Course XXV - Teaching 16: The Unknown Philosopher

Saint Martin is the connection between mystical lodges of the French pre-Revolution and social lodges of the liberal time.
By the end of the eighteen century, France was full of Masonic lodges founded by Cagliostro and, near Paris, in Versailles, Martines de Pasqualis had founded those lodges that later would be named lodges of the Philaletes and Great Prophets. Even Saint Martin, who later would feel detached from Masonry, was unable to contact the latter, since seemingly they devoted themselves to alchemical experiments, and this was against his spirit that was fond of pure mysticism.
Also on those days he leaves his Master on the way to Santo Domingo where the Master would die, and where Saint Martin, if not recognized as his successor, is at least main initiator of the School’s doctrine in the new era that makes the difference. In fact, Saint Martin leaves aside every ceremonial and theurgical experience and looks for higher results through retirement, meditation and prayer to reach the Union with God.
He devotes his whole existence to this apostolate and with this purpose he looks for souls in the great world, great writers and men of science, with the conviction that his direct word will gain souls more easily that any other method, since he is helped by God.
He does not think like that for vanity; on the contrary, he is humble and shy, and understands and knows that he needs a drive to do their best. This was the great merit of the Marchioness of Chabanais, an outstanding woman, whom he was always very grateful for having the rare privilege of helping his spirit and giving it the drive to raising it toward greater heights.
Also at this time he takes the spiritual guide of the Duchess of Borbon, sister of the Duke of Orleans and mother of the Duke of Enghien, of whom he was his friend, protégé and usual guest during his stays in Paris.
His relationships include the most famous names of the time. He spends 15 days at the castle of the Duke of Bouillon, where he has an occasion to meet Madame Dubarry that still was treated as a favorite princess despite the fact that her past reign was over. Seemingly the Duke of Bouillon was a disciple ready to Saint Martin’s teachings, and this becomes noticeable since he was one of the few friends gladly received by the king Louis XVI.
Matter says: “Perhaps this is the better time in his life. It is wonderful to see a gentleman of little nobility and mediocre wealth, a simple officer, doubtless very studious, but a writer still little known, to play so significant role before so numerous best families of the country, being only driven by his great aspirations and immature piety!”
“Generally they listen to him with attention, but not giving any assistance. Seemingly, in this so sensual, skeptical and materialistic society, everybody wished light, but a sweet and pleasant light, and rejected it when they found that its form was somewhat austere, such as he had offered it by means of his first book.”
His disciples demanded a clearer exposition of his doctrine, and then he publishes “Natural picture of relationships between God, man and the Universe”, in 1782, where he declares that the things should be explained by the constitution of man and not man by the things.
He adds that our inner and hidden faculties are the true causes of external works, and also that, in the Universe, the inner powers are the true causes of everything manifested externally. Far from wishing to hide to our eyes the fecund and luminous truths that are food for the human intelligence, God has written them in every thing around us. He has written them on the living force of the elements, in the order and harmony of all phenomena of the world, but even more clearly in what forms the distinctive characteristic of man. Therefore, the great goal of a philosopher must be: the study of the true nature of man; from results emerging from this study, a deduction of the science of things as a whole; and these things assessed and illuminated by the purest light of reason.
This book, like the former, is little clear in many of its expressions, possibly as a result of demands of the secret engaged in Martines de Pasqualis’ school.
If criticism does not deal with this new book in depth, as a result of this book the Martinesists take him as the natural successor of their founder and invite him to meet and finish the work in common. Seemingly the works of this Society intended to reconcile Swedenborg’s ideas with those of Martines de Pasqualis, but seemingly, in secret, their purposes were of political kind and even the discovery of certain great mysteries: the philosopher’s stone was one of them. Saint Martin was striving after a pure spiritualism and, being suspected of theurgical operations, refused this invitation and devoted himself more steadily to look for his disciples in the great world that he would frequent, and among learned people of those days.
He knew that one can always have control from above; so, he aimed carefully at the topmost point. He would not intend to march at the head of wise men, but being aware that one cannot influence public opinion without them, and understanding that public opinion is ruled by them, he wished to reach the great public along with the wise men.
