The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 143 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 13 (part 11)
27.) No Christian should contemplate his own holiness, or fancy himself to be better than others; but he should rather realise his own unworthiness, and regret the perverted state of himself and of humanity as a whole.
"No one should want to know his state of holiness while he lives in this world, but he should keep on drawing the sap of Christ from his own tree, and leave it to that tree to bring forth from him whatever branch or bough it may choose." ( Stiefel , cxi.
345.) "An earnest Christian does not wish to know his own sanctity; he sees only his imperfections, in which the devil battles against him.
His imperfections are always before him, but his sanctity he does not know while he lives in this world.
That sanctity is hidden by Christ at the foot of His Cross, so that the devil may not perceive it." ( Threefold Life , xv.) "A real Christian loves truth and justice, and hates hypocrisy." ( Communion , iv.
228.) 1 The new-born internal and spiritual life is benefited by trouble and suffering.
"To the pious, light arises out of darkness and day out of night.
For them fortune results from misfortune, and out of the curse and malice of this world there grows for them a paradise.
Paul says, To those who love God, all things are for the best.'" ( Mysterium , lxvi.) "Whenever God leads His children into trouble and anguish, they are then every time to produce a new branch on the tree of faith.
Whenever the Spirit of God appears it always presents a new out-growth, of which the noble image is exceedingly glad." ( Menschwerdung , cxi.
8.) p.
284 The conditions by which man is surrounded during his terrestrial life may not permit the effect of his spiritual unfoldment to become fully manifest during that time, but at the time of the death of the physical body, when the obstacles presented by the flesh disappear, then will the inner man enjoy his perfections.
"The celestial kingdom in the saints is active and conscious within their faith, whereby their will surrenders itself to God; but the natural life is surrounded by flesh and blood, and is related to the contrarium in the wrath of God.
Thus the soul is often in anguish when hell rushes upon her, and desires to manifest itself in her; but she sinks within the hope of divine grace, and stands like a beautiful rose among the thorns, until at the death of the body the kingdom of this world drops away from her.
Only then, when there is nothing more to hinder it, will she become truly manifest in the love of God." ( Supersensual Life , xxxix.) The object of our life should be to die continually in regard to our human selfhood, and to live only in the love of God, labouring in His service.
Thereby our activity will become blessed.
1 "I am not rejoicing because I am living within my own sense of self, but because in my selfhood I am in the death of Christ and am dying perpetually, and I wish to die entirely in regard to my selfhood, and to leave it entirely in God, so as to be nothing whatever except an instrument p.
285 of God, and know nothing any more about my (separate) self." ( Stiefel , xi.
527.) "Wherever self dwelleth not, there love has her dwelling.
In the tranquillity at the bottom of the soul, where she dies as to her own selfhood, and where she does not will anything except what God wills (in her), there love resides.
To the extent in which the self-will is dead within itself, to the same extent is the place occupied by love.
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.
Metaphors of drawing sap from a tree and producing new branches suggest spiritual transformation.
John of the Cross's stage of contemplative purgation: a felt absence and aridity of God that strips the soul of attachments to its own consolations en route to deeper union.
The text describes the soul in anguish when hell rushes upon her as a condition for spiritual growth.
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] The text emphasizes not willing anything except what God wills and leaving the self entirely in God.
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.
It is stated that to those who love God, all things are for the best and God leads His children.
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.
[auto] The passage explicitly calls for dying continually to human selfhood and wishing to die entirely in regard to the self.
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 passage discusses contemplation and the tranquillity of the soul as spiritual practices.
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).
[auto] The author states a desire to know nothing about the separate self and be nothing except an instrument of God.
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 man is described as enjoying perfections and becoming manifest in the love of God after death.