Yoga and Christianity or The Secret Doctrine in the Christian Religion.
Franz Hartmann, M.D.[1]
Translation from German by Robert Hutwohl[2]
This document incorporates live notes. Click on a superscripted endnote number in the text to jump to its corresponding endnote; click on the superscripted endnote numeral in the endnotes to return to the original text reference.
Bücher der Schatzkammer
Editorial Schatzkammer Hans Fändrich
Buenos Aires — Argentina
Distribution to the German book trade by Zettner & Co., Würzburg
Dr. Franz Hartmann’s Selected Theosophical Works Edited by Johannes Fährmann
Contents
Editor’s Preface to Volume Two
Preliminary Remarks to Part I of Volume II
- Biographical Notes on Meister Eckhart
- Yoga
III. The Path to Christ
- Christianity
- Rebirth
- The Soul
VII. Evolution and Involution
VIII. Union
Concluding Remarks
Abstract
Dr. Hartmann:
“Therefore, they will always remain as mysteries to such people, and such people will find it more convenient to dismiss as worthless that in which they cannot see anything, rather than striving to lift the veil that conceals their own divinity from their sight. The knowledge of the spiritual person is entirely different from that of scientific observation in the sensory world. Theosophy is the exact science in the realm of the divine spirit. But just as there can be no exact material science where there is no capacity for intuition and observation, so too in the spiritual realm the capacity for spiritual intuition must first be present before one can speak of exact spiritual knowledge. Without this, all material and spiritual knowledge is merely fantasizing and dreaming. The only guiding principle is reason.”
Franz Hartmann’s work explores the similarities between the teachings of yoga and Christianity, particularly focusing on the concept of union with the divine. Hartmann argues that Meister Eckhart, a 13th-century German mystic, presented these teachings in a Christian context, drawing parallels between the Bhagavad Gita and Eckhart’s writings. The work emphasizes the importance of a pure heart and moral standing in the practice of yoga, contrasting it with the potential dangers of Hatha Yoga.
Meister Eckhart, a Dominican theologian, faced persecution from the Church for his teachings, which were deemed heretical. Despite being condemned and forced to recant, his ideas gained popularity among his disciples, who spread his teachings and shaped German mysticism. Eckhart’s writings, though targeted for destruction, circulated secretly and continued to influence theologians, highlighting the enduring power of his ideas.
The teachings of yoga, a sacred science rooted in self-knowledge and spiritual awakening, emphasize the unity of man and God. This profound truth, often misunderstood and misrepresented, transcends dogmatic religions and speculative philosophies. True understanding of yoga and its connection to Christianity requires a pure heart, a quiet mind, and a willingness to embark on a personal journey of self-discovery.
True knowledge is hindered by false concepts, not ignorance. To attain wisdom, one must overcome these misconceptions, often by seeking teachings from the East, where spiritual truths originated. Yoga, the path to self-discovery, involves recognizing the divine within oneself and overcoming the illusion of separation from God, ultimately leading to Nirvana, a state of eternal bliss and peace.
Yoga is a journey of self-discovery and union with the divine, achieved through the transcendence of ego and the awakening of the higher self. This process involves a sevenfold division of human nature, encompassing the physical, astral, and spiritual aspects. True freedom lies in becoming one with the divine, free from the limitations of the ego and the transient world.
The path to Christ, or divine union, is through self-knowledge and realizing one’s true divine nature. This divine self is not separate from God but is the omnipresent divine spirit within all. True freedom and redemption come from overcoming the delusion of self and recognizing one’s unity with God, transcending earthly limitations and becoming one with the divine essence.
True knowledge of God requires the dissolution of the self and the surrender of all works, as the self is an illusion and only God holds true value. External practices like prayer and penance are useful for those still alienated from God, but true devotion comes from inner peace and the recognition of God within oneself. God works grace within the soul, and true works are those that flow from this divine influence, free from selfishness and infinite in nature.
True union with God requires relinquishing the ego and embracing selfless love and inner work. This inner work, characterized by a desire for goodness and a connection with the divine, transcends time and space and manifests in outward actions. By letting go of self-will and embracing God’s will, individuals can achieve a state of unity with the divine, experiencing true freedom and fulfillment.
True Christianity is not about following a sect or a person, but about achieving divine self-knowledge and immortality. This is accomplished by surrendering the ego and becoming one with the eternal truth, the divine light of wisdom. A true Christian is one who has transcended the limitations of the physical world and recognized the divine within themselves and all things.
The soul achieves union with God, becoming one with divine power and losing its individuality. True Christians, akin to yogis, strive for this union through surrender and self-renunciation, attaining divine knowledge and transcending worldly desires. True prayer, devoid of selfish desires, elevates the soul to God, seeking union rather than material blessings.
True worship of God requires a pure heart and a focus on eternity, not outward rituals or historical figures. The divine nature is inherent in all humanity, and Christ serves as a model for achieving unity with God. This unity transcends time and space, allowing individuals to attain the same glory and power as Christ through grace.
True Christianity, according to the text, involves complete surrender to God and renunciation of the self, contrasting with the profit-driven, self-centered approach of the external church. The doctrine of reincarnation, central to Indian religious science and present in Christian mysticism, posits that the individual ray emanating from God reincarnates, carrying with it the spiritual abilities and karma of previous existences. This doctrine, though not explicitly detailed in Eckhart’s teachings, is evident in his writings and Christian symbolism, emphasizing the soul’s journey towards divine perfection through self-renunciation and transcendence of time and space.
True Christianity is based on the realization of one’s immortal self, achieved through self-knowledge and union with God, known as Yoga. This self-knowledge, or Theosophia, cannot be taught but must be discovered within oneself. God, as the Absolute, is beyond human comprehension and attributes, encompassing all in one and all in one.
The divine nature, through self-contemplation, becomes a Trinity: Father (pure reason), Son (the Word), and Holy Spirit (love). This process, eternal and necessary, reflects God’s essence and goodness. The birth of the Son, representing God’s self-knowledge, occurs within the soul, making man a Son of God and uniting all souls in this divine birth.
God, the absolute and self-existing one, knows and loves Himself in all things. Through His eternal contemplation, He creates the world as a manifestation of His essence, with all creatures existing within Him. Recognizing God involves transcending the illusion of individuality and realizing one’s true self as part of the divine unity.
Blessedness lies in recognizing God’s presence within us, not just in acknowledging His presence in all things. Reason, which grasps God’s essence, precedes and guides the will, which desires and loves. The soul, in its purest form, is one with God, and this unity is the source of both knowledge and love.
Human beings are the ultimate purpose of creation, embodying all creatures and destined to return them to God. Through overcoming self-deception and realizing their divine nature, humans can elevate all creatures and fulfill God’s highest purposes. This process involves the interplay of human reason, divine emanations, and the influence of enlightened beings.
The text emphasizes the importance of self-knowledge and the pursuit of divine truth. It highlights the need to transcend the illusory self and ego, focusing instead on the divine light within. True virtue arises from selfless obedience to the law of reason and love, driven by a genuine desire for the good itself, rather than personal gain or external rewards.
Divine love is the ultimate path to spiritual enlightenment, surpassing all knowledge and external practices. Through grace, a gift from God, the soul transcends its limitations and unites with the divine, achieving true freedom and understanding. This union, achieved through self-renunciation and the pursuit of divine knowledge, transforms the individual, making their life a divine manifestation.
True Christian doctrine, according to J. Eckhart, aligns with Indian yoga teachings, emphasizing the union of man with God through self-realization and overcoming the illusion of the false self. This union, achieved through love, patience, and humility, leads to mastery over one’s thoughts, desires, and actions, ultimately transforming suffering into bliss and drawing one closer to God. Theosophy aims to awaken this divine knowledge within individuals, freeing them from external ideals and realizing the true, imperishable ideal of love, truth, and justice within themselves.
Hartmann, drawn to the Theosophical movement due to his mystical nature, became a leading figure and collaborated closely with H. P. Blavatsky. He returned to Europe to guide the Theosophical movement in Germany, founding the “International Theosophical Brotherhood” and publishing numerous works.
Editor’s Preface to Volume Two
Raja Yoga and Hatha Yoga are the two best-known yoga systems. Raja Yoga [rāja yoga] is also called the “royal” yoga, signifying that this system is the most noble and highest. In contrast, Hatha Yoga [haṭha yoga] is its direct opposite, the lowest form of yoga. But not only that, Hatha Yoga is also the system which, unlike the others, harbors great dangers, which is why the true masters of Indian wisdom unanimously and emphatically warn against it. It would not be an exaggeration to speak of the “blessing of Raja Yoga” and the “curse of Hatha Yoga.”
The term “yoga” is widely misunderstood and misused today, which is particularly true of Hatha Yoga. If one adheres to the original (oldest) meaning of this word, as used in the Bhagavad Gita, then yoga means the “union of the soul with God (Atma [Sanskrit = ātmā], Brahma, etc.).” This concept was coined thousands of years before the Christian era. In the millennia that followed, this teaching became increasingly “humanized,” meaning it was dragged down from its divine heights into the realm of the narrow, limited, and selfish interests of earthly, personal beings. In Hatha Yoga, this degradation of the divine to the level of the human and egoistic has found its strongest expression.[3] This descent into the crude and material is so profound that Hatha Yoga, as it is exploited today, contains hardly a trace of true yoga. His gymnastic contortions and certain physical poses might be appropriate for a circus performance, but they have absolutely nothing to do with the goals of true yoga, which are directed toward the spiritual and divine. For acrobats, for physical fitness, for achieving robust health, and for strengthening willpower, these exercises may well have some value; but these things can be achieved more conveniently and easily in other ways. For the refinement of the moral life, the growth of the soul, as well as for the ascent of humanity from crude materiality to spiritualization, these exercises are utterly worthless.
As for the breathing exercises and the intended development of human astral abilities, which are the purpose and goal of Hatha Yoga, these are fraught with dangers that are all the more severe the more the person practicing them is driven by egoism. Unfortunately, there are no statistics yet on how many people have succumbed to illness, madness, possession, and crime as a result, and, even worse, how many have been driven down the path of black magic. The average person today is also hardly able to recognize these harms in time, as they lack the necessary psychological and spiritual knowledge. Only someone who understands the sevenfold constitution of humankind and the universe, as taught in the theosophical worldview, can truly grasp the dangers to which one exposes oneself by engaging in Hatha Yoga.
The practice of yoga is good, indeed excellent, and completely safe when performed correctly, and when the practitioner is of a high moral standing and has a pure heart, or, as required in the Christian religion, when one “loves God above all and one’s neighbor as oneself.” Franz Hartmann’s writings on yoga, which we are making available to humanity again here, are written from this perspective. Anyone wishing to study yoga can rely on these writings.
The publisher.
Preliminary Remarks to Part I of Volume II
The teachings of yoga, as presented in the Vedas and Upanishads of India, but especially in the Bhagavad Gita, the sublime dialogue between the Lord of Heaven and the Son of Earth, offer the highest and deepest wisdom ever taught on Earth. These teachings have recently gained considerable popularity in Western countries as well. That this teaching is nothing truly new to the West, that we have had it in its purest and most sublime form, as taught in the Bhagavad Gita, for 600 years in Christianity as well, where it was taught particularly by Meister Eckhart, the great mystic of the 13th century, is demonstrated in a compelling and convincing manner by Hartmann, the greatest German mystic of the 19th century. Hartmann proves that the path to the realization of “Christ within us” and the yoga teachings of the Bhagavad Gita are virtually identical by comparing them and citing a wealth of passages from Eckhart’s writings as proof of their correspondence. Hartmann first published the present work as a series of articles in his former journal “Lotusblüten” in 1894 under the title “Yoga and Christianity.” The subsequent book edition appeared under the title “The Secret Doctrine in the Christian Religion.” The text published here is taken from “Lotusblüten.” The editor was unable to determine whether the text in the book edition differs from that in “Lotusblüten,” as no copy of the book edition was available to him. However, it can be assumed that the text of the book edition remains unchanged.
The passages quoted from the Bhagavad Gita are taken from the prose edition; the poetic edition was not yet available at that time (1894).
The numerous passages from Meister Eckhart’s writings have been highlighted in italics,[4] while Hartmann’s frequent insertions, which further explain Eckhart’s text, are given in ordinary type to make them easily distinguishable from Eckhart’s words. No changes have been made to the texts themselves.
The publisher.
I. Biographical Notes on Meister Eckhart
“Thus, after first practicing like a student, man should be permeated by the God dwelling within him, transformed into the form of the God he loves, and so firmly established in him that the radiance of the God present within him should shine forth effortlessly.” (Eckhart, 549, 20)
Among all German mystics, there is probably none who presented the teachings of yoga or the union with the divine self inherent in every human being as clearly and distinctly as Johannes Eckhart, known as “the Master,” who paved the way for the great Reformation in Germany. It will therefore be appropriate, before we delve into his teachings, to take a brief look at the life of this man, of whom it is said: “None of his predecessors surpassed him in depth of spirit, or even equaled him. All who came after him drew from his wellspring; they made mysticism more ecclesiastical and popular, they attempted to remove the offensive aspects of his bold consistency, but none added anything essentially new to this audacious edifice.”[5]*
In fact, many writings attributed to Bishop Tauler and others are nothing more than quotations and reprints from Eckhart’s works, which, after Eckhart’s writings were banned by the Pope, were published under the names of other mystics.
Nothing definite is known about the place and time of his birth. He is said to have been born in Strasbourg before 1260 and to have been a pupil of Albertus Magnus as early as 1280. We first find him in 1302 as a highly renowned teacher in Paris at the Collegium St. James. He belonged to the Dominican Order and gave public lectures. When a dispute broke out between Boniface VIII and Philip IV of France, he was summoned to Rome by the Pope to consult with him. Soon afterward, he was appointed Prior of the Saxon province of his order. The excellence of his conduct in office persuaded the superiors of his order to send him to Bohemia as Vicar General in 1307, to reform the monasteries there according to his own discretion. In these high offices, Eckhart taught and preached in many parts of Germany, in Austria, in Strasbourg, but especially and until the end of his life in Cologne. A powerful intellectual movement emanated from him, and communities of the devout gathered around him. He preached especially to the common people and to the nuns in the monasteries; in Cologne, he became the head of a widespread congregation.*[6]
It was a time of great emotional turmoil, especially in Germany. Religious education among the people had spread far beyond the confines of the Church. Many, gripped by a longing for a truly holy life, no longer wished to submit to the yoke of blind dogma and the priesthood; they wanted to receive and enjoy God’s grace themselves, and not be content with mere belief in the Church’s theories. In this spirit, pious societies formed, those earnestly concerned with attaining the knowledge of truth. They wanted to live withdrawn from the world’s folly, free from the yoke of external rules, and in free association, to inspire one another to devotion, renunciation, and works of Christian charity. They had no need of priests; they rejected, in principle, the attainment of eternal salvation through the mediation of others.
The Church’s attitude towards these communities and teachings had long been vacillating. The Pope and the clergy could not deny that sound and genuinely Christian motives underpinned the movement, but the priestly omnipotence was evidently threatened most gravely if these movements grew in power; they therefore had to be restricted or suppressed if it proved impossible to make them subservient to the Church or the hierarchical authority.
Thus began the persecutions of heretics, which soon degenerated to such an extent that any higher degree of piety within the Church was viewed with suspicion. Not only for the bigoted and crude populace, but for the clergy themselves, piety was an object of ridicule and contempt. Many of the accusations hurled against these heretics were evidently fabricated by the zeal of the heresy judges, and the fact that their victims were driven by a holy aspiration was demonstrated by their steadfastness in the harshest persecutions, in the torture chamber, and at the stake. Admittedly, this newer movement also degenerated in some cases into vague fanaticism; but the truth contained within it gave all the individual heretical movements the power to endure inextinguishably amidst all persecution, until, in the Reformation, it attained a firm ecclesiastical organization in a glorified form.
Johannes Eckhart possessed extensive learning and was well-versed not only in the Bible but also in the works of the “heathens.” He said: “I have read many writings, both by pagan masters and prophets, from the Old and the New Testaments, and have earnestly and diligently sought what is the best and highest virtue among them.”
Eckhart’s teachings caused no major offense at least until 1307. This is evidenced by the trust he enjoyed within his order. From that year onward, we hear of him only in connection with measures of ecclesiastical persecution against him. However, this persecution seems to have had no further consequences for Eckhart initially; at least, there are traces indicating that he was still preaching unhindered in Strasbourg in 1322. He then became Prior in Frankfurt am Main. Eckhart spent the last years of his life in Cologne as the head of a theological school to which Tauler and Suso belonged. He preached in the church of his monastery and taught at the university made famous by Albertus Magnus.
At the General Chapter held in Venice in 1325, serious accusations were made that some brothers in the German province of the Order were preaching doctrines to the common people that could easily lead uneducated people astray. Gervasius, Prior of Anjou, was entrusted with investigating the matter. We then learn that in 1326, at the General Chapter in Paris, the Prior of the German province (John Eckhart) was deposed.
The greater the success of Eckhart’s teachings, the greater the zeal of his opponents became. Archbishop Heinrich von Vienenburg of Cologne was particularly prominent in this regard, bringing charges against the Dominican Order before the Pope. If Eckhart was not burned as a heretic, it is only due to the fact that he enjoyed such high esteem among the people that no one dared to harm him unless absolutely necessary.
In 1326, Eckhart appeared before the Inquisition. Condemned to recant his teachings, he declared on February 13, 1327, that he had always abhorred every error in doctrine and every impropriety in conduct, as far as he was able. Therefore, if any error could be found that he had written, taught, or preached in the past, publicly or secretly, in any place or at any time, directly or immediately, out of ambiguity or obstinacy of mind, he hereby expressly and publicly recanted it before all the members of the court, both collectively and individually, because he wished it to be considered from now on as neither said nor written.
Eckhart did not admit to having said or written anything wrong, and therefore nothing was retracted. However, it seems he was nevertheless sentenced by the Inquisition, for on February 20th he appealed the Inquisitors’ verdict to the Pope. The subsequent investigation took an unfavorable turn for Eckhart; for in 1328 a papal bull was issued against a number of doctrines derived from Eckhart’s writings, because they were deemed “strange, doubtful, suspicious, and audacious.” Teaching such audacious and enigmatic propositions was considered dangerous because of hypocrites of both sexes.
Eckhart died at the beginning of 1329, and at least the consideration shown to him personally ceased. On March 27, 1329, the Pope issued a new bull which condemned 28 of the master’s propositions as heretical or suspected of heresy, attributing them to an overly fervent thirst for knowledge that could not be satisfied by the prescribed doctrines of faith.
In other words, Eckhart was a man who dared to think for himself and open his eyes to the light of knowledge, instead of clinging to dogma with his eyes closed to truth. There must have been nothing objectionable about this man’s personal character, since despite the Church’s condemnation of the fallen man, nothing worse was said about him.
Eckhart died amidst the fiercest persecutions. Even over his grave, the Pope cried out his condemnation. But Eckhart’s thoughts were not thereby extinguished; they only now gained true life. Enthusiastic disciples carried them out into the world, and although excommunicated by the Church, Eckhart remained the master to whom many of the noblest, most devout, and most intellectually gifted men unashamedly professed their allegiance. Now Eckhart became “the master” for an entire lineage of theologians; he is called the great, the exalted, the blessed, the divine master, to whom God never concealed anything. His sayings were quoted, and collections of them circulated widely. Suso speaks of him as the one who freed him from the temptations, doubts, and fears of his soul; he sees him in visions, bathed in the light of transfiguration, and hears his assurance that he has attained the full contemplation of divine light after death. Only now do the master’s ideas gain power over the nation. The enthusiastic disciples spread them and, through powerful preaching, ignite even the most sluggish hearts. Thus, on Eckhart’s foundation, his disciples shape German mysticism as a unique asset of the German nation.
But the master’s writings continued to have an impact. Obeying the Pope’s orders, they were likely hunted down and many destroyed; but many also escaped persecution. As precious possessions, they circulated secretly from hand to hand. Naturally, they were often not attributed to the author, and Eckhart’s writings sometimes appeared under other names. People tirelessly copied them, made extracts, highlighted important reflections, and incorporated passages from them into other books.
Thus it comes about that scholars still argue today about whether this or that proposition was written by Eckhart or by someone else. But we are not at all concerned with whether a truth was proclaimed by this person or that person; the only thing that matters is that it is truth and that we recognize it. Neither Eckhart nor Tauler nor anyone else has the merit of having fabricated or invented a new truth, and what any philosopher of the Middle Ages or the modern era believes they have discovered, others had already seen thousands of years earlier.
Lasson and others have also tried in vain to force the eternal truth, as Eckhart presented it, into a system. Futile effort! It is simply the nature of the unlimited that it cannot be dissected and classified; for there, the beginning conditions the end, the end the beginning; there is indeed neither beginning nor end, but only a single whole, which one can certainly consider from different perspectives, but cannot dissect into parts, which it does not actually have. It is not like chemistry, where two compounds form a third; there, it is either everything at once or nothing at all. The existence of faith is conditioned by the presence of love, love is conditioned by knowledge, knowledge by obedience, obedience by faith; the whole is a chain that cannot be broken, they are all mystical forces that are fundamentally one, and which one must possess oneself in order to comprehend. They do not come into being, they merely reveal themselves, and are only different facets of a single revelation that cannot be dissected and classified, and which therefore cannot be made palatable to philosophers. When one speaks of knowledge, one means surrender; surrender, however, is union, and union is separation, and separation is sanctification, and sanctification is knowledge; there is no distinction except that which one makes for oneself; the whole revolves around nothing other than eternal being, and this rests on nothing other than itself.
The truth Eckhart spoke of is still the same one that was spoken by the sages thousands of years ago, the same one taught by Buddha, Pythagoras, and many others, and which can be found in the ancient Vedas of India. The Word of God still speaks the same thing it spoke in the beginning, and what it speaks through humanity is not based on this or that premise or theory, but on truth, because the Word of God is truth in the heart of humanity. Since every person gives this word the outward expression appropriate to their nature, just as water, when poured into a vessel, takes on the shape of the vessel, so too do the modes of expression used by the wise to convey one and the same truth differ in form from one to another; and what is incomprehensible to us in the manner of one may be understandable to us in the manner of another. For this reason, it may be useful to compare the doctrine of truth as explained by Eckhart with the teachings of the same truth in the Upanishads [upaniṣads].
II Yoga
“Yoga is mastery over oneself.”
(Pantanjala [Patañjali])
“Take away from yourself everything that is not
God, and only God remains.”
(Meister Eckhart)
There can be no higher science than that which encompasses truth in the entire universe. This science, however, is not taught in the lecture halls of our academies, and infinity is also incomprehensible to the limited human mind; but since the truth underlying all phenomena is only one, the mind can recognize it as soon as it rises above its limitations and recognizes itself as one with the truth. Truth is the reality underlying all things or phenomena, the true essence of everything in its perfection, the revelation of which is the world of appearances that we see, as well as those forms that are invisible to us. This real, singular, omnipresent, uncreated, self-existent being is God, and the union of man with God is called Yoga (from yog, Sanskrit = to bind).
