Jakob Bohme
Jakob Bohme
Jakob Böhmewas a German Christian mystic and theologian. He was considered an original thinker by many of his contemporaries within the Lutheran tradition, and his first book, commonly known as Aurora, caused a great scandal. In contemporary English, his name may be spelled Jacob Boehme; in seventeenth-century England it was also spelled Behmen, approximating the contemporary English pronunciation of the German Böhme...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionTheologian
Date of Birth24 April 1575
CountryGermany
In this world, with thy earthly life, thou art under heaven, stars, and elements, also under hell and devils; all ruleth in thee, and over thee.
For God is himself the Being of all Beings, and we are as gods in him, through whom he revealeth himself.
You are at enmity with yourself.
In this light my spirit suddenly saw through all, and in and by all creatures, even in herbs and grass it knew God, who he is, and how he is, and what his will is: And suddenly in that light my will was set on by a mighty impulse, to describe the being of God.
When in such sadness I earnestly elevated my spirit into God and locked my whole heart and mind along with all my thoughts and will therein, ceaselessly pressing in with God's Love and Mercy, and not to cease until he blessed me? then after some hard storms my spirit broke through hell's gates into the inmost birth of the Godhead, and there I was embraced with Love as a bridegroom embraces his dear bride.
What kind of spiritual triumph it was I can neither write nor speak; it can only be compared with that where life is born in the midst of death, and is like the resurrection of the dead.
Whatever the self describes, describes the self.
The perfect state, the summum bonum, is Play. In play, life expresses itself in its fullness. God's life is play. Adam fell when his play became serious business .
Everything we see in nature is manifested truth; only we are not able to recognize it unless truth is manifest within ourselves.
In this light, my spirit saw through all things and into all creatures and I recognized God in grass and plants.
We are all strings in the concert of God's joy.
When thou art quiet and silent, then art thou as God was before nature and creature; thou art that which God then wats; thou art that whereof he made thy nature and creature: Then thou hearest and seest even with that wherewith God himself saw and heard in thee, before every thine own willing or thine own seeing began.
A shepherd, in whom the spirit of God works, is more highly esteemed before God than the wisest and most potent in self-wit, without the divine dominion.
When thou standest still from thinking and willing of self, the eternal hearing, seeing, and speaking will be revealed to thee, and so God heareth and seeth through thee. Thine own hearing, willing, and seeing hindereth thee, that thou dost not see nor hear God.