature and worlds come into being; he breathes-in and creation perishes. Also, all this must not be regarded as a mere fable or allegory, but it is a scientific fact, which, however, does not take place outside but within the omnipresence of God. The ancient sages measured the periods during which these processes take place and measured the duration of a heartbeat of the sun of our system, as well as the duration of a breath of Brahma, i.e., an emergence and decay of a creation (kalpa).

          The Secret Doctrine says:

“The Sun is the heart of the Solar World [System] and its brain is

hidden behind the [visible] Sun. Thence, sensation is radiated into every

nerve-centre of the great body, and the waves of the life-essence flow into

each artery and vein. . . . The planets are its limbs and pulses.”^[82]

          Although the human mind cannot comprehend the greatness of God in the universe, yet the manifestations of the Spirit of God in nature are not incomprehensible, and nothing other than their own short-sightedness, narrow-mindedness, and pettiness prevents the learned of the world from seeing the greatness of God in order to recognize his works. From the inability to grasp a great and sublime idea was born the so-called rationalist worldview; The teachings of Theosophy arise from the self-awareness that has awakened to knowledge of the higher and the ascent to the ideal, which is the highest reality.

          If we look at man in his work, we also find that his works do not arise directly from his brain as visible forms. First comes the thought, then the will, then the deed. So too Brahmā can be viewed in three ways; Namely, as the Creator (the Father), as the Word or expression of thought (the Son), and as the revelation brought forth by the expression of thought (the Spirit), which is presented to us in visible form in nature. Man’s hands belong to man, but man does not belong to his hands; moreover, the work which the artist’s hands accomplish often falls far short of the ideal which he wished to create. So also do the forces in nature spring from the divine essence; but nature is not therefore God. Nor is nature self-conscious and permeated with the living spirit of wisdom; the will of nature is not free, but bound to the conditions under which it acts, and therefore not perfect. The nearer the creations of the divine spirit are to the divine source from which they arose, the more perfect they are; the more remote and material they have become, the less godlike they are; just as a ray of light that is thrown back several times finally spreads only a weak glimmer, and a multiple echo finally loses strength. It is nowhere written that the material world as we see it came directly from the hands of the Creator, but the Bible says: Bereshith bara Elohim ath aschomaïm onath Aares; which, when properly translated, means, “The head gave birth to the powers of which are heaven and earth.” — “And the Elohim said: Let there be light! and there was light.”

          The Elohim in the broadest sense thus include all forces and substances in the universe; they are all forms of consciousness, emanating from the all-consciousness of divine wisdom; but we distinguish different planes of existence in the universe, the heavenly world and nature, and consequently also different emanations of the divine forces; those nearer to the source of their eternal origin, and those farther from it, and therefore formed of “coarser stuff.” At the highest level of existence we find these forms of consciousness as divine beings or intelligences, archangels and angels, gods and demons; at the lowest level as known physical forces and lower forms of existence; but they all, even the seemingly inanimate stone, have life and consciousness, though not manifest in such forms; for Brahmā is present in everything, without him there would be no sensation, no chemical affinity, no attraction, no gravitation, no law. Everything is within him and there is nothing outside of him. — “Exalted above all beings, he nevertheless dwells in all; unmoved in himself, he moves everything in his nature. He is far and yet near. He is not divided into beings, and yet he works in all. He is known as the Sustainer of all things; he devours and produces”^[83] He is the one life in everything, which expresses itself in the various forms, according to the conditions which they present, as their vital activity. There is thus no dead matter in the universe; there is life in all things, though not all are perceptible to us. Even in a corpse every atom has its life, for otherwise it could not decompose. It is not the life of the elements of the body but only the unified life activity of the organism as a whole which comes to an end when the body dies.

          The Elohim in their highest form are the seven forms of consciousness emanating from the divine Sun of Wisdom and nature is the mirror in which they are revealed to us. But the “light” which they made manifest, and in comparison with which our earthly light is darkness,^[84] is the “two-fold man,”^[85] the universal man, Adam Kadmon, the male principle, in which is contained the female, spirit and Power, will and imagination, God and nature.

          This is not the place to go into the details of the lofty views communicated to us in The Secret Doctrine (which is “secret” to most simply because it is elusive), but intend to outline only a few of its outlines which are necessary for an understanding of the Bhagavad Gītā. The processes which appear in the external phenomena of nature can serve us as allegories in order to comprehend deeper spiritual operations. This does not mean, however, that one should draw fantastic conclusions from the external processes in nature in relation to spiritual laws of which one knows nothing, but the wise, who recognize the law of the spirit within, also find the confirmation of the effect of this law in external nature. Nature is a book, the meaning of which we cannot discover by a mere study of the letters until we know its language; but if we know the language of nature, the meaning of its letters and words also becomes clear to us.

