[Die Symbole des “heiligen Kreuzweges.”]
Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl[1]
It is not just in the East where sparkling jewels and lotus flowers have burst forth, but the flower of wisdom also blooms in the West and many a precious stone is hidden in an inconspicuous shell, where it is either ignored or its value is completely misjudged. The Christian religion, too, has its deep mysteries, of the existence of which the uninitiated know nothing; they are the same as we find in the Upanishads of the Indians, only in different forms. One of the most beautiful symbols is the “Holy Way of the Cross,” which depicts the passion of Jesus of Nazareth. To the layman and the adherent of an external religion, these pictures are nothing but representations of the captivity and death of a single person who is said to have lived in Palestine 1894 years ago and was crucified by the Jews; but to the deeper seer they are a representation of the ever-repeating history of all mankind from its beginning to the attainment of divine perfection through the knowledge of God, the divine Self.
Who is “Jesus of Nazareth?” To the profane, he is a man who died nearly two thousand years ago; the son of a Jewess, allegedly conceived and born in a miraculous and therefore unnatural way; the initiate who has outgrown theological superstition recognizes him as the symbol of the divine dwelling in humanity, and in Mary as the soul of the world. But the quiet Nazareth is in contrast to the noisy Jerusalem, the mad world, the heart of mankind, the place of rest where the knowledge of truth comes into existence and men are redeemed from the night of ignorance and the hell of folly. Animals surround the cradle of the Redeemer because there were animal-like human forms in which the Sons of Light could incarnate or “overshadow” them once these “daughters of the earth” (the humans of the third race) were mature.[2]
Jesus Himself (the truth within man) says, “I am the truth and the life.” Why should we doubt the words of truth spoken by the truth within us? The apostle Paul says: “O my children, whom I bear again in sorrows, until Christ is formed in you” (until the ideal of truth becomes substance, reality in you.)[3] These and many similar sayings in the Bible suffice, to point out to those who believe in the Bible that “Jesus of Nazareth” does not mean the personality of an individual man, but the essence of the God-man, in other words the Godhead in all mankind. However, whether a person once lived among the Jews to whom the things symbolically depicted in the passion story of Jesus really externally happened is a matter for historians and scholars to investigate; for those seeking truth, all external events and appearances have no value because they are only appearances and not the truth, the essence.
On the other hand, the idea that a man should benefit from the death of another (even if that other were a god) and triumph because another suffered for him is contrary not only to the moral sense of justice, but also to common sense, for a sick person is not healed by another swallowing the medicine for him, he must take it himself, and spiritual freedom is not attained through the favor of another, but only through the awakening of one’s own knowledge.[4] However, by stripping Jesus of Nazareth of his earthly form, he is not diminished, it is precisely the limitation of the form that prevents us from seeing him in his true magnitude. If this limitation falls away, then we see him in his sublimity, as the one “Son of God,” the divine man, Iswara [Iśvara], the Lord of the World. What can be loftier than the thought that the high divine ideal which mankind worships is not of the past and not of a stranger, unapproachable or unknown, but belongs to itself, and that the omnipresent ruler of heaven and earth is not a foreign tyrant, but is our own true, infinite Self once we recognize it as such.
How dumb is all petty and limited dogmatism with its formulas and literal belief in the face of the magnificence of this view! Now we see that another person cannot walk the way of the cross for us, but that we have to walk it ourselves in order to reach the goal. This going the way of the cross is a high and sacred science and art, so high that it cannot be comprehended by most, even the learned, and cannot be practiced by the unholy, and yet it is so important that from its practical application all our happiness, our future, even our immortal existence in space, depends on it. This way of the cross is the way of life which everyone has to traverse and even if he doesn’t want to know anything about the “cross” he has to endure it, provided that he remains a human being and does not want to sink to the level of an animal; for the cross signifies the burden imposed on man by the duties which come with the consciousness of being above his animal instincts. Therefore the way of the cross of life only begins when man begins to think more deeply. This is also represented in the first of the Allegories of the Cloister.
First stop.
Pilate condemns Jesus to death.
