Note[i]
“Where intellectual conceptions fail,
words come in very conveniently.”—Goethe, “Faust”
To every one accustomed to look beyond the mere surface of daily life, it must be clear that many of the words and expressions commonly used have a far deeper meaning than what is usually attributed to them, and that a true understanding of the real meaning of certain words would lead up to a higher state of evolution. We all speak sometimes wiser than we know, and there is no reason why we should not know the wisdom which we speak; but we live in an age in which the reasoning faculty is the supreme object of worship, while true spirituality and clear perception of truth is lost in the clouds. Some rashly reject or refuse to test anything that cannot at once be grasped by the mind, while others are contented with a merely superficial aspect of things, never dreaming that within some dark and deceptive shell may be discovered a luminous kernel of real truth. Moreover, there are thousands of things which claim our attention, so that we rarely find time to examine closely that which is nearest to us.
If we speak of a table, a clock or a telegraph wire, every one knows what we mean, because everybody has seen such things and knows what they are; but when we speak of religious matters or use words expressing states of the soul or conditions of soul life, errors and misunderstandings appear, because nobody can actually know or realize a state which he has never entered and experienced, and that which belongs to the life of the soul will necessarily remain hidden or “occult” to those in whom the life of the soul has not yet awakened. Likewise, a merely external or intellectual study of things divine and spiritual, will at best lead to the formation of theories, unless it is accompanied by the practical development of the power of spiritual perception; for only like can grasp like; theories and opinions are playthings for the intellect; that which is truly spiritual can be grasped only by the real spirit of man.
First of all, the term “occult” is very much misunderstood. Many believe that the “study of occultism” consists in investigating the phenomena of spiritism, inventing theories for their plausible explanation. This seems to me a very low order of occultism. There are two classes of things which are “occult” or hidden from us; namely, those which we do not know intellectually, but which might so be known, and those which cannot be known intellectually, because they transcend the power of comprehension of the human intellect and can be known only spiritually. To use the language of the occultists, we may say that the former come within the grasp of Kama Manas, the latter belong to the dominion of Budhi Manas; the one is terrestrial or human knowledge, the other celestial or angelic wisdom; and where the power of terrestrial reasoning ceases, there the realm of truly spiritual or occult knowledge begins.
This is truly “occult” or religious knowledge and incomprehensible to all who have no real religious sentiment in their hearts. The word “Religion” is itself a very much abused and misused term, understood by few. In its real meaning it is identical with “spiritual self-knowledge,” for it refers to the understanding and practice of that which binds mortal man to his divine and immortal spirit. “To have religion” does not merely mean to give credit to certain religious doctrines or to practice the ceremonies and be devoted to the interests of some church ; but it does mean to have the power to realize the presence of God and to obey his laws. The divine knowledge arising from such a religion is not a science of the lower mind, but of the “angel in man.” For this reason St. Paul says: “I am not speaking to you of the world, nor of the wisdom of the great ones of this world, which perish” (meaning the great intellectual reasoners who are without any real knowledge of truth), “but of the secret, hidden (occult )wisdom of God” (in the great original “Theosophia”) which none of the great ones of this world has ever known.”
The most occult of all things is the “Truth.” Who but those who have attained a real knowledge of truth could know what that word means? The question: “What is truth?” has often been asked, but the questioner must find the answer himself. Truth is Reality, but how could the Reality of the Real be explained if nothing real is known? If the truth would rest upon some proof, the proof would be higher than the truth. Truth is self-existent, self-evident and its own proof. Even if we wish to prove a thing to be true, we must start from some basis known or supposed to be true. We may by reasoning and inference arrive at some probability of a truth; but the truth itself can be known only by its own revelation. It is like a light which is no light for us if we are not able to see it.
Philosophers speak about “The Absolute.” We may talk about it, but our theories are like the speculations of persons trying to form an opinion of what may be at the other side of an impenetrable wall; for the absolute has no relation to anything, and cannot be conceived intellectually. Absolute love, absolute goodness, etc., may be attained and realized by abandoning all thought of self; but they can neither be grasped by the intellect nor demonstrated. The Absolute is the Real and can be known to us only when its presence becomes manifest in our consciousness. No one doubts the presence of “Space” for we live and move in it; nevertheless it is intellectually inconceivable; we cannot conceive universal space as being limited nor form a conception of its infinity.
The same may be said about “Eternity.” It is often supposed to be a succession of times without end; but eternity is not time, it is not motion; it is that from which the motion of time arises; the ocean, from which the rivers flow. Only that which is eternal within ourselves can become conscious of the meaning of “eternity.”