          Thus we know that sunlight is divided into the seven colors of a prism, and we do not draw the fantastic conclusion that there is a spiritual sun whose light is the same; for without the existence of a spiritual perception we could not at all come up with the idea of the existence of a spiritual sun of the universe; On the other hand, when the sun of wisdom has risen within us, we also know the laws of its light, which is our own, and we find the working of the same law in external nature; as it cannot be otherwise, since the material visible world is an image and symbol of the invisible spiritual one. But how can one make this understandable to someone who does not know his own inner life and has not yet awakened to the consciousness of divine existence?

          When Arjuna’s spiritual eye opened, the supreme ruler was revealed to him,

“an exceedingly wonderful, luminous, infinite, all-seeing being. Then he saw the whole universe, so varied in its appearances, as a unit, revealed in the bodies of the gods (Elohim) as many forms. If a thousand suns were to blaze up in the sky at once, it would be like that glory.”^[86]

          The one light, or the one elemental force, the One Life, the one consciousness, reveals itself in the mirror of the world soul in seven lights or colors (the seven candlesticks which stand around the Throne of God),^[87] seven intelligences, forces, lives or forms of consciousness, which permeate the whole of nature, split again and again into seven subdivisions and finally become manifest to us in innumerable forms of existence. Whether we call them Elohim, Dhyan Chohans, the seven Rishis [Riṣḥis], or “Patriarchs,” gods, divine forces, natural forces, or otherwise, depending on the point of view from which we look at them, does not alter their essence; the name we give to a thing denotes the idea we have of it, but not the thing in itself. Modern science has taken a step forward in discovering that even in the smallest organisms living beings, microbes, etc, they are included; perhaps it will not be long before she realizes that there is no dead matter in the universe and that everything in it is a revelation of eternal life. Then it will be back where it was many thousands of years ago, and scholars will begin to understand what the ancient sages proclaimed.

 

VI. Reincarnation.^[88]

[VI. Die Wiederverkörperung.]

 

According to the ancient secret doctrine, the world process consists in a constant periodic growth and decay of creation. Brahmā, the One, always remains the one who is; the essence itself does not change; but the world of manifestation of forces and forms arises and passes away and renews itself to pass away again. “What is real never ceases to be, and what is immaterial has no real existence as an entity, but is only appearance; but only those who know the truth can distinguish between the real and the unreal.”^[89]

          The one, Brahm, is immortal. “It is never born and never dies. It does not arise and will never arise. Unborn, imperishable, infinite, it does not change, even though its forms come and go. Know that He who spread out the universe can never perish. None can bring about the annihilation of the Eternal.”^[90] The worlds, on the other hand, and their inhabitants, come and go; they are the vessels in which the eternal spirit is manifested. “The distinction between the spirit and the form in which it manifests itself is true knowledge”^[91]; the possession of the ability to make this distinction, is the basic condition for the understanding of occult science.

          The emergence of the appearances from the being, whereby worlds come into being, and the disappearance of these appearances in essence, whereby the worlds perish, is called the exhalation and inhalation of Brahma. The animal man breathes air, the divine man breathes spirit; the Spirit of God is the expression of his will and mind, his word, of which all things are made; As it says in the Bible: “If you breathe out your breath, then they (the worlds) are created and you renew the shape of the earth. If you cover your face, they are destroyed; if you take away their breath, they will breathe out (their life) and return to their dust.”^[92] Thus, the manifest arises from the non-manifest and returns to the non-manifest, and re-embodiment, whether it concerns entire worlds or single individuals, is nothing other than a re-manifestation on the material plane of beings who are available on the spirit plane. Nor is the whole essence of the incarnating spirit absorbed in the form in which it incarnates, but takes root in it, so to speak, and overshadows it. The spirit of God, which creates the universe, is immeasurably greater than the products it created, and the spirit of man is far greater than the visible organism in which it has incarnated. Spirit endures, embodiment perishes; but consciousness is permanent or transitory, according as it has its dwelling in the permanent or in the transitory. If it has risen in the divine-spiritual, then it is immortal; if its existence is limited to the transitory form, it perishes with it.

