Scientific Theosophy by Franz Hartmann, M. D.

Scientific Theosophy

By Franz Hartmann, M. D.^[1]

Translation from German by Robert Hutwohl

“Now all the Athenians, including the foreigners and visitors, were intent on nothing but saying or hearing something new.” (Acts XVII, 21)

One of the strangest monstrosities of our time is the “scientific” theosophy that emerged a few years ago—that is, that spiritless, faithless, knowledgeless, and barren pseudo-scientific inquiry into matters belonging to a higher, spiritual realm, of which one can truly know nothing without both the will and the ability to ascend to it. The true “study of theosophy” consists in the spiritual growth of the soul and the development of the spirit, through which the horizon of spiritual knowledge expands ever further. But those spiritless brooding intellectuals who retreat into the narrow circle of their limited views as if in a snail’s shell and conduct their research there can be compared to honking geese, who, despite all their honking and craning of their necks, remain geese nonetheless. If the devil studies theology, he will become nothing other than what he is. For he lacks the divine spark, and where this spark of higher knowledge is not present, it cannot develop or become the flame that warms the heart and whose light illuminates the mind.

The power through which spiritual growth alone can occur is faith—that is, not faith in something that is not true, but faith in truth, or in other words, love of truth itself; for faith and love are mutually dependent. One cannot believe in truth without loving it, and whoever loves it absorbs it. Faith, in the true sense of the word as the power of spiritual self-knowledge in humankind, is the main thing; intellect is secondary, since it has no other purpose than to test that which one grasps with the heart through the power of faith. But whoever wants to test with their intellect that which they do not possess and do not know, because they cannot grasp it through faith and cannot feel it, moves, even if they are dealing with correct theories, only in the realm of figments of the imagination; for truth can only come into our own possession by being realized within ourselves.

“Theosophy” is knowledge of God, that is, knowledge of the Real from which all phenomena arise; it is knowledge of the indivisible unity from which all the countless phenomena in the universe emerge and which underlies each of them, just as all numbers arise from One without separating from it, and this unity underlies all others. The entire universe with all its phenomena is a revelation of the one cause of all evolution, and the foundation of all theosophical study is the endeavor to establish the conditions so that this ground of all existence, which we call “God,” can be revealed within ourselves, in its own nature, as the ground of our own existence, and can lead to our self-knowledge. The first condition for this is that we believe in this God of ours as our own true, divine self, allow ourselves to be lifted up by the power of love, which is like a “magnetic attraction”, and only then, when we have come closer to him in this way (or, what is the same thing, he has come closer to us) and we have thereby reached a higher level of self-consciousness and existence, does the intellect come into its own and examine and judge the things that belong to this higher state of being.

The foundation of true faith is the presence and feeling of truth, even though it is not initially grasped intellectually; the foundation of unbelieving speculation is doubt. A truth in which we believe, because it has been revealed not in our imagination but in our self-consciousness and has become an integral part of our own being, we will never doubt. But the most learned discussions about the creation of the world or other things of which we have no personal experience still leave behind doubt as to whether they are truly true. Everything that merely enters the mind and occupies the intellect, but is not inwardly experienced and felt, belongs only to the realm of speculation and imagination, and to this realm also belong all sentimental feelings that are aroused by the play of the imagination. Knowledge is perfect only when truth is grasped through true faith, that is, through itself, and understood by the light of reason.

The oldest writings of the sages, such as the Bhagavad Gita, teach that whenever the world descends into unbelief or superstition, enlightened teachers appear to guide humanity back to the path of self-realization. About twenty-five years ago, such a time had come. At that time, the intellectual circles were dominated by that same mindless materialism we still encounter in pubs today, and the spirit of truth had long since deserted the churches. Then those enlightened teachers appeared whom we call the “Masters.” We did not see them in their outward form, but through their instrument, H. P. Blavatsky, their teachings were proclaimed to us, half-forgotten facts were brought back to our attention, and much new information, previously kept secret by the initiates, was added. The formation of the Theosophical Society provided the external means to disseminate the teachings of this higher science to wider circles. The resistance the Theosophical movement encountered and overcame only strengthened its power. Today, the spirit it unleashed has permeated many strata of the population in all parts of the world, as well as religion, science, and literature, and continues to exert a powerful influence, even where neither the names of the masters nor their tools are known. At that time, the capacity for belief had been stifled by rationalism, and with it, the very concept of the word “belief” itself had been lost. It was understood as the acceptance of some theory as true, and it was no longer sufficient to simply draw people’s attention to religious truths without further explanation; for truth was buried under a mountain of errors that grew ever larger. It was therefore necessary to clear away these errors, to explain the deeper meaning of religious symbols, to correct religious teachings whose distorted understanding contradicted reason, and to bring them back into harmony with reason, etc. For this reason, the masters of wisdom proclaimed the teachings on the constitution of man and the universe, the teachings on karma, reincarnation, yoga, etc., not as if the knowledge of these teachings were the ultimate goal, but so that people could arrive at a better worldview and the errors that stood in the way of their own spiritual development could be eliminated.