Among all, there was an outstanding body that seemingly was at the head of the philosophical movement of the time: the Academy of Berlin, where Mendelsohn, Bailly and Kant had animated the contests by means of their writings.
In 1776, at request of Frederick the Great, the Academy had seriously asked: “Is it useful to deceive people?”, and had divided the prize between two competitors who had sent entirely opposite conclusions: one of the latter would hold with boldness that at certain times is convenient to leave the people in the error. Repercussions of this debate had been huge, and possibly Saint Martin would dream of such publicity.
Therefore, when the Academy of Berlin proposed a contest about the subject: “Which is the best way so that wild or civilized nations amid errors and superstitions of any kind live according to reason?”, Saint Martin found an occasion to dealing with one of those errors that, in his opinion, was the most serious in his time: the substitution of divine reason for human reason.
He dealt with this matter in depth and giving it the significance emerged from his enlightened viewpoint. He would wish to introduce to the world, under an illustrious standard, the great doctrine that was worrying him: the deep separation that would keep Humanity far away from early relationships with the Creator.
In the beginning, his writing tried to give a clear definition of reason and demonstrate that, in order to surrender men to reason, they should be led to the condition and early science of the human species. For long, this science was secretly conveyed from one sanctuary to another a nd from one School to another, and strongly established this spirituality that makes a difference between man and beast.
He added that when a man comes to Earth and fulfills the common law of his species, he is not aware of a calming bond uniting him with the source from which he came by means of obvious and positive relationships, and he concluded: the only knowledge with steady rights over us will be those lights that we achieve on our early relationships, and that we must find the key to this science in ourselves, that is, rays of divine light illuminating us within. Make you know this divine radiation, this early relationship between man and God, and the problem will be solved, errors covering the truth will be swept from the bosom of Humanity, and peoples that are living amid superstitions will be returned to reason. But those who have to guide them first should be enlightened. While we see Nature and men as isolated beings, with abstraction of the only principle that vivifies both, we will only distort them more and more by deceiving those whom we wish to teach how to define Nature and men. But in case we assume this viewpoint, we should not imagine a man with the power to do much for his fellow, for “as a tree needs not another tree to grow and yield fruits, since he has in itself everything that is necessary to it, so every man has in himself the form to fulfill his mission, not borrowing from other man”.
He concluded with this apostrophe: “If a man does not soar by himself to that universal key, on Earth nobody will come and put it in his hands, and I will believe to have answered the best way I could if I succeeded convincing you that a man cannot answer you”.
His contemporaries considered this was not a proper reply to the question¸ to which Saint Martin replied that his intention was not to give an answer in the sense of the prevailing rationalism, and that he was offering a manifesto.
In those days in France, the question about Mesmer’s magnetism was posed before the Academy of Science of Paris, and next the appointment of Bailly among members of the research committee, Saint Martin met him personally to dissipate any surmised prejudice, because though he did not see with enthusiasm the Mesmer’s phenomena –which he deemed magnetic and somnambulistic as a whole and belonging to a lower order of things– he felt that those phenomena should be studied.
He could not overcome Bailly’s prejudices and, in judging in one of his letters the memorial that Bailly presented, Saint Martin’s view was entirely contemptuous because those prejudices revealed in a scientist a spirit of investigation that was not truly scientific at all.
These two failures did not influence him and, moving to Lyon, in 1785 he continued the outer work of guiding souls, and the inner work of his own perfection.
From Lyon he went to England, where he met his great friend William Law, a fervent mystical Anglican minister. With the Count de Divonne they formed a trio of mystical brotherhood. Soon afterwards he was in contact with the best society. Already he had met the Marchioness de Coislin, wife of the French ambassador, who possibly introduced him to the great world where he could devote himself to his favorite task of mystical propagandist, a task in which he had no special preferences; during his stay in England, he found more adepts among Russians than among English people, and referred to the Prince Alexis Galitzin and M. Thieman as good theosophists.
Some few months later, he left for Italy, a country he visited for the second time, being in Rome on the autumn of 1787.
Also he frequented there the great world, and its several Cardinals, Dukes and Princes and, seemingly, despite we know nothing in this sense, all his contacts were useful only to look for new adepts.
