The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 141 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 13 (part 9)
279 free will already in the beginning (of a desire) destroys the desire, so that it does not become substantial, then is the physician (for the cure of that disease) already born, and there will not be needed such great earnestness as will be required by him who wants to come out of the company of the monsters which he has created, and who will have to destroy the being which he has brought into shape within his own soul." 1 ( Mysterium , xxiv.
25.) If men were realising their true nature as vehicles of the divine spirit, they would see the utter folly of their craving for that which is agreeable or useful for the material self alone, without benefiting the spirit.
From a spiritual point of view, external pleasures which are not instructive are not merely worthless, but actually an impediment to the attainment of our permanent treasure; because in strengthening the ties which bind us to matter they loosen the link that connects us with heaven.
"It is the greatest folly for man to crave for things which are not his own (but which are merely attractive to the being with which he is connected during his earthly career), and to introduce into his desire that which infects him with disease, and which even ultimately drives him away from God, excluding him in body and soul from his celestial state." ( Mysterium , xxiv.
16.) "He who wants to become a master over himself and a celestial citizen must not be a great sleeper, nor fill his abdomen with an abundance of food or drink, wherefrom the elements of the devil begin to qualify; but he must be temperate, sober, and wakeful, like a warrior before the enemy, for the wrath is continually against him, and p.
280 he has enough to do to defend himself (without creating artificial obstacles)." ( Six Theosophical Points , x.
23.) "Over-eating and intoxication cause sin, because the pure will which emanates from the fire-life becomes imprisoned and drowned in desire, so that it is rendered impotent in the battle." 1 ( Six Theosophical Points , cxi.
29.) As the power of the inner man over the outer man increases, the former changes the qualities of the latter to a certain extent.
Nevertheless the physical body cannot be completely changed into the spiritual body of Christ, it being far too gross for that purpose.
As long as it exists in the physical world it will be burdened with physical substance.
"We must continually die in Christ and continually kill the man of sin within us, so that the new man may live; but we cannot entirely destroy the former; we can merely keep him imprisoned, and continually pour into his fiery essence water from the mildness of God." ( Stiefel , i.
63.) "The will, if it goes straight forward, is faith, and as such it can give the body another shape, according to the external spirit; for the inner man is the lord of the outer one; the latter has to obey the former, and the inner one can put the outer one into another figure, but not permanently." ( Forty Questions , vi.
10.) "If man enters into regeneration he may succeed in subjecting the external man to his power to such an extent that the latter must do that which he does not desire, because the former takes away the strength of the latter, and penetrates him; but as the gold dwells in a coarse rock, and nevertheless the coarseness of the rock does not become gold, so the earthly man does not become God." ( Stiefel , i.
59.) 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 passage uses alchemical metaphors like gold in a coarse rock and changing the qualities of the outer man to describe spiritual transformation.
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 advocates destroying desire and not craving things that are not one's own to avoid spiritual disease.
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.
Sin is described as a disease or desire that destroys itself if not made substantial, implying it lacks true being.
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.
The text instructs believers to continually die in Christ and kill the man of sin within to allow the new man to live.
Gurdjieff and Ouspensky's claim that ordinary human beings live in a state of waking sleep, reacting mechanically without unified will or consciousness, and that the spiritual path begins with recognising this condition.
The warning against being a 'great sleeper' parallels the concept of living in a state of unconsciousness.
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 dynamic between the inner and outer man reflects the broader spiritual and physical cosmic order.
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.
Craving material things is said to drive man away from God and exclude him from his celestial state.