The teachings of yoga are thus the teachings of union with God, or, which amounts to the same thing, the “path to Christ,” the God-man who dwells in the heart of all. It is the highest of all teachings; it teaches the path to freedom, salvation, and perfection. Whoever has become master of themselves is independent of everything. That is why the Bhagavad Gita also says:
“Whoever knows me, the mighty Lord of the world, who am unborn and without beginning, walks without error among mortals and is free from sin” (Chapter X, 3)
The word “yoga” corresponds to the word “religion” (from religere, Latin = to bind back) in its original and true meaning. Both terms refer to the invisible bond that connects humanity with God, that is, human existence with the true divine essence underlying it. True religious doctrine is the doctrine that gives us the correct insight into the relationship in which the human soul stands to its own divine origin, which is also the highest goal of its striving, and it provides the means by which humanity can regain this lost divine Self-knowledge. Whether modern religion achieves this is a question everyone can answer for themselves.
The teachings of yoga show us the path to true being. It is not merely a moral doctrine; it advises people to seek eternal life not in another external person, but within themselves, and to awaken to this higher, eternal life themselves. It does not demand blind faith in this or that opinion, but rather the gradual unfolding of knowledge within oneself. The religion of the average person, insofar as it is not based on superstition, is an ethical system. It gives us certain rules and regulations and seeks to compel us to follow them through promises and threats. It appeals to our selfishness and self-interest, to our fear of personal harm in the “afterlife,” just as the penal code appeals to our fear of personal harm in “this life,” while all of this is directly opposed to the teachings of yoga. For it demands complete selflessness, total freedom from all desires for reward or fear of punishment, a complete selfless merging with God, with the love of the whole, which is the self-knowledge of unity in the whole, and it demands this not by invoking any promise or threat, but it gives us the scientific reasons for it. It is not a dogmatic, artificially constructed religious system, nor is it philosophical speculation. It is not based on any theories or conclusions, traditions or external “revelations” or communications from others; it is not devised, fabricated, conceived, or invented by anyone; it is not the work of any human being, but a high and sacred science whose foundation is one’s own experience and self-knowledge; it has nothing to do with visions and reveries, but is the result of a spiritual awakening to a higher consciousness, a resurrection through “mystical death” to a higher form of existence.
This teaching of yoga not only forms the essence of Indian wisdom tradition, but it is also the foundation and culmination of all true Christianity, even if it is known to relatively few theologians. That which the masses cannot grasp remains a mystery to them. Furthermore, teachings relating to the deepest truths of religion have always been preserved as sacred secrets and revealed only to the worthy; the teaching of yoga, the holiest of all, has always been known only to the initiated. It was carefully preserved by the Indian and Egyptian priests; it was the basis of the “mysteries” of the Greeks and Romans; it is contained in the “secret doctrine” of the adepts; its fundamental principle, however, is that man and God are one in their essence, and that when man attains knowledge of God, he recognizes himself as God, or as the Christian mystic Johann Scheffler (Angelus Silesius) expresses it:
“Nothing is known of God, He is the only One;
What is known of Him must be in Himself.”
This is, of course, a teaching that not everyone can grasp, and even today it is risky to share it with everyone, since the fool, who knows nothing of divine knowledge and is himself nothing in truth, could easily be carried away by his own arrogance and imagine that he himself is God. Therefore, admonitions to secrecy are found in all writings that deal with the teachings of yoga. Among others, the author of the Oupnekhat (“The Secret to Be Kept”) also states:
“You should not sit in bad company and impose this secret on someone who has no desire for it, but endless reward will befall him who, having purified his inner and outer self, shares this knowledge with those who seek the truth, and at the opportune moment also makes it known to those who do not seek it.”
(Oupn., Kioni III.)
The secret of the matter lies not so much in the fact that this doctrine is concealed; for in fact it will reveal itself to everyone who is ready for it, as soon as they arrive at true knowledge, but rather in the fact that understanding it requires a higher spiritual power than the ordinary brain activity of the secular scholar or theologian groping in the dark and searching for proof.
“Knowledge consists of two parts: the lesser and the greater. Lesser knowledge is the learning of language, arithmetic, astronomy, agriculture, navigation, the construction of houses (systems), and other necessary sciences. This is lesser knowledge. Greater knowledge is that through which they attain the essence, which is the form of eternity, indestructibility, and immutability. When contemplating this essence, you should ‘sit in a quiet place’ where there is no passage and your attention is not distracted. From the purity of your heart, build a wall around yourself, and know that Atma [ātmā] protects you from all sides.”
(Oupnekhat, Ambrat Nad.)[7]
But this teaching of yoga is not only contained in the libraries of the Vatican, in the few accessible Upanishads, or in the ancient cartulae[8] of mystics and alchemists; it reveals itself of its own accord to everyone noble enough to receive it and capable of pure and sublime thought. Therefore, its spirit permeates all true poetry. For example, Schiller teaches yoga when he says:
“Receive the deity into your heart,
And it descends from the throne of the world.”
We find them even clearer and more distinct in Rückert’s didactic poems, where, to give an example, it says:
“I, the prisoner, playing with my chains,
The blind archer aiming at a high target;
Akin to spirits, bound to beasts,
Searching for myself, ever lost to myself,
I who do not know what I am, was, or will be;
What would I be if I were nothing but myself alone?
I am also you, because you are what is within me;
I am more than I am, because you are my everything.”
But one finds least of the teachings of yoga and least of all truth in modern speculative philosophy; for there, it is not a matter of independent knowledge, but merely a comparison of all possible opinions, theories, hypotheses, and assumptions in order to fit them into some system and make them palatable to the limited earthly mind; there, the philosopher skirts around the truth like a cat around hot porridge; he has no desire to eat it, he only wants to satisfy his curiosity in order to make the world believe that he knows what the truth would have to be, if only it existed. But true Self-knowledge is least of all to be found in modern pseudo-Christianity, for insofar as it has not degenerated into mere fashion and consists of charlatanism, the misguided belief in the external hinders the recognition of inner truth.
If we wish to find truth in Christianity, we must not seek it on its surface, where everything is mere appearance, but rather we must descend into its hidden depths, into which only the gaze of the born mystic can penetrate. And he must do this himself, relying on no one else; for even the best teachings of yoga cannot bring him knowledge if knowledge is not attained. They can only show him the path he must walk; he himself must undertake the journey. If the occult teachings of mysticism could be made comprehensible to the earthly mind, which is incapable of rising above selfishness, it would be neither mystical nor occult. Just as the meaning of a piece of music cannot be expressed or described in mere words, so it is with mysticism. Only like can like understand like. Those whose hearts are filled with a sense of truth will penetrate the secret meaning of the teachings; those who lack this sense will be lost within them. Therefore, most scholarly commentaries on the German mystics are repugnant, if not downright disgusting, to anyone with even a spark of true understanding. Since the knowledge of these commentators is based on nothing more than cobbled-together theories and speculations, they know nothing else. They mistake the truth that enlightened men recognized through their own experience for contrived “postulates” and then boldly launch into postulating and criticizing them without considering that anyone who wants to criticize the works of an adept must first become an adept themselves in order to understand them. Therefore, all treatises on the works of the mystics, even if they are authenticated by the Supreme Church Council, but not written by the “Holy Spirit,” the Spirit of Truth, are utterly worthless to the discerning reader.
Mysticism is that knowledge which arises not from intellectual cleverness, but from spiritual insight. Whoever wishes to see God must investigate Him not in artificially constructed words, but in spirit and in truth.
The transient aspect of man perceives the transient aspect of external nature, the eternal aspect of man perceives that which is imperishable in the universe; the existence of the one conditions the existence of the other:
“Eternity alone comprehends eternity;
Whatever in me conceives of eternity must be infinite.”
(Rückert)
When spiritual matters are discussed, the material mind, unable to grasp them, imagines something perverse. Therefore, the mere mention of words like “God,” “knowledge,” “faith,” etc., begins the Babylonian confusion of tongues; the limited mind imagines something limited by “God” and labels anyone who speaks of God’s omnipresence a pantheist. The “intellect,” nurtured and inflated with opinions and lacking true knowledge, imagines “faith” as clinging to some opinion, either secondhand or fabricated from moonlight, etc. This was the case thousands of years ago, and it will remain so for a long time to come. Alongside great knowledge, small knowledge grows; alongside every simple sage, a versatile, learned fool; where there is a Pythagoras, an Aristotle is not far away. As Empedocles already said:
“Never to be seen with eyes is the eternal essence of the Godhead;
No one approaches it, nor can it be grasped with hands,
as the crowd imagines on the broad road of delusion.
God is the Holy Spirit, utterly ineffable to man,
Is pervading the universe, the all-moving thought.”
However, this does not prevent scholars and theologians from arguing even today, because each believes that his definition of “God” is the correct one, and the other’s is incorrect; but the “educated, cultured person,” who has already reached the point of believing that there is nothing he does not know, logically concludes that there is no truth because he knows nothing about it.
What hinders us from true knowledge is not lack of knowledge or ignorance; for lack of knowledge always precedes knowledge. What hinders us are the self-created false concepts that we mistake for knowledge, and which must first be destroyed before knowledge can arise. If we formed no conception of anything at all, truth could present itself to us as it is; just as one can write much more clearly on a blank tablet than on one that is already covered in writing. Someone who possesses no worldview at all can arrive at a correct one much more easily than someone who possesses a false one. Therefore, scholars are generally the last to recognize the truth. The proverb says, “The more learned, the more misguided,” provided that the learned person possesses a misguided erudition. Since nowadays almost everyone among us has acquired false notions about words relating to spiritual matters, it is expedient to turn to the East, where all spiritual teaching originated, and where we can rediscover the same truths proclaimed to us by the Christian mystics, albeit in different words—words with which we have not yet associated any false notions. This will also make it easier for us to understand the obscure and often seemingly contradictory idioms of the German mystics.
There is only one eternal truth and only one knowledge of it: wisdom. But the doctrine it entails can be presented in various forms; it speaks to both feeling and intellect. German mysticism, which lacks clear words for its concepts, could be compared to music, which speaks only to the heart but leaves the thirst for knowledge unsatisfied. Indian mysticism is rich in the necessary words; it provides not only the music but also the explanatory text. This text is, by its very nature, quite distinct from that provided by scholars and theologians who are neither mystics nor possess self-knowledge. The claims of the latter are based on theories and speculations, and even if they sometimes contain scattered grains of truth, they resemble descriptions of dreams that have not yet materialized for the person concerned. The enlightened mystic, on the other hand, recounts his own experiences, and because he has experienced them himself, he needs to seek no further proof to convince himself of their truth. That he has recognized his true existence is proof enough for him that it exists. And just as one and the same teaching originates from those who have found themselves, so too does the proof of truth for the one who reads or hears it lie in nothing other than that he finds himself. If he truly finds himself, then truth has been realized within him; all other proofs are worthless.
“You can doubt things, whatever they may be, but you will certainly never doubt yourself. This is the starting point. Be certain of yourself, and you will attain all knowledge without hindrance.”
(Rückert.)
When you pick up a modern book about a mystic or philosopher, the first thing you usually encounter is a discussion about whether the author belonged to this or that “school”—whether they were a Pythagorean, Hegelian, Schopenhauerian, and so on. One might then be led to believe that the most important thing about a philosopher is that they lack their own intellect, and that all philosophy consists of blindly parroting what has been recited to them. True philosophy (from philo = to love and sophia = wisdom), however, does not consist of falling in love with another person’s opinions, but rather of finding oneself in the truth, of attaining knowledge of truth oneself. Therefore, the true mystic belongs to no other “school” than the “school of the Holy Spirit,” that is, the Spirit of divine Self-knowledge, “where heaven (true Self-consciousness) is the schoolhouse, the book a pure heart, eternity the lesson, the uncreated light the teacher; where one does not have to seek outside oneself what leads to eternal blessedness, but experiences all truth within oneself” (Eckhart 616, 2). Therefore, Thomas à Kempis, certainly not accused of heresy, also says:
“Blessed is the one whom the truth teaches through itself, not through fleeting images and words, but according to its very nature.”
(The Imitation of Christ III, 1.)
Yoga is the rediscovery of oneself in God. The teachings of yoga are the doctrine of the path that one must walk if one wishes to rediscover oneself in true being. Perhaps the main points of yoga teachings can be summarized in the following seven groups. These points are not theories or “postulates,” nor are they dogmas based on external revelation, but rather facts whose understanding arises from inner experience (yoga).[9]
- The Godhead (Parabrahm). The relationless, unmanifest, unlimited, attributeless non-manifest, the Absolute, the eternal unity and unmoving rest, the nothingness in which everything is contained, the bottomless abyss of all being; the non-being in which existence has its origin, eternity.
“At the beginning of a day of creation, the entire manifest universe emerges from the non-manifest state, and it disappears into it, which is called the non-manifest, at the onset of night.”
(Bhagavad Gita, Chapter VIII, 18)
- God (Brahma). The impersonal, sole fundamental principle in the universe, the source, the cause, the truth, reality, and essence of everything, from whose substance everything originates and to which everything returns; the one true, perfect being; the life, consciousness, reason, and soul of everything in its perfection; that which creates, sustains, and transforms everything.
“I am the soul that resides in the heart of every creature. I am the beginning, the middle, and the end of everything. The entire universe has been unfolded through me, by virtue of my substantial nature. All things dwell within me. My spirit is the bearer of all things, but it is not contained within them.”
(Bhagavad Gita)
III. The universe is the revelation of truth. Everything we see in it belongs to the realm of appearances. Deceptions arise because man does not recognize the divinity hidden in all things and mistakes the appearance of a thing for its true essence.
“The beings of this world are easily deceived by the illusion of opposites, which arise from desire and aversion.”
(Bhagavad Gita)
- Man is one of these phenomena or revelations, and as a whole within the whole, everything contained within the whole is also contained within him. But he has this advantage over other creatures: by virtue of his higher organization, he is capable of recognizing the true essence (God) within himself. The attainment of this self-knowledge is called Yoga.
“By entering into me, the wise person attains my own self-knowledge, my essence, my reality, my being, my greatness, and when he fully knows me in truth, he is fully in me.”
(Bhagavad Gita VIII, 55.)
- Yoga thus consists in overcoming the delusion which causes man to believe that he is a being essentially different from God, and as a result he does not recognize himself for what he really is.
“Dispel the illusion that stands between you and God, and let space and time fall away, your here is eternally there.”
(Rückert)
- Reincarnation. However, as long as man has not attained this Self-knowledge, he has no independent, self-conscious, real existence, but is only an illusory being, and this illusory being constantly renews itself and appears in new material form; in other words, the elements (spirit, self-consciousness, matter, etc.) that constitute man reappear after the death of the personality in new personal manifestations, so that the individual’s “soul” (but not his “person”) repeatedly returns from the subjective state to objective existence (the soul reincarnates) until man, through experience, attains Self-knowledge and thereby independence from everything, true existence.
“Just as a person who has put off their old clothes puts on a new garment, so the soul, after the torn garments have been discarded, reveals itself anew in newly formed bodies.”
(Bhagavad Gita, II, 22)
VII. Nirvana is the state a person enters when they merge into the divine itself (the Absolute), and in which they are freed from all selfishness and thus all desires arising from it. They are then all in all and have nothing more to desire; they are themselves peace and eternal bliss.
“He is the light in all things that have light, and exalted above all darkness. He is knowledge, the knower, and also the object of his knowledge, who dwells in the heart of all things, who has no beginning and can be called neither being nor non-being. Exalted above all beings, he nevertheless dwells in all; unmoved within himself, he moves in his very nature.”
(Bhagavad Gita XIII, 17, 15)
The “proof” for the above points will hardly be found in books; however, everyone can convince themselves, through delving into the depths of their consciousness and through self-observation, whether what has been said is true or not; for every human being is rooted in the Absolute and carries the divine within; they can penetrate to the deepest recesses of their soul and from there ascend again to the external world. Through this, they come to know themselves and the world, for even in their smallest details, they are a reflection of the greater whole.
“You will no longer call the world within you small,
When you recognize the divine in humanity.
Small and narrow is what space and time call its limits,
Only a God-embracing thought is divinely vast.
Surrounded by a sea of embodied thoughts,
You feel yourself boundless within the confines of the body.”
(Rückert)
“Blessed are,” it says in the Bible, “the pure in heart, for they will see God.” The mirror of the soul, enlivened with deceptive images, cannot reflect the light of the high sun of God in its untarnished brilliance. However, it is unlikely that any person has ever attained this purity of heart in a single earthly existence. Since it is not a matter of ignorance of falsehood, but rather of knowing and overcoming it, error and sin are the very foundation of all knowledge. Repeated reincarnations serve to gradually lead people through experience to distinguish between truth and deception and to overcome error.
Since the individual human being is essentially the same in every reincarnation, even if their physical appearance differs, they bring with them, in each appearance on the stage of life, those talents and inclinations they acquired in their previous existence. In this sense, everyone is their own father and their father’s son, and as a son, they reap the fruits of their father’s thoughts, aspirations, and actions, according to the law of karma, which is the eternal law of cause and effect in the sense of divine justice. Anyone who understands this doctrine of reincarnation and karma will also find it in the Bible. In the Sadharma Pundarika [Sadharma Puṇḍarīka], Chapter V, the disciples ask, regarding a man born blind: “Are sins committed in a previous life the cause of this man’s blindness?” And the Bible contains a translation of this passage, albeit an unsuccessful one.
The completion of yoga is therefore not the work of a single moment, but a work that requires many incarnations in order to be completed in a single instant. However, whoever overcomes delusion and has attained divine self-knowledge need not return. Of him it is said in the Bible: “I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he will never depart from it.”
(Revelation 3:12)
“Such exalted souls who have attained me do not return to this life, which is the abode of suffering and transience. They attain supreme bliss (self-free existence).”
(Bhagavad Gita VIII, 15)
Those who attain yoga through the power of past-acquired “grace” (genius) need no further explanation and can achieve this self-knowledge without any prior knowledge. However, if we wish to form a rational understanding of the essence of yoga, it is necessary to learn about those fundamental elements that constitute human nature and, likewise, the constitution of the universe. The German terms “body, soul, and spirit” are entirely inadequate, and learning the sevenfold division of Indian esoteric teachings will bring us much closer to our goal.
Since this sevenfold division has already been mentioned many times in the theosophical literature of our time,[10] it is only necessary to briefly list it here for the sake of completeness.
Seven principles or states are distinguished in humans, namely:
- Sthula Sharira,[11] the physical material body, which in itself is the “carcass,” is not an essential part of the human being, but merely the shell, the carrier of the inner person. It relates to the latter similarly to the soil to the plant in which it grows and from which it draws its nourishment, but which does not belong to the actual organism of the plant. In mysticism, this mortal shell is hardly considered at all, and when, for example, “flesh” is spoken of, it refers to the “astral body,” Kāma, or Kāma-Manas. In the grand scheme of nature, this material body corresponds to the material plane of existence, the garment of nature.
- Linga-Scharira,[12] the “astral body”, the etheric image of the human body, whose outward expression is the physical body. It is the carrier of life force and corresponds to it in the grand scheme of nature in the “astral plane”.
III. Prana,[13] the life force, corresponds to the life principle in nature.
- Kama-rupa.[14] The sensual, animal nature in man, the seat of instincts, desires, and passions; it is the bearer of his higher nature, and the world of elemental beings in the greater natural world corresponds to it. It is the “animal nature” in the macrocosm; called “the fiery world” by Jakob Böhme.
- Manas. The human soul within man, the mind, the thinker, which can think highly and lowly, and also refrain from thinking altogether. It is that which distinguishes man from non-thinking beings, and is the true characteristic of man. It is the bearer of the divine human nature and corresponds in the universe to the plane of Akashic,[15] the soul of the world.
- Buddhi. The divine nature within man, transcending all thought and conception, corresponds in the universe to God-consciousness (Mahat), intelligence. It is the bearer of the spirit, without which the spirit cannot be “born” or manifest.
VII. Atma.[16] The divine spirit, not confined to any space.[17]
As we can see, each of these principles is the bearer of the next higher one. Not that the lower generates or creates the higher, but rather the higher unfolds through the lower and is revealed in it, so that through the presence of the higher the lower, it is ennobled.
Nor is there any mention of a transformation of one principle into another; rather, the dominance of the lower must cease so that the higher can become powerful within. Passion must subside so that a person can think calmly, and likewise, the soul must rise above all human thought and the mind must find peace if divine wisdom is to reveal itself within it and it is to attain the vision of God. “Like a flame that does not flicker when protected from the wind,” says the Bhagavad Gita, “the mind of the yogi should be,” and Rückert expresses the same idea even more clearly:
“The flame grows from the pull of the air and increases its flight,
Thus passion sustains itself through passion.
The fire stokes the wind and extinguishes the fire again, thus passion battles passion down.
How quietly the lamp burns in its sheltered place,
So calms a heart in devotion, evermore.”
This coming to rest for the worldly man, so that the divine man within him may be revealed, is called the “mystical death,” through which the self-consciousness of the divine man within him awakens and is resurrected. The stone lying on his grave is egoism; this must be rolled away from the entrance so that man can attain true freedom from his deceptive “self.”
This doctrine is symbolically represented in the Christian religion by the crucifixion, although the meaning of this representation is not universally understood. Within every human being, a god (Atma-Buddhi-Manas)[18] is bound to and crucified within the lower principles, Kama-Manas, etc., and awaits their mystical death in order to celebrate their resurrection.[19] The three highest principles belong to Heaven, the God-Man; the four lower ones to the earthly personalities, the Earth. That part of the human spirit (Manas) that unites with the divine (Atma-Buddhi)[20] is immortal; everything else remains on Earth. However, one does not need to wait for the death of the physical body to attain this union and, through it, the consciousness of immortality.
“Immortality is not reserved for the future; immortality lies in the feeling of the present.”
(Rückert)
Anyone who understands the teachings of yoga will recognize that this union with the Supreme, with divine self-awareness and divine being, is the highest thing a person can strive for and attain, or rather, the God (super-man) within them can achieve. Compared to this attainment of self-aware immortality, all pursuit of pleasures, amusements, wealth, and intellectual pursuits is mere vain trifles and worthless. This union requires no pious self-righteousness, groveling, or sycophancy; no bigotry or sycophancy; no outward asceticism or self-torture. All these things spring from selfishness, which is the enemy of selflessness; they only strengthen egoism. Nothing is needed but a pure heart. If a person possesses this, they need do absolutely nothing themselves in this great endeavor. For when the heart is free from selfishness, it is filled by God himself with the divine idea from which true knowledge springs.
That is why Meister Eckhart also says:
“To be empty of selfishness is to be full of God. Where the soul is free from all selfishness and everything that springs from it, there God, who is love himself, enters into it in his entirety.”
This is not about whether a person personally loves or dislikes something; for all personal inclinations or aversions, desires or diswills, actions or omissions, spring from the egoism of the transient self. But if the soul is pure and filled with divine love, which could not be “divine” if it were not universal, then this love manifests itself naturally in all of a person’s will, thought, and action. Through this love and its activity, humanity is awakened within the individual, and when, through this selfless love for humanity, a person has become a true human being and recognizes themselves as such, then the knowledge of God can also be revealed within them.
But what this love is, Empedocles already explained:
“Behold this love in your mind! Do not merely stand and marvel with your eyes;
Behold how it dwells as a native within all that lives!
Therefore, it is also called Joy and Aphrodite.
That it is she who, swirling in the universe, animates all things,
no mortal has yet taught.”
No one can make a person understand what love is if they do not already possess it; all mystical forces teach themselves by awakening within the person.
The practice of yoga therefore requires no selfish striving upwards to grasp the good; for the good comes of its own accord as soon as the door is opened to it. It requires only surrender; on the other hand, it demands continued vigilance against influences coming from below, a constant struggle against evil, in which, however, it is not human egoism, but rather one’s higher self-awareness that is the fighter and victor. Through this, one forms a magical circle around oneself, into which no “evil spirit,” but only God, can penetrate.
