(In this text, Franz Hartmann recounts the different stages Annie Besant went through in her search for Truth; and I added green subtitles.)
ANNIE BESANT
Because the theosophical movement is spreading more and more every day wherever the English language is spoken and, despite all the reluctance of the press, is also beginning to take root in Germany, our readers will be pleased to learn something more about Mrs. Annie Besant’s experiences, who now actually stands at the head of this movement in Europe.
The following sketch is taken from her recently published autobiography, “Through Storm to Peace,” and a description of her spiritual development, external personal experiences being of interest only insofar as they had a decisive influence on this inner development.
--oOo--
If a famous fencing master is seen defeating all opponents, everyone seeks to learn his art; to see how he covers himself and parries this and that blow, so that he can imitate him if the need arises.
For a similar reason, it is also useful to know the life of someone who has achieved something spiritually great. The good example helps more than the theory.
The goal towards which Annie Besant has striven since early youth was the knowledge of the truth. Like most people in our age of outward exploration and inward atrophy, she sought truth on the outside, seeking it here and there, in this system and that, this church and that, clergy and atheism, and sought in vain until finally knowledge arose out of her own feeling of truth in her heart and the star of “Theosophy” shone in her, which dispelled the clouds of doubt, brightened the night of ignorance, calmed the storm of craving for knowledge and brought her the long-awaited peace whom she fought for a long time.
Annie Wood (Mrs. Besant) was born on 1 October 1847 in London. Her parents were of Irish descent. Even in her earliest youth she was an ideally designed nature; the world of spirits was open to her mind’s eye, and the realm of the ideal was her favorite abode.
There, she dreamed of the good and the beautiful and the true and the splendor of existence, until the brutality of life came upon her and ushered her with a rough hand into that “reality” which, at the bottom, is nothing but an illusion.
Besant was initially very religious
Her mind was highly religious, but she took the matter seriously and didn’t want to seem anything else, other than what she actually was. Her reason would not allow her to believe blindly in the opinions of ecclesiastical authorities; she wanted proof.
The god of the churches was the kind of god you can talk to, who has his servants and officials and is at least accessible to the clergy. He had to be definable, one had to be able to find out something specific about him; where he lives, how he lives, what his natural history is, his inclinations, peculiarities, hobbies, etc.
The teachings of the theologians gave her no satisfaction. Although everyone knew something special to tell about God, everyone wanted to know him more or less from books and from hearsay; one ascribed this quality to him, the other that quality, but of the fact that God, as he is supposed to have said himself, the truth is, nobody seemed to know about it, or at least didn't understand it.
Desperate, she plunged into the depths of philosophy. She researched Kant, Schopenhauer, Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, etc.; but even “the rule of insufficient reason” could not still the urging of her heart. In spite of all denial of the will to live, she could find no other life; the unconscious, despite the best theories, did not come out of its unconscious and so it did her no good, indeed, even the categorical imperative inspired her little edification.
Just as little as a theological church god who goes for a morning walk in paradise in his dressing gown and while away the time teasing Adam and Eve with an apple tree, she could not be satisfied with the philosophical discovery that the god worshipped by men is nothing more than cosmic space, or that something higher can be produced from the low, a something from nothing, a man can be produced from an ape; and, moreover, reason told her that if man had come forth from the ape, since in the end everything must return to its origin, it would be his highest destiny to become an ape again.
The idea underlying her whole existence was in the feeling of sacrificing herself for something greater than she was. But where was this higher to be found, and what was its nature?
As we see, she made the mistake of wanting to base her belief on knowledge instead of knowledge on belief, a mistake that every reasonable man makes, as long as he confuses “belief” with “my opinion” and wants to substitute an alien theory for his own feelings.
The true faith, i.e., that mystical power which springs from one’s own sense of truth is a thing little known in orthodoxy. There is a lot of talk about “belief in God,” but this means belief in dogmas and ecclesiastical hypotheses.
When belief in God (the truth) is inconsistent with the opinions of the Church, one shows him the door and retains his orthodoxy. As we shall see later, Mrs. Besant was to experience this for herself.