          When the Bhagavad Gītā says: “There was no time when I was not, nor shall any of us ever cease to be”^[93]; it does not mean the personal human being, but the essence of the human being. “This essence is the One Being, Brahmā, the essence of good. Whoever has come to the consciousness of his divine nature enters into Brahmā.”^[94] Man can be compared to a ray of light which springs from the sun and whose end reaches the earth, without therefore leaving the sun, its origin. The divine part of man does not abandon God by incarnating on earth; but the earthly end of the divine ray of light calls into existence an apparition whose embodiment is the personal human being, and this embodiment is the feeling, thinking and willing shell with the five senses and everything that belongs to earthly existence.”^[95] It is man’s dwelling place, but not man himself; it is the living “garment” which man puts on at birth and takes off at death, and in which he has the experiences which are conducive to the attainment of true self-knowledge. “As a man who has shed his old clothes puts on a new robe, so when the forms in which it was revealed are broken, the eternal being reveals itself again in other forms.”^[96] There the earthly part of man’s soul is born, grows old and dies; but the divine part of it is not affected by this; these touches belong only to the temporal, but not to the eternal part of the soul. The man whose consciousness is centered in the earthly part of his soul suffers pleasure and pain; but if his consciousness has merged into his divine part, then he is no longer the feeling part, but the silent spectator raised above all earthly sensations, above joy and suffering, like one who can look down on his own body as on something alien, and says to himself: “It is not I who love and hate, who feels pleasure and pain; but the natural forces in my organism follow their law.”^[97]

          Man’s “spiritual advancement,” then, does not consist in becoming essentially something he has not been from eternity; but that he regains self-awareness and self-knowledge of his real being after he has lost this consciousness through his descent into the physical world. The evolution and involution of man consists in this immersion in the physical world and the re-ascension to God-consciousness, his departure and entry into God, and in this respect, too, man on a small scale is a picture of creation on a large scale, since he is also an embodiment and spiritualization repeated periodically. It is one and the same God from whose nature ever new worlds arise, and it is one and the same spiritual individuality which successively creates a series of diverse personalities in which to abide. If man does not remember his earlier periods of existence on this or other planets, the reason for this is that as a result of his “animation” (which is particularly promoted by sexual excesses and alcohol consumption), the organ for spiritual perception has shriveled and hereditarily atrophied. Nor is it pointless to argue with the world’s scholars whether or not to believe in reincarnation; because it is not about the mere “belief” in this teaching, but about its understanding; but the great secret only becomes clear to those who recognize not only the revelation in nature, but also the being that produces this revelation.

          The physical world is in many respects the reverse mirror image of the spiritual world. In the path of evolution, magnificent forms arise in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, grow, age and, having reached their peak, return to the dust. From the standpoint of the Eternal, man’s evolution, or departure from God-consciousness, presents the opposite picture, and represents a degradation, while his involution, or merging into God, is his exaltation. However, its evolution and involution taken together is progress; provided that he makes the right use of his life; for just as the bee flies from one flower to another, and carries honey home from every calyx, likewise the soul of man collects its experiences from each of its forms of existence on earth, and takes those worth taking back to its heavenly homeland.

          This descent of the spirit into matter is described in the “Secret Doctrine.” The Bhagavad Gītā teaches us the philosophy of Yoga, i.e., the doctrine of ascension from matter to God. One involves the evolution of forms, the other the doctrine of man’s return to his true self-consciousness after having eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; i.e., has absorbed this knowledge and thereby attained that individual immortality, without which immortality would be a state without self-consciousness and therefore only a pious delusion.

          The “Secret Doctrine” unrolls before our eyes a wonderful but also true picture of the origin of the worlds; it sheds a light on the story of creation before which the old petty orthodox views disappear into the realm of fable. It shows us how the spiritual forces which created the universe increasingly compressed the ether until finally earthly worlds were born out of the ethereal worlds; how then on these worlds the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms arose and half-animal—half-human forms developed; until at last the human forms (the daughters of the earth) were sufficiently perfect to unite with the inhabitants of heaven (the sons of light), and as the wave which represents humanity rolls from existence to existence, and in each of them finds its appropriate conditions, until it finally attains perfection. With the embodiment of the celestial bodies and planets, however, there also goes an embodiment of the human organism, or a “condensation” of the same; for our ancestors many millennia ago were ethereal in nature; “Astral beings,” which over the millennia became more and more material, until finally the spiritual element was reduced to that minimum which is found in humanity today, and which humanity must unfold again if it wants to rise to a higher level of the existence.

          But what takes place in humanity as a whole is always repeated in detail. The world soul floods from existence to existence, and in between the lives of individuals flow back from the manifest to the non-manifest and reappear in new forms. The experiences man needs in order to attain divine self-knowledge and perfection cannot be attained in one short human lifetime; unless a person had already reached the near-highest level beforehand.

          As the spirit, the indweller of the seventh and highest sphere, descends to incarnate, it has to climb a ladder of five stages to arrive at the first, the lowest; on his return he rises again through the intermediate ones to the highest level of consciousness. However, this is not to be understood as if he were changing his place in the process; he is constantly rooted in God. Rather, this rising and falling is comparable to a wave movement. The wave seems to roll, and yet the water stays where it is. Rather, it is a weighting down and a surging up of consciousness from the spiritual to the material and from the material to the spiritual. But these five spheres of consciousness correspond to the five coverings of the human being, which we have discussed above. Each of these shells is born from and returns to the plane from which it came. Thus, at each level, the spirit leaves behind part of its burden as it ascends, and picks up the legacy belonging to it as it descends. This taking up of the legacy is also taught in the Christian religion as the “resurrection of the flesh” (if properly understood); for “flesh” here does not mean bones and muscles, but the lower soul forces that belong to the mortal part of man.

