Dialogues on the Supersensual Life E-Book

Jacob Boehme

• Herausgeber: Maria
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Taken from the Preface: “Man has a spark of the Light and Spirit of God, as a supernatural gift of God given into the birth of his Soul to bring forth by degrees a new birth of that life which was lost in Paradise. This holy spark of the Divine Nature within him has a natural, strong, and almost infinite tendency or reaching after that eternal Light and Spirit of God, from whence it came forth. It came forth from God, it came out of God, it partaketh of the Divine Nature, and therefore it is always in a state of tendency and return to God. All this is called the breathing, the moving, the quickening of the Holy Spirit within us, which are so many operations of this spark of life tending towards God. On the other hand the Deity as considered in itself, and without the Soul of man, has an infinite unchangeable tendency of love and desire towards the Soul of man, to unite and communicate its own riches and glories to it, just as the Spirit of the air without Man unites and communicates its riches and virtues to the Spirit of the air that is within Man”.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

PREFACE

PRELIMINARY NOTE

DIALOGUE I

DIALOGUE II

DIALOGUE III

DIALOGUE IV

DIALOGUES ON THE SUPERSENSUAL LIFE

BY

JACOB BOEHME

First digital edition by Maria Ruggieri

PREFACE

The Works of Jacob Behmen, the “Teutonic Theosopher,” translated into English, were first printed in England in the seventeenth century, between 1644 and 1662. In the following century, a complete edition in four large volumes was produced by some of the disciples of William Law. This edition, completed in the year 1781, was compiled in part from the older English edition, and in part from later fragmentary translations by Law and others. It is not easily accessible to the general reader, and, moreover, the greater part of Behmen’s Works could not be recommended save to those who had the time and power to plunge into that deep sea in search of the many noble pearls which it contains.

Behmen’s language and way of thought are remote and strange, and in reading his thought one has often to pass it through a process of intellectual translation. This is chiefly true of his earlier work, the “Aurora” or “Morning Redness.” But among those works which he wrote during the last five years of his life there are some written in a thought-language less difficult to be understood, yet containing the essential teaching of this humble Master of Divine Science. From these I have selected some which may, in a small volume, be useful. It seemed that for this purpose it would be best to take the “Dialogues of the Supersensual Life,” including as one of them the beautiful, really separate, Dialogue, called in the Complete Works, “The way from darkness to true illumination.” In the case of neither of these works is the translation used that of the seventeenth century. The first three dialogues are a translation made by William Law, one of the greatest masters of the English language, and found in MS. after his death. This translation from the original German is not exactly literal, but rather a liberal version, or paraphrase, the thought of Behmen being expanded and elucidated, though in nowise departed from. The dialogue called “The way from darkness to true illumination” was taken by the eighteenth-century editors from a book containing translations of certain smaller treatises of Behmen then lately printed at Bristol and made, as they say, “in a style better adapted to the taste and more accommodated to the apprehension of modern readers.” I do not know who was the translator, but the work seems to be excellently well done.