The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 70 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 7 (part 12)
145:1 This was the divine Man, out of whom the world was created, while the natural man is a product of the world.
145:2 Because everything was within his own will, within himself.
145:3 This celestial Adam has not died, but still exists in all of us; but on account of our state of degeneration, caused by the attraction of the lower principles, we have forgotten our own divine nature.
146:1 It was Adam's own state of feeling and thinking that created an Eden for him, and thus each human being creates his or her own Paradise.
147:1 This Paradise ( Deva-loca or Devachan ) is described in Eastern books as an "illusion;" but it is no more an illusion to its inhabitants than the dream called "terrestrial existence" is an illusion to us.
On the contrary, it is far more permanent and beautiful than this terrestrial world.
147:2 He could not enjoy similarity with God, because he did not possess divine self-knowledge.
To attain this knowledge of self he had to eat from the tree of the self-knowledge of good and evil, and then return to his original divine state.
148:1 This the soul can surely not do by seeking for the Son or the Heart of God in anything outside of her own sphere, and with which she is in no way related.
Therefore the meaning of the words, "Thou shalt worship only one God," is "Thou shalt have faith in no other God except the one who is seeking to reveal Himself within your own conscience, and not worship any strange idols, such as exist in the imagination of men." 149:1 God being a unity, has no other will or object in view than to give birth to His Son, i.e.
, to manifest His outspoken Word as wisdom in man.
150:1 The spiritual will of man is free; not so the will of semi-animal man, for freedom depends on the extent of knowledge.
When man's knowledge becomes divine, then will his will be free—wholly free.
150:2 Man requires the material (animal) element in him to endow him with strength to rise above it by the power of God.
Man may be regarded as a god crucified within an animal.
The god furnishes him with wisdom, the animal with strength.
We are to overcome the animal in us by the power of divine wisdom.
He who has nothing to overcome can gain no victory.
We cannot rise above a thing as long as we have not attained its highest level.
151:1 It would be foolish to worry about what Adam ought or ought not to have done.
The meaning is, that we who have "Adam" in us should enter now with our will into the will of God.
152:1 If primordial man had never fallen from his purely spiritual state and "refused to create," he would never have learned to know the wonders of creation, the unfoldment of the third principle.
The external world, as we know it, was created by Adam's fall.
152:2 The "devil" means spiritual will perverted.
If it is perverted in a personal being, then will there be a personal devil.
153:1 God (Christ), nature, and the devil (Antichrist— i.e.
, Christ perverted) are seeking to attain self-consciousness in man.
Man's consciousness is, therefore, continually changing, and in reality not his own.
Only when the principle of either good or evil has become self-conscious in man, and he has become identified with it, will he know his true impersonal self.
Only then will he be a free and responsible agent.
153:2 It was his desire that the lower qualities should become conscious in himself, each according to its own nature.
Platonic recollection: knowledge as the soul's recovery of what it knew before birth, with learning as remembering rather than acquisition.
We have 'forgotten our own divine nature' due to degeneration, and the path is to recover what was originally present—the celestial Adam who 'still exists in all of us.'
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.
[auto] The passage describes God's will as giving birth to His Son and manifesting His Word as wisdom specifically within man.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The passage narrates cosmic origin: the divine Man created the world, and Adam's fall specifically created the external world as we know it.
The doctrine that the divine is present within all things and the universe itself, pervading creation rather than remaining solely transcendent above it. Distinct from unity_of_being (the general claim that all existence is one substance, agnostic about whether that substance indwells its parts) and from kingdom_within (the divine present specifically IN THE INDIVIDUAL human, accessible without mediation) — divine_immanence is the general pervading-presence claim applied to all of creation, not a human-specific indwelling.
The divine is present within all things: the celestial Adam exists in all of us, God seeks to reveal Himself within one's own conscience, and the divine nature pervades creation.
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.
A hierarchy is implied where the world flows from the divine Man, and the natural man is a product of the world.
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 defined as 'spiritual will perverted' and the Antichrist as 'Christ perverted'—evil as a distortion or perversion of the good rather than an independent positive principle.
Transgressive knowing acquired against divine prohibition — the Watchers' teaching of metallurgy, sorcery, and cosmetics in 1 Enoch, the Gnostic Eve narratives, the Promethean mytheme; explicitly contrasted with gnosis_direct_knowledge, which is salvific.
Adam had to eat from the tree of self-knowledge of good and evil—a transgressive act against prohibition that is nonetheless the necessary path to divine knowledge and return to the original state.
The deeper aspect of the individual's own consciousness aligned with divine or spiritual truth, distinct from the ego or everyday personality — a locus of guidance and identity that can speak with its own recognisable 'voice' in moments of crisis, carrying memory or knowledge the ordinary self lacks. Distinct from inner_light (a static luminous quality or spark, not an alternate seat of identity and agency) and kingdom_within (the claim that the divine realm generally is present inside the individual, not this specific personal higher consciousness).
The celestial Adam within each person, the 'true impersonal self' that is distinct from the ego and everyday personality, which one must identify with to become a free and responsible agent.
The doctrine that the cosmos unfolds as a structured descent of spirit into matter — a directional process traced stage by stage from an unconditioned principle down through successive planes to full materialization — complemented by its own eventual return ('evolution'). Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (the static structure of the resulting levels of the cascade) and cosmogony (a single originating event rather than an ongoing staged process) in naming the directional cosmic PROCESS of descent itself, paired with its own complementary ascent.
The passage describes spirit descending into matter (divine Man creating the world, animal element within man) complemented by the return to the original divine state, naming the directional process of descent and its complementary ascent.
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 human being is presented as containing both the divine (celestial Adam) and the animal, with 'a god crucified within an animal' making the human a privileged mirror of the divine-cosmic structure.
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.
The passage describes the felt condition of exile: 'on account of our state of degeneration, caused by the attraction of the lower principles, we have forgotten our own divine nature.'
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 text describes man as a 'god crucified within an animal' and speaks of returning to an original divine state through wisdom.
Division of the human being into three principles: spirit (pneuma), soul (psyche), and body/matter (hyle or soma).
The passage divides the human into spiritual will (god/wisdom), semi-animal will (animal/strength), and the material body, presenting a threefold structure of spirit, soul, and matter.