Jakob Böhme

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

From the will-less Unground the self-revealing God is born

Both personal and impersonalStated explicitly

Jakob Böhme places at the origin the Ungrund, the Unground: an eternal nothing, free of all determination, neither good nor evil as yet. In that abyss arises a will that longs to know itself and, to do so, gives itself a ground: thus the Trinity is begotten and, from it, eternal nature with its dark and luminous forces. The God who reveals himself is fully personal —Father, Son and Spirit, love and light overcoming wrath— but proceeds from a ground prior to all form. Böhme claims to have seen in his illumination of 1600 the ground and the Unground and the birth of the Trinity. Both aspects are true: the hidden deity and the manifested God.

Who am I? Is there a true self?

The soul is an eternal fire that must be reborn into light

A created, immortal soulStated explicitly

Jakob Böhme devoted his Forty Questions on the Soul (1620) to the subject. The soul proceeds from God's eternal nature: it is a spark of fire, a centre of will with the same dark and luminous forces that exist at the origin, and is therefore an image of the whole. After the fall, the human being lives in three principles: the dark fire of wrath, the light of love and the outer world of the elements. The self-will, the will closed upon itself, is what burns in wrath; the true self is the soul that abandons its own will and is reborn in Christ, in the light. The soul does not die: it remains in the principle in which it has fixed itself.

Why do we suffer?

The will that closes on itself suffers, burning in wrath

Separation from GodStated explicitly

Jakob Böhme looks for the origin of evil in eternal nature itself. In God there is a first dark principle, of fire and wrath, which in the deity is always overcome by the light of love. Lucifer, and later the human being, wanted to live in that fire by themselves, with a will of their own, and thus separated themselves from the light: hell is not an added place, but the wrath in which the will that turns from love locks itself. Suffering is the torment of that self-will. Hence the remedy is surrender (Gelassenheit): where self-love dies, God's will takes up the same space in the soul.

What happens after death?

At death the soul remains in the principle it has chosen

Eternal life and resurrectionStated explicitly

Jakob Böhme treats the soul's destiny in the Forty Questions on the Soul. When the outer body, made of the elements, dissolves, the soul remains in the principle in which it has fixed its will: if it has been reborn in Christ, in the light of love; if it has shut itself up in itself, in the dark fire of wrath, which is hell. This is not a place to which one is sent, but the manifestation of what the soul already was. Böhme keeps the Christian hope of resurrection and of the heavenly body, which the reborn person already begins to bear in this life as an inner spiritual substance.

How is liberation or salvation attained?

Rebirth: die to self-will so that Christ is born within

Through grace and loveStated explicitly

For Jakob Böhme, salvation is an inner new birth. The Way to Christ, his only book printed in his lifetime (1624), gathers treatises on true repentance, surrender and the supersensual life. The process begins with the conversion of the will: the soul recognises that it lives in the wrath of its self-will and turns toward God's mercy. Then comes Gelassenheit, self-abandonment, in which the will ceases to will on its own account. Then Christ is born in the soul as light and renews it. Böhme criticises reliance on a merely outward justification: without this rebirth, faith remains history and titles.

Is a teacher necessary?

A quarter-hour of light teaches more than years at university

The teacher is withinStated explicitly

Jakob Böhme, a shoemaker of Görlitz without university studies, recounts that after an inner struggle the gate was opened to him and in a quarter of an hour he saw and knew more than if he had spent many years at a university. His authority comes from no teacher and no school, but from the Spirit who teaches within. Hence his constant criticism of professional theologians and the «stone church», who know the history of Christ without having seen him born in themselves. Yet his Theosophical Letters show that he ended up acting as a guide for a circle of readers and friends, whom he always referred to their own experience of inner rebirth.

Is the world real?

Each thing bears the signature of what it is within

Manifestation of the divineStated explicitly

For Jakob Böhme, the visible world is the outward manifestation of the inner, eternal world. In De signatura rerum he maintains that every thing has a signature: its form, colour, taste and sound express the inner quality that formed it, as a person's face and voice reveal their mood. The outer world proceeds from the mingling of the two eternal principles, the dark and the luminous, and therefore good and evil are intertwined in it. It is real, but not ultimate: it is God's language, which the illuminated can read. The Mysterium magnum comments on Genesis as an account of that divine self-revelation.

What is love?

Where self-love is banished, the love of God dwells

What appears when the self ceasesStated explicitly

In the dialogue Of the Supersensual Life, the master explains to the disciple that the love of God and self-love exclude one another: where self-love is banished, there the love of God dwells, and as much of the self-will as has died, so much space does the divine will, which is love, occupy in the soul. Böhme further describes love as something that, in a sense, is nothing: it appropriates nothing, and therefore it is above all things and contains them. Whoever finds it finds it in the nothingness of their own will. Love is not a virtue the self cultivates, but what appears when the self-will surrenders.

Are we free, or is everything determined?

Freedom is rooted in the eternal Unground

Real free willStated explicitly

Jakob Böhme gives freedom a metaphysical foundation. The Ungrund, the Unground from which everything proceeds, is pure freedom, will without determination; and the human soul, born from eternal nature, retains something of that original freedom: it can turn toward the light of love or shut itself up in the fire of wrath. That is why in On the Election of Grace (1623) he combats the Calvinist doctrine of a predestination that would condemn some before they choose: God wills no one's evil, and each soul decides for the principle in which it wishes to live. Freedom is real and terrible: on it depends which fire the soul opens to.

Why meditate or pray?

Cease for a moment from thinking and willing to hear God

Being presentStated explicitly

In the dialogue Of the Supersensual Life, the disciple asks how to come to see God and hear him speak. The master answers that if he can cease for a moment from all his thinking and willing, he will hear the unspeakable words of God. The obstacle is one's own thinking and willing, which shuts the soul up in its self-image and in the noise of outward things; when that movement stops, even for an instant, the space opens where God speaks. Böhme also composed a prayer book, On Holy Prayer, for each day of the week, in which vocal prayer is a path toward that stillness of the will.

Can reason know the ultimate?

The Spirit's light reveals the ground of all beings

Esoteric knowledgeStated explicitly

Jakob Böhme claims a knowledge that comes not from books or school reason, but from illumination. In Aurora (1612) he recounts that, after assailing God with zeal, his spirit broke through the gates of hell to the innermost generation of the deity; in a letter of 1621 he adds that he saw and knew the being of all beings, the ground and the Unground, the birth of the Trinity and the origin of the world. That knowledge, which he calls theosophy, is expressed in a language of its own made of qualities, principles and signatures. Böhme insists that it is verifiable: whoever is reborn of the Spirit can see it for himself. Outer reason, without that rebirth, knows only the husk.

Withdraw from the world or transform it?

The outer man works; the inner man remains in God

Contemplation in actionStated explicitly

Jakob Böhme was neither monk nor cleric: he was a shoemaker, later a trader in gloves and wool, married and a family man in Görlitz, and wrote in the time his trade left him. His doctrine does not demand withdrawal from the world. In the dialogues of The Way to Christ, the master teaches the disciple that he may remain in his station and work with his hands and outer senses, while his will, surrendered to God, abides in the supersensual. What he rejects is outward religion of titles, disputes and the «stone church», and the confessional wars of his time. The change that matters is the inner new birth, lived in the midst of ordinary life.