True human freedom lies in becoming free from everything that is not one’s true, immortal, unlimited Self. Yoga is the path to this freedom.
“When your mind has traversed the confused paths of the world and of delusion, you will no longer concern yourself with what appears to be but is deceptive. When your mind, having been led astray from the path of truth by what you have heard and read from others, has attained firmness in its own knowledge, then you will achieve yoga.”
(Bhagavad Gita II, 52)
However, it hardly needs to be mentioned that this disregard for the transient and the superficial, and this expansion of the soul’s self-awareness, upon which one’s own knowledge is based, is not what is called “quietism,” for the Bhagavad Gita also says:
“Do not give yourself over to idleness. He who does nothing cannot attain the state of eternal rest; he cannot achieve perfection through inactivity. Do what is your duty, for activity is better than inactivity.”
(Bhagavad Gita III, 4.)
Rather, “personal inactivity” consists in the fact that a person no longer does anything out of personal self-interest, but everything out of love for humanity and the divine, in the recognition of truth, and as an instrument of divine wisdom. Whoever has attained this is like a sun that creates all life on earth and is active everywhere with its rays, without descending from the firmament and allowing itself to be moved or carried away by the earth, for then the earth would swallow the sun, and there would be no sun anymore. The person awakened to spiritual Self-consciousness is everywhere, for the human spirit is not imprisoned in the body, and when the body has become self-conscious, the spiritually Self-conscious person is also everywhere, wherever their mortal mask may reside. They can act everywhere, yet for that reason, they do not themselves lose the tranquility of their inner self-consciousness.
However, all this is not grasped or understood by those in whom only the spirit of the earth (Kama) [kāma], but not the divine spirit (Buddhi), is active, and precisely for this reason this teaching is “secret” and will remain eternally secret to all the spiritually dead and to all those still trapped in sleep.
“This teaching is not for those who do not practice self-control, who do not worship me, and who no longer wish to hear my voice. Nor is it for the stubborn and the blasphemers. But to you, who are not ensnared by the spirit of contradiction, I will teach this high science.”
(Bhagavad Gita VIII, 67; IX, 1)
Yoga is the highest knowledge, yoga is freedom, the highest religion; but it is also the ultimate goal of all evolution and the pinnacle of all culture; for yoga is the victory over everything that is hostile, and man as an individual, as well as mankind as a whole, actually has no other enemy than himself.
III. The Way to Christ
“The first condition for attaining knowledge of God is the ability to distinguish within oneself the true and imperishable from the apparent and transient self.”
(Sankaracharya [Śaṅkarācarya] “Tattwa Bodha”)
The path to Christ is yoga; that is, union with the divine self. This own divine self is not something alien or unapproachable to humankind, nor is it a person who once lived and is now dead. It is also not something different from or limited by the divine spirit of other people; rather, it is the one God in the universe, who is neither limited nor bound by any form, but is omnipresent, and is only truly known when humankind recognizes its own spiritual omnipresence and divine freedom. This divine self-knowledge is therefore the means of redeeming humanity from the bonds of error, perversity, and ignorance. Eckhart says:
“Man should not believe himself to be separated from God, he should not fear God; that alone is the true fear of God, when one fears losing God. If your sin prevents you from believing yourself to be close to God, you should nevertheless believe that God is near to you, for great harm lies in man distancing himself from God. Whether man distances himself from God or draws near to him, God never distances himself; he always remains near. And if he cannot remain within you, he is no further away than he is outside the door. What separates God from man is only the external, the inessential; in essence, he is already one with God. It is not a matter of acquiring something new, something that did not previously exist, but simply of overcoming the delusion that makes us believe that we are something different from God in our true essence.” When we overcome our own false self, the realization of our true, innermost being comes of its own accord, and we then see what we truly always and eternally were and are meant to remain. This is true freedom: that we are dependent on nothing and as free and unencumbered by anything else as we were in our first flow from the one primordial source of all things. Everything that is created is not free. As long as there is something above me that is not God himself, it weighs upon me, however small it may be or however it may be, even if it were reason and love, insofar as they are created and not God himself; it weighs upon me because it is unfree.[21]
This divine freedom, which can only be attained through one’s own divine Self-knowledge (theosophy), is what the soul of every person consciously or unconsciously strives for, quite apart from all ecclesiastical opinions and religious creeds to which the outer person adheres.
“The soul does not rest until it breaks through everything that is not God and enters into divine freedom. That thing is free which depends on nothing and to which nothing clings. The soul is perfectly free that has transcended everything that is not God, that clings neither to creation nor to itself. The soul should also not be dependent on any external god (Christ), but should recognize itself as God in God. We should desire nothing from God as from a stranger. Whoever desires from another is a servant; whoever gives is a master. I will consider very carefully whether I should accept or desire something from God, for if I were to accept something from him, I would be subservient to God, like a servant to his master, and that is not how we want to be in eternal life, for that is the meaning of Christ’s revelation, that we are all the same (one) Son of God. God is my foundation, and my foundation is God’s foundation. What is mine I have received from no one. Have I received it from If something belongs to another, it is not mine, but to the one from whom I received it. Love can never exist between unequals based on equality; they will remain eternally distant and unequal. Therefore, we should strive to ensure that we do not need to ask God to grant us his grace and divine goodness, but rather that we receive it ourselves without asking him for it.[22]
This Self-knowledge and perfect freedom, however, does not belong to earthly man, the son of the earth spirit, who lives in the delusion of his own arrogance and whose vision does not extend beyond the barrier imposed by this self-delusion. Rather, it belongs to the God-man, who awakens to Self-consciousness in the human soul and is thereby born into human existence. A person suffering from delusions of grandeur may imagine himself to be Christ; but only God within man can recognize Himself in him in truth as the God-man. Human arrogance is of no use in this; rather, it stands as an obstacle.
“Therefore, unity with God consists in the fact that God (the knowledge of truth) is always born in man, that is, that God’s image is revealed in him. Man on earth is not a direct son of God; he is only the ‘stable’ in which the Son of God is born. In this birth, I am one with God; there he cannot exclude me; there, the Holy Spirit (Self-knowledge) receives his essence, his activity and becoming from me as from God. There man ceases to exist entirely as a separate being and a form-limited personality, and all has become one in all. When all imperfection and finitude have been driven out, and with them all distinction between this and that, we become like God; we become all in all, just as God is all in all.”[23]
No person comes to Christ in their selfhood, and therefore there is no way by which a person possessed by the delusion of egoism can reach the God-man; but Christ comes to himself in the person when the person has overcome the delusion of “self”, and then they have not only found the way to Christ, but are already with him.
“When the separation from the senses and from all personal perceptions is complete, and all individuality is surrendered, then God (the knowledge of God) enters into the person; not partially, but in his entirety (universal Self-consciousness). Where I have Christ’s life more than my own life, there I have Christ (the Godhead in humanity) more than myself; there I cease to be ‘I’ and am transformed into God. When I have so transcended my true nature that I perceive nothing in myself and in all things but the one all-encompassing and imperishable essence, then my (personal) soul has lost its name, and nothing remains but the pure essence that eternally begot the Son (knowledge) in the Father (the Godhead), and thus I am born a new person in this essence, and I perform all my works in a divine nature, above my earthly nature. Thus I become one body with Christ and one spirit with God; With all my strength I am lifted into the uncreated Good and draw all things after me into absolute simplicity. There I understand myself not as this or that personality, but as exalted above all limited existence, as the one Son of God, and thus the eternal Word is born in me without ceasing.”[24]
“God’s life is my life; his substance is mine. This means not becoming God, but being God. In eternal, unchanging Being, there is no ‘I and Thou,’ but nothing but God in God. Therefore, the soul is not ‘equal’ or ‘similar’ to God, but is wholly one with him and precisely the same as he is. The soul merges into God, and God merges into the soul; there is a complete merging of the one into the other. Man draws his blessedness where God draws it; he has one and the same essence, knowledge, action, and understanding as God. This breaking through of the limitations of self and finitude is far more glorious than the original emergence from God. In the latter, I behave as a creature, but in the former, I am exalted above myself and all other creatures, neither God nor creature; I am what I have always been and what I am now and forever to be.” “I neither gain nor lose weight, but am the one unmoving cause that moves all things.”[25]
This doctrine, unlike human science, is not based on mere theories, external observations, conclusions, conjectures, logical reasons, communications of opinions, and the like, but on the personal experience of those who have reached this level of knowledge of truth; therefore, it is not based on appearance and probability, but on divine wisdom (self-awareness).
God (the self-consciousness of God) himself speaks to us through the prophets. The holy writers are filled and enlightened by the holy spirit (divine self-knowledge) of truth, so that they describe to us what they themselves have spiritually understood, but one must first discover the inner truth and find the deeper meaning within these descriptions. The holy scriptures of all peoples are composed in symbols and allegories because abstract ideas can only be represented sensuously by clothing them in a suitable form; However, it requires a sense of truth and the capacity for understanding to perceive and recognize not merely the outward form, but the truth contained within. No one is so complacent that they cannot find something in the writings of the sages that corresponds to their own sense of truth, as soon as they look for it, and no one is so enlightened that they cannot find even deeper riches when they delve into these writings. But whoever inserts falsehoods into them and then criticizes them is criticizing nothing other than themselves. Everything in the holy scriptures (Bible, Vedas, Upanishads, etc.) carries a hidden meaning within it; however, all our human, earthly understanding falls short of the truth of the matter. Only in whose hearts the spirit from God (self-knowledge), the spirit of love (for the divine self), has become powerful, can scripture be truly understood and fulfilled.
This is not a matter of arbitrary interpretation of these parables, but rather of the correct understanding of the truth they contain. Each of these religious parables, which refer to things that cannot be grasped by the earthly mind because they lie beyond the limits imposed by its own being and therefore cannot be comprehended, has an external (exoteric), an internal (esoteric), and a spiritual meaning, which cannot be expressed in words but can only be grasped spiritually. Everyone can imagine whatever they like, but in reality, they can only see in them what they perceive as true, according to the standpoint they are capable of adopting. The superficial thinker sees only the external, superficial meaning; the deeply feeling and profoundly thinking thinker sees the ground of the mysteries hidden within. Therefore, Eckhart says:
“The knowledge of truth is like a sea; to one it reaches only the ankles, to another the knees, to a third the waist, and to a fourth it rises above the head, so that he sinks completely in it. Wisdom smiles enticingly at children; the self-wise laugh at it, and in the end it even mocks the learned. God’s essence cannot be expressed or described in words; we are to recognize his essence within ourselves, and for this purpose we must outgrow everything (including belief in books and authorities) that is not God himself.”[26]
Many imagine that knowing what is contained in the Bible and similar texts is all that is needed, thus confusing the means with the end. Knowledge alone does not bring salvation, only possession does, and this is no more about satisfying scientific curiosity than about visions, dreams, delusions, or fantasies of any kind, but rather about the realization of the ideal within oneself.
“Such revelations are reprehensible because they involve the contemplation of sensory (albeit internal) forms. Indulging in visions is still a sign of alienation from God, and the agitation of feeling still demonstrates the power of the senses in human beings. Such supposed revelations originate in the human mind itself, which represents its inner processes in objective images. But when God (true Self-consciousness) has grasped the soul, so that it stands pure and free from all sensory perception, it has no other object than its own reason, which has become entirely its own essence. There, the knowing and the known become one in knowledge; the soul draws from its own light what it desires, and because, by virtue of the glory of reason that has become its essence, it is enveloped by the divine rays penetrating it, it draws eternal truth from within itself. There, the soul understands (spiritually, without intellectual engagement) how to directly perceive and comprehend the Absolute. That sensory or Therefore, no further importance should be attached to inner sensory revelations except insofar as they correspond to this nature of the soul and receive their confirmation through it.”[27]
Neither through self-knowledge, nor through self-will, nor through the works that man accomplishes in his self-centeredness or egoism, however relatively good they may be, is this knowledge of God attained. The “self” is itself nothing but an illusion, a mere appearance, and everything that springs from it can be nothing other than an illusion, a self-deception. Not that human virtues—parental love, patriotism, and so on—are contemptible; on the contrary, they are rightly praised by poets and sages as the highest attainable for man. But where man ends, God begins, and in God, everything that does not originate from God and is not God has no value. God demands not merely a partial sacrifice, but the sacrifice of the whole self; in other words, the dissolution of all bondage is necessary for the attainment of perfect freedom.
“If you wish to be the same Son whom the Father begets, rid yourself of everything that the eternal Word has not taken to Himself. There is no difference between your human nature and His; it is one, and what it is in Christ (in the God-man), that is also (as the God-man) in you. If man is to know God, he must forget and lose himself with all his works, for in seeing and recognizing himself as something separate from God, the soul does not see or recognize God (its own boundless being). But when it loses itself for the sake of God (the divine being) and abandons all things, it finds itself again in God (in the whole) by recognizing God, and then it recognizes itself and all the things from which it has relinquished itself, in a perfect way.”[28]
“If you could annihilate yourself in your own attributes for an instant, you would possess everything that God is in Himself. But as long as you consider yourself something special, you know no more what God is than my mouth knows what color is, or my ear what taste is. If the soul pleases itself insofar as it is something separate, and if, in the perception of God, it still has the sensation of selfhood, then it is on the wrong path. You should sink completely from your unity and dissolve into His unity; your ‘you’ should become so completely one self with His ‘I’ that you eternally understand with Him His uncreated substance and His nameless nothingness. Whoever is to receive God must surrender himself completely and have rid himself of his own self (and thus also of the fruit of his works on earth and in heaven).”[29]
“All good works, like the time in which they are done, pass away without effect in themselves. No human work can be called ‘holy’ or ‘blessed’; evil and good works alike pass by us (the true divine Self) without effect. A work as such is nothing; it does not exist for its own sake, nor does it know itself. As soon as an action has been performed, it is nullified and over, like the time in which it was performed; it is neither here nor there; the mind has nothing more to do with it. But through the action, the mind frees itself from an idea whose fulfillment has filled it, and this liberation then brings it closer to its true nature. It becomes more blessed and better through this. The expression of the mind in good actions thus has a truly ennobling power that continues to work eternally in the mind (becomes its nature).” Only so that man might be preserved from alienation from all that is ungodly were those external practices invented (such as prayer, singing, penance, etc.), and as long as he still feels weak and alienated from God, these practices are useful to him. But as soon as he perceives true devotion within himself, he should boldly turn away from all external beings.”[30]
There is no “beyond good and evil” for humankind; for that beyond is God. If a person wishes to enter that beyond, they must transcend their selfhood, cease to be human, and merge with their humanity into the divine. God knows nothing but himself; he does not act out of selfish motives; he is eternal peace itself.
“Man can offer God nothing dearer than inner peace; God considers your waking, praying, and fasting nothing compared to this peace. He needs nothing more than to be given a calm heart; then he exerts such influences on the soul that no creature can approach or even comprehend them. Inner peace makes us like God, whose peace is not disturbed by his eternal activity (just as the sun is not disturbed by its rays being active on Earth). That peace is without obstacle and without contradiction, which are nevertheless inseparable from activity. It alone is desired for its own sake; activity serves only as a means to an end. The former directs our minds toward the divine, the latter clings to the powers peculiar to us that we share with animals, namely, the powers of sensuality. If the soul is content with outward works of virtue, it is not yet like a free daughter, but like a subservient servant.”[31]
“All works that do not originate from your deepest Self, where God dwells, and to which you are prompted by external causes, are dead works before God; for only that thing truly lives which has the cause of its movement within itself. The work of creation is finite and falls within time. Therefore, these works are too small and worthless to please God in any way. Only those works which God works in us without our (selfish) contribution, in which the soul is merely passive (even if the body is active), and only God alone works, must God reward himself for, because they are pure of selfishness and infinite. God demands no works of our own from us at all; he works the work of grace in our soul, and the works we perform are then the simple consequence of the nature into which our soul is placed. Therefore, go to your own ground, where in your selfhood you become nothing; the works you perform there, that is, which God works in you, are all living.”[32]
It is not this doctrine, but its misunderstanding, that opens the door to false self-abasement, sanctimonious groveling and obsequiousness, cowardice, eye-rolling, hypocrisy, idleness, and self-deception. The Self-awareness of true human dignity should not be suppressed, but rather elevated through a sense of God. Not in blind trust in the intervention of a foreign god should man devote himself to idleness and the neglect of good, but rather he should allow his deceptive self-forgetfulness and his true Self to so fully enter his consciousness that this Self, the good, completely fills him, and he wills, thinks, and acts only in accordance with it. The true essence of man is God.
“If God were alien to the soul, he would be inaccessible to it. What I (as a human being) recognize, I recognize through images in a mediated way. God is recognized directly through himself. Through this, I recognize him, and therefore God must be the “Thou” to my “I,” and I the “Thou” to God’s “I.” Where God is, there is also the soul, and where the soul is, there is God. In other words, as soon as God is, he sees within himself the eternal image of the soul. God is pure Self-consciousness; he is the model of the soul. He is the form of the soul and the soul of souls. The idea of humanity stood eternally before God’s throne; this idea is Christ, the Son of God. The soul holds all creatures within itself; God cannot understand himself without the soul (the essence). In its pure, timeless, spatial, and natural essence, the soul is like God; it differs from him in no way except that it is created and not its own cause. If the soul could completely relinquish its being born and created, it would be exactly the same as the Son of God. What the soul possesses, it holds on loan; nothing is its own, but everything is given to it. What the soul is, it has received from God, and it has flowed from him in such a way that it has not remained in essence, but has received a foreign essence that has its origin in the divine essence. Therefore, it cannot act like God, who moves all things in heaven and on earth and gives life to all things, but it only bestows movement and life upon the body.[33]
“Without outward action and being active in goodness, no one comes to God (to self-knowledge). We are placed in time precisely so that, through temporal, rational action, we may become closer to God and more like him. This includes continually raising one’s reason to God, not in the form of various finite conceptions, but in the form of pure truth, as the highest ideal to be constantly kept before one’s eyes. Whoever performs works in this sense rises freely, freed from all mediation, to God, the light that shines upon him, and his actions are entirely one and the same. If the inner work is to be accomplished, then a person must gather all his powers within himself, as in a corner of his soul; he must close himself off from all particular positions and forms and arrive at a forgetting and ignorance of all that is not God. It must happen in the stillness (of the heart) and in the silence (of desires) if the word of God is to be born within him.”[34]
“Just as a stone, even if it lay still for a thousand years, constantly has a downward tendency, so the inner work is a selfless will and striving for the highest good; a flight from and resistance to all that is evil and wicked, unlike goodness; and the more evil and unlike God the work, the greater the abhorrence, and the more difficult and like God the work, the easier, dearer, and more perfect it is (because it is not done for its own sake, but for the sake of goodness, for love). The outer work is not like this, but it receives its divine goodness in the inner work; but as it is alienated and estranged from its essence, it becomes a lower manifestation of the Godhead, which is hidden in difference, multiplicity, and parts as in a dense covering. The outer work, which encompasses time and space, has no standing before God; it is limited and can be hindered; it grows old and weary through time and repetition; No one can hinder the inner work, just as no one can hinder God. This inner work is loving God (the essence of all things), that is, willing goodness and goodness in itself. This work shines day and night; it praises and glorifies God (itself) in ever new ways and manifests itself in all outward actions. Therefore, the outward work can never be small if the inner work is great (selfless); nor can it be great or good if the inner work is small or nonexistent. Whoever has always embraced the inner work within themselves, wills, thinks, and acts in accordance with it, feels and rejoices in God, for all its greatness, breadth, and length are derived from nowhere but God and in God’s heart.[35]
What else could there be to unite man with God (Latin = religere) than the sensation, the self-awareness of God’s presence in the heart, from which divine self-knowledge springs? Mere theoretical knowledge is not yet knowledge; mere adherence to religious opinions, theories, dogmas, and articles of faith does not confer immortality. It is of no use to me to accept as true a narrative according to which a God is said to have died for mankind, as long as I do not know the God-man crucified within me and cannot grasp the meaning of this image. There can be no other means of attaining self-knowledge of God than for man to become one with Him in his consciousness.
“Where man is lifted above time into eternity, there he performs one and the same work with God. He works with God what God worked thousands of years ago and will work thousands of years from now; for in God there is no time, and all his action is but a single work. When man is one with God, he brings forth all creatures with God; he brings blessedness to all creatures to the degree that he is one with God. However, this does not refer to a human being (in the everyday sense of the word) who acts, but rather God (the God-man) is then the true accomplisher of such persons’ actions. God takes the place of human reason and will, and all human action is instead an action of God in human being.”[36]
“What God demands of us, and what he works within us so that we may enter into him, is equality. Love cannot exist unless it finds or brings about equality. God has never lowered himself, and never lowers himself, into another’s will, but only into his own. Wherever he finds this, he lowers himself into it with his whole being. Therefore, man must first gather himself inwardly and descend into the deepest recesses of his soul in order to drive out all that is ungodly. The soul has divided and scattered itself outwardly with its powers, each of which performs its own peculiar function; thereby, it has become all the weaker in its inner activity, for every divided power is imperfect. Therefore, if the soul is to work powerfully within, it must call all its powers back home and gather them from the scattering of things for inner activity, in order to recognize the one, uncreated eternal truth (reality). Reason and memory must be withdrawn to the depths of the soul, and relinquishing all other functions, we must arrive at the non-knowledge of all that is finite, for perception and knowledge scatter and destroy. This non-knowledge, however, is not to be understood as ignorance, but rather as a consciousness transcending all knowledge and non-knowledge. The purity of the soul consists in this: that it attains unity from the division of life and clings to nothing external. Memory, intellect, and will—all these draw you down into multiplicity; Therefore, you must let go of them all: sensuality and imagination, and everything in which you find yourself and are your own goal. Reason and will need not cease, but rather transcend themselves and return to the source from which they flowed. In our deepest being, God desires to be with us when he finds us at home, and the soul has not ceased to converse with the senses. You must also let go of conceptions of God that are based on sensory perceptions derived from external things, such as the idea that God is good, wise, merciful, and the like. Only when you free yourself from your knowledge and will will God enter into you with his knowledge and will.[37]
Here in this world, the entire existence of the ego revolves around itself; the illusory ego, created through self-reflection, relates everything to its illusory existence. It is constantly: “I am, I have, I love, I desire, I will, I know, I can,” and so on. It is precisely this ego, confined within its own peculiarity and limited by its selfhood, that prevents humanity from finding God, its true, boundless, free, all-encompassing higher self. To completely abandon the false “ego” (Mephistopheles) and willingly merge into the love of the true Self (Christ), so that no duality exists, but only love itself, is the goal of the path to Christ, the culmination of yoga. Christ is our immortal Self; what is received into him is eternal and immortal; everything in humanity that is not of a divine nature and therefore cannot unite with the God-man is temporal and transient, subject to death, decay, and transformation. Christ is the one true, eternal life; whoever enters into him, so that nothing of their own self remains, is redeemed.
