The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 41 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 5 (part 5)
109 the spirit of holiness cannot enter unless unholiness is chased away.
In this battle against evil the angels are always ready to assist man in an invisible manner against the temptations of the "devils," provided that he is willing to receive such an aid.
"The external nature of this world cannot comprehend the nature of heaven: Both are compared with each other, like death compared with life.
We cannot see the angels according to our external nature, neither can they be with us externally; but they reside internally with us.
Whenever we battle with the devil they ward off his blows, and thus they take under their protection the soul that aspires for that which is holy." ( Aurora , xix.
30.) "Know that the devil often fights with the angels.
When the soul of man is secure in God, then the devil desires to enter; but he is stopped, so that he cannot do what he wills.
Whenever the soul imagines, and lustful desires begin to arise, then is the devil victorious." 1 ( Threefold Life , xiv.
13.) "Each principle is attracted by, knows, and loves that which is like unto its own self.
The principles existing within the periphery are acting upon their corresponding principles in the centre.
Love acts upon love, hate upon hate; good is attracted by good, and evil by evil.
If there is no evil desire active in man, evil influences cannot take root in his soul.
The devil is the poorest of all creatures.
He cannot move a leaf upon a tree unless the wrath is contained therein." ( Theosophical Points , v.
18.) Man without any principle could know nothing; it is always a certain principle in him that recognises its corresponding principle in nature.
A man without love cannot know what love is.
Neither can any one recognise the Christ, or be recognised by Him, unless he has the Christ within his own soul.
p.
110 The self-will, i.e.
, the will of God perverted in a created being, is the "fire-life" of the latter and the cause of its anguish.
All the angels have originally been created out of the light; but for the purpose of remaining therein they had to give up to God their fire-life, and not rise up in their self-will against the Lord.
"Each angel who wishes to live in the light and power of God must give up the selfhood of the dominion of the fire within the desire; he must surrender himself and all that belongs to him to the will of God; he must die in regard to his self-will, and unfold in the light of love as a fruit of divine love, so that the will-spirit (the spiritual will) of God shall rule his life." (Stief.
ii.
49.) "The devil was an angel, and it would have been his duty to put his imagination (faith) into the light of God.
In that case he would have received the divine substantiality in his imagination, and his light would have remained luminous.
The fire-fountain would have remained in that essence and quality, and he would have remained an angel." ( Tilk .
i.
187.) Thus those who crave for intellectual knowledge, while deserting the basis of the true knowledge of God, will ultimately become the victims of their own conceit, and turn into devils.
In the recognition of good and evil rests the freedom of choice.
This knowledge is attained by means of the fourth form.
If that quality has awakened in a being, then may the latter go ahead in a forward direction either toward absolute good or evil until the orbit is reached, where the attraction of one or the other ceases to act.
As long as this limit is not reached, a being may either enter the divine love-will, or turn in the opposite direction, and sink within the lower qualities of nature.
The transformation of base substance — outer matter or the inner soul — into a purified, perfected, or 'gold' state; the magnum opus as both laboratory practice and spiritual allegory.
The text uses alchemical metaphors such as fire-life and unfolding as a fruit of divine love to describe spiritual transformation.
Eckhart's signature doctrine that the Father eternally begets the Son in the ground of the soul; the human interior as the actual site of the divine generative act, distinct from inner_light's static indwelling.
One cannot recognise the Christ unless he has the Christ within his own soul.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The text explicitly states that each principle attracts what is like unto itself and that principles in the periphery act upon corresponding principles in the centre.
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
Angels and humans must give up their self-will and fire-life to God, surrendering themselves entirely to the divine will.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
Angels are always ready to assist man in an invisible manner against temptations.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
The devil is described as the poorest creature who cannot act unless wrath or evil desire is already contained within the human soul.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
Man recognises corresponding principles in nature, implying the human reflects the cosmic structure.
Eckhart's radical reading of Matthew 5:3 — the saint as one who wants nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing, having emptied even the will and the self with which to receive God; distinct from renunciation_of_wealth (material poverty).
The angel must give up the selfhood of the dominion of the fire and surrender all that belongs to him.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
Self-will is described as the cause of anguish and the state where the devil desires to enter when the soul is insecure.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The soul is to unfold as a fruit of divine love and receive the divine substantiality in its imagination.