Everyone acquainted with my way
of thinking knows that I heartly dislike all vain pretence, bombast and show;
and certain rumors, starting from a well-known source, but which it is not
necessary to mention, having reached me, that the American Crusaders were in
the habit of marching about the streets in procession with trumpets and flags,
and doing all sorts of extravagant things, even surpassing those which I
ridiculed in my book "Talking Image
of Urer,"
I had no desire to go to Berlin
to participate in such a performance. Nevertheless on September 26th,
an hour before the train started, the firm conviction that I would have to go
to Berlin became settled in my mind, and after telegraphing to Mr. Z. in Berlin
the time of my arrival, I left for that city.
When I arrived in Berlin, there
was neither Mr. Z. nor any other person of my acquaintance, nor could I find
any one I knew or any one who knew where the Crusaders were. Getting impatient,
I made up my mind to return to Hallein, and happening to be near the Potsdam R.
R. station, I stepped into the telegraph office, to telegraph to Hallein, so
that no letters would be forwarded to me at Berlin.
On coming out of the telegraph
office I met Mr. Claude Falls Wright at the door, who to my astonishment told
me, that Mrs. Tingley had requested him just then, to go to the Potsdam R. R.
station without a moment's delay, although she did not give any particular
reasons for making such a request. This may have been a “co-incidence;” but I
am more inclined to think that it was a result of Mrs. Tingley's being in
possession of clairvoyant powers.
At all events it was the means of
giving me the great pleasure of meeting the “Crusaders,” on which occasion all
my evil anticipations were at once destroyed; because I have never met in my
life more amiable and unpretentious people than the American Crusaders.
During an hour of private
conversation which followed, I was often struck with the great resemblance
between this occasion and the olden times, when I used to sit alone with H. P.
Blavatsky. More than once it seemed to me as if the aura of H. P. Blavatsky
were surrounding Mrs. Tingley and penetrating her person; in fact I often felt
as if I were talking with H. P. Blavatsky herself in a rejuvenated state. Not
that I fancy that Mrs. Tingley is a reincarnation of my old friend H. P. B.;
but I recognize the power that spoke to me through Mrs. Tingley's personality,
as being the same that spoke to me through the person of H. P. B.
I would perhaps rather call such
a state a “transfiguration” or “transubstantiation,” and having been repeatedly
in similar states myself, such a condition is not to my mind either incredible
or supernatural.
My object is not to mystify or
astonish the reader, but merely to give a few interesting facts from my own
observation. I will therefore not enter deeper into a revelation of occult
mysteries, which might give rise to misunderstandings, but merely say that I
found the representations which had previously been made to me by certain
persons who claim that to worship the true, were false and that no words will
be strong enough to express my appreciation of the high character of Mrs.
Tingley and her companions.
Unfortunately there was no
short-hand writer present to take down the excellent speeches delivery in
English by Crusaders and it is therefore impossible for me to render them and
do them the justice they deserve, but the following is a translation of the
substance of what I said in German:
« Ladies and Gentlemen,
All who are acquainted with my
writings know that I do not sympathize with the mania prevailing in this
country of forming exclusive sects and societies. The link of union in such
societies is usually the narrow mindedness of their members. They crystallize
around some petty opinion or theory, in which, for some reason or other, they
are putting their faith, and they then fight against everybody who does not
subscribe to their articles of belief, and in the majority of cases they
quarrel and dispute among each other on minor points of differences, each one
trying to prove the other to be an ignoramus and himself to be wise.
An exception to this class of
societies, and the only exception I know, is the “Theosophical Society” which
was founded twenty-one years ago in the United States of America, and which I
joined in the year 1882, in New York, while General Doubleday was President, W.
Q. Judge, Secretary, and H. P. Blavatsky, Corresponding Secretary; travelling
then with Colonel Olcott in India for the purpose of investigating the
philosophies of the East.
To this Society I still belong
and fully sympathize with its principles, because this Society has no theory or
opinion which any one is asked to accept, or which it as a Society has to
defend. Its members may know or believe whatever they please; they may be
Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Mohammedans, Brahmins, theists, pantheists,
materialists, spiritualists, agnostics or even atheists, they may exchange
their opinions among themselves; their religious views do not concern the
Society as such, any more than their views in regard to botany, chemistry,
astronomy or mineralogy.