“If the soul is to see God, it must not look at any temporal thing; if it is to know God, it must have no fellowship with nothingness. Creatures (to which our own created earthly self belongs) are something that separates us from God; as long as we do not let them go and receive pleasure or pain through them, we are far from God. If God is to enter into you, the creature (selfishness) must necessarily go out of you. Where your (self-created) creature ends, there God begins, and just as the image of your creature (selfhood) enters into you, God must depart with all his divinity; but if this image goes out, God enters in. Whoever has left all things in their lowest form, where they are mortal, receives them again in God, where they are truth. To be empty of all creature (selfhood) is to be full of God; and to be full of all creature (possessed with oneself) is to be empty of God. Whoever wants to receive all things must give up himself and thus also the inclination towards all things.”[38]
“God (the divine self-consciousness) demands nothing of us other than separation (from everything that is not divine).”
The true “hermit” is not the one who selfishly keeps himself apart from people or hides in a desert, but the one who is free from his own self-absorption. Only when a person can distinguish between himself as an individual and humanity in its nature, which he shares with all other people and which is unique in all of them, can he also distinguish truth from falsehood, the eternal from the temporal, the spiritual from the material, being from appearance in others.
“The departed one must let go of himself; he must practically recognize that “his” work is not his work, “his” life is not his life. God did not assume the nature of any single, specific person, but rather humanity, universal human nature. The departed one’s will is not tied to himself (and least of all to anything outside himself; he stands in the self-consciousness of God unfolded within him). All love in this world is built on self-love; had you let go of that, you would have let go of the whole world. The departed one desires nothing for himself (since he no longer recognizes his “self” as something particular and separate); he desires nothing particular and specific at all; his will (and consciousness) has become entirely one with the will of God (the universal self-consciousness); he has ceased to will (he no longer exists as a person). This is God’s intention in all things, that we relinquish the (personal) will.” Nothing brings a person to their true nature except the relinquishment of self-will. That would be a perfect and true will, that one should enter completely into God’s (the higher Self’s) will and be without “one’s own” will. God has never communicated himself to an alien will and never does. He wills nothing other than himself. Wherever he finds his will, there he surrenders himself and pours himself into it with all that he is. The person who thus stands in God’s will wills nothing other than what God and God’s will are in him. Were he ill, he would not want to be healthy (of his own will). All pain is a joy to him (for the sake of the higher Self), all diversity unmixed and simple. (He does not rejoice in himself, but God’s joy is in him.) He is free of himself and has gone beyond himself; he is dead to himself and to all creation, and he considers himself as little as he would another a thousand miles away. [But he also despises neither himself nor another.” [But he also despises neither himself nor anyone else; for he does not think at all about himself or about anything that relates to this self, he lives only in God.[39]]
This state, therefore, does not consist of selfish searching, but of complete stillness, in which the soul can be compared to a clear pool of water reflecting the moon’s image. For this image to appear without distortion, however, it is necessary that there be no waves and that the water’s surface be calm. Likewise, the ebb and flow of the soul and the movements of desires and passions must be subdued so that the God-man (Christ) may behold his image in the depths of the soul and reveal it to humanity. Thus, this is not about mediumistic devotion, nor about outward or inward fervor, but about complete passivity to the divine light from above and a power to exclude lower influences, which can only be attained through the continuous practice of self-control.
“God seeks rest in all things; for the divine nature is rest itself. In all creatures, God is as much alike as rest; nothing dearer can the soul offer God than rest; He needs nothing other than that one give Him a tranquil heart. Everything in the soul should be silent, the soul itself should be silent, otherwise God cannot speak within it. The secluded one receives neither pleasure nor sorrow from creatures; the multitude of earthly impulses and cares is silenced within, the soul has become immobile. True seclusion is nothing other than that the spirit stands as unmoved in the face of all external events as a strong rock stands unmoved against a gentle breeze. This unmoving seclusion brings man into the greatest likeness with God; for that God is God, he derives from his unmoving seclusion. The soul must be so firmly established in God that nothing can impress itself upon it; Neither hope nor fear, neither joy nor sorrow, neither love nor grief, nor anything that could upset her.”[40]
When a person has relinquished their ego with all its selfish desires and passions, they can no longer have a selfish desire for God. They then do not conceive of God as something objective or external, but rather they recognize God through God (the higher Self) recognizing itself in themselves.
“Not only is the departed one free from things and from himself, but also from (the conception of) God, insofar as he is distinct from the Godhead; for even God is (in conception) still a determinate object. Therefore, we pray that we may be freed from God, and attain the full truth, and enjoy blessedness, the ultimate, simple, absolute origin in which the highest angels and souls are equal; there, where I stood, and willed what I was, and was what I willed. I ask God that he may free me from God. This is the highest and most essential thing that man can relinquish; namely, that for God’s sake he may relinquish God himself. The Nothingness, which is God himself, draws the soul through all things, above all things, and beyond all things into the uttermost Nothingness, where it is unknowable to all creatures. There it is nothing, there it has nothing, there it wills nothing, there it has surrendered God and all things (and rests in itself). It returns to its own ground (love and glory); there, it becomes its own deprived of her image (of self-delusion); there she loses her name and is nothing more than God in God.”[41]
The blessedness of the soul consists in recognizing that it is everything in everything, and that there is nothing besides it.
“This is man’s highest bliss, that the soul cannot remain with anything until it stands without image, reflected in the nothingness in which it eternally hovered before its own existence. All our perfection and bliss depend on man penetrating and climbing beyond all creation and temporality and entering into the ground that is groundless. Thus annihilated in itself, absorbed into divinity (as the spark rises in the flame and becomes light), the soul is dead and buried in God (in universal self-consciousness), but in truth, life itself. Dead (for the world) is he whom nothing in the world touches. Thus, the soul is dead in itself (in its selfhood); but it is life in God, and what is dead there is (or rather) annihilated. Thus, the soul is dead that is buried in divinity (of bliss and perfection). He who is dead in this way is everywhere in unchanging sameness, so that nothing touches him. This death the soul eternally seeks.”[42]
Once man is dead in his selfhood, that is, once he has become free from himself, then in him, the son of the Earth Spirit, the son of Light, the divine Spirit, Christ the Redeemer, Self-knowledge is born. There is no talk here of a “development” of the earthly, intellectual man, limited by time and space, into a higher, but still limited, “superhuman,” but rather, just as the one light of the sun, which fills the world, rises in the darkness, causing the darkness to completely disappear, so too does the one, all-encompassing universal Self-consciousness rise in the soul that has transcended the barrier of self-delusion and entered into the freedom of immortal existence.
“This birth of God in the soul occurs across time and space in eternity; not at a particular moment, in this year, month, or day, but at all times; that is, beyond time in the vastness where there is no here or now, neither nature nor thought; where the soul has risen above time and thought and is in an eternally present state. It takes place in the very innermost being of the soul, in the spark of reason; but all the powers of the soul become aware of it in a divine perception. There is no question of “devotion” or “pious emotion,” but rather the spirit stands there in a pure contemplation of the highest truth. The body, too, is present in a still stillness, so that not a limb moves; for the eternal Word is born simultaneously in spirit and body. No power of the soul exercises its function in this process; all its powers are gathered within. Thus, God’s birth in the soul is nothing other than a being seized by God (the Truth) in a special heavenly way, whereby God draws the spirit from the storm of unnatural unrest into a quiet simplicity in which God, with his own divine nature, can communicate with the spirit. This birth is an act that can be repeated, and its effects become ever stronger through repetition. The soul in which the birth occurs once is formed according to God; but the more often this birth occurs, the more strongly the soul is formed in God and in the heart of God.”[43]
Through this, spiritual life awakens within the individual, and with it comes a new consciousness, a new way of perceiving and remembering, and new mystical powers unfold which earthly man does not know and cannot know, because they belong not to him, but to the omnipresent spiritual being, of whom the unreborn earthly man knows nothing. For this reason, all mysticism undertaken to satisfy scientific curiosity is pointless and leads nowhere, and the beginning of knowledge of occult science is the surrender of one’s self with all its self-knowledge, self-will, and self-ability. But to grasp this teaching, as Sankaracharya [Śaṅkarācarya] says, one must possess the ability within oneself to distinguish the true and imperishable from the apparent and transient self. Whoever can distinguish this within themselves can also distinguish it in other things and persons, and just as the physical eye perceives the material, so the spiritual eye perceives the spirit that dwells in all things and yet is exalted above all.
“Whoever sees in all beings and in himself the One, the Sole, the Supreme Lord of the world, the Eternal One who acts in transient things, is the true son. Whoever realizes that the different qualities of things originate from only one being, enters into Brahma.” (Bhagavad Gita XIII, 27–30).
This is the great mystery. Whoever grasps it has realized immortality.
IV Christianity
We present wisdom for the mature; not the wisdom of this age and of the great of this world, who amount to nothing, but the mysterious and veiled wisdom (theosophical) that God destined for our glory from eternity. (1 Corinthians 2:6-7)
The word “Christ” originally comes from Sanskrit, and Chréstés referred to a prophet among the ancient Greeks (Aeschylus, Herodotus, etc.). Justin Martyr calls his fellow believers “Chréstiani,” and Loctantius (L. IV. C. VII) says that out of ignorance, people call themselves “Christiani” instead of “Chréstiani.” Chréstos originally denoted a student of wisdom on the path of initiation; once he had overcome all obstacles and purified himself, he became an “anointed one,” a Christos.
This will suffice to indicate that the word “Christianity” means something far higher than is commonly understood, and that a true Christian is not the follower of any sect that calls itself “Christian,” but a person who walks the path of divine Self-knowledge and immortality. Likewise, the true Christian is not the follower of any human being or limited entity called “Christ,” but a person who is receptive to the light of eternal truth, which shines upon the whole world without distinction of nationality or denomination. Eckhart says:
“God is our Father and Christendom (the knowledge of God) is our Mother; Christ (the truth) is everywhere different from us, not in kind, but only in degree. There is no question of him interceding for us; rather, we are to become Christ himself through moral perfection, and without this, even the suffering and death of Christ can do us no good.”[44]
We must therefore not confuse true Christianity with “Christian” church culture; for a church can only be truly Christian insofar as it shows humanity the way to truth, guides it in how it must behave so that the lotus flower of divine self-knowledge can unfold within it, and the God-man (Christ) can awaken within it. Truth belongs to eternity, the church on earth to transience.[45] The characteristic of a churchgoer is that he recognizes the church, that of a true Christian, that he recognizes God as his highest being. The external Church may be an aid or an obstacle to attaining knowledge of God. It is an aid if one finds the teachings of truth within it and follows them; it is an obstacle if one remains stuck in blind faith in dogmas and theories. “Church practices and precepts are not the highest form of instruction; they have their place only when the believer transcends them.” No one has ever attained divine wisdom by despising the Church and the truth taught within it, or by imagining that they have no need for them; nor by blindly believing things of which they have a distorted understanding. But only then can he look down on the Church when he has risen above it, and belief in opinions only has real value when one correctly understands the subject matter. However, if the Church itself no longer recognizes the truth it claims to teach, confuses spirit with form, outward appearance with inner essence, and values its self-interest more highly than truth, then it is also in reality no longer a Christian Church, that is, no longer a school of wisdom, and no longer called by wisdom or capable of teaching wisdom. Whether a person is what they claim to be or not is decided by nothing other than their own higher knowledge, reason imbued with the spirit of truth, which is the supreme judge in all human matters. Without this light of reason, man is merely an animal, to whom one can perhaps teach an artificial kind of morality or training, but not true religion. Among such animalistic humans, all sorts of intellect, wisdom, perspicacity, logic, etc., may be found; one may find among them great historians, theologians, philosophers, chemists, scholars, and professors, etc.; but all this does not belong to true knowledge and does not produce a Christian.
A Christian in the true sense of the word is a person in whose soul the light of the knowledge of God has penetrated. If he is completely filled with this light, then he is Christ, that is, he has become one with the One immortal and omnipresent light of divine wisdom through this union (Yoga), one with Christ, the God-man. Eckhart says of such a person:
“The soul unites with God as food unites with the body. As the eye becomes the eye and the ear the ear, so the soul becomes God in God.[46] It unites with every divine power, as power is in God, and God unites with the soul, as every power is in the soul; the two natures merge into one light, and the soul (in its individuality) becomes nothing by attaining its highest form. What it is, it is in God. The divine powers draw it into themselves, as the sun draws all creatures into itself.”[47]
“The soul is united with the mere Godhead (Atma), so that it can no longer be found within it as a separate entity; no more than a drop of wine in the middle of the sea.[48] Fire transforms into itself what is added to it and brings it into one nature. Thus we are transformed into God.” It is still the same soul, but a different state of the soul; for the old way is completely gone and dead. The soul has regained its true essence and stands in its original innocence. (Individual) reason and everything graspable in concepts remain outside; the soul is absorbed into pure unity. What the supreme power of the soul previously accomplished, God now accomplishes in the human being; but the human being stands free and unencumbered by all things. One can then say: This person is both God and man. He has attained by grace all that Christ possessed by nature. The body is so permeated by the glorious essence of the soul that one can truly say this is a divine man.[49] He is more God than creature.[50] Whoever is enraptured to the divine standpoint understands himself to be nothing other than the being (Parabrahm) who derives his essence and his divinity from God (Brahma).[51]
A true Christian is thus the same as an Indian yogi; that is, a person who earnestly strives for the union of their personal self (Manas) with God (Ātma-Buddhi). There is no doubt that the first “Christians” were members of a school of yoga whose purpose was to unite with God through the practice of surrender to the Supreme and, through this union, to attain immortality. However, when this sublime teaching was widely proclaimed and therefore widely misunderstood by those who could not grasp it, countless sects gradually grew out of these misunderstandings, as we see them today, with their irrational dogmas and incomprehensible articles of faith, fanaticism and intolerance, superficiality and hypocrisy.
One can reasonably divide Christianity, as it is now, without prejudice to the many sects from which it is composed, into the following classes:
- Yogis or saints, of whom there are very few; that is, people who, as described above, have attained divine Self-knowledge. Eckhart belonged to this group, as his writings seem to indicate; for the teachings he proclaimed evidently arose from his own experience, and not, as some of his commentators believe, from his “speculation.”
“Sanctification begins only with perfect rebirth. Far from being able to sit idly by after receiving grace, true, God-pleasing activity only begins then.”[52]
There can be no question that, in a state of grace, one may quietly absolve oneself of all action; rather, since we have become sons of God through this birth, all our lives also become divine, and the principle implanted within us manifests itself in works of love and justice. A residue of imperfection certainly remains in the graced even after that birth, because the infinite fullness cannot fully enter into the finite personality. But this imperfection is merely a coincidence; holiness is the essence. Whoever has received eternal light at birth can no longer fall.[53] Whoever has beheld God in that height of grace can no longer sink. He will never be separated from God in any way, and will never fall into mortal sin, nor willingly commit a lesser sin.[54]
“The overflowing abundance of light that enters the soul at birth also pours into the body, and the body is thereby transfigured. All faculties and the outer person are illuminated. The highest knowledge comes to us at birth. We recognize the Holy Trinity and all things as pure nothingness in God. As the soul gives its essence to the body, so God is life to the soul. As the soul pours itself into all its members, so God flows into all the soul’s faculties, so that they may pour it out further in goodness and love upon all that is beneath them.[55] There, in all their actions, a person should bear witness before the light of the Holy Trinity, which has illuminated all people, so that they may rightly grasp, know, and believe in the Son who is continually born within them. Then the Holy Spirit (the Spirit of divine Self-knowledge) causes me (the illusory “self”) to be, as it were, burned and melted within Him, and to become wholly love.”[56]
These kinds of Christians have no desires whatsoever. Since they are one with the One from whom heaven and earth came, they have nothing to attain on earth or in heaven that they have not already attained and surpassed; they have renounced their ego and thus all its desires.
But only a few are capable of this renunciation and surrender to the highest ideal; the vast majority remain trapped in the bonds of self-interest until the end, considering themselves fundamentally different from God, and therefore hoping to receive this or that from Him for themselves. These constitute the following class.
“Some people look at God as they look at a cow and want to love him as they love a cow. You love a cow for its milk and cheese, for your own benefit. Likewise, all those who love God for outward wealth or inner comfort do the same; they do not love God in the right way, but out of self-interest. Every motive and every intention that is anything other than God in himself, however good it may otherwise be, is only an obstacle.”[57]
Whoever loves God so that something may be bestowed upon them acts like someone who searches for something by candlelight. Having found what they were looking for, they throw away the candle. If they receive what they desired, be it devotion or refreshment, they no longer care about God himself.[58]
God rewards all good things, and whatever you give up for His sake, He will give you back a hundredfold. But if your intention is to receive this reward, you will receive nothing, for you have given up nothing.[59]
Nothing but God alone should work in the righteous. If anything external motivates you in your actions, then your works are dead works.[60]
If I had a friend and loved him with the intention that he would do me good and fulfill all my wishes, then I would not be loving the friend, but myself. True love for God consists in loving God, free from all selfishness, solely for the sake of his goodness, for all that he is in himself. It is the fear of a servant when one abandons sin out of fear of the torments of hell, and not out of love for God. Fear casts one eye on God, the other on torment. The true, perfect nature of the spirit is, even if heaven and hell did not exist, to love God for the sake of his own goodness.[61]
Everything that man wants, does, desires, or hopes to attain from his illusory self belongs, like this self, to the realm of illusion, deception, and transience; therefore, all external “forgiveness of sins,” all pleading and begging to move God to change his will, also belongs to the realm of illusion.
“Repentance should be so strong within us that we would rather suffer a thousand deaths than one small sin. Whoever says he has true repentance and persists in sin speaks falsely and increases his sin.”
A single unpunished sin, even in the most holy life, renders a person (their personality) eternally lost. No prayer of the saints could help them. But whoever has committed a thousand mortal sins, recognizes them, and casts them aside in true repentance and earnest reformation of will, would be blessed with the blessed.[62]
As soon as a person feels displeasure with their sin, they rise up to God and begin to diligently repent of all sins with an unwavering resolve. Then they develop firm trust in God and gain great security; from this comes a spiritual joy that lifts the soul above all pain and sorrow and secures it in God.[63]
The fruit of true repentance is the forgiveness (the abandonment or forsaking) of sin. All sins for which one feels true repentance have been forgotten by God, and we should no longer remember them.[64]
God doesn’t care about what you’ve done, but about who you are. He is a God of the present; as he finds you, he takes you and doesn’t look at what you were, but at who you are now.[65]
As often as a person attains equality with God, so that God becomes so dear to them that they deny themselves and do not seek their own, neither in time nor in eternity, so often they are freed from all their sin and purgatory, even if they had committed the sin of all mankind. For what is a drop in the ocean, is the sin of all mankind compared to the boundless goodness of God.[66]
But true prayer is the elevation of the soul to freedom; to the place where all selfish desires cease, and not a begging for the fulfillment of personal desires.
“God’s work is timeless, so far removed from all change, and so much the necessary consequence of his very being, that there can be no talk of a change of will in God, of an actual answer to prayer. No single thing, no particular idea or desire, no special concept is worthy of filling a human heart; therefore, there is no heartfelt concern that could rightfully be presented to God. Prayer is to be seen as a useful exercise for gathering scattered thoughts and directing them toward the one thing that is necessary.”[67]
All creatures, when threatened with harm, flee to their place of refuge; so we flee to God. Moses prays and Israel triumphs; but “Israel” signifies all the devout who are to overcome their temptations with devout prayer. Aaron and Ur, who supported Moses’ arms, signify steadfast courage and ardent love.[68]
Devout prayer is like a golden ladder that reaches to heaven, allowing one to ascend to God. When the soul is not burdened with sin, it becomes natural for it to easily rise to God in devotion, like a light feather carried aloft by the slightest breath. The best of all prayers is that which comes from the heart without words. That is the perfect way to pray.[69]
True worship begins only when a person is fully focused.*
The most powerful prayer, and at the same time the most potent for obtaining all things, is that which springs from a free mind. A free mind, however, is one that is neither burdened nor weighed down by anything, bound to nothing, desiring nothing of its own, and entirely immersed in the will of God. One should pray so fervently that all limbs and faculties, eyes and ears, heart, mouth, and all senses are directed toward it, and one should not cease until one wishes to unite oneself with the One whom one has present and is asking for, that is, with God.[70]
“True prayer is that in which one asks for nothing. If I ask for something, I am not praying; if I ask for nothing, then I am praying rightly. When I am in the Oneness where all things are present—the past, the present, and the future—they are all equally near and equally one; all in God and all in me. Whoever asks for something other than God worships an idol. Those who pray in spirit and in truth pray rightly. If you are sick and ask God for health, and health is dearer to you than God, then He is not your God. He is a God of heaven and earth, but He is not your God.”[71]
Whoever wishes to worship the Father must place their desire and trust in eternity. As soon as you worship God for the sake of creatures, you are asking for your own harm; for as long as a creature is a creature, it carries within it bitterness and harm, evil and misfortune.[72]
In prayer, it should not say: ‘Give me this virtue or that way of life’, but ‘Give me nothing but what you will and do, Lord, as you will and what you will and what you will in every way.’[73]
“All outward actions are of no consequence, so too is prayer. The heart is not purified by outward prayer, but prayer is purified by a pure heart.”[74]
Among the profit-seeking Christians, there are many varieties; the great tree of Christianity bears diverse leaves and produces many kinds of fruit. Christianity, like many other things, is a light that has a true core, a flame; this is surrounded by an outer gleam that is so dazzling to many that they cannot see the light-giving flame at its center; this gleam is reflected in a thousand different forms, according to the shape of the forms from which it is reflected; but all who belong to this class are more or less concerned with their own advantage, their own salvation, from the monk who, through self-torture, seeks to acquire a comfortable possession in heaven as a reward for his folly, down to the blind fanatic who believes that by blindly clinging to a dogma, by irrationally affirming a misinterpreted fable, everything necessary has been done to secure his place in the Kingdom of Heaven. Regarding this type, Eckhart says:
“All that is born, angels and saints, must be silent when the eternal wisdom of the Father speaks to us, and this wisdom speaks to us in Scripture.[75]
The holy writers were driven by the Holy Spirit (of self-knowledge) to communicate to us, for our salvation, what they had discovered,[76] but in order to recognize the truth contained in these writings, one must first uncover them and reveal their deeper meaning, i.e., one must consider these writings in the same light from which they flowed and not in the light of one’s own imagination.[77]
It is the Holy Spirit who wrote them, and it is also the Holy Spirit who reads and understands them. This is neither a matter of foolishly believing in the outward form of a fable, nor of arbitrarily interpreting the fable and inserting something into it that doesn’t belong, but rather of fathoming, discovering, and recognizing the profound meaning of this fable, which is clothed in the garb of the fable precisely to encourage people to seek the hidden interpretation themselves, so that they may see the truth for themselves and not be content to believe what someone else tells them.
The highest thing is not Scripture, but God. The reason we do not find God is precisely that we seek Him through parables, for whom there is no parable. The highest thing to which Holy Scripture can lead us is a knowledge that is far more unlike God than like him.[78] God’s essence cannot be expressed in words.[79]
A wise man says that God reveals himself in Scripture and in creatures; but Paul says: God has revealed himself in his only begotten Son, and in him everything, from the least to the highest, is to recognize itself fully and purely in God himself. For this to happen, we must outgrow everything that is not God.[80]
Likewise, all ceremonies and the like have only the purpose of directing the meaning to that which they are intended to represent. What takes place internally is thereby meant to be outwardly represented; if it does not take place internally, then the external representation has no value in itself.
