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Results of Spiritual Research
GA 62

9 January 1913, Berlin

Translated by Margaret W. Barnetson

7. Jacob Boehme

At the point of time in modern spiritual evolution when we see the dawn of the new world-conception breaking forth, at that time in which we must record the great achievements of Kepler and Galileo, in which Giordano Bruno, in a certain measure, outlines the great problem of a modern world-conception,—at this moment we meet the solitary thinker to whom the present reflections shall be dedicated, the simple shoemaker of Goerlitz, Jacob Boehme. He struggled with the highest problems of existence in a way which can occupy our thinking and feeling to this day in the deepest manner, and will probably occupy the thinking and feeling of human beings for a long time to come.

A peculiar figure this Jacob Boehme, a figure who strove and struggled in solitude, whereas elsewhere in the spiritual life the single currents united to form a great comprehensive tableau. And in a certain sense one might say that the solitary striving of Jacob Boehme appears almost as interesting, from a certain standpoint, as the flowing together of the different points of view which meet us elsewhere in that epoch. And then we see how, very strangely, what Jacob Boehme found in his own solitary mind, even in his century, received the greatest imaginable dissemination—the greatest imaginable dissemination we may say, considering the fact that we are dealing with a deeply significant spiritual matter. Precisely through the manifestations of his adversaries we see how far his influence extended after only a few decades had passed since his death. Again and again, Jacob Boehme was the object of appreciative and admiring, or rejecting and ridiculing, contemplation. And when we observe what came into being as his following, or as his opposition, we have the impression that both the adherents and the attackers knew they were dealing with a very strange phenomenon.

This phenomenon is strange, especially to those who wish to understand every personality that appears in the spiritual life of humanity on the basis of the immediate conditions, so to speak, of the age and the surroundings. We see, for instance, how people try to understand Goethe by collecting all sorts of details of his life, even the most unimportant, and believe that by assembling these details they can acquire this or that to explain his corresponding spiritual life. It is not possible in this manner really to acquire much for the understanding of Jacob Boehme. External influences are difficult to verify through external science, and it is still harder to understand how Jacob Boehme grew out of that which constituted the spiritual life of his time.

Many, therefore, have professed the opinion that in Jacob Boehme we have to do with a kind of spiritual meteor. All that arose there, all that this personality had to give, appears as if it had suddenly sprung up, revealing itself out of the depths of his strange soul. Others then have tried to explain that many a turn of expression, many a way of presenting his ideas, shows similarity in words and turns of expression to the formulae of the alchemists, or to some philosophical or other tendencies that were still alive in his time. But whoever enters more deeply into the whole mentality of Jacob Boehme will find that such a procedure has hardly more value than if one were to examine the “language” in connection with an eminent personality, who, after all, must always express himself in a language. For when Jacob Boehme makes use of alchemical formulae, or such things, it is only verbal clothing. That which makes such an exceedingly powerful impression, however, on one who seeks to understand him presents itself with an originality such as is found only in the very greatest minds.

In contrast to this, there are a few clues which are not quite compatible with modern thinking—with the modern world-conception—but which, for the person who is capable of entering into such things, throw light on how Jacob Boehme was able to soar up to his high spiritual standpoint. In order to connect our reflections with his life, to the extent that it has a bearing here, we need mention only a few biographical facts.

Jacob Boehme was the son of very poor parents and came from Alt-Seidenberg in the vicinity of Goerlitz. He was born in 1575. In his youth he had to tend the cattle with other village boys. As is apparent from this, he grew up in complete poverty, and since a person growing up in this way does not have any particular means of education, we shall find it understandable that even as a boy of twelve or thirteen years Jacob Boehme could hardly read and only barely write. But another experience confronts us even during his boyhood, of which a faithful biographer heard from him out of his own mouth. We shall first tell this experience. As we have said, it is not one of those things which are quite intelligible to modern consciousness.

When Jacob Boehme was once tending the cattle with other shepherd boys, he withdrew from the company of the boys and climbed a moderately high mountain in the vicinity of his native locality, the “Landskrone.” He declared that he had seen there in the bright noontime something like an entrance-gate into the mountain. He went inside and there found a vessel, a kind of vat, filled with pure gold. That made such an impression of fearful awe on his soul that he ran away and retained only the memory of this peculiar experience.

One can, to be sure, speak of a “dream dreamed in the waking state.” One may, for all that, grant the right to those who are satisfied with such an explanation. But the essential point is not whether one calls such an occurrence a “dream,” or gives it another name, but what it releases in the mind of the person who “dreams” it, what effect it produces in the soul. And from the way in which Jacob Boehme later told this occurrence to his friend we see that it had engraved itself deeply on his mind, that it had released significant forces in his soul so that it had the highest psychological significance for him.

Let us, therefore, grant to the rationalists the right to explain such an experience, which was in any case a significant happening in Jacob Boehme's soul, in the way in which they likewise wish to explain the event of the appearance of Christ before Paul at Damascus. Only, an explanation which resorts to these things must also admit that such significant work as that of Paul, which is so intimately connected with Christianity, proceeded from a “dream.”

Even the boy Jacob Boehme, when he had this experience, felt something like the deepest stirring up of soul forces which are otherwise not active in the soul. The important thing is this inner releasing of deeper-lying forces of the soul. The important thing is the testimony of such a fact which proves that we have to do here with a human being who could descend to a far greater profundity in his soul life than thousands and thousands of others.

Another event of a similar nature must also be borne in mind, of which we must again say that it remained so fixed in Jacob Boehme's memory that the brightness and the significance of this event shone over his whole life, in so far as this life was an inner one.

In his fourteenth year Jacob Boehme was sent to a shoemaker as an apprentice and often had to stand guard, so to speak, in his master's shop. He was not permitted to sell anything. On one occasion—and this story, again, came from the mouth of his loyal biographer, Abraham von Frankenberg—an individuality who immediately made a singular impression on Jacob Boehme came into the shop and wanted to buy shoes. But, because the boy was forbidden to sell shoes, he said this to the stranger. The latter offered him a high price and it came about that the shoes were sold.

Then, however, the following took place, which remained in Jacob Boehme's memory throughout his life. When the stranger had departed and a short time had passed, Jacob Boehme heard his name called: “Jacob, Jacob!” and when he went out the stranger seemed to him even more singular than at first. There was something sun-like, shining in his eyes and he said words to him which sounded very strange: “Jacob, you are now still small, but you will once become an entirely different human being, about whom the world will break out in amazement. But remain humble before your God and read the Bible diligently. You will have to endure much persecution, but be strong, for your God loves you and will be merciful to you.”—Jacob Boehme regarded such an occurrence as much more essential than any other, external biographic experiences.

And his biographer relates further how Jacob Boehme himself told him the following: It was in the year 1600 when, during seven days, Jacob Boehme felt as if withdrawn from his physical body, felt as if he were in an entirely different world, felt as if, with regard to his soul, he was re-born.

We have to do here—if one wants to call it that—with a permanently abnormal condition of the soul. But Jacob Boehme experienced this, his “re-birth,” also simply more or less as something which could, according to his conception, take place with a human soul. He did not become, let us say, a visionary or a false idealist through this, nor did he become an arrogant person, but continued to practice his shoemaker's trade in all humility—or, we might say, in all sobriety. And even the experience of the year 1600, the withdrawal into another world, remained to him a phenomenon of which he said to himself: “You have looked into a kingdom of joy, into a kingdom of spiritual reality, but that is a thing of the past.” And he continued to live from day to clay pursuing his trade in his sober manner.

In the year 1610 this experience of re-birth was repeated. He then began to record what he had experienced in his states of exaltation, since he felt called upon to do this. Thus, in 1612 his first work, The Dawn in Its Ascent, came into being, later entitled Aurora. Regarding it, he said that he did not write it down through his ordinary ego, but that it was given to him word for word; that, in comparison with his ordinary ego, he lived in a being which was encompassing, which reached into all parts of the world and immersed itself in this world.

To be sure, the revelations did not do him much good. When several people noticed what he had to say, what he had written down, a few copies of the manuscript of Aurora were made and circulated. The result was that Gregorius Richter, the deacon of Goerlitz—where Jacob Boehme had meanwhile, in 1594, established himself as shoemaker—railed at Jacob Boehme from the pulpit and not only condemned his work, but also succeeded in having him called before the council of the city of Goerlitz. About this I will now simply repeat the words that we know from his biographer. He relates that the verdict of the council was that Jacob Boehme must be forbidden to write further, for only those who were academicians were permitted to write and Jacob Boehme was not an academician, but an idiot, and must, therefore, refrain from writing!

Thus Jacob Boehme was branded as an idiot. And, since he was a good-natured man on the whole, who could not quite believe—because of the simplicity in his nature—that he would be considered one of the damned entirely without reason, he did indeed resolve to write nothing further in the near future.

But then came the time when he could no longer do otherwise. And in the years 1620 to 1624, up to his death, he wrote rapidly, one after another, a great number of his works, as for instance: The Book of the Contemplative Life, De Signatura Rerum, or Concerning the Birth and Designation of All Beings, or the elucidation of the first book of Moses. But the number of his works is rather large and in this connection, many a reader may fare strangely. Some have said that Jacob Boehme repeats himself again and again. It is true; one cannot deny that certain things appear over and over again in his writings. If, however, a person draws the conclusion from this that you know the whole Jacob Boehme if you know a few of his works, because he always repeats himself—though we cannot simply contradict persons who say this—it must be said that whoever contents himself with having read one work of Jacob Boehme's and has no appetite to read the other works also, does not understand much of Jacob Boehme. But whoever takes the trouble to go through his other works will not rest, in spite of all the repetitions, until he has read even the very last ones.

If, from this characterization of his nature, we try to penetrate more into his train of thought, into the spiritual nature of Jacob Boehme, it must be said that for modern man, who lives only in the cultural life of our time, much indeed must be unintelligible, not only in the content of Jacob Boehme's works, but also in his whole manner of presentation. At first the presentation appears completely chaotic. To be sure, one becomes slowly accustomed to it. But then there still remains for many persons something that is a hard nut to crack. We find that he has very peculiar definitions of words—quite unintelligible for the modern mind. Thus we find that in his explanation of the world he again and again uses words such as “salt,” “mercury” and “sulphur.” And if he wishes to analyse what “sul” signifies, what “phur” signifies, and finds all sorts of deep thoughts therein, then these modern minds must say to themselves that one cannot do anything with this, for what can be the significance of offering explanations about a universal principle by explaining the syllables of a word individually, such as “sul” and “phur”? That is quite alien to the modern mind.

To be sure, if a person enters further into the mind of Jacob Boehme, he will find that Jacob Boehme clothes what he wishes tó say in all kinds of alchemistic formulae. But only when one penetrates through to what expresses itself livingly as the spirit of Jacob Boehme in what he found available, only then does one find that something entirely different lives in these formulae from what we know today as scientific thinking, as thinking with regard to world-conceptions, or any other thinking.

What lives in Jacob Boehme's soul resembles most closely that which has been characterized here in these lectures as the first stage of a higher spiritual life, as the stage of imaginative cognition. We have emphasized the fact that he who ascends from ordinary life in the sense world comes, through a special development of his soul, to the point where he perceives a new world of pictures, of imaginations. And we have stressed the fact—I beg you to call to mind precisely the character of this discussion1See lecture by Rudolf Steiner entitled: Die Wege der übersinnlichen Erkenntnis. that, when the human being has brought it about that he does not only form imaginations, but that pictures, imaginative conceptions, shoot up out of the unknown depths of the soul-life and he experiences a new world, then he who desires to ascend to new cognition must make the firm resolution to suppress completely this first flashing up of an imaginative world in the soul and to wait until it rises up a second time from a much deeper-lying world.

The whole state of soul, the whole inner mood to which Jacob Boehme comes is, therefore, most nearly comparable to that which meets a person in his soul-life who ascends to supersensible knowledge. Nowhere, to be sure, does it appear that something like that which modern spiritual-science proclaims as its conscious methods is already to be found in Jacob Boehme. But whoever were to believe that all this appeared in Jacob Boehme as if of its own accord would, nevertheless, be wrong. He himself once said that he had striven unceasingly for the spirit's—for God's—assistance, and that a luminous, imaginative world resulted from this unceasing striving.

Thus, we cannot say that he was simply a naive, imaginatively cognizant person, but we must say that he grasped naively at the means which lead the human being to the height of imaginative cognition. It is to be assumed, naturally, that such an imaginative force was in his soul. In other words, he arrived at imaginative cognition by just the same paths, only more quickly, more as a matter of course, than one can arrive at it through such methods as are described in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. Thus Jacob Boehme stands before us as an imaginatively cognizant human being. But this imaginative knowledge struggles to the surface with primal power, as if it were a matter of course, as if borne by a strong inner will.

Thus, we see this strong inner will, which cannot express itself in external deeds—his humble occupation prevents this—surrounding his soul like a flood, so that the soul immerses itself in this flood. We see powerful pictures being born out of this will, through which he tries to solve the riddles of the universe. In Jacob Boehme, it is not so much the individual results that matter, as this mood and condition of his soul. And he feels that, in his striving, he is driven to something which is not the ordinary cognizing human ego, but which is connected with the forces that bind the human being—out of the subconscious in his soul, out of the depths of his soul—to the whole cosmos; that is, to what lives and weaves outside in nature.

