Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries Part 18

[49] _Wort und Geist_, p. 196 _seq._

[50] What could be a bolder criticism of the existing Church of his day than this: "In place of the wolf [the Roman Church] there has grown up the fox [the Lutheran Church] another anti-Christ, never a whit better than the first. If he should come to be old enough how he would devour the poor people's hens!"--_The Three Principles of the Divine Essence_, xviii. 102.

[51] _Mysterium magnum_, xxvii. 47.

[52] _Ibid._ xxviii. 49-51.

[53] _Mysterium magnum_, x.x.xvi. 34; xl. 98.

[54] _Ibid._ lxiii. 47-51; _Twenty-first Epistle_, 1.

[55] _Myst. mag._ xxv. 13.

[56] _The First Epistle_, 3-5.

[57] _Apology to Tilken_, ii. 298.

[58] _Ibid._ 72. Compare George Fox's testimony: "All must come to that Spirit, if they would know G.o.d or Christ or the Scriptures aright, which they that gave them forth were led and taught by."--_Journal_ (ed. 1901), i. 35 and _pa.s.sim_.

[59] _Sig. re._ xiv. i.

[60] _Myst. mag._ lxx. 40.

[61] _Fourth Epistle_, 27 and 32.

[62] _The Three Princ._ xxii. 2.

[63] _Aurora_, iii. 39.

{172}

CHAPTER X

BOEHME'S UNIVERSE

"If thou wilt be a philosopher or naturalist and search into G.o.d's being in Nature and discern how it all came to pa.s.s, then pray to G.o.d for the Holy Spirit to enlighten thee. In thy flesh and blood thou art not able to apprehend it, but dost read it as if a mist were before thy eyes. In the Holy Spirit alone, and in the whole Nature out of which all things were made, canst thou search into Nature."--_Aurora_, ii.

15-17.

One idea underlies everything which Boehme has written, namely, that n.o.body can successfully "search into visible Nature," or can say anything true about Man or about the problem of good and evil, until he has "apprehended _the whole Nature out of which all things were made_."

It will not do, he thinks, to make the easy a.s.sumption that in the beginning the world was made out of nothing. "If G.o.d made all things out of nothing," he says, "then the visible world would be no revelation of Him, for it would have nothing of Him in it. He would still be off beyond and outside, and would not be known in this world.

Persons however learned they may be, who hold such 'opinions' have never opened the Gates of G.o.d."[1]

Behind the visible universe and in it there is an invisible universe; behind the material universe and in it there is an immaterial universe; behind the temporal universe and in it there is an eternal universe, and the first business of the philosopher or naturalist, as Boehme conceives it, is to discover the essential Nature of this invisible, immaterial, eternal universe out of which this fragment of a visible world has come forth.

{173}

Need have we, Sore need, of stars that set not in mid storm, Lights that outlast the lightnings.[2]

The visible fragment is never self-explanatory; all attempts to account for what occurs in it drive the serious observer deeper for his answer, and with a breathless boldness this meditative shoemaker of Gorlitz undertakes to tell of the nature of this deeper World within the world.

As a boy he saw a vast treasury of wealth hidden in the inside of a mountain, though he could never make anybody else see it. As a man he believed that he saw an immeasurable wealth of reality hidden within the world of sense, and he tried, often with poor enough success, to make others see the inside world which he found. We must now endeavour to grasp what it was that he saw. There is no doubt at all that this inside world which he discovered within and behind visible Nature, within and behind man, is really there, nor is there any doubt in my mind that he, Jacob Boehme, got an insight into its nature and significance which is of real worth to the modern world, but he is seriously hampered by the poverty of his categories, by the difficulties of his symbolism and by his literary limitations, when he comes to the almost insuperable task of expressing what he has seen.

He is himself perfectly conscious of his limitations. He is constantly amazed that G.o.d uses such "a mean instrument," he regrets again and again that he is "so difficult to be understood," and he often wishes that he could "impart his own soul" to his readers that they "might grasp his meaning,"[3] for he never for a moment doubts that "by G.o.d's grace he has eyes of his own."[4] He lived in an unscientific age, before our present exact terminology was coined. He was the inheritor of the vocabulary and symbolism of alchemy and astrology, and he was obliged to force his spiritual insight into a language which for us has become largely an antique rubbish heap.[5] If he {174} had possessed the marvellous power that Dante had to compel words to express what his soul saw, he might have fused these artificial symbolisms with the fire of his spirit, and given them an eternal value as the Florentine did with the equally dry and stubborn terminology of scholasticism, but that gift he did not have.[6] We must not blame him too much for his obscurities and for his large regions of rubbish and confusion, but be thankful for the luminous patches, and try to seize the meaning and the message where it breaks through and gets revealed.