“What do you seek in the dead body? Why do you not seek the living salvation that can give you eternal life? The dead have nothing to give or to receive.[81]
Whoever receives the body of God but is not pure and cleansed from sin will not be united with the body of God, but it will become a severe judgment on him.”[82]
The external is completely irrelevant. Whoever has God has everything in Him. Therefore, if a person examines their conscience and finds nothing there that punishes them, they are free with complete peace before all judgment, for all preaching refers solely to the inner person.[83]
Sacrament means sign. Those who cling to the sign will not arrive at the inner truth to which the sign merely points. The sacrament is something external, but the truth is something internal; many allow themselves to be hindered from the direct contemplation of God by the externality of the sacraments.[84]
Whoever is inwardly of the same disposition when receiving external food as he should be when receiving the sacrament, would receive God just as well in the sacrament as in the sacrament itself.[85]
Therefore, the worship of a wooden Christ or a “historical” figure of that name is also an obstacle to coming to know the true, living Redeemer who dwells in the heart of all. As for the person of the Nazarene, who, like every other human being, was a manifestation brought forth through the incarnation of the spirit in matter, our salvation does not depend on our belief that another person was of this or that nature, but rather on who we ourselves are.
In every human being, “the Son is eternally immanent in the Father, even in his temporal form of existence.”[86] What the Son assumed was only the one human nature common to all individual persons, humanity, not a specific human person. Had the eternal Word assumed a human person, there would be four persons in the Trinity. But that is not the case.[87]
In the groundless substance of the Godhead, human nature stood unmoved in its highest universality, in an all-encompassing radiance, to shine forth for the pleasure of all creatures. Therefore, divine and human nature had to be united. The Godhead permeated humanity when humanity was ready for it; it is the love that has eternally flowed from the unfathomable depths of God.[88]
In this sense, the Word became flesh and Christ was born of the Father in perfect equality with the Father, and assumed and united our humanity to himself as true God and true man and one Christ.[89]
God became man because he graciously assumed the nature of things in time, as he had borne them within himself from eternity by nature.[90]
The temporal birth of the Son is only a moment in his eternal birth.”[91]
When the consciousness of God awoke in humanity, the first man was born, for Adam, the son of Earth, is only a dwelling place for the true man, Christ, the Son of Light.
“Not Adam, but Christ (the God-man) is the first man God created, for he was intended beforehand as the ultimate purpose of mankind at its creation.”[92]
The purpose of creation was for nature to produce animal-human hybrids in which the God-man could dwell; or in other words:
“Since Adam’s fall, all creatures that have flowed from God (including the ‘gods’) must work with all their powers to bring forth a human being who, after attaining knowledge, will once again attain that state of harmony in which Adam was before the fall, and who will restore all people to the same glory they possessed in human nature. This has been accomplished in Christ, and in this sense all creatures are one human being, and this human being is God.”[93]
To recognize Christ and attain immortality through him, faith in a once-existing historical Christ is of no use; rather, man himself must become one with the divinity in humanity in order to recognize the God-man in it and in himself.
“In this birth of Christ, we are all one. If God had a thousand sons, they would necessarily all have to be one single son. God can only have one single son, just as he has (or is) only one reason.”[94]
“We are all one single son, begotten by the Father from eternity, from the unopened mind of the eternal, unfathomable depths, still undivided from the ultimate cause of original, self-sufficient simplicity.”[95]
Everything merely external has no value for the inner Self, and therefore we should not seek refuge in an external image or in a historical personality, but in God, i.e., in our divine nature.
“Christ is for us the model of what we too are to become and have the power to become. Among the Nazarenes, unity with God is to be sought primarily in the highest faculties of the soul (Buddhi-Manas); it manifests itself in the lower faculties (Kāma-Manas) and in the body through finite activity. With his highest faculties, he never allowed himself to be turned away for a moment from the contemplation of God’s glory, despite all the finite and particular effects of his intellect and all physical suffering.”[96]
Because in him Christ was so united with the nature of the Father that he could not turn away for even a moment from the paternal essence of the Godhead; thus he worked all his works from and into the essence that gives all things their essence.[97]
In him we see what human nature is capable of and what glory we can attain if we become like him. Christ, by his very nature (as are all of us), was not a single human form, but his human nature is the pure generic concept of humanity, in which all human persons are included. By uniting himself with human nature in him, God glorified the entire human race. Christ sits at the right hand of the Father, that is, he sits nowhere. The least in him is everywhere, the highest is nowhere. To sit is to rest where there is no time.[98]
That is where those who stood with him on earth will also go. He “ascended into heaven,” that is, he reconciled humanity by taking it out of time and placing it in eternity.[99]
If we can become not just a human being, but the human being, then by grace we possess all that Christ had by nature, for there we grasp ourselves in the same free totality of human nature that, through union with the eternal Word, became the Son of the Father. This includes separating ourselves from all that is negative, for the negative is the basis of difference and causes us to not be the human being.[100]
All of this is nothing other than what the Indian sages taught thousands of years ago, albeit in different words and expressions. Sankaracharya [Śaṅkarācarya] says: “The first condition for attaining knowledge of God (Theosophy) is the possession of the following fourfold power of grace:
- Nitya anitya vastu viveka.
- Iha amuthra phala bhoga virâga.
- Shama âdi shat sampatti.
- Mumukshu twam.[101]
=
- nitya anitya vastu vivekaḥ
- iha amutra phala bhoga virāgaḥ
- śamādi ṣaṭka saxmpattiḥ
- mumukṣutvaṃ
That is, 1. The ability to distinguish the true and immortal from the apparent and transient.
- By denying oneself, one also renounces all desire for reward or fulfillment of personal wishes.
- Possession of the six virtues: perseverance, self-control, non-covetousness, concentration, seclusion, and faith.
- The realization of the will.
True Christianity consists in complete surrender to God, in renouncing not only the possession or rather the desire for the possession of earthly goods, but in renouncing one’s own personal self and a merging of this self into the Godhead (Nirvana) [nirvāṇa]. The external church, on the other hand, and profit-driven Christianity are not built on this rock, but rather have as their foundation quite the opposite: the self-love and selfishness of the individual, for whom his self (or what he considers his “self”) is paramount, and whose advantage in the “afterlife,” if not in “this life,” he seeks to secure. And since, as we see, renunciation is taught theoretically in the church, but profit-seeking is always practiced and speculated upon in practice, faith in the impersonal divine self, and with it the ability to distinguish between being and non-being, as well as the understanding of deeper religious mysteries, has been lost. It would be desirable for a new Eckhart to come, not to eliminate Christianity itself, but rather its errors and excesses.
To attain perfection, man must achieve a universal existence (omnipresence) in “Christ,” the God-man. This can only be accomplished by renouncing his limitations (personality) and becoming the impersonal God-man. Whoever does not overcome the delusion of the limited self in this present life, even if good, pious, and virtuous, can still enjoy this delusion in heaven after the death of the body, but must return to a new existence on earth until he finally grasps the emptiness of the concept of separateness and abandons this false notion. This return or reincarnation is, of course, not a punishment imposed upon him by another being, but rather the law of his nature. As long as he is limited, he remains limited, whether on earth or in paradise.
This doctrine of reincarnation is not only a central tenet of Indian religious science, but, once understood, it can also be found in Eckhart and in all Christian mystics. However, it is difficult to explain in a few words, for a multitude of misconceptions must be overcome to grasp it correctly. It is neither God himself nor the individual personality that reincarnates, but rather the single, individual ray emanating from God, the higher Self (Ātma), the spiritual sun, which brought forth a human manifestation on Earth and animated it. After death and having survived the post-mortem states (Kāma-loka, Devachan, etc.), this ray returns to “God,” and “God” forms from it a new ray, which again brings forth a new human manifestation on this Earth or another planet. This new appearance is a new human being, and yet in a certain respect the previous one, or rather the product of the preceding one and its “son,” for the individual ray that animated him contains the spiritual abilities, talents, “rewards and punishments” (karma) that he created for himself as his own “father” in his previous existence. The fact that this doctrine is not explained in detail in Eckhart’s teachings is likely due to the fact that he lacked the key to it, the sevenfold constitution of the macrocosm and microcosm, or that, if he did know it, he did not consider it expedient to expose it to public incomprehension. He says:
“When the soul separates from the body, that is its (the personality’s) last day, and it will never reach a higher level of knowledge of God than it had attained at that time.”[102]
“The purpose of earthly life is to gradually permeate all the powers of soul and body with the divine principle through practice and habituation. After this earthly life, however, the soul flows back to its natural origin, from which it sprang, and the more it has remained free of temporal concepts and creatures, the more godlike it becomes as it flows back into God.”[103]
“Blessedness is nothing other than the enjoyment of this godlikeness; it consists in the pure contemplation of God (the divine Self). To the soul, which remains in godlikeness and in its glorious disposition, and progresses from one good to another, eternal life is opened at the moment it separates from the body; there it is embraced by a divine light, transplanted into God, and formed into Him. Every power of the soul then receives the image of the divine persons: the will the image of the Holy Spirit, reason the image of the Son, memory that of the Father and the divine nature; and yet it remains an undivided whole.”[104]
That “part” or “region” of the soul which has attained knowledge of God therefore does not return to Earth; it is the root of the “sacred fig tree,” whose branches extend over the entire Earth. But the “branches,” that is, the lower forces of the soul, plunge back into the sea of external life in the phenomenal world and take new root in the Earth, with which they are related and to which they feel drawn; while the part residing in God lets its light shine upon them. “God” (the eternal unity) is not only the goal but also the origin of all evolution; from Him everything comes forth and returns to Him.
“God is everything and everything is God. He is the father of all things, for he is their cause. His nature is the mother of all things; for it remains with the creature and sustains it in its essence. God gives everything to nature, form and matter.[105] He is the center of all things.[106] He works all his things so that they remain immanent in him.”[107]
Therefore, if God, or rather the divine light (the soul), appears on Earth in a new form (incarnation) as a human being, this does not prevent the soul from also being in God, since the divine light, its own true self, the ground in which it is rooted, is its own true essence. That Eckhart understands “God” to mean one’s own true essence, the Self that is subject to no one, is also evident from the following:
“How God is the essence in all things can be readily understood if we substitute the word “essence” for “God”. As essence, God is in all things.[108] God has all things in a perfect form within himself.[109] Therefore, all things are nobler in God than they are in themselves. But God is not in things with his personality, nor with his nature. Person and nature are one in essence, and so, as essence, God is in all places, and in every place, God is wholly present.[110] He is the essence of all creatures; the essence that has the essence of all creatures within himself.”[111]
This One Being, however, is the soul itself when it recognizes itself. It is the Supreme (Atma) [ātmā] and there is nothing above it.
“Man can will himself in his finitude; God must will himself and can will nothing other than himself. Therefore, all his will is necessarily directed toward converting all that is finite into himself, bringing himself forth in the human soul, and uniting all things within himself through the soul.[112] If you receive your humanity from God, he receives his divinity from you.”[113]
The doctrine of the reincarnation of the divine soul of man forms one of the cornerstones of the Christian religion, and anyone who has truly grasped it will find it depicted in the Bible and in Christian symbolism. Jesus falls three times on his way to Golgotha. This means that in every human being, the soul bears the cross of material existence with its sufferings, striving for the difficult climb to the mountain of self-renunciation and transfiguration in God. It falls “three times,” meaning it has fallen into matter in the past, is still falling into earthly existence, and will continue to “reincarnate” in material existence in the future, until it reaches the summit, has crucified self-will, relinquished the illusion of the “self,” died to illusory life, and attained divine existence. Only then can she say to herself: “It is finished!”, i.e.: “I have achieved the purpose of my pilgrimage with its many stages, divine perfection through the abandonment of selfishness.”
However, in order for the soul (Buddhi-Manas) to reincarnate and retain its individuality, the resurrection of the flesh is an absolute necessity; for “flesh” refers to the lower soul (Kama-Manas [kāma manas]) and not the corpse. The “flesh” that clings to the soul on its journey is formed by the material desires, personal inclinations, memories, sensory impressions, etc., which belong to the lower astral body (Kama-rupa [kāma rūpa]). From these forms the garment that the soul dons upon its new “fall” into matter, and on this plane, the new human being born on Earth is constructed by the hand of nature to seek further experiences on their journey until they finally attain divine wisdom.
But it goes without saying that all these divine truths cannot be explained and dissected to the satisfaction of a person who is superficial and limited in their understanding, and who neither wants to nor can grasp them, in just a few words.
Therefore, they will always remain as mysteries to such people, and such people will find it more convenient to dismiss as worthless that in which they cannot see anything, rather than striving to lift the veil that conceals their own divinity from their sight. The knowledge of the spiritual person is entirely different from that of scientific observation in the sensory world. Theosophy is the exact science in the realm of the divine spirit. But just as there can be no exact material science where there is no capacity for intuition and observation, so too in the spiritual realm the capacity for spiritual intuition must first be present before one can speak of exact spiritual knowledge. Without this, all material and spiritual knowledge is merely fantasizing and dreaming. The only guiding principle is reason.
“Supreme reason is the original essence and the goal of all the soul’s development. All the soul’s powers are servants of this reason, meant to elevate it above lower things and help it rise to its origin. When the soul stands before its origin, the powers remain outside, and it stands there, naked and nameless, stripped of all determinacy. This supreme part of the soul is elevated above time and knows as little of time as of the body. Past, present, and future are one there. Animals perceive place and time, but humans perceive beyond place and time. The now, the smallest part of time, still has something of time in it; it is related to time and borders on time. Therefore, it must transcend it. The same is true of space. What is beyond the sea is just as present to the soul as what is here. It is length without length and breadth without breadth; all time is beyond time, where there is neither a here nor a now. All thinking takes place in time; true knowing, on the other hand, sees everything in an instant. To be or have something particular means: not to be or have everything. Separate all particularity, and you are everything. Nothing, therefore, hinders the soul so much from the knowledge of God as time and place. Time and place are parts, and God is one. Therefore, if the soul is to know God, it must know Him (itself) beyond time and space; for God is neither this nor that, like these manifold things. Thus, this power grasps all things in their truth; nothing is veiled from it, not even God Himself in His own purest essence.”[114]
Since religious instruction is increasingly rare these days, and where it does take place, it is generally based on flawed foundations, it is easy to explain why little of the true science of God can be found in modern church life and why modern Christianity has almost entirely degenerated into a mere fad, which moreover is gradually threatening to go out of fashion, while unbelief, skepticism, materialism, anarchy, etc., are gaining ground where reason does not set a limit to them.
The third class of church followers is recruited from people who know absolutely nothing about themselves, about God, or about religion, but merely give the appearance of being Christians for outwardly selfish reasons. They do not know why they are on earth at all, or what the purpose of their existence is. This class deserves no further consideration; they originated from the animal kingdom and will return to the animal kingdom. The true Christian, however, feels, even without being told, that his soul, although bound to an animal-like body, nevertheless has a much higher origin. He knows that he is a son of light and originated from the light. As a spirit without knowledge, he left his eternal home and, through his search for knowledge, was brought to earth to gather experiences and return to his eternal home as a self-knowing spirit. This knowledge, attained through union with God, is called Yoga.
V Rebirth
Receive the divine into your heart,
And it descends from the world’s throne.
(Schiller)
There is hardly a thinking person who does not find an interest in learning about that which is immortal within them, once they know that the possibility of learning about it exists. For no one is the world of fleeting appearances so attractive that they would want nothing to do with true, eternal being, if only they were capable of understanding that mere appearance is not truth and reality. But what does immortality consist of?
Everything that is not mere appearance is immortal. Even matter, apart from the forms in which it appears, is immortal. Not an atom of substance or energy is lost in the universe; it merely changes and appears today as this, tomorrow as that. The matter that underlies the existence of a stone, a tree, an animal, a human being is immortal; but the stone, the tree, the animal know nothing of it, they are unaware of their immortality, and a human being who is unaware of their immortality derives no more pleasure from it than if they were the rightful owner of a fortune without knowing it. Immortality in itself is nothing as long as one is unaware of it; only when the spiritually awakened human being recognizes themselves as immortal has immortal existence been realized within them. Without this realization, all speculation and fantasizing about human immortality is nothing but an empty dream.
This realization of one’s own immortal self takes place nowhere else but in the true inner self-consciousness of man; only when man has found his true divine self, only then does he truly know himself, and as long as he does not know himself, all his knowledge, all his erudition, all his wisdom that springs from external observation or external instruction is nothing but empty illusion. Knowledge only attains real value when that which one believes to know has come into being, and man only enters into true existence when he recognizes his true Self, God, in everything.
This true Self or self-consciousness, the knowledge of which is called “Theosophia” or knowledge of God, cannot be shown, explained, or proven by any person to another; whoever wants to know themselves must seek and find themselves. Nor is there anything to divide; for God is not a composite, but all in all. We can only say what God is not, but not what He is. Once we have known Him, we can say that He is Himself, He is immortal, infinite, immeasurable, etc. We can say that God is love; but who knows what love is, except the one who has it and knows it? Therefore, divine love, divine self-knowledge, and God in all things are the true Self.[115]
Eckhart says:
“God is the absolute being, encompassing within himself all that is. His attribute is essence; God knows nothing but essence (reality); he knows nothing but essence, he loves nothing, and thinks nothing but his essence. He is living, existing, substantial reason, which understands itself, is within itself, lives within itself, and is identical with itself. If we understand God as essence, then we understand him in his court; his temple is reason. God is reason, which lives in self-knowledge, remaining within itself, where something external touches him. There he is alone in silent rest and recognizes himself within himself.”[116]
The term “God” does not refer to the Absolute. This is called the “Deity.” God, considered as the Absolute, is the ground from which God and everything else originates.
“This ground is a simple stillness, which in itself is unmoving, but this unmoving ground is the ground of all movement and of all rational, self-contained life. Reason, with its gaze, penetrates all corners of the divine; it grasps the Son in the heart of the Father and in the ground, and carries him into its own ground. It presses forward, it never rests, it penetrates into the ground from which goodness and truth spring, it grasps it in principle, in the beginning from which goodness and truth originate, before they spring forth, in a ground far higher than goodness and wisdom. It has the capacity to know everything; therefore, it does not rest until it reaches the highest concept, in which all is one. Where the soul is transformed into the first, purest principle, into the form of abstract essence, there pure knowledge takes place. The soul (the Self) soars upward into simplicity, beyond all things into the unknowable. Formless, it plunges into the formless God.”[117]
“God’s (Brahma’s) attribute is essence, but the Godhead (Parabrahm—Super-God) is also exalted above all essence. God as the Absolute is neither essence nor reason. He is neither this nor that, but all in all, for in God everything is in a higher and more general form, inessential essence; absolute being, which is at the same time non-being in relation to anything else, lies beyond God and every distinction. It is not correct to ascribe any attribute to God; for if I add anything else to God, it is a foreign addition, and I add an idol to God. God, the supreme cause (the Self, Atma) [ātmā], is neither light nor darkness; God’s nature is to be without nature. Everything separated, subtracted, and stripped away, so that nothing remains but a single “Is,” that is his true name. What we understand or express about the ultimate cause, that is ourselves much more than the ultimate cause is, for it is beyond speaking or understanding.” If I had a God whom I could understand (intellectually), I would no longer want to consider him a God.[118]
God is only one in all and all in one; consequently, he is also the innermost being and self of every human being, and everything in a human being that is not God is not true and real, but only appearance.[119]
“God is a pure, unmixed, clear One without any duality. He is to himself nothing and to the sum total of all creatures; but in him there is no contradiction; he is the most comprehensive unity of all that is positive. The unity of God is without ground, that is, it is rather its own ground. It is an origin of the groundless depth (of Self-consciousness), a roof of unlimited height, and a circumference of incomprehensible vastness. The Godhead has nothing, wills and needs nothing, acts nothing, and desires nothing. It entrusts all things to God. God acts; the deity exists, but it does not act. It is the silent ground, the unmoving stillness. God comes into being and passes away, the Godhead remains closed within itself in its revelation; it does not communicate and does not appear; it relates to nothing but itself. Dwelling within itself, it is the darkness into which no perception and no knowledge penetrates. There all personality, light and darkness, matter and form cease.”[120]
“Unity (the Self) cannot reveal itself. This is God’s inability and at the same time his highest ability. The absolute essence of God is unity. What unity cannot reveal itself, the Trinity has revealed, and indeed all three in the same way, because of the unity of being, which is their own natural essence.”[121]
Therefore, God needs his nature for his Self-revelation.
“Nature is an emanation of divinity; essence is the ground of this emanation, remaining in its own depths. That we ascribe matter, form, and activity to God stems from our attachment to the senses, which are incapable of spiritual intuition. The highest contemplation of God must relinquish all such distinctions in order to attain pure, undifferentiated unity.”[122]
“God empties himself and flows back into himself; that is his story. Eternal becoming is the work of eternal nature; therefore, it is without beginning and without end. Essence is the all-encompassing unity of all things; it contains within itself the forms of all things in simplicity and essence, and by means of this simple image, it dwells within all things. Things participate in essence, but not in the divine nature (self-consciousness). Essence and nature are not separate, independent entities; in the Absolute they are one; the Absolute is the essence of Essence and nature is the essence of nature. Similarly, in humanity, one must distinguish between humanity and the human being that makes them human; without divinity, God would not be God, and without humanity, humanity would not be human. Nevertheless, God and divinity, humanity and human being, nature and spirit are not separate entities. If they were, each would have to be the cause of the other. Thus, the absolute essence (the Self) also behaves simultaneously as quiescent being and as the glorious trinity of nature.”[123]
“When divine attributes are spoken of, they do not belong to God (the Self), but to the form in which God is revealed. God is true Being. But I cannot experience any other Being than that which is revealed and realized within myself. I can only experience my own Being in its ground, and this ground is God; God acquires his attributes within me. Whether my God is good or evil depends on whether I am good or evil in my innermost being. My divinity, which I can recognize within myself, does not consist in the divine Being of another, but in my own Being. The life of another cannot make me blessed; the life and blessedness I wish to enjoy must be within myself. The form of being is the revelation of being. When the revelation of the divine being within me becomes perfect, then I myself am the divine being that reveals itself within me.”[124]
Eckhart’s writings often speak of divine persons. However, these are not to be understood as something limited, like the form of a human being, but rather as a specific form of perception and activity of the singular essence. Persona means mask, and thus light, warmth, and life are not three persons in the ordinary sense of the word, but rather distinct manifestations of a single energy (of Akasha) [ākāśa].
“The unborn being, the Godhead, is perfectly self-sufficient and neither increases nor decreases through its manifestation; it communicates itself to no other. Through self-contemplation, the divine nature becomes a Trinity, i.e., the concepts of subject and object and knowledge arise within it. The “Father” is pure reason, which perfectly comprehends itself; he himself, considered as his own object, is the “Son,” and the love between Father and Son, i.e., God’s love for himself, is knowledge, understanding, the “Holy Spirit.” Thus, the three persons have only one essence and are different from one another only as forms of intuition. As “persons,” they are strangers to one another; in essence, they are one.”*
With these considerations, one should never lose sight of the fact that we are not dealing with an external or foreign object, but rather the object of our observation and investigation is our own true self. Within ourselves resides unity and trinity; within ourselves must the knowledge of God take place; only then can we recognize God as unity and trinity in the vast universe.