          In order to make the matter somewhat more comprehensible, it could be presented as follows:

 

		The Seven Principles		The Five Veils.		The Seven Spheres.
Permanent	⎧ { ⎩	7. Ātma. The immortal spirit. Love.			}	Brahmā loka. The World of the Divine.
		6. Buddhi. Understanding. The heavenly soul.		Ānandamaya kośa. The heavenly body.
		5. Buddhi Manas. Mind. Human soul.		Vijñānamaya kośa. The Body of Knowledge.
Changeable	⎧   {   ⎩	4. Kāma Manas. Intellect. Human-animal soul.	}	Manomaya kośa.   The thought body or astral body.		Mahar loka. The Spiritual world.
		3. Kāma. Animal soul. Desire. Instinct.				Svara loka. The Heavenly world.
		2. Prāṇa. Life force.		Pranamaya kośa. The Life Body.		Kāma loka (Antaric loka) The Astral world.
		1. Liṅga Śarīra. The etheric body.	}	Annamaya kośa. The etheric body.   The material appearance.	}	Bhur loka. (The earth.)	The Etheric and the Visible World.
		0. Sthūla Śarīra. The material body.

 

According to this scheme, the process after death is as follows:

          “When the soul has left the body and the tie which bound it to the body is severed, life also leaves the body. It should be noted here that the soul can temporarily leave the body without breaking this bond. In this case a return of the soul and back to the body is possible; as often happens in the case of apparent death, and even after the death of the body has been “confirmed” by the representatives of science and the apparent corpse has been buried, its return can take place while in the coffin; for since the only sure sign of death, as long as there is no putrefaction, is that the bond which binds the soul to the body is broken, but “science” knows nothing of the soul or about this bond, so there is not much to be said for the “experts” “statement” as to whether death occurred.”^[98]

          Simultaneously with the soul, the etheric body also leaves the material house in which the soul dwelt; the divine ray of light withdraws further towards its origin, and when the soul has completely separated itself from the material body, it is also free from this etheric body, which consists only of a higher grade of material matter.

          Now the soul (consciousness) is in the world of desires (kama loca) [kāma-loka], or the lower region of the astral world. Here, the upper and higher soul forces (buddhi-manas) separate from the bottom and base (kāma manas); the “immortal,” or more correctly, permanent part of the mortal. If man has been a devil incapable of noble feelings, he will have to leave his devilish cloak there; and there is nothing consciously divine in him which can remain of him, however learned and perceptive he may have been; for ultimately nothing is immortal in man but the love of the good. But the more the good has come to be known in man, the more is left of him to ascend into the higher state of consciousness, into the heavenly world (Swara-loca [Svara-loka] or Devachan).

          In this state man enjoys heavenly pleasures, for which he has created the basis through his good deeds during earthly existence; but even this condition does not last forever. When the activity of the higher soul forces, which were awakened in him during his life, is exhausted, he must leave the heaven of Indra again and return to earthly existence if he has not yet come to the true knowledge of God.^[99] But before this happens, the soul strips off its last covering and enters, if only for a moment, that state of divine awakening in which it sees its past and future.

          The return to earth takes place in the opposite way. Incidentally, it goes without saying for the mystic that the processes described here do not take place according to a template; for though the law is the same for all beings, it differs in its effects according to the stage of development at which a man finds himself. So, for example, in an Adept, the etheric body is permeated and purified enough by the spirit to be able to continue to exist on the astral plane. For a really good person there is no sojourn in the kama loca [kāma-loka], and whoever has already attained the knowledge of God here is elevated even above heaven. The above description, as well as the following, are only intended to give an average picture, the elaboration of which is left to the intuition of the reader.^[100]

          The disembodied human being is just an idea which carries within itself the impulse to be embodied. This impulse (the will) is unconscious and instinctive in the soul that has not yet come to true knowledge, but conscious in the wise; which is why in the former case the re-embodiment is involuntary, in the latter it is voluntary. The slumbering soul is drawn blindly whither it gravitates according to its inveterate tendencies; the wise man who voluntarily descends to earth in order to fulfill a high mission for the benefit of mankind himself chooses the conditions for his reincarnation that appear suitable for his purpose. His reincarnation is the expression of his self-conscious will; his “word made flesh.”

