The mysticism of Jacob Boehme with special reference to some of the psychodynamic factors involved

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Content THE MYSTICISM OF JACOB BOEHME WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE
TO SOME OF THE PSYCHODYNAMIC FACTORS INVOLVED
A Thesis ,
I
Presented to
the Faculty of the Graduate School |
The University of Southern California I
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
by
James Forrester
June 1952
UMI Number: EP65206
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D i ssi r t at t en P u b l i s h i n g
UMI EP65206
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MASTER OF ARTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS I
!
CHAPTER page]
I. MYSTICISM.............................. ll
General orientation ................ . 1
Towards a definition ................ 9
The contemporary resurgence ........ 11
An interpretation.................... 13
II. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL.................. 19
Personal history of Jacob Boehme . . . 19,
The historical context .............. 3%
Specific intellectual and religious !
influences affecting Boehme ........ 38
Literary output ...................... 4l
III. THE PROBLEMS INVOLVED IN UNDERSTANDING
BOEHME.............................. 44
Literary and verbal obscurity ........ 44
The problem of logic and symbolism . . 49
The problem of the scientific method
in relation to the mystical
experience........................ 59
IV. BOEHME*S SYSTEM OF THOUGHT ............ 69
General survey ...................... 69
The basic concept of the Ungrund ... 73:
God and nature...................... 80
ill,
CHAPTER PAQEi
!
Redemption 88 j
V. A PSYCHODYNAMIC VIEW OP BOEHME......... 95
Relation between psychology and
religious experience .............. . 95
The clinical picture ........ 105
VI. THE INFLUENCE OF BOEHME............... 119
Germany......... 120
England ............................ 122
VII. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS................ 12?
I
BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................... 133
INTRODUCTION
This thesis will deal with the system of thought
which permeated the writings of the important, but infre
quently discussed, Protestant mystic Jacob Boehme. The
object of the thesis is not only to collocate some of the
widely dispersed source material of a biographical, theo
logical and metaphysical nature but to attempt to view the
experience and thought of Boehme against the background of
his own time and to interpret these in a contemporary
idiom. The mystic himself will be viewed as a dynamic
human personality, a self-conscious self, attempting to
relate personal, inter-personal and superpersonal values
meaningfully to an ultimate and abiding reality. This
abiding reality for Boehme is a matter of direct intuition
in the mystical experience. It became the dominant in
terest of his life to particularize and express symboli
cally and systematically the insights which he attributed
to his mystical experiences. These experiences might be
described as a *gestalt* of reality which appears as a
kind of ultimate Platonic universal.
There are problems of approach to the mysticism of
Boehme which it is vitally important to assess. Condi
tioned, as the average American university graduate student
is, to the rigors of the empirical method in all areas of
V
investigation, including the psychological, and to the
proposition that the conclusions of any system of ir
rationalism are invalid, mysticism is very often either
arbitrarily relegated to the category of an illusory ex
perience or its investigation is studiously avoided.
Related to the problem of the-empirical method in
its application to mysticism are also the problems of
language and logic. With large practical benefits in
technological terms to demonstrate its merits the west is
emotionally committed in its logic and symbolism to give an
absolute status to the law of identity. There is some
necessity to reexamine our assumptions in this regard as
Korzybskl would suggest.^ Our contact with oriental phil
osophy, especially in the area of metaphysics, forces this
upon us and no adequate treatment of mysticism, either
oriental or occidental can avoid the issue without viola
tion of intellectual integrity. Logic and symbolism have
developed within literate history from the recognition of
the Aristotelian syllogism to the logical Insights of Bacon
and the modern use of inductive logic. Perhaps the next
expansion of Insight will accommodate the offerings of
religious consciousness and provide the larger synthesis we
^ Korzybski, A., Science and Sanity (New York:
Science Press, 1941).
Vi
need to account for an expanding experience.
This study has been undertaken because it is felt
that the impact of Boehme in the subsequent development of
western philosophical thought, upon specific Protestant
movements and literature has not been fully documented.
This failure to recognize the source of inspiration has
arisen mainly by reason of the difficulties which are in
herent in his language, his lack of amenity to formal
academic classification and the paucity of biographical
information about him. It is hoped also by applying some
contemporary psychodynamic insights that a contribution |
will be made towards an understanding of the religious
phenomenon of mysticism.
In this discussion, except in quoted passages, the
name Boehme will be used. It should be observed however,
that amongst his commentators there is a wide variation in
usage the most common of which are Behmen, Beem, Behraont,
Behem, Bohm, Bemen and Bohme. Boehme*s original writing
was done in High Dutch. Primary source material for the
study has been used from English translation by Sparrow,
Ellistone, Rhys Davis, Stoudt and Earle, from the German
by Schiebler and from the French by St. Martin. In
secondary source material, the commentators who have
helped to interpret the meaning of Boehme*s writings are
Vlll
I
conspicuously F. Hartmann, J.J. Stoudt, A.J. Fenny, H.H. i
i
Brinton, A. Koyre, H. Bornkamra, A. Whyte and R.M. Jones.
The biographical material has been compiled from Martensen,
Hartmann, Hobhouse, Brinton, Jones, Cheney and the ex
cellent article by G.W. Allen in the Encyclopaedia of Re
ligion and Ethics as well as from Michaud*s Biographie
Universelle and other encyclopaedic sources.
CHAPTER I
I
J
MYSTICISM ’
I. GEmRAL ORIENTATION
The thought and experience of Jacob Boehme cannot be
isolated from the total context of the mystical tradition
as it has come to be identified and classified. Although !
I
the word mysticism has been used to describe religious
aberrations, hypnotic trances , hysteric manifestations and ,
occultism in its various forms, there is amongst serious I
students of religious experience the understanding that j
mysticism does not connote these things. Every writer of j
importance in the field of religious mysticism is plagued
with the necessity of recovering the term from its popular
abuses. This is true in the writings of Dean Inge, Evelyn .
Underhill, Margaret Smith, Sheldon Cheney, Dorn Butler,
Rufus Jones and Alan Watts.
As it is to be understood in this discussion, mysti
cism can be defined with some measure of precision. Par
from being a general category into which all miscellaneous
religious experiences which defy rational explanation with-
1
in the limits of the traditional empirical method can be
thrown, it is to be regarded as having specific and re- |
[
cognizable characteristics. Mysticism as a type of human
2
experience is as old as literate history. It appears in
primitive religions as well as in the more advanced forms
of both East and West. Chinese Taoism, Zen Buddhism,
Hinduism, Persian Sufism, Hebrew Prophetism and Christianity,
have found expression for some adherents in mystical ex
periences which, while manifesting doctrinal and theologi
cal diversity, have common philosophical and psychological '
characteristics. Rufus Jones considers mysticism to be
"undoubtedly one of the original grounds of personal re-
1 !
ligion." I
I
The existence of such writings as Buckets Cosmic j
i
Consciousness, Cheney*s Men Who Have Walked With God. j
Kepler*8 The Fellowship of the Saints. Vaughan's Hours with
the Mystics, and Marquette's Comparative Mysticism, to cite
only a few important examples, is evidence that a minimum
criterion is recognized as providing a definitive basis for
classification. This, it will be recognized, is always a
preliminary step towards scientific formulation in any
field of investigation and suggests a productive, if perhaps
belated, beginning towards a more intelligent understanding
of the mystical experience in religion. All scientific
^ Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.
Vol. IX, p. 83.
3 ,
I
development has proceeded from the raw data of uncritically|
examined human experience of the phenomenal universe.
Prom the wealth of general material in the field of
mysticism as viewed without partiality for racial stock or
for doctrinal preference, a tentative, working definition
can be posited. Mysticism may be defined as the intuitive
and emotive apprehension of metaphysical reality. The ex
periences which accompany and are subsequent to this ap
prehension are, according to the testimony of the mystics,
of a deeply satisfying nature. Uniformly this testimony
suggests that for the mystic basic personality needs have
been met at the affective and intellectual levels. By way |
of objective evidence mystics have, in the main, shown ,
characteristics of personality integration, have shown
characteristics of poise, of outgoing social adjustment and*
I
a remarkable degree of objectivity.
Butler, in his Western Mysticism remarks
"It has been asserted strongly that the great
mystics were not religiously mad; nor were they
pious dreamers: far from it— they were, most of
them, peculiarly sane and strong men and women
who left their mark, many of them for good in
history."2
f
Admittedly the evaluation of personality characteristics ofi
^ Dom C. Butler, Western Mysticism (New York: Con
stable and Co., 1922), p. 4'.
4
the medieval mystics from this vantage point in the twen
tieth century is extremely difficult or impossible. We
cannot project ourselves with any adequacy into the context
of their times to understand the pressures and emotional
insecurities to which they were subject, nor can we assess
the adequacy of their psychological insights. Some would
by our standards be considered healthy minded, others would;
be classified as neurotics and still others as psychotics,
The question is then, by what criteria will one who claims |
1
the mystical experience be admitted to a non-pathological i
group? Would Jacob Boehme qualify? j
Various criteria have been used by students of mys
ticism to restrict the limits of what is to be called true
mysticism. Dean Inge passes judgment upon a certain kind
of alleged mystical manifestation and in a negative way
sets up a basis for exclusion.
There are some who connect the word mysticism
with what the older Catholic writers call mystical
phenomena or supernatural favors— mysterious sights,
sounds, and smells, 'boisterous* fits of weeping,
cataleptic trances, stigmata, apparitions and the
like. These results belong rather to psychology and
psychopathy than to religion. The best mystics do
not encourage those who expect and value them. They
are not often experienced in our time and descrip- i
tions of them are likely to prejudice the reader i
against the contemplative life which has no necessary
connection with abnormal psychical states.^
The Roman Catholic Church writers tend to make theo
logical orthodoxy the criterion of mysticism and disregard
the bizarre emotional extravagancies which were evident in
the lives of some who are classified as Christian mystics.
Michael Williams, for example, in the introduction to a
very useful anthology says.
The design of this book is traced, then, by the
intention to provide insight into the traditional
Christian concept, method and personal experience
of the spiritual life. Doctrinal agreement on the
essential principles of the Catholic Faith is more
or less assumed--even in the case of those, authors
who were not members of the Mother Church.^
Kepler in The Fellowship of the Saints uses a ten
point scale as a basis for the selection of his one hundred
and thirty-seven mystics. He does not, of course, suggest ;
that no others could be included, but he does limit the
group to the Christian tradition. The limitation is on a
much broader basis than the Roman Catholic view. These
points as abstracted from his discussion are as follows:
1. Intense love
^ W. R. Inge, Mysticism in Religion (Chicago: Uni- j
versity of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 13. 1
I
^ Michael Williams, Anthology of Christian Classical!
Literature (New Yofk: Tudor Publishing Co., 1937), P* xvi.
2. Joyous freedom
3. Chrlstlikeness
4. Desire to help the needy
5. Practical genius for living with men in
unchristian society
6. Faith that the Kingdom of God can come into
history
7. A continuous humility
8. Hope that every man will become a brother
9. Social activity to save the world, not escape
from it
10. A transparency through which light shines to
others^
Jones, who acknowledges the presence of pathological
elements, occultism and inordinate asceticism in many who
make the claim to the mystical experience, denies that
these manifestations are necessary concomitants of the
higher levels of the mystic way. He sets up the following
six criteria of verification:
1. "The life of the person takes on new depth."
2. "There is a marked increase in unity and
coherence in the person."
3. "The whole nature is fructified."
4. "Mystical experiences refashion the re
cipient's active attitude towards all that
constitutes life."
5. "It becomes possible not only to vote for
a larger total universe of good, but even. . .
to make a creative contribution to that
universe of good."
6. "it. . .has the same marks of self-tran
scendence that go with other supreme values
of life— beauty, truth, love and goodness."8
5 Thomas S. Kepler, The Fellowship of the Saints
(New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 194877
^ Rufus M. Jones, New Studies in Religious Mysticism
(New York: MacMillan Co., 1927), pp. 21-22.
7
In the effort to set up criteria by which to deter
mine what is really mysticism it is recognized that the
degree of precision can never in the nature of the case
I
approach that of the physical sciences, but such a condi
tion does not necessarily invalidate the attempt. The fact
is that over the centuries of human history in every gen
eration numbers of rational and emotionally mature persons
have claimed an experience which can in a minimal way be
described as a self-validating, intuitive grasp of the
Whole which, while it exceeds the limits of intellectual
symbolizing has an essential reality which cannot be denied.
Writers like Cheney and Bucke include mystics both within j
and beyond the Christian tradition.' Any attempt to arrive
at a reasonable and complete conception of the universe of
experience must include all known and observable experi- ,
ences. The mystical experience to which some lay claim may!
be illusory from the standpoint of its metaphysics and
logic, as Bertrand Russell would suggest, but it cannot be
dismissed without serious and scholarly treatment. This
discussion is limited to the investigation of one example
*7 !
' R.M. Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness (New York: E.P, '
Dutton and Co., 1948).
Sheldon Cheney, Men Who Have Walked with.God (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 19^8).
8
of mysticism in the experience of Jacob Boehme but his ex
perience may be taken as typical of all mysticism in its
minimal definition.
It is obvious from a comparative study of mysticism
that the experience is itself prior to the theological and
philosophical formulation. The mystical experience, insofar
as it is a conscious one and insofar as it affects the per
sonality and behavior of the mystic, is a matter for psy
chological investigation. It can only be expressed and
described in the idiom which is available to the mystic in
his particular temporal and intellectual context. The
I
particular metaphysical structure which emerges from the i
experience is a philosophical problem, but the experience
itself remains as a reportable fact regardless of the phil
osophical validity or invalidity of the metaphysics. Like-,
wise is it true that the theological elaboration is not
essential to the experience but the mystic feels it usually
incumbent upon himself to clothe his experience with the
symbolism of his own religious community. Jacob Boehme, as
will be pointed out, struggled laboriously to express him
self in the orthodox language of Reformation Lutheranism.
Outside of the Christian tradition the same situation
obtains whether in the context of Buddhism, Hinduism, I
8
SufiSHi or Judaism.
II. TOWARDS A DEFINITION
A minimal definition of the mystical experience in
terms of these considerations can now be attempted. There
are numerous classical definitions of mysticism such as are
offered by Inge, Underhill and Hocking but for purposes of
this discussion it seems better to formulate one rather
than to list a series written for the most part prior to
the maturing of modern theological and psychological in- •
sights. This is not to discount the validity or the use- j
fulness of older definitions or to deny that there is any j
9 '
similarity.
Summarizing the argument up to this point, mysticism
may be regarded as the dynamic experience of a person who ;
testifies to an intuitive and emotional apprehension of
ultimate reality but which experience cannot be adequately
symbolized in any affirmative terms which would have a one !
to one correspondence with the actuality of the experience.
The ultimate reality is not known in terras of a static
o
Jacques de Marquette, Introduction to Comparative
Mysticism (New York: Philosophical Library, 19^9).
^ W.R. Inge, op.. cit.
10
philosophical abstraction but in terms of a dynamic inter
acting presence. The mystic testifies to an awareness of
this spiritual reality which is as vivid as any experience
of the phenomenal world.
The result of the mystical experience is the abate
ment of enervating tensions and the release of energy for
creative adjustment to the objective world. Of the effects
upon personality of the mystical experience Jones says.
The personality-building effect of mystical ex
perience is one of the most notable results that flow
from it. I am not thinking now merely of the effect
on the physical health of the person. That in most
cases is a striking result. Mystical experiences
have in a multitude of instances been curative. It
is what one would expect to happen. The calming of
the mind, the increase of serenity within, would
normally bring order and health to the body, and that
is a usual sequence. But I am dealing here with the
creative expansion of the entire personality. Eckhart
glowed with the urge of a tremendous new life-impulse.
He became quiveringly alive with powerful vitality.
There was a gushing in, a welling up, of new and
constructive life-forces— an élan vital plainly
operating in him.
It is unmistakable in the lives of Jacob Boehme
and George Fox. Of the latter William Penn wrote:
'He was a new and heavenly-minded man— a divine and
a naturalist and all of God Almighty's making.' A
contemporary says of Jacob Boehme that 'his eyes
lighted up like the windows of Solomon's Temple, and
his spirit was highly illuminated of God beyond any
thing Nature could produce.'. . . The experiences I
have been interpreting work transforming and perman
ent life-effects. They construct personality, equip
for a mission, fuse persons into more dynamic groups
and conduce to the increased power of the race.
Energy to live by actually comes to these persons
from somewhere. The universe in some sort backs and
11
confirms their experience. The mystics even in the
dark epochs in which they have usually flourished
best have been, as one would expect they would be,
strikingly optimistic or at least full of hope. . . .
But the most striking effect of the sense of contact
with God is the immensely heightened quality of per
sonality that goes with the experience and the in
creased effectiveness of the person as an organ of
spiritual service. . . . Under the creative impact ;
of their experience they have become hundred-horse- j
power persons, with a unique striking force against ‘
gigantic forms of evil and with a remarkable quality
of leadership in the Church and in the world.
III. THE CONTEMPORARY RESURGENCE
This thesis is developed against a background of
contemporary interest in medieval philosophy and oriental
and Christian mysticism. Although it is beyond the immedi
ate scope of this paper to uncover the complex social,
economic, political, psychological and religious reasons
for such a resurgence of intellectual activity with respect
to man's relationship to ultimate Reality, the fact itself
has some relevance to the discussion. Historical periods
which show a large literary output in the area of practical
and theoretical mysticism have been times of widespread
insecurity and of disillusionment. It could be demonstrated
that the emergence of this interest has a direct relation
ship to the stage of development to which a particular
H.E. Posdick, Rufus M. Jones Speaks To Our Times
(New York: MacMillan and Co., 1951}> PP* 138-139•
121
civilization has come. Spengler, Sorokin, Toynbee and
t
I
Berdyaev speak with unanimity when they delineate the ;
crisis nature of contemporary history. Spengler»s Per Un-
tergang des Ahenlandes may have had elements of prophetic
truth for in some definable aspects the West is moving to
its death. The broad generalizations of the theorists
which end in pessimism, however, do not take into account
the power of ideals, the increment from developing techno
logy and the creative adaptations of free and objective
minds. The old and inadequate may perish in the heat of
crisis, but, while still the requiems are being chanted,
11
the cry of new life is heard in the streets. j
The resurgent interest in mysticism in the first '
half of the twentieth century is attested by the basic ;
studies of Baron F. Von Hugel's The Mystical Elements of ;
Religion, Dean W.R. Inge's Christian Mysticism. Evelyn
Underhill's Mysticism. Dom Cuthbert Butler's Western Mysti-
cism, Nicolas Berdyaev's Spirit and Reality. Rufus M.
Jones' New Studies in Mystical Religion, William E. Hock
ing 's The Meaning of God in Human Experience, Rudolph
Otto's Mysticism East and West and H.L. Bergson's Les Deux
Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, I918).
13 i
Sources de la Morale et de la Religion. In addition to i
these general studies there are notable psychological con
tributions by scholars of such eminence as William James,
Carl G. Jung, James B. Pratt, Gordon Allport and J'.H. Leuba.
