The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 118 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 11 (part 9)
225:1 All disputes about the nature of Christ only prove that the disputants are not Christians, because if they were true followers of the Christ they would have the living Christ within themselves, and know His true nature.
The misunderstandings of the "Christians" regarding the Christ arise from the fact that they regard Him as something external and incompatible with human nature; neither will any merely theoretical research regarding this mystery lead to any satisfactory result.
The only way in which this matter can be settled for once and for ever is that those who have doubts about the divinity of Christ succeed in raising Him from His tomb within their own souls, when He will become revealed to them.
"Each one desires to be a child of God in his knowledge, and nevertheless disobedience and unfaithfulness are as great in one people as they are in another.
A belief that Christ has once been born and died for me and arisen from death does not make me a child of God.
The devil knows that also; but it is of no use to him.
I must clothe myself in Christ by means of the desire of faith; I must enter myself into His obedience, His incarnation, His suffering and death; I must myself arise in Him and adopt the obedience of Christ.
Only in this way can I be a Christian, and not in any other way." ( Mysterium , li.
43).
226:1 "'Gabriel,' an angel or god of sound, an internal, sourcive spirit." ( Aurora , xii.
86.) 226:2 There is no doubt that, as some will have it, the legend of the descent of the Redeemer is the description of an astrological process; but this theory, far from disproving the incarnation of divine wisdom into a human form, confirms it; because that which takes place in the macrocosm produces corresponding effects in the microcosm.
In man is the sun, the moon, the stars, and the whole of the zodiac.
In the microcosm is represented every part of the macrocosm in its material and spiritual aspect.
p.
227 When man sees the external sun rise in the outer world, the sun in him arises and gives joy to his heart.
Any individual person, or also humanity as a whole, may become either a god or a devil incarnate.
227:1 Christ, or the Universal Logos , is not a personality in the usual acceptation of that term, but becomes personal if personified in man.
Likewise the celestial virgin is personified in woman, in the same sense as the light of the sun becomes individualised in a flower, a diamond, or precious stone.
227:2 " Outside of a body the spirit cannot remain in its perfection, for as soon as it is separated from the form it loses its rule.
The body is the mother of the spirit.
In the body the spirit is born, and receives therein its power and strength.
If it is separated from the body it still remains a spirit, but loses its ruling power." ( Aurora , xxvi.
50.) 228:1 And the divinity in man continues to be crucified in him until the self-will is dead and the Christ arisen in His own light.
229:1 The Christ can never be born or revealed in any impure soul.
A soul wherein regeneration is to take place must be an immaculate virgin, having no intercourse with any external god; but executing the will of God dwelling within herself.
229:2 "Ana" is the Chaldean name for the astral light (see Secret Doctrine ).
"In the language of nature the name 'Mary' means 'salvation from this valley of sorrow.'" ( Principles , xviii.
37.) No man can be saved without the grace of Mary, i.e.
, without the presence of that which is noble, exalted, saving, and sanctifying in him.
Themes
◆Active Contemplationpraxis
A form of meditation that uses imagery, imagination, or symbolic thought rather than purely empty stillness.
The text contrasts theoretical research with the active internal work of raising Christ within.
The transformation of base substance — outer matter or the inner soul — into a purified, perfected, or 'gold' state; the magnum opus as both laboratory practice and spiritual allegory.
The process of 'raising Him from His tomb within their own souls' mirrors the alchemical resurrection and transformation.
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.
Christ becomes personal 'if personified in man' and must be raised from the tomb within the soul.
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 text asserts that 'that which takes place in the macrocosm produces corresponding effects in the microcosm.'
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.
The requirement that 'self-will is dead' aligns with the radical letting-go of will required for divine encounter.
Sufi self-effacement in God — the via by which the lover is unmade as a separate ego and recovered as God's act; specifies the practice/event rather than mystical_union's resulting state.
The divinity in man continues to be crucified 'until the self-will is dead.'
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 claims any individual 'may become either a god or a devil incarnate' through internal transformation.
The claim that the divine realm is present inside the individual, accessible without external mediation.
[auto] The passage explicitly states that true followers have the living Christ within themselves and that divine matters are settled within their own souls.
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 passage explicitly states that 'In man is the sun, the moon, the stars' and 'In the microcosm is represented every part of the macrocosm.'