As long as man remained in truth, he also remained in purity; his consciousness was the all-consciousness of God’s nature, his will the will of God, but without his own knowledge, without consciousness of his individuality. In order to know his individual existence he had to separate himself from his divine nature and become a personalized individual; to appreciate the light, he had to step into the darkness: he had to know evil, to inhabit matter as a spirit, in order to arrive at the knowledge of good. Thus man condemned himself to death by leaving the sphere of his heavenly existence and identifying himself with the material, the “non-self.”
The creatures of the third human race living on earth were not yet human in the true sense of the word, but only human-like animal forms in which no immortal human spirit lived in them. The sons of light had to come down from their lofty heights, die to their divinity by uniting with the people of the earth. Only through this could the creatures of the earth be redeemed and brought to spiritual consciousness, so that the spirit communicated itself to them, and on the other hand, through this, the spirit attained the realization of its individuality.
“When the sweat-born brought forth the egg-born, the two-layered, the mighty, the strong endowed with bones, then the masters of truth spoke: Now we want to create. Then the third race became the vessel of the Angels of Wisdom. This produced the Sons of Will and Yoga.”[5]
“Jesus” is the soul (Ātma-buddhi) and “Pilate” is the material, earth-born intellect (kāma-manas) whose judgment is wrong because it does not have and does not know the truth and is guided in its conclusions by its sense impressions. His is the scholarly conceit who does not know the truth even when it is in front of him, but always looks for “evidence” with his eyes closed.[6] “Pilate” is our own perverted and sinful nature, which makes us unable to recognize “Jesus,” our true Self; we ourselves are Jesus and Pilate in one person and condemn ourselves to captivity because we love captivity and do not know freedom.
Second stop.
Jesus takes up the cross.
Through our divine Self blending with, or more properly permeating, our earthly personality, man attains the dawning awareness of his higher nature, and the “conscience,” which is the sum of his soul impressions made through earlier experiences in previous states of existence (incarnations). As long as man was still a spiritless and conscienceless animal-man, or when he becomes an animal-man, there was and is no “conscience” for him and nothing “moral”; he can do whatever he wants without harming himself in any way other than externally. But if there is in him the sense of the presence of a higher Self, he also takes upon himself the cross along with the sufferings which his union with his sensual nature imposes on him. Only now does the battle between the higher and the lower begin, as so aptly described in the Bhagavad Gita. He is scourged by his passions, mocked by his own animal mind; the “Jews”, i.e., the lower intellectual powers in man, ruled by selfishness, drown out the voice of unselfish love with their clamor; the scholars and Pharisees who cling to the dead letter of the law reject the voice of truth, and the chief priests, to whom the interest of their church and articles of faith are paramount, cry out: “Crucify him!” Even today, when the voice of truth tells us that man is in his very self the Son of God, and that he can find that God nowhere other than in his own self, but the ignorant, which knows no other “self” than the personal, says: “This is the religion of self-idolatry, and whoever follows it must die, for he has made himself the Son of God,” and Pilate is embarrassed because he cannot distinguish the real self from the apparent self.[7]
Third stop.
Jesus falls under the cross.
All mystical symbols are capable of different interpretations. This does not mean that everyone can give them whatever meaning they please, but that the meaning changes for us as we change our point of view. That the fall of the soul means its descent into a lower state (the incarnation) does not need to be discussed. “Man fell laden with sin in the dust of this mortal life.”[8] Three times he falls on his way, and the number three means eternity, i.e., as long as man has not attained perfection, his God is continually reincarnated in him, past, present and future. But in relation to the evolution of the macrocosm, the three falls signify, to my mind, the first three races of the human race, and perhaps also the three stages of existence, the kingdom of heaven, the astral plane, and the material world.
Fourth stop.
Jesus meets his dear mother.
The spiritual in its descent meets the material, divinity meets man. Power is born from energy and matter, God-consciousness is created from spirit and soul. Therefore substance is the dear mother of the ideal; for without the substance the ideal would never be substantial and realized. With regard to the entry of the spirit into matter in the macrocosm, however, The Secret Doctrine says:
“The sons of wisdom, the sons of night, ready to be born again, descended. They saw the ugly forms of the third race. Some entered into these apparitions; others let a spark enter them; others hesitated to incorporate until the fourth race had come into existence.”[9]
In relation to the microcosm, the mother of Jesus is pure mind (manas), in relation to the universe, she is alaya [ālaya], the world soul, the astral light in the higher mystical sense. Both are essentially one and the same. We ourselves are therefore the “mother of Jesus,” and Jesus himself the consciousness of the divine, and when we approach him he meets us.