          “When the bright light of knowledge shines through all the gates of the human spirit—i.e., when all his senses, his feeling, willing and thinking are illuminated by this light, then the truth (Sattva) has come to fullness in such a person. When his body dies, his soul enters the regions of the wise who strive for the highest.”^[101]— “The sage is like my own Self; for he dwells in his love in Me, for whom I am his ultimate goal. After multiple births he enters Me. But a man whose soul is so exalted that he realizes that Vasudeva is the All, is hard to find.”^[102]

          A person’s actions are the expression of his nature, and the type of his nature is determined by his actions. So, for example, a man becomes a thief when stealing becomes a habit in him, and when he has become a thief he steals because stealing is in the nature of a thief. Likewise, by doing good deeds a man becomes good, and he does good works because that is the nature of good men. Everyone gravitates to where they belong, and so a person’s karma (the result of their actions) also determines the manner of their reincarnation. “Whoever is a good man but not yet perfect in knowledge is born again into the house of a good and noble man, and there he strives further on the way to perfection.”^[103]

          On the other hand, if a man dies in whose nature there is selfishness, he is born again at the end of his personal existence among men given to selfishness and greed, and if he takes leave of life while folly reigns in his kingdom, so he will be born again among fools.^[104]

          Two ways are open to man, the way to the sun of divine self-knowledge, i.e., the way to God, which leads to no return, and the way to the light of the “moon,” i.e., the way towards delusions, which lies at the bottom of self-delusion, and by which one returns to earth again. One leads into the realm of knowledge of truth, the other into the realm of imagination. In the wise man the fire of love for the infinite good blazes, and the light of knowledge creates the clear day in his soul; but the mind of the pious, who have not attained true knowledge, is darkened by the “smoke” of superstition, and the night of ignorance reigns in them.^[105] Therefore, when the sun of knowledge was high in the spiritual sky, it has always been the striving of the wise to walk the path of truth, while in our age, when earthly understanding has reached its zenith, most walk the path of deception, upon which the light of fancy is their guide.

          Just as there is a constant oscillating back and forth in the individual human being between the high and the low, between spirituality and materiality, between the divine and the animal, so there is also a periodic change in the whole, in the macrocosm. As such, all mankind wanders through periods of general darkness and general enlightenment, just as day and night alternate at the outside. There are periods of time when the Sun of Divine Wisdom is high in the spiritual sky and others when it appears shrouded in mist. History teaches us that periods of unbelief are followed by periods of superstition, and then periods of doubt. The superstitions of the Middle Ages have been followed by the skepticism of modern times, and contemporary culture is again moving against superstition. Such are the minor periods; the great periods of the world are called “Yugas,” and we can distinguish four of them, with the following length of time:

1. Kritā or Satya Yuga, the golden age, 1,728,000 of our [human] years.
2. Tretā Yuga, 1,296,000 years.
3. Dwapara [Dvāpara] Yuga, 864,000 years.
4. Kali Yuga or the Dark Age, 432,000 years.^[106]

          Each of these periods does not suddenly merge into another, but there is always a “dawn and dusk” taking place. During such transitions, changes occur in the state of the World Soul, and since the outer world is only the external expression of the inner state of this soul life, it is not surprising that there are also changes in the life of the people, in the way of thinking, even geographic changes of the earth due to sinking of continents and volcanic upheavals.^[107]

          Spiritual advancement is much more difficult to achieve during the Age of Spiritual Darkness than during the Age of Light. There, the resistance by matter is greater; but instead, the soul struggles towards the higher when it overcomes it. It is in the spiritual as in the material; the more resistance there is, the more strength must be gathered to overcome it. Where there is nothing to overcome, there is no collection of energy. The lower man has sunk, so too the more powerful means are available to him for his elevation.

          The more nauseous the moral filth which surrounds him, the more easily he will turn away from it, so long as he is not permeated by it. The higher man ascends, the more his spiritual horizon expands; but to ascend he needs steps made of solid matter. The steps that lead to knowledge are error and sin. Whoever overcomes them, they in turn, serve for his elevation.

          Reincarnation occurs everywhere in nature. The flowers which wither in autumn reappear in spring. It is true that the newly created forms are not essentially the same as those which disappeared (the forms themselves have nothing essential at all, but are only embodied manifestations of the forces at work in them), but are the same forces of nature which in the past year brought different species of plants to growth; each according to the quality of its seed, may produce such forms again in the following year. The spiritual individuality of man with the abilities inherent in his being is the seed which constantly creates new personalities whose mental qualities are conditioned by the karma which man accumulated in the past. What drives the human soul to reincarnate is the delusion that it is something different from the divine being; but when the divine seed has sprouted in man and has become conscious of his true divine nature, then the delusion of difference from God disappears; then the human spirit sees that it is itself in everything; then he will no longer be forced to reincarnate; then he is again the universal spirit he was from eternity.