These years have been prolific also in anthologies and
manuals of spiritual devotion consisting of selections from
the writings of the outstanding mystics in the traditions
of both East and West. There have been numerous commen
tators and biographers who have lifted mystics who might
have been obscured in history into new prominence. Jacob
Boehme has received increasing attention as a result of
studies developed by Alexander Whyte, J.J. Stoudt, Heinrich:
Bomkamm, Howard H. Brinton and Stephen Hobhouse.
IV. AN INTERPRETATION
!
The influence of Jacob Boehme upon a poet like John
Milton, a religious genius like William Law, a scientist
like Isaac Newton and a philosopher like Hegel to mention
only four from the large group who admit the effect of his
religio-philosophical views, suggests that he did offer a
synthesis for troubled times which had some value. Axio
matic in the understanding of human progress is always the
grasp men have of ultimate Reality. The scientific method |
has been prolific in the production of means. Perhaps the i
14 ,
temper of the tiroes religiously is set by the inherent ;
necessity to discover ends towards which to direct the
multiplied means of western culture, to find meanings and
goals in terms of a new and broader synthesis, and to re
cover some assurance of an enduring basis for moral values.
In The Next Development in Man, L.L. Whyte, suggests
that the deepest troubles of civilization are due to re
liance on a language of permanence.
To be alive is to undergo ceaseless change . . .
the clue to the unity of nature lies in the prin
ciple of development.12
He welcomes the apparent failures, for "thought is
bom of failure" and he sees contemporary restlessness as
the unending search for unity in diversity and continuing |
attempts to "form a cosmos from a chaos.Alan Watts
finds Western civilization lacking any unifying principle.
He does not feel that such a principle of integration can
be found at the level of the scientific, political and
economic thinking of men, but in a common agreement as to
the basic meaning of life, he finds that social and cultural
unity are expressions of spiritual unity and the under-
!
standing of the ultimate nature of Reality and the destiny j
!
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ j
L.L. Whyte, The Next Development In Man (New York: !
Henry Holt and Co., 194S), p. xi. j
Ibid.. p. 1, 15.
is]
t
of man are of supreme importance.
Western culture seems at the moment spiritually
disintegrated beyond hope of reconstruction, and
perhaps the best that may be expected is that in its
final collapse it may give birth to a new culture,
much as it had its own origin in the waning Classi
cal culture of the Roman Empire.14
Watts has the conviction that the knowledge of
Reality which is necessary is "neither religious belief,
philosophical speculation, nor scientific theory." He means,
"the actual experience or immediate realization of the
ultimate Reality which is the ground and cause of the uni
verse, and thus the principle and meaning of human life.
Now the question which necessarily and directly
arises from such a statement pertains to the possibility and
validity of such knowledge. Is immediate non-analogical
knowledge possible? To this question there are three con
temporary answers. The answer of those imbued with the in
ductive method, and suspicious of all knowledge which is
not objectively available, would be 'no.* To this group
would belong a psychologist like Leuba or Feuerbach or
Lange. For these, God becomes a mere 'wishbeing.*
Alan Watts, The Supreme Identity (New York: Pan
theon Books, 1950), p. 26.
^5 Alan Watts, op. cit.. p. I8.
Douglas Clyde Macintosh, The Problem of Religious
Knowledge (New York: Harper and Brothers, 194ÔT, p. 49.
l6 1
I
This category would Include some thinkers nominally in the
historic Christian traditions. To some who have a suspicion
that the scientific method can give a description of reality
limited to the phenomenal world, and only in quantitative
terms, hut who feel that there are aspects of reality not
amenable to the scientific method or to discursive logic,
the answer will be agnostic. The affirmative answer, as
Watts suggests, will come out of a world-wide, age-old
tradition of experience lying as a common denominator I
beneath the differentia of many religions in both East and |
West. Of this answer Boehme is an example and proponent.
There is at least this much evidence for the j
reality of metaphysical knowledge. Witnesses to
its existence have lived and taught since the be
ginning of known history, and if truthfulness and
reliability have any connection with moral integ
rity, these witnesses have the best possible cre
dentials. Furthermore, the witnesses to this
knowledge present a much more surprising unanimity
than the scientists because they have lived in
such widely distant times and places that in count
less instances there has been no possibility of
their influencing and persuading one another.
Metaphysicians of the Christian tradition--
pseudo-Dionysius, Eckhart, Albert the Great— teach
essentially the same doctrine as Shankara and the
Upanishads, and they in their turn the same as
Chinese Taoism and the Sufis of Islam. Add to this
the corroborative support of the thousands who are
more strictly mystics, and we have the most im
pressively unanimous body of teaching in the whole
world.^7 !
Alan Watts, op,, cit.. p. 41.
17 I
This study will narrow the focus to a more detailed 1
analysis of the thinking of Jacob Boehme whose type of |
answer would fall in the last category. Although his think
ing is clothed in orthodox Christian theological symbolism,
and, although his writings indicate a deference to the au
thority of the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures, there will be
discernable the characteristics which prevail universally I
in the mystical tradition whether from the Vedas, the
Sutras, the Koran or the New Testament. Boehme may be '
found to provide, in the present resurgence of interest in
mysticism, something of the clue which, in the crisis of
every culture, human beings seem to require for the achieve
ment of personality values at the higher levels. This re- ■
surgence is taking place within a framework of revolution
concerning many basic concepts including mechanistic notions
of the structure of the universe. Prom Leucippus and Demo-
critus to Dalton the basic philosophical assumptions of
science with respect to the indivisible atom as the basic
stuff of the universe, did not change. During this period
of nearly 2,500 years any attempted alteration of the pre
vailing dogma was vigorously resisted. There are levels of ,
reality even phenomenally speaking, not available to direct
sense experience, which are only now being interpreted into
meanings which are available to men. When physicists have
18
agreed upon activity as the main characteristic of the
basic phenomenal reality they do not stand very far from
the voluntaristic metaphysics of Boehme.
CHAPTER II
BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL
I. PERSONAL HISTORY OP JACOB BOEHME
In presenting the details of the life of Jacob Boehme
for this study it is not Intended to be completely exhaus
tive, but rather, from the material available, to relate
what suggests itself as being relevant to an understanding
of his personality characteristics. The impression is
given by some of the earlier commentators on Boehme, of
whom Hartmann and Martensen can be named, that after an ex
perience of illumination in I6OO Boehme*s intellectual
energy was entirely directed towards the explanation of
the content of his original insights. Such a view does not
accord with the psychological view of a dynamic personality
but is static and unrealistic.
A chronological examination of Boehme*s writings
suggests that there is a definite progression in his
thought not unrelated to the maturing of his personality.
More recent writers are inclined to assume the dynamic
realities in personality in their presentation. Howard H.
Brlnton, Alexandre Koyre and Heinrich Birnkamm bring to a
greater extent the values of modern psychological insights
to their analysis. The last of these in his Luther und
20;
BÔhme devotes an Illuminating section (Die Entwicklung ;
' Bohmes) to the steps of his development (Die Stufen seiner |
Entwicklung). These he finds to correspond with the writ
ing of the MorgenrSte (1612), the Von den drei Prinztpien
and Vom dreifachen Lehen (I680 to 1620) and Von der Men-
schwerdung Jesu Christi (1620 to 1624).^ It is possible
that earlier writers, impressed with the potency of Boehme*s
expression of his awakening were blinded somewhat to the
empirical situations which inevitably developed about him I
and with which he was inter-related for the quarter of a j
century in which he expressed his ideas. This biographical
sketch will focus on such elements as are deemed to be
significant from the standpoint of a psychodynamic under
standing of the experience and thought of this significant
German mystic. The main source of information seems to
have been, in addition to his own writings, the biography
written by his friend Abraham von Prankenberg.
Jacob Boehme was born in November 1575 in the vil
lage of Alt-Seidenberg in Upper Lusatia. He was one of a
large family about whom there is only scant data beyond
^ Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther und BShme. p. 50ff.
^ The New Schaff-Herzog Religious Encyclopedia.
Vol. II, p. 210.
21
the fact that they were German-Bohemian peasants farming
their own land. His parents were hard-working, pious,
after the manner of the early Lutheran communion, and of
!
frugal habits. It can be assumed that he attended one of
the vernacular primary schools which had developed through
out Protestant Germany in response to the fervent appeals
of Martin Luther. Luther’s interest was to make not only a
literate citizenry but to insure that every man could read
the Bible in his mother tongue. Luther's own translation
undoubtedly formed a basic component in the literary de
velopment of Boehme, since Luther's philosophy of education
was to make religion the foundation of the educational pro
cess and of all school instruction, there is a strong pro
bability that both in the home and at school Boehme was ex
posed to the contents of the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures.^ j
Boehme appears to have been of a delicate physical ^
constitution. He was relieved of the heavier duties about
the farm and designated to herd cattle on the surrounding
hills. It is possible that a sense of alienation might have
y '
been initiated in the emotional context of such a situation.
With the concepts of Lutheran theology and piety to
^ P.V.N. Painter, A History of Education (New York:
D. Appleton and Co., l896y, p. l4ÿ.
22*
structure his world and with the hours of silent loneliness I
under the scudding clouds to provide opportunity for the
free play of an active and Imaginative mind, potential
mystical attitudes could conceivably be born.
A well-attested incident in the boyhood of Boehme
has been repeatedly pointed to by biographers as providing
1
evidence of his mystical potentialities. For sympathetic |
contemporaries it was an omen of the mystical truths he |
was destined to discover. It undoubtedly had an exaggerated
importance for the shepherd boy in retrospect. Apparently
there arises out of the plain near Gdrlitz a basaltic hill
called the Landes-Krone with an elevation of one thousand
feet. While tending cattle, Boehme climbed to the top of ,
this mountain where he reported seeing a cave with a
vaulted entrance made of four red stones. Upon looking into
I
the cave he saw a vessel overflowing with gold currency.
Concluding that this vision was to be attributed to satanic
forces, he fled in panic from the scene. Subsequently he
returned to the place in the company of other boys but
never again did he or they see the cave entrance. Rather
than being a qualifying evidence for a revealer of truths |
of ultimate reality the recitation of such an experience I
would, against a background of modern psychology, in- i
troduce interesting clinical possibilities. Here the fact
23
is mentioned as of biographical significance. Subsequently
it will be discussed from the standpoint of its psychologi-
4
cal implications. Cheney suggesting that the boy Boehme
was given to visions, gives this significant summary:
Such incidents, and a bent toward meditative
solitude— as well as absolute devotion to religious
services— tended to separate Jacob from the other
boys of the community; and there settled upon him
a certain spiritual loneliness, which was to obtain
through life. Detachment and introspection made
him aware of forces not detected by others. It is
said that he never questioned the validity of fairy
tales or the truth of miracles.5
At the age of fourteen Boehme was apprenticed to a
shoemaker in the neighboring town of OBrlitz. An element
in this decision seems to have been the fact that he was
constitutionally unsuited to the rigors of an agricultural
vocation. Presumably he was not cut off entirely from his
home associations by the change in location since the two
communities are only a few miles apart. In this adolescent
experience Boehme appears to have expressed strong morali
zing tendencies. He read his Bible avidly and achieved the
reputation of being of exemplary behavior. He showed no
particular promise in business and, while he was attentive
^ Stephen Hobhouse, Jacob Boehme (New York: Harper
and Brothers, 1949)^ P* 4.
^ Sheldon Cheney, op,, cit. . p. 241.
24:
to his obligations, he aroused the animosity of his fellow j
workmen by his tendency to reprove those around him for I
their irreligious attitudes. He persisted in recounting
his subjective experiences and finally exhausted the
patience of his employer by rebuking him for cursing.
For the purposes of this paper one incident which
belongs to this adolescent period of vocational apprentice
ship should be recounted. Although the preponderance of
opinion is in support of its authenticity as an objective
occurrence, there is some opinion that it was a purely
subjective affair. It is significant psychologically in
either case.
One day Boehme was left in charge of the cobbler's
shop. A stranger entered and asked for a pair of shoes.
Apparently Boehme had been given no specific instructions
to sell shoes and in an attempt to discourage the stranger
from transacting business with him, he placed an inordin
ately high price on the pair selected. The man did pur
chase the shoes, paid the sum named by the apprentice and
left the shop. From the street he heard the customer
calling him by name to come out. He was surprised that
^ Hastings, op.. pit.. Vol. II, p. 778.
25
his name was known to this stranger. The man looked at
him with a penetrating gaze and said, "Jacob, thou art as
yet but little, but the time will come when thou shalt be
great, and become another man, and the world shall marvel
at thee. Therefore, be pious, fear God, and reverence His
Word; especially read diligently the Holy Scriptures, where
thou hast comfort and instruction; for thou must endure
much misery and poverty, and suffer persecution. But be
courageous and persevere, for God loves and is gracious
7
unto thee."
After this experience Boehme became increasingly
devout "he was so devout and so actively pious, remonstrat
ing with all who broke the Commandments or talked with a
loose tongue about God, that his master the shoemaker dis
charged him. The indignant man said that he had no need of i
8 '
a house missionary."
In the industrial economy of the time it was cus
tomary for young men to interpose between the completion of
the apprenticeship requirements and the assumption of per
manent residence a year of traveling. This "WanderJahre"
for Boehme lasted about three years and as a result of what
^ Hobhouse, pp. cit.. p. 4.
® Cheney, op. cit., p. 242.
26
he saw and heard beyond the sheltered limits of his own
community he was plunged into deep melancholy. This was
the typical mystical "dark night of the soul" experience.
Prom it he emerged into the profound experience, which will
be examined subsequently in greater particular, and which
seems to have been one which contributed the impetus for
his complete commitment to the thought pattern and way of
life unfolded in his voluminous writings
He returned to GÔrlitz in 1595 and set up a business
of his own as a master-shoemaker. He married Katherine
Kunshraann, a young woman of pious reputation and stability
of character who was the daughter of a master butcher.
There were four sons and possibly two daughters from the
union. The marriage was stable and happy in spite of the
poverty of the early years, the time devoted to study, the
struggling effort to establish the new cobbler's shop and
the later persecutions by the townspeople.^0
In 1600 Boehme had an impressive experience of a
mystical kind. Jones says of this experience that it "was
the momentous watershed of his life.In the previous
9 Hobhouse, on. cit.. p. 5.
^0 Cheney, op.. cit., p. 242.
Rufus M. Jones, Spiritual Reformers in l6th and
17th Centuries (London: Macmillan and Company, 19l4y,p.I60.
27
experiences nothing of an objective kind was named as being
instrumental in Inducing them. On this occasion, as he sat
in his house presumably meditating upon the Scriptures and
man's relationship to God, his attention was attracted by
the reflection of the sunlight from a burnished pewter dish.
Suddenly he found himself in a state of inner ecstasy and
it seemed that "he beheld the inward properties of all
things in nature opened unto him." Thinking that he had
been the subject of hallucination he went outside into the
fields to try to erase the impression from his mind but his
visual perception of the grass and herbs only confirmed
what he had seen. The vision persisted. "I was pregnant
with it," he said, "for ten years.
Once again in I610 Boehme had another inward ex
perience of a mystical kind. He suddenly discovered that
his previous understanding was fragmentary and incoherent
and, although previously he had kept silent about his ex
periences, he now had a great compulsion to write down as a
memorandum for himself the insights which came to him. Ap
parently this urge found expression in the Morgenrëthe im
13
Aufgang which has come to bear the English title Aurora.
Letters XIII: 9, 10.
Heinrich Bornkamm, o£. cit.. p. 50.
28
In this initial attempt to formulate his thought in verbal
symbols Boehme reveals something of the depression to which,
until this time, he had been subject.
I fell into great melancholy and sadness when I
beheld the mighty deep of this world with its stars
and clouds, rain and snow . . . for I saw evil and
good, love and anger in all things, in the earth
and its elements as well as in man and beast. I
considered also that little spark of light, man,
and what he might be worth before God in comparison
to this great fabric of heaven and earth. Finding
that in this world it goes as well with the wicked
as with the virtuous, I was exceedingly troubled.
The scriptures could not comfort me though I knew
them well.3.4
Boehme was conscious of his literary deficiencies and;
was much embarrassed when a nobleman, Karl von Endern who
had asked permission to take the manuscript home for the
purpose of reading it, had some copies made secretly. Not
only did the manuscript receive much attention but the
thought content aroused the curiosity of intellectuals so
that Boehme found himself rather quickly moved from the
company of tradesmen and customers to the company of the
intellectuals and the nobility.
It was written by a single hand with no skill or
great understanding, but only in that knowledge which
is God's gift. Its author never intended that it
should come into the hands of great people. He
1 h '
Aurora XIX. 1
29
wrote It only as memorial for himself and as a means
of comfort when he was asleep in the flesh.15
Boehme put only casual emphasis upon his visions.
His biographers seem to put more stress upon these subjec
tive experiences than the mystic himself would have de
sired. He did emphasize however, that his knowledge was
not the product of reasoning or formal training but was i
I
knowledge of a direct intuitive kind.
For I never desired to know anything of the
divine mystery, much less understood I the way how
to seek or find it. I knew nothing of it, as is the
condition of poor laymen in their simplicity. I |
sought only after the heart of Jesus Christ, that I
might hide myself herein from the wrathful anger of |
God, and the violent assaults of the devil . . . the j
Gate was opened unto me, that in one quarter of an 1
hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many !
years together at a university; at which I did ex
ceedingly admire; and I knew not how it happened to
me. And thereupon I turned my heart to praise God
for it. For I saw and knew the Being of all Beings;
the By88 and the Abyss; as also the Generation of ;
the Son and the Procession of the Spirit. I saw the
descent and original of this world also, and of all
its creatures.lo
It did not take long after the circulation of the
manuscripts of Boehme for the Lutheran pastor primarius of
GSrlitz to allege heresy in the writings of his parishioner.
^5 Letters X: 2.
Letters II: 6, 7, 8, 6, as quoted by Mrs. A.J.
Penny, Studies in Jacob Boehme (Edinburgh; Neill and Co.
Ltd., 1912).
30 I
On a Sunday morning in July I613 while the unsuspecting 1
!
Boehme sat in his pew the minister, choosing a text against j
false prophetism, "assailed him by name and Invoked the I
action of the authorities against him, as otherwise the
17 I
Divine chastisement would fall upon the town." In face
of a demand by the magistrates that he leave town immedi- !
ately, not being allowed even the slight privilege of taking
farewell of his family, the mystic showed no resentment. I
i
With an ingrained respect for authority probably accentuated
by his knowledge of Luther's teaching from Paul's Epistle
to the Romans he replied to the officers "Yes, dear sirs,
it shall be done; since it cannot be otherwise I am con-
tent." The magistrates feeling they had gone too far
under the goading of the pastor compromised the sentence by
demanding that Boehme deliver up the Aurora and desist from
writing. He obeyed the injunction of the authorities for
five years but in I619 and until his death in 1624 he
undertook a prodigious literary output.
According to the town records of GÔrlitz, Boehme
purchased a good house at an important intersection near
^7 Hobhouse, pp. cit.. p. 9.
* * • 8 Ibid.. p. 9.