The scattered seed sometimes fell on fertile ground, and in some souls who received it, the tree of knowledge grew in the heart, but many others grasped it only with their heads and not with their hearts, and thus that monstrosity was born which nowadays calls itself “theosophical science” (but also figures under other names), and whose study often has no other result than to confuse minds, since it makes a complicated matter out of the simplest and most self-evident things and distorts the truth.

Someone quite rightly said: “Where God builds a temple, the devil builds a chapel next to it.” Blind speculation replaces the love of truth, the true faith that leads to the awakening of the soul and to knowledge; and dust-born “science” replaces spiritual understanding, which grasps the indivisible unity of the universe. This “science” seeks to dissect and classify everything, thereby losing the understanding of unity. It is like trying to understand the properties of an equilateral triangle by tearing apart the three lines that define it. If someone wants to know what can be seen from the summit of a high mountain, they will make the effort to climb the mountain themselves; once they reach the top, they need no further proof. But most representatives of “theosophical science” have no time for that and don’t even consider climbing the mountain. Down in the dark valley, they search for evidence of what can be seen on the sunlit summit, and despite all the evidence, they remain unclear. The theorist is like someone who spends their whole life studying maps to find the way to Rohr, but never actually leaves their room. For the rational person, knowing the direction is enough; they find the way without difficulty and arrive in Rome, while the other can, at best, only boast about their knowledge.

The masters gave us the simple doctrine; their students dissect and obscure it. The seeker of truth recoils in horror before the multitude of rules with which he is inundated, rules he cannot even remember, much less follow. The habit does not make the monk, nor does erudition make the theosophist. Just as true Christianity does not consist of memorizing the books of the Church Fathers and being able to speak learnedly about the Trinity, so too does theosophy not consist of scholarly debates about evolution, life in the astral realm, and the like, but rather in living and acting according to the laws of higher nature and avoiding all evil, that is, everything that hinders higher development. Without action, there is no realization. Faith is the feeling of our higher nature striving within us for revelation. Faith leads us to unity, speculation to multiplicity, and the delusion of authority keeps us in spiritual slavery. This does not mean that one should learn nothing and remain a fool, or reject all teachings and imagine oneself to know everything better. Rather, it means returning from multiplicity back to unity and, above all study of the multifaceted nature of phenomena, not forgetting “faith,” that is, the awareness of the unity of reality. This faith is the foundation of Theosophy. Whoever possesses it and holds fast to it will soon come to the conviction that all appearances in nature, including our own personalities, are nothing more than mere appearances that come and go, while that which is our true essence and from which our forms of existence spring, is fundamentally eternal. This is the true Self of which the Bhagavad Gita says: “There was no time in which I did not exist, and there will be none in which I will not exist.” This Self is transcendent above death and life and above all phenomenal things. When it enters our consciousness, we, united with it, become partakers of its wisdom; only then do we attain the wisdom of God, or in other words, Theosophy. Only through this background of faith does the study of the phenomenal gain its usefulness, and without it, all “theosophical knowledge” is a game of the imagination and without real value.

Spiritual unconsciousness is spiritual death, from which no empty game of imagination, no soulless science, no theory can save us. For the soul striving for truth, it is therefore not a matter of “saying or hearing something new,” but of awakening to a higher life, of which the Athenians want nothing to do; “for when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, they mocked them.” (Acts 17:32)

Franz Hartmann.

Note:

Scientific Theosophy by Franz Hartmann, M. D.

Scientific Theosophy by Franz Hartmann, M. D.