A. B. [1]
The highest desire any reasonable man can cherish and the highest right he can possibly claim is the power to become perfect. To know everything, to love all and be beloved by all, to command and possess everything that exists, is a condition of being that to a certain extent may be felt intuitively, but whose possibility cannot be grasped by the intellect of mortal man. A foretaste of such a blissful condition may be experienced by a person who—even for a short period of time—is perfectly happy. He who is not oppressed by sorrow, not excited by desires, and who is conscious of his own strength and liberty, may feel as if he were the master of worlds, the king of Heaven and Earth; and in fact during such moments he is their ruler as far as he himself is concerned, although Heaven and Earth may not seem to be aware of his existence.
But when he awakes from his dream and looks through the windows of his senses into the physical world and begins to reason about his surroundings, his vision fades away; he beholds himself a child of Earth, a mortal form, bound by many chains to a speck of dust called a planet, floating in the infinity of space. The ideal world that perhaps a moment before appeared to him as a glorious reality may now seem to be the baseless fabric of a dream in which there is nothing real, and physical existence, with all its imperfections, is now to him at least the only unquestionable reality, and its most perfect illusions the only objects worthy of his attention. He sees himself surrounded by material forms, and he desires to come into possession of that which corresponds to his highest ideal.
The highest desire of every mortal is to attain and to realize his own highest ideal. A person without any ideal is unthinkable. To be conscious is to have an ideal; to relinquish the ideal world would be death. A person who has no desire is incapable of progress and useless in the economy of nature; a person who has all his desires satisfied needs to live no longer, for life can be of no further use to him. He whose ideal is mortal must die when his ideal dies; but he who has an immortal ideal must himself become immortal to attain to it.
Man lives in two worlds, in his interior and in the exterior world. Each of these worlds exists under conditions peculiar to itself, and that world in which man lives is for the time being the most real to him. When he falls asleep in one he wakes up in the other, and when the latter closes its doors the former opens before him. When he fully enters his interior world the miseries of external life are forgotten and the very existence of that life may be unknown to him. When he fully enters the external world, the forms seen in the interior world fade away or appear to him like shadowy visions; but the idols of his interior world are alive, and unless his consciousness is fully absorbed by the illusions produced on his mind through the senses, he may still behold their reflections thrown on the sky of the external world. Happy is he who never loses sight of his highest ideals and who succeeds in harmoniously blending his internal and external worlds into one.
The real seldom attains the ideal, and often it happens that man, after many unsuccessful attempts to realize his ideals in the exterior world, returns in disappointment to his interior world and gives up his search; but if he succeeds, there arises for him a moment of happiness during which time and space, as we know them, exist for him no longer, when the external world becomes blended with his interior world, when his personality is lost in the object of his desires: but still he remains a man.
Artists and poets are familiar with such states. An inventor who sees his inventions accepted, a soldier who comes victorious out of the struggle, a lover who is united with the idol of his choice, forgets his own personality and is lost in the object of his desire. The ecstatic saint who sees the Redeemer before him floats in an ocean of rapture, and his consciousness is centered in the ideal that he himself has created, but which is as real to him as if it were a living form of flesh. Shakespeare’s Juliet finds her ideal realized in Romeo’s youthful form. United with him she forgets the rush of time; night disappears, and she is not conscious of it; the lark heralds the dawn and she mistakes its tones for the singing of the nightingale. Happiness measures no time and knows no danger.
But as the sun arose too early for Juliet, so in the enjoyment of evanescent ideals that have been realized in the external world, happiness quickly vanishes. An ideal that has been materialized ceases to be an ideal; the ethereal forms of the interior world, if grasped by the rude hands of mortals, must die. Man’s material nature must die before he can grasp an immortal ideal.
Low ideals may be transformed into higher ideals; but if low ideals die, their death calls similar ones into existence. From the blood of a vampire that has been slain, a swarm of vampires arises. A wish fulfilled makes room for other wishes, a gratified passion is chased by other passions, a craving that has been stilled gives birth to new cravings. Sensual happiness is short-lived and often dies in disgust. The love of the immortal alone is immortal.
