Dialogues on the Supersensual Life

"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. This love or desire of God toward the soul of Man is so great that he gave his only-begotten Son, the brightness of his glory, to take the human nature upon him, in its fallen state, that by this mysterious union of God and Man, all the enemies of the Soul of Man might be overcome, and every human creature might have a power of being born again according to that Image of God in which he was first created. The gospel is the history of this Love of God to Man. Inwardly he has a seed of the Divine Life given into the birth of his Soul, a seed that has all the riches of eternity in it, and is always wanting to come to the birth in him, and be alive in God. Outwardly he has Jesus Christ, who as a Sun of Righteousness, is always casting forth his enlivening beams on this inward seed, to kindle and call it forth to the birth, doing that to this Seed of Heaven in Man, which the sun in the firmament is always doing to the vegetable seeds in the earth.

"Consider this matter in the following similitude. A grain of wheat has the air and light of this world enclosed or incorporated in it. This is the mystery of its life, this is its power of growing, by this it has a strong continual tendency of uniting again with that ocean of light and air from whence it came forth. On the other hand that great ocean of light and air, having its own offspring hidden in the heart of the grain has a perpetual strong tendency to unite and communicate with it again. From this desire of union on both sides, the vegetable life arises and all the virtues and powers contained in it. But let it be well observed that this desire on both sides cannot have its effect till the husk and gross part of the grain falls into a state of corruption and death; till this begins, the mystery of life hidden in it cannot come forth."

The sun only acts by stirring up in each thing, and calling into activity, its own imprisoned, dormant, heat or life. Save by the same nature-process, working in an inner sphere, there cannot come to pass the flower and fruit of the Soul. The Sun, true emblem of the Redeeming Spirit, helps each vital force to break forth from its state of death – even though, like the grains of wheat found in Egyptian graves and then new-planted, it has[Pg xxviii] been immured there thousands of years – and to enter into its highest possible state of life. Indeed, in this school of wisdom, the natural visible light, of which the Sun is the dispensing medium to our solar system, and other suns to other circles of planets, is actually an outer manifestation of the inner supernatural light, and warmth, not a mere emblem at all. We speak more truly than we know, when we speak of a "heavenly day." All Nature is a series of "out-births" of the Deity. "The outward world," says Behmen, "is sprung out of the inward spiritual world, viz., out of Light and Darkness." And his English interpreter says: "Whatever is delightful and ravishing, sublime and glorious in spirits, minds, or bodies, either in heaven, or on earth, is from the power of the Supernatural Light opening its endless wonders in them. Hell has no misery, horror or distraction, but because it has no communication with the supernatural Light. And did not the supernatural Light stream forth its blessings into this world, through the materiality of the Sun, all outward Nature would be full of the horror of Hell." And elsewhere, "There is no meekness, benevolence or goodness in Angel, Man, or any other Creature, but where Light is the Lord of its life. Life itself begins no sooner, rises no higher, has no other glory, than as the Light begins it, and leads it on. Sounds have no softness, flowers and germs no sweetness, plants and fruits have no growth, but as the Mystery of Light opens itself in them."6 And so Behmen himself says: "There is nothing that is created or born in Nature but it also manifests its internal form externally; for the internal continually labours or works itself forth to manifestation. We know in the power and form of this World, how the only Essence has manifested itself with the external birth in the desire of the similitude; how it has manifested itself in so many forms and shapes, which we see and know in the stars and elements, likewise in the living creatures, and also in the trees and herbs." Thus there is a real communion between all beauty, sweetness, and glory, within and without the Soul of man.

It is this truth, not of the analogy between the essential life of Man and Nature, but of the unity in all things, that is now opening itself out in many ways. Wordsworth, a true seer, has given to it its highest expression in English Poetry. Modern science all tends to confirmation of this unity.

God, then, must become Man, there must be a birth of the Life of God in the Soul, in order that the Soul may live its highest life. Only in this way can the wild properties of Nature be subordinated and turned to their proper use, their restless hunger pacified. Goodness and happiness can be expected from nothing else but from the Divine Life united to and dwelling in the Nature Life. It is the "ingrafted Word" of St James' Epistle.

The plant cannot but grow towards the sun. If it is too deep in earth, or prevented by a strong soil, or withered by dryness, so that it cannot attain to its end, the fault is not with it. But, in the spiritual inner world (in which the plant dwells not) the Soul of man has this freedom – that it can consciously turn towards God, whose Spirit and Life will then come forth to meet it, or can turn towards the Things of this World. Upon this freedom of choice is founded Behmen's moral teaching. The Soul is like a woman (and all nations have testified in their languages and parables to their sense of this) who can freely choose to submit and surrender her body to this Lover, or to that. When she has chosen her free power ends. As she has chosen, so her life-faculty will be fertilised by good or evil; so will be the new life that arises within her, and so will be her future joy or sorrow.

