Occult science in medicine

by Franz Hartmann

“It is a good divine that follows his own instructions.”—“Merchant of Venice.”

but such characters are at the present time very rare, for the world now lives only in dreams. “There are “divines” knowing nothing of any divinity; medical practitioners knowing nothing about medicine; “anthropologists” knowing nothing about the nature of man; lawyers knowing nothing of justice; “humanitarians” beggaring their employees; “christians” to whom Christ is unknown. In every sphere of life the external is mistaken for the internal, the illusion for the reality, while the reality remains unrealized and therefore unknown.

A superficial science can concern itself only with superficial causes and effects, however deeply it may enter into the details of such superficialities. The mysterious powers in nature, the intelligent forces in man, are at present almost entirely unknown, and there is no other way of penetrating into the deeper secrets of nature except by the development of the higher nature of man.

In ancient times the physician was considered sacred and belonged to the priesthood, not to a priesthood appointed only by man, but to a strong and real priesthood anointed by God. The physician of the future will be again a king and a priest; for only he who is not merely nominally but truly divine can be in possession of divine powers. In him the triangular pyramid consisting of science, religion and art will culminate in one point, called Self-knowledge or Divine Wisdom, where man himself becomes identified with that superior light and intelligence—his true self—of whose ray his personality is a vehicle, image and symbol.

There is a long and weary road to be travelled yet before mankind will arrive at this summit of perfection, and the goal is so far away that only few are able to see it, while to many it will be an apparently unrealisable ideal, and, like a mountain peak lost in the clouds, inconceivable; but the ideal exists and the clouds that hinder us from seeing it are our own errors and misconceptions; it remains with ourselves to clear them away.

We ourselves, by the power of so much of the perception of truth as we have already received and which has become our own, have it within our reach to overcome the darkness and open our minds to the influence of the light. But the light itself we cannot create or manufacture; it is not the product of our calculations, influences and theories. The truth is self-existent, eternal; it may be perceived, but it cannot be made.

The reason why so few can realise the meaning of the term “self-knowledge,” is that the knowledge obtained in our schools is exclusively of an artificial kind. We read that which other men have believed and known and we imagine we know it. We fill our minds with the thoughts of others and find little time to think for ourselves. We seek to arrive at a conviction of the existence of this or that object by means of arguments and inferences, while we refuse to open our eyes and to see ourselves the very thing about whose existence we argue. Thus from a theosophical point of view we should appear to a higher being like a nation of people with closed eyes arguing about the existence of the sun and unable or unwilling to look at it for ourselves.

There is only one way to arrive at real self-knowledge, and this is Experience. By external experience we attain knowledge of external circumstances; by experiencing internal powers we attain internal knowledge of them. To know in reality means to be. By becoming material we learn the laws ruling in matter; by becoming spiritual we learn the laws of the spirit; our will is free to guide us in either direction. We cannot know truth in any other way than by becoming true, nor wisdom except by becoming wise. We can know any external or internal power, be it heat or light, love or justice, only by the effects which we experience from its action upon or within our own self.

Man’s life in his present condition resembles a dream, and the dreams of humanity as a whole, no less than those of the individual, repeat themselves over and over again. They come and go and come again, appearing perhaps in changed forms, like clouds floating upon the sky and assuming different shapes, but representing the old, ever-returning illusions. While above them, unseen and unknown, shines the sunlight of eternal, unchanging truth, whose presence may be felt like the warm rays of the sun penetrating the clouds, but which to be known requires to be seen. The temple of nature is open to everyone who is able to enter; its light is free to everyone who is able to see; everything is a manifestation of truth, but it requires the presence of truth in ourselves to enable us to perceive it. That which hinders us from entering the temple of nature, from seeing the light and perceiving the truth, are the shadows which we ourselves have created. The real object of the lights kindled by science is not to reveal the truth—which requires no artificial light to be seen, and whose own light is quite sufficient for that purpose—but to destroy the fogs which hinder us from seeing the truth. No one would think of examining the sun by the light of a candle; but the candle-light may guide us through the dark passages of the labyrinth of matter to the door which opens upon the surface, where after the daylight is seen, artificial help is no longer required. But as in seeking our way through a tunnel the best guide is the light that shines from afar through the entrance, so a perception of truth in the heart is the only reliable guiding star in the labyrinth of ever-changing illusions.

All the scientific lights in which this light of eternal truth is not reflected, however radiant they may be, are only so many will-o’-the-wisps misleading the wanderer. All scientific theories and hypotheses based upon a non-recognition of the inner constitution of man and denying his super-terrestrial origin are founded on a misconception of truth. Such opinions are continually subject to change, and no new theory of that kind exists at present which has not existed in some similar shape before. But the truth itself is independent of these opinions, it has always existed and there have always been some who were capable of recognising it, and others who, unwilling or unable to see it, based their knowledge upon misconceptions and superstitious beliefs founded upon other men’s assertions.