The human being who really has an earnest desire for knowledge feels that there is not only something rational in the act of cognition, but something that he achieves for himself through suffering and pain, and through the overcoming of suffering and pain. And he notices, when he tries to penetrate into nature and existence with present-day, ordinary means, how he really separates himself from nature and existence through all such means. But when we expose forces in our soul which rest otherwise in the subconscious, then we feel that these are connected with nature and existence in quite another, more intimate sense. In order to explain this, I should like to draw upon the following.

It is a well-known fact, and one hears it often related, that in regions where an earthquake or some other elemental event is imminent, certain animals flee from the locality of the earthquake or some similar occurrence, or at least become restless, so that they are like prophetic announcers of what is to happen. We may say that the instinctive life of the animal is more closely connected with what takes place outside in nature than the whole state of soul of the human being. But in the depths of the human soul, there lives something which is not the same as the instinct of animals, but which is deeper than this animal instinct, and which is also closely connected with the forces of nature. And in descending into the depths of his soul, Jacob Boehme felt himself more closely interwoven with the forces of nature.

But one thing stands out particularly. It has been emphasized that only when that which appears as imaginations and an imaginative world has been suppressed, extinguished, and then lights up again as if of its own accord,—only then does this second imaginative world have value. (As I said, I beg you to call to mind the earlier discussions.) Now, it is most singular if we compare the path of Jacob Boehme with this.

In the year 1600 he experiences a re-birth, feels himself transported into a spiritual world, into a “kingdom of joy.” Then he continues to live in sober simplicity. For ten years it is as if what he had experienced were submerged. Then it emerges a second time in the year 1610. Did not then the path which we represented as the right one appear as a natural phenomenon in Jacob Boehme's soul? For us, it is this that makes Jacob Boehme approach so closely that upon which we ourselves have focused our attention as being the natural way into the supersensible worlds. If we take this into account his experience will not seem as strange to us as it may have seemed at first sight.2See also: Rudolf Steiner, Kosmischc und menschliche Geschichte,, Vol. V, Lecture 3.

It will have no value for the objective cognition of the sceptic, to be sure, if one reflects profoundly on the combination out of the syllables “sul” and “phur,” or about other such things. But I beg you to call to mind what we explained concerning human speech once on an earlier occasion3See: Rudolf Steiner - Geisteswissenschaft und de Sprache. how we showed that in the course of human evolution “speech” really preceded abstract, conceptual thinking, and how Jean Paul is entirely right when he emphasizes that the child learns to think through speech, instead of forming speech through thinking. Speech, therefore, is something more elementary, primal than thinking. When we see how the whole of nature arises again in our thoughts, then we feel how thought is separated from the realities of nature by a world chasm. But, when the sound as something more like the sounds in nature—and, after all, speech was originally composed of such sounds,—when the sound of speech is wrested from the human soul, then something of the whole system of law in the universe works into the depths of the soul. And then a kind of echo in relation to nature tears itself loose in an entirely different way from that occurring when something is released out of thoughts as an echo.

A soul of the present time no longer has any feeling for the affinity of speech and sounds in nature. As a contemporary soul one can only slowly struggle through to the feeling that in all speech there is something which directly resembles an echo of the impressions of the external world. In such a personality as Jacob Boehme, who draws deeper forces from his soul with elemental power, it is only natural that in this respect also, in feeling also, as it were, he is carried back to that impression of speech which was once characteristic of humanity and which the child, more or less unconsciously, still develops.

And now if we extend what has just been set forth to include the strange analyses concerning the joining together of syllables into words, then we can understand that what nature brings about in the human soul is only a feeling by means of the sounds; that nature wishes to create her own language through sound itself. Precisely because Jacob Boehme stood closer to nature in his soul, he also lived more in speech than in thought, and his whole philosophy is more a feeling with, a sympathizing with, that which lives and weaves outside in nature than any abstract grasping of things. What I mean to say is that, when a person lets a thought of Jacob Boehme's really have its effect on him, he feels as if the thought were as akin to what Jacob Boehme observed as he himself is akin only to that which he senses as some kind of taste, when he also feels contact with nature.

Thus, does Jacob Boehme feel the contact with nature. He feels in the inner being what weaves and works and lives outside in nature. He lives nature's life with it, and in his representations he gives, really, that wherein he participates, so that one feels what he perceived vibrating in his words. To him, therefore, words are something which he feels especially to be like that which is the “How” in nature itself. One does not have to ponder, therefore, over the question whether such discussions as the above-mentioned about “sul” and “phur” mean anything particular in Jacob Boehme, but one should try to re-experience in connection with this soul how it makes the experience of the universe into the experience of the soul and gives as its revelations that which the soul can experience.

No one understands Jacob Boehme who simply supposes that he perceived thunder and lightning, clouds, or cloud transformations, or the growth of grass like a modern human being. A person understands him only if he knows that with the flashing lightning, with the rolling thunder, with the changing clouds something is transformed for his soul-life, so that something takes place in his soul which stands there as the solution of the corresponding riddle. Thus, what takes place in the world becomes for Jacob Boehme a riddle of his own experience.

And now, if we look at him thus, we understand how he could wrestle with a task which meets us elsewhere during his time also, and which long occupied other spirits, even the greatest spirit of recent times. This same sixteenth century, in which occurred the birth of Jacob Boehme, gave birth to the Faust riddle, which places next to the striving and struggling man the enemy of man, who drags down man's striving nature into the base, sensual—into that which Jacob Boehme's age called “the

Devilish.” Poetically, Goethe still struggled with the problem which places “evil” in the world structure. Must not the human being ask again and again: How does it come about that the irregular, the unsuitable, places itself antagonistically in the harmonious universe, in the wise guidance of the world? And the question of the origin of evil lies in the riddle of Faust. It is really already in the book of Job, but it appeared especially powerfully in the sixteenth century.

In what manner could this question appear before the mind of Jacob Boehme?

We need only to take a few words from the Dawn in Its Ascent and we shall see at once how that which is elsewhere a world problem becomes for Jacob Boehme at first an inner soul problem. There he says approximately the following words: If an understanding and thoughtful man shows himself anywhere in the world, the Devil at once meddles with his soul and seeks to drag his nature down into the vulgar, common, sensual,—seeks to ensnare the man in pride and conceit.

Here we see at once how the problem is grasped by Jacob Boehme as a soul problem. We see how he searches in the soul itself for the power of evil, which interferes with the good soul forces. And the question arises for him: What does the soul have to do with the soul forces that strive towards evil? Thus the problem of evil becomes for Jacob Boehme finally an inner soul question.4See also: Rudolf Steiner, Geisteswissenschaft als Forderung unserer Zeit; Vol. VII, Das Böse im Lichte der Erkenntnis vom Geiste. But because for him soul and universe correspond to each other, the soul at once expands into a universe. And now the peculiar thing for him is that the question of evil is transformed into an entirely different question, into the question of human consciousness—in fact, of all spiritual consciousness, of the whole character of the life of consciousness.

It is difficult today with our current conceptions to illuminate Jacob Boehme's soul life and what the cosmic questions and their solutions became for him, and a person cannot make himself very clear if he uses the words of Jacob Boehme, because they are no longer current coin in our time. I will try, therefore entirely in the spirit of Jacob Boehme, but with somewhat different words to approach what he wished to say about the question of evil, which becomes with him a question concerning the whole nature of spiritual consciousness in general.

Let us once try to think how our consciousness works, what our whole consciousness would be if we were not in a position to hold fast in memory, as thought, what we once experienced in our soul, in our consciousness. Let us try to think how our consciousness would have to be something entirely different if we were not capable of drawing up out of our memory what we experienced yesterday, the day before yesterday, years ago. The whole content of consciousness rests on the fact that we can remember past experience, and our consciousness does not extend back beyond that point of time to which we can remember. We began then to grasp ourselves as an “ego,” to have the coherent thread of our consciousness, to be at home in our soul life.

Upon what, therefore, does the whole nature of consciousness depend? Upon the fact that we know: Now we are at this moment experiencing something in our consciousness. When we experience something, we are directly connected with this experience. In the moment when we experience something we are nothing else than our experience itself. A person who visualizes a red colour is united with the experience of it at the moment when he visualizes this red colour. Whoever conceives an ideal is, at that moment, one with the ideal. I le distinguishes himself only afterwards from his experience, while before he was one with it. Thus our whole consciousness is something that we first experienced and then stored up as an objective thing in our inner soul life. Such storing away in the objective makes our consciousness possible. We could not develop any consciousness if everything that we experienced were always forgotten—completely removed. By placing our experience before ourselves as counterpart (Gegenwurf),5The term Wurf is almost untranslatable. It is apparently intended to suggest the primordial source from which all that is takes its rise. Gegenwurf is that which is created by the Wurf, its counterpart. as Jacob Boehme says,—by confronting ourselves with it as with an opposite—only thereby does our real consciousness ignite. We must observe this in connection with the simplest fact of our consciousness.

In his clairvoyant contemplation Jacob Boehme extends this experience, which any and every consciousness can have, over all the world. He says: And if a Divine Being in the world had once had the capacity only to live in Himself, but not to confront Himself with His experience—as counterpart—consciousness would never have come to be, even in a Divine Being. But for the Divine Being the counterpart is the world. Just as we confront ourselves with our conceptions, just as we become conscious of ourselves through the object, so the counterpart for Divine Consciousness is the world. And everything that surrounds us Divine Consciousness set out of Itself, in order to become aware of Itself thereby,—just as we develop our consciousness only when we set up our own experiences as counterpart.

For Jacob Boehme the grasping of this thought was not a theory, but something that brought him satisfaction with regard to a question which signified a matter of destiny for him—the great Faust question. He could now say to himself: “If I am carried back in thought into Divine Consciousness prior to the world, as it were, this Divine Consciousness could come to Itself, become real consciousness, only by confronting Itself with the world, in order to become aware of Itself through Its counterpart.” Thus, everything that lives and weaves and is took its rise from the Divine-Psychic, from a Will of this Divine-Psychic, which developed the craving, as Will, to become aware of Itself. And in that moment (this now became clear to Jacob Boehme) when the Unitary Consciousness set up Its counterpart and wanted to become aware of Itself—that is, duplicated Itself, created, as it were, the reflected image of Itself—It created this reflected image in a variety, in the multiplicity of single members, just as the single human soul does not have its life only in single limbs, but in limbs that have a certain independence, such as hand, and foot, and head. A person does not get close to the reality of Jacob Boehme if he describes him as a pantheist. He must go through the train of thought in a similar way, must understand how Jacob Boehme conceived everything that appears before us as a “counterpart of the Godhead.”

To the counterpart of the Godhead, which the Godhead set out of Itself in order to become aware of Itself thereby, belongs also the human being as he is. From this point of view of his. Jacob Boehme says: Men direct their gaze upwards; see the stars, the masses of clouds, the mountains and the plants, and would often assume the existence of still another special region of the Godhead. But I say to you, you unreasoning human being, that you yourself belong to the counterpart of the Godhead; for how could you sense anything and become aware of anything of Divine Being in yourself if you had not flowed forth from this Divine Being? You have sprung from this Divine Being. He placed you opposite Himself, as He also gave birth to you out of Himself, and you shall be buried in Him. And how could you be raised from the dead if an alien Godhead stood confronting you? How could you call yourself a child of God if you were not one with the substance and being of God!

That he does not refer to any ordinary pantheism is expressed by him through the fact that he says: “The external world is not God; it will never in eternity be called God, but a being in which God reveals Himself. … If one says that God is all. that God is heaven and earth and also the external world, it is true, for everything has its origin and genesis in Him. But what can I do with such a speech, which is no religion?”

One cannot call him a pantheist. Just as the question concerning the essential nature of the world is not, for him, something artificially sought after, neither is that which he gives himself as an answer to it. Rather is it an experience for him. He felt the prerequisite conditions determining his own consciousness and extended these over Divine Consciousness, because he knew clearly that the nature of his own capacity for consciousness was an echo of the actualities of the world.

And in the answer to the question of the soul and the Divine in the soul he finds also the answer to the question concerning the origin of evil. This is something exceedingly characteristic of Jacob Boehme, which has again and again aroused the admiration of profound thinkers. Thus, for instance, Schelling was very significantly affected when he became aware of the manner in which Jacob Boehme approached the question concerning the significance of evil in the world, and other thinkers of the nineteenth century also admired the profundity of thought with which Jacob Boehme took hold of this question.

One may say, with regard to many persons who have sought an answer to the question concerning the origin of evil, that they searched for the primal cause of evil. It is characteristic of Jacob Boehme that he went further than that point which, according to the opinion of many people, is the sole and only limit to which one can go. For where else should a person go if he does not wish to stop at this primal cause? Jacob Boehme goes beyond the primal cause when he wishes to solve the question concerning the significance of evil. He goes to that which he calls, significantly, not the primal cause, or primal ground (Urgrund), but the groundlessness, (Ungrund), and here we actually stand before an experience of the human soul in Jacob Boehme which can be admired in the highest degree if one has the requisite organ.