Thus it is, also, with “Immortality.” No amount of argument or external proof of a continuance of the life of the soul after the death of the physical body can make us realize our own immortality. True knowledge of immortality is born only when that which is immortal in us awakens to the realization of its own being.
Books upon books have been written about “God,” some trying to prove, others to deny his existence; nevertheless it is certain that none of these writers have ever been able to form a true intellectual conception of the meaning of that term; because, a god comprehensible to the human mind would be less than a man and could not be the God of the universe. God can be known only to himself. The word “comprehend” means to “embrace” or “enclose”; the insignificantly little cannot enclose the infinitely great. We can realize the presence of God as we realize the presence of space, but we can neither grasp him with our intellect, nor describe him correctly. God can be known only by “Faith”; but this term does not, as many suppose, imply merely a certain opinion or a mental assent to some doctrine or theory, nor the belief in the truth of some supposed historical evidence; it means, as St. Paul says (I. Corinth, ii., 5) that self-reliance, “which is based in the power of God.” The true faith arises from the realization of the action of this divine power within ourselves.
A great deal might be said about the often abused and much misunderstood term “Spirit” and a closer investigation would show that a great many things are called “spirits,” which in reality have no spirit at all. The source of the greatest evils of our modem civilization is the fact that true spirituality is almost unknown and scientific learning mistaken for it. Nevertheless these two are as decidedly different from each other as love and argumentation. Spirituality refers to that which is refined, noble, grand and exalting, while the intellect without spiritual intelligence is low, narrow and material. Spirituality is divine and pure, while an overgrown intellectual activity has a downward tendency, and scientific attainments do not include selfishness and rascality.
Nowhere do we find more confusion and error than in dealing with religious terms. A doctrine may contain the highest wisdom and be highly useful, or embody the blackest lie and be pernicious, according to the way in which it is applied. A “prayer” consisting in that opening and elevation of soul which enables the light of divine truth to manifest itself in the mind is sublime and elevating; it is the greatest treasure in the possession of man; but the “prayer” which seeks to make divine powers subservient to our temporal interests is low and degrading. Teachings in regard to “Self” may be perfectly true if applied to the real self, but false and misleading if we refer them to our temporal and illusive self. For this reason it was taught ages ago that the power to discriminate between the durable and the non-enduring is the first requirement for the attainment of real knowledge, and the recognition of the true self is the corner-stone of the true church of Christ and the key to all mysteries. In the life of the recognition of the true self, the illusion of self disappears like a shadow in the light of the sun. But this recognition is difficult to attain.
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- C. Monay says: “Whence is the power of standing outside myself, of recognizing the worthlessness of the pseudo judgments, of the prejudices with their lurid coloring of passion, of the temporal interests, of the ephemeral appetites, of all the sensibilities of egoism, to which I nevertheless surrender myself? Through and above this troubled atmosphere I see a being, pure, passionless, rightly measuring the proportions and relations of things, for whom there is, properly speaking, no present with its phantasms, falsities and half truths; who has nothing personal in the sense of being opposed to the whole of the related personalities; who sees the truth rather than struggles logically toward it, and truth of which I can at present form no conception; whose activities are unimpeded by intellectual doubt, unperverted by moral depravity, and who is indifferent to results, because he has not to guide his conduct by calculation of them, or by any estimate of their value. I look upon him with awe, because in being passionless he sometimes seems to me without love. Yet I know that this is not so; only that his love is diffused by its range and elevated in abstraction beyond my gaze and comprehension. And I see in this being my ideal, my higher, my only true, in a word, my immortal self.” Thus we see that the term “self-love” has two interpretations. In one of its aspects it means a contemptible egoism, in its other aspect the divine love of our divine ideal, our God.
Another term about the profound meaning of which we are extremely ignorant as “Man”; because to arrive at a perfect understanding of it, we would have to attain to the end and aim of our evolution, which is perfect self-knowledge. Millions of human beings are in this world, claiming to be “men”; but there are few who realize what “manhood” in its highest aspect means. Perfect man is a conscious inhabitant of the interplanetary spheres, a creator of worlds and lord over all the spirits and powers of nature, even while his “shadow,” his physical body, walks upon this earth; but the “man” of our “natural science” is merely an intellectual animal; a shadow of the real man.
Nothing shows more clearly that we are leading only a sort of a dream-life than the fact that we only half understand the meaning of the terms referring to our states and conditions and to the powers we are supposed to possess. We speak of “love” and “hope,” of “will” and “imagination,” of “knowledge,” etc., and are not able to realize their real nature, because we know only their shadows, but do not possess the true powers. We cannot grasp things which we cannot feel. We speak of “love” and feel only desire; but desire for possession is only the reflected image of love. We speak of “hope” and believe it to be “the confident expectation of some benefit to arise”; but it is only our illusive self that hopes for some benefit; he in whom the star of real hope has risen finds in that power itself the fulfillment of his aspirations.
