The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 139 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 13 (part 7)
27.) The first and greatest danger for the new-born being arises from pride; as is illustrated in the New Testament, for hardly is the new-born Saviour laid in the cradle, standing between the ox of self will and the ass of ignorance in the stable, represented by the animal constitution of man, when the king of pride (Herod) finds his kingdom endangered, and seeks to kill the child, which is to become the ruler in the new Jerusalem within the consciousness of man.
1 "The enlightened children of God are threatened by a great danger; namely, in many of them who enjoyed the great sight of the holiness of God, wherein the triumph of life is attained, carnal reason mirrors itself therein and seeks to intrude its selfishness into the interior centre from whence the light shines.
From this results miserable pride and self-conceit; and selfish reason,—being, moreover, nothing but a reflection of the eternal light,—fancies itself to be more than that.
It thinks that it may now do as it pleases, and that, whatever it does, it is the will of God doing it in it, and it believes itself to be a prophet.
Nevertheless it enters nowhere p.
275 except within its own self, and moves within its own desire, whereby the centrum naturæ soon begins to arise.
Then the devil of flattery comes forward, and man becomes drunk with self-conceit, persuading himself that it is God who compels him to act as he does.
Thus he ruins the good beginning, during which the light of God began to shine within nature, and then the light of God departs from him.
There is then nothing left but the light of external nature within the creature, but self-assertion puts itself therein and fancies that it is the original light received from God." 1 ( Calmness , i.
8.) Within the human constitution the old terrestrial and the new celestial states are dwelling together, and this necessarily causes within the regenerated a continual battle during the term of his terrestrial life.
This battle between the higher and the lower consciousness, between earthly desires and celestial joy, is experienced by every one, but it is especially marked in those in whom, on account of a higher degree of spirituality, the spiritual sensitiveness is more keen.
"Not in the terrestrial essence does God become manifest in us, but in the true image that became weakened in Adam; but the external thing clings to the internal, the inner man manifests the divine mystery, and the external one the external mystery or the mirror of wonders.
From this results the battle in the new-born man.
The new man wants to be lord, for he perceives the divine world; but the terrestrial man is opposed to him, and wants to rule also, for he perceives the external world." ( Forty Questions , xvii.
14.) p.
276 "The cause of the antagonism between the flesh and the spirit can easily be found without much seeking, for the inner spirit has the body of God, born from the sweet essentiality, and the external spirit has the body of the fiery mirror of wrath, which continually seeks to awaken wrath; namely, the great wonders which are in the Arcanum in the sternness of the soul.
The inner love-spirit protests and will not let the external spirit arise and fire the soul; because it would cause it to lose its own happiness and form, which would then be destroyed by the wrath." ( Forty Questions , xvii.
14.) "There are two kinds of will to be distinguished in the constitution of man.
One arises within the lily and grows in the kingdom of God; the other sinks into the darkness of death and desires for the earth, she being its mother.
This latter will continually battles against the lily, and the lily flies from its roughness.
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 regeneration of the new-born being implies a spiritual transformation of nature into a purified state.
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 depicts the new-born Saviour arising within the human consciousness as a central doctrine.
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 passage warns against selfish will and self-assertion obstructing the divine.
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.
Pride is described as a reflection of light that fancies itself to be more than it is.
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 constitution is presented as a mirror of the divine mystery and the stable allegory.
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.
The text warns that the light of God departs when pride ruins the beginning.
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 inner spirit is described as having the body of God within the regenerated man.