[Der Ursprung der Leidenschaften. Involution und Evolution.]
Translation from the German by Robert Hütwohl[1]
Involution and Evolution
“Diabolus est Deus inversus.”
“The devil is God inverted.”
In the Bhagavad-Gītā Arjuna (man) asks:
“What, O teacher, is
The power which often hits people with violence
Driven to sin and against his will
Forcing him?”
And Krishna (the deity) replies:
“It is the passion
known as kāma. It is that which drives him.
Born from the night of ignorance,
It is man’s enemy; greedy, strong
And rapacious, it is his undoing.
As the smoke of fire rises,
Like rust, sticks to the metal mirror,
And as the womb embraces the child,
So the world is surrounded by this spirit.”
Passion is what creates suffering, and man suffers because he lets what causes him suffering affect him or cannot prevent this effect. Physical ailments can be inflicted on him from external forces, but he can gain dominion over inward passions. No one can anger another man, provoke him to anger, arouse his envy or desire, and the like, unless he allows himself to be angered or provoked. Everyone has the right and inherent power to be master of the passions which beset him.
Every aspiring man desires to be free from passions; but it becomes difficult for him to master the emotions of his lower nature. Passions are states which belong to his lower self; they are forms of self-will which work mightily when man lacks the consciousness of his higher nature by which power he can control these lower powers. The sufferings they create are a necessary evil, because through them man is stimulated to overcome these forms of will; they are necessary for the development of his individuality; for this only begins where he ceases to be a herd man or a plaything of the natural forces at work in him; true, individual self-consciousness only occurs when the human being has found himself and his will is free and no longer bound to his desires. He who is driven by his baser instincts and desires is not free.
Without struggle there is no victory, without victory there is no freedom. A entirely dispassionate man would be either a god who has conquered all forms of self-will, or a weakling, capable of no ardour and unfit for anything. But if you are struggling with your passions, the question will also arise: “Where do they come from?”
Observation and experience teach us that our passions arise from, and are manifestations of, the workings of universally dominant natural impulses. They are general principles which express themselves in one and the same way in humans and animals. Sexual instinct, greed, pride, envy, avarice, etc., are the same forces in humans and animals, just as light, warmth, electricity, etc., are everywhere the same and produce the same conditions. As is the case with all other forces in nature, here too the formless and omnipresent reveals a part of itself in form limited to time and space. This general and, like the air, omnipresent “spirit” is a form of will in nature, an activity of the life of the soul of the world. It is the descent of the life principle into the material, of the formless into the forms to which it binds itself, in order to begin the ascent from the material into the spiritual, to attain self-awareness, individuality, and the ONE will in nature becoming individual Embodied in forms, innumerable forms of consciousness arise according to the qualities of those organisms, and the self-will of beings arises from the qualities they acquire as a result of their evolution.
There are thus two kinds of progress, viz. the descent of the wave of life in the universe from the spiritual to the material, and the ascent towards the spirit. This is indicated in the theosophical writings by the symbol of the two intertwined triangles. Just as the universally present sunlight embodies itself in the most varied forms of plants and produces various herbs, splendidly colored flowers, sweet and bitter fruits, so this spirit condenses, taking on coarser and coarser vibrations upon its descent, until it becomes visible matter and animates forms. First it forms the mineral kingdom, then the forms of the vegetable kingdom, then the animal kingdom, of which the crown is the animal man, which then, at a certain stage in its development, becomes mature to absorb the divine life, the divine spark, by the awakening of which the animal man becomes a real human being whose privilege is the possession of true individual self-awareness and immortality.
The descending tide of this life wave or “life essence” is not an intelligent spirit. Let us call it the “Earth Spirit.” Goethe has it speak in Faust as follows:
“In the flood of life, in the storm of action
I wriggle up and down,
Weave to and fro birth and grave, an eternal sea, an ever changing weaving, a glowing life.
So I create with the whizzing loom of time, And weave the living garment of the deity.”