31
19
the Neisse bridge. He appears to have done well as a
shoemaker but the records also reveal that he sold his
cobbler's premises on March 12, I613, only a few months
before the verbal attacks of the Lutheran pastor Gregory
Richter. He then made a living by trading in yarns and
woollens. His economic status was not too well assured by
this activity although there was opportunity to travel and
the Epistles reveal that some of the wealthier friends who
had been drawn into his fellowship contributed to the needs
20
of Boehme and his family.
In the midst of economic vicissitudes and the mis
understanding of the representatives of the Lutheran church
Boehme poured himself into his writings. He made an at
tempt at defence, without invective or rancor, against the
accusations of Richter but it served only to bring the
official word from the city fathers that "it would be most
expedient for himself, the country, the town, and the
21
magistrates, that he would go into voluntary exile."
This turned out to be less than a year before his death.
Hobhouse, pp. cit.. p. 41.
20 Letters V, VI, XXI, XXXII, XXXIII
Hobhouse, oe,. cit.. p. 9.
32
Since there had been some danger that Boehme might
be indicted as a heretic by the Elector of Saxony, it is
interesting to discover that he went to Dresden and at the
Prince Elector's Court he met in conference with several
eminent Lutheran Theologians, among them the dogmatist John
Gerhard* The theologians were much impressed with the ap
parent intelligence of Boehme, his obvious qualities of
graciousness and his competence to discuss theological
matters. None of them could bring themselves to condemn
him. Boehme returned to GÔrlitz shortly afterwards, a
sick man, and died two weeks later on Sunday, November 21,
1624. Pastor Gregory Richter his antagonist died in August
of the same year increasingly bitter that one of his sons
had become an ardent follower of Boehme.
GÔrlitz is today a town of about 100,000 people.
The river Neisse on which Boehme*s house stands looking
' towards the Lutheran Peterskirche where Gregory Richter
anathematized the cobbler-mystic, divides the New Poland
and the Soviet zone. There are two memorials to Boehme in
the town one near the park and the other over his grave.
The statue bears the inscription "Liebe und Demut unser
Schwert" (Our sword is love and humility). In I875, the
tercentenary of Boehme*s birth and again in 1924, great
celebrations were held in GÔrlitz in honor of the Protestant
33,
mystic. For the latter a medal was struck off in his honor
by the city magistrates. Conspicuous in the activities werej
the Lutheran ecclesiastical leaders who now regard Boehme
as one of their illustrious spiritual geniuses.
This sketch while lacking the detail of a clinically
oriented case history does provide much material of psy
chological interest. Most of those who have written about
Boehme have been involved emotionally in a desire to uphold
the legitimacy and the respectability of the mystical ex- j
perience or have themselves been benefited from the reading,
of the writings of Boehme and have desired to recommend him!
i
to a wider reading group. With the exception of Jones and j
Hobhouse this is not true of the more recent scholarly
attempts to investigate Boehme.
Only Prankenberg gives any clue as to the physical
appearance of Boehme, He describes him thus:
His bodily appearance was somewhat mean; he was
of small stature, had a low forehead but prominent
temples, a rather aquiline nose, a scanty beard,
grey eyes sparkling into heavenly blue, a low but
gracious voice. He was modest in his bearing, un
assuming in conversation, lowly in conduct, patient
in suffering and loving-hearted.22
22
Hobhouse, pp. cit., p. 10.
34
II. THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Even though, through concern to support the case for
the "God-taught" claim of Boehme*s thought, the Influences
upon him of a philosophical, and literary nature have been
minimized, honest psychological inquiry must see him in the
context of his time. His thinking, experiencing and writing
were not done in a social vacuum. Even the data of the
mystical predisposition and the postulate of God are in
sufficient. Some reference should be made to the swirling
forces of religious, political, social, economic and phil
osophical transitions which were sweeping across Europe and
which may reasonably be presumed to have had a bearing on
the emotional and cognitive reactions of Jacob Boehme. '
The Reformation movement, while religiously stemming '
from the rediscovery by Luther of the doctrinal ideas in
the Pauline epistles, was the culmination of tensions which
had filled Europe for generations. The power of Roman
Catholic Institutionalism had been a galling burden upon
intelligent and ethically minded men in all walks of life.
Luther's genius was the creative factor which set in motion i
the long slumbering desire for the reformation of the |
I
church. Princes and patricians, nobles and peasants, ec- '
cleslastics and monks, humanistic scholars and mystics,
found common cause with Luther. In the critical years from !
35 j
1517, when Luther nailed his 95 theses against Indulgences I
to the door of the castle at Wittenberg, a storm of violence|
and counter-violence broke over Europe. It seemed that
men were in a time of expanding worlds comparable to our
own. By Boehme*s day however, the flames of war resulting
from ecclesiastical and political friction and intrigue were
breaking out sporadically in every part of the western
world. Lusatia with towns situated along the northern trade
routes became in Boehme*s life-time a pawn of coveted im-
portance to the German, Bohemian and Austrian princes. The
German, Silesian Bohemian borders were fluid during all of
this period and there must have been much evidence of mili-!
I
tary activity and of the suffering which attends war.
Boehme appears to have remained uninvolved in the political
and military aspect of the contemporary milieu in any ;
physical sense but his writing gives evidence that he was
emotionally disturbed and undoubtedly part of the compulsion
to find inward harmony and a universal order, could be
traced to the deep unrest and chaotic confusion which char
acterized the social and political atmosphere around him.
He expressed himself as unable to accommodate the Christian
ethic to the prevalent internecine conflicts.
Everything for which these men are competing and
fighting, the while they devastate lands and slaughter
peoples, is only an empty skin without its fruit, and
36
the whole belongs to the world of fire and separa
tion. Not one of these parties has truth or under
standing on his side. All contend in the name of
God but none does His will. They fight for their
own personal glory and to secure their carnal
pleasures. If they were truly Christians, there
would exist no question or quarrel between them.^^
Regarding his attitude towards the use of force he
appears to have adopted a form of pacifism in which he is
optimistic regarding the value of reasonableness in the
tension situation.
Thou shouldst be a leader into the kingdom of God,
and enkindle thy brother with thy love and meedkness,
that he may see in thee God's essence as in a mirror,
and thus in thee take hold also with his imagination.
DoeSt thou this, then bringest thou thy soul, thy
work, likewise thy neighbour or brother into God's
kingdom, and enlargest the kingdom of heaven with
its manifestations. This has Christ taught us say
ing: "If any smite thee on one cheek, offer him the
other also; if any take away thy cloak, withhold not
from him thy coat also" (Matt. 5:39, 4o); that he
may have in thee a mirror and retreat into himself,
see thy meekness, acknowledge thou art God's child,
and that God's Spirit leads thee; that he may learn
of thee, descend into himself and seek himself.
Else, if thou oppose him with defiance and spite,
his spite becomes kindled still more, and at last he
thinks he is acting right to thee. But thus he must
certainly recognize he doth thee wrong.
And as God's love resists all wicked men, and the
conscience often dissuades from evil, so also thy
meekness and patience go to his bad conscience and
arraign the conscience in itself before God's flight
in the wrath. In this way many a wicked man goes
out from his wickedness, descends into himself and
Cheney, op,, cit., p. 246.
37
seeks himself. Teen God's Spirit puts him in mind :
of thy patience, and sets it before his eyes, and so
he is drawn thereby into repentence and abstinence.
Not that one should not defend oneself against a
murderer or thief, who would murder and steal. But I
where one sees that any is eager upon unrighteous- :
ness, one should set his fault openly with a good
light before his eyes, and freely and of good-will |
offer him the richly-loving Christian heart; that '
he may find actually and in fact, that it is done '
out of love-zeal to God, and that love and God's
will are more to that man than the earthly nature,
and that he purposely will not consent to anything
passionate or evil being done; that he may see that
the children of God do love more the love of God
and do cleave to it more than to any temporal good;
and that God's children are not at home in this
world, but only pilgrims, who gladly relinquish
everything of this world so that they may but in
herit the kingdom of heaven.24
During his "Wander jahre,Boehme undoubtedly ex
perienced the bitterness of the Protestant-Catholic contro
versy which disturbed the country but he must also have be
come aware of the acrimonious divisions which were begin
ning to show themselves amongst Protestants. The Lutheran
church itself was torn into quarrelling factions and, as he
had reason to learn, had settled into a brittle and bigotted
framework. It is little wonder that the established church
was symbolized by Babel. In the Mysterlum Magnum he de
scribes it as "Babel und Pabel."^^ "In the great Babel
The Six Points IV: 25, 26, 27.
Mysterlum Magnum LI: 49.
38;
they quarrel about the words and permit the spirit of Under-!
standing to lie in mysterio.**^^
III. SPECIFIC INTELLECTUAL AND RELIGIOUS
INFLUENCES AFFECTING BOEHME
As has been noted, there was in the earlier bio
graphers of Boehme a tendency to minimize the influences
which were brought to bear on him. One writer, Grutzmacher,
27
claimed that he was an "isolated thinker." Boehme him
self believed that his knowledge was derived uniquely from
interior or divine sources. Such a view does not find
support in the light of modern psychological understanding.
There were undoubtedly inner conflicts pressing for re
solution and there may have been much internal structuring
of an integrating principle but that is not the whole
story. In this paper it is not proposed either to discount
or to prove the validity of the alleged element of divine
revelation in Boehme. The hypothesis that there were
factors in the intellectual environment which could have
resulted in the experiences and expressions of Boehme is
Howard H. Brinton. The Mystic Will (New York;
MacMillan Co., 1930), p. 97*
As quoted from Wort und Geist. R.M. Jones,
Spiritual Reformers, p. 169.
39 I
all that It is desired to establish at this point. The
statement that he was *God-taught* is for the moment taken
with reservations. The streams of influence which impinged
upon him are identifiable in spite of his own declaration
that, "I have written, not from the instruction or knowledge
received from men ... I have no need of any other book.
Without doubt a large Influence in the thinking of
Boehme was his vernacular Bible in Luther's translation. <
!
He read avidly from the Bible over a period of years and
had been exposed to its teaching both in the home and at the
parochial elementary school. He could not have been un
affected by the mysticism of the fourth Gospel and the
Pauline epistles. Then again he had always been regular in
his church attendance and had there heard the exposition of
orthodox Lutheran theological ideas.
Hobhouse gives it as his opinion that "Certain re
markable similarities make it probable that he had also
read the Theologia Germanica and some of Tauler's Sermons.
in German printed versions. It is just possible that he
had seen a few of Meister Eckhart's Sermons in a manuscript
copy.Boehme nowhere in his writings acknowledges any
pA
The Apologia II, 298.
Stephen Hobhouse, William Law (New York: Harper
and Brothers, 1948), p. 359*
40
sources. His intense desire for personal salvation and his
speculative interest in bringing the physical universe and
a supernatural order into one world would date him as one
trying to make a synthesis between the intellectual and
religious elements of his time. He was virtually contem
poraneous with Galileo, Kepler and Bacon, with pseudo-
scientists like Theophrastus Paracelsus, with the philoso
pher René Descartes, with theologians of the Reformation
like John Calvin and with the spiritual mystics like
Schwenckfeld, Weigel and Franck. The basic voluntaristic
concepts could be seen as not incongruous with the contem
porary theological discussions concerning the will. He did
have intellectual interaction with professional people into
whose company his writings began to bring him. Among this
group were Dr. Walther, Director of the Chemical Laboratory
of Dresden, Dr. Kober, the physician in GÔrlitz, Abraham von
Franckenberg, his biographer. Dr. Weissner and the nobleman
Carl von Endern who first made public the contents of the
Aurora manuscript. There is no support for the view that
Boehme was an "isolated thinker."
30
Jones, Spiritual Reformers. p. 165.
41
IV. LITERARY OUTPUT
Boehme began to write in l6l2. His first work was
the Aurora which constituted an attempt to put into writing
for his own use the overwhelming insights which had broken
in upon him. He believed his discovery would usher in a neWj
dawn for men as indeed in a philosophical sense proved to |
I
be true. Some of his basic metaphysical concepts came to be|
embraced together with other strands of thought to "generate
both a great intellectual movement and an important reli-
31
gious revolt." After the restriction put upon him by the
GÔrlitz magistrates he wrote nothing for five years. Under
the pressure applied by his friends including Dr. Kober and
Dr. Walther, and because Boehme felt himself to be released
from his promise to the magistrates since Pastor Richter had
resumed his campaign of vilification, he consented to write
again. He was now forty-three years of age. The extent of
this influence is suggested in the following passage:
Many learned men, including not only priests and
doctors but noblemen, both counts and princes, cor
responded with me, and some came to me in person to
demand more of my gifts and knowledge. But I dared
not accede, for the Pastor Primarius had seen to it
that I was forbidden. These friends suggested that
God might withdraw my gift and bestow it upon another
31
Brinton, op. cit.. p. 6.
42:
who would make real use of it. They urged that I
obey God rather than man.32
Between 1612 and the time of his death in 1624,
Boehme wrote some thirty books of substantial proportions.
Only one of these books was printed in his lifetime although
the other manuscripts were circulated in copied manuscript
form by his influential admirers. The book which was
printed was The Way to Christ and included four tracts. It
is considered to be the most helpful devotional book by
Boehme and has been reprinted some forty times. The most
recent English translation by J. J. Stoudt has been used
in preparing this paper. In addition to the Aurora and The 1
Way to Christ « the books found most useful for this study j
have been The Three Principles, The Threefold Life, The
Forty Questions, The Incarnation, The Six Points, Regenera
tion , The Supersensual Life, Predestination and the Mys-
terlum Magnum. An unfinished devotional book, the last of
the literary efforts of Boehme was enthusiastically en
dorsed by Dr, Alexander Whyte and was "to be treasured like
very sand of gold.The book was intended for daily
family use. (HausbiÜchlein) Of contemporary interest is the
32 Cheney, cit. , p. 256.
33 l.L. Whyte, op_. cit. . p. 62.
43
fact that during World War II some of the manuscripts of
Boehme*s work fell into the hands of the Nazi police but
were subsequently recovered and most of the originals are
in the archives at GBrlitz, at Gottingen University and in
04
the ducal library at Wolfenbùttel, Brunswick. A very ex
cellent and complete chronological list of the literary
35
output of Boehme has been compiled by Brinton.
3^ Hobhouse, op. cit.. p. I3, 14.
Brinton, op. cit.. p. 259^ 260.
CHAPTER III
THE PROBLEMS INVOLVED IN UNDERSTANDING BOEHME
I. LITERARY AND VERBAL OBSCURITY
Most writers and commentators on Boehme refer to the
difficulties involved in understanding him. His writing in
the original manuscripts was done in High Dutch. Some
courageous spirits like K.W. Shiebler, Claude de Saint-
Martin or the English mystic William Law mastered High Dutch;
in order to get at the real meaning of Boehme*s thought.
Shlebler* 8 seven volume translation into the German formed
the basis for Martènsen*s translation into the Danish.
Martensen'8 translation was rendered in English by the Welsh
clergyman and scholar T. Rhys Evans. This translation has
been edited in turn by Stephen Hobhouse in 19^9 who sought
to remove some of the obscurities.^ There are other trans
lations of a reliable kind as has been indicated elsewhere
in this discussion but the problem of first hand contact
with the thinking of Boehme remains a difficult one from
the standpoint of primary sources.
In addition to the language barriers there is the
^ Hobhouse, o£. cit.. p. xiv.
45 j
problem of the figures of speech used by Boehme and borrowed
from the alchemists. Prom Paracelsus and the Hermetic
philosophers he probably took some terms including the
three chemical ideas Sulphur, Mercury and Salt. These
words are not to be taken as we understand them in contem
porary thinking, but they represent the threefold structure
of Boehme*s metaphysics. Sulphur is the first natural
center or the matrix from which begins the progressive
manifestation of nature. The elements are dialectical.
Sulphur becomes *sul* the primitive will of the uncondi
tioned abyss, which we shall later explain more fully.
*Phur* becomes desire. Will is the thesis and desire the
antithesis. These two elements are in constant interaction
and from their interaction reality proceeds. Mercury re
presents the principle of the will which breaks the mani
fested will into its creaturely forms. Salt, sulphur and
mercury in their total interaction produce what we call
2
matter. Boehme himself disclaimed any intimate knowledge
of the technical processes of alchemy and it is significant
that in his more mature work these images are replaced by
other figures of speech. "Do not take me for an alchemist
^ John Joseph Stoudt, The Way to Christ (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1947), p. xxvi.
46
;for I write only In the knowledge of the spirit and not
3
from experiments.
The contemporary theological terms of the Lutheran
communion are used throughout his writings. It is obvious
that even in his earliest writing Boehme accepts the tradi
tional forms of the Trinity, the atonement, regeneration
and the rest but he transcends the meanings of the formal- ;
ized doctrine. The forms for him are at best only poor
images of reality. Whatever images and symbols he uses are
only * fingers pointing at the moon.^
In some of Boehme*s writings the device of dialogue
is used. Usually questions are put by the first speaker and
answered by the second. There is a repetition of points of
view in Boehme*s successive writings and in the later books
a considerable refinement of argument is obvious. The
salient characteristics remain throughout and it is to
these that this paper will give attention. In the writings
of Boehme there are difficulties of vocabulary and image
but they may be explained in part by his lack of formal
training and more likely because he was making a vigorous
attempt with the prisms he possessed to focus thoughts of
Aurora XXII: IO5.
47
inexpressible intensity on the level of intellection.
The effect of the obscurities in Boehme has been to
discourage serious study of his writings. Sparrow one of
the first and best translators of Boehme admits the diffi
culties involved and suggests that many investigators have
been critical because they have been
. . . Offended by the stumbling blocks that have
lain in their way, from the misreports and relations
of others who have but superficially looked upon
them, and taken up surmising at the second or third
hand ... we admonish the reader that when he
findeth somewhat in any place of our deep sense to
be obscure that he do not condemn it according to
the manner of the evil world, but diligently read
and pray to God who will surely open the door of his
heart so that he will apprehend it and be able to
make use of it to the profit and salvation of his
soul.4
Boehme has been called the father of teutonic phil
osophy. Charles Hotham, Rector of Wigam and author of Ad
Philosophiam Teutonicam Manductlo (1648) writes
Whatsoever the thrice-great Hermes deliver*d as
Oracles from the Propheticall Tripos or Pythagoras
spake by authority, or Socrates debated or Aristotle
affirmed, yea, whatever divine Plato prophesied or
Plotinus proved; this, and all this, or a far higher
and profounder philosophy is contained in the
Teutoniks writings.5
h
Mysterium Magnum II
5 Cheney, op. cit.. p. 282.
Brinton, op.. cit.., p. 67.
Rufus M. Jones, in introduction to Howard H.
Brinton*s The Mystic Will.
^ James M. Baldwin, A Dictionary of Philosophy and
Psychology (New York: Peter Smith, 194o77 Vol. 2, p. 125.
® W.R. Inge, Christian Mysticism (London: Methuen
and Co., 1899), P. 2731
48 i
It is clear that there is a profundity of thought in |
Boehme which has, in addition to the language problem put
him beyond the reach of the intellectually indifferent.
Patience and persistence are prerequisites to the investiga
tion of Boehme. Jones has suggested the problem in a
figurative way when he wrote.