Educated in the English church system, she learned early on the dogmas of the same and became enthusiastic about it. The Fathers of the Church, the Epistles of Polycarpus, Ignatius, and Clement, the Confessions of St. Augustine, &c., were her favorite books, and she dreamed of a great, universal, truly Catholic Church, to the service of which she might be wholly devoted.
The Roman Catholic Church, too, with its celebrations, pomp, music and ceremonies, exercised their spirit and excited her imagination.
She regretted not being born in an age when she could have been martyred for the Church; she flagellated herself, prayed and fasted.
Her idea of Christ was the center around which all her feelings and thoughts revolved, it seemed to her that her devotion to him must be powerful enough to pull him down from his hiding place in heaven. She wanted to do everything in her power to show her gratitude to him for his great love and for the salvation of mankind.
Though she felt it inwardly, she did not understand it intellectually then, that Christ (the God-man) knows no other sacrifice other than the merging of the earthly spirit in her, and no other surrender than the utter disappearance of man in his selfhood, and in himself becomes the God-man.
Like thousands of others, she wanted to be a servant and helper of God, but not to become God; she did not know that man becomes God, when divinity is recognized in him, and that no one can truly serve God without knowing Him.
Through her daily study of the Bible she became acquainted with the contradictions contained in it, which no one could explain to her, because everyone she asked knew only the external sense and not the spiritual meaning of these symbols.
Then the period of doubt began. She was shocked at herself to find she could no longer believe that the prophet Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and that Joshua made the sun stand still.
She went from one prelate to another for advice.
"Credo quia absurdum!" [I believe because it is absurd!] was the Catholic’s reply.
"Vade retro Satan as!" [Get thee behind me, Satan!] cried the Protestant, shuddering.
In vain did she try to nip her heretical doubts in the bud, to lock up reason in the chamber of dogmatism; the soul struggling to know the truth was too powerful within her to silence her voice.
She was already seriously considering becoming a nun when, in 1867, she met a young evangelical “cleric” named Frank Besant, who fell in love with her and coerced her into a promise of marriage.
Partly as a result of persuasion from her parents, partly to keep the promise once made, she acquiesced and the marriage took place. The main motivation for this association was the idea that she could do much more good alongside a “minister of God” than in any other position, and her relatives encouraged her in this opinion.
But she found herself disappointed. The ideal she had hoped to attain did not at all correspond to the reality she found. The “godly servant of God” proved to be a pious sneak, a hypocrite who hid common lusts and passions under the mask of godliness and whose only concern was to keep up appearances.
In her husband she had hoped to attain the outward image of the divine Saviour, in his transfigured form, but instead, getting that one creep who knew how to talk unctuously and spit in the face of the truth, a man who mistreated her and deeply offended her sensitivity with his tactlessness, and her position was the less enviable, as under the laws then prevailing in England (which were later abolished by Mrs Besant's influence), the wife had no legal right over her husband, could not have property of her own, but with all what she was and had, like a domestic animal, was her husband’s absolute property.
The best part of any delusion is the disappointment; from every idol which disintegrates into itself, a new knowledge arises.
Since she had got to know the false Christianity in all its perversity, she listened to the voice of reason again and renounced it.
Despite all her husband’s persuasions and violent measures, she made no secret of her conversion, and since a Protestant priest cannot very well have a wife who is known to be a heretic without damaging his reputation, he decided to consent to a divorce.
Besant becomes an atheist and social activist
Now a period of deprivation began for her. Poverty and hunger, which she had not previously known from her own experience, were her daily guests, and she got by with the work of her hands as best she could.
The “Christ” whom the Church had created and who was a servant of the Church, disappeared from her imagination, and in his place came love for humanity. From then on her whole effort was directed towards being useful to her fellow men, the lot of the poor and oppressed, to spread enlightenment and to find a satisfactory solution to social questions.
These endeavors brought her into contact with the well-known “atheist” Charles Bradlaugh (each sect calls anyone an atheist who does not believe in the God who is the result of their system’s self-reflection), the apostle of the Enlightenment whose perseverance and energy owes much to the cause of the Enlightenment in England, which is admitted even by those who disagree with his views.