With many persons the terms “imagination” and “fancy” are almost identical. They say that this or that thing is only “imaginary,” and mean it to be only a dream. But “imagination” in its real sense means the power to form images in our mind, and of the very substance of the mind; and there is nothing more real for us than “mind.” Our universe is the product of the creative power of will and imagination, and if we were in the possession of this truly magical power, we might project the pictures formed in our mind and render them objective, material and visible to others. This power is even now in possession of some yogis or adepts; but with the majority of people “to imagine” is only to dream.
Similar remarks might be made about the “will” In its true sense this word signifies a creative power, a spiritual force, by which all the powers of nature can be subjugated and controlled; but what we call “willing” is often a mere wishing. We cannot control the forces of nature around us by the exercise of our will, because our will has not yet attained the power to control the forces of nature within our own constitution; we are subject to the will of these forces and obedient to the dictation of the desires created by them in our body, instead of being the master of this creative, preserving and destructive force, and thus “our will” is in reality not our own.
We are proud of what we call our “knowledge,” and fancy it to be the real thing, and the result is that even the true meaning of the term “real knowledge” is very seldom understood. A knowledge of the phenomena of nature without an understanding of the one Reality from which all external manifestations spring, is not real. What is generally regarded as “knowledge” consists of certain views, theories and opinions formed by deductions, inductions and inferences; while real knowledge is born only from the self-realization of truths. True knowledge can only be self-knowledge; we can really know only that which we know ourselves; to be informed about the knowledge of another does not constitute our own knowledge. We cannot have real self-knowledge of anything that does not form a part of ourselves. Real self-knowledge is the union of the knower with the known through the power of knowing; it means an identification of the investigator with the object of his investigation; a blending of the states of consciousness of both. Such a blending is a spiritual one, and all real knowledge is therefore spiritual and not merely intellectual.
We speak of “existence,” and say that we exist; but it seems that our ancestors who discovered this term knew more about its true meaning than we do. They used to call things by their right names. The term “exist” from the Latin ex, out and est, is, evidently means “to be out.” Out of what? Evidently did the things which exist come out of the unmanifested state; they were contained as ideas in the universal mind and projected into outward existence. Thus the word “existence” suggests a whole system of philosophy and gives us a key to the mystery of creation.
There are many words and expressions which would open before us new regions of truth, if we would only make up our mind to grasp their real meaning. “To make up one’s mind” does not mean merely to form a purpose or to suggest to oneself a certain act, such as abandoning a bad habit. If we actually make up our mind to do a thing, it is already half done; for “to make up one’s mind” means to open a hole in the shell of darkness which surrounds the mind and to let in a new ray of truth, which comes like a new revelation. There are many things which we cannot accomplish, mainly because we are too weak to make up our mind to accomplish them.
Let us look at the word “dissolute” If any one invented it, he must have had a great deal of metaphysical knowledge. “Dissolute” means a state of solution, the antithesis of solidity, and what expression could better describe a state of a person who by debauchery and sensuality or anger disperses into space the powers which ought to go to give him firmness in his character and to build up his individuality. An expert in such matters says: “The astral body of the inner man must grow as something different from the physical body, with which it is, however, intimately connected. This process goes on very slowly and gradually. A fit of anger or some other passion breaks the newly-formed force, and the ‘double’ flics back into its old chains. The astral body may have begun to become consolidated; but some old sensual habit appears again and draws out of it the already accumulated substance, and all the previous labor is lost.” Thus it will be seen that the term “dissolution” actually means what it expresses—namely, a dissolution of the “inner man,” which is necessarily followed by disease, and ultimately by the dissolution of the physical body.
The antithesis of “dissolution” is expressed by the term “concentration” or “interior recollection” Both of these terms are very often used, and very seldom understood. Both refer to states which are not properly understood unless they are properly practiced, and their proper practice is impossible without a proper understanding.
Thus we might continue this examination at any desirable length and find a great many words in our language representing ideal states which are only half-understood because we have not yet attained these states; but enough has been said to call the attention to the occult meaning of those words, and to the necessity of their thoughtful consideration.
Franz Hartmann, M. D.
Note:
[1] The Occult Meaning of Some Words. Franz Hartmann, M.D. The Metaphysical Magazine 14, no. 3 (March 1901), 161-169 {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos, by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}