Fifth station.
Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross.
The power that helps man bear his cross on the path of life and enables him to be morally upright is the strength he receives from above, whether we think of it described as will, belief, conviction, confidence, self-awareness, etc.; it is the light which emanates from the spiritual sun of the universe (Logos), and which is felt by those who cannot yet see spiritually as the warmth of the love of good.
With regard to the macrocosm, however, we see that in the zodiac the sign of Cancer, which signifies a step back into the material, is followed by the sign of Leo. Through the power of the lion, which the spirit finds in the material, it gains substance and strength for its development.
Sixth station.
Veronica hands Jesus the sweat cloth.
“Veronica” means the personal self upon which the higher self desires to impress its stamp, “that the old man may die in us, and that we may be renewed in the image of Jesus.”[10] The more the “old man” in us lives according to his sensuality and yields to selfishness, the more the God-man in us suffers, whose nature is unselfish love. This is as logical and understandable as any other problem in exact science.
In the evolution of the human race, the people of the third race were only fully formed when the Sons of Heaven “overshadowed” them.
“The sons of wisdom, the sons of power, chose to incarnate and descended to earth. The third race was ready for their reception. “In these we will dwell,” said the Lord of the Flame. The third race became the vahan [vāhan] (vessel) for the Sons of Wisdom.”[11]
Seventh station.
Jesus falls under the cross a second time.
The spiritual man puts on three garments during his descent into matter: First thought (thought body, Kārana-Sharira) [kāraṇa-śarīra] forms, “the indescribable image,” which is based on the idea of selfhood. Then the astral body (Sukshma-Sharira) [sūkṣma-śarīra], the ethereal garment of the psychic man. Lastly, the material body (Sthula-Sharira) [sthūla-śarīra], which is brought forth from the five elements and is born of karma.[12] Each of these three changes represents a “fall into matter,” the subsequent one being deeper than the previous one, as there is a progressive “densification,” a loss of higher consciousness, a sinking into ignorance of the truth.
Eighth station.
Jerusalem’s daughters weep for Jesus.
“Jerusalem” is to be understood as meaning the foolish world with its follies and daydreams. But the “daughters of Jerusalem” are the freaks of scholarly arrogance and clericalism, the false dogmas and perverted philosophies of which it is written that the times of enlightenment will come, woman will say: “Blessed are the barren (who brought no error into the world) and the womb that is not born and the breasts that are not suckled!”
According to another view, the daughters of the new Jerusalem, which is the kingdom of truth, are the spiritual powers that have come to knowledge (virtue, righteousness, etc.), who weep over the loss of the knowledge of truth among men.
Ninth station.
Jesus falls under the cross for the third time.
Through the “third fall” the descent of the soul into matter is completed. Thus she has reached the lowest point of her degradation (material embodiment) and now begins her real ascent to Golgotha, the mountain of sacrifice of the transitory self. Through this humiliation, however, the soul at the same time gains the strength to rise above the material and to overcome it. Without contact with sin there would be no victory over it. The devil becomes mankind’s savior by being overpowered and controlled.
Tenth station.
Jesus is stripped of his clothes.
Whoever recovers from the third fall does not have to wait for his mortal coil to be stripped off through the death of his body, but he is freed from everything impure by recognizing the purity in his soul. Once you have fully realized what is pure, you no longer find pleasure in what is impure. He recognizes himself as the heavenly man and his earthly garments as the house in which he dwells. Dwelling in the body, he lives free from it in the spiritual world; he recognizes himself in his appearance as a human creature; but in his inner being as the “ruler of everything made of light, radiant consciousness itself.”[13]
Eleventh Station.
Christ is nailed to the cross.
Nailing to the cross means complete surrender, giving up one’s own thinking, willing and acting, which are the three “nails” by which man nails himself to earthly existence. Through this surrender to the divine spirit of true self-knowledge the spirit of God attains the power to think, will and act within us so that, contrary to blind nature, we become its self-aware tools. In other words, by knowing the law and conforming to it, we ourselves become the law.[14]
Twelfth station.
Jesus is mocked on the cross and dies.