Alone the possession of the highest ideal can give permanent happiness; but the highest ideal in the universe must be a universal ideal. As long as there is a still higher ideal for a man who believes he has attained the highest, that higher one will attract him; but he who has realized the highest can desire nothing more, because there is nothing more for him to desire, until the highest itself has become still more exalted. There must be state of perfection, which all may reach and beyond which none can advance, until the Universe as a whole advances beyond it. All men have the right to reach this highest ideal; but not all have the same power developed, and some may reach it soon, while others may lag on the road.
The highest ideal in the Universe is know to no mortal. but the highest manifestation of the unknown is the spiritual consciousness of man. In his power to feel intuitively and to know by spiritual perception that which is true, to recognize and express the truth, consists the highest imaginable perfection of man. To know the whole truth is to know everything that exists; to love the truth above all, is to be loved by all who understand the truth; to be able to express the truth in its fullness, gives universal power; to attain immortal truth, is to become for ever immortal.
Material acquisitions perish, because forms are evanescent and die. Intellectual accomplishments vanish, for the intellectual forces are subject to change. Desires and opinions change, and memories fade away. A child becomes a man, a man an old man, and the old man a child. The dolls and rattles of childhood give way to intellectual playthings, but when they have served their purpose the latter appear as useless as the former. In the ever-revolving kaleidoscope of nature the aspect of forms continually changes. What is laughed at as a superstition by one century is often accepted as the basis of science for the next, and the highest knowledge of today appears as an absurdity in the great tomorrow. Nothing is permanent but the truth.
But where can man find the truth? If he seeks deep enough in himself he will find it revealed; each man may know his own heart. He may sent a ray of his intelligence into the depths of his soul, and there he may discover corals and pearls, or watch the monsters of the deep. He may enter into the interior sanctuary of his own temple and see the goddess unveiled; but not every one can penetrate into the soul of another. The intelligence that resides in each man may look down through the network of forces that constitutes its dwelling. It may penetrate veil after veil, until at the innermost center it discovers the germ of truth contained therein, and under its beneficent influence that germ will grow into a sun that will illuminate the whole of man’s interior world.
How shall we know the truth? Truth recognizes itself. If the surface of the soul is not lashed by the storms of passion, it the excitement created by selfish desires does not disturb its tranquillity, if its waters are not darkened by the reflections of the past, truth will see her own image mirrored in the deep; and man, having recognized the truth, through the truth will become one with the truth. To know the truth in its fullness is to become immortal; to lose the power of knowing, the truth is to die. The voice of truth is the “still small voice” that may be heard in the heart; and if it is permitted to speak it may grow and become the powerful “Word,” that was in the beginning, that is now and forever will be. The principle of Truth is the great spiritual sun that knows that it exists. It is self-conscious and self-sufficient, it stands higher than love and higher than science; it asks not for the opinions of others, and its decisions suffer no appeal; it knows neither doubt nor fear, but reposes in the tranquillity of its own supreme majesty. It can neither be altered nor changed, but is the same in every man. It may be compared to a light that may be either subdued or permitted to shine; we may blind ourselves to the truth, but the truth cannot be extinguished. A small room will require but little light, and a large room much greater light for its illumination; but the light is the same in either and shines with equal clearness.
The perception of the truth rests in the equilibrium of the intellect and the emotions. Its voice may be drowned in the turmoil of the intellectual workshop, or its light may be obscured by the emotions. To see its light and to hear its voice without any foreign admixture, heart and head should act harmoniously together. Reason, if supported by both, is One, but if only supported by one it forms the absurd Two that leads to delusion. The emotional maniac is only guided by his heart, the intellectual maniac only lives in his brain. Neither the revelry of the emotions nor intellectual fanaticism can disclose the truth; only during the stillness produced by the harmony of both can the truth be discovered. A man who only follows the dictates of his emotions resembles one who in ascending a peak becomes dizzy and falls over a precipice; a man who is only guided by his sensual perceptions is easily lost in the whirlpool of multifarious forms. He is like a person who, while examining a drop of water under a microscope on the shore of the ocean, is blind to the existence of the ocean from whence that drop has been taken. But if head and heart are attuned to respond to the divine harmonies in Nature, then will the truth reveal itself to man and through man, and the highest ideal will see its own image reflected in man.
