Chapter XXII (part 8)

Permanency also suffers no change of its nature, because it is not mingled with the unstable. And the beautiful there is beautiful, because it does not subsist in beauty (as in a subject). Each thing too is there p. 280 established, not as in a foreign land, but the seat of each thing is that which each thing is. . . . Nor is the thing itself different from the place in which it subsists. For the subject of it is intellect, and it is itself intellect . . . There each part always proceeds from the whole, and is at the same time each part and the whole. For it appears indeed as a part; but by him whose sight is acute, it will be seen as a whole . . . . There is likewise no weariness of the vision which is there, nor any plenitude of perception which can bring intuition to an end. For neither was there any vacuity, which when filled might cause the visive energy to cease; nor is this one thing, but that another, so as to occasion a part of one thing is not to be amicable with that of another. And the knowledge which is possible there is insatiable. . . . For by seeing itself more abundantly it perceives both itself and the objects of its perception to be infinite, it follows its own nature (in unceasing contemplation). The life there is wisdom; a wisdom not obtained by a reasoning process, because the whole of it always was, and is not in any respect deficient, so as to be in want of investigation. But it is the first wisdom, and is not derived from another. 1 Closely akin to Plotinus is Jacob Boehme, who was a common shoemaker in the German town of Goerlitz (end of the XVI and the beginning of the XVII century), and has left a whole series of remarkable writings in which he describes revelations vouchsafed him in moments of illumination. His first "illumination" occurred in 1600 A.D., when he was twenty-five years old. 2 Sitting one day in his room, his eyes fell upon a burnished pewter dish, which reflected the sunshine with such marvelous splendor that he fell into an inward ecstasy , and it seemed to him as if he could now look into the principles and deepest foundations of things. He believed that it was only a fancy, and in order to banish it from his mind he went out upon the green. But here he remarked that he gazed into the very heart of things, the very herbs and grass, and that actual nature harmonized with what he had inwardly seen. He said nothing of this to anyone, but praised and thanked God in silence. Of the first illumination Boehme's biographer says: "He learned to know the innermost foundation of nature, and acquire the capacity p. 281 to see henceforth with the eyes of the soul into the heart of all things, a faculty which remained with him even in his normal condition." About the year 1600, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, he was again surrounded by the divine light and replenished with the heavenly knowledge; insomuch as going abroad in the fields to a green before Neys Gate, at Goerlitz, he there sat down and, viewing the herbs and grass of the field in his inward light, he saw into their essences, use and properties, which were discovered to him by their lineaments, figures and signatures.