Translation from German by Robert Hutwohl[1]
It is not my intention to enter into discussions of any of the opinions expressed in the “Sphinx”; for one does not arrive at knowledge of the truth through disputes over differences of opinion. Everyone has the right to say what he believes, but no one has the right to condemn what he does not know. I would therefore have considered it pointless to waste a word on Ernst Diestel’s article in the last issue of the “Sphinx” in which he attacks what he understands as “Indian mysticism”, which is actually the exact opposite of Indian teaching, if I had not been asked by various quarters to correct that article so that my silence would not be interpreted as approval.
In this article on “Love and Selfishness,” Mr. Diestel proves nothing more than that he neither knows the Indian teaching, which is in its essence identical with the true Christian view, nor does he know what selflessness is. He says that in Indian mysticism there is no room for Christ, for the God who is love, while in fact Indian mysticism has no room for anything other than Christ Jesus; even if it calls him by other names, for example “Iswara” [īśvara]. It constantly holds before its students the God who says of himself: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” the “Jesus” who is the Lord of that heaven of which it is said in the Bible: “The kingdom of heaven is within you,” and who is therefore not to be sought in the distance, but in our own consciousness, just as the spiritual life of a person is contained in himself and not in an alien object; if a force is to become my force, it must work in me, not separated from me. Pastor Diestel evidently knows nothing of this Christ, who is the redeeming force in the soul of man, and therefore he looks for an external and alien God, whom he imagines to be an ignorant and therefore foolish love. The Indian view agrees with the Christian one in that it says that God is the reality and the true essence of everything, and that nothing exists apart from him, but that everything that seems to have an essence apart from God is nothing but an illusion, an appearance, an appearance, but not essence, and that one should therefore hold to God, to the essence, and not to the empty illusion. But Pastor Diestel wants something else besides the only God, the only truth, namely his personality, which is of the utmost value and importance to him, without which God has no value for him. If Pastor Diestel were to die of this world of illusion, then for him, since he does not know Christ (the truth), there would be nothing left but a “desolate emptiness”. But the theosophist, in whom true knowledge has awakened, which is selfless love, lives in a higher consciousness, or more correctly: “It is not he who lives, but he and Christ in him”. He need not wait for death to escape this “miserable existence,” but he can at any moment raise himself in consciousness to that region of knowledge, love and bliss (Sat-chit-ananda) [sat-cit-ānanda] of which the theologian pondering in the dust knows nothing. We “do not need a gospel from India” if we correctly understand the true angelic message in our hearts, or correctly comprehend the truths hidden in the Christian religion or in Buddhist philosophy. But precisely because these so-called Christian teachings are understood in a completely superficial way and wrongly interpreted by one-sided theologians and pastors, we have recourse to the Indian teachers in order to find the key to the correct understanding of our own religion by comparing their teachings with those of the Bible.
Indian teaching tells us, among other things, that everything, be it love, indifference to earthly things, etc., if it does not spring from wisdom (sattva), has no real value. Indifference to the lower is presumption or narrow-mindedness as long as one does not know the higher. If one recognizes the truth, the disdain for lies comes of its own accord. Likewise, love in the spiritual realm has no value which springs from self-delusion or conceit, if not from selfishness. The transitory [lower] self is an illusion, and everything that springs from it can be nothing other than an illusion. In order not to love selflessly, one does not need to have one’s own advantage in mind. As soon as I myself, that is, my self-will, love something, this love does not spring from my divine, omnipresent self, but from my limited personal selfhood and is therefore transitory. All good things come from God alone; But God is omnipresent and therefore also in me, where is the innermost self of every human being; for “we are temples of God, but do not know it” as long as we do not recognize God in us (Christ). This is the “I” which recognizes itself in everything high and noble, and has the right to say: “Tatwam asi!” [tat tvam asi] (That is you!) This is the “I” which Mr. Diestel confuses with the personal “I” of Mr. Diestel; if someone who does not know the God-man (Christ) uses these words, then this is just senseless, empty chatter.
Yesterday I received a letter from a pupil, a young girl of nineteen, from which I will extract the following passage to show that a cow can have a much greater true understanding of spiritual things than many a person who is supposed to possess it as a “spiritual man.” The girl writes: “Every day brings me closer to clarity, and it is as if I had awakened from a dream. Now I feel and recognize the great mystery which I knew before but could not understand, and which consists in this: That we must leave the finite self more and more in order to be able to live more and more in the true Self (Atma Buddhi Manas) [ātma buddhi manas]; and once the finite “self”, which in truth is no self at all, has nothing more to say, we can also detach ourselves from the material and act in freedom, just as one takes off a garment and puts it back on again. I understand that intellectually, but I cannot yet feel it. It seems to me that understanding is the first stage and feeling the second. Feeling is living; “understanding” or “perceiving” is only looking into it. Now I understand that loving God is something different than being alone with him; it is something even higher to be able to say: “I am you!” than just saying: “I love you!”
But the great mystery of the knowledge of God cannot be made clear to anyone who does not himself come to clarity through the truth; least of all could this be done through a newspaper article. The above is therefore not intended to combat the views of the author in question or to defend my own views; but only to serve him and others as material for their own reflection and as a support for the attainment of that self-knowledge which is the knowledge of God, or in other words: the self-knowledge of divine love.
Dr. Franz Hartmann.
Note:
[1] Love and Selfishness. A Correction. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Sphinx 22, no. 123 (May 1896), 290-292 [Liebe und Selbstsucht. Eine Berichtigung] Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025. The original text was set using the German fraktur or blackletter.