[Das Rätsel des Daseins]
Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl.[1]
The erring mind seeks in vain
To fathom the riddle of existence.
Existence is only known through existence;
If you want to know it, you have to find it yourself.
In vain do scholars and philosophers rack their brains trying to solve the riddle of existence. As thousands of years ago, the inexorable Sphinx still stands by the way and poses this riddle to those who pass it on the path of life, and everyone who cannot solve it is thrown into the abyss. How could it be otherwise; for what avails man all his science, theories and opinions concerning this and that, as long as he does not know his own existence? What should he hold on to internally if he cannot find support within himself? How can he rely on himself if he does not know his real self and everything on the outside is only an illusion, a delusion? And yet the solution to the riddle of existence is a very simple thing; it requires very little erudition; a peasant can solve it as easily as a scholar; nothing more is required than entering into true existence oneself. With that, the wrong existence is then automatically recognized.
The following pages are taken from a letter by a theosophist (i.e., a person who has come to Self-knowledge) and are intended to show us the way to the solution of the riddle of existence:
“The world (the body) has life, eternity (the spirit) is life itself. The inner as well as the outer lives; the cause of this vitality is life, and the effects of life arise from its activity. Life is the law, being alive is its revelation. Life appears to reason as law and to the sense organs as revelation. All parts in nature are animated by the unitary whole; the body in nature through nature, the soul of man through the underlying eternity, which is our real home, our origin, our Self (Ātma) When the Eternal reveals itself, a series of effects and counteractions come into play, which in turn are causes of more distant effects. Thus, the whole of nature is the realm of motion, the realm of apparent causes and effects (not springing from themselves), the realm of changes in properties and opposites, but eternity is the essence, the unity in which there is no duality, no opposite and no change.
What is changeable in man belongs to nature, what is eternal in him belongs to eternity and is one with life, which is the law itself. What is full of change in nature affects what is changeable in us and brings about contrary movements and sensations in us. Eternity causes no change in us (true self-awareness always remains the same), it only reveals itself in the soul as perfect peace, an exhilarating bliss, a pure, sublime, redeeming power, self-aware freedom and self-aware immortality; a self-realization of the oneness of the true self with the essence of all.
Eternity reveals itself in us as rest, nature (the realm of attributes) causes restlessness. Eternity reveals the truth; the action of nature gives occasion for deception. The eternal in us reveals itself to our introspection as our true existence, which is self-existing, eternal, uncreated, independent of everything, dependent only on itself, unapproachable, self-aware and dwelling in nothing but itself; but the forces of nature act in our organism as excitatory causes, causing joys and sorrows, pleasure and pain, selfish hopes and sorrows, personal likes and dislikes, individual loves and hates, the delusion of separate selfhood with the delusions that arise from that delusion, namely (false) self-confidence, self-conceit, self-preservation, greed, desires, passions, virtues and vices, opposite feelings, desires and thoughts, in short everything that springs from the struggle of opposites in us and is only of temporary duration. All this does not belong to our actual being, but only to the nature to which we are bound; it is the life of nature in us, and we call it “our life” because we have forgotten our true existence, which is above death and life, and identify with the states that the play of the natural forces in the organism, which we inhabit.
From this ignorance of our true eternal existence arises our own participation in everything that the human organism with which we are “affected,” experiences, tolerates or enjoys. We share the joys of our body and also its sorrows. In the same degree that we identify ourselves with what is mortal or mutable in us, we ourselves must die or change, and in the same degree that we allow the knowledge of the Eternal to be revealed in us, we know also our own true nature and existence, which cannot be touched by anything external.
