Note[1]
The world (the body) has life, and eternity (the soul) is Life. The interior lives and the external lives; the cause is life and the effects are living. Life is law and its manifestation; it is law for the understanding and manifestation for the organs of sense. The parts are vivified by the whole; the bodies by the world; the soul of man by eternity, this being our home. When the eternal being manifests motion there springs into existence a series of actions and reactions, producing secondary causes. Thus the world is the realm of motion, of apparent causes and effects, of change and contraries and duality; but eternity is the kingdom of the one fundamental Cause, of oneness and tranquillity.
That which is subject to change in man is related to the world (nature); that which is eternal in him is one with eternity, one with the law which is the life itself. The changeable in nature, acting upon that which is subject to change in us, produces opposite motions and sensations and change; eternity causes no change in the eternal, but becomes manifest in the soul as a revelation of internal, imperturbable peace, immutable blissful joy, and holy, pure, exalted and redeeming power, a self-consciousness of liberty and immortal being, a recognition of the oneness of the true self with the All.
Eternity manifests itself in us as rest, nature causes unrest. Eternity reveals the truth, the action of the world causes illusions. The eternal in us reveals to us our own real nature as a self-existent being, independent of everything, unapproachable, resting upon nothing but its own self, dwelling in nothing but its own divine self-consciousness; but the powers of nature act in our organisms as exciting causes originating joys and sorrows, pain and pleasure, the illusions of personal hopes and affections, the delusion of separateness and “self,” desire for “self-preservation,” false self-consciousness, self-esteem, longings, desires, passions, virtues and vices, manifold thoughts and sensations, in short, the experiences of an external illusory life, caused by the action of opposites upon each other and having no permanency or stability, and not belonging truly to us; but being due to the action of nature in us, a life which we call “our own” merely because, having become oblivious to our own true state of being, we are in the habit of identifying ourselves with the conditions produced by the play of nature’s forces within the organism in which we dwell.
From this non-recognition of our eternal state thus results our participation of all that the human organism to which we are attached has to enjoy and to suffer, and, while we are taking part in its joys, we have also to take part in its sufferings. To the extent that we identify ourselves with that which is mortal or changeable in us, must we die or become changed; to the extent in which we realize eternity in ourselves do we realize our own eternal existence, which nothing foreign can trouble or touch.
The door from this ignorance of our real nature to the true knowledge attainable only by the realization of its own self, is the experience gained by suffering. Here is the beginning of our redemption, because we become willing to be redeemed after experiencing the absolute worthlessness of the impermanent upon which our hopes and desires have rested. Realizing the action of opposites in nature and how they continually neutralize each other, producing nothing new; seeing how the wheel of nature revolves for ever in a circle without aim or end; how nature perpetually devours her own children, and birth is followed by death, beauty by ugliness, strength by weakness, intellectuality by the imbecility of old age, the soul begins to seek for a place of refuge beyond the wheel of revolving shadows and finds rest in the light. Disappointed in all her hopes, thrown back upon the resources within herself, seeing that there is nothing to be relied upon and to rest upon among all created existences, the world begins to appear to her empty and dark, devoid of anything worth striving after or worthy to keep. She begins to see that the images that have been reflected in her so long were false, and her life illusive; that the active life of nature, whose sensations she experienced, was not her true life, which is rest, peace and joy. She then begins to long for the knowledge of her own true life, seeks to become free of the battle of opposites and to repose in the one indivisible unity, the one eternal cause; and in proportion as the soul departs from the delusion of “self” (surrenders her self-will to the divine) the realm of illusions and fantasy disappears beneath her feet, and upon the mind dawns the morning glory of a new day of immortality and freedom, and the heart becomes filled with a sense of all-consciousness, knowing itself to have no separate life, but to be one with the true life in all.
Thus the external lives by change and the eternal lives in immutable oneness; our worldly consciousness moves in continual friction, and our eternal self-consciousness rests in eternal peace. If we let the world act upon our soul, the body experiences life; but if we let eternity become revealed in us, the eternal life of the soul becomes revealed to her. The greater the sensations which act upon the body, the more that body experiences life, and it craves for sensation so that it may know that it lives; for the life of the soul is inconceivable to the body, eternity is to it a word without meaning. But if we let eternity become manifest in the soul, then begins the true life of the soul in internal emotion, which finds its culmination in the attainment of perfect “self-forgetfulness”; this being identical with the acquisition of perfect consciousness of the true Self, and culminating in perfect satisfaction, happiness, freedom, peace and tranquillity.
The external world acting upon our interior world produces external emotion, causing the true interior life of the soul, the true self-consciousness, to disappear in proportion as the external life is stimulated into activity; for the life of the soul is external rest and internal motion; external unconsciousness and insensibility, but internal illumination; external non-being, but internal all-being. The life of the soul consists in the action of her internal (superior) and external (inferior) powers. With her internal powers she reaches into the kingdom of spirit; her external powers are bound up with matter. Carried away by the whirl of the world, taking part in the never-ending aimless motion of opposites, the higher faculties of the soul become paralyzed and inactive; true self-consciousness is overshadowed by the realization of the illusion of self, and our life restricted to the exercise of those faculties which belong to the lower and animal part of our organism, the material intellect, imagination, beliefs and opinions, personal affections and desires and all that belongs to the delusion of “self”; the soul then is like a mirror in which only the illusions of the world are reflected, and we mistake the life of these illusions in us for our true life. Thus the lower faculties of the soul, whose destiny it is to serve its superior faculties, assume an apparently independent life of their own, having no other object than its own self; this being the cause of that egoism, which springs from the nonrecognition of the true omnipresent and universal self, that Self which is known to few and which in ordinary parlance is called “God.”
So begins the restless chase after gratification of personal desires, illusory possessions, illusory knowledge, illusory loves, illusory joys, all of which cannot be permanent, because they are born and die within the revolving wheel of ever-changing existence.
But as the soul is in possession of dual faculties, it is also capable to reflect the kingdom of heaven (eternity) when its lower activity ceases. When the external senses are subdued and the activity of the external thinking faculties are restrained so as to be at perfect rest, the soul begins to realize its own true, eternal nature; entering into true self-consciousness, it becomes unconscious of the illusions of the external world; self-luminous and self-knowing, it enters into the incomprehensible oneness, into true being, independent of space and time, expanding and unfolding into a higher state with superior faculties and perceptions, growing continually holier, purer and more luminous, until it finds perfect redemption in eternal rest.
F. Hartmann.
Note:
[i1 The Mystery of Existence. F. Hartmann [Franz Hartmann, M.D.] Lucifer 15, no. 87 (November 1894), 209-212. This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos, by Robert Hütwohl, ©2025