WHAT IS THEOSOPHY?
The question is answered by Schopenhauer as follows:
“... Starting from the plane of mental conception (Vorstellung), and proceeding on our way towards the attainment of objective knowledge, we shall never be able to arrive at a higher point than our own conception (imagination), i.e. of the external appearance of the object of our observation; but we shall never be able to penetrate into the interior of the things and to find out what they really are (not what they merely appear to be). So far I agree with Kant. But as a counterpoise to this truth I have called attention to another one; namely, that we are not merely the cognising subject, but we are also ourselves a part of object of our cognition, we are ourselves the Thing itself. There is consequently an interior way open to us from that self-existing and interior essence of things, which we cannot approach from the outside; a kind of subterranean passage, a secret connection, by which we by treason, as it were, may at once penetrate into a fortress which was impregnable from the outside. The Thing itself can as such enter our consciousness only in a direct manner, i.e. by becoming conscious of its own self. To attempt to know it objectively is to ask for a self-contradiction.” (The World as Will and Conception. Vol. ii., Cap. 18).
What Schopenhauer expresses in modern philosophical language might perhaps be stated in a few words by saying, that man cannot become conscious of the truth unless the truth is in him, and in that case it is not the man who recognises the truth, but the truth which recognises itself in man. He who wants to know it objectively must separate himself from it, because no one can see his own face without the help of a mirror; but if he separates himself from it, the truth exists in him no longer. It is therefore the truth itself which may become self-conscious in man, provided there exists any truth in him.
F. H.
A NOTE OF EXPLANATION.
I would much rather suffer an unintentional misrepresentation of my meaning than take the trouble to reply, and have no desire to magnify small matters of difference. But a very critical friend calls my attention to certain statements and apparent discrepancies in the “Esoteric Character of the Gospels,” on which I will beg leave to say a word.
I find it affirmed on p. 300, in a foot-note, that “Mr. G. Massey is not correct in saying that ‘The Gnostic form of the name Chrest or Chrestos denotes the Good God, not a human original,’ for it denoted the latter, that is, a good, holy man.” But either the statement has no meaning as an answer to me, or it is based on a misunderstanding of mine.[[135]] I was showing that the original Christ of the Gnosis was not one particular form of human personality, like the supposed historic Christ, and that the name denoted a divine, and not a human original. I was perfectly well aware, as your quotations show, that the name was afterwards conferred on the “good” as the Chrestoi or Chrestiani. Nor do I say, or anywhere imply, that the “Karest,” or mummy-type of immortality was the only form of the Christ, as your quotations again will prove. I have written enough about that Gnostic Christ who was the Immortal Self in man, the reflection of, or emanation from, the divine nature in humanity, and in both sexes, not merely in one.[[136]] This is the Christ that never could become a one person or be limited to one sex. This you accept and preach; yet you can add “Still the personage (Jesus) so addressed by Paul—wherever he lived—was a great initiate, and a ‘Son of God.’”[[137]] But the Christos of Paul, being the Gnostic Christ, as you admit (301), it cannot be a personage named Jesus, or a great Initiate, who was addressed by him. It appears to me that in passages like these, you are giving away all that is worth contending for, and vouching for that which never has been, and never can be, proved. I have searched for Jesus many years in the Gospels and elsewhere without being able to catch hold of the hem of the garment of any human personality. Ben-Pandira we know a little of, but cannot make him out in the Christ of the Gospels. The Christ of the Gnosis can be identified, but not with any historic Jesus.