The outward, visible, temporal world, he declares, is "a spiration, or outbreathing, or egress" of an eternal spiritual World and this inner, spiritual World "couches within" our visible world and is its ground and mother, and the outward world is from husk to core a parable or figure of the inward and eternal World. "The whole outward visible world, with all its being, is a 'signature' or figure of the inward, spiritual World, and everything has a character that fits an internal reality and process, and the internal is in the external."[7] As he expresses the same idea in another book: "The visible world is a manifestation of the inward spiritual World, and it is an image or figure of eternity, whereby eternity has made itself visible."[8]

But there is a still deeper Source of things than this inward spiritual World, which is after all a manifested and organized World, and Boehme begins his account with That which is before beginnings--the unoriginated Mother of all Worlds and of All that is, visible and invisible. This infinite Mother of all births, this eternal Matrix, he calls the _Ungrund_, "Abyss," or the "Great {175} Mystery,"[9] or the "Eternal Stillness." Here we are beyond beginnings, beyond time, beyond "nature," and we can say nothing in the language of reason that is true or adequate. The eternal divine Abyss is its own origin and explanation; it presupposes nothing but itself; there is nothing beyond it, nothing outside it--there is, in fact, no "beyond" and "outside"--it is "neither near nor far off."[10] It is an absolute Peace, an indivisible Unity, an undifferentiated One--an Abysmal Deep, which no Name can adequately name and which can be described in no words of time and s.p.a.ce, of here and now.

But we must not make the common blunder of supposing that Boehme means that _before_ G.o.d expressed Himself and unfolded Himself in the infinite processes of revelation and creation, He existed apart, as this undifferentiated One, this unknowable Abyss, this incomprehensible Matrix. There is no "before." Creation, revelation, manifestation is a dateless and eternal fact. G.o.d to be a personal G.o.d must go out of Himself and find Himself in something that mirrors Him. He must have a Son. He must pour His Life and Love through a universe. What Boehme means, then, is that no manifestation, no created universe, no expression, is the ultimate Reality itself. The manifested universe has come out of More than itself. The Abyss is more than anything, or all, that comes out of it, or can come out of it, and it lies with its infinite depth beneath everything which appears, as a man's entire life, conscious and unconscious, is in and yet lies behind every act of will, though we can "talk about" only what is voiced or expressed.

Even within this Abysmal Depth, that underlies all that comes to being, there is eternal process--eternal movement toward Personality and Character: "G.o.d is the eternal Seeker and Finder of Himself."[11] "In the {176} Stillness an eternal Will arises, a longing desire for manifestation, the eye of eternity turns upon itself and discovers itself"[12]--in a word there is within the infinite Divine Deep an eternal process of self-consciousness and personality, which Boehme expresses in the words, "The Father eternally generates the Son." "G.o.d hath no beginning and there is nothing sooner than He, but His Word hath a bottomless, unfathomable origin in Him and an eternal end: which is not rightly called _end_, but Person, _i.e._ the Heart of the Father, for it is generated in the eternal Centre."[13] This inner process toward Personality is often called by Boehme "the eternal Virgin" who brings to birth G.o.d as Person, or sometimes "the Mirror,"

in which G.o.d sees Himself revealed as will and wisdom and goodness.

In the greatest artistic creation of the modern world--"The Sistine Madonna"--Raphael has with almost infinite pictorial power of genius tried to express in visible form this Birth of G.o.d. Behind curtains which hang suspended from nowhere and stretch across the universe, dividing the visible from the invisible, the world of Nature from the world of holy mystery, the infinite, immeasurable and abysmal G.o.d is pictured as defined and personal in the face and figure of a little Child, in which the artist suggests in symbolism the infinite depth and joy and potency of Divinity breaking forth out of mystery into form.

It is precisely this birth of G.o.d into visibility that Boehme is endeavouring to tell. "The Son," however, Boehme says, "is not divided or sundered from the Father, as two persons side by side--there are not two G.o.ds. The Son is the heart of the Father--G.o.d as Person--the outspringing Joy of the total triumphing Reality,[14] and through this eternal movement toward self-consciousness and Personality, G.o.d becomes Spirit, an out-going energy of purpose, a dynamic activity, bursting forth into infinite manifestation and differentiation--a forth-breathed or expressed Word.[15] Through {177} this eternal process of self-differentiation and outgoing activity, the inner spiritual universe comes into being--as an intermediate Nature or world, between the ineffable Abyss of G.o.d on the one hand, and our world of material, visible things on the other hand." "The process of the whole creation," he says, "is nothing else but a manifestation of the deep and unsearchable G.o.d, and yet creation is not G.o.d but rather like an apple which springs from the power of the tree and grows upon the tree, and yet is not the tree--even so all things have sprung forth out of the central divine Desire."[16]

This entire manifested or out-breathed universe is, he says, the expression of the divine desire for holy sport and play. The Heart of G.o.d enjoys this myriad play of created beings, all tuned as the infinite strings of a harp for contributing to one mighty harmony, and all together uttering and voicing the infinite variety of the divine purpose. Each differentiated spirit or light or property or atom of creation has a part to play in the infinite sport or game or harmony, "so that in G.o.d there might be a holy play through the universe as a child plays with his mother, and that so the joy in the Heart of G.o.d might be increased,"[17] or again, "so that each being may be a true sounding string in G.o.d's harmonious concert."[18]

This eternal, interior World--the Mirror in which the Spirit manifests Himself--is a double world of darkness and light, for there can be no manifestation except through opposites.[19] There must be yes and no.