He (Boehme) has been lying in the lanes of in
tellectual traffic like a mighty bowlder which
every traveler had at least to recognize. Most
students who have reviewed the period of history
to which he belonged have walked around the
bowlder and have noted its immense size. Some
have described its wierd form and shape as seen
from the outside, and a few patient workers have
attempted to penetrate it with acids, or with
drills, but it has all the time baffled them and
remained a bowlder.®
It is not surprising that in the perspective of the
history of mysticism it is said, "Boehme*s system of theo
sophy is one of the chief monuments of mystical thought.
This verdict has of course, not been unanimous. John
Wesley, for example, characterized Boehme*s writings as
"Sublime nonsense, inimitable bombast, fustian not to be
8
paralleled." A notable group of intellectuals has paid
49
9
tribute to the greatness of Boehme*s genius and many have
acknowledged his influence upon their lives and thinking.
This may be said of those who have taken the pains to try
to understand Boehme that they feel impelled to express
themselves in terms of respect or they resort to satire.
Brinton makes this evaluation.
The chaos in Boehme * s works is often more apparent
than real. That which was responsible for throwing
William Law into a "perfect sweat" and which made
Hegel * 8 "head swim" was the absence of technical
diction. The German language had not yet developed
a philsophic vocabulary nor did Boehme desire one.
He preferred to construct his own symbols.
II. THE PROBLEM OP LOGIC AND SYMBOLISM
The perennial problem for the mystic is to express
himself with reference to his religious experience in
symbols that have any adequacy. The nature of his exper
ience involves something he believes to be objectively real
but which is not of the spatio-temporal world of sensory
experience in the same way that we experience light waves
or sound or objects accessible to the tactile nerve ends.
So far as Boehme is concerned there is not in his writing
the emphasis upon purgation, illumination, and ecstatic
^ R.M. Jones, Spiritual Reformers. op. cit., p. 133* *
Brinton, 0£. cit.. p. 62.
50
union to the same degree as in the classical mystics. The
mystical experience for Boehme is significant only insofar
as it demonstrates the necessity of an intuitive grasp of
total reality as the beginning point of understanding. A
tremendous philosophical synthesis appears to be the fruit
of the mystical experience. Boehme*s system however, is not|
a static block of totality. It is a dynamic concept pro- j
I
ceeding from the divine will. The divine will Boehme
equates with the "abyss" (Ungrund) and it is the ultimate
inner nature of being. It is pure subjectivity and is
apprehended immediately. The will is always primary and un
conditioned. It is the "dark abyss" of which everything is
ultimately the manifestation. The human will in the sense
of conation is analogous to the divine will.
All things are generated out of will and are re- .
propogated in will for will is the master of every
work. It has its origins out of God the Father
towards nature, and passes through nature to his
heart which is the end of nature.H
By will God created heaven and earth and a
mighty will such as His is hidden in the soul.
The will shapes its own form in the spirit; it
can give to the body another form out of the center
of nature, for the inner is lord of the outer,
. , . it can make out of it a devil and out of the
Threefold Life 4:48.
The Threefold Life 8:l8.
51
13
devil an angel.
These examples of Boehme*s thinking will serve to
illustrate the problem for symbolic representation or logi
cal discussion. Apparently in Boehme there is an evolu
tional principle by which all that is * thing!sh* comes from
nothing which can be equated with God in a ‘dark* sense in
which there are connotations of anguish. There is also an
involutional principle by which things return to God. For
man who has been regenerated by the exercise of his will in
going through the point of separation between light and
darkness (Durchgangspunkt) which Boehme equates with the
cross, God has connotations of joy but the experience is
ineffable.
Beloved mind, behold, this is now God and his
kingdom of heaven, even the eternal element and
paradise, as it stands in an eternal beginning
from eternity to eternity. What Joy, pleasure and
loveliness is therein I have no pen to describe,
for the earthly tongue is much too weak, speech is
dross as compared to its gold.14
Where metaphysical speculation or mystical rational
ization give expression to the concept of an ultimate,
abstract absolute which lies beyond what may be designated
Forty Questions 6:10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
Howard H. Brinton, op. cit.. p. I56.
52 î
I
by symbols, polluted with the stain of phenomena, and
where it lies beyond the processes of discursive logic, it |
is sometimes designated as ‘nothing* or *no-thing*. That is
to say, whether pointed to by a speculative metaphysic or
referred to in the futile negative analogies, which are the
best the mystic can do to reduce an essentially ineffable
and intuitive knowledge to description, it cannot be sub
sumed under any of the categories of affirmation.
The concept of * no-thing' appears in the context of
oriental philosophical religions in the Upanishads, the con
cluding portion of the Vedas called the Vedanta. These
writings are an anthology of transcendental thinking. j
Their argument begins with the senses and leads to an
absolute *no-thing* which, as we shall show is sometimes
equated with the Self. Similarly in Zen Buddhism the doc- ;
I
trine of * sunyata * involves the concept of *nothing *.
Amongst the Chinese both the Peng Shui, of almost universal
acceptance, and the Tao suggest the metaphysical 'nothing*
of oriental thought.
Amongst Greek thinkers also the concept appears. In .
Permenides, Gorgias and Plato, the status of unreality is
given to all that has * thingness * and, over against the
I
Heraclitean flux, Plato conceived reality as beyond the j
phenomenal world, beyond reasoning and even beyond what men ;
53 j
call God. The world of phenomena was the world of flux, j
1 5 I
"Where nothing is but all things seem." The world of
eternal * is-ness * was for Plato the world of * no-thingness *.
For the oriental and mystical traditions * nothing *
can almost be equated with the self in the sense of being
that which can never be known objectively. It is the
eternal subject which can never be known by created objects
except in the experience of mystical union in which all
sense of individuation is lost and the self merges with the j
I
i
Self in what cannot be distinguished from deification. On
the other hand, in a metaphysical sense, as in Boehme, the
'no-thingness* of the Ungrund suggests the 'One' which in
cludes the 'all* in the eternal Now. For the oriental and
for the classical mystic there is always present the epis-
temological problem. For the Greeks the ontological problem
seems to predominate. Motivating all the metaphysical
speculation which includes some variant view of 'nothing*
there seems to be the impulse towards permanence and towards
a kind of knowledge that avoids the incompleteness of the
heuristic process which is tied to the 'thingness* and
^5 Arthur Kenyon Rogers, A Student's History of Phil
osophy (New York: The MacMillan Co., 193^), p. 89•
54
tentativeness of empirical development and to the 'thingish*
symbols of discursive reasoning.
The problem of nothing as applied to the absolute
always stands in an embarrassing relation to language.
Words are always symbols which represent something. Com
binations of vowels and consonants even though pronouncable,
I
are nonsense unless they stand over against some idea which i
they represent. The word 'nothing,' if it stands for no
thing, then, is nonsense, unless we give some content to i
nothing. If we give some content to nothing it is no longer;
nothing but something which the word 'nothing* represents. '
I
Attempts have been made to resolve this dilemma by |
what is called the absence-theory. If in answer to the
question, "What is in this box?" The answer is "Nothing,"
then the meaning obviously intended is that there is no
article in it. If this idea is extended in an ever-widening
reference to infinity, the mind cannot reach an absolute
absence. The absence is always of this thing or that thing.
In other words, it is always a relative absence.
Plato made 'nothing' the opposite of Being. He called
it Non-Being. But Plato was involved in the contradiction
of asserting the being of non-being. This dichotomy simply '
involves two kinds of being one of which is assigned an ^
opposite designation to the other. Since both being and !
55
non-being can be made the subject of a proposition, non- |
being is 'something* and therefore, not 'nothing'.
'Nothing' can be taken as a form of negation and in
the case of the ultimate in Hinduism, Buddhism or Christian
mysticism it does not involve the absolute concept of
Nothing. To affirm that X is nothing is quite different
from saying X is not Y. By saying that X is not Y we re- !
tain a value for X. Most mystical negation arises in the
latter category. The absolute is Neti, Neti or not Y, but i
i
it is not nothing. Perhaps Alan Watts sums the difficulty |
Î
up so far as the use of conceptual symbols In mystical <
I
thinking about God and creation is concerned. |
;
Thus God's "othering" of himself in the creation
is not, as in pantheism, a maya. an illusion. The
multiplicity is as real as the unity, since the
creature is one with God in the very act of being
other than God. Thus we must change the meaning
of the statement that God made the world out of
nothing, and understand the nothing as the nothing
(sunyata), the unutterable mystery, the divine
darkness, which is God himself as he appears to
human sense and thought and feeling. For this
seeming void, this no-thing unintelligible to the
human mind and its dualistic mode of thought, is
God as he is absolutely in himself, beyond all
duality— neither one nor many, nor both one and
many, and yet with equal reality one and many, and
both one and many. Human speech cannot surpass its
own inherent dualityI
1^ Alan W. Watts, Behold the Spirit (London: John
Murray, 19^7), P* 145.
561
i
Closely related to the problem of language is the j
!
problem of logic for the mystical tradition. Suzuki be- |
. I
lieves the occidental mind to be incapable of understanding
the mystical thought of the orient because mysticism defies
the analysis of logic, "and logic is the most characteris-
17
tic feature of Western thought." Western logic is dual
istic and cannot extricate itself from the antitheses of
affirmation and negation. Whenever we affirm A we imply
not-A, We give an absolute and final status to the law of
identity. Always "A is A" and any suggestion that "A is B",
or that "A is not-A" is the essence of contradiction and is;
unthinkable. The mystic says in effect at this point that j
our logical symbols cannot interpret the facts of experi
ence and so we must discard them. A becomes not-A and
still remains A. The All is equated with Nothing and the
Nothing becomes the One. The mystical experience Involves
irrationalism. There always comes the leap beyond reason
to the total intuitive comprehension in which all duality
is obliterated.
Hocking would say that in the general type of
^ Suzuki, Daisetz Taeitaro, "The Philosophy of Zen,"
Philosophy East and West. Vol. I, 2, (University of Hawaii
Press), p. 5*
57 ,
religious experience, intellect retires in favor of feelingJ
Religion is a reaction to our finite situation, j
a natural reflex of small and highly aspiring beings '
in a huge— perhaps infinite— arena. ,
He adds that if no revelation is communicated in words !
. . . any such dealings must occur in the unlighted
chambers of consciousness, whose only report to the
vocal self is in the raw material of feeling.
Speaking of the "alleged finitude of ideas" Hocking says of
totality there Is ". . . the dark stretching expanse of
reality left out by all ideas— not-X to all of them. . . .
Some marginal interest always goes to not-X of whatever
IQ
idea." ^ But he does not admit that X and not-X are to be
equated. He elaborates the discussion for mysticism and
explains the problem of negation in the following terms.
The instability of any given predicate must often
appear as evidence that the idea in question is
impossible: on this account our whole-idea has
often been put down as a no-idea: everything so far
as idea can grasp it being equivalent to nothing.
The mystic has often been charged with this con
clusion, even while he maintains, as the true
mystic must that his whole-idea is the most positive
of all.20
William Ernest Hocking, The Meaning of God In
Hnman Experience (New Haven; Yate University Press, 1912),
p. 54.
William Ernest Hooking, o£. cit., p. 95-
Ibid.. p. 100.
58
The finitude of our thinking is matched by the
limited structures of our logic and by the limitation in
herent in all the symbolisms we can use. In the case of
the use of negation as discussed in this paper, when it
points to the absolute, what is negated is something finite
in the known world of empirical fact and differs, as Royce
points out, "in some important respects both logically and
metaphysically from the ordinary negation of the logical
text books, whose object is a class or kind of being."
Royce further thinks in the case of the oriental or Chris
tian mystic that "these two objects" (objects of ordinary
experience and the apparent object of the mystic's ex
perience) "stand in a relation which is certainly not
merely the not-relation although . . . (the mystics) are
unnecessarily fond of speaking as if it were so.
It can be deduced from the study of the basic nega
tion as represented in the various traditions which have
been examined that there is a common denominator in the
understanding of the absolute. Perhaps the concept of the
self (Jung's Nicht Ich) as being not the ego but the inner
core of being is as productive a clue to the meaning of God
21
Hastings, 0£. cit., Vol. IX, p. 270.
59 ;
In mystical experience as can be found. It is that which j
cannot be known objectively but is known intuitively. It |
is that which is creatively analogous in man and in the ;
universe. It is that without which all so-called reality {
would be nothing and yet it is itself no-thing but eter
nally subject. It is the same kind of reality whether the
I
'Self* of the Upanishads or of the Brahmana, 'Zen* of Bud- |
dhism, the 'Nameless' of Dionysius or the 'abyss' of Boehme.
In it the antinomies of unity and plurality and identity
and change are accounted for. It is as Khudson points out
a principle of explanation but it cannot itself be ex
plained or be accounted for by analysis.22
III. THE PROBLEM OP THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN
RELATION TO THE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE
The insistence of Boehme on the priority of faith
over reason may have been a substantial deterrent to many
potential scientifically minded investigators. Boehme in
many passages disqualifies reason as a means of arriving
at true knowledge. The fundamental task for man is to
apprehend God and then in the light which comes from God to
22 Albert Knudson, Basic Issues in Christian Thought
(New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1950), p. 75•
60
apprehend the world.
Leave off your laborious searching in reason and
enter into the will of God, into God's spirit, and
cast outward reason away, and then your will is God's
will, and God's spirit will seek you within you.
And if he findeth your will in him, then he mani-
festeth himself in your will as in his own propriety.
For if you quit that will, then it is his who is all
things, and when he moveth go you with him for he
hath divine power; and then whatever you search, he
is in it, and then nothing is hidden from the will.
Thus you see in his light and are his.
Again he says, "no man understandeth us rightly in
the ground, except his mind be born of God."^3
The knowledge which came to Boehme came not as the
result of reasoning or effort but as the result of a change
in his interior being. It is his conviction that no one
can understand until he has had a like change.
Only insofar as a man gives up his own self-will
and immerses himself unconditionally in the will of
God, can man attain salvation, and thereby enlight
enment in the Divine Wisdom: for man in his first-
birth nature, is an alien to the 'Principle' wherein
alone divine wisdom resides, and unless he be born
again, of water and of the Spirit, into another
'Principle*, an alien he will forever remain.24
In contradistinction to the method of Boehme the
empirical approach presupposes that all knowledge is the
product of the rational interpretation of empirical
23 The Three Principles. VIII; 35-
^ Mrs. A.J. Penny, Studies In Jacob Boehme. p. Ix.
61
evidence. For the thinker completely committed to the
empirical procedures there could never he logical certainty
about God as being objectively real. The conclusions of
the scientific method are always held as tentative and
hypothetical, they concern particular aspects of phenomenal
reality and they offer at best a quantitative description
of the universe. The knowledge which the scientific method
gives is an ever-widening area in each particular disci
pline. Evidence supporting the various hypotheses is con
stantly under a process of re-examination and new inter
pretations are continuously made in the light of newly
available facts. The hypotheses in which the scientist is
interested are however, of the nature of factors separated
from the whole milieu of experience for purposes of ana
lysis. The scientist, qua scientist, does not consider it
his responsibility to make any synthesis of these verified
parts and even should he do it he would, in the manner of
some philosophical scientists, still be making a synthesis
at the level of the phenomenal world. Should he go so far
as to postulate God as a working hypothesis, his God in the
nature of the scientific method could only be held as a
tentative assumption subject to cancellation if additional
evidence made the hypothesis untenable. There is the
additional problem that since God is defined as being
62,
noumenal rather than phenomenal he Is not accessible to a
method designed to deal exclusively with phenomenal i
actualities.
I
On the validity of any metaphysical absolute the I
scientific method cannot make any pronouncement. It deals
with the microcosm and not with the macrocosm. Again, it
is nominally objective and is suspicious of any emotional
attachment to a hypothesis. Boehme was in love with his
hypothesis and involved in it with a total involvement of
emotion and intellect. This is difficulty enough for the
scientifically conditioned investigator, but Boehme pre
sents an insuperable obstacle for most in his declaration
that he not only has certain knowledge of an intuitive kind
about God but that also he knows exactly how the phenomenal
world came into existence. How could the secrets of the
natural world, the exclusive province of the natural sci
ences be known except by the rational processes and the
inductive method? The unsophisticated Boehme knowing no
thing of the scientific method, claims to have been given
certain knowledge of the beginning and development of the
natural world. His account of the cosmic drama is graphic
direct and assured. "Let no man wonder," he says, "if I
write about the creation of the world as if I had been
63|
there and had myself witnessed it. Again he says, "For i
I
I saw and knew the Being of all Being; the Byss and the |
Abyss; as also the Generation of the Son and the Procession
of the Spirit. I saw the descent and original of this
world also, and of all its creatures.
It is little surprise that Leuba and other psy-
I
I
chologists should quickly relegate the mystical experience |
to the category of illusion. With obvious impatience
Knight Dunlap declares "Mysticism adopts a type of reason- j
27 !
ing against which science constantly struggles." j
The only place Boehme gives for the exercise of |
reason is in the reduction of intuitive knowledge to the ,
level of symbolic expression. He denies that reason has
anything to do with the genesis of his concepts, but he
does not completely disqualify reason or deny its use to
others. He says.
The understanding is born of God. It is not the
product of the schools in which human science is
taught. I do not treat intellectual learning with
contempt, and if I had obtained a more elaborate
education, it would surely have been an advantage
to me, while my mind received the divine gift; but
it pleases God to turn the wisdom of his world into
Sheldon Cheney, 0£. cit., p. 271. i
26 Letters II: 6, 7, 8, 9, as quoted by Mrs. A.J.
Penny, cit.
27 Knight, Dunlap, Mysticism. Freudian!sm and Scien
tific Psychology (St. Louis: C.V. Mosby Co., 1920), p. 42.'
64
foolishness, and to give His strength to the weak,
so that all may bow down before Him.28
Further, he is rather plain as to the limitations he
places upon human reason with regard to the physical world.
I do not say that man should not investigate
natural sciences, and gain experience in regard to |
external things. Such a study is certainly useful |
to him; but man's own reasoning should not be the
basis of his knowledge. Man should not have his
conduct guided merely by the light of external
reasoning, but he should, with all his reasoning
and with his whole being, bow in deep humility
before God.29
The question of the adequacy of method is one thing,
the question as to the nature of the objective reality to
be verified is another and the question of the psychologi
cal nature of the mystical experience is still another. It
can be argued that there are limits to the scientific
method. The method is adequate for the investigation of
the phenomena1 world but it is illegitimate to assume as the
naturalistic scientists do that the natural world is the
only real world. To say that the natural world is the only
real is to make a dogmatic metaphysical assumption which
sweeps away the whole problem of mysticism but leaves the
question as to the persistence of the mystical experience
pR
Franz Hartmann, Personal Christianity A Science
(New York: Macoy Publishing Co., 1919)# P* 65.