I do not care whether this or
that member is a Catholic, a Protestant, a Baptist, a Methodist, a
Presbyterian, Congregationalist or anything else, whether he believes in the
Pope, in the Archbishop of Canterbury, in Mrs. Besant, William Q. Judge or in
any other person. Self-knowledge has nothing to do with any belief in
authorities, nor with the respectability of any other person than one's self.
Even the personal opinion or
belief of the President or any officer of the Society is his own affair and
does not concern the Society as such. The “Theosophical Society,” as a body,
has no other aim than the recognition of truth. Its object is to outgrow all
narrow minded dogmatism and to rise above sectarianism of any kind. It is a
Society granting the utmost freedom of thought, and its fundamental purpose is
expressed in its constitution, namely:
-
“To form a nucleus
around which the (already universally theoretically recognized) theories of
universal brotherhood may crystallize and be practically carried out.”
To this no sane person can
possibly object. Objections may be raised against this or that view held by
this or that member of the Society; but the Theosophical Society as such has no
dogma to defend, and thus all disputes that may arise against the opinions held
by the Theosophical Society are without an object and without any foundation.
Thus the foundation upon which
the Theosophical Society is builded is not a theory, but a true principle of
universal divine love, and this love is not a dream nor a product of the
imagination, but is identical with the recognition of the eternal truth, which
shows that all mankind, and even all creatures, are a unity in their essence,
even if that one essence appears in a variety of forms or appearances, each
having its own individual qualities.
Here an explanation will be
useful, and it may be said, that in proclaiming the essential oneness of the
All, while being a representative of the Theosophical Society, I am already
establishing a dogma for the Theosophical Society. I must therefore ask you to
regard all that I may say concerning any particular theory, not as an official
declaration of that Society as such, but only as my own personal view, which I
have as much right to express as any other member of the Theosophical Society.
My views regarding the oneness of
God in the All are identical with those which are held by the greatest
philosophers of all ages and the German mystics of the middle ages, and which
are perhaps found best expressed in the writings of the great Indian sage
Sankaracharya. According to this view all is spirit (Atma). Spirit is the very
essence of everything. It is one and indivisible; but it manifests itself in a
multitude of varied appearance. I will not enter here into lengthy
philosophical speculations, but try to illustrate this theory by an example, however
inadequate that example may be to describe the whole truth
I find that there is only one
universal soul, the soul of the world. The individual souls therein do not
differ from each other in their innermost essence. As in a great ocean every
particle is water, and all the particles together represent the ocean, so in
the great soul of the world all the individual souls consist of only one
essence, and the sum of these individual souls constitutes the soul of the
world.
Let us now imagine one great
ocean, in which through the influence of the cold, icicles, ice fields and
icebergs are forming, and we find that they also essentially consist of nothing
but water, although they may differ from each other greatly in regard to size,
form or shape, in regard to purity and in the way of crystallization.
They differ from their liquid
surrounding only in so far as they are in a frozen state, and if the heat of
the sun acts upon them, they melt, their individual qualities disappear and
they are again what they never ceased to be, namely, water. Neither do they
then continue to exist as separate particles of water, but each particle
together with the rest is itself the ocean.
In a similar way the one
universal spirit, the great soul of the universe, the one great Self of all
beings may be regarded as an ocean, in which in consequence of the desire for
separate existence innumerable individual “selves” spring into existence. They
are all one in their essence, but as one image in a broken mirror appears
reflected in many forms, so each individuality now appears as something
different from the rest. So as one ice block in the ocean differs from another,
so each personality has its own individual qualities.
There are “blocks” that are
learned and others that are ignorant; some good, others bad, some beautiful,
others ugly; some virtuous, others wicked, and so forth; but essentially they
are all one. Their separatedness is not in essence, but only in appearance, and
due to the non recognition of their own real nature.
As the cold freezes the water, so
the delusion of self causes a hard crust of egotism to surround the human
heart, so that it no longer recognizes its oneness and harmony with the all,
but fancies itself to be a central point around which the universe turns. But
within each is latent the energy of divine love. Under the influence of divine
wisdom the hard crust becomes dissolved, and when the delusion of self has
entirely disappeared, man recognizes himself no longer as a thing separated
from God, but one with the God of all beings.
