The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 136 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 13 (part 4)
will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of My Father in heaven." It would seem self-evident that no being inferior to the Father in heaven can possibly do the will of the Father, because no one can do the will of God unless he is in possession of p.
269 [paragraph continues] God's will, and thus one with God.
Therefore he who wants to pray truly or to practice "Yoga" must enter into heaven; that is to say, into the celestial state of will.
The new life which is accorded to man by means of his regeneration in the power of faith and prayer is not a mere spirit, but corporeal and substantial.
The "body of the resurrection," even if it is invisible to mortal eyes, is far more durable and indestructible than any imaginable physical form.
"While Christ eats the faith and the prayer of our soul, the human faith, together with the prayer and praise of God, become corporeal in the word of the power, and this new being is then one with the substance of the celestial corporeity of Christ, the eternal body of Christ." ( Mysterium , lxx.) "The poor imprisoned soul, shut up within the darkness of death, is a hungering magical fire, which attracts from the incarnation of Christ the reopened substantiality of God, and out of this swallowing or nourishing she produces a body similar to Divinity.
Thus, then, the poor soul will be clothed with a body of light, comparable to the fire in a burning wick." ( Letters , xi.
21.) "The new man is not a mere spirit, but he lives in flesh and blood, comparable to gold in a rock, which is not merely spiritual, but has a body; nut only such a body as that of the gross rock, but a body which can stand the test of the fire." ( Menschwerdung , i.
4.) The creation of this new body is the beginning of the union of man with divine glory, but it is not the perfection of it.
The process of regeneration, like that of physical generation, has its stages of development.
Upon the baptism by "water" follows that of the "blood," and finally that of the "fire." "By means of the introduction of the divine will man becomes reunited to God and reborn in his emotional p.
270 nature.
He then begins to die relatively to the selfishness of the false desire (in him) and to be regenerated in new power.
There is then still attracted to him the carnal quality, but in the spirit he walks with God, and thus there is born within the earthly man of flesh a new spiritual man with divine perceptions and with a divine will, killing day by day the lust of the flesh, and by divine power rendering the world— i.e.
, the external life—heavenly, and causing heaven— i.e.
, the inner spiritual world—to become visible in the external world, so that God becomes man and man God, until finally the tree reaches its perfection, when the external shell will drop off, and it then stands there as a spiritual tree of life in the garden of God." ( Mysterium , Supplement, viii.) This imbibing of the "Elixir of Life" no man can accomplish by his own mortal power.
All he can do is to render himself receptive for the divine power.
The rest is done by the Spirit of God.
The new life of the regenerated is during his terrestrial existence continually exposed to great dangers, arising from three sources, namely, from the selfishness of human nature, from the devil (evil will), and from the desires of the mortal flesh and blood.
"No one should imagine himself to be secure after having once obtained the crown of pearls, for he may lose it again.
The soul is during her terrestrial life fettered by three fearful chains.
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.
[auto] Uses strong alchemical imagery such as 'Elixir of Life', 'gold in a rock', and transformation by 'fire'.
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.
Describes faith becoming 'corporeal in the word of the power' 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.
States that the 'inner spiritual world' becomes visible in the 'external world', reflecting the as above so below axiom.
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.
Requires rendering oneself 'receptive' and dying to 'selfishness' to allow divine power.
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.
Describes the 'external shell will drop off' and dying to 'selfishness of the false desire'.
Disciplined inward attention — sitting, focused, or open-awareness practice — as a stand-alone term that umbrellas active_contemplation, inner_silence, and dhyana-style sitting.
References the practice of 'Yoga' and praying truly as disciplines for entering heaven.
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.
Asserts 'God becomes man and man God', implying the human reflects the divine structure.
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).
Requires rendering oneself 'receptive' rather than acting by mortal 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.
Describes the soul as 'imprisoned... within the darkness of death' and fettered by chains.
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] Describes the human becoming 'one with the substance of the celestial corporeity of Christ' and clothed in a 'body of light'.