A sincere friendship ensued, and soon Mrs. Besant found herself at the forefront of the socialist movement. She was the head of the “Freethinkers” and became an employee of the newspaper “The National Reformer” founded by the same in London.
What tenacity Bradlaugh displayed in bringing the cause of liberty of thought into orthodox England, and how he finally triumphed, how he, five times elected to Parliament, was refused five times to take his seat there on the pretense that he could not be sworn as an “atheist”; how he swore himself and was thrown out and came again; how the theologians spared no means of destroying him morally by slanders, and bankrupting him financially by lawsuits, and how he finally won the victory, is well known.
Mrs. Besant took an honest part in this persecution. The burning of heretics had gone out of fashion, and so she was spared the fire, but quite a few of her public lectures had the windows smashed by a bigoted rabble.
After such lectures she often walked through a threatening, noisy, screaming, club-wielding crowd, but was never seriously injured; for at their approach the ranks of her pursuers opened; Struck by their eyes, the screamers fell back.
So the “atheist” fought for the truth and the light, fought by herself and outwardly through word and writing, until even the lowest strata of the population got a glimmer of recognition of the unity of the human race, which makes the social position of the lower classes in England more tolerable than we find in other countries, so that England is referred to by many as “the only free country in Europe.”
Hartmann's Reflections
If we were experienced in verse-making, we would include a translation of Abu Ben Adhem’s poem here for better understanding.
One night he saw an angel standing in front of his bed, writing on a golden tablet. He asked him what he was writing, and the angel told him that on this tablet would be inscribed the names of those who love God.
“And is my name included?” Abu asked.
“No!” replied the angel.
Then Abu Ben Adhem said: “Write my name on the tablet on which those who love mankind are written.”
The angel disappeared and when he came again the next night, Abu’s name was written on the tablet of those who love God, obanan.
The name “atheist” is a swear word used to mislead thoughtless people. God is the truth, and none is an atheist but one who does not want to know or denies the truth.
But this includes precisely those who constantly misuse the word “God.” No one can say there is no God unless they can define the word “God,” and a definable God ceases to be God, all in all, and ubiquitous.
No one but God can recognize the Deity, and in the recognition of God all limitations, all ideas cease. God is in all, but we cannot comprehend the infinite with our limited minds; we can only feel its existence, and this feeling of goodness in us is called divine love.
Clear knowledge arises from this feeling only when the idea of limitation in man ceases, when the “self” has become nothing and divinity recognizes itself in the humanity of men.
Rückert says:
“You must feel the reason from which your existence swells. You will destroy it if you want to dig it up.”
(The Wisdom of the Brahmins.)
This truth, which in the end everyone must learn to know if they want to know themselves, Mrs. Besant also had to experience in herself. The breast of the "atheist" was always filled with a love for humanity, which manifested itself in everything she strived for and did.
There was no talk of consolation in a better “hereafter,” of no immortal life for mortal man after he died, but it was about improving the lot of people in this life, out of a herd of animals, each eating up the other, to make people willing to support each other according to the law of humanity. Their god was nothing but truth, their goddess the love of humanity.
When asked:
“Why should we seek the truth and do good if there is no immortal life in which to receive our reward?”
She replied:
“There is no reason why you should lead a noble life, when you find full bliss in an ignoble one. No one can enjoy happiness beyond his ability to attain it. A book may be of great interest to a human, but a dog will prefer a bone. Those who are only interested in their petty self cannot think freely. If we love the truth not for its own sake, but merely for the personal benefits it can bring us.
If we do not find happiness in living a noble life, making humanity happy, spreading light, and leaving the world in a better condition than that in which we found it when we entered, so have we we have no right to call ourselves 'freethinkers.' We have seen a glimpse of the truth, and we consider their possession to be better than anything else, and demand no other reward.
We want to preach the gospel of truth until the clergy have sighed and the dawn brings the good news of the rejoicing people whom the knowledge of the truth has set free.”
