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Douglas Gabriel and John Barnwell discuss this topic in the video below.
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Theosophy Pre-school
A beautiful description of what German philosophers and writers have in common with theosophy is found in Rudolf Steiner’s lecture series, The Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy. These short vignettes about German thinkers are potent descriptions of the many treasures of philosophical and spiritual thinking that arose in Germany as materialism was becoming the new “religion” under the guise of Enlightenment through secular scientific thinking. Rudolf Steiner even goes so far as to say that these German thinkers are the “pre-school of theosophy.” In fact, these great thinkers are the some of the first theosophists, after the fashion of Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes) and his book entitled, Anthroposophia Theomagica. The ideas brought forward at that time were precursors to the development of theosophical ideas that became very popular at the turn of the 20th Century. In other words, Steiner was building on the foundations of his fellow German philosophers and spiritual scientists.
In our recent dive into the nature of Truth, both ‘relative’ and ‘absolute’, we put together seventy sayings of Rudolf Steiner on the topic of Truth and distributed them far and wide. What is Truth? became the topic of articles and podcasts that have tried to bring the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth, to light. In doing so, we first had to review what Rudolf Steiner said about the ‘Karma of Untruthfulness’ in 1917, as the world war raged all around Dornach where he was building the first Goetheanum. Then, the power of materialism had to be addressed because of its effects on the untruthfulness of our time. After those endeavors, the evils of materialism versus spiritual science were discussed in articles and podcasts. But we believe that only the very simple and original words of truth (the restored lost Word) can fully describe the source, nature, and power of Truth in all Her majesty. Therefore, we uncovered theosophic sources explaining Truth in beautiful images that we will quote in the later part of this article.
In reviewing Steiner’s truth aphorisms, we came across the lecture series, The Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy wherein he indicates that certain German thinkers have become the epitome of materialism (Kant, Haeckel, etc.) while others have unknowingly started the pre-school of theosophy (Boehme, Novalis, etc.) and had already begun revealing what Steiner calls the “cosmic wisdom of theosophy.” Many of these authors are quite familiar to us, but two held a certain special interest because of the many references to Truth discovered in their works. One author, Karl von Eckartshausen (pictured below), was found to be a wealth of wisdom on all aspects of the Truth.
Even though Eckartshausen is a Christian mystic and uses a few too many “Church” references for us, his inspiration is exceptional and spurred us on to create another article on Truth. This time, we accessed the Truth expressed in numerous German thinkers as a pre-school of theosophy.
We hope that you will find these vignettes, and the selected passages on Truth, to be helpful in the search for Absolute Truth, the substance of what can be found in Anthroposophy through Rudolf Steiner’s profound insight. It is also of great interest to our study of Anthroposophy to see some of the source documents that Steiner was reading as he developed his comprehensive world view – cosmology. We greatly appreciate being pointed in the direction of these early ‘pre-school theosophists’ so that further insights about Truth could be unearthed and brought to light.
Rudolf Steiner on German Thinkers
[The selections below were drawn from: The Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy, 22 Lectures, Berlin, October 5 – May 3, 1905, by Rudolf Steiner]
Of all pre-schools of theosophy or spiritual science which one can go through today the school of the German thought of the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries is the very best for present humanity. German spiritual life of the turn from the 18th to the 19th centuries originated from the so-called Enlightenment. Great spirits developed from the Enlightenment. One only needs to be reminded of the name Lessing to recall one of the best.
Thus, you see a painting of the first time in the 19th century the first thoughts that can work educationally on the human being, up to the facts that bring theosophy together with immediate spiritualistic experiences. At that time, you find everything in a pure and sometimes nobler way expressed than it was shown later by the respective authors.
Later, the interest changed more and more into something similar to curiosity, the mere urge for knowledge. In the first half of the 19th century, even such spirits who could not go very deeply had the desire of ascending to spiritual heights, developing inner soul organs, and knew something concerning self-knowledge and self-development.
I share the ideas of Goethe, Herder, and Schiller to show how they were theosophists. In a theosophical way, Novalis pronounces what is a characteristic trait of that time that represented it like a theosophical spiritual motto. It is indicated in the words from Novalis’ Novices of Sais:
“Someone succeeded; he lifted the veil of the goddess at Sais. What did he see?
He saw – miracle of miracles – himself.”
Thus, the human being comes out, after he has developed the spiritual organs in himself, and searches for himself all over the world. He does not search for himself in himself, he searches for himself in the world, and with it, he searches for God. This search of God in the world, as Novalis expresses it so nicely in the quotation above, is theosophy.
The spiritual scientist adds: he finds the divine in his self, and this is just theosophy, divine wisdom to raise the heart, the soul to the spirit, so that one succeeds in connecting wisdom with the divine and to have not only understanding, but the general feeling of the divine world. Spiritual science is a means to give the human being food and prosperity, in the true (spiritual) sense of the word.
