The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 80 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 8 (part 8)
For the internal being is continually labouring to manifest itself outwardly.
Thus everything has its own mouth for the purpose of revealing itself, and therein is based the language of nature, by means of which each thing speaks out of its own quality, and represents that for which it may be useful and good." 1 ( Signature , i.
11–17.) Footnotes 164:1 The external consciousness was hidden within the internal one, in the same sense as the character of a tree is hidden within the seed.
165:1 We find the same fundamental law in all departments of nature.
A new world is only a "nebular spot," a dust of cosmic matter, as long as it has not formed an organised centre.
Likewise man resembles a " nebula " of unlimited extent, of which only the organised kernel (the physical body) is visible; and so man begins to exist as a spiritual being only when the universal Spirit takes form within his soul.
166:1 The visible sun in the sky is the exterior manifestation of an invisible spiritual power.
As the visible sunlight dries up swamps and destroys impurities, so is the spiritual sunlight opposed to the evil influences that arise from the astral plane.
166:2 Nature exists in universal man, and be is existing in her.
Nature receives her consciousness from man, and as the will in him has become tinctured with evil desires, so nature—the product of his imagination—became tinctured with evil likewise.
166:3 Neither Christ, nor "Lucifer," nor "the Antichrist," is, as the vulgar interpretation has it, outside of the soul of the world, but a power active within the latter, in the same sense as a man's disease does not exist outside of his own body, but within it.
167:1 If it had not been for Lucifer's seduction and Adam's fall, primordial man would have remained for ever in blissful ignorance of the lower qualities, in a spiritual state, which he could not have fully enjoyed, because he did not know its opposite, namely, suffering.
Thus the devil brought suffering into the world, and is therefore man's benefactor; provided that man learns by the experience afforded to him in this way, and does not become absorbed by evil, but conquers it.
167:2 If it were not for the omnipresent and superior power of good, there would be no possibility for man to conquer his evil desires.
This absolute good is the One, without which the Two (relative good and evil) could not exist.
168:1 The earth, like every other cosmic body, is a form of manifestation of will, and has a sensation of its own.
Every part of the earth strives for the full enjoyment of the beneficent sun-rays, and when arriving at the meridian it would fain stand still, as if in mute adoration and worship of the glory of the celestial orb, but is pushed on by those parts that follow.
Thus every part alternatively embraces the sunlight and sinks again into darkness once during the daily revolution of our planet.
169:1 The world is the body of universal man; the spiritual sun is his heart, and the moon is the symbol of his imagination (or fancy).
The true meaning of Boehme's writings, like those of the Bible, will only be understood if we cease to look upon the cosmos from our limited personal point of view, and, by becoming identified in our consciousness with the All, realise that the All is our Self.
170:1 It may be remarked that at the time of Jacob Boehme it was not generally known that the sun has a hydrogen atmosphere, nor that water was composed of oxygen and hydrogen, the most combustible gas.
170:2 The same doctrine applies to the light of the spirit.
The Christ-spirit is everywhere; but it is not manifest in every person.
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.
The universal Spirit takes form within the soul, mirroring the divine generative act in the human interior.
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.
[auto] The passage explicitly links the visible sun to invisible spiritual power and states that nature reveals itself outwardly from its internal quality.
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
Nature receives consciousness from man and the earth strives for sun-rays, indicating interconnected cosmic affinities.
The uncreated luminous quality of the divine, sometimes experienced directly in mystical states; illumination as revelation.
[auto] The passage explicitly describes the visible sun as an exterior manifestation of invisible spiritual power and spiritual sunlight opposing evil.
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.
Nature speaks out of its quality to represent that for which it may be useful and good.
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 the internal being labouring to manifest outwardly and the One giving rise to the Two.
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.
Evil is described as a tincture or condition that exists only in relation to the absolute good.
The doctrine of the universe as boundless and without center or circumference, populated by innumerable worlds — Bruno's rejection of the closed Aristotelian sphere; the divine and the cosmos as ontologically infinite.
Man is compared to a 'nebula' of unlimited extent and new worlds are described as nebular spots of cosmic matter.
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.
[auto] The text declares that 'the world is the body of universal man' and that nature exists within man while man exists in 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.
Man begins to exist as a spiritual being when the universal Spirit takes form within his soul.