This spirit has no intelligence of its own, but has an inherent instinct for self-preservation, necessary for its progress on the path of involution; but by allying itself with the organisms of animals and men, it gains an ally in their intellectual faculties, and is thereby better able to establish or seek those conditions which it needs for its descent into matter. For it, densification and materialization is an advance and a necessity, just as spiritualization is an advance and a necessity for those beings who are on the ascending path of evolution. This earth-spirit, which tempts men to humble themselves by producing in them grosser vibrations of spirit, is not a personal devil “walking about like a roaring lion seeking whomever to devour”; it has neither judgment nor conscience, but instinctively follows the law of necessity. Where there are germs of passions in the animal organism, there this kindred spirit, striving for gross vibrations, is attracted; it combines with these germs and favors their growth, which takes place all the more the more the will and imagination of man participate and come to its aid. So these germs grow up in the mind like mushrooms after a rainy night, and the human mind is like a garden populated by many such plants, which in theosophical literature are called “false lives” or “desire elements” and their outward appearance when they become visible corresponds to their character.
Every passion cultivated in man represents a personality of corresponding appearance; the spiritual aura which surrounds man is a miniature world populated with the figments of his own will and imagination; the earth spirit gives them substance, will power and character form. He who thinks of his passions nourishes them; those who try to suppress them give them strength; for every power grows by the resistance it meets; it is only by rising above them that one gets rid of them.
The animals in our visible corporeal world are personifications of natural forces, including the passions, and it is therefore not surprising that the form of an animal corresponds to the sum of its character traits, and that in one or the other this or that trait is predominant and is pronounced; all creatures are symbols and outward representations of the essence underlying their existence. In the astral, where the “stuff” is of finer vibrations and consequently much more docile, the forms take on even more readily those qualities which correspond to their essence. Then the addiction to slander can be presented as a poisonous snake, envy as a toad, sensuality as a billy goat (think of the witch trials of the Middle Ages), fear as a hare and the like. Now, if a man possesses a “mediumistic” arrangement, i.e., one which provides the elements necessary for a “materialization,” then these personifications can even become externally visible and physically appear and act as they emerge from the human being; for each of them represents a “personality,” an individual phenomenon with its own will, feeling, and thought, whose life is of shorter or longer duration according to the intensity of the desire from which it sprang.
Among the Christian saints, there are many who weakened their bodies through ascetic practices and thereby became mediumistic. Then the false egos formed through the suppression of passions and desires emerged from within them and appeared condensed into material beings, and thus male and female saints were tormented by these self-arisen devils. Examples of this are the temptations of St. Anthony,[2] St. Therese, Catherine of Kaufbeuren and hundreds of others. Such a devil once appeared to Katharina in the costume of a hunter’s boy, took a bowl of hot soup that she was carrying out of her hands and poured the contents over her head. Hundreds of similar events are recorded in the history of spiritism. Such things are often depicted in old church paintings, e.g. the fight of the angel Michael with the devils. The angel, who with the fiery sword sends the devils lying at his feet into hell, represents the higher Self, which destroys the false lives through the power of the knowledge of the truth.
Every passion not only creates certain colors in the human aura, but corresponding forms also arise from it. A person who is insanely drunk sees snakes or worms crawling about his body, which have a real existence for him, even if they are invisible to others. They may arise in his astral body in much the same way that material worms arise in a decaying material body. Convicted criminals are sometimes tormented by horrifying visions that take on a tangible reality in the night and solitude of their dungeon, as described by Shakespeare in Macbeth. “Science” usually refers to such visions as “hallucinations,” which usually mean figments of the imagination, or the imagined perception of something nonexistent, or illusions; but with the same right one could regard our whole visible world as a series of illusions. For the inhabitant of the dream world, appearances there are just as real as products of imagination as the appearances of this world are for us, and that the super-sensible can enter the realm of the senses under certain circumstances is doubted at most only by those who are familiar with such things have no experience. It may be objected that the “false selves” are only thought-forms; but it may be replied that in our present bodily form we too are only thought-forms, existing on the physical-material plane and therefore “materialized” and visible to us. All existence is relative. But not only through our passions, but also through our everyday wanting, thinking and through employment and education such “I’s” are created. One says, for example, “in this person there is an actor, in that a doctor, an inventor, a musician” etc., depending on whether the person has nurtured and developed this or that quality within himself. Such an “I” or “elemental” is related to our true “I” only insofar as we identify with it. One must distinguish between man and the qualities temporarily assumed and embodied in him. You can e.g., be a shoemaker or tailor and still remain a human being. The shoemaker gives up his craft and with it the shoemaker disappears. Man remains what he is. After death, when man has discarded all his earthly qualities, in the end only the immortal man, the true Self, remains. Since the wrong lives have disappeared; there the king is no longer a king, the beggar no longer a beggar, the scholar no longer a scholar; then the traders and barterers are driven out of the Temple of Wisdom, and only the “Son of God” rules in it, or as much as there is of this Heavenly Man.