Thus, it is really justified, even concerning our changed conditions, what Goethe said about the real liberation from all obstacles and misfortune of life. Goethe says in the poem The Secrets: “From the power that ties all beings, – that human being frees himself who overcomes himself.”
That sentence that Goethe said about the single human being also applies to humanity in as much as this human being is a social being: those human beings who overcome themselves free the world from the power that ties all beings.
Great, astute spirits never doubted that the human mind is able to find sense and reason and lawful necessity also in the course of historical events. I need to draw your attention to the fact that our great German poet and thinker, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), in the testament of his life, in his last work, explained this human development as an education of the human race. He represented antiquity as the childhood of humanity with the Old Testament as the first elementary book, the following age as a kind of youth from which we have the possibility to look at the future that should bring us something mature.
Another great German thinker whom, admittedly, only a few know, even those who are destined to study him, the great German philosopher Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel (1770-1831) called history an education of the human being to become conscious of freedom. We could still add a hundred examples, and we would see everywhere that those human beings who look ingeniously into this activity, in this bewildering, apparently chaotic activity never doubted that there is also a lawful necessity, above all a higher order than outdoors in nature, in the world of the stars, plants, animals, and physical beings generally.
All those who looked deeper in nature, into spiritual life, found more or less the principle of karma and reincarnation. Giordano Bruno was a supporter of the principle, and when, from the dullness a new intellectual culture emerged, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) concluded in his wisdom the teachings of reincarnation. We see that our German theosophy is deeply penetrated by this view.
Many a time I have already pointed here to the fact that it is a prejudice if one declares the present theosophical movement in the strict sense of the word as a Buddhist or neo-Buddhist one. Theosophy or spiritual science does not want to implant a foreign worldview from without, but to show how also within our European culture deeper teachings of wisdom form the basis of the striving of humanity that express themselves most distinctly. I venture to show how in a newer epoch of the German spiritual life theosophical feeling and thinking were expressed in a quite extraordinary measure, in its intellectual purity around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. I would like to show how within the Germanic folk culture an impact exists which goes back to views that we meet in theosophy. In the most different forms, the human beings have expressed truth. However, some understand the forms of truth that have a sense of the core and the living spring of truth.
We search for the core of truth in all religions to find it in our own. We recognize that religion originated not from childish images, but from the highest wisdom, from spiritual research. However, we have also learned that one can keep abreast with science and be, nevertheless, a religious person. If this knowledge finds an echo again, a lively feeling awakes for that which one of the theosophists, Goethe, called into the world more than hundred years ago like a program, like a beautiful and marvelous saying to humanity. I would like to share this saying today, confessing that there can be no true science, no deeper human observation, which shows religious truth as something childish; and that all religions contain as a core our highest destination: “Who has science and art, has religion, too; who does not have both, should have religion.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Someone who broke with materialism definitely out of a courageous attitude was Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814). The great German thinker Fichte is to the majority a deep secret doctrine. Fichte represented the doctrine of the ego, of the human self-consciousness not speculatively, but out of the whole depth of his being.
Fichte reached the point that just the theosophists seek again. Theosophy wants to show how the human being soars to the divine, how it should stimulate the divine strength slumbering in the human being with which he becomes aware of the divine around himself. Fichte completely strives for the same.
The activity in the ego, which develops our spiritual organs, is the being that the human being gives himself. This is the “Tathandlung,” this is Fichte’s self-knowledge. From this point, Fichte advances gradually. Once you educate yourselves to his thoughts, then you find a healthy access to theosophy, and the way to the spiritual life.
Fichte had the task to emancipate the human personality. This was the good side of the Enlightenment. Fichte was already in the highest degree stimulating for those, at the end of the 18th century, who were sitting at his feet and listening how he measured out the human personality with world-spanning lines of thought. He inspired them to penetrate conceptionally to the soul and to acquire other treasures.
Fichte could speak of a special spiritual sense because he was one of those who wanted to open the eyes of human beings who are gifted with a special sense. They appear like the sighted among blind people. This sense can be evoked with every person. By the special sense, Fichte shows quite clearly that he understood theosophy. This special sense was the real definition of theosophy. Others followed from such sources, from such currents of the spiritual life.
Friedrich von Hardenberg – Novalis
One of those who sat at Fichte’s feet and looked reverentially to him, one of those who worked out philosophical ideas, was the young short-lived German theosophist Novalis (pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg, German Romantic poet and author, 1772-1801). He died around the turn of 18th to the 19th century, not yet thirty years old. Whomever becomes engrossed in his works goes through the finest training of theosophy. Perhaps it could be to that who is educated in the western science a much better elementary training to go through his tremendous light flashes, than through the Bhagavad Gita or similar writings that remain more or less strange to the West. Just now, it is possible to become engrossed completely in that which this great soul achieved.