In order to have a play there must be opposing players. In order to have life and reality there must be conflict and conquest. As soon as the forth-going Word of G.o.d is differentiated into many concrete expressions and the fundamental Unity of the Abyss is broken up into particular desires and wills, there is bound to be a clash of opposites--will and contra-will, strain and tension, light and joy and beauty, and over against them pain and sorrow and evil. Evil must appear as soon as there is {178} process of separation, differentiation, variety, specialization and particularity.[20]

Darkness appears as soon as there is a contraction or narrowing into concrete desire and will.

Both worlds--the light world and the dark world--are made by desire and will. Narrowing desires for individual and particular aims, which sever a being from the total whole of divine goodness, make the kingdom of darkness, while death to self-will and a yearning desire and will for all that is expressed in the Heart and Light of G.o.d, in the Person of His Son, make the kingdom of Light. Lucifer--the awful example of the dark World--fell because he stood in pride and despised the Birth of the Heart of G.o.d and its gentle, universalizing love-spirit; and so his light went out into darkness. His climbing up into a severed will was his fall. The more he climbed toward the sundered aim of his own will and turned away from the Heart of G.o.d, the greater was his fall, for to turn away from the Heart of G.o.d is always to fall.[21] There is no darkness, no evil, in angel or devil or man, except the nature of that particular being's own will and desire--both darkness and light are born of desire. The origin of the fall of any creature, therefore, is not outside that creature, but within it.[22]

The evil in the world is only a possible good spoiled. Beings created for a holy sport and play, for an ordered harmony, as infinite harp-strings for a celestial music, set their wilful desires upon sundered ends, broke the intended harmony, or "temperature," as Boehme calls it, introduced strife--the _turba magna_--and darkness, and so spoiled the actual material out of which the kingdoms of nature are made, for the att.i.tude of will moulds the permanent structure of the being. Through the whole universe, visible and invisible, as a result, the dark lines run, and the drama of the whole process of the universe is the mighty issue between light and darkness, good and evil: Two universal qualities persist from {179} beginning to end and produce two kingdoms arrayed against each other--each within the other--one love, the other wrath; one light, the other darkness; one heavenly, the other h.e.l.lish.[23]

Now out of this inner spiritual universe--a double universe of light and darkness--this temporal, visible, more or less material, world has come forth, as an outer sheath of an inner world, and, like its Mother, it, too, is a double world of good and evil. "There is not," as William Law, interpreting Boehme, once said, "the smallest thing or the smallest quality of a thing in this world, but is a quality of heaven or h.e.l.l discovered [_i.e._ revealed] under a temporal form. Every thing that is disagreeable to taste, to the sight, to our hearing, smelling or feeling has its root and ground and cause in and from h.e.l.l [the dark kingdom], and is as surely in its degree the working and manifestation of h.e.l.l in this world, as the most diabolical malice and wickedness is; the stink of weeds, of mire, of all poisonous, corrupted things; shrieks, horrible sounds; wrathful fire, rage of tempests and thick darkness, are all of them things that had no possibility of existence, till the fallen angels disordered their kingdom [_i.e._ until the inner universe was spoiled by narrow, sundered desires].

Therefore everything that is disagreeable and horrible in this life, everything that can afflict and terrify our senses, all the kinds of natural and moral evil, are only so much of the nature, effects and manifestation of h.e.l.l, for h.e.l.l and evil are only two words for one and the same thing. . . . On the other hand, all that is sweet, delightful and amiable in the world, in the serenity of air, the fineness of seasons, the joy of light, the melody of sounds, the beauty of colours, the fragrance of smells, the splendour of precious stones, is nothing else but heaven breaking through the veil of this world, manifesting itself in such a degree and darting forth in such variety so much of its own nature."[24]

I have spoken so far as though Boehme traced the {180} source of every thing to _will and desire_, as though, in fact, the visible universe were the manifold outer expression of some deep-lying personal will, and in the last a.n.a.lysis that is true, but his more usual form of interpretation is that of the working of great structural _tendencies_, or _energies_, or "_qualities_," as he calls them, which are common both to the inner and the outer universe. There are, he declares again and again with painful reiteration, but with little advance of lucidity, seven of these fundamental laws or energies or qualities, like the sevenfold colour-band of the rainbow, though they can never be untangled or sundered or thought of as standing side by side, for together in their unity and interprocesses they form the universe, with its warp and woof of light and darkness.[25]