          But if the deity gains nothing and does not change by making worlds come into being and pass away, then the question arises in this consideration, which has occupied many philosophers, namely, why did God create the world? They say he did it for love; but if all is God, then there is nothing that this universal being could make the object of his love other than like himself. But the love of the absolute for itself is the absolute love from which springs self-knowledge. The World Soul is the mirror in which the world spirit sees its image, and the world of appearances is the result of its imagination. One could counter the above question with the question: “Why does beauty love to see her image in a mirror?” It is in the nature of God to reveal himself to himself through his creation. His revelation is the object of his love, and his love embraces all that is contained in his revelation and conforms to his own nature; for he exalts himself in all things. But where the divine nature is most manifest, there is also found the love of God, i.e., the love of the divine is greatest in everything, and whoever walks in true love lives in true knowledge; he is one with God because his love is his essence and that essence is one with the knowledge of God in the universe.

Notes follow:

^[1] Seven parts originally published as separate articles but combined here as one document:

The Epistemology of the Bhagavad Gitā. Considered in the Light of the Secret Doctrine. [Die Erkenntnislehre der Bhagavad Gitā. Im Lichte der Geheimlehre betrachtet. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 9, no. 54 (March 1897), 174-193]

The Epistemology of the Bhagavad Gitā. Considered in the Light of the Secret Doctrine. II. The Animal and the Heavenly Man. [Die Erkenntnislehre der Bhagavad Gītā. Im Lichte der Geheimlehre betrachtet. II. Der irdische und der himmlische Mensch. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 9, no. 55 (April 1897), 252-276]

The Epistemology of the Bhagavad Gitā. Considered in the Light of the Secret Doctrine. III. The Universe. [Die Erkenntnislehre der Bhagavad Gītā. Im Lichte der Geheimlehre betrachtet. III. Das Weltall. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 9, no. 56 (May 1897), 318-332]

The Epistemology of the Bhagavad Gitā. Considered in the Light of the Secret Doctrine (continued.) [Die Erkenntnislehre der Bhagavad Gītā. Im Lichte der Geheimlehre betrachtet (Fortsetzung.) Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 9, no. 57 (June 1897), 427-439]

The Epistemology of the Bhagavad Gitā. Considered in the Light of the Secret Doctrine. IV. Brahmā. [Die Erkenntnislehre der Bhagavad Gītā. Im Lichte der Geheimlehre betrachtet. IV. Brahmā. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 10, no. 58 (July 1897), 497-523]

The Epistemology of the Bhagavad Gitā. Considered in the Light of the Secret Doctrine. V. Creation. [Die Erkenntnislehre der Bhagavad Gītā. Im Lichte der Geheimlehre betrachtet. V. Die Schöpfung. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 10, no. 59 (August 1897), 571-596]

The Epistemology of the Bhagavad Gitā. Considered in the Light of the Secret Doctrine. VI. Reincarnation. [Die Erkenntnislehre der Bhagavad Gītā. Im Lichte der Geheimlehre betrachtet. VI. Die Wiederverkörperung. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 10, no. 60 (September 1897), 648-673]

{These articles are reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos. Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}

^[2] The Epistemology of the Bhagavad Gītā. Considered in the Light of the Secret Doctrine [Die Erkenntnislehre der Bhagavad Gītā. Im Lichte der Geheimlehre betrachtet. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 9, no. 54 (March 1897), 174-193]

^[3] A new edition of the German translation of the Bhagavad Gītā by Dr. F. Hartmann will soon be published by Schwetschke in Braunschweig.

^[4] Bhagavad Gītā X, 7.

^[5] Bhagavad Gītā XIII, 27.

^[6] The Epistemology of the Bhagavad Gitā. Considered in the Light of the Secret Doctrine. II. The Animal and the Heavenly Man. [Die Erkenntnislehre der Bhagavad Gītā. Im Lichte der Geheimlehre betrachtet. II. Der irdische und der himmlische Mensch. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 9, no. 55 (April 1897), 252-276]

^[7] {R.H.—Dr. Hartmann is pointing out the successes by the practice of the graded path, which is taught in such Hindu works as the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali and in Buddhism, both the greater vehicle (mahāyāna) and the lessor vehicle (Hīnayāna).}

^[8] {R.H.—Just as the graded path towards higher consciousness is indicated by the teachings in the Yoga Sūtras, so too has the physical, emotional and mental evolutions of man been a graded path. The theosophical teachings differ considerably with the scientific hypotheses of the paleontologists, anthropologists and archeologists who have determined man’s evolutionary journey to be far shorter (several millions of years) than what the theosophists proclaim, which is some 18 million years in duration.}

^[9] Such as, for example, a person can quickly fall into a deep sleep without first sinking into a dream state, so the soul can also quickly enter the heavenly state after the death of the body without coming into much conscious contact with the middle region (kama loca) [kāma-loka]; but in both cases there is no higher development, but only a change in existence.