Novalis, who illumined the secrets of existence with brilliant light flashes, revered mathematics like a religion. It was something sacred to him. Some human beings are able to feel something sacred and something like music with the abstract lines of mathematics and geometry. From Novalis speaking about mathematics, you become engrossed in the inner music of space — mathematics is the access to infinite truth.
Novalis knew how to speak in miraculous tones in his Heinrich of Ofterdingen about theosophy. In the Novices of Sais he shows how Hyazinth gets to know the girl Rosenblüth. A wise man comes and tells fairy tales about the magic life, about spiritual secrets. Hyazinth and Rosenblüth become inspired by the story and decide to walk to the initiation temple of Isis. However, nobody can give them directions to the temple and they become separated. Hyazinth walks and walks. He finally sits down, tired, among blossoming flowers and beautiful Springtime. Then, Nature speaks to him. He drops off to dream in a ghostly way: The temple of Isis is around him. The curtain is lifted from the veiled picture, and what does he see? Rosenblüth.
Novalis describes how Rosenblüth represents that feeling of unity, that uniform idea of the whole of Nature, how it extends over the whole world, and how he looks for the hidden secret that life often shows to us that we need to understand. This is wonderfully indicated in lovely descriptions that are truly theosophic.
We have to understand Novalis as a peculiar, tender, and intimate being. If Fichte arranges his razor-sharp thoughts and carries us off by this sharpness, then Novalis is wonderfully gentle and shows the spiritual life from a completely different side. Thus, he is the necessary supplement for someone who wants to go through the German preliminary stage of theosophy. Our best went through this pre-school in those days.
The selections below are drawn from Novalis’, Collected Works:
To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.
Man has his being in truth – if he sacrifices truth he sacrifices himself. Whoever betrays truth betrays himself. It is not a question of lying – but of acting against one’s conviction.
Scientific truth is marvelous, but moral truth is divine and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise.
The difference between delusion and truth lies in the difference of their functions for life. Delusion lives away from the truth; truth has its life within itself.
All truth is ancient. The enticement of novelty lies only in its expressive variations.
All Illusion is as essential to truth as the body to the soul. Error is the necessary instrument of truth. I make truth with error.
Paracelsus
The physician and occultist Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, 1493-1541) can still provide the seeker of truth much that human beings need today. A movement for spiritual investigation like Theosophy (spiritual science) is particularly suitable to unearth the treasures, the spirit of knowledge, the investigative tools, and the enlightenment of nature which is hidden with Paracelsus.
In order to understand Paracelsus, one must look at the basic character of his work as a doctor and as a philosopher, and grasp him as a theosophist, as he combined these soul characters with each other. His personality and his work was uniform. With a brilliant overview, he tried to grasp the construction of the world edifice. His awakened sight looked up at the secrets of the starry heavens, became engrossed in the construction of the earth and in particular in the construction of the human being. This brilliant insight penetrated also into the secrets of the spiritual life. He was also a theosophist as he tried to enclose the nature of the astronomical knowledge and at the same time the nature of anthropology, the doctrine of the human being in connection with the doctrine of all living beings.
You can also receive elementary instructions of certain theosophical basic concepts from Paracelsus. What Paracelsus argues about dream and sleep is in the most eminent sense what also spiritual science has to say about it, only he expresses it in his superb language.
Jacob Boehme
Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) is probably one of the strangest personalities of the last centuries. At the turn of the 16th to the 17th centuries, he stands there with knowledge and wisdom, with a worldview, which appears like a completion of many centuries. He was a person who was understood very little in his day, but societies now exist in Holland, in England, and in Germany which try to make Jacob Boehme’s views popular.
About 1600, when Giordano Bruno died a martyr’s death, Jacob Boehme’s soul was penetrated by great, immense ideas for the first time. If one reads the stuff that has been said about him in newer handbooks it is completely comprehensible that one finds Jacob Boehme incomprehensible.
If one knows the spiritual life of the 19th century exactly, in particular that German spiritual life, which especially philosophical circles influence, one can understand that Jacob Boehme was understood so little. There are hardly bigger contrasts than Jacob Boehme and Immanuel Kant. Whatever the education of the 19th century produced is far away from the spirit of this strange man.
All who try to approach Jacob Boehme from the theosophical worldview are surprised that one still needed a theosophical deepening with that nation that birthed Jacob Boehme. One needs only to know Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme to know theosophy. Everything that they wrote is given from a deep spring, with immense deepness and magic power. Jacob Boehme was one of the greatest magicians of all times.
Freedom and the possibility of evil belong together, harmony and the possibility of disharmony. Just this thought of Jacob Boehme inspired Friedrich Schelling and you find a wonderful representation of that which lives in the freedom of the human being in his Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom.
