It was the eve of World War II and as he sat down to conduct his
one-on-one interview in Berlin, Estonian journalist Gunnar Aarma knew this was the chance
of a lifetime.
He fumbled for his reporter's notebook and peered up
at the little black-haired man sitting just across from him behind an enormous, oversized
office desk.
The man staring back at him was Adolf Hitler.
But for Aarma, then 22, it wasn't the opportunity to
pose questions to the world's most menacing leader of the age that excited him: It was his
chance to see Hitler's biological field.
Sitting in his home in Estonia six
decades later, the sprightly, broad-faced Aarma claims to be one of the only men ever to
have examined the essence of the German dictator face to face.
Some time before his Sept., 1939 interview—arranged with the intervention of a German industrialist—the young Berlin correspondent for Estonia's Teataja daily
had become an adherent of Raja Yoga.
Proponents of Raja Yoga believe one's character
surrounds a person as an array of colors, or biological field—which
well-studied Yogas say they can see.
"I was already able to see the biological field of a person," explained Aarma,
now 81 and still a respected Estonian authority on Eastern religions. "I was
interested in seeing Hitler's."
As Hitler answered a dozen pre-prepared questions, Aarma
scrutinized the aura of the German dictator—who was soon to be
the terror of Europe and butcher of millions.
Aarma was taken aback by what he
saw. .
"There was a lot of yellow, the color of
immaturity, and, surprisingly enough, blue, the color of wisdom," he said.
"Green, the color of rigidness and constraint, was vanishing and there was no red—the color of aggressiveness and sexuality."
The lack of red, by Aarma's reading, was the most
telling.
"It showed Hitler was a sick man," he
explained. "He was deprived of this very important sexual component. "
"He was," Aarma suggests confidently,
"100 percent impotent. This would explain his peculiarities and his tendencies to
come up with such esoteric political theories."
But the lack of red, the apparent absence of
aggressiveness, hardly accounted for the fact that he was about to start a world war that
would lead to the deaths of over 50 million people.
Like everyone else in Europe at the time, Aarma said
he understood Hitler's potential to wreak havoc. He had seen for himself how the German
Fuhrer became livid when speaking to a crowd.
"I had witnessed some of his speeches," he
recalled. "I had seen Hitler work himself up to the point of hysteria. So I was
bewildered at first when I saw so little red in his aura."
Aarma's explanation?
Hitler was faking it.
"He had to work himself up artificially to get
into that crazed euphoric state," said Aarma.
That, said Aarma, would also account for the blue—the color of intelligence. Hitler understood his tirades and
theatrics appealed to the German people. And to the extent it would unite the Germanic
nations of Europe, Hitler also knew the German people would back a wider European war.
According to the colors he saw, Aarma questions
whether Hitler was deranged—at least in the years before the
war.
"This man was in no sense wise, in the sense of
a man who had pondered life and arrived at some meaningful insight," said Aarma.
"But he did have a certain raw intellect."
Aarma contrasts the cold, calculating Hitler to the
other great dictator of the era, Joseph Stalin.
"Stalin was stupid, I would even say
abnormal," said Aarma, leaning into a sofa, surrounded by several bronzed Buddhas.
"Stalin wasn't necessarily being guided by what his people wanted. Hitler was. Hitler
knew what he was doing."
Gunnar Aarma, a celebrated Estonian philosopher and social commentator
into his 80s, died on February 12, 2001. He was 84.
—CITY PAPER-The Baltic States
