Theosophical Correspondence.
Translation from German by Robert Hutwohl[1]
Thought-forms.
Question: — Why should we not have bad thoughts?
Answer: — Because we harm ourselves and others by doing so. — Everything in the world, both visible and invisible, is substantial. Everything is “matter,” “force,” and “spirit.” Matter forms the form, force gives movement, spirit provides consciousness, and the more plastic matter is, the more the form expresses the character of the idea or thought it represents. Thoughts are vibrations which produce forms in the spiritual atmosphere that surrounds us everywhere, which, although they are not visible to our physical eyes, are nevertheless substantial and corporeal and made of “thought matter.” Since like everywhere combines with like, a good thought attracts good elements from the surrounding spiritual world, and an ugly thought attracts ugly elements, feeds on them, grows, and presents itself in corresponding beautiful or ugly forms. These forms are given life by the will of the owner of such thoughts. The mere contemplation of an emerging idea does not give life to the thought; but the accommodation of it, the consent and identification with it, animates and animates the thought-form and thereby produces an independent creature, endowed with will and intelligence, of a more or less long life, according to the intensity of the will-power which has called it into existence.
These creations form the world in which everyone moves. Thoughts govern not only each individual but also the world at large. The thought-forms which a man creates and animates by his will not only govern him in this world, but they are also the “works which follow him” when he leaves the mortal body. These own creations of his are his false “selves,” that is, the forms under which his divided self presents itself to him; they are his followers who adhere to him in the “beyond” because he nourished and raised them in the “here” and who, according to their nature, delight or annoy him. Each person thus creates his own heaven or hell. Since like attracts like and feeds on it, he creates within himself the angel who teaches, guides and protects him, or a herd of devils and avengers who persecute him.
But not only is the harboring of bad thoughts harmful to the person himself, but the thought vibrations he generates also affect other people who are susceptible to them, nesting wherever they find nourishment and thus forming a seed that bears destructive fruit, and the responsibility for which then falls back on the sower, even if he sowed this seed unintentionally; for everything returns in the end to its origin, and what is sown will ultimately be reaped by the one who sowed it. This is the doctrine of karma, and if it were generally understood correctly, this world would be better.
Exams.
Question: — Every time something really unpleasant happens to me, I am told that this is a test sent to me by God, which I must endure patiently. Is God so ignorant that he must conduct such experiments to find out whether I can be patient?
Answer: — This childish question represents the standpoint taken by many church believers and also by some theologians who are still children in religious matters. As long as God is conceived as a being separate from man and outside of nature, the ideas arising from this false conception are also wrong. A God who could not judge man would be a stupid God, and if he had to torture people to test their patience, he would be a devil. The misfortunes which befall man are the effects of causes which he has created for himself through his ignorance or passions, and they give him the opportunity to examine himself and to test his own moral and intellectual power. They are the steps by which he can rise to the top.
There are three kinds of patience, according to whether ignorance (Tamas), desire (Rajas) or goodness (Sattva) predominates in it. A foolish indifference to things in which one is helpless or in the face of which one behaves like the ostrich that thinks it will escape its persecutors by hiding its head in the sand is based on ignorance and does not give one spiritual strength. Enduring evil with the intention of deriving personal advantage from it may strengthen the willpower, but it also feeds egoism. Patience, however, which springs from the knowledge that everything, if we use it properly, is ultimately for our good, gives us the strength to endure evil, and this strength elevates us and leads us to wisdom, to God.
Spirit and matter.
Question: — What is the difference between mind and matter?