29 Ibid.. p. 48.
65
unexplained. Just as there are qualitative aspects of
reality in music, art, or human relationships which are not ;
amenable to analysis and are not only immeasurable but
ineffable so with mysticism. Trueblood points out that ■
i
... to say that an experience is ineffable !
is not to make a strange assertion, for ineffability j
faces us constantly. One has only to watch the
efforts of a lover of music, as he tries to tell
the unmusical about his experiences, to realize
that this is true. All the musical devotee can do
is to use words of vivid imagery, which probably
appear, to the unmusical hearer, vague, raphsodical
and largely meaningless. . • . An extreme illustra
tion of this comes to our attention with convincing
power if we try to tell a person bom blind about
some vivid color that has thrilled us. . . . The
knowledge of color is strictly ineffable.30
Boehme*s claims cannot be disposed of without serious
examination. At the same time it must be recognized that
there are limits to the use of the scientific method in
pronouncing upon them. For the purposes of this paper the
question as to the validity of his metaphysical concepts
will not be exhaustively discussed. So far as the objec
tive reality of Boehme*s God is concerned, there are three
possibilities. Either he has touched reality at a level
not accessible by rational procedures, or his experience is
3^ D. Elton Trueblood, The Knowledge of God (New York;
Harper and Brothers, 1939)# pT 82-83'
66
! illusory, or his experience is not illusory but his claim
I to the intuitional nature of his knowledge is a misunder-
I standing of the 'gestalt*, but rationally derived nature
i
' of his insights.
There is no violation of sound procedure in examin
ing Boehme's experience on the basis of the psychological
assumption that the personality needs of Boehme have pro
vided the dynamic which has led to the experience which he
claims and to the system of metaphysics which he has
elaborated. On the basis of the empirical examination of
mysticism as an experience of a religious nature reported
in all the major traditions, there may appear psychodynamic
factors arising out of social pressures or alienation, in
ternal conflicts, physical inadequacy, a sense of guilt
engendered in a theologically legalistic background, or
insecurities concomitant with an unsettled era. These and
other factors will be discussed subsequently as being ap
plicable to the experience of Boehme. Whether the reality
which Boehme believes to exist with apodicitic certainty,
has objective reality the scientific method cannot ad
judicate. Neither by the same token can this method dis
prove his claims. However, the mystical experience and
the deliverances of the mystic's consciousness are proper
subjects for psychological discussion. The fact is that
67 :
I although the mystical experience is private in the most ^
, complete sense and is highly subjective, it does have both j
; cognitive and functional elements to which testimony is
I
' given. There emerges in the case of Boehme an understand-
; Ing of cosmic process which although not expressed in the
: modern idiom is not too far from the understanding of con- !
temporary thinkers like Whitehead, Northrop, Conger and |
31 '
Overstreet. There is also a functional element. The
mystic gives evidence of sustained outgoing and construe- j
tive effort such as is the product of a highly integrated |
personality. Gordon Allport observes.
Religion is the search for a value underlying
all things, and as such is the most comprehensive
of all the possible philosophies of life. A deeply
moving religious experience is not readily forgotten,
but is likely to remain as a focus of thought and
desire. Many lives have no such focus; for them
religion is an indifferent matter, or else a purely |
formal and compartmental interest. But the authen
tically religious personality unites the tangible
present intelligible and acceptable to him. Psy
chotherapy recognizes this integrative function of
religion in personality, soundness of mind being
aided by the possession of a completely embracing
theory of life.32
The fact is that the claim of Boehme to a distinctive
3^ Henry Nelson Wieman and Bernard Eugene Meland,
American Philosophies of Religion (New York: Willett,
Clark and Co., 193^)7 Chapter XIII.
32 Gordon W. Allport, Personality - A Psychological
Interpretation (New York: Henry Holt and CoT%1937)>
p. 226.
68
I type of religious experience is corroborated by the like
I
: claims of a very large group of people in the traditions
' of both east and west over many centuries. The number of
! persons participating in such a claim and the stupendous
. nature of the claim demands that some intensive psycho
logical investigation be undertaken in this area. No
totally reasonable concept of the universe can be arrived
at without taking this basic religious experience into
account. The problems for psychological study are, how
ever, very numerous. It is difficult to assess the ex
perience without Judging the validity of the objective
reference.
CHAPTER IV
BOEHME*S SYSTEM OF THOUGHT
I. GENERAL SURVEY ^
1
The writings of Boehme, some thirty in number and |
spread over the years from l6l2 to 1624, do not represent I
as they stand, a systematic metaphysical scheme. An exam- j
ination of any of the commentators will reveal that the
mystic expressed himself in a spontaneous fashion. He
wrote under a compulsion and as though his vivid experience
I
and heightened imagination were trying to force themselves j
/
into his inadequate symbolism.
I might sometimes perhaps write more elegantly,
and in a better style, but the fire burning within
me is driving me on. My hand and my pen must then
seek to follow the thoughts as well as they can.
The inspiration comes like a shower of rain. That
which I catch I have. If it were possible to grasp 1
and describe all that I perceive, then would my
writings be more explicit.!
If his view on any one subject is to be found, it will
usually mean the laborious collocation of disparate state
ments from various parts of his work. His vocabulary is a
conglomerate of hermetic philosophy, alchemy, astrology
and orthodox Lutheran theology. There is no order in any
^ Hartmann, o p , , cit.. p. 65-66.
1 7 0
I single work of Boehme which would encompass all his con- |
' I
Icepts and yet when they are painstakingly cataloged it
becomes obvious that there has emerged a meaningful whole I
'which has a large measure of coherence and consistency. In
this section of the discussion the salient features of
Boehme*s thought will be developed with supporting quota
tions from the text.
Rufus Jones declares with reference to the untutored
style,
. . . nor is there any doubt in my mind that he,
Jacob Boehme, got an insight . . . 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.2
Beyond concern for his own inadequacies however,
Boehme insists in not a few places in his writings that in
addition to qualities of earnestness and persistence the
reader, to grasp these truths, must meet also the terms of
an essential spiritual condition.
These writings transcend the horizon of in
tellectual reasoning, and their interior meaning
cannot be grasped by speculation and argumenta
tion; but it requires the mind to be in a godlike
state, and illuminated by the Spirit of Truth.
^ Rufus M. Jones, Spiritual Reformers. op. clt..
p. 173.
71
If any one desires to follow me in the science
of the things whereof I write, let him follow rather
the flights of my soul than those of my pen. '
I
Spiritual knowledge cannot be communicated from
one intellect to another, but must be sought for in
the Spirit of God. Truly theosophical writings will
even to the intellect convey here and there a ray
of recognition; but if the reader is found worthy
by God to have the divine light kindled within his
own soul, then will the inexpressible worlds of God
be heard by him.
He who reads these writings and cannot under
stand them, should not throw them aside, imagining
that they can never be understood. He should seek
to change his will, and elevate his soul to God,
asking Him for grace and understanding, and then
read again. He will then perceive more truth than
he did before, until at last the power of God will
manifest itself in him, and he will be drawn down
into the depths, into the supernatural foundation
— that is to say, into the eternal unity of God.3
A comprehensive view of Boehme*s system will be
given here as a means to a better understanding of the re
lationship between the various parts. By looking at a
topographical map first, it is thought that the closer ex
amination of the high points will have clearer meaning.
Having surveyed the main outlines of the problem and the
solution which Boehme offered the particulars of the ”Un-
grund”, God and nature, and Boehme*s concept of redemption
will be taken up. This will by no means be an exhaustive
3 Hartmann, op,, cit. . p. 6j, 68, 69
; 7^
• treatment of Boehme*s thought but It will provide some
, basis for the subsequent discussion of the psychological
‘ aspects of the experience which issued in this elaboration.
I ,
The fundamental problems for Boehme are the under- j
standing of God in Himself, the manifestation of God in thej
' structure of the world and in man, and the culmination of
the system as the life of God in the soul of man. This .
statement suffers from being an oversimplification but its
elements will serve as guide posts. Martensen outlines the
"fundamental task which Boehme has set for himself” as "to
understand God and in this light to understand the world."^1
God is for Boehme the All (Allés) and Nothing (Nichts). '
Everything is potentially in Him but since nothing is yet
manifest He is nothing knowable or definable. This poten
tiality is characterized by will and the desire for objec
tification. The phenomena1 world is generated from the
eternal divine nature. The world is a manifestation of
God who is both transcendent and immanent.
The problem of evil is one which occasioned some
shifts in viewpoint in the course of Boehme*s writing. In
the Aurora only good proceeds from the Ungrund. There is
a good that remains and a good that falls represented by !
i l
Hobhouse, pp. cit. . p. 27.
73 ■
! Christ and Lucifer. Later Boehme shifts to the point of
; view that good and evil are in a relationship of antithesis'
1
: which exists as a given inherently characteristic of life !
! !
' and movement from the Abyss, Finally Boehme adopts the j
view that evil is the dark or wrath side of God and an un- I
I
avoidable accompaniment of divine manifestation. '
Man for Boehme is a fallen being and is of a tri
partite nature. He is constituted of three factors, spirit,
soul and body. These elements correspond to three prin
ciples of light, darkness and the world of sense. Man
aspires to the knowledge of God as all things tend to re
turn to their source but in order to have true self-know- ‘
ledge men must have a rebirth by choosing the way to Christ.
The rebirth is the sine qua non for an understanding of
spiritual truths, for understanding the nature of the
world and for the knowledge of God.
II. THE BASIC CONCEPT OF THE UNGRUND
Berdyaev in his Spirit and Reality considers
Boehme*s Ungrund to be the fundamental hypothesis of meta
physics. He says.
The Ungrund, the primal, pre-existential freedom
goes deeper than God. It is nothingness which longs ,
to be something. The glimmerings of being precede
being itself and in the dark void anterior to being
74
5
freedom is kindled.
Obviously Boehme*s system includes the necessity of |
radical change if man is to have enlightenment. A sense of
depravity overshadows human reason. The heart of the
matter of amendment hinges upon the will being brought into
harmony with God*s. The remedy will involve an understand
ing of how the whole problem has arisen and how it can be
remedied. In order to understand that one must go back to
the process by which God has been manifested. We must know
how the All— or Nothing— became self-conscious, created !
plurality and what is now being willed. Boehme*s own in- |
sights began with the Ungrund or the Ungrounded and from
that beginning and by direct illumination he explains how
by a sort of evolutionary process involving a dialectical
progression the Ungrund attains manifestation. We will
here first attempt to explain Boehme*s view of the Ungrund,
the development of the seven forms of nature, the three
principles and the emergence of sin and finally the con
ception of regeneration.
The Ungrund is the highest metaphysical principle
in Boehme*s system. It is a state of being antecedent to
reality. It is the condition of the supreme spirit before
^ Stephen Hobhouse, Jacob Boehme (New York: Harper
and Brothers, 1949), p. 95*
75
; any manifestation whatever occurs. The supreme spirit was
in a state of * still rest*. Ungrund is not being as any
kind of existence. It is the eternity beyond nature and
creature, the eternal nothing. It is the unconditioned
* abyss * without temporal or spatial relations and without
self-awareness. It is all incohate and subjective. It is
the undifferentiated matrix in which All is, but only po
tentially. Boehme equates the Ungrund and God but he also
uses God as the Trinity and as the Light Principle which
we shall discuss later. '
!
In eternity, that is in the Unground out of I
nature, there is nothing either that can give
anything; it is an eternal rest which has no
parallel, a groundlessness without beginning and
end. Nor is there any limit or place, nor any
seeking or finding, or anything in which there
were a possibility. ... It has no essential
principle.^
This kind of understanding Boehme had of the Ungrund
in his illumination, but because we are compelled to think
in three dimensions in space and time the categories in
which we try to express the ungrund of necessity do not
apply. The transcendent Fact was not in space or time. The
best we can do is to try feebly to apprehend the Pact but
we cannot comprehend it in our thoughts. This is strangely
^ The Incarnation II: 1, 8.
76
comparable to a basic characteristic of modern physics.
Einstein is reported to have said.
The most beautiful and most profound emotion
we can experience Is the sensation of the mystical.
It is the sower of all true science. He to whom
this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer
wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead.
To know that what is Impenetrable to us really
exists manifesting itself as the highest wisdom
and the most radiant beauty which our dull
faculties can comprehend only in their most
primitive forms— this knowledge, this feeling is
at the center of true religiousness.7
Boehme*s difficulty in describing the Ungrund is
that one which is common to all mysticism. If the word
God is equated with the Ungrund there still remains the
question, how is He to be described? He can be described
in negatives but any assertive statement would never be
accurate because it would have to be qualified immediately
in such a way as to invalidate completely the affirmative
assertion.
He is not this and not that, neither evil nor
good, neither love nor anger. It cannot be said of
God that He has distinction in Himself, for he iSp
in Himself natureless, emotionless, creatureless
It should not be concluded however, that Boehme*s Ungrund
7 Lincoln Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein
(New York: William Sloane Associates, Î9Î8T7 P* 105.
^ Predestination. I: 3.
77
is described entirely in terms of the Weti, Neti, of the
Upanishads. For Boehme the All is not exactly nothing in
the primordial state. It is boundless, motionless and j
without content but is has the attribute of will. This will
is stimulated by desire towards manifestation. It is the
essence of will to split into opposite phases so that
everything is ultimately a manifestation of will in op
posites, the divine light or darkness, the divine love or
anger.
All whatsoever it is that liveth and moveth j
is in God, and God Himself is all, and all whatso- !
ever is found or framed, is formed out of Him, be j
it either out of love or out of wrath.9
Employing the terms which suggest the Christian trinitarian
concept Boehme expresses himself this way:
The first beginningless, inconceivable will bears
in itself the one eternal good as a conceived will
which is a son of the groundless will and yet equally
eternal with it. The other will is the first will * s
perceptibility and finding. The groundless will is
father and the conceived will is son. The outgo of
the groundless will through the conceived son is the
spirit. Thus the one will of the Ungrund differen
tiates itself by means of the first eternal begin
ningless conception of itself by a three-fold opera
tion, yet it remains only one will.^0
9 Aurora. Ill: 145.
Predestina11on I; 5, 6, 12.
78 ,
The ’abysmal* will of Boehme is basic to his general
cosmology but it also applies for the soul. Man is the ;
microcosm of the macrocosm. The same voluntaristic con- ;
flict is an essential in the soul of man, in nature as in i
I
Deity. "To understand this conflict,** says Brinton, **was |
I
to understand the mystery of life. To find a solution was '
to reach the goal of existence. . . .**^^
The soul’s free will is as thin as nothing. . . .
God’s free will has conceived itself through the
spiritual world and works through it, and the
spiritual world’s free will has conceived itself
through the outward world and works through it.
Even so the soul’s free will which also has its
origin out of the abyss conceives itself into
something whereby it may become.12
At the level of the abyss the nearest contemporary
equivalent for the unconditioned will might be conation.
It seems to be an undifferentiated unrest or striving
which as yet has no awareness of any goal.
The Ungrund is an eternal Nothing but makes
an eternal beginning as desire. . . .13
With this beginning regarding the Ungrund we can
now pursue the question how does the totally subjective.
Howard Brinton, op,, clt,., p. 9.
Mysterlum Magnum XXVII: 6.
Mysterlum Pansophicum
79
Insensitive, Incognitive desire become manifest? How does
it objectify itself? It is plain that the question, how
can it happen, is irrelevant or impertinent. Boehme on
' the authority of his illumination simply describes how it
does happen. When manifestation does take place in the
interaction of will and desire, there results first God’s
self-consciousness and then the production of creatures.
The process by which Nothing becomes something Boehme calls
imagination. Human imagination is the temporal repetition
of process by which the Ungrund becomes the Grund. There
will be an elaboration of the meaning of imagination when
the question of evil is examined. Constantly in Boehme*s
discussions of the problem of manifestation the reader is
reminded of the inadequacy of human reason. To comprehend
this process, reason must be left behind and the compre-
hensor must move into another dimension where the cate-
: gories of time and space do not limit understanding.
At this point Boehme*s view of eternity might be
outlined before we proceed to discuss the details of the
manifestation of the Ungrund. Eternity is not time
measured indefinitely in a linear pattern as series of
time units in progression. When man fell, he fell into
time. From the advantageous position as seeing everything
eternally Inter-related as organic wholes he must now see
I 80
‘ them out of true perspective as successively related in
mechanical series. Boehme*s concept obliterates and tran- i
scends the linear dimension.
)
- We cannot say of man that he in the beginning was ^
enclosed in time for he was in eternity. God had I
created him in his image, but he fell; so the power i
of time seized him where all things stand in number, j
measure and weight and the same clock work is the ^
outspoken formed word of God, according to love and
anger, wherein lies the whole creation together with
man according to nature.14
Since man has fallen then from the universal to the
particular the problem in seeking truth is to reverse the
fall and to be reinstated to universality. Here we have
used Boehme*s concept of the fall but we shall elaborate
upon it in the discussion of the problem of evil.
111. GOD AND NATURE
The manifestation of the Ungrund is more coherently ;
set out in the Three Principles (l6l9)> the Threefold Life
(1620) and the Forty Questions (I620) than in the Aurora
(1612) which was written first. When manifestation takes
place a second will arises out of the subjective. Two
wills are necessary to make experience possible. The
argument seems to be one by analogy from the characteristic
Predestination VII: 5I.
81
of our human minds that we know and appreciate only through
the experience of opposites. For example, there is no
consciousness of light if there is no darkness anywhere. |
»
For Boehme the process of manifestation is an evolution j
through seven inter-related forms from the abyss to the I
I
realization of Eternal Nature. For him also the Eternal
Nature must be differentiated from the Divine Nature. The
Divine Nature exists in the trinity, the Father, the Son
and the Holy Spirit. After the eternal generation of the
Son, and eternal movement of the Holy Spirit, there follows;
the existence of the Eternal Nature. For the Eternal !
Nature, there is no limitation of time. God sees Eternal
Nature constantly in the process of generation and considers
it "the great storehouse and workshop in which all the
created essences, elements, principles, and potentialities
of all possible world are laid up.” Perhaps this is
what Barnett is getting at in a contemporary way as he
interprets the work of Einstein by concluding
Man’s inescapable impasse is that he himself is
part of the world he seeks to explore; his body and
proud brain are mosaics of the same elemental
particles that compose the dark, drifting dust
clouds of interstellar space; he is, in the final
analysis, merely an ephemeral conformation of the
Alexander Whyte, o^. cit., p. 74.
82 ;
primeordlal space-tlme field. Standing midway :
between macrocosm and microcosm he finds barriers
on every side and can perhaps but marvel, as St. i
Paul did nineteen hundred years ago, that ’the
world was created by the word of God so that what -
is seen was made out of things which do not !
a p p e a r ]
I
Eternal Nature is for Boehme manifested in seven
different forms. These forms are properties or qualities
and each one is interdependent upon the rest. Boehme
maintains that all of the forms are eternal and that no
one precedes any other.
All the seven spirits of God are born one in
another. One gives birth to another; there is
neither first nor last. The last generates the
first, as well as the first the second, the third
the fourth,up to the last. They are all seven
equally eternal.^7
In explaining why he discusses them as a series he, once
again, falls back to the matter of the inadequacy of human
reason.
If I am sometimes describing only two or three
as being active in the generation of another
spirit, I am doing so on account of my weakness,
because in my degenerate mind I cannot retain the
impression of the action of all seven in their
perfection. I see all the seven; but when I begin
to analyze what I see, I then cannot grasp all the
seven at once, but only one after another.
Lincoln Barnett, op,, cit. , p. 114.