In a deep sense, the desire of the spark of Life in the Soul to return to its Original Source is part of the longing desire of the universal Life for its own heart or centre. Of this longing the universal attraction, striving against resistance, towards an universal centre, proved to govern the phenomenal or physical world, is but the outer sheath and visible working. It has been said that Sir Isaac Newton (who was a diligent reader of Behmen's Works) "ploughed with Jacob Behmen's heifer." There is in truth but one Religion, that founded upon the eternal, immutable, universal processes of the actual Nature of things, and of this Christianity, rightly apprehended, is the supreme Revelation. This will be seen better by all as the Religion unfolds itself. Rightly speaking there is no such thing as supernatural religion; there is but one Religion, that of Nature. It is the work of visible religion to teach by signs and parables, embodying the mystery in symbols, and clothing it with adoration.

Jacob Behmen's mode of expression is all his own, and there is much in the fabric of his thought which men of our time, if they take a superficial view, would not find it easy to accept. The doctrine of Evolution now profoundly influences every corner of the field of thought. We now incline to think rather of the rise of Man out of Nature than of his fall into it, though, perhaps, there can no more be a rise without a precedent fall, than there can be a return without a precedent out-going. Evolution may be the time-form of Attraction. But all this affects the outside form, not the essence of the doctrine. Behmen is concerned with the real nature of things, apart from time and space, with their apparent, but so misleading, facts. He appeals to each Soul's knowledge of itself, and, on the principle that all is in everything, draws from the nature of Man, that little Universe (and we can no otherwise learn things as they are in themselves), his teaching as to Universal Nature. "In Man (he says) lies all whatsoever the Sun shines upon, or Heaven contains, as also Hell and all the Deeps." His Iliad is the struggle between light and darkness, life and death, expansion and contraction, the centripetal and centrifugal force, heat and cold, love and hatred, peace and wrath, humility and pride, self-sacrifice and self-seeking, joy and anguish, repose and restlessness, in the whole of Nature and in the Soul of Man. Does not every man, who has lived his full life, know the truth and reality of all this? It is known more especially and actually by those ardent and adventurous spirits who have sailed in far seas of thought or action, not merely coasting along the shores of tradition, authority and established rule. Sinners know some things more vividly[Pg xxxiii] than those who ever and easily have been good. Only the man who has been sick knows the difference between sickness and health. The prodigal who had wandered in a far country and had lived as he would, understood the meaning of peace and love better than the brother who had always stayed at home.

These wanderers, if they return in time, know best, taught by the heart-rending lessons of experience, the difference between the Heaven and Hell within them; the Hell of wrath, self-torment, fear, anxiety, envy, malice, evil-will, pride, cruelty, sensual passion, longing to domineer, and the Heaven of love, benevolence, meekness, humility, compassion, peace, joy, long-suffering.

They know that Heaven and Hell can alike be revealed in the Soul. From youth they have felt something in them striving, often feebly enough, against passionate desires for wealth, honour, success, and for mastery over the minds, affections, and bodies of others. Behind all this turmoil and ever unsatisfied anguish of seeking that which satisfies not, they have been aware of a diviner life slowly growing towards heaven, ever and again thwarted and driven back by the renewed assaults of the Spirit of the World, yet never quite destroyed. At the moments of fiercest fight against rebel passions they have felt the divine assisting strength flow into them, if only they powerfully invoked it, turning towards its source as a babe towards its mother's breast. They have heard the "Peace be still" amid the wildest spiritual storms. They know that if they have been saved, it is not by their own strength nor by reasoning, but by this power from without.

They know the impotence, in action, of the merely reflective or spectator faculty. In this sense of the word "reason," they would agree with him who wrote "Your Heart is the best and greatest gift of God to you; it is the highest, greatest, strongest, and noblest Power of your Nature; it forms your whole Life, be it what it will; all Evil and all Good comes from it; your Heart alone has the key of Life and Death; it does all that it will; Reason is but its plaything; and whether in Time or Eternity, can only be a mere Beholder of the wonders of happiness, or forms of misery, which the right or wrong working of the Heart is entered into."7

William Law remarks that Jesus Christ, though he had all wisdom, yet gives but a small number of doctrines to mankind "whilst every moral teacher writes volumes upon every single virtue." It is, he adds, because our Lord "knew what they know not, that our whole malady lies in this, that the Will of our Mind is turned into this World, and that nothing can relieve us, or set us right, but the turning of the Will of our Mind and the Desire of our Hearts to God. And hence it is that he calls us to nothing but a total denial of ourselves and the Life of this World and to faith in him as the Worker of a new birth and life in us." On this one root of the whole matter Jacob Behmen insisted, expressing one truth in a thousand ways and through images, which to him are not images but the same process working in other spheres. His whole practical, moral teaching enforces the right direction of Desire. Mali mores sunt mali amores, said one who also truly saw; the profound Augustine. The hunger of the Soul must be turned to the source of eternal joy. All that is good and beautiful in nature or in the heart of man flows from that fountain. Desire is everything in Nature; does everything. Heaven is Nature filled with divine Life attracted by Desire.

