The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 119 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 11 (part 10)
"Human reason can understand nothing about the kingdom of Christ, nor about His person or office, because the testament of Christ is celestial, and human reasoning is terrestrial; the latter seeks Christ in time, while He can only be found in eternity." "All misunderstanding is caused by the circumstance that the heaven wherein Christ is seated to the right of God is not understood, and because it is not known that this heaven is in this world, and this world rooted in heaven.
They are both one in the other, like day and night." ( Baptism , i.) 230:1 The spiritual soul does not become an animal soul in man; neither is the former a separate entity to be put into the latter; but as the vibrations of light awaken corresponding vibrations within the ether that is in darkness, so the divine harmony existing in the spiritual soul of the universe awakens corresponding harmonies in the soul of man.
232:1 Perhaps the same idea might be approached by saying: The divine harmony underlying the original order of nature, which was thrown into confusion by the action of an evil will within the seven qualities of eternal nature, created a centre of harmony within the soul of Mary, which, expanding from within outwardly, rendered her whole nature harmonious and spiritual.
233:1 The sunlight of wisdom (self- knowledge and self-perception) is superior to all that is merely imaginary, fanciful, and illusive.
Wisdom sees the illusion, but is not captivated by it.
233:2 No soul can become divine or deified by merely contemplating God as if He were something foreign to herself.
God must become substantial and corporified in her.
The mere idealist is satisfied with enjoying in his imagination the beauty of the ideal, but does not embody it within himself.
The so-called "realist" is satisfied with what he believes to be real, and acquires nothing better than what he already has.
The true Christian, i.e.
, the "ideo-realist," seeks to realise the ideal, so that it becomes a part of himself.
235:1 The Manas became absorbed in the Buddhi .
235:2 "God lives also in man." ( Threefold Life , xi.
106.) Each human being (if he is not godless) carries God and the Christ, the Holy Spirit, the virgin Mary, together with the angel Gabriel and all the rest of the angels and spirits within himself.
It is, therefore, of little use to seek for all that in history.
We can find it nowhere except within ourselves.
237:1 The divine spirit, i.e.
, the spiritual consciousness of each or any individual person upon this earth, never was, is, or will be imprisoned, incarnated or reincarnated, or absorbed in any material mind or person.
It for ever remains in heaven, i.e.
, in its own celestial state.
The mind and the body are merely reflections of the light of the spirit as it shines into "matter." The true Man is in heaven; his shadow walks upon the earth.
237:2 Whenever I speak of the man Christ, and of what a triune God and man He is, I make a distinction between the human creature, that came from us human beings, and the triune Divinity, the revealed word of the power and omnipotence.
Not that they are separated from each other, but the Spirit of God is higher than the being to which that Spirit gives birth in its outbreathed word.
I do not say that the sweet and beloved Christ is the man, but it is the holy sunshine in the flame of love in the p.
238 man; for whenever I see a holy Christian man stand or walk I do not say, "Here stands or walks Christ;" but I say, "Here stands and walks a Christian man in whom shines the sun of Christ." ( Stief .
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 rendering nature 'harmonious and spiritual' by realizing the ideal mirrors spiritual alchemy.
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 Spirit gives birth in its 'outbreathed word' within the being, paralleling the divine generative act in 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.
[auto] The text explicitly states that divine harmony in the universe awakens 'corresponding harmonies' in the soul of man.
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.
The text describes how vibrations of light awaken corresponding vibrations within the ether and soul.
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 an 'action of an evil will' that throws order into confusion rather than a positive substance.
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] It asserts that each human being carries God, Christ, and angels within themselves, making the human a mirror of the divine cosmos.
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.
[auto] The text discusses how a soul becomes 'divine or deified' by embodying the ideal rather than just contemplating it.