In June 1788, he stays in the city of Strasbourg, where he remained three years and to which possibly he moved to study in depth Boheme’s doctrines, which later influenced him so much.
This city was cradle of Mesmer’s experiences and just had been the center of most famous initiations and Count Cagliostro’s miraculous cures. It was a free and imperial city, characterized by its open and cordial hospitality, when the aristocratic youth of Russia, Germany and Scandinavia had close contact with that of France, and a man as Metternich did with Galitzin and Narbonne.
There he met his beloved disciples: the Princess of Borbon, whom he pleasantly surrendered hours of that retirement that he loved so much; moreover, he found a new source of spirituality opened by the philosopher Rudolf Salzmann and a lady, Madame Boecklin: they facilitated him the study of the enlightened Jacob Boehme and led him to learning German, since English and French translations could not give him any idea about how much the original texts would contain.
With Madame Boecklin, Salzmann, the elder of the Meyers, Baron Razenried, Madame Westerman and other person whose name he does not mention¸ they formed a very united group, to which surely many other people adhered. But of them all, Madame Boecklin is perhaps the woman to whom Saint Martin likes to attribute the most fecund success in his life: knowledge of the doctrine of Jacob Boehme, the theosophist. Just as he put this philosopher over all his masters, so he put Madame Boecklin over all his women friends.
For all this, Strasbourg becomes his Paradise; and as a result of the tragedy that France would undergo, Paris would be his Purgatory.
Madame Boecklin had the privilege of exalting the spirituality of Saint Martin as nobody knew how to do until then. Those three years that Saint Martin spends in Strasbourg become decisive for his life, since they substantially developed his scientific, historic, philosophic and critical abilities. Soon afterwards he met there a nephew of Swedenborg, called Silferhielm, when Saint Martin still would continue his studies about the Sweden seer and, being advised by Silferhielm, he writes his new work, “The New Man”.
A little later, in order to dissuade his friend the Princess of Borbon from certain harmful practices, he wrote another book entitled “Ecce Homo”, where he refers to false visions and false manifestations on the one hand by indicating by these names clairvoyance and wonderful cures, and on the other hand apparitions of “elementals” that make use of these apparitions to lead us by the wrong way.
Saint Martin’s stay in Strasbourg was quite important, since by deepening his studies about Boehme¸ his spirit grew up even more, since in that environment of free debate he acquired new disciplines of study and wider perspectives; so, detached from the drama gestated in Europe, he could compare his ideas and those of his masters with ideas of contemporary philosophers, such as Kant at the head. In 1791, Saint Martin’s father sent for him because he was seriously ill; then he must leave Strasbourg and move to Amboise –his Hell, as he called it. An icy Hell, because the indifference of the environment to the ideal he professes is quite painful. This is one of the most terrible trials he must stand, since he has to be far away from his friends and over all from Madame Boecklin, besides his spiritual loneliness. Some few months later, now in 1792, he understands that this is a new trial that he has to stand and be resigned to it.
This year, as a result of the publication of the two works above mentioned, he must leavee for Paris several times, and also he begins his correspondence with his friend Kirchberger of Liebisdorf, who would comfort him a lot and, at the same time, would give him a great drive toward new mystical studies, and the continuation and intensification of researches about Boehme’s writings.
This Noble, a member of the Sovereign Council of Bern and of several cantonal and municipal committees, a very spirited, educated and curious man, who admired sincerely Saint Martin, meant for him his best friend, and the correspondence with him was one of the things he considered extremely important.
Also this friend would grant great solace and would help him forget those happy years spent in Strasbourg, which contrasted even more with these very hard times. France was living the Terror and, despite it, Saint Martin never thought of leaving the country. “He is described as endowed with a stoic impassivity, full trust in divine protection, calm and radiant, seeing how the hand of the Providence heavily falls on the dynasty and the country, on old-fashioned institutions, and blinded people and chiefs” (Matter).
“Always waiting for in the name of those fundamental laws whose studies he had preferred to those of an ordinary jurisprudence, his look raised toward a higher horizon and from a very different plane from that of the multitude, he spent the years of the Revolution, deeply moved, but without the slightest disturbance. He would meditate on the same problems, continued the same mission and preserved the same friendships” (Matter).