^7 Aurora X: 2.
no ;
Ibid. . X: 22.
83
On the rising of the will to manifestation there
arose a darkening of the Ungrund, until then universal
light. In order that there might be manifestation, the
' second will must produce the contrary of the first which
* is variously described by Boehme as darkness, overshadow
ing, contraction or harshness. It is resistance to
change. When this form appears the first will seeks to
turn back again to the light but it cannot do this without
reversing the will to manifestation, which is impossible.
Of necessity there arises a second form which is the
opposite of the first and desires change.
Desire, being a strong attraction, causes the
eternal freedom, which is comparable to a nothing,
to contract and enter into a state of darkness.
The primitive will desires to be free of that
darkness, for it desires the light. The will can
not attain this light, and the more it desires for
freedom the greater will be the attraction caused
by the desire.^9
The third form arises out of the tension between
the first two and is described as bitterness or anguish.
In the Mysterlum Magnum and in the Incarnation Boehme uses
the figure of the wheel to illustrate what he is trying to
say.^^
Si% Theosophical Points I: 38.
20 Mysterlum Magnum III: I5, also Incarnation II:
4.
84
The third quality, the anguish, is evolved in
the following manner: the hardness is fixed, the
motion is fugitive; the one is centripetal, the
other is centrifugal; but they are one, and cannot
be separated from each other (nor from their
center), they become like a turnipg wheel, in
which one part strives upwards and the other one
in a downward direction. The hardness furnishes
substantiality and weight, while the sting (desire
in motion) supplies spirit (will for freedom) and
fugitive life. All this causes a turning around
and within and outwardly having nevertheless no
destination where to arrive. That which the
attraction of the desire causes to become fixed
is again rendered volatile by the aspiring for
freedom. There then, results the greatest dis
quietude, comparable to a furious madness, from
which results a terrible anguish.21
The fourth form arises out of the anguish. There
seems here to appear the beginning point of self-conscious
ness where there is the possibility of choosing between
two alternatives. Boehme likens it to a lightning flash or
to fire. Nature desires to express itself according to
the purpose of its being and is opposed in direct propor
tion to the measure of this desire. The greater the desire
therefore, the greater the tension, until fire breaks out.
If the fire continues to burn it becomes light which is
the fifth form and the first of the higher ternary in
Boehme*s scheme. In this light the first three forms which
I
we have described become as gentle, soft and harmonious.
Mvsterium Magnum III: I5.
; %
I The fourth form is the transition point through which it
i is necessary for man and nature to pass in order to be
reborn into light. It is only in the fifth form that self-
I
fulfillment is achieved by letting self-will become
synchronized with God’s will.
; As the sun in the terrestrial plane transforms
acerbity in concord, so acts the light of God in
the forms of eternal nature. This light shines
into them and out of them; it ignites them so
that they obtain its will and surrender themselves
to it entirely. Then they give up their own will
and become as if they had no power at all of them
selves, and are desirous only for the power of the
light.22
There is a much deeper significance to the fourth
point than has been here suggested but it will be better
seen in the discussion of the question of the appearance
of evil. The fourth point is the point of choice but there
are implications which cause Boehme to relate it to the
whole matter of the fall and regeneration.
The sixth point is the result of the decision
having been made to continue in the light. Here being
which has had its basis in the first three forms becomes
substantial and begins to express itself to perception.
Sound is a form of expression and of identity. Together
with sound Boehme describes the sixth form in terms of
22 Theosophical Points V: 3*
86
! speech, cries, colors, scents, tastes, feeling, lightness,
; 1
I heaviness and so on. He gives a very lucid account of the
' I
sixth form in the Mysterlum Magnum. 1
I I
! To constitute audible life, or the sound of j
the powers, hardness, softness, compactness and ,
thinness and motion are required. To constitute j
the sixth principle there are therefore required ;
all the other qualities of nature. The first '
form furnishes hardness, the second motion; by
means of the third, division takes place. The
fire changes the harshness of the conceived
essence by consuming it into a spiritual being,
representing mildness and softness, and this
becomes formed into sound, according to the
qualities which it contains.23
This sound of hearing, seeing, feeling,
tasting, and smelling is the true intelligent
life; for if one power enters into another one,
then the latter receives the former in sound.
When they enter into each other, each then awakens
the other and recognizes the other.24
It should not be construed that the sixth form is to
be identified with the sound of the phenomenal world. Once
again Boehme is using a figure of speech. The meaning lies
beyond any literal interpretation of the words. The de
scriptions apply to the Eternal Nature which is the mani
festation or objectification of the Ungrund, and these are
not directly available to the senses.
23 Mysterlum Magnum V: 11.
Ibid., V: 14.
87
In the light of God the kingdom of heaven (the
consciousness of the spirit), sound is very subtle,
sweet and lovely, so that if compared with terres
trial noise, it is like a perfect stillness.
Nevertheless in the realm of glory it is indeed
comprehensible sound, and there Is a language
which is heard by the angels— a language which is,
however, only partaking of the nature of their
world.25
The seventh form is the culmination of all the rest.
Being having attained essence now puts on shape which
Boehme calls figure or signature. That which began as
Ungrund with the characteristic of will now reaches the
point of expression in Eternal Nature and the signature of
God is put on it speaking of the spirit which is inherent
in it.
The seventh spirit of God is the body, being
bom from the other six spirits, and in it all the
celestial figures are taking form. Prom it arises
all beauty, all joy. If this spirit did not exist
God would be imperceptible.26
Thus it is that Boehme describes the objectifica
tion of the Ungrund and provides the basis for the under
standing of sin and its remedy. All of the phenomenal
world including man represents a less perfect order than
Eternal Nature because the presence of sin.
Mysterlum Magnum V: 19*
Aurora I: 2, 3*
88
This world with all that belongs to it as well
as man is created as an outbirth of the Eternal
Nature; understand, out of the seven seals of the
Eternal Nature.2?
IV. REDEMPTION
(
At the point of the fourth form, which is the place j
of choice in the system, Lucifer did not allow the light of
God’s love to illuminate the lower terniary and being con
tent with the fireglow saw things as they appeared to his
unenlightened imagination. To Boehme the imagination is
the consciousness of what is real. If the imagination is
false the imaginer has an inverted view of what is real. ,
Lucifer in his imagination without the light of God which
is the sixth form, returns to the first three forms and
sees them as wrath, vengeance and punishment while the
enlightened see them as love and mercy and guidance.
Lucifer then is eternally committed to what Boehme call the
’first principle’, which is the dark world of anger and is
all and eternally evil. It was the choice of his will to
stand in self-will and to prefer power and might to meek
ness, humility and love.
At this point it would be well to discuss the ’three
27 The Threefold Life III; 40.
89
principles*. In discussing the fact that he was ’God- ;
taught* Boehme said: |
I have written, not from the instruction or
knowledge received from men. ... I have no
need of any other book, ... My book hath only
three leaves.28
By this Boehme undoubtedly meant his ’three principles’.
Two of the principles are eternal and the other is tem
poral. In the first principle all is darkness, anger and
evil. In this principle the first three forms predominate
and the latter three are obscured. The second principle
is light and love where the latter of the terniary of forms
predominates and the first three are hidden. The third
principle is the phenomenal world and roan and it stands
qualified in the evil of the first principle and the good
of the second principle. Each of these two principles
seeks to draw man. His eternal state will be determined by
way in which he directs his Imagination. Brinton in his
study of The Mystic Will discusses the three principles and
gives to imagination the equivalent meaning of the contem
porary psychological terra ’attention*
The first principle is the principle of the Father
and the second principle is equated with the Son. This
oft
Penny, o£. cit.. p. I5.
Brinton, op. cit., p. 242.
90 ,
poses the embarrassing question of identifying evil with '
I
God the Father, Boehme would reply that the Father is j
never manifested alone and only through the Son. Î
I
. . . If the Father should (by a false imagina- ^
tion) be thought of as existing alone, and apart
from the Son, He must (by such an imagination) be j
known as wrathful, angry, jealous, and as such an
imagination exists. He must speak to it in terms ;
of its own apprehension. But in Himself, as i
known by a true (because divinely illuminated)
imagination. He is all Love and Goodness.30 :
Of the third principle Boehme says:
j
This world is rooted in evil and good, and *
there can be neither one of them without the |
other. But the great misfortune in it is that I
evil is preponderating therein over good, and the
wrath stronger than love, and this is due to the
sin of the devil and of man, who excited by their
perverted desires, so that the world is now power
fully qualified in wrath, acting like a poison
within the body.31
To remedy the situation Boehme has a plan of re
demption and regeneration. Lucifer’s fall was beyond all j
help. He willed himself eternally into the first prin
ciple where his state is forever fixed. Adam however, was
in the third principle which is not eternal. This might
be analogous so far as the devil is concerned to a psychosis
in man where wrong concepts of reality are accepted as
3^ Hastings, o£. cit.. p. 781.
3^ Mvsterium Magnum XI: 15.
91
though they were the real and the subject has no insight
into his condition. Lucifer has said ’Evil be thou my i
good’. Adam on the other hand might be likened to an in
dividual who is neurotic and still is capable of discerning
evil as evil and good as good. He has however, lost the j
divine perception which knows only good. Boehme puts the *
doctrine of depravity in these terms that man in the third
principle is now incapable of comprehending the whole con
tent of reality until he has been transmuted from his
condition by a new birth.
The second principle or the Son has come down into
the temporal world to reenact the part of Adam, but where
Adam fell, Christ the Son stood. He resisted the tempta
tion In the wilderness and then He went to the cross which
Boehme holds to be the place of choice of the fourth or
fire form of Eternal Nature. Here is the vicarious prin
ciple of the Lutheran orthodoxy, but by reference to the
meanings behind the traditional forms Boehme has given a
universal quality to his thinking.
When the two kingdoms, the wrath of God and the
love of God were battling with each other, then
appeared Christ as the hero. He willingly sur
rendered Himself to the wrath, and He extinguished
it by His love. He came from God into this world
and took our soul into Himself, so that He might
take us out of the earthly state into Himself and i
lead us thus into God. He regenerated us within
Himself, so that we would become capable of living
92
again in God, and that we should put our will
into Him. In Him He led us to the Father, into
our first home; that is to say, into the paradise
which Adam had left.32
The focal point of Boehme*s scheme of redemption is
the fourth form where Lucifer and Adam failed, the former
in an ultimate way and Adam to a lesser degree. In Adam
those qualities which are represented by the fifth, sixth
and seventh forms became obscure only to be restored by
Christ returning for Adam to the fourth point and thence
bringing the hidden qualities to light. The fourth form
is then equivalent to the cross. The following passage
from the Incarnation is illustrative.
The Word took our own flesh and blood into the
divine essentiality, and broke the power which
held us imprisoned in the wrath of death and fury.
It broke that power on the Cross; that is to say,
in the center of nature (the fourth natural form,
whose symbol is the Cross), and ignited again in
our soul (that had become dark) the burning white
light-fire.33
Looking back now over the general scheme, as Boehme
came to describe it in his voluminous writings from the
time of his illumination, there was no major change. The
forms of expression change slightly, as for example, the
Incarnation I: 11.
33 Incarnation II: 6, 9.
93
alchemistic concepts in the later writings are eliminated
and a somewhat more consistent presentation of his view on
the problem of evil, is developed. Sin finally becomes
not something which God has made, but something which only |
takes on the appearance of reality In the Imagination
which has been perverted by the wrong choice. In man this
is remediable only as the individual is willing to allow
his will to become God*s will. Ultimately, the third or
temporal principle will be removed and only the principles
of wrath and love will remain, but each will be unknown to
the other. Those who have been taken into the principle
of the Son will see, in all, the good for ever, and the un-
regenerate will eternally abide in the anger of God. Hell
is then the eternal darkness where self-interest prevails
and good is equated with evil. Heaven is the eternal
light where human and divine wills are meshed in perfect
unity. All is good. Heaven and hell are thus for Boehme
not places but states of the soul. Heaven and hell are
within us.
The mind in its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, and Hell of Heaven,
Milton
Thus the cycle is complete. Prom the objectifica
tion of the Ungrund through the fourth form of choice and
by regeneration back to God.
94
Those earnest souls that have worked the wonders
of God in His will at the foot of the Cross, having
received the body of God, that is, of Christ and who
have walked therein in justice and truth all their
doings also follow them in their strong will and
desire, and they experience inexpressible joy in
the love and mercy of God, by which they are con
tinually surrounded. The wonders of God are their
nutriment; they are living in glory, power, strength,
and majesty such as is beyond all description.34
For before the time of this world there was
nothing but God from Eternity, and after this world
there will be nothing but God in Eternity.35
3^ Ijie Threefold Life XVIII: 12.
35 Ibid.. VI: 43.
CHAPTER V
A PSYCHODYNAMIC VIEW OP BOEHME
I. RELATION BETWEEN
PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ^
Although Boehme would resist any suggestion that his*
system of thought was a projection of his own psychological,
processes there is suggestive evidence that his religious
and philosophical deliverances can be understood in the
I
light of his temperament, his active mind with its capacity
for abstract thinking and its actively imaginative quality,
the personality conflicts and social pressures to which he ;
was subject. Boehme would insist that the emotionally
overwhelming insights came from a supernatural source and
he would probably think it blasphemous to suggest that
there were deep personality needs which supplied the
dynamic which impelled him to reach out for an answer
beyond himself. Typical of the conviction of Boehme that
the compulsion came from God is the following statement,
I say it before God and testify before His
Judgment-seat, where everything must appear, that
I in my human self do not know what I shall have
to write; but whenever I am writing the Spirit
dictates to me what to write, and shows me all
in such a wonderful clearness, that I often do
not know whether or not I am with my consciousness
96
in this world.^
Psychologists have alluded to religious experience ,
now over several decades. Just as there have been several
' 1
' schools of psychological thought there have been diverse <
psychological interpretations of religious experience. . The!
I I
fact that there are differences among those psychologists '
who sincerely attempt to understand religious experience
is not important. The fact that psychologists are, with
improved techniques and expanded insights, recognizing
the therapeutic values of religion as well as the limita- ,
tions which the scientific method imposes upon psychologi- ;
I
cal pronouncements bids well to bring the psychologist and i
the minister of religion into a complementary relationship.
Allport has expressed himself in these words:
. . . there is inherent absurdity in supposing
that psychology and religion, both dealing with
the outward reaching of man*s mind, must be per
manently and hopelessly at odds. As different as
are science and art in their axioms and methods
they have learned to co-operate in a thousand
ways— in the production of finer dwellings, music,
clothing, design. Why should not science and re
ligion, likewise differing In axioms and method,
yet cooperate in the production of an improved
human character without which all other human
gains are tragic loss? Prom many sides today
comes the demand that religion and psychology
busy themselves in finding a common ground for
uniting their efforts for human welfare.2
^ Hartmann, op,, eft., p. 65.
2 Allport, OP. cit., p. Vi.
97
In spite of this conciliatory viewpoint which char
acterizes the contemporary scene there have been many
psychologists who have challenged the validity of religious
concepts and who have felt that religiously oriented per
sonalities have made an inferior adjustment. William
James, while appreciative of some religious values, says
in his notable lectures Varieties of Religious Experience.
There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact
a religious life exclusively pursued, does tend
to make the person exceptional and eccentric. . . .
Often they have led a discordant inner life, and
had melancholy during a part of their career. They
have known no measure, been liable to obsessions
and fixed ideas and frequently they have fallen
into trances, heard voices, seen visions and pre
sented all sorts of peculiarities which are or
dinarily classed as pathological. Often, moreover,
these pathological features in their career have
helped to give them their religious authority and
influence.3
Although the thinking of William James would apply
to the classical Christian mystics it would have to be
taken with qualifications with respect to Boehme. He has
been influential neither for his melancholy nor for his
trances but for devout and happy inner life to which his
religious technique led and for the philosophical system
which he suggested. The melancholy and the visions were
^ William James, Varieties of Religious Experience
(New York: Longmans Green and Company, 1902^, p 7# 8.
98
- characteristic of the earlier phase of his experience. :
^ His later life seems to have shown signs of emotional '
balance in spite of the hostility of the community, the
: I
' economic struggle to maintain his family and the antipathy |
of the religious authorities. Nevertheless Brinton de
scribes the situation with respect to Boehme accurately
when he says.
The world*8 vast laboratory for the psychology
of religion exhibits few more interesting specimens
than Jacob Boehme. Writers who wish to show that I
mysticism is pathological find in him much that is ;
to their purpose. Under the influence of strong
emotion ordinary processes of thought assumed for
him a supernatural significance. He was highly
suggestible and often wrote as if he were in a
trance.4
Some psychologists like Feuerbach have thrown all
religious experience into subjectivism and have gone beyond
the scientific limits of empirical psychology by affirming
that in the religious experience God is a ”wishbeing”.
Leuba too cannot bring himself to feel that the divine per
sonal beings which are claimed to be the objects of re
ligious devotion have any more than subjective existence.
In attempting to estimate the dynamics in the mystical ex
perience and to explain what the mystic wants, and is trying
.^to achieve by his religious techniques, Leuba lists five.
^ Brinton, op. cit., p. 64.
99 :
‘ There could be ground In the experience of Boehme for each
1 of these but there is not any scientific reason to say i
that therefore, that which satisfies these needs is 11-
* lusory. The tendencies and needs underlying the mystical
' experience for Leuba are:
The tendencies to self-affirmation and the
need for self-esteem.
The tendencies to cherish, to devote oneself
to something or somebody. These tendencies come
to their most perfect expression in the parents*
relations with the utterly dependent child, but,
strange as it may seem, they appear even in man*s
relation with God.
The need for affection and moral support.
The need for peace, for single-mindedness or ■
unity, both in passivity and in action.
Organic needs or needs for sensuous satis
faction (especially in connexion with the sex
life). If the mystics profess disdain for the
body and its pleasures, it is not because they
are indifferent to sensuous delight as such, but
because they see some compatibility between the
pleasures of the flesh and the soul * s welfare.
When they are not aware of the bodily origin
of sensuous enjoyment, they give themselves up
to it with great relish and complete abandon.5
Freud, who developed valuable analytical techniques
on the theory that factors in the unconscious areas affected
behavior, applied his medical philosophy of pansexuality to i
i
religious experience. He believed that repressed desires
5 J.H. Leuba, The Psychology of Religious Mysticism
(New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1925), p. Il6ff.
1 0 0
seek expression in complexes and they come out in disguise
' as dreams, phantasies and the psychopathology of every day
life. More constructively they appear in art, morals and
' religion. There are sex references in Boehme as will he
indicated later in this discussion, but Boehme does not use
erotic terminology to the degree which may be found in many
of the classical mystics.
Adler rejected Freud's extreme sex emphasis and
adopted as his fundamental thesis the view that all
i
neurotic behavior is an attempt to escape from a feeling of
inferiority in order to gain a feeling of superiority. He |
thought that chronically misunderstood persons beat a re- *
treat into religion and that the religious concepts were
fictitious. For Boehme some of the views of Adler might
be applicable, but once again to judge Boehme*s religious
object to be fictitious is impossible of scientific cor-
roboration or disproof. For Boehme, without equivocation,
there was a reality capable of sustaining his highest
values and of providing an integrating factor for his
scheme of the universe.
