The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 134 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 13 (part 2)
265 To form a correct conception of the regeneration of man, and of what kind of a being it is which is to be brought to life in us, we must learn to know what is eternity and time, light and darkness, good and evil, and especially the origin and the generation of man.
We shall then find that man is of a threefold aspect.
In one aspect he dwells continually in heaven, and is a member of the body of Christ; in another aspect he is subject to the powers of darkness, and in his third aspect he is made of mortal flesh.
Nevertheless there are not three men in one human being, but he is only one.
It is nowhere stated that God is a temple of man, and that we can enter into Him with our human selfhood, however refined that selfhood may be.
The spiritual regeneration of man is brought about by the divine power of God entering and becoming self-conscious in man, so that his whole being becomes filled with God as the darkness becomes filled with light.
"We behold the eternal world with its stars, and the four elements wherein man and all creatures live.
This is not God, and is not called 'God.' God dwells therein, but the essence of the external world does not comprehend Him.
Likewise the light shines into the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not." "God dwells in the world and fills everything; nevertheless He possesses nothing.
The light dwells within the darkness, but does not own it; day dwells in night and night in the day, time in eternity and eternity in time; and so it is with man.
He is himself time, and lives within it according to his external aspect, and likewise the external world is existing in time; but the inner man is eternity, and spiritual time and world, such as is created in light according to the love of God, and in darkness according to His wrath.
His spirit lives in that principle which is manifest in him, either in darkness or in the light.
Each of these dwells within itself; neither possesses the other; but if one enters within the p.
266 other and desires to possess the other, then will the other lose its supremacy and power.
If the light becomes manifest in the darkness, then the darkness ceases to be darkness; and if the darkness arises within the light, then the light and its power will be extinguished.
"The eternal darkness of the soul is the kingdom of hell; the eternal light in the soul is her heaven.
Man, therefore, is created of, and lives in three worlds.
One is the world of eternal darkness that arises from the centre of nature—eternal nature—wherein is born the fire as the eternal torment; the other world is the world of eternal light, wherein resides happiness and the Spirit of God.
It is in this world of light wherein the Spirit of Christ assumes human substantiality.
The third world wherein man lives, and from which he was generated, is the external visible world, with its four elements, and the visible stars." ( Regeneration , i.) Now the question may be asked, "By what means can man effect the process of his spiritual regeneration?" The answer is, that man, not being a god, can accomplish nothing whatever of that kind by his own will or power, and that it can only be accomplished by the unmerited grace of the god in him.
No one can give unto himself anything which he does not possess; neither can any man attract unto himself by an exercise of his will the sunshine.
All that man can do is to employ the powers which he has received from God for the purpose that there may be no impediment created by his self-will which might prevent the action of the Holy Spirit within his own soul.
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.
Regeneration is described as a transformation process involving the death of self-will and birth of new will.
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 of Christ assumes human substantiality and becomes self-conscious in man.
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 links the inner man to eternity and the outer man to time, reflecting cosmic structures within the human.
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 text emphasizes the death of self-will and reliance on unmerited grace rather than human power.
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.
Darkness ceases to be darkness when light becomes manifest, suggesting evil is the absence of light.
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 man lives in three worlds and mirrors the structure of eternal darkness, light, and the visible world.
Eckhart's radical reading of Matthew 5:3 — the saint as one who wants nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing, having emptied even the will and the self with which to receive God; distinct from renunciation_of_wealth (material poverty).
Regeneration requires the death of self-will and cannot be accomplished by human will or power.
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.
Man is described as subject to powers of darkness and mortal flesh, distinct from his aspect in heaven.
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] Spiritual regeneration is described as the divine power entering man so his being becomes filled with God.