“As reason, the “Father” looks upon himself, and through the self-reflection of his being, he forms himself and must express himself in an independent being that arises from this. Therefore, the Word is called a “son,” one with the Father in essence, different from him in form. This self-reflection in the Godhead is eternal; for this very reason, the birth of the Son is also eternal, and from the very beginning, the Word was with God. Without this self-reflection, only a being without knowledge would remain. The object of knowledge is the eternal Word; understanding and Word are one and the same. Through the emergence of self-knowledge, the Godhead is revealed as both Father and Son, and therefore the Father can also be described as a creature that has created himself. In the act of knowing with certainty, the self posits itself as its own object, and by representing itself as another self, it distinguishes itself from this other self.”[125]
This creates in the son the delusion (Maya) [māyā] of selfhood and difference from God, which increases ever more as man sinks further into material existence, until finally, having reached the lowest level, he completely forgets his divine essence and its unity with God. Now he must laboriously climb upwards again, overcome the delusions that the illusion of duality brings with it, and forget his apparent self in order to find the true self, until finally, when he has overcome all notions of “self,” he becomes all-consciousness again, the all-knowing, singular being.[126]
“The Son is called Word” (Logos) because he flows from God in the act of understanding, and yet at the same time remains in God; just as the Word is the self-emptying of my thought, which nevertheless remains in me and is of the same essence as me as the thinking being. The birth of the Son is an eternal process. In the very instant when the Son (thought) springs from the Father (will), he also returns to him because of their consubstantiality, and in this rebirth of the Son in God, the Spirit originates as love (self-knowledge), in which both are one. The Father’s activity is nothing other than this birthing of his Son (by means of his nature). This process is eternal, timeless, and necessary, a becoming, not an doing. It does not spring from a free decision of God, which God could also refrain from making, but rather it is posited with God as the necessity of His being. Were He to forgo it for even a moment, He would be denying Himself. This birth did not merely occur once in the past, but it occurs continually, just as creation does. The Son was not born once, but is rather being born now, and this “now” is an eternal becoming; for God (true self-consciousness) there is neither future nor past, no before and no after, and because in this process all manifoldness (of appearances) does not actually emerge from the unity of being and always flows back into it, this process is also called a “game.” The difference of forces is always resolved in the unity of being. Thus, the river has flowed back into itself (and the sun does not grow cold).[127]
“God’s essence and nature is love, but God loves nothing but himself (and in reality, nothing else exists). He is also goodness, because he desires the best (himself) in all things. Because of his goodness, he must go beyond himself, for it is the nature of goodness that it must flow out. God is all that whose being is better than non-being; everything that desire might covet is utterly alien and small compared to God. No science, even among the most learned masters, can comprehend God’s essence, not even how he manifests himself in the smallest creature. He is not exhausted by any thought. He is the first cause, therefore he communicates himself to all things; he is simple in essence, therefore he is the most universal; he is his own origin, therefore all things spring from him; he is unchanging, therefore he is the highest good; he is perfect, therefore he is the most incomprehensible. Even if the soul finds an expression for God, the truth of his essence does not lie therein.”[128]
This birth of the Son of God takes place in the soul of man, when the soul of man is capable of receiving it.
“For this reason God created the world, that his only begotten Son might be born in it. Why is all Scripture written, and why did God create the nature of angels and the entire world, if not so that God might be born in the soul? The Father loves nothing but his Son (himself). Only because each of us can become this Son has he loved us from eternity. All perfection, light, grace, and blessedness must necessarily enter the soul with this birth, and in no other way. As a result of this birth, man becomes the Son of God himself. God’s Son is the Son of the soul, and in this, God and the soul have one and the same Son, namely, God. There is no difference between the only begotten Son (the Word) and the soul. Just as the eternal Son springs from the Father’s heart, so he springs from a soul filled with God’s love. God alone (not earthly man) works this work, and he works it so secretly that neither angels nor saints know of it, and the soul can do nothing but remain silent.”[129]
However, because this birth takes place in different people, several sons of God are not born; just as several humanities are not created when different people recognize humanity within themselves.
“In this birth, we are all one. God can have only one Son (himself), just as he has only one reason (Self-knowledge). Each of us participates equally in this destiny. The soul is like the echo that resounds back the received call in the same way. God begets his only begotten Son into the highest part of my soul (Buddhi-Manas); by begetting his Son into me, I beget him again into the Father. In the word that the Father, by virtue of his nature, must speak, he speaks my spirit, yours, and every human spirit in accord with that word. In this speaking, you and I are one Son of God’s nature, just as that word is. The Father knows nothing but this word. In this knowledge, God gives his life, his essence, his divinity, his own power. At this level of grace, the Father recognizes no distinction between you and himself.”[130]
“This birth is common to all who wish to turn to it, who are ready for it and eagerly desire it. But it is only this desire that should fill the soul preparing for that birth. For this birth, God wants and needs a free, untroubled soul in which there is nothing but Him alone, and which pays attention to nothing but Him. The work is God’s; it is part of God’s nature that He cannot refrain from being born in me and in all of you unless we resist His work.”[131]
Indian teachings state the following:
“At the time when ‘you and that’ and ‘that and you’ (i.e., the distinction between soul and God) disappear, and man recognizes himself as Akasha (ether) [ākāśa], the all-encompassing and all-pervading being; when he knows the independent and unified, the pure essence, they call him Atma [ātmā] (Self), and Maya [māyā], which is love, they call him because love has no beginning and no end, and is in everything and without everything; for when knowledge arises, love disappears.”
(Atharva Veda.)
“I am the soul that resides in the heart of every creature. I am the beginning, the middle, and the end of everything. I am the seed of all things. There is nothing moving or unmoved that exists without me. If something is glorious, excellent, or powerful, know that everything that is excellent in it originated from my power. But why this manifold knowledge? I continually reveal the universe through a part of myself.”
(Bhagavad Gita X, 20, 39, 41.)
“Whoever worships me and recognizes my spirit can become one with me.”
(Bhagavad Gita XIII, 18.)
“When the sublime gazes upon young humanity in wonder, it speaks in a bright dream: God has done this. And when it awakens to the feeling of beauty, it joyfully and proudly proclaims: Humankind has accomplished it. And when it finally matures to the truth, it will recognize: God, who cannot be separated from humankind, does it.”
(Rückert)
VI The Soul
“And they call the Self (Atma) (ātmā) a witness because the Knower, the Knowing, and the Known are all three created entities that will eventually perish, and the one who knows the arising and passing away of these is not created and will not perish; he is himself with himself, light and lamp.”
(Atharva Veda)
God, viewed as spirit (Self-consciousness), cannot reveal himself to himself; for this, he needs his own nature or substance (prakriti) [prakṛti]. The substance or material basis of all existence is called life or the soul (the Mother of God).
“In the clear mirror of eternity (the soul of the world), in the eternal Self-knowledge of the Father (the Self), there he forms an image of himself, his Son. In this mirror all things are reflected (as appearances) and recognized therein; certainly not as creatures, but as God in God. The Father (the Knower) created all things from nothing (from himself); the Son (that which is known) is the archetype of all becoming; the Spirit (knowledge or consciousness, will and representation) is the “carpenter” and organizer in eternity and in temporality. In the Son are contained the ideas of all things; the Spirit encompasses the eternal world order.”[132]
To illustrate this more clearly, we include the following excerpt from the Vedas:
“That Lord of the world (Logos) is manifest, and the world is hidden within Him; for it has name and form, and since it originated from the Lord of the world, it remains within the Lord of the world and enters into the Lord of the world (Ishvara) [īśvara]. The original manifestation of the world, which is the Self (Atma) [ātmā], is the Right and the True; but name (individuality) and form (limitation) are illusion and unreality. When name and form, which are illusion and untruth, enter into that manifested mind (Atma), they also appear as right and true; that is, although the name and form of the world are an illusion, they nevertheless appear as the True, and in truth have no existence.” (Jedir Veda)[133]
“By contemplating himself, God grasps himself as the fullness of ideas, the archetypes of all things (as Plato also taught). This eternal contemplation of himself is the creative activity of God, just as the begetting of the Son is, and in the Son (the soul) all things are therefore created. Birth means creation. Therein lies the glory of God, that he could create a thousand worlds and yet remain exalted above them all in his pure essence (just as man, as a thinker, is also exalted above all the thoughts he thinks). The Son knows all things according to their essence, just as the Father does. He holds within himself the images of all things and, together with him, omnipotence over everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen. He is the unity of all creatures, and this eternal emergence of creature from God, which nevertheless remains indwelling within God, is described as a “game” of the Son, who plays with all things before the Father. In fact, nothing essentially new is created (except form, which in itself is nothing); it remains the infinite variety of splendid images without any real distinction (of essence) within itself and from God. Speaking and giving birth are creations from nothing (in fact, nothing essential is created); there is no matter from which God made anything; he is his own “matter” and form. His form generates itself from his substance, and according to this form he forms all finite things. But his simple nature is formless, becoming without becoming, being without essence, and without cause in its absence. Therefore, it remains alien to all that becomes, and everything to which becoming is due finds its end there. Just as God (the world-thought) is eternal, so all things have been in him; but they were nothing in themselves. Before the creation of the world, he was nothing to them; they knew nothing of him; but in himself, he was eternally the same to them as he is now and will be eternally. Therefore, no creature could reveal God as long as it did not itself exist.”[134]
“God is the absolute, self-existing One; He knows nothing but Himself, but this knowing encompasses the knowledge of everything that is in the One. God could never (fully) know Himself without also knowing all creatures (since everything is contained within Him). He knows and loves Himself in all things. In His self-perception, He perceives all things. By creating Himself (His selfhood), God created the whole world; as soon as He existed, the world (His conception) also existed. In this sense, the Word was with God, as distinct from Him. When the world was still uncreated, with its essence in the Father, there was light, that is, self-emptying reason, with its gaze directed toward the essence of the world as it existed in uncreated simplicity, without any form, in the Father.”[135]
“God (the Knower) performs all his works with necessity; his activity is the birthing of his Son (to know himself), whom he begets at all times. He creates the world without ceasing; but he does not move himself for this reason and loses nothing in the process. When God created heaven and earth and all creatures, this did not affect his eternal, unmoving separation any more than if he had never created creatures. In God, no new decision of will has ever entered. When the creature was not for itself, as it is now, it was eternally in God and in his reason. Everything that God has created, he has created without changing his essence; but the created changes (in its appearance). As soon as God thinks a work, it is completed. There is no work, it is a becoming without change (of essence), and this becoming is his essence. In God there is pure ideality, so that no change penetrates. He performs all his works in himself and from himself in an instant. God wills, and they come into being[136] (through Kriyasakti) [kriyāśakti], the creative power).“
Things arise as images, that is, as physical appearances in the soul of the world. But since these creatures have acquired an individual consciousness, sensation, perception, life, etc., which is communicated to them through the reflection of the divine universal consciousness, the illusion of selfhood, individuality, and separation from the sole essence arises within them.
“That God created the world does not mean that the creatures sprang from the essence of God, like the eternal Word; for then the creature would be God, which no wise person can assume, but the nature of creatures refutes this as something impossible and false. Besides God, there is nothing but nothingness. All things and creatures are in and of themselves nothing but an insubstantial appearance; that which is real and essential in them is the essence, the Word.”[137]
“God (the Self) is the center of all things; the Godhead has all things within Himself; but in one being, undivided. Insofar as God is in all things, He is the soul of all souls. He is the nature of all natures, because He has the nature of all natures in Himself, undivided. He is the light of lights, the life of the living, the being of all that is, the reason of the rational. He has all things hidden within Himself; but not this or that particular thing, but as unity within unity.”[138] All creatures are in God and are his divinity and signify his fullness; God has encompassed everything in everything within himself; there, everything is one and one is in everything. What I perceive of creatures in God, I perceive nothing but God alone; for God is nothing but God. He is the essence that has the essence of all creatures within him; he is in things as their reason and their own nature, more intimately than they are in themselves. Because God is without parts, all things and all places are a place of God and full of God according to his essence without ceasing. He communicates with all things and gives to all the same amount; but things receive differently, according to their capacity to receive. The Godhead gives mere being to the stones, growth to the tree, perception to the cattle, reason to the angel, and free will to humankind. He loves all creatures equally and fills them with his essence; only from things themselves does their inequality originate. “Something of God” is already God in his totality; “something of him” encompasses his entire being. Therefore, he is as perfect in the lowest creature as in the highest.”[139]
Whoever recognizes God, the highest Self, and knows how to distinguish it in themselves and in other people from the transient and apparent “self”, sees in other creatures not merely their “brother” and their “sister”, but themselves, i.e. God, who is the one true being in all things.
“All things are nothing in themselves; God is everything in their essence. He touches all things and yet remains untouched in all; he is exalted above all things, a self-existence, and this self-existence sustains all things. He seeks nothing outside himself, and there is nothing outside him; all things are in God and from God; for outside himself and without him there is nothing. What creatures truly are, they are in God, and therefore, in truth, there is only God. If one were to take away from all creatures the essence that God gives, nothing essential would remain. All good in creatures comes from God; there is no creature that does not have something good and perfect in itself; but in themselves they are nothing.”[140]
Therefore, the realization of the true self consists in overcoming the delusion of the false “self.” A person does not recognize themselves for what they truly are because they genuinely believe themselves to be something they are not.
“It is therefore necessary that you relinquish your attachment to this delusion (the self) that appears as truth, which you have imagined and attached to your heart, and without attachment to it, and without having attached your heart to it, renounce all actions, pleasures, and delights that you desire. The world and its treasures—from what and by whom did they come? It is clear that they pass from one to another. And if you should not be master of this perception and state, know that name and form are in Atma, and that apart from Atma (Self), nothing exists. (Jedir Veda (Dschedir Veda.))
God is nothing to man as long as man considers his transient self to be a god, that is, the highest being, and believes he sees his ideal in his transient being. Whoever wants to recognize the highest ideal in its entirety and realize it within himself must transcend the limitations of egoism and grasp himself as a whole within the whole.
“Humanity, in the highest sense of this word, is equal to the angels and akin to the divine; therefore, I should cast aside the individual and grasp myself as humanity; for the individual is merely an accident (something inessential) in the substance of the species. Free yourselves from all that is accidental and grasp yourselves in the free totality of human nature, and not as this or that specific person. Separate yourselves from the not; for the not is the difference that you are a human being and not humanity. If you wish to be blessed, you must desire to be one son of God and not many sons. This human being is not that one; I am not what you are, and you are not what I am. Put away the not from all creatures, and all are one; what remains is the Son whom the Father begets.”[141]
Within the soul, two regions can be distinguished: the higher and the lower soul forces. Through the higher forces, the soul is connected to God and the whole, and can recognize itself as one with the omnipresent unity; through the lower forces, it is rooted in the multiplicity of material phenomena, and the lower part of the soul cannot grasp the infinity and majesty of the higher Self.
“What the lower soul powers (Kama-Manas) [kāmā-manas] grasp, they grasp in finite form; the true soul, on the other hand (Buddhi-Manas), is divine nature itself (the ‘Mother of God’), the substance in which the Godhead recognizes itself as God. When the soul dwells in the pure light of reason, it has no relation to the material world and no receptivity to it; it is something ineffable, incomprehensible, infinite, like God. It does not age; it is eternally young. The more one finds in it the principle of action, the closer one is to its supreme principle, its origin, its birth, and that is what is called ‘young’—that which is near to its birth. Old age belongs only to the body and its sensory activity (the house inhabited by the soul). It should grieve me if I were not younger tomorrow than I am today, that is, if I were not even closer to God, to my origin, than I am today.”[142]
Our fleeting pleasure lies in the fact that we are individual human beings and can delight in sensual things and intellectual concepts, i.e., in multiplicity; but our eternal blessedness lies in the fact that we become aware within ourselves of the omnipresence of God, i.e., of our own infinite self, and are infinite and immortal in God himself, and recognize that we are.
“Our blessedness does not lie in the fact that God is in us; for he is in all creatures, but they do not know it; but in the fact that we recognize and know how near God is to us. Therein lies my blessedness, that God is rational within me and that I recognize this. Reason is nobler than will. The will grasps him beneath the veil of goodness; reason, on the other hand, grasps him unveiled, stripped of goodness and essence. It guides and illuminates the will and precedes its expression, love. One cannot love God (the divine Self) without first knowing him (spiritually). Spiritual knowledge is a firm foundation and a basis of all being. Love can only cling to knowledge. God and I are one; but this can only occur in knowledge. The function of the will (Kama-Manas) [kāma manas] is twofold: desire and love. The function of reason is simple: it is cognition, and it cannot rest until it grasps its object (truth) without its veil. Therefore, it precedes the will like a guiding star, announcing to it that which it then loves. As long as one desires things, one does not possess them. When one possesses them, one loves them, and desire vanishes. Reason is the head of the soul; it goes directly toward God (theoretical speculation seeks Him indirectly). Desire is directed toward the good; reason, however, is directed toward the cause through which the good exists. Desire grasps God insofar as He is lovable; reason rises higher and grasps Him insofar as He is essence.”[143]
“Reason and will must work together; reason must be fertilized by the will in order to fulfill its purpose. In the activity of reason, a movement of external things toward the soul takes place, and through this movement the image of these things is impressed and shaped upon the soul, thus marking the beginning of a movement of the soul into its substantial form and the true essence of the things that appear in the images. The theoretical power of the soul, however, is not as uninhibited as the will, for otherwise it would ceaselessly immerse itself in the indeterminate deity. This is not the case, however, for it has its function to perform, to order every power of the soul and maintain it in its proper place, while the will merely commands or forbids. The will is nobler than the intellect insofar as it is capable of renouncing all determinate concepts and plunging into unknowing; but above the will stands the pure intuition of the Absolute, which otherwise appears as a function of reason. Blessedness lies neither in knowledge nor in love alone, but there is Oneness in the soul, and from this Oneness springs knowledge and love. God himself is denied the power to act there; he is oneness and enjoys himself as God. Supreme reason (Atma) [ātmā] is God himself; it stands face to face with the absolute ground. In this ground of the soul, memory, reason, and will are one and without distinction. Where intellect and instruction end, there is darkness; there God shines.”[144]
“In the soul of supreme power (Buddhi), God shines unveiled; nothing but God (Atma) penetrates it, and it is without cessation in God. The power is a light that never goes out; it always retains in spirit the possibility of turning back to God, for even in hell (in the fire of passions) the nature of the soul remains divine; pleasure and pain touch only its lowest powers; the divine ‘spark’ is a light of complete divine equality; it remains ever turned toward God and never separates from Him. This spark fights ceaselessly against all that is not divine. It is a special power, nameless, without attribute, neither this nor that, neither here nor there, it shares the nature of divinity. It is one with God; unity flows into it and it flows back into unity. Here the soul receives all its life and being. Only this is wholly in God; everything else remains outside. This spark is also called the spirit of the soul (Atma). It is the innermost being, which contains everything in He beholds the form of eternity; he is the light of reason in which there is no longer any contradiction.[145]
This is the soul, the Self, which is all in all only one, and only he who has found this has found himself in truth[146]; but creatures, considered as individual things separate from this Self (God), be they humans, angels or demons, are only temporary appearances or representations in this Self.
“The world of creatures is insubstantial and void. If I perceive all creatures (including myself), I perceive nothing. All creatures in themselves are nothing; only radiant (and permeated) by the light from which they derive their essence are they something. I do not say that they are ‘something insignificant’; they are nothing, they have no essence, for their essence depends on the presence of God. Were God to turn away for an instant, they would vanish into their nothingness. Whoever perceives God (the Self in All) sees that all creatures are nothing. When one creature is compared to others, it appears beautiful; but when it is compared to God, it is nothing.”[147]
“God is the highest; therefore, he acts upon everything, but nothing acts upon him. He is in all things in such a way that he is simultaneously outside of all things. Therefore, the imperfection of things cannot defile him. God is solely in the essence of creation; but in essence there is no imperfection, for imperfection is a falling away from perfection (from essence). The more he is in all things, the more he is outside of them (all-conscious). That which has finite existence, time or place, does not belong to God; he stands above it. To the extent that he is in all creatures, to that extent he is exalted above them. What is one in many must necessarily stand above the many.”[148]
The natural, personal human being, however, is only a phenomenon through which God can reveal himself, and in himself he is nothing. Human beings, limited by time and form, cannot be God and cannot reveal God, but are creatures of nature, which sprang from God.[149]
“Because the creature is intrinsically nothing in its own being, it cannot reveal God. Not a single drop of what the divine nature is has ever entered the perception of a creature. God reveals himself to himself through the creature; he is that which appears in the creature as good and perfect, as in a mirror.”[150]
“God did everything for his own sake; for apart from him nothing exists. He is the cause of all things, and just as he acts according to the example of the first cause, so all creatures act according to the same example. This is the love they have for God. All creatures are called to return to that (Self-consciousness) from which they flowed. All their life and being is nothing but a striving and hurrying toward that from which they originated. All creatures, in all their activities, desire to reveal God, but they cannot. Just as my mouth proclaims and reveals God (the Self), so too does the stone, and this revelation through action is clearer than that through words; but even the highest angels, with their striving toward God, cannot approach the efficacy of God. The Trinity (the knowledge of the Self within itself) is the origin of all things, and all things strive back to their origin. They have been eternally in God (in non-self-consciousness) and are destined to return to God (to God-consciousness).”[151]
VII. Evolution and Involution
In eternal Being, all things are contained unseen. Then follows their manifestation, through which they come into being, and in death (the cessation of appearances) they become invisible again. What is there to lament? (Bhagavad Gita, II, 28)
God in Himself (true Self-consciousness) is unchanging; in Him there is no progress or regression, neither evolution nor involution, He is perfection itself. But the ideas that exist in His nature, and appear and disappear as things, creatures, and phenomena perceptible to us, unfold and, through ever-advancing development, become ever better instruments for revealing their inherent divine nature. God is, for example, just as present in a stone as in a human being; but in a stone, He is not self-conscious. In a human being, He can become Sself-conscious. Once this has occurred, and the human being has thereby attained self-consciousness in God, then he is in divine Self-consciousness (in perfection) and no longer needs the human body for the unfolding of this Self-consciousness, which is then complete. He thereby re-enters God, from whom he came. Previously, he was in God without consciousness of individuality; now he has overcome self-deception and is in God in wisdom.
“Therefore, all movement, and the purpose of this refinement, is continuous refinement. Nature makes no leap; it always begins with the lowly and strives upward to the highest. Just as the colors of a rainbow imperceptibly blend into one another, so in nature, effect follows effect without interruption. It is impossible for nature to destroy, spoil, or even touch anything without intending to bring forth a higher good from what it touches; it is not enough for it to bring forth something else of equal good; its will always strives for the better. Matter does not rest until it is filled with all the forms of which it is capable, and reason does not rest until it is filled with all that to which it is receptive. All creatures direct their course toward the highest perfection; in everything one finds a striving for God (Self-consciousness); yet they pursue it in different ways, according to the measure of their capacity. Fire (love) ascends, the earth descends, and every creature seeks its place, as God has assigned it. All, even the lowest, strive from diversity toward unity. To become like God (through entering into God, not through separation from Him) is the common longing of all creatures. That is why heaven runs, that is why humans and animals desire. No creature is so depraved that it could love anything that is absolutely evil; for what one loves must either be good or appear good. God is love. Were God not in all things, nature would neither act nor desire anything in anything; for whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, unconsciously your nature seeks God in its innermost being. Therein lies the essence of all creatures, that they seek God and pursue Him. Everything that nature is capable of, it directs toward this one goal.”[152]
“God is stillness. All movement arises from a longing for stillness (but the bliss of stillness is only recognized when one has achieved victory over restlessness). God seeks stillness in all things; the divine nature is stillness. The soul seeks inner stillness in all its movement. God has given all things their home: water to the fish, air to the bird, earth to the animal, and divinity to the soul. That God is unmoving is what causes all things to move within him, and the nobler a thing is, the more easily it moves. Were there no stillness in God, the divine nature would perish and the kingdom of heaven would come to an end.”[153]
At the center of the wheel is stillness, but the spokes move, and the movement returns to the center from which it originated. This center is perfection (Nirvana) [nirvāṇa].