“While other philosophers, people of letters and men of State and war, in panic and frightened, escaped from those events, he would see only beginnings hat should be not mistaken for accidents” (Matter).
In 1793, two rough blows wait for him: his father’s death, which affects him despite Saint Martin expected it, and that of the King of France, who had made him Knight of Saint Louis through the Prince of Montbarey, in 1789.
This year, to cap it all, the authorities suspect of his correspondence with Strasbourg; so, quite grief-stricken and to avoid troubles to her friend, the Countess of Boeckling, being this so dear to his soul, he must stop corresponding with her.
After a while in the castle of the Princess of Borbon, he returns to Amboise for matters related to his father’s succession. This is a calm place compared with the storm roaring in the city of Paris, where he could not return as a result of the decree about privileged castes, which affected him personally because of his noble birth. Loved by the people in Amboise, he is appointed to catalogue books and manuscripts taken out from ecclesiastic houses suppressed by the law. He accepts this job as if it were an important and profitable mission for his spirit, and he was not wrong, because it gave him delight and bliss, like when he read the life of Margaret of the Holy Sacrament and saw the magnificent spiritual development she had achieved.
Authorities appreciated so much his work that he was appointed to represent the district before the Normal School; he accepted this post too, since as a citizen he was ever ready to support the country “provided the question is not to judge or to kill human beings”.
Outstanding citizens of every district should follow certain training at the Normal School to learn what type of instruction the people should have in general; once this experience was acquired, these persons would be skilled to prepare future instructors.
Now Saint Martin is more than 51 years old and despite this mission was somewhat shocking from his viewpoint, he accepts, convinced that “everything is connected in our revolution, where I have occasion to see the hand of the Providence; so, nothing is little to me, and though it would be nothing more than a grain of sand in the vast building that God prepares for nations, I must not resist when I am called”. “The main motive of my acceptance”, Saint Martin continues in a letter to his friend Liebisdorf, “is to think that, with God’s help, I expect that, by my presence and prayers, I may stop partially those obstacles that the enemy of all good can sow in this great course of teaching that is about to open, and upon which the happiness of many generations can depend”.
“This idea comforts me, and though I could not deviate more than only one drop of poison that this enemy will try to pour on the very root of this tree that will cover with its shade the whole country, I would feel guilty if I went back.”
Doubtless, one of his hopes was to proselytize the ideal of his life among those two thousand or three thousand professors he would meet at the Normal School, but his best advantage of this experience was that he acquired a methodical philosophy that he could use later against those who had taught it. At the Normal School he could speak few times before the other members only two or three times, and at most for 5 or 6 minutes each time. But he would leave all in the hands of the Providence and inadvertently he liked more and more the methodical discussion that he could put into practice in the so called “Garat Battle”, a debate with the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Interior Affairs and Garat, the General Commissary of Public Instruction at that time, with the charge of Professor of Analysis of the Human Understanding, at the Normal School; with the latter he had a dramatic debate about the eventual existence in man of a moral sense and about the difference between sensations and knowledge.
His illusions put in the Normal School totally failed; the School, dissolved in 1795, did not achieve its purposes.
Now, being accustomed to reflect with a philosophical method, following inspirations of his conscience and willing to bring to characteristic debates of that time spiritual words dedicated to demonstrate that the purpose of life and health of the social body is in spiritual paths, he published his “Letters to a Friend about the French Revolution”, in 1795, followed by “Clarity about Social Association”, in 1797, and a third book entitled “Which Institutions are the Fittest to Found the Moral of a People”, in 1798.
Essentially, these publications respond to this: Even when he sympathized with the deep and justifiable causes of the Revolutionary movement, Saint Martin proposes principles that the organisms of the Revolution were far from admitting. Saint Martin does not treat the outer form of governments republican, monarchic, aristocratic or mixed; he seeks more deeply the conditions of a legitimate association, and to him they seemingly may subsist under every political form. He wished a very common idea in those days: that the association is founded on the need of mutually assuring to enjoy property and other material benefits depending on it, and he looks for the source of this association in a thought eventually wise, deep, just, fertile and kind; first of all, this source is providential. In Saint Martin’s view, man has descended from a higher state to a situation where he is surrounded by darkness and misery; all his present efforts must aim at getting up from this fall, and the whole work of the Providence has no other goal than to facilitate him this task.