Certainly, the ordinary soul which has its roots in the modern world conception does not, perhaps, possess this organ; but one can have this organ which feels admiration when, in Jacob Boehme, the transition is made from the primal ground to the groundlessness. And, after all, it is really something like the egg of Columbus, something exceedingly simple. For, at the moment when Jacob Boehme had solved the world riddle for himself in the way we have just described—when it was clear to him that there is a relationship between God and the world like that between the soul and the limbs of the body—then he could also say to himself: When the world came into existence as counterpart of the Godhead, there appeared in this counterpart the dividedness, the differences among the limbs, as we should say.6He did not use these words, but we wish to characterize according to the essence rather than the words, for we shall, thereby, come closer to understanding him. The dividedness of the single limbs of the body confronting the single soul made its appearance. Is not every single limb of the body good with regard to functions of the soul? Can we not say that the right hand is good, the left hand is good, everything is good in as much as it serves the functions of the soul? But cannot the right hand, because of its relative independence, indeed just because of its excellence, injure the left hand?

Here we have the independence of the corporeal, that which needs to have “no ground” (cause), set up against that which constitutes harmony. We see this placed in the primal ground (cause), which simply results from the fact that from the “primal ground” we pass on to the “groundlessness.” Just as we do not need to seek in light the cause of darkness, so we do not need to seek in good the cause of evil. But as the world proves itself, for Jacob Boehme, to be the counterpart of the Godhead, the possibility arises in this world of dividedness for the individual limbs to work against each other, in that, because they must have their independence for the sake of the purpose of the world—according to the goal-seeking character of the world—they must also develop this independence.

Thus, for Jacob Boehme, evil does not have its roots in that which one explains, but in that which we find as “groundlessness” without the need for explaining it. But the latter appears thereby, as if of its own accord, as a counterpart of good. And now evil, the unsuitable, the harmful in the world becomes for Jacob Boehme itself a counterpart, in contrast to good,—just as we become aware of ourselves through contact with an object. We move along in space; we do not think of ourselves. But we begin at once to think of ourselves if, for instance, we knock our head against a window. Then we become aware of ourselves through the counterpart, through the object. Just as Jacob Boehme confronts consciousness with the counterpart, just as he experiences himself through the counterpart, so the good, the suitable, the advantageous and useful becomes aware of itself, for Jacob Boehme, through the fact that it has to preserve itself in the presence of the harmful and unsuitable. It becomes aware of itself in that “evil” became the counterpart of good, like the objects that are experienced through collision with the external world.

Thus Jacob Boehme sees in good the force which assimilates its counterpart, just as man, in his memory, assimilates more and more what he himself first set out of his consciousness. We find thus a constant absorption of evil and, thereby, an enriching of the good with the evil. And as darkness relates itself to light, in that light shines into darkness and thereby first becomes visible, so does good first become effective by working into evil and relating itself to evil as light to darkness. Just as light graduates to the different colours through darkness and could not appear as light if darkness were not opposed to it, so can good perform its world-function only by experiencing itself through its counterpart, through evil.

Thus Jacob Boehme looks into the world. He sees the good effective in such a way that it finds itself confronted by evil, but that it takes evil into its own domain, absorbs it, so to speak. Thus a pre-earthly occurrence appears for Jacob Boehme in such a way that he says to himself: The Deity once placed other spiritual beings opposite Himself. These were, like our present nature at a later stage, a counterpart of the Deity. Thus these beings were already a counterpart of the Deity, whereby the Deity achieved consciousness of Himself. But they behaved towards the Deity like the limbs that turn against their own body.

Thereby the Being Lucifer came into existence for Jacob Boehme. What is Lucifer for him? He is the Being who, after the counterpart was created, used the separateness, the multiplicity, to rebel against his Creator as independent counterpart. Thus, in the forces of the world which differ from and struggle against one another Jacob Boehme finds that which must be, but which contributes to the general evolution, nevertheless, by being absorbed in the course of development. In the same way he also conceives that all deeds of the opponent of the Gods—in order that the deeds of the Deity Himself may come to realization so much the more powerfully through the counterpart—are absorbed by the Deity, and that the self-realization of the Deity becomes only so much the more glorious through the forces which the opponent develops.

Into the depths of the world Jacob Boehme pursues the thought which extends the experiencing of consciousness to the cosmic experience of the origin and primal state of evil. And he puts into a simple formula—not what he gave theoretically, we must say, as the solution of the cosmic riddles, but what he experienced,—into the formula: No Yes without a No, for the “Yes” must first experience itself through its counterpart, through the “No.” “No Yes without a No is the simple formula into which Jacob Boehme brought the whole problem of evil. And it is not a theoretical formula, but in this philosophy, there lies something like a most primal, most elemental experience.

For to know that there is no Yes without a No, that evil is absorbed by good and contributes to the evolution of the world,—that may yet be nothing. But it is something else to be a struggling soul, a soul that experiences pain and suffering, temptations and seductions, and to say to oneself: “All of this must be present, and although it is present I can procure for myself out of my living philosophical word—not by theorizing—the certainty and the consolation and the hope that the best in me will find the possibility of overcoming what is only the counterpart, the “No,” through the primal, through the Primordial Impulse (Wurf),7The term Wurf is almost untranslatable. It is apparently intended to suggest the primordial source from which all that is takes its rise. Gegenwurf is that which is created by the Wurf, its counterpart. through the “Yes.” And no matter how much I become entangled in evil, and no matter how small the ray of light is that extends over it,—I can and may hope for liberation, so that the good in me and not the evil will win the victory!

If such a philosophy passes over into certainty of redemption, then it is something which is, in this manner, connected with the personality, to be sure, but which has with this character of personality at the same time general human significance. If a person allows this to work upon his soul, he will gladly go on from this struggling soul which rises into the cold abstractions of the “Yes” and “No” in order to acquire therefrom the warmest soul content and the warmest soul experiences—then he will gladly go on from this soul, which gains through struggle confidence in its world conception, to the lonely man in Goerlitz who had no opportunity to found a school, for the time which men, under other circumstances, spend in spiritual things he had to spend in making shoes ... he had to gain the time by strenuous effort for his numerous works. Such a person will gladly go to the man whose books reveal how he struggled with language because his external education was so limited, but whose teachings, nevertheless, were disseminated and spread abroad after his death; who sat on his shoemaker's bench and had only few friends to whom he could open his heart. He had friends, it is true, to whom he wrote letters, but their number was small.

One sees him thus in his loneliness and feels as if a necessary connection existed herein. Just as one can think of Giordano Bruno only as journeying through the world, moving from land to land in order to proclaim something about the world as if with trumpet tone—just as one feels in him, who enters into the multiplicity of phenomena, that this journeying belongs to this world conception—so does one feel in the other case that this lonely shoemaker experienced something which could be experienced only in such a way that it took place as if in a solitary dialogue with the spirits of existence—in this solitary seership which we characterized at the beginning.

If we feel thus, then the sentiment grows in us, with regard to what the human being needs in order to solve the riddles of the world in a thoughtful, feeling way, that the greatest which the human being can experience in the world is independent of place and time, is subject only to the human soul's capacity for profound meditation, and that the soul can undertake the greatest world-migrations, the migrations into the spirit-regions, everywhere and always. Then there rings out to us from Jacob Boehme's soul, and touches our understanding, that which characterizes his world conception in such a significant expression when he says:

Wem Zeit wie Ewigkeit
Und Ewigkeit als wie die Zeit,
Der ist befreit von allem Streit.

To whom time is like eternity
And eternity like time,
He is freed from all strife.

This does not characterize his world conception in a theoretical respect, but it characterizes what his world conception really came to be through the fact that he was such a very special human being. For we have been able to emphasize that through his whole being he was more intimately connected with nature than the normal human being,—that he experienced the weaving and activity of nature in his own soul experiences. This leads us to sense a certain necessity in a designation which Jacob Boehme's friends gave him. They gave him a happy designation. For let us just consider the following:

When there was already a widely diffused, wonderfully detailed science over in the East, in the Orient, whose wisdom we admire if we learn to know it, we still find the very simplest spiritual culture on Central European soil. We find that something lives in all the souls of Central Europe which is like an intimate connection of the forces in the depths of the soul with the forces of nature and the nature-beings, and that the people threw twigs on the ground and saw in the “Runes” which took form all kinds of riddles which they sought to solve. These human beings were decipherers of “Rune riddles.” And of all that speaks out of the souls of the human beings in the forests of ancient Germania about what lives in nature, about what rustles through the trees, or lives mysteriously in human souls themselves,—we feel as if something of all this were active in Jacob Boehme's soul.

Then something in Jacob Boehme may well become comprehensible to us which would otherwise be the most difficult thing for us to comprehend today. We are not forcing things if we compare with the picture of the decipherer of runic riddles, who solves all sorts of riddles through the twigs which have been thrown on the ground and claims to perceive the revelations of the Divinity Himself—if we compare with this the way, for instance, in which Jacob Boehme sets up the syllables “sul” and “phur” runically out of his relationship with the feeling for speech, and wants to solve world riddles thereby. Here he appears to us like a last offspring of the forests of ancient Germania, and we understand why his friends gave him the name “Philosophus Teutonicus.” This includes, however, his significance for the coming times.

We look towards him and see how he struggled with the most exciting problems that can play into the human soul, how he arrived at peace in this struggle, and how his last words: “I enter into Paradise” were the seal to consistency of soul, to soul-practice. It is this that led him to peace of the soul. A breath of faith lives in all his books, and from this point of view Jacob Boehme can have significance for us and for all times. When it comes to the practical life consequence of a philosophy, this “Philosophus Teutonicus” will always be a dominant influence as regards that which he can really be for the soul if it becomes familiar with him.8Compare: Rudolf Steiner—Die Rätsel der Philosophie, Vol. I.

His adversaries sometimes make a strange impression—beginning in the year 1684, when the first rather strong refutation of Jacob Boehme by Kallo appeared, up until our time, when we also have a writing against Jacob Boehme, by a Leipzig scholar of the past century, Dr. Harles. It seems rather peculiar how Harles wishes to show that Jacob Boehme did nothing but warm up old alchemistic things, and then says that, after he had often tormented himself for days in order to present Jacob Boehme in this way, he was often glad when he could approach Matthias Claudius in the evening in order to find recuperation and edification in his words, after he had had to concern himself thus with Jacob Boehme throughout the day. And he desires also for his readers that they not allow themselves to be beguiled by the glistening and glimmering formulae of Jacob Boehme, but that they also take refuge in the simple and naive Matthias Claudius, whose gift to the soul is such that the soul does not have to seek its salvation in being elevated to the highest heights of spiritual life.

It may be that this Dr. Harles, the antagonist of Jacob Boehme, had to take refuge in Matthias Claudius in order to escape from the glistening, high-flown formulae of Jacob Boehme, and that he could find peace in Claudius, in contrast to his experience with Jacob Boehme. Only, it makes a strange impression on one who knows that Matthias Claudius himself took refuge, after he had achieved what Dr. Harles found in his works, in some one who not only knew Jacob Boehme, but even translated him—in Saint Martin, who was a faithful pupil of Jacob Boehme! Thus it is very good not only to know wherein Dr. Harles, the antagonist of Jacob Boehme, sought edification, but also to know wherein Matthias Claudius sought his edification!

But the world conception of Jacob Boehme is one that is suited to lead beyond contradictions, if only one does not stop at it. The whole nature of the lectures that have been given here has shown that within the world conception which is represented here we should not remain standing at any one phenomenon, but that whatever of the spiritual world can be grasped directly through the forces of our age should be grasped. Certainly Jacob Boehme remains a significant personality, a star of the first magnitude in the spirit-heavens of humanity—yet no one will stop at him. The representations of spiritual-science which are given today are, therefore, by no means given from the standpoint of Jacob Boehme, but from that of our age, and the next time we shall show, in contrast, what an entirely modern spirit has to say.9Rudolf Steiner, Die Weltanschauung eines Kulturforschers der Gegenwart (Herman Grimm) und die Geistesforschuug.

But Jacob Boehme becomes still more interesting if we transport ourselves into his spirit-nature—which stands upright in simplicity and solitude, and takes flight with his soul into the highest region of clairvoyance,—and if we find how this spirit-nature could spread peace over Jacob Boehme's soul, which can subsequently be felt by all who approach him with understanding or, at least, seeking for understanding. For this reason, intellectual characterizations will not come close to the reality of Jacob Boehme, but only such characterizations as endeavour to feel what a human being like Jacob Boehme felt, what streamed forth from him—as, for instance, in the three lines which I have cited.

And only then can the words with which I essayed to characterize Jacob Boehme gain their significance if those present feel that they were not said in order to culminate in a theory or theoretical characterization of Jacob Boehme, but to culminate in this: that, when we are directly confronted by the personality of Jacob Boehme, something streams out from it—and streams out so much the more warmly and intensively the more we learn to know it—which can sum up what has been said in words designating his peace, his serenity:

To whom time is like eternity
And eternity like time,
He is freed from all strife.

