Translation from German by Robert Hutwohl[1]
Question: — What is meant by the “denial of the will to live”?
Answer: — If you read Schopenhauer’s works carefully, you will get information about it. Such a denial does not consist in wanting to know nothing more about existence and wishing for its destruction, but the denial of one’s own personal will to live in this world of appearances is the affirmation of the spiritual universal will to eternal life in the light of true knowledge, arising from a higher consciousness. A denial of the will to live, i.e. of any activity, would result in an unbearable state of extreme boredom; if the higher life in man reveals itself, his inclination towards external existence also diminishes and ultimately disappears completely. In this case, a man learns to distinguish between his true self and the shadow image that represents his nature and recognizes that all the sufferings and joys he experiences belong only to his personality; that the various forms of his desires and passions are general forces of nature which take hold of his body, comparable to parasites which invade his dwelling to feed on his life force like vampires, but with which he has nothing in common and which do not affect him. He then also finds that natural life is only an apparent life and that this earth in its present state is not a vale of joy but rather a prison, and that leaving it is not a specter but a release for him. In such a case, the occurrence of the negation of the will to personal existence is self-evident, and this abandonment of personality is not a destruction of the individuality of the soul but rather the basis for the consolidation of its individual character.
Note:
[1] Hartmann, F. (1907) “Theosophical Correspondence. What is meant by the “denial of the will to live?” By Dr. Franz Hartmann. [Theosophische Korrespondenz. Theosophischer Wegweiser 8, no. 10 (July 1907), 304 [Translation from German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025]