PRELIMINARY NOTE

Before entering upon the Dialogues I have thought it well to insert some sentences taken from a treatise of Behmen's called "Regeneration," together with some taken from another treatise of his on "Christ's Testament" because they show well the spirit in which he thought and wrote. The freedom of thought and expression which he claims is, happily, far more readily accorded now than it was in his own day.

I have only one thing to add. In the eighteenth century English translation of Behmen's Works, all the substantives, as was then the frequent custom, are printed with capital letters. There is a philosophic basis for this practice, because a substantive is an attempt to denote a "thing in itself" and is therefore of greater weight than an adjective, which only expresses qualities which we attribute to it. To Behmen's Works this mode of printing seems especially appropriate. In our now too literary language, many words have become so trite and carelessly[Pg xxxviii] used that they have almost ceased to have reference to real existing things. But Behmen never uses words in this merely literary way, being indeed in nowise a man of letters. It might have been said of him, as indeed his enemies did at the time say, that which was said by the Jews of our Lord, "How knoweth this man letters having never learned?" When he speaks of the "glory" of God, he means something as real as if he spoke of the "leaves on that tree," and so with all his words. I was therefore somewhat inclined, in order to mark this, to adhere altogether to the old custom in this case, and though I have not done so, fearing it might annoy the eye of the unaccustomed reader, I have preserved the capital letters in many cases, where it is especially desirable to dwell on the expression of real existences by the words. It is of course an illogical compromise between two customs.

The title "Supersensual Life" is not altogether a good one, but it is that which is used in former editions of Behmen. The idea is rather of Life behind, than above, the life of sense.

Sentences Selected from Jacob Behmen's Treatises "Regeneration" and "Christ's Testaments"1

A true Christian, who is born anew of the Spirit of Christ, is in the simplicity of Christ, and hath no strife or contention with any man about religion.

2

The Christendom that is in Babel striveth about the manner how men ought to serve God and glorify him; also, how they are to know him, and what he is in his Essence and Will. And they preach positively that whosoever is not one and the same with them in every particular of knowledge and opinion, is no Christian, but a heretic.

3

But a Christian is of no sect. He can dwell in the midst of sects, and appear in their services, without being attached or bound to any. He hath but one knowledge, and that is, Christ in him. He seeketh but one way, which is the desire always to do and teach that which is right; and he putteth all his knowing and willing into the Life of Christ. He sigheth and wisheth continually that the Will of God might be done in him, and that his Kingdom might be manifested in him. His faith is a desire after God and Goodness, which he wrappeth up in a sure hope, trusting to the words of the promise, and liveth and dieth therein; though as to the true man, he never dieth.

4

For Christ saith: Whosoever believeth in me shall never die, but hath pierced through from death to life; and, Rivers of living water shall flow from him, viz. good doctrine and works.

5

Therefore I say that whosoever fighteth and contendeth about the Letter, is all Babel. The Letters of the Word proceed from, and stand all in, one Root, which is the Spirit of God; as the various flowers stand all in the earth, and grow about one another. They fight not with each other about their difference of colour, smell, and taste, but suffer the earth, the sun, the rain, the wind, the heat, and cold, to do with them as they please; and yet every one of them groweth in its own peculiar essence and property.

6

Even so it is with the Children of God; they have various gifts and degrees of knowledge, yet all form one Spirit. They all rejoice at the great Wonders of God, and give thanks to the Most High in his Wisdom. Why then should they contend about him in Whom they live and have their being, and of whose substance they themselves are?

7

It is the greatest folly that is in Babel for people to strive about religion, so that they contend vehemently about opinions of their own forging, viz. about the Letter. When the Kingdom of God consisteth of no Opinion, but in Power and Love.

8

As Christ said to his disciples, and left it with them at the last, saying: Love one another as I have loved you: for thereby men shall know that ye are My disciples. If men would as fervently seek after love and righteousness as they do after opinions, there would be no strife on earth, and we should be as children of one father, and should need no law or ordinance. For God is not served by any law, but only by obedience. Laws are for the wicked, who will not enhance love and righteousness; they are, and must be, compelled by laws.

9

We all have but one Order, Law, or Ordinance, which is to stand still to the Lord of all Beings, and resign our wills up to him, and suffer his Spirit to play what music he will. And thus we give to him again as his own fruits that which he worketh and manifesteth in us.