But what is the truth whose gospel the social reformers want to proclaim to mankind?
Defending human rights, knowing how to obtain them.
But in order to really recognize the rights of people and their duties towards one another, one must above all know what man is basically, where he and his rights and duties, his suffering and deprivation come from, what the goal of mankind is persecuted as a whole, etc.
And ignorance of these things frustrates all attempts by our do-gooders to establish a lasting state of happiness among men. The deeper causes of suffering are hidden from them, their sight is limited to the superficial, their means are therefore only external, and the results which they obtain are swept away like houses of cards by the next gale.
All communities are based on a common purpose, the attainment of which is the purpose of social union. Surely human society does not exist to have a sadder and more uncertain existence than when everyone is left to their own devices; for in that case social association would be an evil, and human society would be like a herd of cattle, each of which has a shepherd and protector only in order to be exploited and eventually eaten up by it.
Men do not unite for the purpose of making one another miserable, but to give each an opportunity to obtain the advantages of life through mutual cooperation, and to give each individual an opportunity to enjoy them so far as this is compatible with the rights of others is.
Every right is conditional on the fulfillment of a duty. But all rights and duties have as their original basis the supreme and eternal law of the spirit in nature, and as their ultimate purpose the return to this law of unity from the multiplicity of its phenomena.
All legislation relating to the rights and duties of man, if it is to be just, must have man’s ultimate and supreme destiny as its end. It is therefore urgently to be desired that the legislators become acquainted with this provision, and this is only possible when the erroneous views about human nature have given way to higher knowledge, and if this is lacking, at least to a more truth-based theory or view.
Only when man knows his true nature can he know what ideals are to be realized for him and what he is still lacking in order to realize them.
Were the existence of the essential human being limited to the existence of his transitory appearance limited in time and space; if he contained nothing spiritual, sublime, infinite, he would not be able to sense, feel or imagine any sublime, eternal and immortal ideals, and even if he had this ability, which is basically an impossibility because only like can approach, feel and comprehend like, he would be all the more unhappy if he were a finite being in the midst of infinite and for him unattainable ideals.
If life itself were the purpose of life, it would have no purpose. Life is change, change is movement. Everything that changes moves towards a certain goal, which can be nothing other than either the realization of the highest ideal being, or the annihilation of being. There is no middle way, because a movement without a goal is foolishness.
Certainly mankind is not purposefully moving towards annihilation; otherwise the desire for progress and improvement would not stir in every individual.
Progress moves towards the realization of existence in its highest potency; but this existence can only be one, all-encompassing and infinite, and the attainment of this one infinite existence, this “knowledge of God,” is the highest destiny of man, and his eternal goal, where he finds rest, even if this goal, which is common to most people, still seems incomprehensible, incomprehensible and impossible today.
Every man approaches the realization of the Eternal Ideal, or in other words, his own divine self-knowledge, to the degree that he is able to feel and comprehend the presence within him of these highest and common ideals, and his happiness depends on the self-awareness of these ideals in his nature. A knowledge that extends to the big and whole makes him happier than a knowledge that is limited to a single object, however detailed it may be.
An all-encompassing love makes him happier than a passion extended to a single form or being; for him omnipotence is infinitely greater than limited ability; an infinite freedom loftier than the freedom of a chained dog, going only as far as its chain goes.
Man can only realize all these infinite ideals within himself when he recognizes humanity as a whole within himself. So long as he imagines himself to be an individual or separate being limited to his physical appearance, he can only enjoy limited ideals; only when he recognizes humanity as a whole within himself are all ideals of humanity his property.
This realization of unity, not only in the whole human race, but in everything, is the basis for the exercise of all rights and duties, based on the operation of the law of eternal justice (karma), which can only be one and universal, otherwise it contradicts itself. A right contrary to general justice is a wrong; A law which only takes individuals or classes into account is defective because it does not recognize the unity of the whole and the equal rights of all its phenomena before the eternal law of the whole, and therefore cannot realize any universal but only limited ideals.