“Therefore, in nature there is a ceaseless change of forms. The grain of wheat decomposes to pass into new forms; the plant that my parents ate helped to build my body. This is the true significance of man in the order of all things, that he is the essential means for God’s highest purposes; this is the striving of all things to be transformed into human nature. Man is to carry all things up to God, their first origin. By nature, man is the totality of all creatures. When one speaks of man, one speaks of all creatures; for all creatures are gathered in him. All creatures are one single human being whom God must love by nature, and this “human being” is God. In human nature, all creatures change their names and are ennobled; in human nature, they lose their nature and return to their origin. In human nature, every creature attains its eternity.”[154]
When the spiritual human being (universal spirit) sprang from God (the Absolute), he was an “angel,” that is, a spiritual force and being without individual self-awareness, i.e., without the illusion of a personal “self.” From him, all humans and creatures originated in order to return to God through overcoming this illusion via experience and evolution.
“The highest angel draws from God and shapes what he has received according to himself; then he gives it to the middle angels; they give it to the lower angels, and these to earthly human beings. The angel purifies, illuminates, and perfects the soul. Divine light is so overflowing that the soul could not bear it were it not tempered by the angel’s light, and thus infused into the soul. But the perfected human being has transcended the mediation of the lower angels (powers) and receives directly from the highest angel. The highest effects of God in human beings are also beyond the knowledge of the highest angel.”[155]
“The essence of the angel is reason. He is a spotless mirror in which divine light is reflected. Thus, he stands free and formless between God and matter; himself an image of God, he illuminates all his being with the image of God. Angels also perceive in a timeless light. The works they perform in God are timeless; but in their actions toward finite things, they have a shadow of temporality. What the angel possesses comes to him without effort, whereas the soul acquires it through its labor. Therefore, the growth of the soul is something far more glorious than that of the angel, and one piece of knowledge that the soul gains is more valuable than ten pieces of knowledge gained by an angel (who has nothing to overcome in the process).”[156]
“Had Adam (the original universal man) beheld God in his absolute essence, he could not have “fallen”; but he recognized that he (in his selfhood) existed, and his gaze clung to this with pleasure; this was his “fall” and nothing else, and so too do those who turn from God (the true infinite Self) to the transient aspects of their nature (the apparent self) fall. The deeper man (as a whole) sank into his selfhood, the deeper his descendants became mired in their egoism; thus, the consequence of this degradation, “original sin,” propagated and continues to propagate. This “fall” was advantageous for man. If man could remain in unity, performing all the functions that all creatures have ever performed, this would not be so good; for the supreme power of the soul (Buddhi) would draw the lowest (Kama) [kāma] after it, so that man could accomplish nothing but a single divine work. Das kann aber nicht sein, und deshalb schaut die oberste Kraft in Gott (dem wahren Selbstbewußtsein) ihr Heil und gießt es weiter in die niederen Kräfte, so daß sie Erkenntnis des Guten und Bösen haben. Ohne die Erkenntnis des Bösen könnte der Mensch die Natur des Guten nicht wirklich erkennen lernen. Nur durch die Überwindung der Täuschung erlangt er die Erkenntnis der Wahrheit und die Realisierung seiner wahren Individualität und Einheit mit Gott, deren unendlicher Wert durch nichts zu ersetzen ist. Die Zerspaltung der Kräfte der Seele und der Ursprung der Individualität des Einzelnen ist ein Bestandteil der ewigen Weltordnung und ist ein Mittel zum Zweck auf dem Wege zur Vollkommenheit.”[157]
God (true self-consciousness) is far too great for any creature to grasp, or for Him to be confined within a human “self.” Whoever wishes to become one with Him must not try to drag Him down into their limitations, but rather rise to Him in freedom.
“When God created all creatures, they were lowly and confined, so that he could not move within them; so he made the soul so like himself and so fitting that he could share himself with it. He created nothing like him except the soul; it is more powerful, nobler, or greater than all creatures; it was not created like other things, in a limited form, but in God; it was formed with God, and God’s image is fully expressed within it. Its greatness cannot fill heaven and earth, but only God himself, whom the heavens of all heavens cannot contain. Therefore, whoever wishes to measure the soul should take God as the measure; for the ground of God and the ground of the soul are but one single being. Nowhere is God so truly (self-aware) as in the soul; in all creatures there is something of God (consciousness); but in the soul He is divinely (self-knowing), for it is His resting place. In its highest powers, the image of the Trinity is reason, will, and memory; memory resembles the Father, reason the Son, and the will the Holy Spirit. The highest form of the soul, the “spark,” corresponds to the non-manifest deity, which is the soul’s highest object.”[158]
This self or spark (Atma) is not something foreign and separate from man, unattainable and separate, but rather each person’s own real and true divine Self, hidden in the innermost depths of the soul.
“I stand in the ground of eternal divinity, where God works all his works from me and through me, and everything that is understood, that is me. God made all things through me when I was in the groundless ground of God (the eternal divinity). Everything that is in God is God. Since my image has been eternally in God, and still is, and always must be, therefore my soul has been eternally in God and is God himself; thus the soul is identified with the Word (Logos) that was eternally in God, and in the universal human being all creatures were created. Between the Son of God and humanity (as unity) there is no difference; the Son is the archetype of humanity. Thus we ourselves are his only Son, whom the Father eternally begot. The individual human being is not all of humanity. Only then do I truly understand myself in the highest sense, when I understand nothing other than that I am the being from whom God derives his being or his own divinity. Thus, the soul (the Self) is God (the Self) himself, and I am the creator of all things; indeed, I (if I understand this correctly) am the one who created God, the Absolute. In the Godhead, the Absolute, there I myself was, willed myself, and recognized myself. There I was my own creator (the creator of my incarnations and reincarnations). By coming into being, all things came into being. I was the cause of myself and of all things, and if I would not have been, I would not have been, and all things would not have been. Were I (the Absolute) not, then God would not have been either.”[159]
Before man can attain, or even wish to attain, the knowledge of his divine Self, he must experience almost infinitely many disappointments, which serve to convince him that his “apparent self” is not his true self, but merely the product of Self-reflection.[160] To overcome this self-deception, man has reason.
“Human reason is the true instrument of God, through which the return of all things to God is accomplished. Human reason forms all things within itself and encompasses all things; it shapes things, and even the lowest things become as bright as the sun within it. Through his soul’s capacity, man has within him the essence of all creatures, of stones as well as trees and all others. In this capacity, he has absorbed into his reason the images of all creatures with their differences, and thus he encompasses essence and image, reason and irrationality of all. Thus, all things are created within him. Therefore, when reason is purified with God, all things return within it to their origin. Therefore, the soul never rests until it comes into God, who is its first form, and all creatures never rest until they come into human nature, and then, only within this, into their first form, in God. We are to spiritualize all things, to be spirit to all things, and all things are to be spirit to us; we are to recognize all things in God and allow them to become God with us. All creatures renounce their lives to gain their essence; all rise into my reason to become rational in me; I alone lead them back to God; I bring them from their reason into my reason (consciousness), so that they are one with me in me.”
But not only do man’s emanations penetrate lower creatures to elevate them, but the emanations of higher beings also penetrate man with their powers when he makes himself receptive to them, and thereby bring about his elevation, edification and liberation from the delusion of selfhood with its attachment of desires and passions.
“Since man has lost the power to accomplish what he is called to do through sin (error), all creatures that have flowed from God must work with all their powers to create a (universal) human being who will once again attain union with God (the knowledge of the true self) in which Adam was before the Fall, and who will raise all creatures back to the same power they possessed in human nature.”[161]
These creatures emanating from God are all beings who possess free will, and among them are all the great and exalted human spirits (Maha-atma) [Mahātmā] who live or have lived on Earth and who, through their influence and teachings, can help lower-ranking people and bring them closer to themselves and thus also closer to God.
“To the extent that I am closer to God, God speaks into me, and thus returns to himself. By virtue of the human soul, which has become one with Christ (the light of divine wisdom), God returns to himself with all creatures. There the world of creatures sinks away, and the revealed, triune God (Self-knowledge) himself sinks into the abyss of divinity, where there is no longer any concept of ‘self’ (Nirvana) [nirvāṇa]. There the Father flows back into himself with all creatures. The becoming of all things ends in their becoming away, and the eternal process is the effect of eternal nature and therefore has neither beginning nor end. Thus the circle is completed, the river has flowed into itself, and the universe rests again in the unopened womb of the unopened divinity.”[162]
From the divine perspective, there is therefore neither becoming nor becoming, neither the creation of something new nor its passing away, neither evolution nor involution, neither essential progress nor regression; God always remains the same, and the entire universe can be compared to a sunspot that forms and disappears on the (spiritual) sun of the universe. This is why the Jedi Veda states:
“Just as a crystal, covered in dust and therefore opaque, regains its purity and brilliance after being washed, so too does the Atma (the Self), which is the being of light, not appear as light because of the dust of distorted knowledge. But when it is washed with the fire and water of knowledge, it becomes bright, clear, and visible again; affliction departs from it, and its actions and deeds come to an end. Nothing remains for it to do. It has become the One. Whoever has made this light their lamp and recognized the pure Brahman becomes one with it.”
VIII. Union
“The difficulties that stand in the way of those who direct their hearts toward the unseen are great; for the spiritual path is hard to find for those whose minds are attached to their bodies. But whoever surrenders themselves to Me in all their actions, I will raise them from the tide, because their prayer is directed to Me. Turn your heart to Me alone, let your mind find rest in Me, and you will dwell with Me on high. Do not doubt this.” (Bhagavad Gita)
It hardly needs mentioning that the precepts given here are not written for those who have no desire to know the true self, but only for those who strive for divine Self-knowledge. For all others, mere moral sermons and exhortations to an edifying life suffice, of which there is a great many. Moral doctrine seeks to create a good and virtuous person who can be proud of their “self.” The teachings of yoga recognize this illusory self with all its virtues as nothingness; it eliminates all so-called selfhood, all egoism, whether sensual or “transcendental”; it recognizes nothing as truly existing except God, before whom everything else is nothing and therefore, in reality, possesses nothing within itself.
Whoever wishes to know their true Self should think about themselves as little as possible, instead keeping their mind always focused on the truth. They should demand nothing for themselves, neither in this life nor in any other. This does not mean that they should be incapable of finding interest in anything, or that they should imagine they despise everything; rather, they should transcend the limitations of their mortal self. Then everything that this self was previously attracted to and controlled by will fall away of its own accord.
“The power that springs forth from the consciousness of God in the human heart is like the radiance of the sun; it is one with God; its necessary activity, a never-ending flow, originates in the heart of the Godhead. When God finds you ready, He must work in you and pour Himself into you, just as the sun, when the air is clear and pure, must pour itself into it and cannot contain itself; for the work of grace is God’s revelation, through which He reveals Himself to Himself in the soul. There, that in which the work is performed is transplanted into the active force and raised to equality. If you receive your humanity from God, then God receives His divinity from you. God’s nature, essence, and divinity depend on the fact that He must carry out His work in the soul. Whether you like it or not, whether you are asleep or awake, God (Self-consciousness) is doing his thing. He is always ready to give; but we are not always ready to receive. Only we do him violence and injustice by hindering him, through our lack of readiness, from the work that is necessary to him by his very nature. I will not ask God to give me something, nor will I praise him for what he has given me; but I will ask him to make me capable of receiving, and I will praise him for the fact that it is his very nature and essence that he must give. Whoever would deprive him of this would surely take away his very being and his life; for his being and life is love itself; his love is the Holy Spirit.”
The point is not that man should consider his void “self” pious, good, virtuous, wise, etc., thereby flattering his personal vanity, but rather that his person is nothing to him at all, and he lives in and participates in the glory, goodness, power (virtue), wisdom, self-knowledge, and blessedness of God. Likewise, all actions that spring from the desire of the “self,” of nothingness, are worthless in eternity and, like their creator, transient; only that which man does because he is called to do it is lasting; it is selfless and therefore not his own work, but the work of God within him.
“Virtue is a constant abiding in God; its foundation is God’s love in the heart; everything that divine love works in the soul belongs to virtue. To do God’s will means to selflessly obey the law of reason and love; not because one imagines that this is the will of some god, but because God’s will is love and his law is reason. The truly virtuous person loves the good not for the sake of any end, but for the sake of the good itself and because he recognizes it as the good. The righteous person loves neither this nor that in God, and if he were to give God all his knowledge and everything he can offer besides himself, he would not heed it, nor would it please him; for he wills and desires nothing for himself. He has no finite ends for which he acts. Just as God acts without finite ends, so too does the just person, and just as immortality itself is its own highest end, so too is the just person’s action determined by no external or finite ends. God (Self-consciousness) is its own end. To surrender oneself to God is the prerequisite of virtue; how could the virtuous person have any other end in mind than God himself? Virtue is selfless; it desires nothing for itself and is not practiced with regard to any expected reward.[163]
“All those who perform good works for the glory of God, but with the intention that God might give them something in return or do what they desire, are like the merchants whom Jesus drove out of the temple. They want to give something up in order to obtain something better in return, and, as it were, to make a deal with the Lord. But in their bargain, they deceive themselves; for everything they have and are able to do, they have received from God, to be used for God’s sake alone; therefore, God owes them nothing. God does not seek his own; in all his works, he is free and independent, he acts solely out of love. So too is the person who is united with God; he stands free and independent in all his actions, he performs them out of love without any external purpose, solely for the glory of God; he does not act, but God works good in him.”[164]
“If you seek good or refrain from evil for your own benefit, you are not seeking God, but your own self-interest. Whoever seeks God and something else besides will not find Him. But whoever seeks God alone will find Him and all that He has to offer. Seek God for God’s sake, truth for truth’s sake, justice for justice’s sake, and leave your “self” entirely out of it. Once truth, justice, or goodness has grasped someone, they can never turn away from it, not even for a moment, even if all the torments of hell depended on it. Virtue should be taken so seriously that the greater the torment associated with it, the greater our love for virtue would become. The true person acts in order to act, and for no other reason.”[165]
This includes, above all, the belief in a higher and better, spiritual Self.
Faith is a mystical force whose existence is based not on theory or opinion, but on nothing but itself; it is the sensation of truth.
“Whoever God imparts true knowledge of all things is deprived of illusion, supposition, and opinion; they no longer need to seek words and proofs as they have heard from other people or derived from their own imagination. A revelation that once occurred for another can only be a guide for us; but where the revelation of truth takes place within oneself, there, in direct perception, all parable ceases. Life in truth, in the self-knowledge of God, is a direct reception from the Holy Spirit (of Self-knowledge). The “children of God” are those who read Scripture and understand it in their innermost being and fulfill it in good works until they learn to perceive the truth in God. In the light of faith they understand Holy Scripture until, through the light of faith, they enter the dew of grace, and in this they learn to find pleasure in the ways of eternal life; but those who are called “gods” (adepts) are those who are dead in God and in whom nothing lives but God. They are hidden in unity with God and live a divine life. And the third, “fathers of the gods,” are the most perfect; for they have sunk into the bottomless depths of God, and God not only lives in them, but they also live in God. They have climbed the hills and mountains and have reached the true sun, and the blazing fire of the Holy Spirit has consumed all matter in them, so that nothing appears but a light in God.
“What is put into words is grasped by the lower faculties of the soul (Kama-Manas) [kāma manas]; this is not enough for the higher faculties of the soul; they penetrate ever further, to their origin, from which the soul flowed. Whoever wishes to know God must be free from all artificial thinking; only when a person is lifted above all intellectual comprehension, standing in the light of faith, does God find himself unhindered, working within him. No one reaches this through their own will and speculation, but only through pure intuition and clear reason. When the divine light pours into the soul, it is purified with God, as one light with another, and this is then called a light of faith. Wherever the soul cannot reach with its faculties and senses, there faith (the light) carries it. As this unfathomable light, faith, through the magnitude of (simple) understanding, frees us from all (composite) knowledge; through the greatness of (divine) will, frees us from all (personal) volition; and through the abundance of images, frees us from the attraction of individual images. True, earnest faith is far more than all mere conjecture; in it we possess true knowledge.”[166]
Faith is indeed a spiritual intuition, a spiritual comprehension, feeling, and knowing, without which no intellectual understanding is possible, just as in the external world, the intuition of an object must precede the understanding of its composition if one is to speak of genuine knowledge and not merely a self-created idea. To this spiritual intuition, however, belongs spiritual love, through which one desires to know the object of knowledge (the true Self), feels spiritually drawn to it, grasps it spiritually, and comprehends it.
“Love is just like a fisherman’s hook. The fisherman won’t get the fish unless it’s caught on the hook; but once the hook has caught it, the fisherman is sure of the fish, however much the fish may struggle. Whoever is caught by love bears the strongest chain, yet a sweet burden. Whoever has taken this burden upon themselves gains more and is thereby more advanced than by all theoretical knowledge and all external exercises. Nothing makes you truly God’s own than this sweet bondage. Whoever has found this path should seek no other. Whoever is caught on this hook is so captive that foot and hand, mouth, eyes, heart, and everything that is within them must belong to God (to divine existence). Death separates the soul from the body; but divine love separates everything from the soul; that which is not God or divine, it does not tolerate. Whoever is caught in this net and walks this path does everything he does out of love, or rather, love does it through him, and it belongs to love; whether he does something or nothing, it makes no difference. The most insignificant action of such a person is more beneficial to him and more pleasing to God than all human activity undertaken with less love; his rest is more beneficial than the (selfish) actions of others; therefore, pay attention only to love, and you will be blessedly caught in it, and the more you are caught, the more free you are (from yourself).”
“But that one person does not have as much love as another, that is their fault, because they did not prepare themselves (in their previous forms of existence) as well as the other. The spark of the soul never goes out; the knowledge of God awakened in the soul never completely fades so that a person cannot rise up and turn from sin to God. At any moment, light can dawn within a person, as soon as they become masters of their free will.”[167]
“God gives everyone the best, according to their level of understanding and what benefits them most. God often exhorts us to do good through all kinds of hardship. If we could understand this and act accordingly, we could receive grace (in love). Grace reaches the soul veiled in doctrine; but it works purely and irresistibly where the Spirit of Self-Knowledge (the Holy Spirit) speaks to the heart without any external mediation, and the heart understands and willingly receives it.”[168]
“Grace is the work of God in us. It cannot become powerful in us without our will; but our will can do nothing to obtain it either; we cannot draw it down upon ourselves, but only remove the obstacles that stand in the way of its working. All of God’s gifts are by God’s grace and undeserved; it behooves us to always be ready to receive them and to wait patiently for them. No one who wills sin can convert of their own accord; it is even less possible for a sinner to convert by their own power than for a person to kill themselves and then resurrect themselves by their own power. Whoever wishes to convert according to a distorted (downward-directed) will must allow themselves to be drawn upward by the power of the divine will. The light of natural reason (Manas) is to the light of grace (Buddhi) like a single drop to the ocean, and a thousand times less. If I am to recognize God in that essential point that stands in the middle, equally distant and equally near to all creatures, if I am to draw closer to Him, then my natural reason must be elevated above itself by a light that stands higher than it. If my eye were a light and so powerful that it could absorb the light of the sun and become one with it, this would not happen through my own power, but through the light of the sun working within me. So it is with my reason. If I turn my reason, which is my light, away from all things and direct it toward God, whose light flows forth unceasingly as grace, then my reason is illuminated by this light and united with him in love, and in this my soul learns to love and know God as he truly is (and not merely as he is described). Without the spirit of knowledge, we can do nothing. Without the activity of God, body and soul are dead. The soul is like a withered tree and cannot bear fruit for life unless grace is continually powerful within it. Therefore, the soul itself can do nothing; rather, human will must cease, and the soul must allow God to reign within it. Through this, the will is raised to freedom. This is precisely the sure sign of the light of grace in the soul, when a person, with their free will, turns away from transient things and toward the eternal, God, the highest good.[169]
As soon as faith awakens, hope is already there, and with the first glimmer of spiritual knowledge entering the soul, the certainty of possession appears, where no doubt is possible anymore.
“At that stage of thought where it encompasses nothing other than true being, this pure essence alone is the sole content, the light that dawns in the soul. Where we ourselves no longer will and think, there God is the willing and thinking within us; his will takes the place of our self-will, and his fullness takes hold of us as soon as we have become completely empty through the expulsion of self-delusion. There, man has, through his free will, relinquished all self-will. To remain completely still and completely empty is the very best thing there. One might well wish to be prepared partly by oneself and partly by God (the true Self); but that is impossible. You cannot so quickly think of preparation or desire it that God would not nevertheless precede you.”[170]
Since God is the true Self, everything and nothing besides Him, there is also nothing in reality that could unite with Him; for nothing has ever been separate from Him. Human beings, a ray of the eternal sun of the universe, have formed a “pseudo-self,” and this pseudo-self imagines itself to be something different from God. Therefore, it is not actually a matter of a union of God and humanity, who have never been separate, but rather only of humanity overcoming false appearances, deception, error, and self-deception, and thereby attaining the knowledge of its own true essence, its divinity.
“The reason we cannot find God is that we seek Him in parables, for He has no parable. If the soul knew itself, it would also know God. That the soul moves in concepts and grasps its God in concepts stems from its lack of self-knowledge and its ability to be deceived by concepts. Sinking into divinity, the soul loses all objective perception and recognizes itself as everything. We are to understand the eternal Word as it is spoken directly into the soul by divinity, and as it cannot be captured in words. What can be captured in words is far too small; The eternal Word teaches the soul of all this in an instant. All dogmatic ideas are not truth itself. Everything that is expressed in words and images is merely a lure to God, an invitation to humanity to come to its own true Self-awareness. Whoever is content with mere theories, hypotheses, and opinions, and does not wish to penetrate further with the powers of the soul, with knowledge and love, remains behind.
Anyone who wants to become master of their own thinking must rise above their own thinking, be the thinker themselves.
“Thinking and willing in terms of intellect cannot reach the divine. The Word flows from God and yet remains in God; all of God’s deeds are wondrous, incomprehensible, and unbelievable; were they comprehensible and believable, they would not be superhuman, not divine. To recognize the true self requires an elevation of the soul above all intellectual concepts (and figments of the imagination), and therein lies the highest knowledge. Many arrive at clear understanding and rational, discerning comprehension in images and forms; but few transcend this standpoint. God much prefers a person free from all self-created or learned notions to a hundred thousand who revel in their dialectical skill and thereby hinder God’s entry into their souls.”[171]
“Faith springs from reason; but it becomes fruitful in the will, and the will becomes fruitful through faith. Thus, the light of faith is the cause of that elevation into the infinite. Reason receives from without, it hears and perceives, it presupposes differences, orders, and determines. As it completes its task, insofar as it is able, a highest realm remains for it, which it cannot fathom; it knows only that it is a highest (ideal). This it now communicates to the will, as reason, in the shared ground of the soul, not in its determinacy. Thus, it raises the will above itself and places it in that highest realm. There, the will plunges into the unconscious, which is God himself. Because faith, in this sense, is the deepest motive of the will, it is, as the innermost being, opposed to the commandment as an external determining ground of action.”[172]
Therefore, when it comes to spiritual Self-knowledge, that is, the recognition of eternal truth within oneself, it is not a matter of mere knowledge or the satisfaction of scientific curiosity, but rather of receiving the spiritual power of divine self-consciousness, which is the nourishment of the soul. This power, through which the spirit grows, unfolds, and expands, is as necessary for the soul as material food is for the physical body. Millions of people, despite their superficial knowledge and superficial morality, starve because their souls do not receive the nourishment they need for life and growth. Therefore, one should learn to renounce the transient and turn one’s heart to the divine in order to receive its light and power. This renunciation, through which the highest is attained, is called “penance.”
