The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 92 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 9 (part 10)
The conditions of these animal elementals in the constitution of man are some of those causes of his bodily ills of which modern medical science is entirely ignorant.
191:1 This is the way in which the "personalities" mentioned in the Book Genesis were "begotten." 192:1 Since the "woman" has issued from man, his manner of reproduction has necessarily become an external and animal one, and will continue to be so until the true divine marriage has taken place, by which the Will of man becomes again one with the goddess of wisdom.
192:2 Each sex seeks within the other that of which it is itself deficient, and therefore, seen from the spiritual point of view, all sexual "love" may be regarded as a manifestation of selfishness.
193:1 "Sin" is that which constitutes a disobedience against the will of God, which is also the law of nature.
He who resists the law of nature without being able to rise above his own animal nature commits a crime against nature, and therefore against God.
But if we rise above our animal plane into the higher regions of feeling and thought, then shall we be no longer affected by the laws that govern that animal nature, and no resistance will be needed, as the desires of the flesh do not affect the spirit that is not identified with the flesh.
193:2 Here Jacob Boehme evidently refers to the human soul, the Manas , and not to the Buddhi , or spiritual soul, which overshadows each new incarnation.
193:3 The spiritual soul in man has its origin in God, and its individual qualities are gathered from the efflorescence of its experiences in previous p.
194 incarnations; but the human and animal soul are the products of the mental and astral influences acting through the bodies of the parents; while the visible material form is made of the elements of the earth.
194:1 The highest sensual pleasure which human beings can possibly enjoy is experienced by them during the connubial act; but as this act constitutes the exercise of the highest power which is still within man's dominion, namely, the power to create a being like unto himself, therefore this power should not be prostituted for baser motives, such as the gratification of sensual desire.
195:1 In the male is represented especially the fiery essence (the will or obstinacy), in the female the essence of light (spirituality or gentleness).
The sexual distinctions, however, do not belong to the external body exclusively, but to the inner man, of whom the outer man is not always a correct image, because there are other factors besides the true soul entering in his formation.
Therefore it sometimes happens that the sex of the external body does not seem to correspond to that of the inner man.
We meet with male persons apparently inhabited by a female soul with female tastes and tendencies, and vice versa; and in such persons there are sometimes manifest apparently inexplicable sexual perversities.
195:2 It should always be remembered that man's constitution is not the p.
196 result of the action of only one principle, but of three, manifesting themselves in the seven qualities of eternal nature, in seven different forms, and that, therefore, his external body is not the expression of only one principle, but of three.
His spirit is from the innermost fountain, his soul from the internal world, his body from external nature.
196:1 The absence of words in modern languages for expressing internal facts in a comprehensible manner leads to a continual confusion of terms.
Thus the term "soul" refers here not to the divine soul that originates directly from God, nor to that part of man which becomes reincarnated (the Karana Sarira ), but to the "inner man" (the Manas and lower lsencippri).
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 passage discusses the relationship between the inner man and outer body, noting they do not always correspond.
The reunification of complementary divine principles (male-female, spirit-matter) as a symbol of wholeness and salvation.
[auto] The passage explicitly identifies the 'true divine marriage' as the state where the Will of man becomes one with the goddess of wisdom, ending animal reproduction.
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 spirit, soul, and body originating from different levels (innermost fountain, internal world, external nature).
Gurdjieff and Ouspensky's claim that ordinary human beings live in a state of waking sleep, reacting mechanically without unified will or consciousness, and that the spiritual path begins with recognising this condition.
The animal soul resembling a menagerie suggests a mechanical or reactive aspect of human nature.
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 describes man's constitution as reflecting three principles manifesting in seven qualities of eternal 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.
Rising above animal nature to align with God's will implies transformation into a divine state.
Division of the human being into three principles: spirit (pneuma), soul (psyche), and body/matter (hyle or soma).
[auto] The text distinguishes the 'animal soul' from the higher 'Will of man' and references 'bodily ills,' aligning with a division of human principles.