The gate that leads from the realm of ignorance to true self-knowledge (knowledge of God) can only be reached by everyone through their own experience on the path of disappointment (karma). Where the path of suffering begins, there also begins the path of salvation. Only when we have learned through our own experience to see the worthlessness of the lower ideals to which we cling are we ready to leave them and open our hearts to higher ideals. Having walked the cycle of nature often enough ourselves, we recognize the to-and-fro waves of opposites through which nothing new is created, the cycle in which no real progress takes place; the wheel (sansara) [saṃsāra] turning forever on its axis, which does not move. We see how this course always returns to its starting point, how nature (satwa) [sattva] devours her own children, how night follows day, summer follows winter, birth is followed by youth, mating, old age and death, beauty by ugliness, youthful vigor by old age, intellectual strength by senile nonsense, and the soul longs to get out of this ever-revolving circle, and seeks a resting place. She strives out of the realm of shadows and finds herself in the light. The soul that has experienced the same bitter disappointments a thousand times, whose hopes have been desecrated again and again, who feels abandoned by everything and has to rely on herself alone and learns to recognize that outside of the higher power dwelling within her, there is nothing that she can rely on, begins to see that the earth is empty and desolate and dark; that the images which fill the soul have no lasting value, and that the world can offer nothing worthy of the soul’s desire. She feels that the outward life is a semblance of life; that the life of nature she felt is not her own true life, which consists in the blissful consciousness of true existence. Then she begins to long for the knowledge of her true existence, to be free from the bonds of opposites and to find rest in the indivisible eternal unity. To the same degree that she leaves the world of illusions, she is also abandoned by them; abandoning the delusion of selfhood and ascending to the regions of unselfishness, the realm of selfishness with its spawn vanishes under her feet, and before her appears the dawn of a new day of freedom and immortality. Egoism disappears and the heart is filled with a feeling of an all-encompassing self-awareness that knows no peculiarity and separateness, but feels and recognizes itself as one with life in everything.
Thus, the external lives in constant change and the eternal in constant unity with itself; our earthly consciousness moves in constant friction, our eternal self-consciousness rests in eternal peace. If we allow the world to affect us, our body will be enlivened, but if we allow the eternal to be revealed in us, then the soul will recognize itself in eternal existence. The greater the impact of the sense impressions on the body, the more the body enjoys existence, it constantly longs for stimulation, so that it knows that it is alive. To the body (kāma-manas) the life of the soul is an incomprehensible thing and immortality a meaningless word, for the earthly part of man has no true life and is not immortal. It takes immortality to know immortality, because no thing can have true knowledge (self-knowledge) of anything other than itself; it must be what it wants to recognize in itself. But if we allow the eternal to be revealed in the soul, then the true life of the soul awakens in us, the appearance disappears and in its place comes the knowledge of the truth, which leads to freedom and peace.
On the other hand, when the outer world acts on the inner, outward movement arises, and true self-consciousness disappears in proportion as the outer life comes into action; for the life of the soul is external stillness and internal movement, external unconsciousness and insensibility, but internal enlightenment; it is external non-existence, but inner all-Self-consciousness.
The vital activity of the soul consists in the exercise of its powers, which are internal (higher) and external (lower). Through her inner powers she reaches up into the realm of the spirit; through her lower powers she is bound to the material. When she is carried away by the whirl of the world and takes part in the purposeless and never-ending dance of opposites, her higher functions become paralyzed and inactive; the real sense of self of inner truth and majesty is toned down and obscured by the delusion of the perishable self, and vital activity is finally confined to the exercise of those functions pertaining to the lower and animal parts of our organism. The material mind (kāma-manas), imagination, theories and opinions, personal tendencies and dislikes, personal wants and desires all belong to the delusion of the “self.” In this case the soul is like a mirror in which the mirages of the world appear as realities, and we take the life of these images in our soul for our own life. Then these lower powers of the soul, whose real purpose is to serve the higher powers, begin to live as it were independently, and their purpose is none other than the preservation and satisfaction of one’s own self. This is the cause of all the many ways in which egoism manifests itself and which springs from ignorance of the true self, that self which few know and which in common parlance is called “God.”
Then begins the restless hunt for the satisfaction of personal desires, which grow the more one nourishes them. There, one cultivates personal affections and friendships, delusive knowledge, fantastic hopes, pernicious joys, all things which cannot last long because they are born and die within the cycle of our ever-changing existence.
But just as the soul can take in the world of phenomena, so too can it also take in the realm of the eternal by means of its higher powers, as soon as the lower activity is brought to a standstill. When the outer senses are controlled and the mind is kept in check so that there is complete stillness, the soul begins to feel its true existence, true consciousness awakens in it, the illusions of the world disappear, it becomes self-luminous and self-aware; it enters into the true existence of unity in all, independent of space and time, and as it unfolds and expands into a higher state, it also attains higher faculties and perceptions. It grows ever purer, holier, and stronger, and finds complete freedom in entering eternal rest.”
Notes:
[1] The Riddle of Existence. [Das Rätsel des Daseins. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 5, no. 30 (March 1895), 212-223] {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos. Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}