This writing by Schelling about the freedom of the human being is like an offering to Jacob Boehme. Schelling understood something of Jacob Boehme. Boehme lived on with Goethe and other great spirits of the 19th century. Only when materialism arose, the spiritual life was alienated from Jacob Boehme. Then one understood him less and less. A time comes again in which one will not only understand him but in which one wants to learn from him. A new era approaches for theosophy. A time comes then, when one understands such great spiritual deeds like Jacob Boehme’s writings, like the Germanic mythology again when they progress towards a new glorification. A spiritualization of all wisdom, then all potential human energy can be created. If the age comes to an end, which has the task of the external control of all natural forces, then Jacob Boehme will also be understood again. Copernicus, Galilei, and Giordano Bruno also belonged to the same age to which Jacob Boehme belongs. They have led the world to the observation of the sensuous world, the external world.
Jacob Boehme appeared just in that age when his works could be considered as a comprehensive summary of all mental achievements of humanity. He arranges all of that knowledge for the world in the dawn of an age that introduces the materialistic epoch. When the materialistic age has reached its zenith, Jacob Boehme well be found again and everything that is contained in his works will be revitalized. Everything is contained in his works that the world has collected as spiritual treasures.
We must not consider the achievements of theosophy as something particular. The theosophical world movement must be something that is alive, that signifies life and growth. If the theosophical society represents this, it understands how to work in the sense of the great spirits of former times, in the sense of Jacob Boehme, it becomes theosophical work in the true sense of the word.
Friedrich Schelling
We also have the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854). If we open ourselves to his writings from his youth, where he became independent, he works strongly on one who gets involved with him because he expresses the thoughts of Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, German-Swiss physician, occultist, 1493-1541). This thought was expressed by Schelling and in particular by the naturalist Oken (originally Lorenz Oken, 1779-1851). Oken was the great predecessor of the modern theory of evolution and founder of the Society of German Naturalists and Physicians. This type of thought was an eminently theosophical one.
In 1809, Schelling published a writing, which is of great significance for theosophy. He had gotten to know the deep German thinker Jacob Boehme. He became engrossed in him, and thus he got to know the nature of the bad and its coherence with freedom. You find this in his Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom. There he shows that God is the light and that from the light everything comes that shines, however, the light has to shine into the darkness and that is where light’s shadow originates. Shadow must appear if the light is there, but the light does not generate it. Hence, he says, from the divine primal ground of the light everything great arises in the world. Again, you can educate yourselves to the theosophical life if you take up that in yourselves.
Another writing by Schelling is still significant: Bruno or On the Divine and Natural Principle of Things (1802-1843). In pleasant dialogue form, like with Plato, he discusses here the coherence of soul and spirit in the theosophical sense. Therefore, Schelling would be able to become a theosophist – he understood how to practice inner sight.
Schelling held two courses of lectures: Philosophy of Mythology (1856) Philosophy of Revelation (1858). There he led into the essence of the old mysteries and showed how Christianity originated from them. Then we are led automatically to reincarnation and karma. If you become engrossed in the philosophy of mythology and in the philosophy of revelation, you find, this is theosophy.
Emmanuel Kant
Everything that is connected with the name Kant is nothing else than a result of the Enlightenment, the emancipation of the personality, the relief of the personality from the traditions. Official philosophy calls Kant the destroyer and regards his system of theories as a philosophical action first-rate. At first this German life of thought impeded the access to the real spiritual world and then to the living and immortal essence of the human being.
The human cognitive faculties are limited in the sense of Kant’s philosophy. They cannot penetrate to the “thing in itself.” Whichever ideas and concepts we form, whatever we get to know in the world, we deal with phenomena and not with the true “thing in itself” in the sense of Kant’s philosophy. This is always concealed behind the phenomena. With it, blind speculation is encouraged – and we have seen it in the spiritual development of Germany very well – which wants to define and restrict the human cognitive faculties in all directions.
Kant wanted to save all spiritual aspects for mere faith and apply only cognition – what one can know – only to the external impressions, to the appearance. Kant’s philosophy put big obstacles in the way of the further development of the spiritual life.
Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Haeckel honestly acquired for himself what he presented to us in his writings, and, hence, we have to allow him the mistakes of his virtues, too. The positive effect of his work remains, the negative one disappears. From a higher point of view, one can say, the fetishist worships the fetish, a lifeless being, and the materialistic atomist does not worship one small idol only, but many small idols, which he calls atoms. The “materialistic” thinker has not given up fetishism but praying. As big as the superstition of the fetishist is, as big is that of the materialist. The materialistic atom is nothing but a fetish. Haeckel says in a passage, “we see God in the stone, in the plant, in the animal, in the human being. Everywhere is God.” However, he sees only that God whom he understands.
Goethe lets the Earth Spirit speak to Faust characteristically: “Your peer is the spirit you comprehend: Mine you are not!”
Thus, the materialist sees the whirling atoms in the stone, in the plant, in the animal, and in the human being and perhaps in a piece of art, and refers to the fact that he possesses a uniform worldview and has overcome old superstitions. The theosophists also have a uniform worldview, and we can use the same words as Haeckel. We see God in the stone, in the plant and in the human being, but we see no whirl of atoms, but the living god, the spiritual god whom we attempt to find in nature outside because we also seek him in ourselves.