Answer: — If, as religion and philosophy teach, everything is God and nothing exists outside of Him, then “spirit” and “matter” cannot be essentially different from one another, but represent only manifestations of different kinds of one and the same entity. They are not only intimately connected with one another, but form the inseparable Trinity, i.e. the unity in its three aspects, and neither is conceivable without the other, just as what is called “space” is not conceivable without movement (extension), and this is not conceivable without something that moves. Spirit is consciousness, and just as a being cannot form an idea of the state of being conscious of itself if it is not conscious of itself, so man cannot grasp the deity if it has not become manifest in himself. In order to get an approximate idea of the “world riddle,” we can only say that the nameless unity, which encompasses all names and forces, produces different vibrations on the various levels of existence, the highest of which are of a spiritual nature and the lowest of which represent the realm of the material. We ourselves have a relative existence and can only know things in their relationship to us. What we call “matter” are states of vibration on a level that we can perceive with our senses. This does not mean, however, that there are not other, even slower vibrations and, consequently, bodies that are even more “material” than the matter we know, even if such “sub-physical” things are not perceptible to our physical organs.
According to the teachings of occult science, the nameless, impenetrable and indivisible One reveals itself as a trinity of
Love, light and life,
and these appear in different forms:
Love as attraction in its highest form, as selfless love for the Supreme, from which the knowledge of the Supreme arises, down to the mutual attraction of the atoms from which visible matter is formed, and as heat.
The light, the spirit, in its highest aspect as consciousness and intelligence, which manifests itself in the brain as intellect, in its external form the visible light.
Life, power as sensation, perception, organic activity in the most varied forms, as spiritual life, as life activity in matter and electricity in the air. But the three are essentially one; for where one is active, the other two are also there; where there is love, there is life and light; where there is light, there is life; where there is life, there is consciousness, etc. The way in which this trinity is revealed depends on the nature of the forms in which it takes place. The various forms of existence represent a scale of vibrations, of which the higher always penetrates the lower one that lies next: spirit penetrates the matter of thought, the power of thought penetrates the ether, the ether the air, the air the water, the water the earth, and as the higher penetrates the lower, it changes its state, unites with it, makes it capable of a higher development of life and, as it were, raises it up to itself.
We are all materialized spirits. Just as water, when it freezes, turns to ice but still remains essentially water, so too are we spirits; but we have surrounded ourselves with condensed material shells. When we descended into material existence in order to learn about it, we ourselves had to become material beings and experience the properties of matter in ourselves in order to learn to control them. As a result, as it were, “a deep sleep came over Adam,” man, embodied in an animal-like organism, lost the consciousness of his spirituality; but now the ascent from matter to spirit begins, and the more man is permeated by the power of the higher and controls his material nature with its desires and thoughts through this power, the more the consciousness of his spirituality will awaken in him again, and through his connection with the higher he will ultimately ascend to the highest. This descent of the spirit into matter and the resurrection from the material to the spiritual is symbolically represented by the double triangle ✡︎.
The History of the Theosophical Society.
This can be described in a few words:
In 1875 it was founded in New York at the suggestion of H. P. Blavatsky and a few years later the headquarters were moved to Adyar near Madras.
In 1884, as a result of the president’s advertising addiction and the “irregularities” associated with it, she suffered an illness that almost cost her her life and as a result of which Blavatsky left India.
In London, H. P. Blavatsky formed an inner circle of “chosen ones” within the “Theosophical Society,” which anyone could join, and which consequently consisted of the most heterogeneous elements.
After Blavatsky’s death (on May 8, 1891), the leadership of this inner circle passed to two people, who soon fell out and excommunicated each other.
The resulting split soon spread throughout the entire Theosophical Society; a fragmentation occurred, and two opposing parties were finally formed, each with its own president and their supporters, whereby the Theosophical Society lost its free and independent character and theosophy was degraded to a party matter.
In Germany, the “Theosophical Society” kept itself free from these party disputes and was reconstructed in 1898 on the originally assumed free basis and without a “presidency”.
At present it consists of a cooperative of free theosophical associations, which are still haunted by the ghosts of the former party tendencies, but which cannot be hindered in their free development by these.
Note
[1] Hartmann, F. (1905). “Theosophical Correspondence. Thought-Forms; Examinations; Spirit and Matter; The History of the Theosophical Society.” Hutwohl, R. (trans.), Theosophischer Wegweiser 7, no. 7 (April), 219-223. Robert Hutwohl, ©2025