[Theosophie und Okkultismus (Eine Betrachtung).]
Translation from the German by Robert Hütwohl[1]
“Many will appear in my name and say: I am Christ, and will lead many astray.”
”Many false prophets will arise and deceive many.” (Mathaeus XXIV)
“Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have already gone out into the world.” (I John IV 1.)
Theosophy, or knowledge of God, is nowadays often confused with the occult, mysticism, spiritism, animism, astral vision, philosophical or metaphysical speculation, fanaticism, devilry, and superstition, and some think a good “theosophist” is by letting their imagination run wild, or blindly believes everything which lying spirits, outside or inside, tell him.
The mysterious has always exerted an irresistible attraction on the mind of curious people and many a “seeker after truth” indulges in feelings which spring from something quite different from love of the highest and only too easily from egoism towards the father and vanity towards the mother; but theosophy in the true sense of the word is neither a matter for the human-animal intellect nor merely a matter for feeling, but that spiritual knowledge which can only be attained through the awakening of the soul to true, higher self-awareness. Love without the mind is blind and the mind without love is the dark. No man can create the light of truth from himself; he attains it only by it being inwardly revealed in him.
The word “theosophy” is not a new invention. St. Paul writes in his Letters to the Corinthians (1st chap. II v. 7): “I do not speak to you of the wisdom of this world, nor of the great ones of this world who are passing away, but of the hidden (occult) Wisdom which God destined from eternity for our glory.” — In the Greek text of the Bible this hidden wisdom of God is called “Theosophy” (ϑεοῦ σοφίαν ἐν μηστηρίω).
Knowledge is not to be confused with wisdom; Scholarly stuff, no matter how useful it may be for temporal life in this world of appearances, is not yet knowledge of the eternal. The wisdom of God is therefore called “hidden” because it is a spiritual power proper to the inward spiritual man, the “reward of God”; but not to mortal man, the “son of nature,” who draws his knowledge from the sense world. The knowledge of the outward man is patchy and changeable; conscience is what the inward man knows with certainty; because it is the product of its experiences from many previous existences. The conclusions of the speculative philosopher are based on views and opinions formed by reading and reasoning, and pertain to things which may perhaps be true, but of which he has no personal experience; theosophy, or knowledge of the true and the real, has nothing to do with opinions, judgment, and belief; it needs no proof because it springs from the revelation of the light of truth in enlightened man. That is why the enlightened Thomas von Kempen says: “Blessed is he whom wisdom itself teaches: Not through ephemeral images and words, but as it is in its essence.”
Theosophy is the knowledge of the Eternal, the One, of which the infinite multiplicity of forms which make up this phenomenal world are made, and in which the One is embodied. God appears to us personally in all forms; for nothing exists without God; the whole universe is a revelation of the essence and power, power and glory of God at different stages of existence and whoever has come to the knowledge of God recognizes him as the indivisible one in himself and in all beings. The Bhagavad Gītā says: “Whoever sees in all beings the sole, supreme lord of the universe, the eternal one who works in transitory forms, that is the true seer.” (Ch. 13. verse 27).
God is permanent, everything else is only temporary. The distinction between the eternal and the transitory is the first condition for the knowledge of truth. However, this knowledge is not the scientific conviction of the correctness of a theory, but it springs from the consciousness of the union of divinity and humanity and the knowledge of the harmony which connects all beings in the universe with one another.
Nature is a symbol of the eternal and delivers this lesson to us. When we look at the waves of the stormy sea, they bring before our eyes a symbol of the stormy life of men. Each wave has its individual existence, albeit quickly transient; each is as it were, a personality which arises and perishes; each is born of the sea and returns to its origin. Each has its foam, which shines in all sorts of colors when illuminated by the sun’s rays and melts away again the next moment; but basically all the billows and waves are nothing but water and as such do not endure, and when the sea is still they are all one. The same calm prevails on the surface as in the depths and there is no difference between the drops and sea.
In the same way, human existence with such a wave and its earthly dreams with all its wishes, hopes, possessions and ideas can be regarded as the foam of the same. Basically, we are all God; but we don’t know. Also, a mere knowledge of this theory would be of little use to us. Only when the realization of our essential oneness with the Deity awakens in our consciousness, then do we really grasp what we really are, then do we recognize our personal existence as a passing phenomenon and our selfish notions as a dream. Every cloud in the sky has its particular shape and movement, and yet they are all just haze. Every body has its own form, and yet they are all just “matter.” There is only one primal force, only one spirit, but many kinds of revelations, and it is given to man to recognize himself as this One Spirit and his unity with God. This knowledge is true Theosophy, from which the theosophical teachings emerge.