Jakob Böhme

In dem Zeitpunkte der modernen Geistesentwickelung, in dem wir die Morgenröte der neuen Weltanschauung hereinbrechen sehen, in jenem Zeitpunkte, da wir die großen Taten des Kepler, des Galilei zu verzeichnen haben, da Giordano Bruno gewissermaßen das große Problem der modernen Weltanschauung entwirft, in diesem Zeitpunkte begegnet uns der einsame Denker, dem die heutige Betrachtung gewidmet sein soll, der einfache Görlitzer Schuster Jakob Böhme, der gerungen hat mit den höchsten Problemen des Daseins in einer Weise, welche unser Denken und Empfinden bis zum heutigen Tage in tiefster Weise beschäftigen kann, und wohl auch noch lange das Denken und Empfinden der Menschen beschäftigen wird.

Eine eigenartige Gestalt, dieser Jakob Böhme, eine Gestalt, die in Einsamkeit strebt und ringt, während sich sozusagen sonst im Geistesleben die einzelnen Strömungen zu einem großen umfassenden Tableau zusammenschließen. In einer gewissen Weise darf man sagen, daß das einsame Ringen Jakob Böhmes von einem gewissen Gesichtspunkte aus fast so interessant erscheint wie das Zusammenströmen der verschiedenen Gesichtspunkte, die uns sonst in jenem Zeitalter begegnen. Und dann sehen wir, wie ganz merkwürdig das, was Jakob Böhme in der eigenen, einsamen Seele in seinem Jahrhunderte noch fand, die denkbar weiteste Verbreitung gefunden hat, denkbar weiteste Verbreitung können wir sagen in Anbetracht dessen, daß es sich um eine tief bedeutsame geistige Sache handelt. Wir sehen gerade aus den Manifestationen seiner Gegner, wie weit sein Einfluß gereicht hat, nachdem nur wenige Jahrzehnte seit seinem Tode verflossen waren. Immer wieder und wieder ist Jakob Böhme der Gegenstand anerkennender, bewundernder, oder auch ablehnender, verspottender Betrachtung gewesen, und wenn wir auf das hinblicken, was sich an Anhängerschaft oder an Gegnerschaft gebildet hatte, so haben wir aus beidem den Eindruck, daß die Anhänger und die Bekämpfer wissen: sie haben es mit einer ganz merkwürdigen Erscheinung zu tun.

Merkwürdig ist diese Erscheinung besonders denjenigen, welche eine jede Persönlichkeit, die im Geistesleben der Menschheit auftritt, sozusagen aus den unmittelbaren Bedingungen der Zeit und der Umgebung begreifen wollen. Wir sehen ja, wie zum Beispiel versucht wird, Goethe dadurch zu begreifen, daß man alle möglichen, auch die geringsten Einzelheiten seines Lebens zusammenträgt und aus der Zusammenstellung dieser Einzelheiten glaubt, für die Erklärung seines entsprechenden Geisteslebens dieses oder jenes gewinnen zu können. Auf diese Weise läßt sich für Jakob Böhme nicht eigentlich vielgewinnen, denn äußere Einflüsse lassen sich mit der äußeren Wissenschaft schwierig konstatieren. Noch weniger läßt sich begreifen, wie er aus dem, was das Geistesleben seiner Zeit war, herausgewachsen ist. Daher haben viele sich zu der Meinung bekannt, daß man es in Jakob Böhme zu tun habe mit einer Art geistigen Meteors. Alles, was da auftritt, was diese Persönlichkeit zu geben hatte, erscheint wie plötzlich herausentsprungen, sich offenbarend aus den Tiefen seiner eigenartigen Seele. Andere haben dann zu erklären versucht, wie doch manche Wendung bei Jakob Böhme, manche Art der Darstellung seiner Ideen in den Worten und in den Wendungen, Ähnlichkeit mit den Formeln der Alchimisten oder anderer philosophischer oder sonstiger Richtungen zeigt, die in seiner Zeit noch lebten.

Wer aber tiefer auf die ganze Geistesart Jakob Böhmes eingeht, der findet, daß eine solche Prozedur kaum mehr Wert hat, als wenn man bei einem bedeutenden Geiste, der sich doch immer in einer Sprache ausdrücken muß, die Sprache untersuchen wollte; denn wenn sich Jakob Böhme alchimistischer Formeln oder dergleichen bedient, so ist das nur sprachliche Einkleidung. Was aber auf den, der ihn zu verstehen sucht, einen so urgewaltigen Eindruck macht, das stellt sich in einer Originalität dar, wie man es nur bei den allergrößten Geistern findet. Dagegen gibt es einige Anhaltspunkte, welche dem modernen Denken, der modernen Weltanschauung nicht recht sympathisch sind, die aber immerhin demjenigen, der sich auf so etwas einzulassen vermag, beleuchten, wie Jakob Böhme sich auf seinen hohen geistigen Standpunkt hat hinaufschwingen können. Wir brauchen, um, soweit es hier in Betracht kommt, an sein Leben anzuknüpfen, nur wenige Daten aus seinem Leben anzuführen.

Jakob Böhme war der Sohn ganz armer Leute und stammte aus Alt-Seidenberg in der Nähe von Görlitz. 1575 ist er geboren. Er mußte in der Jugend mit anderen Dorfknaben das Vieh hüten. Er wuchs also, wie daraus hervorgeht, in vollständiger Armut auf, und da man bei einem solchen Aufwachsen keine besonderen Bildungsmittel hat, so werden wir es begreiflich finden, daß Jakob Böhme noch als zwölf-, dreizehnjähriger Junge kaum lesen und nur notdürftig schreiben konnte. Aber ein anderes Erlebnis tritt uns bereits während seiner Knabenzeit entgegen, das ein treuer Biograph von ihm aus seinem eigenen Munde gehört hat. Zunächst soll dieses Ereignis erzählt werden. Wie gesagt, es ist keine von denjenigen Sachen, welche dem modernen Bewußtsein so recht einleuchten wollen.

Als Jakob Böhme einst mit anderen Hirtenknaben das Vieh hütete, entfernte er sich von der Gesellschaft der Knaben, bestieg einen mäßig hohen Berg in der Nähe seines Heimatortes, die Landskrone, und will da am hellen Mittag gesehen haben, daß sich etwas wie ein Eingangstor in den Berg fand. Er ging hinein und fand dort ein Gefäß, eine Art Bütte, angefüllt mit lauterem Golde. Das machte einen solchen Eindruck des Schauderns auf seine Seele, daß er davonrannte und nur die Erinnerung an dieses eigenartige Erlebnis behielt. - Man kann allerdings von einem im wachen Zustande geträumten Traume sprechen. Denen, die eine solche Erklärung befriedigen kann, mag man zwar immerhin recht geben. Aber es ist nicht das Wesentliche, ob man ein solches Ereignis einen «Traum» nennt oder ihm einen anderen Namen gibt, sondern was es in der Seele des Betreffenden, der es «träumt», auslöst, was es in der Seele für eine Wirkung ausübt. Aus der Art und Weise, wie Jakob Böhme später dieses Ereignis seinem Freunde erzählte, sehen wir, daß es sich tief in seine Seele eingegraben hatte, daß es in seiner Seele bedeutende Kräfte losgelöst hatte, so daß es seelisch für ihn von höchster Bedeutung war.

Lassen wir daher den Rationalisten das Recht, ein solches Erlebnis, welches unter allen Umständen ein bedeutungsvoller Vorgang in Jakob Böhmes Seele war, so zu erklären, wie sie ja auch das Ereignis der Erscheinung des Christus gegenüber dem Paulus vor Damaskus erklären wollen. Nur hat eine solche Erklärung, die zu diesen Dingen Zuflucht nimmt, auch zuzugeben, daß eine solche bedeutsame Arbeit wie diejenige des Paulus, die so innig mit dem Christentum zusammenhängt, von einem «Traume» ausgegangen sei. Etwas wie eine tiefste Aufrüttelung von Seelenkräften, die sonst nicht in der Seele tätig sind, das fühlte schon der Knabe Jakob Böhme, als er dieses Erlebnis hatte. Auf diese innere Loslösung von tieferliegenden Kräften der Seele kommt es an. Auf das Zeugnis einer solchen Sache kommt es an, das da beweist, daß man es mit einem Menschen zu tun hat, der tiefer in die Schachte seines Seelenlebens hinuntersteigen kann als tausend und abertausend andere.

Eines anderen Ereignisses von ganz ähnlicher Art ist noch zu gedenken, von dem wir wieder sagen müssen, es ist Jakob Böhme so im Gedächtnis geblieben, daß der Glanz und die Bedeutung dieses Ereignisses über sein ganzes Leben hinleuchteten, insofern dieses Leben ein Innenleben war.

Jakob Böhme wurde im vierzehnten Jahre zu einem Schuster in die Lehre gegeben und mußte im Geschäft seines Lehrmeisters oft sozusagen Wache stehen; verkaufen durfte er nichts. Da kam einmal — wieder ist diese Erzählung aus dem Munde seines getreuen Biographen Abraham von Frankenberg herrührend — eine dem Jakob Böhme sofort sonderbar erscheinende Persönlichkeit in den Laden und wollte Schuhe kaufen. Weil aber dem Knaben verboten war, Schuhe zu verkaufen, so sagte er dies dem Fremden. Dieser bot ihm einen hohen Preis, und es kam dann auch dazu, daß die Schuhe verkauft wurden. Dann aber trug sich das Folgende zu, was Jakob Böhme zeitlebens im Gedächtnis blieb. Als der Fremde sich entfernt hatte und kurze Zeit verflossen war, hörte Jakob Böhme seinen Vornamen «Jakob, Jakob!» rufen, und als er hinausging, da kam ihm der Fremde noch sonderbarer vor als zuerst. Er hatte etwas Sonnenhaftes, Glänzendes in den Augen und sagte zu ihm Worte, die ganz sonderlich klangen: Jakob, du bist jetzt noch klein, aber du wirst einst ein ganz anderer Mensch werden, über den die Welt in Erstaunen ausbrechen wird. Doch bleibe demütig gegenüber deinem Gotte und lies fleißig die Bibel. Du wirst viel Verfolgung auszuhalten haben. Bleibe aber stark, denn dein Gott hat dich lieb und wird dir gnädig sein.

Ein solches Ereignis sah Jakob Böhme für viel wesentlicher an als irgendwelche anderen, äußeren biographischen Erlebnisse. Und weiter erzählt sein Biograph, wie ihm Jakob Böhme selbst gesagt hat: Im Jahre 1593 war es, da fühlte sich Jakob Böhme während sieben Tagen wie entrückt aus seinem physischen Leibe, fühlte sich wie in einer ganz anderen Welt, fühlte sich der Seele nach wie wiedergeboren.

Da haben wir es also, wenn man so sagen will, mit einem dauernd abnormen Seelenzustande zu tun. Aber Jakob Böhme erlebte auch diese seine «Wiedergeburt» doch mehr oder weniger wie etwas, was seiner Auffassung nach mit einer Menschenseele sich eben verbinden könne. Er wurde dadurch nicht etwa zum Schwärmer oder zum falschen Idealisten, auch nicht zu einem hochmütigen Menschen, sondern trieb sein Schuhmacherhandwerk weiter in aller Demut, man möchte sagen, in aller Nüchternheit. Selbst das Erlebnis vom Jahre 1593, die Entrückung in eine andere Welt, blieb ihm eine Erscheinung, von welcher er sich sagte: Du hast hineingeschäut in ein Freudenreich, in ein Reich geistiger Wirklichkeit, aber es ist das eine vergangene Sache. — Und er lebte in den Alltag hinein weiter seinem Geschäfte nach in seiner Nüchternheit.

In den Jahren 1600 und 1610 wiederholte sich dieses Erlebnis der Wiedergeburt. Da fing er dann an, weil er sich dazu berufen glaubte, das aufzuzeichnen, was er in seinen entrückten Zuständen erlebt hatte. So entstand 1612 sein erstes Werk «Die Morgenröte im Aufgange», später «Aurora» betitelt. Er sagt von ihr, daß er sie nicht mit seinem gewöhnlichen Ich niedergeschrieben habe, sondern daß sie ihm Wort für Wort eingegeben war, daß er gegenüber seinem gewöhnlichen Ich in einem Wesen lebte, welches ein umfassendes, überall in die Welt hineinreichendes und sich in dieselbe versenkendes gewesen sei.

Die Offenbarungen bekamen ihm allerdings nicht besonders gut. Als einige Leute merkten, was er zu sagen hatte, was er niedergeschrieben hatte, da wurde das Manuskript der «Aurora» abgeschrieben und in wenigen Exemplaren verbreitet. Die Folge war, daß der Diakonus von Görlitz, Gregorius Richter, wo sich Jakob Böhme inzwischen als Schuster niedergelassen hatte, auf der Kanzel gegen Jakob Böhme loszog und nicht nur sein Werk verdammte, sondern es erlangte, daß er vor den Rat der Stadt Görlitz berufen wurde. Ich will jetzt nur die Worte wiederholen, die wir darüber von seinem Biographen kennen. Der erzählt: Da fand der Rat, daß dem Jakob Böhme verboten werden müsse, weiter zu schreiben; denn schreiben dürften nur die, die Akademiker wären, aber Jakob Böhme sei nicht ein Akademikus, sondern ein Idiot, und müsse sich daher des Schreibens enthalten!