Most productive for this study have been the
I
writings of Jung, Allport and Benoit. In the foreword to
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism by Suzuki, Dr. C. G. Jung
makes some analysis of the enlightenment experience of
101 ;
satorl.^ He admits that the experience Is of the nature of
a 'mysterium Ineffabile* and that it involves an insight 1
i
into the nature of the self. The self for Jung is some-
I
thing other than the ego. The experience of satori is
I
comparable to the religious experience of transformation i
I
in the Christian tradition but, more accurately, something !
comparable to the experience of a Dionysius or a Boehme or
an Eckehart. In this experience there comes a total con
sciousness of life (Bewusstseinstotalitât). |
The occurrence of satori is interpreted and i
formulated as a break through of a consciousness !
limited to the ego-form in the form of the non-
ego-llke self.7
Jung seems to indicate there that, though one is limited
by ordinary consciousness and symbols which always have the
characteristics of somethingness, (Etwasheit), the nature
of Zen is the inner (Nicht-Ich) non-ego core of being
which is discoverable as the clue to universality. Satori
is the awareness of this as an experiential and emotion-
stirring fact. This core is ineffable, indescribable, no
thing.
Jung frankly suggests the possibilities of **self-
deception** or "auto-suggestion” in the experience of
6 Suzuki, 0£. cit,. p. 12.
^ Suzuki, 0£. eft., p. 14.
102
satori. He hesitates however, to put the judgments of
psychoanalysis upon the experience. He points out,
I
We can . . . never decide definitely whether a j
person is really 'enlightened* or * redeemed *, |
or whether he merely imagines it. We have no
criteria for this. . . . The imagination itself
is a psychic occurrence, and therefore whether an
enlightenment is called 'real* or * imaginary* Is
quite immaterial. . . . The fact that there is a
religious movement upon which many brilliant
minds have worked over a period of many centuries
is sufficient reason for venturing at least upon
a serious attempt to bring such happenings within
the realm of scientific understanding.”
Jung finds the preparation for the mystical ex
perience to be always of the nature of 'sich lassen* and
the ultimate conclusion for the mystic is that the Absolute
is a 'Nothing*. For the non-mystical worshipper God is
always imaged and conceptualized. God has, for the un
initiated creature characteristics (Geschôpfesart). For
Boehme, images are unnecessary and such a view tends to
incur the irritation of those who wish to preserve the
institutional pattern. The essential ultimate he refuses
to reduce to a * thing * in any sense.
As psychologists broaden their understanding of the
limitations of some approaches to the complex problems of
human personality, there seems to develop a greater
o
Suzuki, 02,. cit. . pp. 15, 16.
103 ;
rapprochement between theology and psychology. Ministers
of religion also recognizing that psychology has an answer |
for certain types of personality aberration which the j
formal program of their group cannot give, find in the |
psychologist a helpful ally. Gordon Allport has for some |
years held a point of view which accommodates the religious !
outlook. In Personality - a Psychological Interpretation ,
he points out that "the authentically religious personality
unites the tangible present with some comprehensive view ,
of the world that makes this tangible present intelligible I
and acceptable to him. Psychotherapy recognizes this in
tegrative function of religion in personality, soundness of*
mind being aided by the possession of a completely embrac
ing theory of life.This articulation of the relation
ship between psychology and religion is more likely to lead
to an intelligent understanding of the nature of mystical
experience than the dogmatic and general pronouncement that
it is entirely explained under the category of illusion.
In the case of Boehme, religion had an "integrative func
tion" .
^ Gordon W. Allport, Personality - A Psychological
Interpretation (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1937)>
p. 226,
104
Of the psychoanalytical school Benoit, a recent
writer in the field of metaphysics, points out that as a
science, psychology belongs to the world of relativity and
1
' cannot give the answer to the ultimate questions which
concern man nor can psychology give the answer to the
question of who we really are. Psychology deals only with
the phenomenal fragmented ego but that which is always sub
ject (Jung's Nicht Ich) is what is involved in the mystical
experience as distinct from the religious attitude induced
by the indoctrination of formal c r e e d s . '
Insofar as Boehme*s experience was inevitably of the
Ich as well as of the Nicht Ich, of the objective self as
well as of the subjective intuitively known self there is
a dimension which lends itself to psychological examination.
This is tantamount to saying that no conclusions can be
drawn with the finality of a Euclidian quad erat demon
strandum. Even so there is much in the early experience of
Boehme which would suggest the outcome in mysticism.
Herbert Benoit, Métaphysique et Psychoanalyse
(Paris: Editions Mazarine, I949).
105
II. THE CLINICAL PICTURE ;
i
The biographical material given in an earlier chap
ter in chronological arrangement contains clues to the I
early personality needs of Boehme. It is proposed here to |
select psychologically significant items for discussion |
which would suggest the dynamics behind the mystic's be
havior. Alienation, inferiority, fragmentation, guilt
feelings, insecurities both emotional and physical, sex,
the desire for intellectual coherence are all demonstrable
drives in the life of Boehme. All of these are, however,
related to the ego system of values. That is to say, he
had built up, as is natural, a sense of his own ego as an
object of supreme worth which, in a hostile world and with
his own inherent weaknesses, was in dire Jeopardy. The way
of Stoicism was Impossible. Suicide could not be the
answer. In his formal religious context monasticism would
not do. The ego must then be attached to the imperishable,
unchangable God in a subjective way. But the relative ego
values cannot be secured by God, and in this final dis
illusionment Boehme was driven into melancholy where he
achieved the insight that the transient ego values which he
had held as supreme were, in an ultimate reference, worth- ,
less. He reached the insight that the core of his being
was one with the interior Being from whom he had been alien.
106
He needed no longer to cling to any of the former illusory
values which inhere in the sensory world. The supreme
value was union of the self with the Self. The experience !
thus psychologized is Boehme's, the vocabulary is contem- |
porary and the hypothesis is tentative. ^
Of the clinically significant items are those which ^
concern Boehme*s family background, his relation to parents
f
and siblings, his childhood experiences, his schooling and
religious training, his adolescence, his vocational adjust-;
ment, his marriage his maturing Weltanschauung, his be- '
havior under the attacks of his critics and his attitude
towards death.
The home pattern into which Boehme was born can be
assumed to have been dominated by the concepts of domestic
relationship which permeate the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures.
In the fresh flush of early post-Reforraation days parental
authority carried divine sanctions and the husband and
father assumed a priestly relationship to his household.
The basis of child-parent relationship was legalistic. The
child's range of choice was no doubt limited and for one of
Jacob's active intelligence and creative imagination it
could be predicted that some form of phantasy might appear.
This was true, of course, in his recitation of the vivid
experience of "seeing” the cave on Landes-Krone containing
107
currency. No one, including Boehme, could ever provide
perceptual verification and it must be concluded that this 1
I
experience was of the nature of an hallucination. At the |
childish, pre-adolescent level Boehme needed something
which would compensate for his deprivation of play, his
feeling of physical inferiority and his need of attention.
Apparently he was one of a large family and not being
robust was given the lighter duties about the farm on
which all had to work to supplement the meager family in
come. Under such conditions hallucinations would be in
dicated as the primitive technique available to the boy in
the struggle to realize a greater wholeness. It should be
observed that in a day when psychological understanding was
limited and the miraculous was not impossible such an ex
perience could produce awe amongst those who heard the
recitation of it. Such a result would give young Jacob
a measure of control and prestige which would be satisfying
but it would also tend to fixate the pattern of behavior.
The persistence of such a pattern would indicate a patho
logical condition which could only be changed in Boehme*s
theological context by a radical, crisis type, subjective
experience.
The incident in the shoemaker's shop in which a |
customer predicted great things of Boehme and exhorted him
108,
' to persist in the reading of the Scriptures has also psy
chological significance, Boehme had not chosen the cob- j
bier's trade of his own volition, but had been apprenticed !
by his father because of his physical inability to work on |
(
the farm. His relations with his‘master and with his j
fellow workers were strained. He was noted for his avid *
reading of the Bible and for his moralistic attitude.
Barriers separated him from those around him and there is
evidence of a deep sense of alienation. This feeling must ;
t
have reached almost overwhelming proportions when Boehme |
I
was discharged for his religious proclivities and was
thrust out to make his living as a journeyman in a country
filled with soldiers and wracked by wars and political,
philosophical and religious debate of the most acrimonious
kind.
This period for Boehme was filled with deep depres-
. Sion, His world was totally chaotic and he found even the
clergy, from whom he might expect some answer, themselves
enmeshed in the skein of controversy. His religious
training had induced intense guilt feelings. His social
alienation was obvious, but in addition there was the in
terior feeling of alienation from God. There was no place I
for Boehme in the dualistic natural world. His idealized
. concept of human relations separated him from the lustful
109
earthy, though exteriorly religious men of his own times.
His own sense of sin kept him from God. His intelligence
could not structure a cosmos out of the emotional chaos
I
which surrounded him. He says:
I fell into great melancholy and sadness when |
I beheld the mighty deep of this world with its |
stars and clouds, rain and snow . . . for I saw '
evil and good, love and anger in all things, in
the earth and its elements as well as in man and
beast. I considered also that little spark of
light, man, and what he might be worth before
God in comparison to this great fabric of heaven
and earth. Finding that in this world it goes as ;
well with the wicked as with the virtuous, I was i
exceedingly troubled. The scriptures could not i
comfort me though I knew them well. Often the
devil would give me heathenish thoughts about
which I will be silent.H
Fragmented, alien and sin-ridden Boehme made the
supreme effort for deliverance. He comprised in his person
the medieval urge for salvation by religious means and at
the same time shared the Reformation urge for a full in
tellectual understanding of the whole process. His answer
came in the mystical experience which he describes in the
Aurora.
In this affliction I raised up my spirit, of
which I then understood little or nothing, toward
God with a mighty assault and wrapped up my whole
heart and soul together with my thought and will
in the resolution to struggle with the love and
mercy of God without ceasing until he blessed
me. . . . And when in my zeal I stormed so hard
Brinton, 0£. cit., p. 47.
110
on God and all the gates of hell, as if my life
depended on it, and I had still left some reserves
of strength, suddenly at a violent assault my
spirit burst through the gates of hell into the
innermost birth of Deity and there I was embraced
with love as a bridegroom embraces his bride.
What this triumph of the spirit was I cannot ex
press. I can compare it with nothing except with
the birth of life in the midst of death. It was
like the resurrection from the dead. In this
Light my spirit saw through all things and into
all creatures and I recognized God in grass and
plants. Then I had a great impulse to describe
the Being of God, but as I could not at once grasp
with my reason His profound births in their essence,
a year passed before I received true understanding.
It was with me as with a young tree planted in the
ground, at first it is young and tender and pleasant
to the sight, but it does not bear. Though it
blossoms the blossoms fall off. Many a cold wind
and frost and snow shall pass over it before it
bears its fruit.12
There is indication of a manic-depressive cycle in
Boehme.
If any one desires to follow me, let him not
be intoxicated by terrestrial thoughts and desires,
but girded with the sword of the Spirit, because
he will have to descend into a terrible depth,
even into the midst of the kingdom of hell. It
indeed requires hard labor to fight with the devil
between heaven and hell, as he is a powerful lord.
During such battles I have often made many bitter
experiences, which filled ray heart with sorrow.
Often the sun has disappeared from my sight, but
then he rose again, and the oftener the sunset
occurred, the more beautiful, clear, and magnifi
cent was the sunrise.13
IP
Brinton, op.
^3 Hartmann, op_. cit.. p. 68.
Ill
i The cognitive element in Boehme*s experience was
I
: quite appreciable. Coe found in case studies of spiritual
awakenings and mystical experiences many subconscious pro-
I
cesses which he calls automatisms or ideas or thought pro
cesses which after a period of incubation dart suddenly
into consciousness and tend to be interpreted as of super-
14
personal origin. Boisen makes the general assertion that
all emotional disturbances even in psychotic cases may be
purposive and constructive. They are techniques by which ^
the individual is freed from things which hinder growth |
and fulfillment.^^ {
Psychology cannot, of course, as an empirical |
science Judge the validity of what is claimed to be of
super-personal origin. It can deal with the deliverances
of the consciousness and the behavior of the mystic. It
could maintain the alternative hypotheses that (l) the ex
perience is illusory but answers the need of the fearful
ego, (2) the experience arising out of human need finds an
answer in a transcendent Being capable of responding to
human need, or (3) there is something inherent in the
14
University of Chicago Press, 19I6), p. 103. 1
G.A. Coe, The Psychology of Religion (Chicago: |
•ess, 1916), p. 103.
A.T* Boisen, The Exploration of the Inner World
(Chicago: Willett Clark and Co., 1936J7 P* 270.
112
structure of the universe which impels the organism to seek
wholeness in a religio-ethical way. For Boehme the ex
perience carried a degree of absolute certainty with res
pect to the means of his release. There is for him no
heuristic way to increasing certitude by the careful
validation of successive hypotheses. The experience is
immediate, certain and self-validating. Allport describes
this aspect of the mystical experience in these words:
Although I have no conclusive evidence on the
point, I suspect that the most commonly accepted
type of verification is some form of immediate
experience, convincing to oneself though not as
a rule to others. It is religion.*s peculiar
secret that it brings to the individual a solemn
assurance unlike anything else in life, a tran
quility, an ever-present help in trouble, that
makes next steps easier no matter what mesh of
circumstances may entangle the life. A person
who finds that the practice of faith has brought
a genuine solution of conflict is convinced, for
to discover order and felicity where there was
chaos and distress is to find something extra
ordinarily real. This experience of a "solution
found” is often attended by some degree of mysti
cal perception. One feels that one has reached
out a hand and received an answering clasp. One
has sent up a cry and hears a response. Whoever
verifies his faith in this manner has evidence
no less convincing to him than the sensory per
ception which validates his beliefs in the world
about him. Immediacy of this sort persuades him
that revelation comes from God to man.
n ^ 1
Gordon W. Allport, The Individual and His Religion,
p. 139.
113
There Is a prevalent view which follows the
I
Freudian pattern in reference to certain aspects of the
emotional articulation of the mystical experience. The
!
language of Boehme in The Three Principles is the language
of a sublimated eroticism and it has been concluded by some
that such expressions suggest the origin of religious ex
perience in a suppressed sex impulse. Brinton faces this
issue in Boehme by saying:
The theory which holds that mysticism is in many
instances an auto-erotic phenomenon as it often
uses the vocabulary of sexual passion, would seem
to find occasional support in Boehme*s rhapsodies
to Sophia, the Virgin Wisdom of God. A writer
named Kielholz, following Freud, characterizes
Boehme*s philosophy as a "sexualization of the
whole cosmos.”17
Allport points out among five hundred students interrogated
on an anonymous basis regarding their religious awakening
18
only 8 per cent thought that sex turmoil was a factor.
Such a percentage would render invalid any general con
clusion.
Boehme*s training undoubtedly emphasized sexual
abstinence outside of the marriage relationship. When he
did marry there seems to have been nothing abnormal about
the relationship. He married at his own social level and
Brinton, o£. cit., p. 64.
18
Allport, op. cit., p. 7*
114
his wife bore him four sons and probably two daughters.
She seems to have been devoted to him and except for short
periods when Jacob travelled in business interests or to
the court, they lived together. Boehme provided for his
family as a responsible husband and father.
Boehme introduces to his thought a personified
Wisdom whom he names the Eternal Maiden Sophia. Of her he ,
speaks rapturously and emotionally. :
Wisdom, the eternal virgin, the playmate of God |
to His honor and joy, becomes full of desire to i
behold the wonders of God that are contained within j
herself. Owing to this desire, the divine essences j
within her become active and attract the holy power, i
and thus she enters into a state of permanent being.
By this she does not conceive of anything within
herself; her inclination is resting in the Holy
Spirit. She merely moves before God for the purpose
of revealing the wonders of God.19
Here is the feminine principle mating with the masculine
will. She is reminiscent of the "yin" or passive principle
as opposed to the "yang" or the masculine principle of
oriental mysticism. Any theory about the sexual origins
of religious experience would be difficult to prove since
so many other personality needs are indicated in the
symbolized expressions. The Christian concepts of shep
herd, water of life, bread, light and so on, would indicate
19
Hartmann, o j g . . cit. . p. 79.
115
' other bases as well as the sexual denoted by the expres-
I sions of the family and of love. For Boehme there was how-:
!
ever, the erotic element which undoubtedly in some way he
felt necessary to the completion of his scheme. At the
intellectual level there may have been a sense of depriva
tion in his interaction with his wife. She does not appear
as providing any mental stimulus. Sophia represents an j
intellectual principle. This suggestion however, is purely
speculative, but it is submitted on the assumption that j
Boehme felt the need of an intellectual "sounding board” to|
20 I
provide the antithesis in his dialectic of generation. i
In his relations with others Boehme seems to have j
desired mutuality. He suffered under the virulent attacks
of the Lutheran pastor Gregory Richter but he did not re
taliate with invective. The following are a few samples
of Richter's abusive tirades: .
The writings of Jacob Boehme contain as many
blasphemies as there are lines. They have a fearful
odor of shoemaker's pitch and blacking.
The shoemaker is the Antichrist.
We ask who deserves belief? The word of Christ
or the prejudiced shoemaker with his dirt?
The Holy Ghost has anointed Christ with oil,
but the villain of a shoemaker has been daubed over
with dirt by the devil.
Brinton, op>. cit., p. l84.
1161
Christ spake about important things; but the
shoemaker speaks about things that are vile.
Christ taught publicly; but the shoemaker sits
in a corner.
Christ used to drink good wine; but shoemakers
drink whisky.21
He bowed to the demand of the magistrates that he
should not write any more of his religious views. He re
mained passive in the matter although he had a compulsion
to express himself about the truths he felt to be all
important. Only when Richter broke his side of the agree
ment did Boehme resume his writing. Boehme was obviously
an introvert and always passive in relation to authority.
His obvious lack of defensiveness against personal attack
would suggest in the total context a basic security at a
level not vulnerable to slander rather than a fear of
punishment or reprisal. Such a condition of poise would
suggest a high degree of maturity.
When finally Boehme felt he should write an ex
planatory pamphlet to the magistrates replying to the ac
cusations of Richter he did so in a point by point manner *
and "with a most hearty gentleness and love which stream
forth from the depths of his nature.
Hartmann, o£. cit.. p. 36.
pp
Hobhouse, o j g ^ . cit. . p. 9.
117
If there was in Boehme a tendency to hallucination
as a means of satisfying himself with respect to the "real
ities” which lay beyond the level of sensory perception it
' persisted to the end. While staying with some friends in
Silesia he became ill and was carried back to GÔrlitz. The
account of what followed is summarized very well in
Martensen*s words.