Haeckel and others with their books which founded a kind of materialistic Gospel for many are nothing else than founders of a materialistic religion. Because the worldly-sensuous has won such an immense strength and authority that the human being wants to gain the highest by science and its wisdom, the scientists have turned away from Christ Jesus, also those who feel only a bit of the power of science and have something to inform of the greatness and the power of science. Thus, we have the separation of science and religion.
Karl von Eckartshausen
Rudolf speaks of Karl von Eckartshausen in, The Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy, German Theosophists at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century, in the following words:
“Of all pre-schools of theosophy (spiritual science) which one can go through today this school of the German thought of the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries is the very best for the present human beings.
You can find explanations also with Eckartshausen (Karl von E., 1752-1803, philosopher, mystic) who also wrote about the inner spiritual development. His novel, Kosti’s Journey or also The Hieroglyphics of the Human Heart are writings that are adapted to open the human soul to a higher vision. He also described what he calls a soul body appropriately. Another writer is sometimes rather stimulating: Joseph Ennemoser (1787-1854) was a physician and a mesmerist who wrote theosophy, too, informed with a lot of animal magnetism and the mysteries in his works, which contributed much to show the Greek mythology in the right light.”
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Karl von Eckartshausen (1752-1803) was an 18th century German mystic who wrote extensively on esoteric topics. His work, The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary, is Christian mysticism veiled in hermetic code, Kabbalist mysteries, and ancient ideas of magic. One of his last books, Magic. The Principles of Higher Knowledge was one of the first books to address theosophy and Anthroposophy as paths to Truth. Eckartshausen was briefly a member of the Bavarian Illuminati, but left for spiritual reasons. Throughout his works, he cryptically mentions a “society of the elect” which has existed from the very beginning of time, “the invisible celestial college.” He predicted that “it is the society whose members form a theocratic republic, which one day will be the Regent Mother of the whole world.”
Eckartshausen published in all some sixty-nine works, embracing many classes of literature, including science, the fine arts, the drama, politics, religion, history, and, in particular, certain contributions of great merit to the occult sciences. He also wrote other books on magic and some on the properties of numbers, and he is even accredited with a certain knowledge of alchemy.
A. E. Waite tells us about Eckartshausen in the introduction to The Cloud upon the Sanctuary:
“Apart from The Cloud upon the Sanctuary, Eckartshausen is a name known only to the Christian Transcendentalists of England. The Cloud upon the Sanctuary has, I believe, always remained in the memory of a few, and is destined still to survive, for it carries with it a message of very deep significance to all those who look beneath the body of religious doctrine for the one principle of life which energizes the whole organism.
Saint-Martin acknowledges that part of the numerical system of Eckartshausen was in astonishing agreement with things that he had learned long ago in his own school of initiation – that of Martines de Pasqually. Eckartshausen bears witness to his own personal experience and instructions received from above, his consciousness of a higher presence, the answers which he had received and the visions, along with the steps by which he had advanced even to the attainment of what he terms “the Law in its fullness.”
He believed it is possible, by seeking inwardly, to approach the essential wisdom and this wisdom is Jesus Christ who is also the essence of love within us. The truth of this experience being the awakening within us of a spiritual faculty cognizing spiritual objects as objectively and naturally as the outward senses perceive natural phenomenon. This organ is the intuitive sense of the transcendental world, and its awakening, which is the highest object of religion, takes place in three stages: (a) morally, by the way of inspiration; (b) intellectually, by the way of illumination; (c) spiritually, by the way of revelation. The awakening of this organ is the lifting of the “cloud from the sanctuary”, enabling our hearts to become receptive of God, even in this world.
We must take the key which Eckartshausen himself offers, namely, that there is within all of us a dormant faculty, the awakening of which gives entrance, as it develops, into a new world of consciousness, which is one of the initial stages of that state which he, in common with all other mystics, terms ‘union with the Divine.’ In that union, outside all formal sects, all orthodox bonds of fellowship, and veils and webs of symbolism, we form a great congregation, the first fruits of immortality, and in virtue of the solidarity of humanity, and in virtue of the great doctrine of the communication of all things holy with all that seeks for holiness, the ‘above and the below.’”
From The Cloud Karl von Eckartshausen
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The selections below are drawn from: Magic. The Principles of Higher Knowledge, by Karl von Eckartshausen:
Pride is the greatest atrocity in the eyes of Wisdom. It was Pride which removed mankind from the Path to the Truth, thereby obstructing the access to the Temple of Nature. Truth is not for owners of Pride, but for those who seek knowledge with a sincere heart, to unselfishly help mankind.