Legislation for the benefit of some or certain classes necessarily involves disadvantages for others, but since in reality there are no “others,” since all beings in nature are only different manifestations of a single entity, not differing from each other in their original nature, so every injustice that is committed against individual phenomena of this kind falls back on the whole and thus also on the authors of the whole.
Just as when the whole organism is poisoned, all the individual parts suffer. Under such circumstances, however, the coming together of human society has failed in its purpose of providing its members, and indeed everyone, with the means to live as happily as possible.
But man’s striving to be happy is solely because he loves himself, and his love is high or low according to what he considers or recognizes as his self. Even the highest “selfless” love for God is basically self-love, since God is the highest existence for man and man can only feel and enjoy his own existence and not that of another.
Divine love is therefore divine self-love, the self-knowledge of God in everything, which is realized in the individual human being. But he who does not know this divine, one Universal itself, or does not feel its existence, only knows the personal deceptive “self,” which is an illusion brought about by the peculiarity of appearance.
As love of the true self is the basis of the highest knowledge, thus love of the false self is the cause of all evil and all folly.
Anyone who considers himself to be a special existence separate from all other beings has not the slightest reason to find his own happiness in the happiness of others. He only knows “himself,” he is there only for “himself”.
Life becomes for him the scene of a struggle of everyone against all, a struggle for existence in which the stronger wins, and the end result of this struggle would be the annihilation of society, the remnant of a monster that has devoured all beings; if not in the inmost soul of every rational man, albeit without his being intellectually conscious of it, slumbered the spark of higher reason, that divine self-consciousness, the development of which is the purpose of all true religion; but which cannot and must not be promoted by the sects, since otherwise it would put an end to the egoism of these sects and would abolish their individual specialness with its special aspirations.
Besant becomes materialistic
In her heart Mrs. Besant was deeply religious, a saint such as one seldom finds, but her mind could not find its way in her feelings, materialism had laid its cuckoo eggs in this nest.
Truth was alive in her heart, but her mind abounded with theories of “force and matter” and the supposed omnipotence of dead matter which creates life; of “scientific” opinions, which arise from external observation and a logic based on it, but not from the knowledge of the truth.
Mrs. Besant was a personal friend of Ludwig Büchner, Haeckel and other materialists. But their “materialism” was not that of our beer house philosophers and traveling salesman.
She says in relation to this as follows:
“There are two different kinds of ‘materialism.’ We have the materialism of the West, which doesn’t care about the whole world, but only about its own self. He cares nothing for mankind, but only for his own benefit, personal pleasure, personal lust; he cares not for the human race nor for the future, but only for himself and the present. He says: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we will be dead.”
Neither I nor my acquaintances have anything to do with this materialism. It is the materialism of the beast which destroys the glory of human existence and belongs only to the selfish and therefore the degenerate.
The higher materialism is that which teaches that the life of the individual ends in death, but recognizes the life of mankind as a whole, for which he should live, and to which everything that is good and noble in him should serve.”
That such ideal materialism, however far removed from bestial materialism, cannot satisfy the perfectionist heart, Mrs. Besant must have felt in her heart.
The unctuous gossip of our world philosophers, who for want of something better will console us with the fact that posterity will remember us, has no temptation for us either, and sounds like an appeal to our vanity.
What do I care if posterity speaks of me or not when I am no more and know nothing of posterity’s talk?
At the end of one’s day, to be lost in nothing, to be unaware of the good which one has created, is a bad consolation for man. But like every thinking person, Mrs. Besant saw well that existence cannot be its own reason, that this is not the culmination of all wisdom, that man can be given his temporary life, which resembles that of the mayfly, comfortably or bearable, and that the suffering of mankind must have a deeper cause than a failed national economy.
Besant becomes a theosophist
She says:
“Since 1866 I became more and more convinced that my philosophy was insufficient and that life and soul were more than I thought.
Psychology made great strides and hypnotism pointed to unexpected surprises in human consciousness. He proved that the thinking power is at its highest activity when the brain, which according to scientific views should be the generator of thoughts, is in an unconscious state. I experimented myself, and obtained surprising results, and in 1889 I resolved to find what I was looking for at all costs.