After an illness of about a fortnight he asked
for the sacrament, which the new clergyman, who
trod in Richter*s footsteps, would only administer
on condition that he subscribed to the Lutheran
Confession of Faith .--a wholly superfluous demand
with which Boehme was able in all sincerity to
comply. He awaited death with composure. On
Sunday, November 21st, shortly after midnight,
or early in the morning, he called his son Tobias,
and asked him if he did not hear that sweet,
harmonious music. As Tobias heard nothing, the
dying man begged him to set wide the door that
he might the better hear it; then he asked what
was the hour, and when he was told that it had
Just struck two, he said: "My time is not yet;
three hours hence is my time. After some silence
he exclaimed: "Oh, Thou strong God of Sabaoth,
deliver me according to Thy will!" and, immedi
ately afterwards: "Thou crucified Lord Jesus
Christ, have mercy upon me, and take me to Thyself
into Thy Kingdom!” A little later, he gave
instructions where some of his manuscripts would
be found, and expressed the hope that the noble
friend whom he had visited in Silesia would provide
for his widow, but also assured her that she must
speedily follow him (as indeed took place, for she
died of the plague in the very next year). At
six in the morning, he suddenly bade them farewell
with a smile, and said: "Now I go hence into
Paradise," whereupon he yielded up his spirit in
peace.23
Hobhouse, gj^. cit. . p. 10.
118
Whether or not Boehme*s perceptive faculties always
gave him the truth about the nature of the stimuli which
excited them, we have some basis for evaluation. On the
assumption however, that his psychosomatic organism needed
to be "saved" from the "contrariura" within and the aliéna- I
I
tion without, Boehme found an answer which provided him '
with a modicum of serenity. Out of the creative struggle :
in the conflict situation came philosophical and religious
insights which as far as they could be extricated from the !
obscurities of verbiage and as far as they permeated j
European, British and American thought, they were to be j
influential in shaping new and larger meanings for men*s
minds,
CHAPTER VI
THE INFLUENCE OP BOEHME
Boehme lived comparatively short time for he died at
age forty-nine. His immediate circle of acquaintances was
small and during his lifetime only one of his writings was
printed, and that for a limited circulation. Without the
advantage of extended formal education, without wealth or '
influence to promote his ideas and with the most inadequate;
means of articulation, Boehme nevertheless developed a way |
of life which profoundly affected post-Reformation Protes- j
I
tantism at the level of practice and he offered an inter-
I
pretation of the universe which became basic in the de- ‘
velopment of German idealistic philosophy. His influence
spread rapidly to England and thence to America by way of
some emigrant groups whose individualized faith and prac
tice were incongruous with the authority and practice of
the established conformist churches. If any difference is
to be noted in the ultimate influence of Boehme between
Germany and English-American groups it was that the specu
lative philosophical elements appealed to the former while
the religlo-ethical emphasis appealed to the latter.
120
I. GERMANY
One of the foremost proponents of Boehme*s teaching |
in Germany was Johann Georg Gichtel who was born fourteen
years after Boehme*s death. He organized a group of
followers in Holland which came to be known as the "Angel
Brotherhood". Unlike Boehme, who had condemned the Luther
an church for its external and religiously superficial
characteristics, but had remained within its borders to
the end of his life, the Gichtelians became separatists.
Their emphasis too came to include ascetic elements which
are not to be found explicitly in Boehme*s teaching. They
were responsible for having Boehme*s teachings printed in
German.
A contemporary of Gitchel, whose name is better
known because of his identification with early German
pietism, continued to spread the ideas of Boehme through
the Lutheran church. This man was Philipp Jacob Spener.
He remained in the Lutheran church although in constant
controversy with the Lutheran theologians especially at
the University of Wittenberg. He particularly stressed
devotion as a personal necessity for the good life and he
emphasized as Boehme had done the experience of regenera
tion by spiritual means as the condition of understanding.
It is of Interest that Spener tried for years to organize
121
the thought of Boehme into a system but died with the task
unaccomplished. Spener was called "the father of pietism"
but none of the extravagancies of later Pietism are to be
found in his teaching. He was profoundly influenced by his
reading of Boehme and brought about the founding of the
University of Halle in 1694. Spener also exercised a
great influence over his godson Count von Zinzendorf who is
generally regarded as the founder of Moravianiam.^
As has been suggested however, the major influence
of Boehme in Germany was in the realm of speculative phil
osophy. This is the more remarkable because he lacked
completely formal philosophical training or vocabulary.
Having pushed past the awkward imagery and symbolisms of
Boehme the Hegelian dialectic will be recognized. The
logic of life emerges as the dialectical synthesis of con
tradictory opposites. Schelling and Schopenhauer also were
influenced by Boehme*s thought. Die Welt als Wille und
Vorstellung is more than a reaction to Kantian philosophy.
It is the voluntarism of the mystic of GÔrlitz without the
experience of deliverance from the dark anguish of the
lower terniary. Schopenhauer, recognizing the influence of
^ Vergilius Perm, Encyclopedia of Religion (New
York: The Philosophical Library, 1945y7
122
Boehme in Schelling spoke of the latter as "a vendor at
second hand of Boehme*s thoughts.
The German poets of the romanticist, post-Kantian
I
' period acknowledged the influence of Boehme. Tieck,
Novalis, the two Schlegels, Baader and Schleiermacher were
indebted to him for introducing them to the ultimate lying
behind the face of nature of which man can have an aesthe- j
tic intuition.^
II. ENGLAND
In England, in many respects, Boehme, after 1644,
had a more widespread influence than in Germany. His I
thinking permeated the religious, philosophical, political,
scientific and literary life of the 17th century to a very
important degree. The soil was ready for the seeds of ,
Boehmenism which were carried by the restless European
non-conformists. Liberty of conscience became the hue and
cry of the sects and it would not be denied. The "divine
right of kings" had been shifted to a new basis in the
will of the governed. The organized church lost its power
2
3
Cheney, op. cit. . p. 28I.
Brinton, op. cit.. p. 74.
123
’ over the minds of men because it could not resolve the ^
dilemma between authority and revelation. The church couldi
not allow, without loss of power, that salvation was pro- i
curable on an individual basis and without reference to
the sacraments. Denying individual reference to God how
ever, it was denying the original basis of its own au
thority.
Philosophically too, the Cambridge Platonists who
were recovering a brand of idealism through Plotinus, were ,
not inhospitable to Boehme. Henry More was critical of
i
Boehme*s claim to inspiration but showed a profound respect;
4 '
for the calibre of his thinking. It was he who called !
Boehme the "Apostle of the Quakers".
There has been a tacit acceptance on the part of
many appreciative students of Boehme of the notion that Sir
Isaac Newton drew upon Boehme for many of the basic con
cepts in his system of physics. Margaret Bailey, for ex
ample, accepts the testimony of William Law as set forth in
a letter addressed to Dr. Cheyne that when Sir Isaac Newton
died, "there were found amongst his papers large abstracts
^ Margaret L. Bailey, Milton and Jacob Boehme (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1914), p. 91ff-
124
out of J. Behmen*s works, written with his own hand. . . ."5
Brinton shows a suspicion that while Newton may have been a ;
1
student of Boehme he did not derive very much which is
6
identifiable. Hobhouse, one of the most recent writers on
the subject denies that Boehme had any decisive influence
7
on the thinking of Newton. It would appear that the
trend is to discount this rather interesting hypothesis as *
knowledge widens with respect to both Newton and Boehme.
The truth is probably that both being men with active minds j
and being in the stream of contemporary and fresh specula- I
tion about the universe they formed similar hypotheses from'
the same basic intellectual ground swell. For the purposes
of this discussion it is significant that Newton gave much
more than casual attention to Boehme*s writings and It may
be assumed that In some way his religious outlook. If not
his philosophy, was affected.
The most important effect of Boehme*s thinking how
ever, in England was upon the sects such as the Anabaptists,
the Pamilists, the Seekers and the Quakers. In the course
of time many of these sects merged under the constructive
5 Bailey, pp. clt.> p. 80.
^ Brinton, pp. cit., p. 70.
^ Hobhouse, William Law, p. 397*
125:
genius of George Pox and continued to be known as the ;
Quakers. They were characterized by mystical beliefs and '
I
by devout practices and they remained apart from the es
tablished forms of religion. All of these converging
groups were saturated with "Behmenlsm". They were attacked
as heretics by notable persons like Richard Baxter and from
his writing has been derived much of the information which
is extant concerning the Boehmenists. The greatest ex
ponent of Boehme in England was William Law, an eminent ,
scholar at Cambridge University who left holy orders be- !
I
cause he refused to take the loyalty oath to King George l.|
Law learned High Dutch so that he could have a first hand
acquaintance with Boehme*s writings. His Boehraenian in
fluence was transmitted to the early Methodist movement.
Of the English literary group Boehme*s influence is most
apparent in Milton and particularly in his classical cosmic
drama Paradise Lost. It is also acknowledged in Blake and
Coleridge.
In America in 1688 a Quaker named Daniel Leeds pub
lished "for the general good" a summary of Boehme*s teach
ing. This seems to be the first evidence of the German ‘
1
mystic*s influence in this country. Shortly afterwards a
group of German Pietists who were devout followers of the
Boehmian way settled in Germantown. They had a good many
126
of Boehme*s writings with them and they subsequently im
ported many European editions of these books. Wherever in i
I
New Jersey and Pennsylvania Quaker and Moravian groups '
settled there could be found the teaching of the teutonic
philosopher.
Amongst recent contemporaries so great a thinker as
I
the late Nicolas Berdyaev found his inspiration in Boehme. j
I
Hobhouse says on this point
Nicolas Berdyaev is probably the chief mystical
philosopher of our time and it is recorded that,
when he died last March at the age of 73^ he had
before him the notes for his next projected book,
in which he contemplated "returning to his deepest
inspiration, the mysticism of Jacob Boehme." This
fact is perhaps a sufficient reason for offering
once more to the English reader a connected account
of the doctrines of the humble shoemaker of Silesia,
who has been generally regarded as the greatest
mystic produced by any of the Churches of the
Reformation.8
® Hobhouse, Jacob Boehme. p. xi.
CHAPTER VII
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
It has been the purpose of this thesis to examine |
I
I
the mystical thought and experience of Jacob Boehme in the '
I
light of some modern psychological insights. The back- |
I
ground of general discussion about mysticism has been
offered in an attempt to show that the experience and the
concepts expressed by Boehme stand in a common relationship
with a minimal content of all mysticism in both East and '
West which can be included under the terras of the defini
tion we have used. Mysticism of the philosophical type ;
I
has, in the western tradition, always found itself in an
anomalous relation to the group providing the norms. The
mysticism of Boehme was rejected by his contemporaries
because it was unacceptable to the ecclesiastical leaders.
It was dangerous to the vested interests of the authorities
and was branded as unorthodox. The mysticism of Boehme
finds little sympathetic understanding today, not primarily
because of its obscurity of articulation, but because it
will not be confined within the limits of traditional
logic. The prevalent scientific outlook is naturalistic.
From the standpoint of method it cannot be otherwise, but
from the standpoint of the philosophy which tends to be
projected mystical experience has a very precarious
128
standing.
This problem is well illustrated by the statement
made by Professor W. T. Stace of Princeton University in
the presidential address to the Eastern Division of the
American Philosophical Association in 1949* He based a
criticism of philosophical mysticism upon his definition of
"naturalism" which he expressed in the following way, ;
I will define naturalism as the belief that the
world is a single system of things or events every
one of which is bound to every other in a network j
of relations and laws, and that outside this I
*natural order* there is nothing. Necessarily I
therefore, naturalism repudiates the existence of |
any supernatural being or beings, that is beings
falling outside the natural order, and this is
the precise point of its conflict with religion.^
The fact is that Professor Stace cannot establish
the basic assumption of this kind of naturalism any more
than he can disprove the metaphysical assumptions of
Boehme. His concept of "nothing" is just as inaccessible
as the Ungrund. It is this kind of argument which, however
unsound, standing upon the prestige of scientific achieve
ment in an emotional way, puts a question mark on the as
sertions of the mystic.
In the discussion of the dynamic elements in Boehme
^ Proceedings and addresses of the American Phil
osophical Association. 1949-5O, Vol. XXIII, p. 22.
129
some emphasis was given to the thinking of Jung and Benoit,
The psycho-analytic theory of the Jungian type appears to 1
provide a better frame of reference for the study of mys- i
tical experience than does for example, the phenomenologicalj
2
viewpoint as enunciated by Snygg and Combs. The reason
for this lies basically in the respective insights into the
nature of the ego which have been developed. The phenome
nological theorists define the phenomenal field in the
following way:
By the phenomena1 field we mean the entire uni
verse, including himself, as it is experienced by
the individual at the instant of action. ... It
is simply the universe of naive experience in
which the individual lives, the everyday situation
of self and surroundings which each person takes to
be reality ... to the individual himself his
phenomenal field reality, the only reality he
can know.3
According to this theoi*y the phenomenal field is organized
on the basis of selection by the individual and the selec
tion is determined by the needs which arise. The phenome
nal self is the focal point about which organization takes
place.
The basic need of everyone is to preserve and
enhance the phenomenal self, and the characteristics
2
Donald Snygg and Arthur W. Combs, Individual Be
havior (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949)> P* 15*
Snygg and Combs, gjg, cit., p. 15-
130
of all parts of the field are governed by this need.
The phenomenal self is so important in the economy
of the individual that it gives continuity and con
sistency to his behavior.4
The phenomenological psychologist does not separate
the phenomenal ego (Jung*s ich) from the totally subjective
self (Jung*8 nicht ich). The needs to be met by the ego
are of the world of "naive experience" which is the world
of discursive logic and relativity. Rather than giving
"continuity" to behavior it would be quite as logical to
argue that it is also at this point that life is fragmented
and neuroses appear.
The most productive clue to the psychological under
standing of the mystical experience is the insight that the
important point of reference is not ultimately the ego but
the self which the ego only intuits. Although striving for.
satisfaction may begin at the phenomena1 level, the needs '
of this subject self are not met by the transiencies of the
phenomenal level but by an intuited relationship with the
Subject Self of which all phenomena are alien projections.
If this be true then there may lie beneath the bizarre ex
terior of Boehme*s mysticism a secret which for most men
i
lies undiscovered. For such as have had this experience |
^ Ibid.. p. 78.
i3i
things temporal become unimportant, if not altogether
'maya*, there is no need for defensive behavior, and at
last beyond the relativities of the spatio-temporal world
of sensory experience the self is satisfied for ever. At
least this is of the genius of Boehme as he was accustomed
to express it in his friends* albums, and as it was ex
pressed by a devout Lutheran pastor in 19^3 while he awaited
execution in a Nazi prison camp.
"Wem Zeit ist wie Ewigkeit
Und Ewigkeit wie Zeit, j
Der ist befreit von allem Streit."
"To whom Eternity's as Time,
And Time is as Eternity, c
He lives at peace, from every evil free. j
Hobhouse, o£. cit., p. 10.
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!
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I
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I
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Alfred A. Knopf, I91BT 2 volumes.
Trueblood, D. Elton, The Knowledge of God. New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1939* 207 PP-
Underhill, Evelyn, Mysticism. New York: E.P. Dutton and
Co., 1930. 515 pp.
Watts, Alan, Behold the Spirit. London: John Murray,
1947. 254 pp.
_______, The Supreme Identity. New York: Pantheon Books,
1950. 204 pp.
Whyte, L.L., The Next Development in Man. New York: Henry
Holt and Co., 1948. 322 pp. ;
Wieman, Henry Nelson and Meland, Bernard Eugene, American
Philosophies of Religion. New York: Willett, Clark
and Co., 1938. 370 pp.
D. TRANSLATIONS
ENGLISH
Earle, J.H., Six Theosophical Points. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1920. 220 pp.
Hartmann, P., Personal Christianity, a Science. New York:
Macoy Publishing Co., 1919. 336 pp.
Holland, B., Dialogues of the Supersensual Life. London:
The Methuen Co., I90I. 144 pp.
Martensen, Hans L., Jacob Boehme. New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1949. 200 pp.
137.
Sparrow, J., The Forty Questions of the Soul and the
Clavis. London; John M. Watkinds, I9II. 384 pp.
Stoudt, J.J., The Way to Christ. New York: Harper
Brothers and Co., I947. 254 pp.
FRENCH
de Saint-Martin, Louis Claude, Oeuvres Completes Traduits
en Français, Vol. I, Milan: Libreria Lorabarda, I927.
Sedir, Jakob Bohme - De la Signature des Choses. Paris:
Bibliothèque Chacornac, 1908. 210 pp.
GERMAN
Schiebler, K.W., Jakob Bohme * s Sammtliche Werke in Sieben
Banden Herausgeben. Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth,
1831. 7 volumes.
E. PSYCHOLOGICAL MATERIAL
Angyal, Andras, Foundations for a Science of Personality.
New York: The Commonwealth Fund, 1941. 398 pp.
Allport, Gordon W., Personality: A Psychological Inter
pretation. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1937*
588 pp.
The Individual and His Religion. New York: The
MacMillan Company, 1951. 147 PP*
Benoit, Herbert, Metaphysique et Psychoanalyse. Paris:
Editions Mazarine, I949.
Boisen, A.T., The Exploration of the Inner World. Chicago:
Willett Clark and Company, 1935. 322 pp.
Coe, G.A., The Psychology of Religion. Chicago: Uni
versity of Chicago Press, 19Id. 385 pp.
138
Dunlap, Knight, Mysticism. Freudianism and Scientific
Psychology. St. Louis: C.V. Mosby, 1920. 173 PP* '
James, William, Varieties of Religious Experience. New |
York: Longmans Green and Company, 1902. 526 pp. i
Johnson, Paul E., Psychology of Religion. New York: j
Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 19^5. 208 pp.
Jung, C.G., Psychological Types. New York: Harcourt Brace
and Co. Inc., 1926. 654 pp.
Leuba, J.H., The Psychology of Religious Mysticism. New
York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1925% 336PP•
Pratt, J.B., The Religious Consciousness. New York: The
MacMillan Co., 1920. 486 pp.
Snygg, Donald and Arthur W. Combs, Individual Behavior.
New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949. 38^6 pp.
Roberts, David E., Psychotherapy and a Christian View of
Man. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951 * 16T
pp.
F. PERIODICAL ARTICLES
Liddell, Anna Forbes, "Philosophical Mysticism and Modern
Science," The Personalist. Vol. XXXII: 2, Spring,
April, 1951.
Berndtson, Arthur, "Cognition and the Mystical Experience,"
The Personalist. Vol. XXXI: 3> Summer, July, I950.
Stace, W.T., Proceedings and Addresses of the American
Philosophical Association. Vol. XXIII, p. 22, 1949-50*
Thouless, Robert H., "Has Psychology Explained Religion
Away?" The Hibbert Journal. Vol. XLIX, July, I95I.
139
G. ENCYCLOPEDIAS
Baldwin, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. Vol. II. j
Encyclopaedia Blrtannlca # 15th Edition, III, 775* j
Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. Vol. II, j
Michaud Biographie Universelle Ancienne et Moderne, Vol, X.J
— — 4% . -------------------------------------------- '
The New Schaff-Herzog Religious Encyclopedia. Vol. II.

Asset Metadata

Creator Forrester, James (author)

Core Title The mysticism of Jacob Boehme with special reference to some of the psychodynamic factors involved

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Degree Master of Arts

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag OAI-PMH Harvest,philosophy, religion and theology

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Language English

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c39-357761

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Document Type Thesis

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Rights Forrester, James

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Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

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