When all of mankind is capable of thinking in pictures or in objects, and not in symbols or signs, and we can speak in the nature of the thing and not in arbitrary signs, then we have given up our erring ways and our opinions. Then, we have reached the Kingdom of Truth.
Love, Truth, and Purity are the sounds of World of Spirits. They reverberate on the instrument of our Soul when the strings are harmoniously tuned.
The fondness for Truth and Goodness leads Human Beings to Wisdom.
Clearness, enlightenment, tolerance, humility, and compliance towards others are attributes of Truth.
The recognition of Truth is the Theory of Wisdom, and Love is the practice.
The seekers do not employ an instrument to catch the truth. They search with an inquiring eye and a sincere heart.
All Wisdom and Knowledge comes from above as the result of all Good and Truth. This knowledge is an outflow of Light, but it does not become part of such a Human Being unless the Intelligence and the Will are united in Goodness and in Truth.
When the Light changes over from the Intelligence into the Will, it becomes very beneficial warmth; the same as the Good, when practiced, turns into Truth, and when the Good and Truth unite, they become Wisdom and Love.
The pure Will joins the Good and Truth. The impure will joins evil with falsehood; that is the origin of false magic and the abuse of knowledge, by turning love into hate.
Therefore, there must be two truths: one truth which is the matter itself, and the other which indicates what the matter is. The first is Absolute Truth, and the other is Relative Truth. Absolute Truth is only in God. Relative Truth is in Human Beings and is more or less by degrees in accordance with the approximation to God.
Since Sensuous Truth exists, so exists Spiritual Truth, and that is the clearness of the matter itself – that is the true, Absolute Truth. But this Absolute Truth has its boundaries in accordance with the ability of our understanding. The primary source of Absolute Truth comes from God, Who is Goodness and Truth. Goodness is in this consideration the Mother of Creation; Truth is the Daughter of Goodness and the Mother of Existence.
Truth is the matter itself, therefore, there is only one Truth. Sensuous Truth or Relative Truth are only approximations of Absolute Truth. They are more or less Truth in accordance with the degree of their relationship with Absolute Truth.
God Himself is Belief and Truth; the One Who is total Truth and total Love.
The true and highest Magic is the Theosophis, Knowledge of God, approximation, effectiveness through God. The second classification is the Anthroposophia, the Science of Natural Things, the Science of Human Intelligence. Let us examine the secrets of Anthroposophy, and out of the miraculousness of Nature, let us study the highest Wisdom of the Theosophist.
All the true and highest Science comes only from God because He is Truth and Wisdom.
Wisdom is only there where there is Truth; Light, where Goodness is united with Truth; there, where there is Harmony, and Harmony is only in God.
Goodness and Truth is His Law of Being; Goodness and Truth the bond that connects us again with Him, the Bond of Love, the mood or the atmosphere of the Harmony of the Whole.
Self-Love and World-Love are what separated us from the Deity. It was the distance from the Truth, the transition from the Spiritual into the material, and cause of separation, the misery, the death.
The Holy Truth, which is inhabiting the heavens, is the source of Life for all thinking Beings out of which they gather the Light, and this is the sole source.
The selections below are drawn from: The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary, by Karl von Eckartshausen:
Men are not of one mind, scientists dispute, and where there is discord, truth is not yet apprehended.
Is it not true that all which we call reality is but relative, for absolute truth is not to be found in the phenomenal world.
Thus your natural reason is but only the appearance of truth and light; and the more this appearance increases and spreads, the more the essence of light inwardly fades, and the man confuses himself with this appearance and gropes vainly after the dazzling phantasmal images he conjures.
The truth leads humanity to happiness.
That which you call truth is a form of conception empty of real matter, the knowledge of which is acquired from without and through the senses, and the understanding co-ordinates them by observed synthetic relationship into science or opinion.
You abstract from the Scriptures and Tradition their moral, theoretical, and practical truth; but as individuality is the principle of your intelligence, and as egotism is the incentive to your will, you do not see, by your light, the moral law which dominates, or you repel it with your will.
Jesus Christ is Wisdom, Truth, and Love. He, as Wisdom, is the Principle of reason, and the Source of the purest intelligence. As Love, He is the Principle of morality, the true and pure incentive of the will.
Love and Wisdom beget the Spirit of Truth, interior light; this light illuminates us and makes supernatural things objective to us.
It is inconceivable to what depths of error a man falls when he abandons simple truths of faith by imposing his own opinions.
All that I am now saying is not hyperphysical extravagance; it is reality, truth, that everyone can prove for himself by experience, as soon as he receives in himself the principle of all reason and morality – Jesus Christ, being wisdom and love in essence.
Absolute truth does not exist for sensuous man; it exists only for interior and spiritual man who possesses a suitable sensorium; who possesses an interior sense to receive the absolute truth of the transcendental world, a spiritual faculty which cognizes spiritual objects as objectively and naturally as the exterior senses perceive external phenomena.
