The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 97 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 10 (part 4)
Therefore the Word and the bruiser of the head of the serpent did not enter into form within their souls; but it stood within the mind to oppose the devils and the kingdom of hell with those that were willing to surrender themselves to it." ( Three Principles , xviii.
26.) "The saints of God being prophets, and prophesying in the spirit of Jesus, all spoke aiming at the covenant, i.e.
, out of the promised Word , which was again to move within the flesh; that is to say, that the Word was contained within the weakened interior image, and unfolded itself, and indicated to the external man what was to happen to him in the future, when it would manifest itself, and destroy therein death and the loathsomeness resulting from the battle taking place within the forms of life." 2 ( Stiefel , 385.) As our progenitors (in their terrestrial aspect) were p.
207 governed by external reasoning, Eve believed that in giving birth to Cain the bruiser of the head of the serpent had already come into the world.
1 "Hear and see what was Adam and Eve's desire before and after the fall.
They desired the terrestrial kingdom, and Eve's mind was directed to terrestrial things.
When she gave birth to Cain she said, 'I have the Man, the Lord.' She thought that he was the one whose heel was to bruise the head of the serpent, and that he was to drive the devil away.
She did not think that it was for her to die to her own false, earthly, and fleshly will, and to be reborn in a divine will.
Such a (selfish) will she carried within her seed, and Adam likewise, and from that resulted the will in the soul-essence.
2 The tree produced a branch of its own nature, for Cain's thoughts were bent upon becoming a lord of this earth.
As Cain saw that Abel was higher in the love of God than he, his free animal will arose for the purpose of killing Abel, for he cared only for the possession of the external world, and to be lord therein, while Abel was seeking only for the love of God." ( Mysterium , xxvi.
23.) As an antithesis to Cain, there was born to Adam another son, namely, Abel, who was not so much an image of his earthly as rather of his celestial essentiality, that had been restored to a certain extent by divine mercy.
3 "After the fall Jehovah spoke the name of Jesus in Adam into an actual life; that is to say, he manifested it in the celestial being that had been weakened on account of the sin.
In consequence of this in-speaking, there was awakened out of the spiritual death or state of dying, into p.
208 which Adam had sunk, a divine desire once more, and this awakened desire was the beginning of faith.
This very desire separated itself from the quality of the false desire, and formed an image, and thus Abel came into existence; but Cain was the product of Adam's soul-quality, according to his earthly lust." ( Grace , ix.
101.) Thus Abel on the whole, and especially on account of his forcible death which he suffered, represented an anti-type of the Redeemer.
"Relatively to his external human state, Abel was also sinful; but in his interior the angelic world and image of Paradise began to bud.
Then the interior man put his heel upon the monster-serpent of false desire, and on the other hand the monster-serpent stung the heel of his angelic will." ( Mysterium , xxviii.
2.) "The killing of Abel's external body by Cain symbolises that the external man must be mortified in the wrath of God.
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 Jehovah speaking the name of Jesus in Adam into actual life and the Word entering form within the soul.
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.
Salvation requires dying to one's own 'false, earthly, and fleshly will' and surrendering to the divine.
Final, collective cosmic judgment as an event in which the wicked are sentenced and the cosmos restored; distinct from psychopomp_journey (individual passage at death) and emphasising verdict where Zoroastrian frashokereti emphasises restoration.
The Word is said to manifest in the future to 'destroy therein death'.
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 characterized as 'false desire', 'spiritual death', and a lack of divine will rather than a positive substance.
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.
Progenitors are described as 'governed by external reasoning' rather than divine will.
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 soul is described as impregnated by the first principle and reflecting the cosmic battle between the Word and the serpent.
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.
Adam is described as having sunk into 'spiritual death or state of dying' due to sin.
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 interior man is described as having the 'image of Paradise' begin to bud and being reborn in divine will.