So war denn Jakob Böhme zum Idioten gestempelt worden, und da er im ganzen ein gutmütiger Mensch war, der sich doch nicht ganz denken konnte, wegen des Einfältigen in seiner Natur, daß man ihn so ganz grundlos zu den Verdammten halten würde, so beschloß er in der Tat, in der nächsten Zeit nichts weiter zu schreiben. Aber dann kam die Zeit, wo er nicht mehr anders konnte. Und in den Jahren von 1620 bis 1624, bis zu seinem Tode, schrieb er rasch hintereinander eine große Anzahl seiner Werke, so zum Beispiel «Das Buch vom beschaulichen Leben», «De signatura rerum oder von der Geburt und Bezeichnung aller Wesen», oder die «Erklärung über das erste Buch Mose». Aber die Zahl seiner Werke ist eine recht große, und darin mag es manchem Leser eigenartig ergehen. Manche haben gesagt, Jakob Böhme wiederhole sich immer wieder. Es ist wahr, man kann nicht widersprechen, gewisse Dinge tauchen immer wieder bei ihm auf. Wenn man aber daraus den Schluß zieht, daß man den ganzen Jakob Böhme kenne, wenn man einige seiner Werke kennt, weil er sich immer wiederholt - man mag solchen Leuten, die das sagen, nicht so ohne weiteres unrecht geben —, so muß doch gesagt werden: wer dabei stehen bleibt, ein Werk Jakob Böhmes gelesen zu haben und keinen Appetit bekommt, auch die anderen Werke zu lesen, der wird nicht viel von Jakob Böhme verstehen. Wer sich aber bemühen wird, seine anderen Werke dann durchzugehen, der wird trotz aller Wiederholungen doch nicht ruhen, bis er auch die letzten gelesen hat.

Wenn wir von dieser Charakteristik seines Wesens mehr in seine Gedankengänge, in das geistige Wesen Jakob Böhmes einzudringen versuchen, so muß gesagt werden, daß dem modernen Menschen, welcher nur im Bildungsleben unserer Zeit lebt, allerdings vieles nicht nur im Inhalte der Werke Jakob Böhmes unverständlich sein muß, sondern auch in der ganzen Art und Weise, wie er darstellt. Zunächst erscheint die Darstellung ganz chaotisch. Man liest sich langsam ein, gewiß. Aber dann bleibt noch immer für viele Leute etwas, was eine schwer zu knackende Nuß ist: daß wir bei ihm finden, wie er, ganz unverständlich für das moderne Gemüt, ganz sonderbareWorterklärungen hat. So finden wir bei ihm, daß er zur Welterklärung immer wieder Worte gebraucht wie «Salz», «Quecksilber» und «Sulphur». Wenn er nun Auseinandersetzungen machen will, was «sul» bedeutet; was «phur» bedeutet, und dann allerlei Tiefsinniges findet, dann müssen diese modernen Gemüter sich sagen: Damit kann man nichts anfangen; denn was soll es heißen, Erklärungen abgeben über ein Weltprinzip, wenn man die Silben eines Wortes einzeln erklärt, wie «sul» und «phur»? — Das liegt der modernen Seele ganz fern.

Wenn man allerdings weiter auf Jakob Böhme eingeht, so findet man: er kleidet, was er sagen will, in allerlei alchimistische Formeln. Aber erst wenn man zu dem durchdringt, was sich als Jakob Böhmescher Geist auslebt in dem, was er so vorgefunden hat, dann erst findet man, daß darin etwas ganz anderes lebt, als was wir heute als wissenschaftliches Denken, überhaupt als Weltanschauungs- oder sonstiges Denken kennen.

Am ähnlichsten ist das, was in Jakob Böhmes Seele lebt, noch dem, was hier in diesen Vorträgen als die erste Stufe zu einem höheren geistigen Leben charakterisiert worden ist als die Stufe des imaginativen Erkennens. Haben wir doch hervorgehoben, daß der, welcher von dem gewöhnlichen Leben in der Sinneswelt aufsteigt, durch einebesondere Entwickelung seiner Seele dahin kommt, eine neue Welt von Bildern, von Imaginationen wahrzunehmen. Und es ist hervorgehoben worden - ich bitte, sich gerade an die Charakteristik dieser Auseinandersetzung zu erinnern —: wenn es der Mensch dahin gebracht hat, daß er sich nicht nur Imaginationen bildet, sondern daß Bilder, imaginative Vorstellungen aus den unbekannten Tiefen des Seelenlebens heraufschießen, und er eine neue Welt erlebt, dann hat der, welcher zu neuen Erkenntnissen aufsteigen will, den starken Entschluß zu fassen, dieses erste Aufleuchten einer imaginativen Welt in der Seele ganz zu unterdrücken und zu warten, bis es ein zweites Mal aus einer viel untergründigeren Welt herauftaucht.

Am ehesten ist also die ganze Seelenverfassung, die ganze innere Stimmung, zu welcher Jakob Böhme kommt, mit dem zu vergleichen, was einem Menschen in seinem Seelenleben begegnet, der zu einem übersinnlichen Erkennen aufsteigt. Zwar zeigt sich nirgends, daß schon so etwas, was : die moderne Geisteswissenschaft als ihre Methoden verkündet, sich bei Jakob Böhme findet. Aber der würde dennoch unrecht haben, welcher glauben wollte, das alles trete wie von selbst bei Jakob Böhme auf. Er selbst sagt einmal, daß er unablässig gerungen habe nach des Geistes, nach Gottes Beistand, und daß sich nach diesem unablässigen Ringen ergeben habe eine lichtvolle, imaginative Welt. So können wir nicht sagen, daß er einfach ein naiver imaginativ Erkennender ist, sondern wir müssen sagen, daß er naiv zu den Mitteln greift, welche den Menschen zu der Höhe des imaginativen Erkennens hinaufführen. In seiner Seele ist natürlich eine solche imaginative Kraft anzunehmen. Er kommt also auf ganz denselben Wegen, nur rascher, selbstverständlicher, zur imaginativen Erkenntnis, als man durch jene Methoden dazu kommen kann, wie sie in dem Buche «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» geschildert sind.

So steht Jakob Böhme als ein imaginativ Erkennender vor uns. Aber mit Urgewalt, wie selbstverständlich, ringt sich dieses imaginative Erkennen, wie getragen von einem starken innerlichen Willen, an die Oberfläche. So sehen wir bei ihm diesen starken innerlichen Willen, der sich nicht in äußeren Taten ausleben kann - sein bescheidener Beruf hindert ihn daran -, wie eine Flut seine Seele umgebend, so daß die Seele in diese Flut eintaucht. Und aus diesem Willen sehen wir mächtige Bilder herausgeboren werden, durch die er sich die Weltenrätsel zu lösen versucht. Nicht allein so sehr auf die einzelnen Resultate, als auf diese Stimmung und Verfassung seiner Seele kommt es bei Jakob Böhme an. Er fühlt, daß er in seinem Streben zu etwas getrieben wird, was nicht das gewöhnliche erkennende menschliche Ich ist, sondern was mit den Kräften zusammenhängt, welche den Menschen vom Unterbewußten seiner Seele, von den Tiefen seiner Seele aus mit dem ganzen Kosmos verbinden, mit dem also, was draußen in der Natur webt und lebt.

Der Mensch, der wirklich einen ernsthaften Trieb zur Erkenntnis hat, fühlt ja, wie in dem Erkennen nicht nur etwas Rationelles ist, sondern etwas, was er sich erringt durch Leiden und Schmerzen und durch Überwindung von Leiden und Schmerzen. Und er merkt, wenn er mit den heutigen gewöhnlichen Mitteln in Natur und Dasein einzudringen versucht, wie er sich eigentlich durch alle solche Mittel von Natur und Dasein entfernt. Wenn wir aber Kräfte in unserer Seele bloßlegen, die sonst im Unterbewußten ruhen, dann fühlen wir, daß diese in ganz anderem, innigerem Sinne mit Natur und Dasein zusammenhängen. Um das zu erklären, möchte ich folgendes heranziehen.

Es ist bekannt und wird oft erzählt, wie gewisse Tiere in Gegenden, wo ein Erdbeben oder ein sonstiges Elementarereignis herannaht, von der Stätte des Erdbebens oder dergleichen fliehen, oder daß sie wenigstens unruhig werden, so daß sie wie prophetische Vorherverkündiger dessen sind, was geschehen wird. Man kann sagen: Das instinktive Leben des Tieres hängt inniger mit dem zusammen, was sich draußen in der Natur vollzieht, als die ganze Seelenverfassung des Menschen. Aber in den Tiefen der Menschenseele lebt etwas, das nicht etwa dasselbe ist, wie der Instinkt der Tiere, sondern das tiefer ist als dieser tierische Instinkt, das auch wieder innig mit den Naturkräften zusammenhängt. Indem Jakob Böhme nun in die Tiefen seiner Seele hinuntersteigt, fühlt er sich inniger verwoben mit den Naturkräften. Besonders aber ist eines hervorspringend. Es wurde hervorgehoben: erst wenn das, was als Imaginationen und imaginative Welt auftritt, unterdrückt wird, ausgelöscht wird, und dann wie von selbst wieder aufleuchtet, erst dann hat diese zweite imaginative Welt einen Wert. Nun ist es höchst eigenartig, wenn wir damit den Weg bei Jakob Böhme vergleichen: Im Jahre 1600 erlebt er eine Wiedergeburt, fühlt sich entrückt in eine geistige Welt, in ein Freudenreich. Dann lebt er nüchtern fort. Zehn Jahre hindurch ist wie untergetaucht, was er erlebt hat. Dann taucht es ein drittes Mal auf im Jahre 1610. Ist dann nicht wie ein Naturereignis in Jakob Böhmes Seele der Weg eingetreten, den wir als den richtigen darstellten? Das ist es, was uns Jakob Böhme so nahe heranrückt an das, was wir selbst als den naturgemäßen Weg in die übersinnlichen Welten ins Auge gefaßt haben. Wenn wir dies berücksichtigen, wird sein Erlebnis uns nicht mehr so fremd erscheinen, als es auf den ersten Blick hin erscheinen kann.

Für die objektive Erkenntnis des Zweiflers wird es allerdings keinen Wert haben, wenn man tiefsinnige Betrachtungen anstellt über die Zusammensetzung aus den Silben «sul» und «phur« oder über anderes noch. Aber ich bitte Sie, sich an das zu erinnern, was früher einmal über die menschliche Sprache ausgeführt worden ist, wie dargelegt worden ist, wie im Laufe der Menschheitsentwickelung die Sprache eigentlich dem abstrakten, vorstellungsmäßigen Denken vorangeht, und wie Jean Paul durchaus recht hat, wenn er betont, daß das Kind an der Sprache denken lernt, und nicht das Sprechen sich an dem Denken ausbildet. Die Sprache ist also etwas Elementareres, Ursprünglicheres als das Denken. Wenn wir sehen, wie die ganze Natur in unseren Gedanken wiederersteht, dann fühlen wir, wie der Gedanke durch eine Weltenkluft von den Naturtatsachen getrennt ist. Wenn aber der Laut als ein mehr den Naturlauten ähnlicher — und aus solchen ist doch die Sprache ursprünglich zusammengesetzt —, wenn sich der Sprachlaut der menschlichen Seele entringt, dann wirkt in die Tiefen der Seele etwas hinein von der ganzen Gesetzmäßigkeit der Welt, und dann ringt sich in ganz anderer Weise eine Art Echo gegenüber der Natur los, als wenn sich aus den Gedanken etwas als Echo loslöst.

Eine heutige Seele hat gar nicht mehr das Gefühl für die Verwandtschaft von Sprache und Naturlaut. Man ringt sich als heutige Seele nur langsam durch, zu fühlen, wie inaller Sprache etwas ist, was sich wie ein Echo der Eindrücke der Außenwelt unmittelbar ausnimmt. Bei einer solchen Persönlichkeit wie Jakob Böhme, die mit elementarer Gewalt tiefere Seelenkräfte aus ihrer Seele herausholt, ist es nur naturgemäß, daß sie auch in dieser Beziehung gleichsam sich auch im Fühlen zu jener Empfindung über die Sprache zurückversetzt, welche der Menschheit einmal eigen war, die das Kind noch mehr oder weniger unbewußt entwickelt.

Wenn wir das eben Ausgeführte nun ausdehnen auf die sonderbaren Auseinandersetzungen über das Zusammenstellen von Silben zu Worten, dann können wir verstehen, wie es nur ein Fühlen an den Lauten ist, was die Natur in der Menschenseele macht, wie die Natur sich durch den Laut selber eine Sprache schaffen will. Eben weil Jakob Böhme mit der Seele der Natur näher steht, lebt er auch noch mehr in der Sprache als in den Gedanken, und seine ganze Philosophie ist mehr ein Mitfühlen, ein Mitempfinden dessen, was in der Natur draußen lebt und webt, als irgendein abstraktes Erfassen der Dinge. Man möchte sagen, wenn man einen Gedanken Jakob Böhmes so recht auf sich wirken läßt, hat man das Gefühl, als ob der Gedanke so verwandt wäre dem, was Jakob Böhme beobachtet, wie man nur dem verwandt ist, was man als irgendeinen Geschmack empfindet, wo man auch eine Berührung mit der Natur empfindet.