Therefore, the diverse human associations must be constituted by the same purpose and sustained by the same spirit, on pain of being disapproved by the Divine Wisdom.
His great goal, his Great Work was, however it was always the same, to study the spiritual life of man taken in his ideal perfection or rather in his early nature; to take him in pure relationships with the first cause of the spiritual world; and to teach to those who have ears how to hear the art of bringing them to this perfection.
In his opinion, this was in fact the only study deserving entire attention from men, and since he felt that Boehme was the best master in this science, he continuously would turn his attention to the writings of the great German mystic. These studies led him to conclude that the two Schools – Boehme’s and Martines de Pasqualis’– would complement one other perfectly.
In those days he had corresponded again with Madame Boecklin, and always would continue so with Liebisdorf, his great friend and disciple.
His economic situation was difficult, but he continued to be generous and always serenely trusting in the designs of the Providence.
On February 7, 1799, his friend Liebisdorf dies, and his decease leaves an irreplaceable void; his only consolation always is to return to Boehme’s writings¸ of whom he translates three works, namely: “Nascent Dawn”, “Triple Life” and “Three Principles”.
In 1800 he publishes a volume, “The Spirit of the Things” where the author looks for the deepest reason of those things that are calling his attention, as much in Nature as in customs, et cetera. A work written by Boehme, “Signatura Rerum”, suggests him to carry out this idea.
In 1802, he publishes a book, “Ministry of Man-Spirit”, where he exhorts man to understand sufficiently the spiritual power of which he is a trustee, and to make use of it and liberate Humanity and Nature.
In 1803 he begins feeling the same symptoms of illness that brought his father to the tomb. He does not fear death and calls his disease “spleen”, but he explains that it is not the English “spleen” by which you see everything black and sad, because by his “spleen”, on the contrary, everything becomes rose-colored as much internally as externally.
The apoplexy puts a sweet end to a sweet existence, and still leaves him some few minutes to pray and address touching words to his friends that attended immediately.
He exhorted them to live in harmonious union and with trust in God, and after he uttered these words, the mystic whom M. De Maistre would call “the most educated, wise and elegant philosopher” breathed his last.
Matter, his biographer, says: “His career could finish; he had seen the greatest things that can be seen at whatever time; he had undergone hard trials with serenity and had achieved great works. He had in his life neither glory of the world nor wealth, and to his eyes the latter meant nothing. But he had tasted the deepest and sweetest bliss; loved by God and men, also he loved much, and he always expected more from the time to come than from the present”.
He loved his work and never expected any payment on Earth. According to his own words, “It is not at the hearing where defending counsels get their fees for lawsuits; they got them outside the hearing and when the lawsuit is over”. “This is my story and also my reluctance to receiving any payment in this low world.”
In his book entitled “Portrait”, he would declare: “I never had more than one idea, and I intend to preserve it up to the tomb, and this idea is that my last hour is my most fiery wish and my sweetest hope”.
Here is Saint Martin’s moral code, and through its rules a soul can be united with the Creator:
1st) You are a man, therefore you never must forget this:
you represent the human dignity. Respect and
make respect the nobility; this is your most general
and high mission on Earth.
2nd) It is within yourself, on the light that illuminates
your being, the image of God, and not in books that
are nothing more than images of man, where you
will find the rules to guide your life.
3rd) Watch over this inner light and do not let
vain words dissipate it. He who watches
severely over his word, watches over his
thoughts and watches over his affections, and
he who watches this way, rules properly his
soul.
4th) He who governs himself properly, lets be carried
away by Him who guides everything, and our
soul is taken this way to the purification given
by sorrow, and to the strength granted by a
ceaseless combat, stage by stage.
5th) He leads us to overcome in the very bosom of
temptations, and by means of them. Temptations
are the most living means of God to guide us,
because we succumb to them when the worldly
spirit guides us, and we move away from them
when we are guided by the divine spirit.