Translation from German by Robert Hutwohl[1]
Theosophical life is life in self-knowledge of the true, the good and the beautiful in all spheres of existence. One lives theosophically when one lives wisely; for the word “theosophy” in its true sense means the highest wisdom. One lives wisely when one knows the laws of life and follows them, and consequently, in one’s will, thoughts and actions one is not concerned with one’s own advantage, but with the welfare of the community. One lives theosophically when one acts according to the principles of love and justice and thereby tries to restore the harmony that should prevail in the world. This is the purpose of all religions. Christianity contains the rules for this, and in Buddhist philosophy, they are summarized in the following Pali verses:
Sabba papāssa atsaranam. Kusa lassa upasambadū.
Sachitta pario dapanam etam Buddhanusanam.
To purify the heart, to refrain from doing evil, to produce good; this is the wisdom of the enlightened.
Anyone who wants to undertake anything must of course first know what he wants to achieve and also know the means to achieve this goal. Anyone who wants to live correctly should know what life is and how he can reach a higher level of it and participate in a higher life. Many believe that they are living theosophically if they live thoughtlessly from day to day and enjoy this sensual life without intentionally harming anyone. Such a life is like the life of a stone or a plant, which is also good because it does no harm to anyone; but it is not a life of progress; it is a life of ignorance (tamas), i.e. in ignorance of the truth. Others make great efforts to gain personal advantage in the “beyond” through pious works; they want to storm heaven, but their works arise from self-conceit and are products of self-delusion, which, with their self-created peculiarity, belong to the realm of illusions. This is a life of desire (rajas), an animal (desirous) life, but not a “theosophical” (divine) life. Only when man has reached a higher level of knowledge (sattva), when the divine life has awakened in him, can he feel, think, will and act “divinely”, i.e. impersonally; he then acts not as a human being, but as a god; for the good of the whole and not for himself personally.
The great mystic and theosophist Jacob Böhme says something like this:
“If we consider the beginning of our life and compare it with the eternal life that we have in the promise, we do not find that we have our home in this external life; for we see the beginning and end of external life, as well as the complete breaking and final decay of our bodies. We see and know nothing more of a (personal) return to this life, nor have we any promise of it.”[2]
Earthly life in this world is portrayed by Jacob Böhme as a life of danger, misery and ruin, and this circumstance has given many people the cause of the highly wrong view that one must mourn this life, deny oneself its joys, embitter one’s existence and spend one’s whole life fantasizing about fantastic higher regions and, neglecting the duties of this life, lead a dream life in a heaven above the clouds of which one can know nothing.
In fact, this life is exactly what we need. For some it is a vale of tears, for others a vale of joy, depending on what they have created for themselves through their karma in previous forms of existence; but for all it is a school for learning about life. And whoever has learned to know true life is spiritually (in his self-consciousness) elevated above both the fleeting sufferings of this life and its fleeting joys. This is the essence of the matter; everything external is inessential and fleeting, and false asceticism is not only useless, but destructive to body and mind and an obstacle to the soul’s awakening to that existence of joy and bliss which inner enlightenment automatically brings. In the Buddhist religion, sadness is counted among the deadly sins because it prevents the awakening of the divine life in man and leads to spiritual death. Sadness plunges the soul into darkness; true knowledge brings joy and light. All external renunciation and sacrifice that does not arise from the knowledge of the higher is of little value. Once the better is correctly recognized, the desire for the less good ceases of its own accord, and no sacrifice is needed to renounce something that one no longer desires.
We are in this world to learn about physical life by investigation; but should we therefore enjoy it to the fullest, and give ourselves over to the gratification of the appetites of our animal nature? This would be a devotion and sacrifice in a wrong direction. It is one thing to enjoy the good and beautiful and useful things that the world of sense offers us, and another to cling wholeheartedly to the pleasures of this world, or to any transitory thing, as if that one thing were all. He who clings to the less good with both hands has no hand left to grasp the better. He who clings with all his strength to the external and the sensual closes the door to the opening of the inner senses and to spiritual perception and knowledge; a man who is called to a higher position is not fit for that promotion unless he will give up the pleasures which his previous low position has brought with it. Anyone who clings wholeheartedly to the transitory is not yet ready for immortality. Nor can he expect any advancement in the afterlife; for there, as in this world, it is not what one would like to be that counts, but what one actually is. If there is light within us, then our home is the light; if there is darkness within us, then we are in the dark; if desire burns within us, then we will go where the object of our desire draws us. The Bhagavad Gita says: “He who departs from this world with his whole mind fixed on me, enters into me. But if his whole mind is fixed on something else, he enters into that being’s essence; for his nature is the same as the nature of that being.”[3]
As long as man lives in his earthly body, all the principles of the great universe are present in him, and he is therefore able to draw strength from all regions of the cosmos, to develop himself in each one and to create a home for himself there. Through his external senses he is connected to the external sensory world, through his sensations with the astral world, through his intellect with the world of thought, through his intuition with the world of ideas, and when the divine spark in his heart becomes a flame through love for the highest in everything, he can recognize the wisdom of God (theosophy) in its light. He himself is the creator who can build an organism for himself in each of these regions that is suitable for living in these regions with full consciousness; an astral organism for the astral world, a thought body for the world of thought, an imperishable body for his spiritual resurrection in the world of God, not in an unknown future or in the problematic afterlife, but here; for the present is his. But anyone who has not trained himself for a higher life in this life will not be fit for a higher life after death either. From the standpoint of true knowledge, this earthly life with all its sufferings and joys is a dream life, and its continuation in the afterlife, without true knowledge, is also a dream. Death is not a gain, but only the loss of a tool that is necessary to work on the physical plane. Through it, the human spirit strips off the earthly garment with which it has clothed itself here on earth. Other garments remain, which it has created for itself through its feelings and thoughts; but these garments are also transient and must be discarded.
A person who has not yet reached his true spiritual self-consciousness has no self-conscious, immortal ego, and even if the Monad, forced by the law of nature, builds new bodies for itself in order to overshadow them, to live in them and to gather new experiences, the person, in the ignorance of his ego, is nothing but a dream-form, who dreams all kinds of things that ultimately disappear. This is the life of those who have not yet found themselves on earth and in heaven. But the true theosophical life springs from the knowledge of reality, and the true and real for every person is his immortal, eternal Self!
Notes:
[1] Hartmann, F. (1904). “What is the theosophical Life?” Hutwohl, R. (trans.), Theosophisches Leben 7, no. 1 (April), 9-13 [Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025]
[2] “Threefold Life,” Chapter I, v. 1. There is no mention of a reincarnation of the personality, but rather of a reunion of the elements (skandhas) to form a new personality.
[3] Chapter VIII, verse 5.