One evening I was sitting alone after sunset; I was filled with a mighty but almost hopeless longing to solve the human riddle. Then I heard a voice, which later became the holiest sound on earth for me, and which commanded me to hope that salvation was near.
A fortnight later Mr. Stead (editor of the Review of Reviews) came to me and gave me two thick books, the contents of which he asked me to report on. It was two volumes of the Secret Doctrine edited by H.P. Blavatsky.
I started reading and got more and more excited with each page. Everything was so clear, so deep and yet so understandable, as if I had known it for a long time. I was dazzled by the light which shone from the whole; little by little my brain assimilated the explanations presented and I grasped the truth through intuition. Now I knew the fight was over, I had found the truth.”
(Autobiography, p. 340)
From that time Mrs. Besant began a new life. She became acquainted with H. P. Blavatsky. Like me and everyone who ever got to know H.P. Blavatsky, she soon realized that all the suspicions thrown at her sprang from ignorance, envy and self-conceit, and the result was an intimate friendship with her.
On May 10, 1889 Mrs. Besant became a member of the “Theosophical Society” and has been at the forefront of this movement since the death of H.P. Blavatsky.
Indeed, no better “successor” could have been found for H.P. Blavatsky than Mrs. Besant, who by clarity of thought, wonderful eloquence and will power, but above all by purity of heart, firmness of character and kindness, ranks first where she speaks, the hearers are carried away by her words, imbued with the spirit of truth; wherever she appears, joy enters the house, since her constant companion is unassuming charity.
In Mrs. Besant’s devotion to Theosophy, a severance occurred in her relations both with Bradlaugh and with the Freethinker Party in England, since these freethinkers still could not think freely enough to hear truths which they had not already come to terms with.
Mrs. Besant has been accused of “frequent changing of opinions,” but the rising from all sorts of opinions into the light of true knowledge is not a changing of opinion. Where knowledge begins, all mere opinions end.
She herself says of the satisfaction she gained from this:
“I have found in Theosophy everything I expected and much more. I’m sure of myself now. I know from my own experience that the soul exists and that not my body but my soul is my own Self.
I know that I can leave my body at my leisure and associate disembodied with those living people who teach me, and upon my re-entry into the body impress those teachings on my physical memory and recall them. I know that I am still a beginner in such matters, and also that consciousness, instead of being dependent on the brain, is all the more active as it is free from material bonds.
I know that the Sages (Adepts) of whom H.P. Blavatsky spoke really exist and possess knowledge and powers, compared with which all our science and mastery of natural forces is but child’s play.
I have learned all this and much more, and this knowledge is available to all who can pay the entrance fee. This entrance fee is nothing but a willingness to give all to attain spiritual truth, and to devote whatever truth one has attained to the service of mankind, keeping none of it for oneself.”
And so, we have tried in the above to give a picture of the spiritual development of the person who is now at the forefront of the Theosophical movement in Europe, and it only remains for us to express the wish that the “Theosophical Society” which they represent, does not lose sight of the true purpose of their existence.
This purpose is not to bring new knowledge to the world, but to form a nucleus in which the universally accepted theoretical truths of the unity of mankind, and the mutual rights and duties arising therefrom, are put into practice.
The redemption of the human race will not spring from human ingenuity, its Redeemer does not dwell in the head but in the heart. But if the knowledge of truth is to be born in the heart, it must be illuminated by the light of the intellect.
What prevents this enlightenment is people’s wrong worldview regarding God, man and nature. Therefore the Sages of the East have put before us a better world-view for our testing, and the propagation of that world-view is the aim which Mrs. Besant has set for herself, as is that of the author of the Lotusblüten [Franz Hartmann].
(Lotusblüten 3, no. 19, April 1893, p.242-274)
NOTE
Unfortunately, Annie Besant also had a huge flaw: she was very influenced, and she allowed herself to be completely manipulated by several charlatans (the main one being Charles Leadbeater) and under his "guidance" she did tremendous damage to the Theosophical Society.