Dreams are foam. Ideals only acquire substance when they are realized. All true knowledge comes from experience. A dead person cannot know what life is, the dreaming knows nothing about being awake. No man can learn through theoretical study what kind of powers faith, love, hope, justice, patience, etc. are, if he does not have these powers; he only feels them when they are revealed in him. True theosophy is the spiritual life of the inner man; it is not awakened in everyone; but each one carries within himself a spark of that divine life, which can awaken and enlighten the mind of man as it becomes flame through love of the Highest, and in that light the mysteries of God in the universe are known.
Whoever knows himself in truth, knows God. Man is a miniature world and as such a reflection of the greater world around him. God and nature, heaven and hell, the realm of spirits with all its spheres, the animal world and all the elements are represented in it. All the forces at work in the great world are dormant in him, and only the influence of the corresponding forces in the great world is required to awaken them. The visible is a symbol or simile of the invisible. We can therefore form an idea of the spiritual world by considering the visible.
We know that the visible sun is the center and heart of our world; that the sun breathes in and out and that our earth and the other planets receive their life, light and warmth from it. Without its heat rays the earth would be cold and rigid, without its light, dark, without its electric rays there would be no life, no power necessary for the construction and growth of organisms. These three forces or vibrations complement each other, one is just as necessary as the other. The visible sun is neither friend nor foe; she shines her rays on the just and the unjust; there is no need to ask her for her light; her blessing is open to anyone who grants admission.
If we regard the Deity (the “Word”) as the spiritual sun of the universe, we find in it the three powers mentioned above; but in a higher form. Its warmth is selfless, divine love, its light consciousness and intelligence, its “actinic” rays the spiritual life of the soul. Without the love of the highest there would be no elevation, for this love pulls us up; without intelligence the mind would be without light; without the spiritual life the soul would be spiritually dead and no rebirth in the spirit, no construction or development of the “immortal part sown in the corruptible”[2] would be possible. Love, wisdom, soul life are just as necessary for the knowledge of immortal existence as light, warmth and vitality for existence in the material world. These three forces comprise the “grace” of the spiritual sun, bestowed on anyone who opens his heart to it. Its possession is the only undoubted proof of immortality and the true saving spiritual faith, against which there is no contradiction because it is not based on hearsay but on self-consciousness.
There is no mention of a miraculous resurrection from the grave, no miraculous and supernatural creation of a heavenly body after death. Death cannot create anything new for us that we do not already have; it can only remove the obstacles which stand in the way of the soul’s clear seeing, by shedding the material covering which imprisons the inner man. But the inner, heavenly man needs a heavenly body, a “spiritual” organism with corresponding sense organs; without it, the ego would only be an abstract concept, an insubstantial dream structure without individual self-awareness and without free will. If this heavenly body is to be resurrected after the death of the material body, it must have been formed beforehand. In him our spiritual life has its dwelling place; it is the seat of our higher feelings and spiritual perceptions, the seat of true self-consciousness, spiritual faith, divine love, and all the heavenly powers and virtues inherent in immortal man. When after death the remaining coverings are discarded, the etheric body disappears, the region of desires and earthly thinking is left, there still remains this heavenly body, and without it there is no personal consciousness of immortality, for without the form the spirit cannot be manifested. Since everything is essentially God, everything is essentially immortal and cannot be destroyed; but in order that man may come to the consciousness of immortality, he needs the heavenly body, of which the apostle Paul says: “Not all flesh is one and the same, but the flesh (the organism) of humans is different, that of animals is different, that of fish is different, and that of birds is different. Also there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies; but the glory of the heavenly is different; another the earthly” etc. Through the transformations that the soul experiences after leaving the body, everything impure and “material” is stripped away, only the perfect remains. Only what has attained true self-awareness has this consciousness, and this self-knowledge is true “theosophy.” Without it there is no self-conscious immortality. A poet rightly says:
“The greatest immodesty
Is the belief in immortality;
The demand on nature
The poor creature
Even in their worst copies
To be preserved for all eternity.”
