[Die Religion der Erkenntnis]
Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl[1]
“Purification of the heart and renunciation of evil-doing is the religion of all Buddhas.” Gautama Buddha
Religion and Church! — Both belong together by rights, like the core and the shell. As the protective bark surrounds the pith of the tree, or the shell surrounds the egg, so the outward form of religion should protect religious life from harmful influences; but the bark is not the tree, the shell is not the egg, churchhood is not religion. The inside is the essence, the outside is the form. If you only stick to the letter, you lose the spirit of the thing. He who only observes the form does not recognize the essence. The spirit of religion is the light, the form is the shadow, the church is appearance. If the appearance is false, it is an obstacle to recognizing the true light.
For millennia, mankind was held in dishonorable, depressing spiritual slavery by fear of an unknown, otherworldly, avenging god who was credited with human weaknesses. Not realizing that God himself is the law, he was pictured as a legislator above his law, able to amend the law at will, and ultimately entrusting his office to a vicarious ecclesiastical association of men, which he endowed with powers to forgive sins, to remit just punishments, and to bestow undeserved favors.
But the dawn of the day of liberty that will put an end to this degrading mysticism has come. The proclamation of the angel’s message rings out more and more loudly: “The man is himself.” In the light of truth the phantoms of night vanish, the heavens melt away like a dream, and the monstrosities of hell sink into the void from which they arose; for, viewed in the light of true knowledge, these things appear as conditions that man creates for himself. The true church can certainly forgive sins, but this church is the holy spirit of self-knowledge, and whoever enters into it also gives away their sins with the delusion of his own identity. No god dwelling without us, nor any external church, can grant a man a remission of his sins; but if he himself desist from sinning, he is free from sin. The spirit of knowledge gives him the strength to do this. Often people who have not yet come to a knowledge of the truth seek consolation in the outward forms of the church, and it is good that this is so. Should the chick break the shell of the egg before it has fledged, it would be its undoing; but the mature bird no longer needs the shell. As long as people do not recognize the spirit of the true religion, they need to believe in externals in order not to sink into unbelief; but when the spirit of knowledge prevails, it breaks the form. All external consolations are like narcotics, which give the sick person temporary relief, but leave him weaker at the end than he was at the beginning; for whoever relies on foreign, external help gains no strength of his own. Whoever does not himself shake off the chains that bind him, even God cannot redeem him; he certainly gives us the strength to do so, but we have to use it ourselves. If we sit in the dark dungeon and still believe so firmly that the sun is shining outside, it still doesn’t bring us any light. But if we open the windows, the sunlight comes in without our effort.
God is indeed everywhere, but he only enters our existence when we enter his existence. There is no light for the blind, and no God for the wicked. God must come into us if he is to come into our existence. This is not done through ceremony and custom, but through our will coming into alignment with the divine will. God’s will is love. He wants nothing but to be born in us, and he cannot do so while our will resists him. Our task is to let the will of God rule in us and to avoid and remove everything that stands in the way of the work of God’s love in our soul.
God is not a thing other than His will. When divine love becomes manifest in our hearts and becomes our living force, we attain freedom through it. But the love of God is not subject to any limitations. It has nothing to do with personal inclinations and special favors. It is general; it fills and pervades the whole universe and is shared with all creatures without distinction according to the degree to which they are able to absorb it. His love is the law in all creation. Whoever loves and recognizes God in all his creatures and acts in accordance with this knowledge fulfills the law.
True religion is not the mindless acceptance of ecclesiastical dogmas, but the fulfillment of the law, and this law is love. Not the love of a distant and unknown God, but the love of all that is noble and beautiful and true in human beings, as well as in animals and in all of nature; for whoever imagines that he loves God and despises his creatures has no true knowledge and only worships a figment of his own imagination. God’s work is evolution. Whoever wants to love him must be a collaborator in his work and seek to promote the good in all things as far as his knowledge reaches. He who harms others harms himself. This is a most simple religion, and it needs no great learning; for on the pure of heart, and refraining from doing evil, God fills him with his love, and works its wonders through him.
True religion is based on unselfish love; from it the knowledge of God (Theosophy) emerges. The cornerstone of popular churchdom is egoism with its entourage. It might be called the religion of convenience, since it is far more convenient to rely on outside help than to practice the great art of self-restraint, far easier to believe in dogma than to penetrate the spirit of religion, and even that to walk the path to the light that leads through the thorny valley of renunciation and self-denial.
In this way, self-control and self-knowledge are mutually dependent. By the spirit of truth man is exalted and enlightened; he is strengthened by self-control. The higher he climbs the mountain of living faith, the more the spiritual horizon of his knowledge expands, and when he has found a firm footing where he has arrived, he is ready for further ascent. What is the light of the sun in the outer world is the light of knowledge within us. We receive the teaching from outside, but only what becomes an essence within us is our property. Views rule on the outside, but insight lies within ourselves.
Every force grows from its center and spreads out. He who has his base within himself builds on good foundations and gathers strength. If you shift your center of gravity outwards, you gravitate outwards; he scatters his strength and in the end loses himself. The brave bears his own burden and thereby becomes strong, the coward seeks to burden another and indulges in unworthy weakness. The righteous seek to pay their debt, the deceiver demands a scapegoat.
All great religious systems are based on the same truths, but in all ecclesiastical organizations they are misunderstood and distorted. In all, Christ (the God-man) is the light, though called by other names, and in all, egoism is the Antichrist and the beast on which the ruler of Babylon rides. The Christian church is no exception to this rule; for it is a consequence of the imperfection of human nature, in which delusion and selfishness still prevail and prevent men from seeing the truth. These illusions are fueled by fear of punishment and hopes for undeserved rewards. Even some high-ranking theologians have come to see that modern Christianity represents neither the spirit nor the teaching of Christ. The religious controversies of the Middle Ages have often produced the opinion that it is only a question of professing this or that denomination in order to be saved and instead of living faith in the redeeming divine power which is constantly in the heart of people striving for revelation, the highest step is the acceptance of theories, whereby one comfortably spares one’s own thinking; the common understanding of religious truths is characterized by its narrowness, and “religion” is a word understood by few.
Religion in the true sense of that word is a most serious and precious thing; for it is not about dogmatism in relation to this or that ecclesiastical theory, but about one’s own development and the awakening to true self-awareness and spiritual life after death. A man who has no self-knowledge and self-control lives only a dream-life, even if he is content in it while it lasts, and this dreaming continues even after death; because he is not master of his feelings and thoughts, but a play of the blind natural forces that produce his feelings and thoughts. The phenomena of hypnotism and suggestion, in which physical suffering can even be produced through the power of uncontrolled ideas, may give many an opportunity to reflect on whether the state which one creates for oneself during life is not real to him after death, hell will appear.
All man’s sufferings, both before and after the death of his body, arise from ignorance of his true divine nature. The only remedy for ignorance is knowledge. Whoever knows himself in truth (in God) is lord over his whole nature, over heaven and hell; for he has awakened from sleep and dreams no more. In the light of true knowledge all errors disappear like fog by the light of the sun.
Note
[1] The Religion of Knowledge. [Die Religion der Erkenntnis. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Theosophischer Wegweiser 5, no. 8 (May 1903), 228-230] {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}