The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 140 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 13 (part 8)
A sprout grows from the earth, and thus the substance of which it is formed flies from the earth and is attracted towards the sunlight until it becomes a plant or a tree.
So does the divine Sun draw the human lily, i.e.
, the new man in his power, out of the substance of evil, until he finally becomes a tree in the kingdom of God.
He then lets the evil tree or the husk wherein the new tree grew drop into the earth, its mother, for which that husk was longing." ( Menschwerdung , xi.
8.) Trees do not grow in the air, but require the dark soil and manure to take root and draw nutriment from the earth, and likewise the inner man requires the outer one for the purpose of gaining experience and self-knowledge.
"In the rough rock precious gold may be found growing, and the roughness of the rock aids it to grow, although the roughness is not like the gold.
Likewise the terrestrial body must aid in generating Christ within itself, even though that body is not Christ, and never will be Christ in eternity." ( Grace , viii.
94.) p.
277 "We are of an earthly nature, but we have also a celestial existence within the terrestrial one.
During temporal life both are mixed with each other, but they do not act upon each other; each one is merely the dwelling of the other, as is the case with gold-bearing rock.
The rock is not the gold, but merely its vehicle.
The roughness of the rock is not that which produces gold, but this is done by the tincture of the sun acting therein." 1 ( Menschwerdung , i.
14.) In this battle between the terrestrial and celestial nature we need not be aggressive, but merely on the defence.
This means that it is useless to resist evil or to combat it by remaining on the same level with it.
We render ourselves free from the conflict by rising above the place of contention, and this rising is accomplished by surrendering ourselves to the Supreme; or, to express it in other words, we conquer the flesh by sacrificing ourselves to the eternal spirit in Christ.
"Adamic man may live in Paradise according to the inner element which is unfolded within his mind, provided he does not permit himself to be affected by malice and surrenders himself fully to the heart of God.
Then will the virgin within the inner element receive him and illumine his heart, so that he may master the Adamic body." ( Three Principles , xv.
20.) p.
278 "We are always exposed to temptations, but we can be victorious in Christ who has conquered, for His soul is our soul and His flesh is our flesh, provided that we trust in Him and surrender ourselves to Him entirely, as Christ surrendered Himself to His Father." 1 ( Forty Questions , i.
10.) Far easier is it to overcome the desire for evil than to destroy it after it has become embodied by being enacted.
"Desire is the introducing (of the will) into a thing, and from the desire results the formation of a corporeal being (in the astral plane).
Therein is hidden the source of sin.
It is far easier to ward off the desire than to destroy the body (formed by the act).
The latter is far more difficult.
Therefore it is advisable to turn away one's eyes from evil desire, so that the tincture (the life-principle) may not enter the essence and the mind be filled with that whereby the desire becomes substantial and which will require a (forcible) breaking up." ( Three Principles , xx.
28.) "It is far better to demolish the desire than to demolish afterwards the substance with great pains.
If the p.
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] The text relies heavily on alchemical metaphors of gold in rock, tincture, and generating Christ within the body.
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 terrestrial body must aid in generating Christ within itself.
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 passage draws parallels between the growth of plants from earth to sun and the inner man's ascent from terrestrial substance to divine light.
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.
[auto] Salvation requires surrendering oneself fully to the heart of God and turning away from evil desire.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The Divine Sun actively draws the human lily and the tincture of the sun acts within the rock.
Fragments of divine light or spirit trapped inside material bodies, awaiting liberation and return to their source.
[auto] The text describes a celestial existence within the terrestrial one, similar to divine fragments trapped in material bodies awaiting liberation.
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.
Conquering the flesh is accomplished by sacrificing oneself to the eternal spirit in Christ.
Disciplined inward attention — sitting, focused, or open-awareness practice — as a stand-alone term that umbrellas active_contemplation, inner_silence, and dhyana-style sitting.
The practice involves turning away eyes from desire and unfolding the inner element within the mind.
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 being is described as containing both earthly and celestial natures, mirroring the cosmic relationship between earth and sun.
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).
Adamic man lives in Paradise provided he surrenders himself fully to the heart of God.
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 human lily is described as being drawn out of the substance of evil, implying a state of separation requiring rescue.
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 terrestrial body aids in generating Christ within itself, transforming the human into a tree in the kingdom of God.