So fühlt Jakob Böhme die Berührung mit der Natur. Er fühlt im Innern, was draußen in der Natur webt und wirkt und lebt. Er lebt das Leben der Natur mit, und er gibt im Grunde genommen in seinen Darstellungen das, was er mitlebt, so daß man in seinen Worten nachvibrieren fühlt, was er schaut. Daher sind ihm die Worte auch etwas, was er besonders als das fühlt, was das «Wie» in der Natur selber ist. Man braucht also nicht darüber nachzugrübeln, ob solche Auseinandersetzungen wie die angedeutete über das «sul» und «phur» bei Jakob Böhme etwas Besonderes bedeuten, sondern man versuche, bei dieser Seele das nachzuleben, wie sie das Welterleben zum Seelenerleben macht, und das, was die Seele erleben kann, als ihre Offenbarungen gibt.

Man versteht Jakob Böhme nicht, wenn man der Meinung ist, daß er Blitz und Donner, Wolken oder Wolkenverwandlungen oder das Wachsen des Grases nur so wahrnimmt, wie ein moderner Mensch. Man versteht ihn nur, wenn man weiß, daß mit dem zuckenden Blitze, mit dem rollenden Donner, mit den sich verwandelnden Wolken für sein Seelenerleben etwas sich verwandelt, so daß sich in seiner Seele etwas abspielt, was wie die Lösung des entsprechenden Rätsels dasteht. So wird für Jakob Böhme das, was sich in der Welt abspielt, zu einem Rätsel des eigenen Erlebens.

Jetzt begreifen wir, wenn wir ihn so ins Auge fassen, wie er mit einer Aufgabe ringen konnte, die uns auch sonst in seiner Zeit entgegentritt und die andere Geister lange beschäftigt hat, sogar den größten Geist der neueren Zeit. Dasselbe sechzehnte Jahrhundert, in welches die Geburt Jakob Böhmes fällt, hat ja das Faust-Rätsel geboren, das neben den strebenden und ringenden Menschen hinstellt des Menschen Widersacher, der die strebende Natur des Menschen herunterzieht in das Niedrige, Sinnliche, in das, was die Zeit Jakob Böhmes «das Teuflische» genannt hat. Dichterisch hat dann Goethe noch immer mit dem Problem gerungen, welches das «Böse» in den Weltenzusammenhang hineinstellt. Muß nicht der Mensch immer wieder und wieder fragen: Wie kommt es, daß in das harmonische All, in die weise Weltenführung sich das Irreguläre, das Nichtzweckmäßige feindlich hineinstellt? Und die Frage nach dem Ursprunge des Bösen liegt in dem Faust-Rätsel. Sie liegt eigentlich schon in dem Buche Hiob, aber sie trat ganz besonders gewaltig im sechzehnten Jahrhunderte hervor.

Wie konnte diese Frage vor das Gemüt Jakob Böhmes treten? Wir brauchen nur ein paar Worte aus der «Morgenröte im Aufgange» heranzuziehen und werden gleich sehen, wie das, was sonst ein Weltenproblem ist, für Jakob Böhme zunächst ein inneres Seelenproblem wird. Da sagt er ungefähr die folgenden Worte: Wenn sich irgendwo in der Welt ein verständiger und tiefsinniger Mensch zeige, so mische sich in seine Seele eben sogleich der Teufel hinein und suche seine Natur in das Gemeine, Alltägliche, Sinnliche herunterzuziehen, suche den Menschen in Hochmut und Überhebung zu verstricken. — Da sehen wir sogleich bei Jakob Böhme das Problem als ein Seelenproblem erfaßt, sehen, wie er in der Seele selbst die Gewalt des Bösen sucht, die mitten in die guten Seelenkräfte sich hineinmischt. Und es entsteht für ihn die Frage: Was hat die Seele mit den nach dem Bösen strebenden Seelenkräften zu tun? - So wird zuletzt das Problem des Bösen für Jakob Böhme zu einer inneren Seelenfrage. Aber weil sich «Seele» und «Welt» für ihn entsprechen, erweitert sich die Seele sogleich zu einer Welt, und jetzt ist es das Eigenartige für ihn, daß sich die Frage nach dem Bösen zu einer ganz anderen Frage ausbildet, zu der Frage nach dem menschlichen, ja, nach dem geistigen Bewußtsein überhaupt, nach der ganzen Eigenart des Bewußtseinslebens.

Es ist heute schwer, mit den für uns gangbaren Vorstellungen in das Seelenleben Jakob Böhmes hineinzuleuchten und in das, was ihm die Weltenfragen und ihre Lösungen wurden, und man wird nicht recht verständlich, wenn man die Worte Jakob Böhmes gebraucht, weil sie in unserer Zeit keine gangbare Münze mehr sind. So will ich, durchaus im Geiste Jakob Böhmes, aber mit etwas anderen Worten versuchen, dem nahe zu kommen, was er über die Frage des Bösen sagen will, die bei ihm eine Frage nach der ganzen Natur des geistigen Bewußtseins überhaupt wird.

Versuchen wir einmal zu denken, wie unser Bewußtsein wirkt, was unser ganzes Bewußtsein wäre, wenn wir nicht in der Lage wären, das, was wir einmal in der Seele, im Bewußtsein erlebt haben, in der Erinnerung als Gedanken festzuhalten. Versuchen wir zu denken, wie unser Bewußtsein etwas ganz anderes sein müßte, wenn wir nicht imstande wären, was wir gestern, vorgestern, vor Jahren erlebt haben, aus der Erinnerung wieder heraufzuholen. Darauf beruht der ganze Inhalt des Bewußtseins, daß wir uns daran erinnern können; und unser Bewußtsein geht nicht über den Zeitpunkt hinaus, bis zu dem wir uns zurückerinnern können. Da fingen wir an, uns als ein Ich zu fassen, den zusammenhängenden Faden unseres Bewußtseins zu haben, uns in unserem Seelenleben auszukennen.

Worauf beruht also die ganze Natur des Bewußtseins? Darauf, daß wir wissen: Jetzt erleben wir etwas im Bewußtsein. Da sind wir, wenn wir etwas erleben, mit diesem Erlebnis unmittelbar verbunden: wir sind in dem Augenblicke, wo wir etwas erleben, nichts anderes als unser Erlebnis selber. Wer eine rote Farbe vorstellt, ist in dem Momente, wo er diese rote Farbe vorstellt, mit dem Erleben derselben zusammen. Wer ein Ideal vorstellt, ist in diesem Momente eins mit dem Ideal. Er unterscheidet sich erst nachher von seinem Erlebnis, während er vorher eins mit ihm war. So ist unser ganzes Bewußtsein etwas, was wir erst erlebt und dann wie ein Objektives in unserem inneren Seelenleben aufgespeichert haben. Solche Aufspeicherung in das Objektive hinein macht unser Bewußtsein möglich. Wir könnten kein Bewußtsein entwickeln, wenn immer gleich alles vergessen, hinweggeschafft wäre, was wir erlebt haben.

Indem wir unser Erlebnis uns entgegenstellen, als «Gegenwurf», wie Jakob Böhme sagt, wie ein Entgegengestelltes uns gegenüberstellen, nur dadurch entzündet sich unser eigentliches Bewußtsein. Das haben wir sozusagen mit der einfachsten Tatsache unseres Bewußtseins zu beobachten. Jakob Böhme dehnt dieses Erlebnis, das ein jedes Bewußtsein haben kann, in seinem hellseherischen Anschauen auf alle Welt aus. Er sagt: Wenn ein göttliches Wesen in der Welt einmal nur die Fähigkeit gehabt hätte, in sich zu leben, sich aber nicht seinem Erlebnisse — als Gegenwurf — gegenüberzustellen, so würde es niemals auch in einem göttlichen Wesen zu einem Bewußtsein gekommen sein. Für das göttliche Wesen aber ist der Gegenwurf die Welt. Wie wir unsere Vorstellungen uns entgegensetzen, wie wir uns an dem Objekt bewußt werden, so ist für das göttliche Bewußtsein die Welt der Gegenwurf. Und alles, was uns umgibt, hat das göttliche Bewußtsein aus sich herausgesetzt, um seiner selbst daran gewahr zu werden, wie wir unser Bewußtsein erst entwickeln, indem wir uns unsere eigenen Erlebnisse als Gegenwurf hinstellen.

Für Jakob Böhme war die Fassung dieses Gedankens nicht eine Theorie, sondern das war für ihn etwas, was ihm Befriedigung brachte für eine Frage, die für ihn ein Schicksal bedeutet, für die große Faust-Frage. Er konnte sich jetzt sagen: Wenn ich mich zurückversetze in das göttliche Bewußtsein gleichsam vor der Welt, so konnte dieses göttliche Bewußtsein nur dadurch zu sich selbst kommen, wirkliches Bewußtsein werden, indem es sich die Welt entgegensetzte, damit es seiner an seinem Gegenwurfe gewahr werden konnte. So ist alles, was da lebt und webt und ist, aus dem Göttlich-Seelenhaften entsprungen, aus einem Willen dieses Göttlich-Seelischen, der als Wille die Begierde entwickelte, seiner selbst gewahr zu werden. Und in dem Augenblicke - das wurde Jakob Böhme jetzt klar -, wo sich das einheitliche Bewußtsein den Gegenwurf setzte und seiner selbst gewahr werden wollte, sich also verdoppelte, gleichsam das Spiegelbild seiner selbst schuf, da schuf es dieses Spiegelbild in Mannigfaltigem, in der Mannigfaltigkeit einzelner Glieder, wie sich die einzelne menschliche Seele nicht bloß in einzelnen Gliedern auslebt, sondern in Gliedern, die eine gewisse Selbständigkeit haben, Hand und Fuß und Kopf und dergleichen. Man kommt Jakob Böhme nicht nahe, wenn man ihn als einen Pantheisten bezeichnet. Man muß schon den Gedankengang in einer ähnlichen Weise durchmachen, muß verstehen, wie er alles, was uns entgegentritt, als einen Gegenwurf der Gottheit auffaßt.

Auch wie der Mensch selber ist, gehört zu dem Gegenwurf der Gottheit, den die Gottheit aus sich heraussetzte, um ihrer selbst daran gewahr zu werden. Von diesem seinem Gesichtspunkte aus sagt Jakob Böhme: Die Menschen richten den Blick empor, sehen die Sterne, die Wolkenmassen, die Berge und die Pflanzen, und wollen oftmals noch eine besondere Region der Gottheit außerdem annehmen. Aber ich sage dir, du unverständiger Mensch, daß du selber dem Gegenwurfe des Gottes angehörst; denn wie könntest du in dir irgend etwas verspüren und gewahr werden von göttlicher Wesenheit, wenn du nicht dieser göttlichen Wesenheit entflossen wärest? Du stammst aus dieser göttlichen Wesenheit, sie hat dich sich gegenübergestellt, wie aus ihr geboren, und du wirst in ihr begraben. Und wie könntest du wieder auferweckt werden, wenn eine dir fremde Gottheit gegenüberstände? Wie könntest du dich ein Kind Gottes nennen, wenn du nicht eins mit der Substanz und Wesenheit des Gottes wärest!

Daß Jakob Böhme nicht einen gewöhnlichen Pantheismus meint, drückt er dadurch aus, daß er sagt: Die äußere Welt ist nicht Gott, wird auch ewig nicht Gott genannt, sondern ein Wesen, darin sich Gott offenbart. - Wenn man sagt: Gott ist alles, Gott ist Himmel und Erde und auch die äußere Welt, so ist das wahr; denn von ihm und in ihm urständet alles. Was mache ich aber mit einer solchen Rede, die keine Religion ist? —- Einen Pantheisten kann man ihn nicht nennen. Wie für ihn die Frage nach dem Wesen der Welt nicht etwas Gesuchtes ist, so auch nicht das, was er sich als Antwort darauf gibt, sondern es ist ein Erlebnis für ihn. Er hat die Bedingungen des eigenen Bewußtseins gefühlt und dehnt das aus auf das göttliche Bewußtsein, weil er sich klar ist, daß sein Bewußtseinsvermögen ein Echo ist der Tatsachen der Welt. In der Beantwortung der Frage nach der Seele und dem Göttlichen der Seele findet er auch die Frage nach dem Ursprunge des Bösen beantwortet. Das ist etwas für Jakob Böhme außerordentlich Charakteristisches, was immer wieder die Bewunderung von tiefsinnigen Denkern erregt hat. So war zum Beispiel Schelling ganz bedeutsam berührt, als er gewahr wurde, in welcher Art sich Jakob Böhme der Frage nach der Bedeutung des Bösen in der Welt näherte, und auch andere Denker des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts bewunderten den Tiefsinn, mit dem Jakob Böhme diese Frage anpackte.