Only what is eternal in man will be eternal.
Every thing needs an organism for its development. Every living form grows through nutrition. We have a material body which feeds on the produce of the earth and has sense tools for communicating with the material world; our “astral body” absorbs the influences of the astral plane that arouse our desires and passions; our intellect feeds on thought and has organs for seeking ideas, grasping them, dissecting them and combining them into new thoughts, and likewise our immortal part is nourished by absorbing divine powers and strengthened by the exercise of them. Love and faith (spiritual knowledge) are the wings of the soul, through which it can rise to the highest to draw from the source of divine life; love is its substance; it is the force which connects the Deity to humanity and all beings to one another. Faith is the knowledge of the inner spiritual man, which the outer personal man can become conscious of through intuition. Without the intuitive knowledge of truth, all knowledge based on intellectual speculation as to the divine mysteries in nature is only a figment of the imagination.
The inner man and the outer man are not separate personalities during mortality; they are connected and in a way one, yet different from each other; similar to how the two poles of a magnet form an inseparable magnet and yet one is not the other. The outer man receives his light from the inner man, and the inner man his light from the Deity; and as the clarity of a glass depends on its purity, so the mind’s receptivity to the light of divine wisdom depends on its freedom from base ideas, thoughts, and desires.
We have everything within us, as it were in the seed, but we are not conscious of it; it must first come from within to the outside. Theosophical writings only have the purpose of bringing to personal consciousness what we already know inwardly. Man has no understanding of anything which does not already exist, even if only as a germ, within himself; but if a slumbering knowledge is awakened in him by a lecture or by reading a book, he is happy about it, as if he were meeting an old acquaintance; what he had previously seen vaguely now suddenly becomes clear to him and he may end with the astonished exclamation: “I’ve always known all that!”
Theosophy is therefore not a teaching system and not a product of intellectual speculation, but one’s own inner, spiritual knowledge, which can only be unique, but can vary depending on the degree of receptivity. A great light illuminates a large room, a small one a small one; but the nature of the light is the same.
“Occult knowledge” emerges from the revelation of the light of truth in man. It is not a matter of learning but of experiencing. All higher knowledge which does not spring from the self-knowledge of the truth is theory or fantasy, after-prayer and often lies or deceit. Countless are the unfortunates who are possessed by lying spirits which have arisen in themselves through the influx of influences from the astral and which sometimes even make themselves felt through inner voices. The nature of these “ghosts” is usually recognized by the vanity and megalomania of those possessed by them. The fact that the speeches of such lying spirits sometimes seem unctuous and edifying is irrelevant, for a comedian can also make beautiful speeches.
H. P. Blavatsky says: “One should have become a theosophist before one wants to become an occultist.” one should have come to the knowledge of one’s higher self before one deals with occult things, since this study is otherwise connected with the greatest dangers; for the impure attracts the impure, and the selfish egoist ends up being possessed by evil spirits.
Since the whole world, as Jakob Boehme also teaches, came into being from divine wisdom through divine will, self-knowledge or theosophy and the occult science arising from it also encompasses the whole world with all its realms. Man in his earthly appearance is an intellectual animal; but in his inmost being he is God, and the universe his (God’s) revelation. If he has come to unite his consciousness with the spirit of God, he can recognize the whole universe and its laws as a universal human being within himself.
“In myself is the world! — In myself the sun shines, the changing moon shines and the bright stars shimmer. The seas roar in my chest, my breath pervades the universe, and my thought calls forth new forms everywhere. Where I reveal myself, there is peace and bliss, and where I am not, despair. Mine is the power, splendor and glory of the universe and mine is the realm of love, harmony and infinite bliss.”[3] This is the true occultist, recognizing himself in God and God in all beings,[4] and without this realization there is unsalaried preoccupation with Occultism and intercourse with the invisible inhabitants of the astral world a dangerous bungling.
Notes
[1] Theosophy and Occultism. (A Consideration) [Theosophie und Okkultismus (Eine Betrachtung). Franz Hartmann, M.D. Neue Lotusblüten 3, nos. 9-10 (September-October 1910), 257-272.] {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}
[2] St. Paul. I Corinthians 15, 44.
[3] “The Talking Image of Urur.”
[4] Paul. II Corinthians 13, 5.