10

Now if we did not contend about our different fruits, gifts, kinds, and degrees of knowledge, but did acknowledge them in one another, like Children of the Spirit of God, what could condemn us? For the Kingdom of God consisteth not in our knowing and supposing, but in Power.

11

If we did not know half so much, and were more like children, and had but a brotherly mind and goodwill towards one another, and lived like children of one mother, and as branches of one tree, taking our Sap all from one Root, we should be far more holy than we are.

12

Knowledge serves only to this end, viz., to know that we have lost the Divine Power in Adam, and are now become inclined to sin; that we have evil properties in us, and that doing evil pleaseth not God; so that with our knowledge we learn to do right. Now if we have the Power of God in us, and desire with all our hearts to act and to live aright, then our knowledge is but our sport, or matter of pleasure, wherein we rejoice.

13

For true knowledge is the manifestation of the Spirit of God through the Eternal Wisdom. He knoweth what he will in his children; he sheweth his wisdom and wonders by his children, as the earth putteth forth her various flowers.

14

Now if we dwell with one another, like humble children, in the Spirit of Christ, are rejoicing at the gift or knowledge of another, who would judge or condemn us? Who judgeth or condemneth the birds in the woods that praise the Lord of all Beings with various voices, every one in its own essence? Doth the Spirit of God reprove them for not bringing their voices into one harmony? Doth not the melody of them all proceed from his Power, and do they not sport before him?

15

Those men therefore that strive and wrangle about the knowledge and will of God, and despise one another on that account, are more foolish than the birds in the woods, and the wild beasts that have no true understanding. They are more unprofitable in the sight of the holy God than the flowers of the field, which stand still in quiet submission to the Spirit of God, and suffer him to manifest the Divine Wisdom and Power through them.

16

All Christian Religion consisteth wholly on this, to learn to know ourselves; whence we came, and what we are; how we are gone forth from the Unity into dissension, wickedness, and unrighteousness; how we have awakened and stirred up these evils in us; and how we may be delivered from them again, and recover our original blessedness.

17

First; How we were in the Unity, when we were the Children of God in Adam before he fell. Secondly; How we are now in dissension and disunion, in strife and contrariety. Thirdly; Whither we go when we pass out of this corruptible condition; whither with the unnatural, and whither with the natural part. And lastly; How we came forth from disunion and vanity, and enter into that one Tree, Christ in us, out of which we all sprung in Adam. In these four points all the necessary knowledge of a Christian consisteth.

18

So that we need not strive about any thing; we have no cause of contention with each other. Let every one only exercise himself in learning how he may enter again into the Love of God and his Brother.

19

The written Word is but an instrument whereby the Spirit leadeth us to itself within us. That Word which will teach must be living in the literal Word. The Spirit of God must be in the literal sound, or else none is a Teacher of God, but a mere Teacher of the Letter, a knower of the history, and not of the Spirit of God in Christ.

20

All that men will serve God with must be done in Faith, viz. in the Spirit. It is the Spirit that maketh the work perfect, and acceptable in the sight of God. All that a man undertaketh and doeth in Faith, he doth in the Spirit of God, which Spirit of God doth co-operate in the work, and then it is acceptable to God. For he hath done it himself, and his Power and Virtue is in it. It is holy.

21

Strife and misunderstanding concerning Christ's Person, Office, and Being, or Substance, as also concerning his Testaments which he left behind him, wherein he worketh at present, ariseth from the deflected creaturely Reason, which runneth on only in an Image-like opinion, and reacheth not the ground of this mystery, and yet will be a mistress of all things or beings, and will judge all things. It doth but lose itself in such Image-likeness, and breaketh itself off from its Centre, and disperseth the thoughts, and runneth on in the multiplicity, whereby its ground is confused and the mind is disquieted, and knoweth not itself.

22

No Life can stand in certainty, except it continue in its Centre, out of which it is sprung.

23

When the Soul that is sprung from God's Word and Will is entered into its own desire to will of itself, it will run in mere uncertainty till it return to its Original again.

24

Seeing that human life is an outflowing of the Divine Power, Understanding and Skill, the same ought to continue in its Original, or else it loseth the Divine Knowledge, Power and Skill, and with self-speculation bringeth itself into centres of its own, and strange imaging, wherewith its Original becometh darkened and strange.

Therefore say I, that this is the only cause that men dispute about God, his Word, Essence or Being, and Will, that the understanding of man hath broken itself off from its Original, and now runneth on in mere self-will, thoughts and images in its own lust to selfishness, wherein there is no true knowledge, nor can be, till the Life returneth to its Original, viz. into the Divine Outflowing and Will.

25

If this be done, then God's Will speaketh forth the Divine Power and Wonders again through the human willing. In which Divine Speaking, the Life may know and comprehend God's Will, and frame itself therein. Then there is true Divine Knowledge and Understanding in man's skill, when his skill is continually renewed with Divine Power.