Man kann von vielen Leuten sagen, die der Frage nach dem Ursprunge des Bösen nachgegangen sind: sie haben den Urgrund des Bösen gesucht. Das ist nun charakteristisch für Jakob Böhme, daß er weiter geht als bis zu jenem Punkte, bis zu dem man nach der Meinung vieler Leute einzig und allein gehen kann. Denn wohin soll man noch gehen, wenn man bei diesem Urgrunde nicht stehenbleiben will? Jakob Böhme geht über den Urgrund hinaus, da er die Frage nach der Bedeutung des Bösen lösen will. Er geht zu dem, was er bedeutsam nicht den Urgrund, sondern den Ungrund nennt, und hier stehen wir tatsächlich vor einem Erlebnis der menschlichen Seele in Jakob Böhme, das man im höchsten Maße bewundern kann, wenn man ein Organ dafür hat. Gewiß, die gewöhnliche Seele, die in der modernen Weltanschauung wurzelt, wird dieses Organ vielleicht nicht haben; aber man kann dieses Organ haben, das Bewunderung empfindet, wo bei Jakob Böhme der Übergang gemacht wird vom Urgrunde zum Ungrunde. Im Grunde genommen ist es doch etwas wie das «Ei des Kolumbus», etwas höchst Einfaches. Denn in dem Augenblicke, wo Jakob Böhme das Weltenrätsel sich so gelöst hatte, wie wir es eben charakterisiert haben, als er sich klar war, es ist ein Verhältnis zwischen Gott und Welt wie zwischen der Seele und den Leibesgliedern, da konnte er sich auch sagen — er hat nicht diese Worte gebraucht, aber wir wollen in seinem Geiste, weniger in seinen Worten charakterisieren, denn wir kommen dadurch seinem Verständnisse näher —: Als die Welt als Gegenwurf der Gottheit zustande gekommen ist, da ist in dem Gegenwurfe die «Schiedlichkeit» aufgetreten, die Unterschiede der Glieder, wie wir sagen würden. Die Schiedlichkeit der einzelnen Leibesglieder gegenüber der einzelnen Seele ist aufgetreten. Ist nicht jedes einzelne Leibesglied in bezug auf Verrichtungen der Seele gut? Können wir nicht sagen: Die rechte Hand ist gut, die linke Hand ist gut, alles ist gut, insofern es den Verrichtungen der Seele dient? Aber kann die rechte Hand nicht wegen ihrer relativen Selbständigkeit, ja, gerade wegen ihrer Güte, die linke Hand verletzen? Da haben wir gegen das, was Harmonie ist, hingestellt die Selbständigkeit des Leiblichen, dasjenige, was «keinen Grund» zu haben braucht, haben das hineingestellt in den Urgrund, was sich einfach dadurch ergibt, daß wir vom «Urgrunde» zum «Ungrunde» gehen.

Wie wir nicht im Lichte den Grund der Finsternis zu suchen brauchen, so brauchen wir nicht in dem Guten den Grund des Bösen zu suchen. Aber indem sich die Welt für Jakob Böhme als der Gegenwurf der Gottheit erweist, ergibt sich in dieser Welt der Schiedlichkeit die Möglichkeit, daß die einzelnen Glieder gegeneinander wirken, indem sie, weil sie zum Zwecke der Welt, nach der Zielstrebigkeit der Welt ihre Selbständigkeit haben müssen, diese Selbständigkeit auch entfalten müssen. So wurzelt für Jakob Böhme das Böse nicht in dem, was man erklärt, sondern in dem, was sich ergibt als Ungrund, ohne daß man es zu erklären braucht. Dadurch aber tritt letzteres wie von selbst als ein Gegenwurf des Guten auf; und jetzt wird das Böse, das Unzweckmäßige, das Schädliche in der Welt gegenüber dem Guten für Jakob Böhme selber ein Gegenwurf, wie wir unser selbst an dem Objekt gewahr werden.

Wir gehen fort im Raume, wir denken nicht an uns, aber wir fangen an, sogleich an uns zu denken, wenn wir uns zum Beispiel den Kopf an einem Fenster stoßen: da werden wir durch den Gegenwurf, durch das Objekt, unser selbst gewahr. Wie er das Bewußtsein gegen den Gegenwurf stellt, wie er sich erfährt an dem Gegenwurf, so wird für Jakob Böhme das Gute, das Zweckmäßige, das Vorteilhafte und Nützliche seiner selbst gewahr, indem es sich gegenüber dem Schädlichen und Unzweckmäßigen zu erhalten hat, wird seiner selbst gewahr, indem das «Böse» der Gegenwurf des Guten wurde, wie die Objekte, die durch das Anstoßen nach der Außenwelt hin erlebt werden.

So sieht Jakob Böhme in dem Guten die Kraft, die sich ihren Gegenwurf einverleibt, wie sich der Mensch in der Erinnerung immer mehr das einverleibt, was er selber erst aus dem Bewußtsein herausgesetzt hat. So finden wir ein fortwährendes Aufsaugen des Bösen und dadurch ein Bereichern der Gutheit mit der Bösheit. Und wie Finsternis sich zum Licht verhält, indem das Licht in die Finsternis hineinscheint und dadurch erst sichtbar wird, so wird das Gute erst wirksam, indem es in das Böse hineinwirkt und sich zu dem Bösen verhält wie Licht zu Finsternis. Wie sich Licht an Finsternis zu den verschiedenen Farben abstuft und nicht als Licht erscheinen könnte, wenn ihm nicht Finsternis entgegenstünde, so kann das Gute nur seine Weltenfunktion verrichten, indem es sich selber an seinem Gegenwurfe, an dem Schlechten erlebt.

So sieht Jakob Böhme in die Welt hinein, sieht das Gute so wirksam, daß es das Böse sich gegenübergestellt findet, aber das Böse in sein Gebiet hineinstellt, gleichsam aufsaugt. So erscheint für Jakob Böhme ein vorirdisches Ereignis so, daß er sich sagt: Die Gottheit hat sich einstmals andere geistige Wesenheiten gegenübergestellt. Diese waren, wie unsere jetzige Natur auf einer späteren Stufe, ein Gegenwurf der Gottheit. So waren diese Wesenheiten schon ein Gegenwurf der Gottheit, wodurch sich die Gottheit zum Bewußtsein brachte. Aber sie verhielten sich zu der Gottheit wie die Glieder, die sich gegen den eigenen Leib wenden. Dadurch entstand für Jakob Böhme die Wesenheit Luzifer. Was ist für ihn Luzifer? Es ist die Wesenheit, welche, nachdem der Gegenwurf geschaffen war, die Schiedlichkeit, die Mannigfaltigkeit dazu benutzte, um als selbständiger Gegenwurf sich gegen ihren Schöpfer aufzulehnen. So findet Jakob Böhme in den miteinander differierenden, kämpfenden Kräften der Welt dasjenige, was da sein muß, was aber doch zur Gesamtevolution beiträgt, indem es im Laufe der Entwickelung aufgesogen wird. Wie er sich auch nur vorstellt, daß alle Taten des Götter-Widersachers — damit sich die Taten der Gottheit selber nur um so stärker an dem Gegenwurfe ausleben — von der Gottheit aufgesogen werden, und daß das Sichausleben der Gottheit nur um so glorreicher wird durch die Kräfte, welche der Widersacher entwickelt.

Bis tief in die Welt hinein verfolgt Jakob Böhme den Gedanken, der das Erleben des Bewußtseins ausbreitet zu dem Welterlebnis von dem Ursprunge und Urstand des Bösen. In eine einfache Formel bringt er, man kann nicht sagen, was er als die Lösung der Weltenrätsel theoretisch gegeben hat, sondern was er erlebt hat, in die Formel: Kein Ja ohne ein Nein, denn das Ja muß sich an seinem Gegenwurfe, an dem Nein, erst erleben. «Kein Ja ohne ein Nein» ist die einfache Formel, in die Jakob Böhme das ganze Problem des Bösen hineinbrachte.

Nicht eine theoretische Formel ist es, sondern es liegt in dieser Philosophie etwas wie ursprünglichstes, elementarstes Erleben. Denn zu wissen, daß kein Ja ohne ein Nein ist, daß das Böse aufgesogen wird von dem Guten und zur Weltentwickelung beiträgt, das mag noch nichts sein. Aber etwas anderes ist es noch, eine ringende Seele zu sein, eine Seele, welche Schmerz und Leid, Versuchungen und Verführungen erlebt, und sich zu sagen: Das alles muß doch da sein, und trotzdem es da ist, kann ich mir aus meinem nicht theoretisierenden, sondern lebendigen philosophischen Wort die Sicherheit und den Trost und die Hoffnung bereiten, daß das Beste in mir die Möglichkeit finden wird, um das, was nur der Gegenwurf, das Nein ist, durch das Ursprüngliche, durch den «Wurf», durch das Ja zu überwinden. Und wenn ich mich noch so sehr in das Böse verstricke, und wenn der Lichtstrahl noch so klein ist, der sich darüber verbreitet: ich kann und darf hoffen auf Befreiung, daß nicht das Böse, sondern das Gute in mir den Sieg davontragen werde.

Wenn eine solche Philosophie übergeht in Erlösungsgewißheit, dann ist das etwas, was in dieser Art zwar mit der Persönlichkeit verknüpft ist, aber mit diesem Persönlichkeitscharakter zugleich allgemeine menschliche Bedeutung hat. Wenn man dies auf seine Seele wirken läßt, dann geht man gern von dieser ringenden Seele, die bis in die kalten Abstraktionen des « Ja» und «Nein» hinaufgeht, um den wärmsten Seeleninhalt und die wärmsten Seelenerlebnisse daraus zu gewinnen, dann geht man gern von dieser, in ihrer Weltanschauung Zuversicht sich erringenden Seele über zu dem einsamen Manne in Görlitz, der keine Gelegenheit hatte, eine Schule zu gründen, denn diejenige Zeit, welche die Menschen sonst auf geistige Dinge verwenden, mußte er dazu verwenden, Schuhe zu machen. Abringen mußte er sich die Zeit zu seinen zahlreichen Werken. Man geht gern zu dem Menschen, dessen Büchern man ansieht, wie er mit der Sprache gerungen hat, weil seine äußere Bildung eine so geringe war, dessen Lehren aber trotzdem nach seinem Tode sich ausbreiteten und Ausdehnung gewannen, der auf seinem Schusterstuhle saß und nur wenig Freunde hatte, denen er sich mitteilte. Er hatte zwar Freunde, an welche er Briefe schrieb, aber ihre Zahl war nur gering. So schaut man ihn in seiner Einsamkeit und bekommt die Empfindung, als ob ein notwendiger Zusammenhang darin bestünde: wie man sich Giordano Bruno nur denken kann die Welt durchwandernd, von Land zu Land ziehend, um wie mit Posaunenton etwas von der Welt zu verkünden, wie man bei ihm, der auf die Mannigfaltigkeit der Erscheinungen eingeht, fühlt, daß dieses Wandern zu dieser Weltanschauung gehörte, so fühlt man in dem anderen Falle, daß dieser einsame Schuster etwas erlebte, was nur so erlebt werden konnte, daß es sich gleichsam wie in einem einsamen Zwiegespräch mit den Geistern des Daseins abspielte, sich abspielte in diesem einsamen Sehertum, das wir eingangs charakterisiert haben.

Wenn wir so fühlen, dann wächst in uns die Empfindung gegenüber dem, was der Mensch zur gemütvollen Lösung der Weltenrätsel braucht: daß das Größte, was der Mensch in der Welt erleben kann, unabhängig ist von Ort und Zeit, nur gebunden ist an die Kraft der Vertiefung der menschlichen Seele, und daß die Seele die größten Weltenwanderungen, die Wanderungen in die Geistgebiete, überall und immer anstellen kann. Dann klingt uns aus Jakob Böhmes Seele das entgegen und berührt unser Verständnis, was als ein so bedeutsames Wort seine Weltanschauung charakterisiert, wenn er sagt:

Wem Zeit wie Ewigkeit,
und Ewigkeit wie Zeit,
der ist befreit
von allem Streit.

Das charakterisiert nicht seine Weltanschauung in theoretischer Beziehung, sondern es charakterisiert, was seine Weltanschauung wirklich dadurch geworden ist, daß er ein so ganz besonderer Mensch war. Haben wir doch hervorheben können, daß er durch seine ganze Wesenheit intimer mit der Natur im Zusammenhange stand als der normale Mensch, daß er das Weben und Treiben der Natur in seinen eigenen Seelenerlebnissen erlebte. Das macht, daß wir eine gewisse Notwendigkeit in einer Bezeichnung empfinden, welche die Freunde Jakob Böhmes diesem gegeben haben. Eine glückliche Bezeichnung haben sie ihm gegeben. Denn bedenken wir einmal: Als drüben im Morgenlande, im Orient, bereits eine weit ausgebreitete, wunderbar ins einzelne gehende Wissenschaft vorhanden ist, deren Weisheit wir bewundern, wenn wir sie kennenlernen, da finden wir auf mitteleuropäischem Boden noch die allereinfachste Geisteskultur, finden, wie in allen Seelen Mitteleuropas noch etwas lebt wie ein inniger Zusammenhang der Kräfte in den Seelenuntergründen mit den Kräften der Natur und Naturwesen, und wie die Leute die Zweige auf den Boden warfen und aus den «Runen», die sich da bildeten, allerlei Rätsel sahen und zu lösen suchten. «Runenrätsellöser» waren diese Menschen. Und von alledem, was aus den Seelen der Menschen in Germaniens Wäldern spricht von dem, was in der Natur lebt, was durch die Bäume rauscht oder geheimnisvoll in den Menschenseelen selber lebt, von alledem fühlen wir etwas wie in Jakob Böhmes Seele wirksam.

