Wherefore Hitler?

5. Short of the Glory of God

The Germans’ perception of Hitler as a divine being or instrument of God is subject to critical overview, even by the most ardent admirers of the man and the Reich. It’s no disgrace to fall short of the Absolute highest standard, which is that of Supernal Spirit. Unfortunately, a miss is as good as a mile in these matters, and the doom to which Hitler delivered his people is exactly the kind of outcome presaged by hubris.

We see in the text at the above link that a Supernal seer is immediately aware of the divine unity that pervades all creation, that divine love flows through him, giving him compassion for all beings and deep empathy for human suffering. There are many degrees of Supernal adeptship, but a basic attainment is transcendence of anger, fear, hatred, and the desire for vengeance.

The Bhagavad Gita was greatly prized by Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, though it’s hard to say how deeply his understanding penetrated its many layers of meaning. The Gita sheds more light on our question, as Krishna urges the seeker of Supernal Spirit to “abandon all desires born of will” (6:24), to “become free from enmity to all creatures” (11:55), to be “even-minded in all conditions and rejoice in the welfare of all beings” (12:4). In the last chapter he describes a high degree of Supernal attainment: “Casting aside self-sense, force, arrogance, desire, anger, possessiveness, egoless and tranquil in mind, he is worthy of becoming One with Brahman.” In Hindu theology Brahman is not an anthropomorphic God but a symbol of Supernal Spirit.

Though he was a man of great self-possession and high character, it seems clear that Hitler had not mastered his passions to the extreme degree prescribed here. He certainly would never have “abandoned desires born of will”, since he staunchly affirmed Nietzsche’s will to power. The whole thrust of the Weltanschauung he fostered in the Reich was diametrically opposed to such Gita basics as detachment from the fruit of action. The very mantra Sieg Heil emphatically lustily affirms desire for a very definite outcome!

The Weltanschauung was thoroughly Faustian ~ in fact a case can be made that the Third Reich was the grand climax of 500 years of the Faustian Modern Age, with Nietzsche as the immediate predecessor and prophet. There was nothing in Hitler’s teaching, as written in Mein Kampf and proclaimed in his speeches, that bodies forth any Supernal insight nor even spiritual essentials like life after death and salvation of the soul. There was only the Faustian drive upward and onward to undiscovered heights, the neverending reach for something better than what we are and of which we cannot now conceive. This he called idealism, and it took on a religious dimension.

One of the grandest (or most grandiose) ideals of the Reich was to conquer the world. It stirred the hearts of the Germans in a way that was hardly “free from enmity to all creatures”, nor did it lead them to “rejoice in the welfare of all beings”. When objections were made to this aim on moral grounds, they were usually refuted by appeal to the Nietzschean valuation of such sentiments as weak, ignoble, and Christian. Here, though, we are quoting not the Gospel but the Gita, wherein the teachings are delivered by a Son of God to the warrior Arjuna. The final outcome, which can be seen as the fruit of all the teachings, was victory in a monumental battle.

So how is this different from Sieg Heil? Most obviously in the monumental defeat of the Reich, but the deeper truth which leads to the divergence of results is that only a leader who possesses the Supernal qualities given above can carry it off. Detachment from the lust for victory brings victory. Transcending arrogance, anger, and hatred invests you with the divine force needed to lay waste a mighty foe who hates your guts.

The opening scenario in the Gita is that Arjuna has lost the will to fight because among the enemy are many of his beloved kinsmen. He laments to Krishna by citing the basic karmic truth that “if we kill evil men, evil shall befall us”. (1:46) Several chapters later Krishna answers this plaint by unveiling a great secret which is often overlooked even by the most knowledgeable commentators: “He who sees that the God in himself (Atman) is the same God in all, he hurts not himself by hurting other.” (13:28) I.e., the way to slay even the vilest, most black-hearted foe without incurring a jot of karma is to grasp the Truth that he is really Supernal Spirit wearing one of its myriad masks. Of course to be able to see this you must have attained Supernal Spirit yourself.

6. Is He Fit for Becoming Brahman?

Back to chapter 4