What could lift the soul of man more than the consciousness of his divine nature, which awakens in him to the same degree as he selflessly performs his duty, and cares no more for considerations of his person? “Jesus” symbolizes our own spiritual life,[15] which unites heaven and earth. Thereby we are enabled in our feeling, perception and self-confidence to ascend into the heavenly existence and to enjoy it. But that also stops the delusion of separateness and personality.
Thirteenth station.
The body of Jesus in the womb of Mary.
In this symbol too we find a threefold meaning, depending on the point of view from which we look at it:
- At the highest level, “the womb of Mary” signifies the state of nirvana, divine rest, the “Self” (Ātma) which is satchitananda [sat-cit-ānanda] (truth, self-knowledge and bliss).
- On the celestial plane it signifies Devachan, the “paradise” from which, after a period of rest, “Jesus” (the soul) descends anew into material existence, to appear on the stage of life in a new personality as a human appearance.
- On the astral plane it means the astral light (kāma-loka) in which the skandhas, i.e., the psychic qualities (the “flesh”), which are the personal qualities of the deceased are dormant until a new reincarnation (reincarnation or new formation of a personality).[16]
For the material body, the “womb of Mary” are the elements in which it dissolves and in which it finds no rest, for vital activity itself does not cease. Where it ceases to reveal itself in one form, it reappears in another.
Fourteenth station.
The body of Jesus is placed in the tomb.
This tomb is a new one; i.e., the soul, which is separated from the body, moves into a new human body in its next incarnation and develops a new personality, similar to an actor who appears in different roles on successive evenings, but who remains the same person. But it is not “Jesus” (Ātma-Buddhi) himself, who enters this “grave,” but only those forces of the soul which are still attracted to the earthly. That which has merged with the Higher Self (Ātma-Buddhi-Manas) overshadows the new personality but is not imprisoned in it, i.e., the spiritual luminous self sends a ray of light of its own being into the heart of the personal man in order for that ray to illumine and unfold in him. This burial or incarnation takes place not only upon a man’s birth, but throughout his life; for as long as man remains rational, reason also shines on him, and as long as he experiences, he advances from one stage to the next on the path of experience.[17]
These are some of the meanings of these symbols as presented to one’s own notions; but the deep meaning of these is far from being exhausted. Whether they agree with the views of this or that church will be of the utmost indifference to anyone if he is more concerned with his own knowledge than with adopting the opinions of other people. A complete explanation which would satisfy scientific curiosity also fulfills not the purpose for which these symbols are created, which is that he who beholds them should ponder them for himself, delve into the mysteries which they conceal, but also find in his own mind the key to them. But this is also the purpose of this article, as well as of everything that appears in the “Lotusblüten.” It is not our intention to deal with dogmatics, or to set up and defend this or that new theory, but rather, urge the readers towards drawing attention to the existence of a higher world-view, and leave it up to them to look at it and thus reach a higher level of self-knowledge, on which man learns to know his higher nature and his immortality.
Notes
[1] The Symbols of the “Holy Way of the Cross.” [Die Symbole des “heiligen Kreuzweges.” Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 6, no. 35 (August 1895), 601-622] {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] See „Auszüge aus dem Buche Dzyan.“ [“Excerpts from the Book of Dzyan.”] Lotusblüten, vol. II, page 665.
[3] Galatians IV, 19.
[4] Lotusblüten, no. 25, page 723.
[5] The Secret Doctrine. See Lotusblüten, vol. 2.
[6] John 18, 38.
[7] John 19, verses 7 and 8.
[8] Thomas of Kempen. Appendix.
[9] Lotusblüten, vol. 2, page 587.
[10] Thomas of Kempen. Appendix.
[11] Lotusblüten, vol. 2, page 761.
[12] Tattva Bodha. Lotusblüten, vol. III, page 392 and so on.
[13] Lotusblüten, no. 22, page 473.
[14] Compare Bhagavad Gita, chapter 5.
[15] Thomas of Kempen. Appendix.
[16] See: A. Besant. „Der Tod und—was dann.“ [Death and—what then.] Lotusblüten, vol. III, page 275.
[17] A. Besant: “Reinkarnation oder Wiederverkörperungslehre.” [“Reincarnation or Re-embodiment Doctrine.”] Lotusblüten, vol. II, page 692.