Absolute truth in its fullness cannot be grasped by mortal man. Material man, entombed in his chrysalis of clay, can only dimly see the rays that radiate from the sphere of infinity. But if he bids his emotions “Be still,” and commands his intellect “Be not deluded,” he may stretch his feelers into the interior world and perceive the truth. He may use his heart as a touchstone to examine the conclusions arrived at by the brain, and the brain as scales in which to weigh the decisions of the heart. Then will the lower ideals be dispersed by the perception of the highest ideal, for Truth is a jealous goddess and suffers no others beside her.
Man is usually guided chiefly by the intellect and woman chiefly by the emotions. To reason from external appearances has become a necessity to them in consequence of their material organizations, which, like a shell, prevents the direct perception of the eternal reality and forces them to view it through the veil of matter. Those whose minds are open to receive the direct influence of the highest consciousness need not to become conscious of its existence through the reading of books. They will know all the forms of life, because the source of all life is recognized by them; they need not study letters to convey to them the meaning of words, because the Word itself is living in them. They will be the instruments through whom eternal wisdom reveals itself to those entombed in matter.
Let those who doubt this examine the analogy presented by social intercourse. If we meet a stranger and wish to know his true character, it will serve our purpose little to look at his clothes or at the exterior form of his body. External forms are expressions of internal forces; but forms are delusive and may be disguised. If we wish to know the real man we must look through his eyes down into his interior world, and if we are able to read what we see there we shall know the truth. Words and sounds may deceive, but when soul speaks to soul without a veil between them, they will be as one and the truth will be clear.
The doctrine of such a state of perfection is the “Great Arcanum” that cannot be learned in books. It is the “Great Secret” that may be understood by a child, but will ever remain incomprehensible to those who, having no practical knowledge, are unable to grasp it. The attainment of such a state of perfection is the “Great Work” of which the Alchemist spoke, when they said that thousands of years may be required to accomplish it, but that it also could be accomplished in a moment even by a woman while engaged in spinning. They looked upon the human mind as being a great alembic in which the contending living forces can be purified by the heat of holy aspirations. They gave directions how the soul of mortal man should be sublimated and her immortal parts be made to ascend to the source of life. The purified element would then descend again “in showers of snowy whiteness” apparent and visible to all, because rendering every act of life holy and pure. In a similar manner they taught how the base metals—meaning the animal energy in man—could be transformed into the pure gold of spirituality, and how, by preparing and tasting the true “Elixir of Life,” souls could be rendered immortal.
Their truths shared the fate of other truths; they were misunderstood, and their science is now known only to a few. Masonry and Theology have—each in its own manner—continued the teachings of the Alchemists, and happy is the mason or priest who understands the true meaning of the mysteries of which he is the keeper.
But of such true disciples there are only a few. The systems in which the truth has been embodied are still in existence, but the cold hand of dead materialism has been laid upon the outward forms and their spirit has fled. Priests and disciples see only the outward expression, and but few can divine the internal truth that called those forms into life. The key to the inner sanctuary has been lost, and the true password has not been rediscovered by the followers of Hiram Abiff. The riddle propounded thousands of years ago by the Egyptian Sphinx to those that passed along the pathway of life is still unsolved by mankind, and as those who were not able to solve it disappeared into the abyss, so at the present day those who cannot open their souls to the divine influence of the light of truth perish in the darkness of death. In vain will men continue to plow the intellectual soil so long as they reject the life-giving influence of the sun of the spirit. As well may they expect to raise a harvest by burying the seed in a dark cavern under a rock.
But the truth still lives. It resides on the top of the mountain in the interior world of man and sends its divine influence down into the valleys, and wherever the doors and windows are open to receive it there it will dispel the darkness, rendering men and women immortal and guiding them on the road to perfection, until, when all the struggles have ceased, they will find permanent happiness in the realization of the highest ideal.
A. B.
Note
[1] Truth. A.B. [Franz Hartmann, M.D.] The Theosophist 7, no. 73 (October 1885), 13-18. {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos, by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}