^[10] Bhagavad Gītā IX, 7th — Compare, Śaṅkarāchārya, “Tattva Bodha,” Part 1, XXIV, p. 31.

^[11] {R.H.—The sanskrit word, maya, means “consisting of,” or “made of.” Therefore the five kośas may be translated:

1. Annamaya Kosha [Annamaya-kośa]. The sheath consisting of the material.
2. Pranamaya Kosha [Prāṇamaya-kośa]. The sheath consisting of life.
3. Manomaya Kosha [kośa]. The sheath consisting of “mind.”
4. Vijnānamaya Kosha [Vijñānamaya-kośa]. The sheath consisting of “knowledge.”
5. Anandamaya Kosha [Ānandamaya-kośa]. The sheath consisting of bliss.}

^[12] Bhagavad Gītā III, 11.

^[13] Zohar, fol. 156, 6.

^[14] Bhagavad Gītā, VIII, 16.

^[15] Ibid. XVI, 19.

^[16] The Epistemology of the Bhagavad Gitā. Considered in the Light of the Secret Doctrine. III. The Universe. [Die Erkenntnislehre der Bhagavad Gītā. Im Lichte der Geheimlehre betrachtet. III. Das Weltall. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 9, no. 56 (May 1897), 318-332]

^[17] Bhagavad Gītā X, 20.

^[18] Ibid. X, 41.

^[19] Ibid. XVIII, 67.

^[20] Bhagavad Gītā XII, 2.

^[21] [Bhagavad Gītā] Chapter XIII, 1 and 2.

^[22] Mysterium magnum X, 30.

^[23] J. Boehme: “Clavis.” 38.

^[24] Bhagavad Gītā II, 22.

^[25] Ibid. II, 19.

^[26] The Epistemology of the Bhagavad Gitā. Considered in the Light of the Secret Doctrine (continued.) [Die Erkenntnislehre der Bhagavad Gītā. Im Lichte der Geheimlehre betrachtet (Fortsetzung.) Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 9, no. 57 (June 1897), 427-439]

^[27] Bhagavad Gītā XIV, 14 and 15.

^[28] {R.H.—This condition is so rare, that it is seldom mentioned in occult works.}

^[29] [Bhagavad Gītā] Chapter XVII, 19 and 20.

^[30] [Bhagavad Gītā] Chapter VIII, 6.

^[31] Chapter IX, 25.

^[32] [Bhagavad Gītā] Chapter VI, 41.

^[33] Bhagavad Gītā II, 47 and 49.

^[34] Ibid. Ill, 7 and 15.

^[35] “Der geistige Führer.” Chapter I.

^[36] II. Korinther IV, 11.

^[37] Phil. II, 13.

^[38] Bhagavad Gītā XV, 11 and 12.

^[39] Bhagavad Gītā XIV, 10.

^[40] Ibid. XIV, ii.

^[41] The Epistemology of the Bhagavad Gitā. Considered in the Light of the Secret Doctrine. IV. Brahmā. [Die Erkenntnislehre der Bhagavad Gītā. Im Lichte der Geheimlehre betrachtet. IV. Brahmā. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 10, no. 58 (July 1897), 497-523]

^[42] [Bhagavad Gītā] Chapter IV, 40.

^[43] Śaṅkarāchārya: “Atma Bodha” und “Tattva Bodha.”

^[44] Bhagavad Gītā, III, 26.

^[45] Ibid. VIII, 25.

^[46] Bhagavad Gītā, IV, 1. {R.H.—See the academic paper: P. L. Bhargava, “Original Home of the Ikṣvākus.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 1 (1976), 64–66. They are mentioned in the Padma Purāṇa and Bhāgavata Purāṇa (VIII, IX).}

^[47] Bhagavad Gītā, IV, 7.

^[48] Ibid. IX, 11.

^[49] {R.H.—Dr. Hartmann is clarifying that Kṛṣṇa later incarnated as the Christ.}

^[50] Bhagavad Gītā, XV, 7.

^[51] {R.H.—These cycles are reflective in man, the microcosm. As above, so below.}

^[52] H. P. Blavatsky: “The Secret Doctrine.” Vol. II, Pg. 73. [The 3rd and Rev. Edition, 1893.]

^[53] John, XIV, 24.

^[54] Ibid, XIV, 2.

^[55] Bhagavad Gītā, VII, 30.

^[56] Ibid. XIII, 22 and 23.

^[57] K. E. Neumann: “Die Reden Gotamo Buddha’s.” [The Discourses of Gotamo Buddha] Page 139.

