The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 42 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 5 (part 6)
"In the lightning flash, the fourth form of nature, is the origin of life, and it attains perfection in the constancy of the fire.
Here, in the object of division, is the p.
111 spirit born, and this spirit can either go backwards and enter with his imagination into his mother, the dark world, or move forward, and by means of death sink into the anguish of the fire, and then bloom out into life.
He is free, and therefore either of these two ways is within his choice." ( Theosophical Points , vii.
2.) Every being is free and responsible only according to the degree of its knowledge; not its intellectual knowledge, but according to that which is the result of the experiences of its spirit—its "conscience." "In the principle of fire is the turning-point.
There the will may move in whatever direction he chooses.
If it desires the "Nothing," i.e.
, freedom, it must sacrifice itself to the fire, and sink in the death of that principle.
1 Then the Father, the eternal Will to nature, will put it into the will of the Son; where for the great deal which that being has given, it will receive all; but not to its own honour, but for the glorification and power of God.
When this is accomplished, God in such a man is his will and his doing, and his fire becomes a light and a clear mirror; but if he does not will to do so, but wishes to be himself a master, and to possess multiplicity for his own self; then must he enter into the severe astringency, into the world of darkness, and cannot conduct himself in his principles higher than up to the fire, or rather only up to the lightning flash.
He remains in darkness, because only freedom outside of nature can supply the light and the clearness." ( Theosophical Points , vii.
6).
The fourth form is the object of division after the death of the body, and the centre of consciousness will be either with the higher part or the lower, according to the preponderance of either good or evil.
The higher p.
112 consciousness enters the light; the lower consciousness continues to exist in its own hell-fire and self-created suffering.
God "redeems" man by redeeming Himself from man's animal elements, to which he is tied during the terrestrial life of the personality.
Lucifer could have retained his state of celestial life; it was by his own will that he surrendered himself to the wrath of nature.
"The life of the eternal creature was in its beginning entirely free, because it was in the appropriate harmonious temperature.
The angels were created for heaven, and even if the world of darkness with the realm of phantasy was contained therein, it was in latent condition, and not manifest.
By the action of the free will in the fallen angels the world of darkness became objective in them; because they were inclined towards phantastry (speculation), and consequently the latter took possession of them and arose in their essence." ( Grace , iv.
45.) "One should not think that King Lucifer could not have remained that which he was.
He had before him the light of the majesty, just like the other throne angels.
If he had contemplated therein, he would have remained an angel; but because he acted according to his own selfish will, he is now an enemy of the love of God, and of all holy angels." ( Menschwerdung , i.
217.) He knew the will of God, and nevertheless acted in opposition to it, and therefore he did not become merely an idiot, but a devil.
"The realm of illusion has been from eternity, and gave cause to the angels' fall; it presented the conditions without which such a fall from the angelic state could not have taken place; but Lucifer entered into it by his own free will, and without any coercion." ( Grace , Vi.
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 human will reflects the divine will, suggesting a structural correspondence between man and God.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The text describes a hierarchy of nature forms and divine persons (Father, Son) through which existence flows.
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.
The text states 'God in such a man is his will and his doing,' positioning the human as a mirror of the divine.