But how can we free ourselves from these false flames and forms of desire in this life? How can we get rid of these phantasms and spooks which are figments of our imagination but are alive, intelligent, and willful? — If we drive them out, they will come back again.
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of man, it wanders through arid regions to seek rest; but he doesn’t find it. Then he says, I will return to my house from whence I came. He comes, finds it empty, cleaned and adorned, goes back and takes with him seven other spirits worse than himself; they come and take the apartment. And so in the end things are worse with this man than they were at the beginning.”[3]
An old saying goes: “Natura abhorret vacuum” (“Nature abhors a vacuum”). One cannot cast out a desire from the heart without replacing it with another. All attempts to ennoble humanity by depriving it of what it needs at its present stage of development without giving it anything higher in return have ended miserably. Deprivation only creates a void. Where there is no temptation, there is no overcoming of it, and no opportunity to strengthen the power to control oneself. The salvation of the world will not be brought about by prohibitions and the avoidance of evil, but by the awakening of a higher spiritual knowledge strong enough to withstand temptations. A wise legislation will therefore not seek to deprive the people of every opportunity to satisfy natural passions, but limit itself to preventing excesses and not sanctioning unnatural vices by tolerating them or allowing them to become popular.
Animal nature cannot rule itself; there, only a stronger passion drives out the weaker one. The fear of a thrashing restrains the trained dog from taking the offered bone; vanity overcomes avarice, greed overcomes fear, anger overcomes cowardice, pride overcomes envy, etc. Here, the law of the stronger prevails, just as in the outer animal kingdom, where one creature devours another.
Human animal nature is like a menagerie populated by all sorts of animals fighting each other. It will be of little use to us to step into the arena with the club and argue with them; for the passions, temporarily conquered and silenced, rise again and become more stormy than before. In order to fight with the beasts, man must put himself on a par with them; then the passion is often stronger than he is, and he is always in danger of being defeated.
On the other hand, it is in the power of man to raise himself above the battlefield in his self-consciousness through soul power and to be just an uninvolved spectator during these fights, who is not touched inside by all of this. He then does not, himself, take part in this quarrel; as an immortal spirit he looks down on his own person and the processes taking place in it and says to himself: “These powers are in accordance with their law.”[4] They do not disturb his holy peace; he does not resist the lusts of the passions, nor seek to gratify them; he is above all.
The mind of man which is not attached to anything does not suffer. But when he is attached to something, he participates in its feelings, and it is then the spirit that suffers. A dead body has no sensation; an unconscious person does not suffer. Likewise, the mind of a man fully in that state of higher consciousness called “ecstasy” or “trance” feels no physical pain even though his body is being damaged. The history of the martyrs and victims of the Inquisition provides numerous examples of this. In such cases, it is not the human spirit but the body which is in a state of unconsciousness. The less the spirit is bound to the body, the more it is free, the clearer its consciousness emerges. If we succeed in no longer thinking about this or that object, the perception of it also ceases with this thinking.
Physical sensations belong to the realm of the material, mental sensations and passions to the realm of desires (the astral plane) which is intimately connected with it; but every normal man has within him a spark of the divine life bestowed on him, the possession of which places him above the animal kingdom, and by the power of which he can rise in self-consciousness above both the sensual and the lustful realms. Will and thought are the wings of the soul. Everyone has them, but he must learn to use them in order to reach the realm of freedom and redeem himself. What fills the soul of man is his property. When the spirit of self-knowledge enters his heart and the divine ideal is realized within himself, no emptiness remains.
Notes
[1] The Source of the Passions. [Der Ursprung der Leidenschaften. Involution und Evolution Franz Hartmann, M.D. Neue Lotusblüten 1, no. 9-10 (September-October 1908), 301-318] {This was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos. Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}
[2] See illustration. {R.H.—I was not able to locate any illustration in this volume 1 of Neue Lotusblüten, I found three, but which one did Dr. Hartmann refer to? Therefore, I have not included any image, just as he did not in the original article.}
[3] Matt. XII, 44.
[4] Bhagavad-Gītā XIV, 23.