The current incredulity towards everything which is not cognized objectively by our senses is the explanation for the misconception of truths which are, of all, most important to man.
This real knowledge is actual faith, in which everything takes place in spirit and in truth. Thus one ought to have a sensorium fitted for this communication, an organized spiritual sensorium, a spiritual and interior faculty able to receive this light; but it is closed to most men by their senses.
As man has internally a spiritual organ and a sensorium to receive the true principle of divine wisdom, or a true motive for the will of divine love, he has also exteriorly a physical and material sensorium to receive the appearance of light and truth.
As external nature can have no absolute truth, but only phenomenally relative, therefore, human reason cannot cognize pure truth, it can but apprehend through the appearance of phenomena, which excites the lust of the eye, and in this as a source of action consists the corruption of sensuous man and the degradation of nature.
With, however, the development of a new organ we have a new perception, a sense of new reality. Without it, the spiritual world cannot exist for us because the organ rendering it objective to us is not developed.
The curtain is all at once raised, the impenetrable veil is torn away, the Cloud before the Sanctuary lifts, a new world suddenly exists for us, scales fall from the eyes, and we are at once transported from the phenomenal world to the regions of truth.
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God alone is substance, absolute truth; He alone is He who is, and we are what He has made us. For Him, all exists in Unity; for us, all exists in multiplicity.
A more advanced school has always existed to whom the deposition of all science has been confided, and this school was the community illuminated interiorly by the Savior, the Society of the Elect, which has continued from the first day of creation to the present time; its members are scattered all over the world, but they have always been united in the spirit and in one truth; they have had but one intelligence and one source of truth, but one doctor and one master; but in whom resides substantially the whole plenitude of God, and who alone initiates them into the high mysteries of Nature and the Spiritual World.
The interior Church is an illuminated Community of God which is scattered throughout the world, but which is governed by one truth and united in one spirit. This enlightened community has existed since the first day of the world’s creation, and its duration will be to the last day of time.
This community possesses a School, in which all who thirst for knowledge are instructed by the Spirit of Wisdom itself; and all the mysteries of God and of nature are preserved in this School for the children of light. Perfect knowledge of God, of nature, and of humanity are the objects of instruction in this school.
It is from her that all truths penetrate into the world, she is the School of the Prophets, and of all who search for wisdom, and it is in this community alone that truth and the explanation of all mystery is to be found. It is the most hidden of communities yet possesses members from many circles; of such is this School.
From all time there has been an exterior school based on the interior one, of which it is but the outer expression. From all time, therefore, there has been a hidden assembly, a Society of the Elect, of those who sought for and had capacity for light, and this interior society was called the interior Sanctuary or Church. All that the external Church possesses in symbol, ceremony or rite is the outward expression of the spirit of truth residing in the interior Sanctuary.
Hence this Sanctuary composed of scattered members, but tied by the bonds of perfect unity and love, has been occupied from the earliest ages in building the grand Temple through the regeneration of humanity, by which the reign of God will be manifest.
This society is in the communion of those who have the most capacity for light, i.e., the Elect. The Elect are united in truth, and their Chief is the Light of the World himself, Jesus Christ, the One Anointed in light, the single mediator for the human race, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
The interior Church was formed immediately after the fall of man, and received from God first-hand the revelation of the means by which fallen humanity could be again raised to its rights and delivered from its misery. It received the primitive charge of all revelation and mystery; it received the key to true science, both divine and natural.
When it became necessary that interior truths should be enfolded in exterior ceremony and symbol, on account of the real weakness of men who were not capable of bearing the Light of Light, then exterior worship began. It was, however, always the type and symbol of the interior, that is to say, the symbol of the true homage offered to God in spirit and in truth.
Interior truth passed into the external wrapped in symbol and ceremony, so that sensuous man could observe, and be gradually thereby led to interior truth.
Through these divine instruments, the interior truths of the Sanctuary were taken into every nation, and modified symbolically according to their customs, capacity for instruction, climate, and receptiveness. The external types of every religion, worship, ceremony, and Sacred Book have as their object of instruction, the interior truths of the Sanctuary by which humanity, but only in the latter days, will be conducted to the universal knowledge of the one Absolute Truth.
The more the external worship of a people has remained united with the spirit of esoteric truth, the purer its religion. Then, the external form entirely parted from its inner truth when ceremonial observances without soul or life alone remained.
God Himself communicated to this people its exterior religious legislation, He gave all the symbols and enacted all the ceremonies, and they contained the impress of the great esoteric truth of the Sanctuary.
To the priests was confided the external, the letter of the symbol, hieroglyphics. The prophets had the charge of the inner truth, and their occupation was to continually recall the priest to the spirit in the letter. The science of the priests was that of the knowledge of exterior symbol.