The first "quality" is a contracting, compacting tendency which runs through the entire universe, outer and inner. It is in its inmost essence _desire_, the egoistic tendency, the focusing of will upon a definite aim so that consciousness contracts from its universal and absolute possibilities to a definite, limited, concrete _something in particular_, and thus negates everything else. Desire always disturbs the "Quiet" and brings contraction, negation and darkness. In the outer world it appears as the property of cohesion which makes the particles of a particular thing hold and cling together and form one self-contained and separate thing. It is the individualizing tendency which permeates the universe and which may be expressed either as a material law in the outer world, or as personal will-tendency in the inner world.

The second "quality" is the attractive, gravitating tendency which binds whole with whole as an organizing, universalizing energy. This, again, is both spiritual and physical--it has an outer and an inner aspect. It is a fundamental love-principle in the inner world--the {181} foundation, as Boehme says, of sweetness and warmth and mercy[26]--and at the same time is a structural, organizing law of nature, which tends out of many parts to make one universe.[27]

These two diverse tendencies at work eternally in the same world produce strain and tension and _anguish_. The tension occasioned by these opposite forces gives rise to the third "quality," which is a tendency toward movement, oscillation, rotation--what Boehme often calls _the wheel of nature_, or the wheel of motion, or the wheel of life.[28] This, too, is both outer and inner; a law of the physical world and a tendency of spirit. There is nothing in nature that is not ceaselessly moved, and there is no life without its restlessness and anguish, its inward strain and stress, its tension and its problem, its dizzy wheel of life--the perpetual pursuit of a goal which ends at the starting-point as an endless circular process.

The fourth "quality" is the _flash_, or ignition, due to collision between nature and spirit, in which a new principle of activity breaks through what before was mere play of _forces_, and reveals something that has activity in itself, the kindling, burning power of fire, though not yet fire which gives _light_. In the outer world it is the bursting forth of the elemental, fusing, consuming powers of Nature which may either construct or destroy. In the inner world it is the birth of self-consciousness on its lower levels, the awaking of the soul, the kindling of pa.s.sion, and desire, and purpose. Any one of these four lower "qualities" may stay at its own level, remain in itself, out of "temperature" or balance with the rest, and so be only a "dark principle"; or it may go on and fulfil itself in one of the higher "qualities" next to be described, and so become a part of the triumphing "light principle." Fire may be only a "fire of anguish" or it may go up into a "fire of love"; it may be a harsh, {182} self-tormenting fire, or it may be a soft, light-bringing, purifying fire. Suffering may harden the spirit, or it may be the condition of joy. Crucifixion may be mere torture, or it may be the way of salvation. It is then here at the _great divide_ between the "qualities" that the universe reveals its differentiation into two kingdoms--"the dark" and "the light."

The fifth "quality" is Light, springing out of the "flash" of fire and rising to the level of illumination and the revelation of beauty. It is at this stage of Light that the lower force-forms and fire-forms first stand revealed in their full meaning and come to their real fulfilment. On its inner or spiritual side this Light-quality is an "amiable and blessed Love." It is the dawn and beginning of the triumphing spirit of freedom which wills to draw all things back to one centre, one harmony, one unity, in which wild will and selfish pa.s.sion and isolating pride, and all that springs from the dark fire-root are quenched, and instead the central principle of the spiritual world--Love--comes into play.

Boehme calls his sixth "quality" voice or sound, but he means by it the entire range of intelligent expression through tone and melody, music and speech, everything in the world, in fact, that gives joy and beauty through purposeful utterance. He even widens his category of "sound"

to include colours and smells and tastes, in short, all the sense-qualities by which the world gets revealed in its richness of beauty and harmony to our perception. He widens it, too, to include deeper and subtler tones than those of our earth-born sense--the heavenly sports and melodies and harmonies which the rightly attuned spirit may hear with a finer organ than the ear.

The seventh, and final, "quality" is body or figure, by which he means the fundamental tendency or energy toward expression in actuality and concrete form. The final goal of intelligent purpose is the realization of wisdom, of idea, in actual Nature-forms and life-forms--the _incarnation of the spirit_. There is nothing real in the {183} universe but has its form, its "signature," its figure, its body-aspect: "There is not anything but has its soul and its body, and each soul is as it were an inner kernel, or seed, to a visible and comprehensible body,"[29] and, as we shall see, the supreme achievement of the universe is the visible appearance of the Word of G.o.d, the eternal Son, in flesh like ours--a visible realization in time of the eternal Heart of G.o.d. The glory of G.o.d appears in a kingdom of G.o.d, a visible vesture of the Spirit.