“Only true repentance enables us to truly receive God into ourselves. Through it we recognize all sin and achieve a reflection in us of everything we seek in Him.”[173]
“Through the reception of divine light, the soul, in its direct entry into God (divine self-consciousness), attains a full knowledge of all things; it then no longer needs any external description; it no longer sees in images and concepts; it is no longer bound to specific concepts, nor to the pronouncements of Holy Scripture, nor to any human teaching. Far more than it could attain from without, it already carries within itself and then develops in all its faculties, so that will and memory, like the lower faculties of the soul, all become equally servants and instruments of that highest knowledge, and the whole of human life becomes a divine life. With this, the will also attains the unlimited capacity to make all things possible and to develop what it has received into a holy life.”[174]
Thus, the inner person is permeated, strengthened, and illuminated by the awakening power of knowledge within, and the virtue of the inner person illuminates the outer person as embers penetrate iron, so that finally even the outer and inner come into perfect harmony, and the one God-man finds his image reflected in human personalities. This power is love.
“Love is the same as God, and to the extent that we dwell in love, to the extent that we dwell in God; it bestows upon all virtues that they may bear the name virtue (from ‘to be of service’). Where (selfless) love is present, it accomplishes great things; where holy and perfect works do not appear, love must also be scarce or even absent. If the soul were more concerned with other virtues than with love, it would possess no virtue at all. In all the impulses that rouse us to love, nothing else drives us but the Holy Spirit (self-knowledge). The goal toward which love directs all its outward effects is goodness, and this goodness is God. Nothing can be considered good except that it occurs in love. Love, however, should be pure (selfless), unencumbered, and detached (from self-interest); it should not be directed toward “me,” nor toward anything outside itself, but solely toward goodness and God (the Self that encompasses all). Therefore, true love extends to everything equally. What you love, you should love in God; in Him, your neighbor, just as you yourself, is the object of your (selfless) love. (You yourself are the Self that is love.) If you love yourself, you love all people just as much as yourself. As long as you love another person less than yourself, you do not yet truly love yourself.”[175]
This love for the true self (God) can only fully reveal itself when the soul is freed from everything that belongs to the non-self, i.e., the false self.
“The soul must strip itself of everything that does not belong to its essence. If we are to penetrate to the core of God, we must first enter into our own core. True humility lies in remaining aware of what one is by nature, something created from nothing (a nothingness that appears to be “something”), in not choosing one’s own actions and omissions, but rather awaiting the illumination of grace (the light of the true self) in order to find what is right in action and omission; this is the true humility of nature. The humility of the spirit, however, is that it no more ascribes or appropriates to itself all the good that God does in it than it did when it (its apparent self) did not exist.”
Whoever relinquishes their false self desires nothing more, neither for themselves nor for “another”; they attain everything without asking for it, and all others receive it through them, for they are everything themselves. Nothing is achieved through impatience; but when patience arises, contentment is already present.
“Patience is the surrender of self-will and self-interest, the boundless and complete devotion to God, which constitutes the essence of virtue. Whatever God gives to the righteous (i.e., the selfless), sickness or poverty, or whatever else, He prefers above all else because it is God’s will. Were it not God’s will (karma), it would not exist in that very instant. As soon as God’s will pleases you, you are everywhere in Heaven, whatever happens to you (your person). We should let God (the true Self) do with us as He wills, as if we did not exist. God should be as powerful in everything you are as in his own uncreated nature. If our will becomes God’s will, that is good; but if God’s will becomes our will, that is far better. Patience makes all suffering sweet and transforms what is the bitterest pain for natural man into the highest bliss, into the certainty of God’s presence in our suffering; that he suffers with us (is “crucified” in us), and that in suffering and deprivation we draw closer to God than in joy and comfort.”[176]
Yoga, or the union of man with God, that is, with the immortal Self, consists in nothing other than man overcoming, through the power of his indwelling divine Self, the self-deception brought about by the illusion of form, rising to his true self-awareness through this inner power, and becoming master of his “self”—his feelings and thoughts, his will and desires, his actions and omissions—in other words, becoming his own master. This is the ultimate goal of all religion, including Christianity, and therefore, quite apart from all “historical facts,” the man Jesus Christ was presented as a model for us to follow.
“Christ alone (the Godhead who appears in humanity as God) is our end, which we should follow, and our goal, which we should strive for, and with which we should be united in all his glory, according to the degree to which this union belongs to us. True confessors of God take the life and teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ as their (ideal) model, so that they may continually be reflected in them and be able to cast aside everything that is unlike this glorious model (and that prevents them from being realized in it).”[177]
Concluding remarks
These excerpts from the works of the Christian master J. Eckhart will suffice to illustrate that true Christian doctrine, in its innermost essence, is identical with Indian yoga teachings. The reason so few grasp the truth contained therein is that, as Sankaracharya [Śaṅkarācarya] says, so few possess the ability to distinguish the eternal Self (God) from the non-permanent (the personality clinging to earthly things). Many cling to an external ideal, an external savior, who is a product of their own conception and with whom they believe they have nothing in common, thus preventing themselves from realizing the true ideal within themselves, from awakening the true savior within.
But this is the purpose of all religion and the purpose of our reincarnations on Earth: That man may become master over his false, imagined self, and find the true Redeemer within himself, becoming one with his God and through this one with the God of the universe. The God of every person, however, who can bring him closer to the God of the universe, is his own free and unlimited individuality, which lives “in heaven” and yet is incarnated on Earth in his personality. This is why it is also said that Jesus said: “For as many as there are people on Earth, there are as many gods in heaven,” and above all these gods stand the “fathers” of the gods.
The Secret Doctrine states the following regarding the fathers of the gods: “The Lord of the Universe (Brahma) had “seven sons,” meaning the spiritual sun of the universe (the Logos) manifested itself in seven rays or sons of light (Dhyani Buddhas) [dhyāni buddhas]. From these sprang their chayyas [chāyas] (shadows), the celestial bodhisattvas, the prototypes of the earthly bodhisattvas and Buddhas, and finally, (spiritual) humans. These seven sons of light are also called the seven stars (and every human being is the offspring of such a star, belonging to the family of one of these seven sons).”
“The star under which a human being is born remains their star through all their incarnations (their higher Self) within a Manvantara period. This, however, is not their astrological star; the latter refers only to their personality (karma), the former to their (spiritual) individuality. The “angel” of this star, or the Dhyani Buddha [dhyāni buddha], is either the guiding or merely the presiding “angel” in each new rebirth of the Monad, which is a part of this angel’s own being, even though its vessel, the human being, is unaware of it. Every adept has their Dhyani Buddha [dhyāni buddha] or “elder twin soul” (soul bridegroom) and is aware of it. They call it the “father soul” and “father fire” (or the “father in heaven”).”
“As a consequence of this sevenfold revelation of the singular essence underlying all humanity, all of humanity consists of seven distinct classes with their subdivisions, and every human soul belongs to one of these seven classes or revelations of the One. This has always been known to all initiates, and that is why Jesus says: “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30); “I am returning to my Father,” etc. Those people who have sprung from the same divine ray of light are spiritually related to one another. Therefore, each class of adepts has its own “community of souls,” and the only way to join such a “brotherhood” is for each individual to bring themselves under the influence of the light that springs from their own Logos.”
The reason man finds neither his own true Self nor its “Father in Heaven” is that he does not want to know anything about Him, and does not allow His divine knowledge (Theosophy) to awaken in his consciousness and be revealed, but instead binds himself to external ideals that are just as transient as he is.
The purpose of Theosophy is to convince oneself of the transience of all external ideals (even the idea of an external savior), to free oneself from them, and to allow the true, imperishable ideal to be realized within us. This ideal is “divine,” that is, free, boundless, unlimited, formless, omnipresent, and transcending all human concepts; it is not bound by time and space and is therefore immortal, exalted above life and death. It is love, truth, and justice itself, which, when we allow them to become action within us, become reality and essence within us, and ultimately imprint their character on the outer person as well, so that the outer person, too, appears as what they should be: An image of their God.
Selected Theosophical Works
Dr. Franz Hartmann (1838–1912) is considered the most important German mystic of the 19th century. He was not only a born mystic of great stature, who produced a large number of highly qualified works of his own, each with its own unique character, but he was also a reinterpreter and insightful commentator on the medieval German mystics Meister Eckhart, Theophrastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim, Jakob Böhme, Angelus Silesius, and others, as well as on ancient Indian and Chinese mysticism. He translated German mystics into English and Oriental mystics into German. His translations into German are not so much literal, philologically precise, dry, and tedious translations as they are faithful to the meaning, imbued with the spirit and life of the original. Anyone who wants to translate mystical works faithfully into fluent language must, after all, be a mystic himself. Literary philologists who have no sense of mysticism cannot do that.
It is therefore easy to understand that, due to his own mystical nature, Hartmann was led by the guiding forces of humanity to the Theosophical movement, where he soon assumed a leading role. He came to India at the beginning of the 1880s to meet H. P. Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Society, in person, having become aware of her through her writings. He remained there for several years as one of her best collaborators and, on the advice of the Masters, became her representative when she went to Europe for an extended period. In the course of this work, Hartmann came into personal and written contact with Masters of the White Lodge, some of whom were Blavatsky’s teachers and the inspirations for the founding of the Theosophical Society, a relationship he maintained for the rest of his life. When his task in India was completed, he returned to Europe to guide the Theosophical movement in Germany in the direction desired by the Masters. Here he developed a lively literary and public speaking activity, launching the first purely theosophical German journal “Lotusblüten” in 1893, writing numerous theosophical works, publishing or commissioning German translations of the most outstanding oriental sacred texts, and founding the “International Theosophical Brotherhood” in 1897, of which he remained the spiritual leader until the end of his life.
As a consequence of the political upheaval of 1933, Hartmann’s works were also destroyed in Germany. Since they belong to the enduring legacy of German literature and are of inestimable value for the intellectual development of the German people, we are publishing a new edition of these writings.
Notes:
[1] Yoga and Christianity or The Secret Doctrine in the Christian Religion. By Franz Hartmann, M.D. [Yoga und Christentum oder Die Geheimlehre in der christlichen Religion [From, Drei Abhandlungen über Yoga (Three Treatises on Yoga)] [Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025]
[2] [Note that Sanskrit terms are not capitalized, just as they are not in Sanskrit texts.]
[3] [R. H. — Hatha Yoga, developed over the course of humanity’s earliest evolution was absolutely necessary, as a practice for the earliest humans of the 3rd or Lemurian race, was developed back then, millions of years ago for the development of the physical body, especially its nerves and coordination of the muscles, all at the earliest stages of the evolution of the physical body. This took place in accordance while the physical body was becoming reduced in size towards the beginning of the Atlantean or 4th race. The development of the nervous system also evolved the five prāṇa or vital airs and the etheric body, known as the prāṇamaya-kośa.]
[4] [R. H.—I have changed all italics to plain text, for easier reading. However, the font size has been reduced, which will make it easier for the reader to identify Eckhart’s comments from Dr. Hartmann’s comments.]
[5] Charles Schmidt, “Studien”.
[6] Excerpt from Lasson’s biography of Eckhart.
[7] [R. H.—According to Lewis Spence in An Encyclopaedia of Occultism, the Oupnekhat or Oupnekhata (Book of the Secret) is a work written in Persian. This expression, “sit in a quiet place” was also said by the Christ in the New Testament as to how to pray.]
[8] [R. H.—scarteke (Charteque, scarte) = middle low German = old book]
[9] It hardly needs to be noted that the definitions of “deity” and “God” given here only have a negative value, to indicate what God is not, but to form a limited concept of Him.
[10] See “[Johannes] Fährmann, Großer Theosophischer Katechismus”, 2 vols. (Editor’s note).
[11] [R. H.—sthūla śarīra]
[12] [R. H.—lińga-śarīra]
[13] [R. H.—prāṇa]
[14] [R. H.—kāma-rūpa]
[15] [R. H.—ākāśa]
[16] [ātmā]
[17] An exhaustive account of the sevenfold constitution of man is contained in the work “Fährmann, The Sevenfold Nature of Man and Universe”, Part III of the “Großen Theosophischen Katechismus”. (The Publisher.)
[18] [R. H.—ātmā-buddhi-manas]
[19] However, this does not exhaust the symbolic meaning of the cross. See “Hartmann, “White and Black Magic”.
[20] [R. H.—ātmā-buddhi]
[21] See, Eckhart, 287,7 – 561,23 – 252,8 – 260,17.
[22] Eckhart, 379,3 – 205,33 – 233,36 – 362,22 – 66,2 – 209,26 – 266,5 – 614,35.
[23] Eckhart, 198,12 – 55,44 – 14,12.
[24] 592,11 – 584, 4–19.
[25] 439,11 – 204,20 – 227,34 – 198,2 – 40,8, 34 – 241,11.
[26] 331,16 – 317,28.
[27] 381,7 – 240,19 – 655,36 – 634,3.
[28] 56,4 – 157 – 620,33 – 222,37.
[29] 261,15 – 89,32 – 136,40.
[30] 71 – 74 – 22,18.
[31] 153,11 – 353,3.
[32] 158,83 – 480,1 – 633,18 – 189,26.
[33] 139,40 – 267,11 – 658,21 – 582,30 – 581,23 – 671,35 – 511,29 – 349,18.
[34] 49,19 – 14,31.
[35] 431,1 – 435,22.
[36] 190,29 – 199,12 – 467,10.
[37] 86 – 307,12 – 570,30 – 13 – 15 – 264,5 – 24,31 – 304,9,33 – 102,15 – 25.
[38] 222,29 – 298,16 – 12,8 – 66,22 –223,8 – 487,10 – 574,36.
[39] 204,38 – 555 –570,30 – 311,39.
[40] 152 – 15 – 486,35 – 222,12.
[41] 281,35 – 283,37 – 310,25 – 532,3 – 503,1.
[42] 658,24 – 258,29 – 106,37 – 242,1 – 462,21 – 536,36.
[43] 101,19 – 110,28 – 105,10 – 266,32 – 110,26 – 479 – 481 – 401,16.
[44] Lasson, Meister Eckhart.
[45] All the sayings quoted from Eckhart’s works are numbered in this chapter due to their large number, instead of being marked with asterisks as is usually the case. (The Editor.)
[46] Eckhart, 531,25 – 113,24 – 226,31.
[47] 467,6 – 566,35.
[48] 206,15.
[49] 127,25.
[50] 185,1.
[51] 586,21.
[52] 121,9.
[53] 625,26
[54] 10,14
[55] 109,32.
[56] 12.
[57] 70.16.
[58] 147,18.
[59] 177,2.
[60] 190,17.
[61] 517,22.
[62] 454,5
[63] 558,3.
[64] 451,11.
[65] 558,3.
[66] 603,9.
[67] 240,8.
[68] 357.
[69] 359.
[70] 544,27.
[71] 54,24.
[72] 57,22.
[73] 544,12.
[74] 612,12.
[75] 307,20.
[76] 280,4.
[77] 146,8.
[78] 513,38.
[79] 91,31.
[80] 317,28.
[81] 599,26.
[82] 356,16.
[83] 349,32.
[84] 239,26.
[85] 239,26.
[86] 391,15.
[87] 678,36.
[88] 591,34.
[89] 289,9.
[90] 514,34.
[91] 674,2.
[92] 150,11.
[93] 497,11.
[94] 167,9.
[95] 286,21.
[96] 193,8.
[97] 583,32.
[98] 117,1.
[99] 244,31.
[100] 158,12.
[101] Sanskrit:
- Nitya anitya vastu viveka.
- Iha amuthra phala bhoga virâga.
- Shama âdi shat sampatti.
- Mumukshu twamnitya anitya vastu vivekaḥ
- iha amutra phala bhoga virāgaḥ
- śamādi ṣaṭka saxmpattiḥ
- mumukṣutvaṃ
[102] 639,18.
[103] 413,32.
[104] 386,28.
[105] 610,29.
[106] 273,5.
[107] 466,24.
[108] 613,13.
[109] 321,14.
[110] 389,24.
[111] 83,7.
[112] 201,32.
[113] 614,1.
[114] 57,23 – 297,23 – 156,20 – 142,38 – 98,18 – 0,4 – 105,13 – 121,35 – 162,8 – 222,24 – 297, 23,34.
[115] “He is Brahm. He is also the whole body and soul; he is the limit and the end of everything. He is not the various kinds of knowledge; he is the form of knowledge that encompasses all things; he is omnipresent; he himself is filled with himself (and with nothing that is not himself). The ignorant imagine that he does not exist; non-existence is not his; he is eternal; they cannot call him the naming, nor the naming, nor the named, for all naming is from him; he is everything; he is free and independent of all attributes; there is no higher knowledge above him; he is more exalted than all that is exalted; he does not enter into thought, and there is no person who does not recognize him (when they recognize him) as the truth. The wise recognize him as the origin of all things, the great light.” (Atharva Veda)
[116] 262,37 – 188,29 – 269,35 – 527,12.
[117] 139,33 – 144,32 – 59,16 – 99,4,12 – 540,17,26.
[118] 263,10 – 282,30 – 268,35 – 82,28 – 283.38 – 659,17 – 590,4 – 108,31 – 318.31.
[119] “The Lord, who dwells in the hearts of all, continually brings forth all things by His omnipotence according to eternal, unchanging laws. Take refuge in Him with your whole being. Then, through His strength, you will attain supreme peace, divine existence.” (Bhagavad Gita, XVIII, 61, 62)
[120] 380,28 – 560,30 – 321,6 – 525,31 – 532,30 – 527,23 – 389,2 – 528,24 – 529,3 – 517,2.
[121] As soon as Self-knowledge occurs within the Self, the Self is no longer a unity, but a trinity in which the knowing Self, the known Self, and Self-knowledge must be distinguished.
[122] 390,14 – 699,19 – 681,30 – 513,9.
[123] 630,30 – 515,27 – 497,30 – 668 – 388.
[124] 530,37 – 681,32.
[125] 580,13 – 336.19 – 534.18.
[126] “Whoever recognizes me, the mighty Lord of the world, who am unborn and without beginning, walks without error among mortals and is free from sin. Whoever recognizes this my divine majesty has attained the unity of being through his submission to me.” (Bhagavad Gita, X 3,7)
[127] 421,1 – 285,15 – 673,1 – 670,5 – 160,15 – 120,28 – 336,31 – 250,25 – 437,27 – 672,27 – 528,35 – 540,36 – 387,38.
[128] 134,29 – 507,12 . 124,29 – 11,34 – 169,24 – 313,32 – 112,33.
[129] 401,5 – 104,30 – 159,30 – 9,39 – 401,15 – 266,5 – 101,3.
[130] 167,9 – 268,21 – 290,34.
[131] 483,24 – 14,19 – 620,29.
[132] 378,36 – 497,20 – 498,10.
[133] [R. H.—Desatir? There is no Veda by this name: Jedir Veda. There is a Persian text by the name Desatir, but that is not what Dr. Hartmann is referring to here. The four Hindu Vedas are: Ṛg, Sāma, Yajur, and Atharva.]
[134] 241,8 – 503,26 – 101,35 – 534,22 – 528,36 – 497,32.
[135] 254,15 – 379,32 – 180,8 – 579,7 – 589,6.
[136] 437,30 – 266,27 – 207,1 – 487,11 – 321,8 – 7,38.
[137] 325,4 – 321,11.
[138] This is described in Chapter X of the Bhagavad Gita.
[139] 273,5 – 541,12 – 529,34 – 540,3 – 333,10 – 322,22 – 391,14 – 83,7 – 83,16 – 10,36 – 389,24 – 514,29 – 272 – 512,12.
[140] 531 – 96,25 – 162,38 – 441,36 – 188,1 – 254,1.
[141] 38,25 – 167,9 – 14,19.
[142] 153,21 – 132,30 – 229,1 – 304,8 – 89,23 – 255,3 – 257,11.
[143] 220,35 – 270,40 – 270,26 – 98,27 – 273,37 – 206,10 – 106,30 – 108,13 – 121,17.
[144] 591,23 – 214,24 – 671,1 – 496,20 – 282,15 – 127,6– 251,2 – 288,19.
[145] 199,25 – 595,20 – 11,31 – 79,6 – 113,33 – 306,8 – 255,20 – 180,32 – 264,27.
[146] “He whose soul is united with Brahma through surrender to Me sees everything in One; he sees the soul in everything and everything in the soul (the Self). He who sees Me in everything sees everything in Me; do not forsake him and he does not forsake Me. He who recognizes Me in every being dwells in Me. He who sees the same essence in everything, Arjuna! whether in pleasure or pain, and remains unconcerned about it, is an excellent yogi.” (Bhagavad Gita, VI, 29–32)
[147] 83,17 – 107,38 – 136,23 – 222,34.
[148] 612,15 – 206,35 – 268,10.
[149] The more a person, in their own arrogance, imagines themselves to be godlike and a “superman”, the greater they appear to all who understand – as a fool.
[150] 389,7 – 254,1.
[151] 529,17 – 93,13 – 92,93 – 503,22 – 531,7.
[152] 142, 3,15 – 439,26 – 26,17 – 180,12 – 268,8 – 582,2 – 173,7 – 439,20 – 31,6 – 143,19 – 301,3 – 332,40.
[153] 152,27 – 657,22 – 154,19 – 620,14 – 657,32.
[154] 333,31 – 402,32 – 459,16 – 273,10 – 587,33 – 522,3 – 390,38.
[155] 104,1 – 159,36 – 655,38 – 682,40 – 322,2.
[156] 103,24 – 162,2 – 133,28 – 639,12.
[157] 658,2 – 652,12 – 674,2 – 467,9 – 496,29 – 519,11 – 260,24 – 511,23.
[158] 136,34 – 394,10 – 395,12 – 179,25 – 413,21 – 467,13 – 220,36 – 207,3 – 318,1.
[159] 613,19 – 589,25 – 266,4 – 285,14 – 157 – 588,37 – 283,37.
[160] See Hartmann, The White and Black Magic or the Law of the Spirit in Nature.
[161] 497,11.
[162] 92,5 – 527,32 – 497,23.
[163] 495,22 – 146,10.
[164] 34,10.
[165] 58,8 – 62,15 – 66,7.
[166] 469,6,24 – 513,9,12 – 475,35 – 406,34 – 591,11 – 566,39.
[167] 395,20.
[168] 395,20 – 200,35.
[169] 446,16 – 217,40 – 229,21 – 273,38 – 364,11 – 366,31 – 77,27 – 385,6.
[170] 27,15.
[171] 206,29 – 513,12.
[172] 384,7 – 521,30 – 439,3.
[173] 659,27.
[174] 242,26 – 37,18 – 667,34.
[175] 377,39 – 606,33 – 378,17 – 352,35 – 61,4 – 208,26 – 310,9.
[176] 146,32 – 293,31 – 55,5 – 426 – 435 – 441.
[177] 295,7 – 478,6.