^[58] Bhagavad Gītā, VII, 3.

^[59] Bhagavad Gītā, II, 42.

^[60] Ibid, verse 4.

^[61] Ibid. III, 13.

^[62] Ibid, III, 11.

^[63] Bhagavad Gītā, XVI, 138.

^[64] Bhagavad Gītā, XIII, 28.

^[65] The Epistemology of the Bhagavad Gitā. Considered in the Light of the Secret Doctrine. V. Creation. [Die Erkenntnislehre der Bhagavad Gītā. Im Lichte der Geheimlehre betrachtet. V. Die Schöpfung. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 10, no. 59 (August 1897), 571-596]

^[66] Chap. IX, verse 10.

^[67] Chap. X, verse 8.

^[68] Chap. IX, 4–9.

^[69] Jacob Boehme: “Das umgewandte Auge.”

^[70] Bhagavad Gītā II, 69.

^[71] H. P. Blavatsky: “The Secret Doctrine.” Vol. I, page 55 [27] — See: “Lotusblüthen.” Vol. I. page 155. {R.H.—I have used the same verses but from the original English, not the German. Dr. Hartmann left out two technical words, which I have, in turn, put back in. He probably originally left them out due to their technical nature.}

^[72] Compare I Corinthians II, 10.

^[73] I. Timoth. VI, 16.

^[74] I Timoth. VI, 16.

^[75] [Bhagavad Gītā] Chap. XV, 16–20.

^[76] Jacob Boebme: “Aurora” X, 26.

^[77] Bhagavad Gītā XVIII, 55.

^[78] {R.H.—The reader should take note here that Dr. Hartmann, even though he uses the German word “Schöpfer” for “creator,” he knows “creator” should not be used at all, and yet sometimes he does. Possibly because it is difficult to find a suitable substitute for the word, although “emanator” could have been used. I can only guess he is attempting to gradually persuade Christians to see the esoteric doctrine. And also because Jacob Boehme uses creation and creator. Under the strictest of conditions, he would never use “Schöpfer,” because he has said something cannot be created out of nothing, as with the errors the Bible makes, such as in Genesis.}

^[79] “Drei Prinzipien” VII, 6.

^[80] F. Hartmann: “Die Bhagavad Gītā.” Page 31, note 24.

^[81] John I, 1 and 2.

^[82] “The Secret Doctrine” I, 590. {Hartmann used the 3rd and Rev. Edition, 1893. Instead of translating and using the German, which is very close to the English, I have used the English.}

^[83] Bhagavad Gītā XIII, 15.

^[84] The Secret Doctrine I, page 485. [The 3rd and Rev. Edition, 1893.]

^[85] Zohar.

^[86] Bhagavad Gītā XI, 9–14.

^[87] “Revelation of John” II, 1.

^[88] The Epistemology of the Bhagavad Gitā. Considered in the Light of the Secret Doctrine. VI. Reincarnation. [Die Erkenntnislehre der Bhagavad Gītā. Im Lichte der Geheimlehre betrachtet. VI. Die Wiederverkörperung. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 10, no. 60 (September 1897), 648-673]

^[89] Bhagavad Gītā, II, 16.

^[90] Ibid. II, 20. 17.

^[91] Ibid. XIII, 2.

^[92] Psalm 104, verses 29, 30.

^[93] Bhagavad Gītā, II, 12.

^[94] Ibid. II, 72.

^[95] Bhagavad Gītā, XV, 7.

^[96] Ibid, II, 22.

^[97] Bhagavad Gītā, XIV, 23.

^[98] See: F. Hartmann, “Buried Alive.” {R.H.—Franz Hartmann, M.D., Buried Alive, An Examination into the Occult Causes of Apparent Death, Trance and Catalepsy. Boston: Occult Publishing Co., 1895. Later republished as Premature Burial, London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co., Ltd., Second, Rev., 1896.}

^[99] Bhagavad Gītā, IX, 21.

^[100] See, A. Besant, “Reinkarnation.”

^[101] Bhagavad Gītā, XIV, 14.

^[102] Bhagavad Gītā, VII, 9.

^[103] Ibid. VI, 41.

^[104] Bhagavad Gītā, XIV, 15.

^[105] Compare Bhagavad Gītā, VIII, 24–26.

^[106] We are now at the end of the first 5,000 years of the Kali Yuga, ending in early 1898, and great social, political, and even physical changes of the earth’s surface are imminent.

^[107] During such a transition the great catastrophe took place, through which the continent of Atlantis sank under the sea in the year 9,564 BC, and Europe received its present form. {Dr. Hartmann is describing the latest and last sinking of Atlantis. Prior to that, there have been many other deluges of Atlantis, at various times and affecting different sizes of land masses.}