34. Theosophists

A translation of the profound Indian poem "Bhagavad-Gita" by Franz Hartmann has recently been published. The poem reveals the deepest experiences that the chosen ones, the priestly natures of a sensible people, had in special states. As if in a dream, the solutions to those questions of life which, according to their disposition, they needed to answer, were revealed to these priestly natures. It was not through abstract thinking, which we Westerners have to rely on, but through mystical vision and intuition that these Oriental seekers of truth sought to achieve their goals. It would be in vain if we Westerners wanted to imitate them. Our nature is different from theirs; and therefore the way must be different by which we reach the summit of knowledge and the height of a free way of life. Theosophists do not think this way. They shrug their shoulders at the whole of European science; they smile at its intellectuality and rationality and worship the Oriental way of seeking truth as the only one. Oh, it is delightful to observe the superior expression when one enters into a conversation with a Theosophist about the value of occidental knowledge. "That is all external work"; the "rationalists only walk around a thing and look at its surface"; "we, on the other hand, live inside the thing; we even live inside God himself; we experience the Godhead within us". These are some of the phrases we hear. And you will hardly get away without being labeled a "limited intellectual" if you reveal in just a few words that you cannot think of the inferiority of Western science in the same way. But it is not a good idea to make such a confession so soon. Rather, I advise everyone who meets with a Theosophist to first of all place himself in complete faith and try to hear something of the revelations that such an enlightened person, full of oriental wisdom, experiences in "his inner being". For one hears nothing; nothing but phrases borrowed from Oriental writings, without a trace of content. The inner experiences are nothing but hypocrisy. It is cheap to take phrases from a literature that is, after all, profound and use them to declare the whole of Western cognitive work worthless. Theosophists have no idea of the depth, the inwardness of the science of the West, which supposedly belongs to the superficial mind, to external concepts. But the way in which they speak of the highest knowledge, which they do not have, the mystical way in which they present incomprehensible foreign wisdom, has a seductive effect on quite a few of their contemporaries. And the Theosophical Society is spread all over Europe, has its followers in all major cities; and the number of those who prefer to turn to the dark talk of experiencing the deity within rather than the clear, bright, conceptual knowledge of the Occident is not small. Theosophists benefit from the fact that they are able to maintain good relations with spiritualists and similar strange spirits. They also say of the spiritualists that they treat the phenomena of the spirit world externally, while they themselves only want to experience them inwardly, completely spiritually. But they do not refuse to go hand in hand with the spiritualists when it comes to combating the free science of modern times, which is based solely on reason and observation.