That task of the prophets was experimental possession of the truth of the symbols. In the interior the spirit lived. There was in the ancient alliance a school of prophets and of priests, the one occupying itself with the spirit in the emblem, the other with the emblem itself. The priests had the external possession of the Ark, of the shewbread, of the candlesticks, of the manna, of Aaron’s rod, and the prophets were in interior possession of the inner spiritual truth which was represented exteriorly by those symbols.
In the midst of all this, truth reposes inviolable in the inner Sanctuary.
Faithful to the spirit of truth, which promised never to abandon its community, the members of the interior Church lived in silence, but in real activity, and united the science of the temple of the ancient alliance with the spirit of the great savior of man.
This society of sages communicated, according to time and circumstances, unto the exterior societies their symbolic hieroglyphs, in order to attract man to the great truths of their interior.
As soon as external societies wish to be independent of the interior one, and to transform a temple of wisdom into a political edifice, the interior society retires and leaves only the letter without the spirit. It is thus that secret external societies of wisdom were nothing but hieroglyphic screens, the truth remaining inviolable in the sanctuary so that she might never be profaned.
The absolute truth lying in the center of Mystery is like the sun, it blinds ordinary sight and man sees only the shadow.
In order that man may recover the veiled light, strength and dignity, Divinity bends to the weakness of its creatures, and writes the truth that is interior and eternal mystery on the outside of things, so that man can transport himself through this to their spirit.
Mystic hieroglyphs are these letters also; they are sketches and designs holding interior and holy truth.
Religion and the Mysteries go hand in hand to lead our brethren to truth, both have for object the reversing and renewing of our natures, both have for the end the re-building of a temple inhabited by Wisdom and Love, or God with man.
Religion divides itself into exterior and interior religion, exterior signifying ceremony; and interior, worship in spirit and in truth; the outer schools possessing the letter and the symbol, the inner ones, the spirit and meaning – but the outer schools were united to the inner ones by ceremonies, as also the outer schools of the mysteries were linked with the inner one by means of symbol.
The letter of truth must exist; then comes the practical explanation, then the truth itself; only truth can comprehend truth; then alone can the spirit of truth appear.
It is to you who labor to reach truth, you who have so faithfully preserved the glyph of the holy mysteries in your temple, it is to you that the first ray of truth will be directed; this ray will pierce through the cloud of mystery, and will announce the full day and the treasure which it brings.
It is likewise with the Mysteries; their hieroglyphics and infinite number of emblems have the object of exemplifying but one single truth. He who knows this has found the key to understand everything all at once.
The physical world is that of phenomena, and it possesses no absolute truth, all that we call truth here is but relative, the shadow and phenomena only of truth.
The inner sensorium opens and links us onto the spiritual world. We are enlightened by wisdom, led by truth, and nourished with the torch of love.
Man, before the Fall, was the living Temple of Divinity, and at the time when this Temple was destroyed, the plan to rebuild the Temple was already projected by the Wisdom of God; and at this period begin the Holy Mysteries of every religion, which are all and each in themselves, after a thousand varying modes, according to time and circumstances, and method of conception of different nations, but symbols repeated and modified of one solitary truth, and this unique truth is – regeneration, or the re-union of man with God.
Before the Fall man was wise, he was united to Wisdom; after the Fall he was no longer one with Her, hence a true science through express Revelation became absolutely necessary.
But no person can be re-born if he does not know and put in practice the following principle – that of truth becoming the object for our doing or not doing.
The Kingdom of God is a kingdom of truth, morality, and happiness. It operates in the saints from the innermost to the outside, and spreads itself gradually by the Spirit of Jesus Christ into all nations, to institute everywhere an Order by means of which the individual can reach highest perfection.
Note from Tyla:
All of our books are free and available in the bookshelf link below. For those who like printed copies for the time when the internet and lights go out during Operation: Cyber Polygon, please order a copy from Amazon while they allow us to publish on their platform. Join the Gabriels in preparing for the amazing shift in cultural ages.
Gabriel Bookshelf
Douglas’ book on the heart is not in print form, but still important to read in understanding how to open the heart chakra and begin developing this incredible organ of supersensible perception – which is the heart. Once this organ is open and flourishing, you will find your life flooded with synchronicity, harmony, divine coincidence, and flow. This is what the Satanic leaders of the world have been trying to suppress from humanity for centuries. They know that once humans tune in to this organ, we will be forever connected to the divine and will be forever free from their enslavement.
The Heart e-book can be accessed here:
Chapter One: The World Changes When Our Hearts Do
Chapter Two: Physiological Aspects of the Human Heart
. . . . . Secrets of the Heart
. . . . .Chambers of the Heart
. . . . .A Thumb of Fire
Chapter Three: Three Fields of Force
Chapter Four: Great Thoughts About the Heart
Chapter Five: Rudolf Steiner on the Human Heart
Chapter Six: Dodecahedron Universe
Chapter Seven: Historical Review of the Centrality of the Heart
Chapter Eight: Eastern Wisdom of the Etheric Heart
Our Spirit 