This is not annihilation, but an
expansion of consciousness. Universal consciousness becomes manifest in the
place of limited knowledge. The more man loses his own self-conceit and
recognizes the divine Self of himself and of all, the more will he be happy and
the more will there be happiness and peace upon this earth. This is not an
imaginary but a logically proven fact, and the foundation of every true system of
religion.
Religion itself is based upon the
recognition of truth. The various forms and systems of religion which serve as
a vehicle for the truth may have their origin in different traditions or
belief; they are only forms, which are subject to changes, as is shown by the
religious history of the world; they are born and they die, but the truth
itself cannot be limited by any system, it is universal, eternal and free.
Without the recognition of truth there can be no true religion nor a true
science; the more a system of religion represents the truth, the more is it
true itself.
This recognition of truth is
called theosophia or “the hidden
wisdom of God” (I Cor., II, 7). It is called “hidden,” because it is beyond the
grasp of the human-animal intellect, it can only be grasped spiritually with
the heart. It does not consist in knowing the qualities of a great many things,
nor is it the product of learning, but it is due to nothing else than to the
manifestation of truth in the heart of man.
It consists in an awakening of
the inner spiritual consciousness, which enables man to know the truth
intuitively and without regard to any external information, and to enter deeper
into the divine mysteries of nature, not by means of artificially induced
trances or hypnotism, but by means of the truth revealing itself to his
internal under standing.
All mankind possess this
spiritual energy, but not in every person has it become developed. Each human
being has in his or her soul a spark of divinity, which by the influence of
divine love may become a flame. The seat of that spark of divine life is not in
the brain, but in the heart; but when it begins to burn in the heart, its light
illumines the mind. The reason why so few people are illumined by the light of
divine wisdom is because the majorities know nothing of any interior life and
therefore they do not desire it.
The world is full of clever
intellectual reasoners, people with heads but without hearts, living so to say
all the time outside of their own self. Many dream only that they live, but do
not know real life. Some revel in their sentiments and imagine a sickly
sentimentalism to be wisdom. Two things are necessary for the true
understanding, heart and head, soul and spirit, feeling and understanding.
The old Rosicrucians used to
compare the light of wisdom within the heart with the sun, the light of the
intellect with the moon. We know that the moon has no light of her own, she
borrows it from the sun; her light is a reflection of the sunlight upon the surface
of the material moon; it is superficial and uncertain, while the light of the sun
comes from the centre of his sphere.
Thus an intellect without that
love which comes from the heart is without life and without spirit, uncertain,
superficial and without true understanding. Nevertheless the intellect is as
necessary for man as the moon is for the solar system. When the sunlight is
absent, the moonlight will be of service; where wisdom is absent, science steps
to the front. The heart should perceive the truth and the intellect weigh it
upon the balance of reason; then would we arrive at a true knowledge of truth.
Thus real knowledge is not a
product of dreaming or of argumentation, but a spiritual awakening, which can
take place only when the delusion of self, which keeps the soul imprisoned in a
state of torpor, disappears. The power which destroys that shell of selfishness
is that divine and universal love which springs from the recognition of the
oneness of all life. To cultivate this love which is not merely “unselfish,”
but exalted beyond the conception of self, is the object of the “Theosophical
Society.”
It can only be cultivated by
works; good intentions alone are not sufficient. We do not wish to follow the
sectarian, who believe it their duty to continually preach about love without
ever practicing it themselves. The ideal does not become realized by merely
being looked at and admired; it can only be realized by practice.
This is the message of love which
Theosophy teaches and which is to be carried around the world by our “American
Crusaders.” Their dogma is:
-
"Seek to attain
real knowledge of your own self, by letting the power of truth become manifest
in your soul."
In this doctrine there is nothing
to be proved or to be disputed about. It is a self-evident truth that requires
no proof, but needs only to be understood. It only teaches an universal
principle, which every one may grasp, if lie is able to rise above the narrow
conception of self.
Let us therefore rise above the
sphere of selfishness, personality, dogmatism and the adulation of authorities
and open our hearts to the influence of the holy spirit of love and truth. If
we accomplish this, others will follow our example and the world will be come
wiser and happier. Thus will be fulfilled the mission of the Theosophical
Society and the mission of the American Crusaders. »
(Theosophy, October 1896, vol. 11, p.221-224, “Letter from Germany”)