Da wird uns wohl etwas in Jakob Böhme begreiflich, was uns heute am schwersten begreiflich wäre. Es ist nicht erzwungen, wenn man neben den Runenrätsellöser, der aus den auf den Boden geworfenen Zweigen allerlei Rätsel löst und die Offenbarungen der Gottheit selber erkennen will, wenn man daneben hinstellt, wie Jakob Böhme aus seiner Verwandtschaft mit dem Sprachgefühl zum Beispiel dieSilben «sul» und «phur» runenartig hinstellt und daraus Weltenrätsel lösen will. Da erscheint er uns wie ein letzter Sproß aus Germaniens Wäldern, und wir begreifen, warum seine Freunde ihm den Namen «Philosophus teutonicus» gegeben haben. Das schließt aber seine Bedeutung für die kommenden Zeiten ein.

Wir blicken auf ihn hin, wie er mit dem Aufregendsten gerungen hat, das in die menschliche Seele hereinspielen kann, wie er in diesem Ringen zum Frieden gekommen ist, und wie die letzten Worte von ihm: «Nun fahr ich hin ins Paradies», die Besiegelung der Seelenkonsequenz, der Seelenpraxis waren. Das ist es, was ihn zum Frieden der Seele geführt hat. Ein Hauch des Glaubens lebt in allen seinen Büchern, und von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus wird Jakob Böhme für uns und für alle Zeiten Bedeutung haben können. Für das, was er der Seele, wenn sie sich in ihn einlebt, für die praktische Lebenskonsequenz einer Philosophie wirklich sein kann, wird dieser «Philosophus teutonicus» immer tonangebend sein.

Seine Gegner nehmen sich manchmal recht sonderbar aus, angefangen vom Jahre 1684, als die erste stärkere Gegenschrift gegen Jakob Böhme von Calov erschienen ist, bis in unsere Zeit, wo wir im vorigen Jahrhundert auch eine Schrift gegen Jakob Böhme von einem Leipziger Gelehrten, Dr. Harles, haben. Recht sonderbar erscheint es, wie Harles zeigen will, daß Jakob Böhme doch weiter nichts als alte alchimistische Dinge aufwärmte, und dann sagt: nachdem er sich oft tagelang gequält hat, so Jakob Böhme hinzustellen, da war er oft froh, wenn er abends, nachdem er sich des Tages über so mit Jakob Böhme befassen mußte, an Matthias Claudius herantreten konnte, um in seinen Worten Erholung und Erbauung zu finden; und er wünscht auch seinen Lesern, daß sie sich nicht von den gleißenden und glimmernden Formeln Jakob Böhmes berücken lassen möchten, sondern daß auch sie ihre Zuflucht zu dem einfachen und naiven Matthias Claudius nehmen möchten, der solches der Seele gibt, daß die Seele ihr Heil nicht zu suchen braucht im Aufschwunge zu den höchsten Höhen des geistigen Lebens. Mag nun sein, daß jener Dr. Harles, der Widersacher von Jakob Böhme, zu Matthias Claudius seine Zuflucht nehmen mußte, um von den gleißenden, hochfliegenden Formeln Jakob Böhmes abzukommen, und daß er beiClaudius Ruhe finden konnte gegenüber dem Sichbeschäftigen mit Jakob Böhme. Einen sonderbaren Eindruck macht es nur bei einem, der es weiß, daß Matthias Claudius selber, nachdem er das geleistet hatte, was Dr. Harles bei ihm findet, seinerseits seine Zuflucht suchte bei jemandem, der Jakob Böhme nicht nur kannte, sondern ihn sogar übersetzt hat — bei Saint Martin, der wieder ein getreuer Schüler von Jakob Böhme war! So ist es sehr gut, wenn man nicht nur weiß, woran Dr. Harles, der Gegner Jakob Böhmes, Erbauung sucht, sondern wenn man auch weiß, woran wieder Matthias Claudius seine Erbauung suchte!

Aber die Weltanschauung Jakob Böhmes ist eine solche, die geeignet ist, über die Widersprüche hinauszuführen, wenn man nur nicht bei ihr stehenbleibt. Die ganze Natur der hier gehaltenen Vorträge hat ja gezeigt, daß wir innerhalb der hier vertretenen Weltanschauung nicht bei irgendeiner Erscheinung stehenbleiben sollen, sondern daß erfaßt werden soll, was von der geistigen Welt unmittelbar aus unserer eigenen Zeit heraus erfaßt werden kann. Gewiß bleibt Jakob Böhme eine bedeutende Persönlichkeit, ein Stern erster Größe am Geisteshimmel der Menschheit, stehenbleiben wird niemand bei ihm. Daher sind auch die Darstellungen, die heute über Geisteswissenschaft gegeben werden, durchaus nicht vom Standpunkte Jakob Böhmes aus gehalten, sondern von dem unserer Zeit, und es soll auch das nächstemal gezeigt werden, was ein ganz moderner Geist zu sagen hat. Aber Jakob Böhme wird noch interessanter, wenn wir uns in seine in Einfältigkeit und Einsamkeit aufrechtstehende, mit der Seele in die höchste Region des Hellsehens entfliehende Geistesart versetzen, und wenn wir finden, wie diese Geistesart Frieden über Jakob Böhmes Seele ausbreiten konnte, der von allen nachempfunden werden kann, die sich verständnisvoll oder wenigstens Verständnis suchend Jakob Böhme nahen. Deshalb werden auch nicht Verstandes-Charakteristiken an Jakob Böhme heranführen, sondern nur solche, welche nachzufühlen versuchen, was ein Mensch wie Jakob Böhme fühlte, was sich ausgoß wie zum Beispiel schon in die angeführten vier bedeutungsvollen Zeilen. Dann nur werden die Worte, mit denen ich Jakob Böhme zu charakterisieren versuchte, ihre Bedeutung gewinnen können, wenn die Anwesenden fühlen, daß sie nicht gesagt waren, um in einer Theorie oder theoretischen Charakteristik Jakob Böhmes zu gipfeln, sondern darin, daß im unmittelbaren Gegenüberstehen der Persönlichkeit Jakob Böhmes von dieser etwas ausströmt — und um so wärmer und intensiver ausströmt, je mehr wir sie kennenlernen —, was das Gesagte zusammenschließen kann in einem seinen Frieden, seine Ruhe bezeichnenden Worte:

Wem Zeit wie Ewigkeit,
und Ewigkeit wie Zeit,
der ist befreit
von allem Streit.

Jakob Böhme

At this point in modern intellectual development, when we see the dawn of a new worldview breaking, at this point when we have to record the great deeds of Kepler and Galileo, when Giordano Bruno, in a sense, outlines the great problem of the modern worldview, at this point in time we encounter the solitary thinker to whom today's reflection is dedicated, the simple Görlitz shoemaker Jakob Böhme, who wrestled with the highest problems of existence in a way that can still deeply occupy our thinking and feeling to this day, and will probably continue to occupy the thinking and feeling of people for a long time to come.

Jakob Böhme was a peculiar figure, a figure who strove and wrestled in solitude, while elsewhere in intellectual life, so to speak, the individual currents merged into a large, comprehensive tableau. In a certain sense, one might say that Jakob Böhme's solitary struggle appears, from a certain point of view, almost as interesting as the convergence of the various points of view that we otherwise encounter in that era. And then we see how remarkable it is that what Jakob Böhme found in his own lonely soul in his century has found the widest possible dissemination, the widest possible dissemination, we might say, in view of the fact that it is a deeply significant spiritual matter. We see from the manifestations of his opponents how far his influence extended, only a few decades after his death. Again and again, Jakob Böhme has been the subject of appreciative, admiring, or even dismissive, mocking consideration, and when we look at what had formed in terms of followers or opponents, we get the impression from both that the followers and the opponents know that they are dealing with a very strange phenomenon.

This phenomenon is particularly strange to those who want to understand every personality that appears in the spiritual life of humanity, so to speak, from the immediate conditions of the time and the environment. We see, for example, how attempts are made to understand Goethe by gathering together all possible details of his life, even the smallest ones, and believing that from the compilation of these details it is possible to gain this or that insight into his spiritual life. In this way, not much can actually be gained for Jakob Böhme, because external influences are difficult to ascertain with external science. It is even more difficult to understand how he grew out of the spiritual life of his time. For this reason, many have come to the conclusion that Jakob Böhme was a kind of spiritual meteor. Everything that appears, everything that this personality had to offer, seems to have sprung up suddenly, revealing itself from the depths of his unique soul. Others have then attempted to explain how some of Jakob Böhme's turns of phrase, some of the ways in which he expressed his ideas in words and phrases, show similarities with the formulas of alchemists or other philosophical or other schools of thought that were still alive in his time.

But anyone who delves deeper into Jakob Böhme's entire mindset will find that such an approach is hardly more valuable than examining the language of an important mind that must always express itself in language; for when Jakob Böhme uses alchemical formulas or the like, it is only a linguistic guise. What makes such a powerful impression on those who seek to understand him is an originality that is found only in the greatest minds. On the other hand, there are some points of reference that are not very appealing to modern thinking and the modern worldview, but which nevertheless illuminate for those who are able to engage with such things how Jakob Böhme was able to rise to his high spiritual position. In order to connect with his life, as far as is relevant here, we need only cite a few facts from his life.

Jakob Böhme was the son of very poor people and came from Alt-Seidenberg near Görlitz. He was born in 1575. In his youth, he had to tend cattle with other village boys. As can be seen, he grew up in complete poverty, and since such an upbringing does not provide any special means of education, we will find it understandable that Jakob Böhme, even as a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy, could hardly read and could only write poorly. But another experience from his boyhood comes to mind, which a faithful biographer heard from his own mouth. First, this event should be recounted. As I said, it is not one of those things that are readily comprehensible to the modern mind.

Once, when Jakob Böhme was herding cattle with other shepherd boys, he left the group, climbed a moderately high mountain near his home town, the Landskrone, and claims to have seen something like an entrance gate in the mountain in broad daylight. He went inside and found a vessel, a kind of vat, filled with pure gold. This made such a shuddering impression on his soul that he ran away, retaining only the memory of this strange experience. - One can, of course, speak of a dream dreamt while awake. Those who find such an explanation satisfactory may well be right. But it is not essential whether one calls such an event a “dream” or gives it another name, but rather what it triggers in the soul of the person who “dreams” it, what effect it has on the soul. From the way Jakob Böhme later recounted this event to his friend, we can see that it had deeply engraved itself in his soul, that it had unleashed significant forces in his soul, so that it was of the utmost importance to him spiritually.

Let us therefore allow the rationalists the right to explain such an experience, which was in any case a significant event in Jakob Böhme's soul, in the same way that they seek to explain the event of Christ's appearance to Paul before Damascus. However, such an explanation, which resorts to these things, must also admit that such a significant work as that of Paul, which is so closely connected with Christianity, originated from a “dream.” Something like a profound stirring of soul forces that are not otherwise active in the soul was already felt by the boy Jakob Böhme when he had this experience. What matters is this inner detachment from the deeper forces of the soul. What matters is the testimony of such a thing, which proves that we are dealing with a person who can descend deeper into the depths of his soul than thousands upon thousands of others.

Another event of a very similar nature is also worth mentioning, which we must again say remained so vividly in Jakob Böhme's memory that the splendor and significance of this event shone throughout his entire life, insofar as this life was an inner life.

At the age of fourteen, Jakob Böhme was apprenticed to a shoemaker and often had to stand guard, so to speak, in his master's shop; he was not allowed to sell anything. Then one day—again, this story comes from the mouth of his faithful biographer Abraham von Frankenberg—a person who immediately struck Jakob Böhme as strange came into the shop and wanted to buy shoes. But because the boy was forbidden to sell shoes, he told the stranger so. The stranger offered him a high price, and so it came to pass that the shoes were sold. But then the following happened, which Jakob Böhme remembered for the rest of his life. When the stranger had left and a short time had passed, Jakob Böhme heard his first name being called, “Jakob, Jakob!” When he went outside, the stranger seemed even stranger to him than before. He had something sunny and shining in his eyes and said words to him that sounded very strange: "Jakob, you are still small now, but you will one day become a completely different person, one who will astonish the world. But remain humble before your God and read the Bible diligently. You will have to endure much persecution. But remain strong, for your God loves you and will be merciful to you."

Jakob Böhme considered such an event to be much more significant than any other external biographical experiences. His biographer goes on to recount what Jakob Böhme himself told him: In 1593, Jakob Böhme felt as if he had been transported out of his physical body for seven days, felt as if he were in a completely different world, felt as if his soul had been reborn.

So here we have, if you will, a permanently abnormal state of mind. But Jakob Böhme also experienced this “rebirth” of his more or less as something that, in his opinion, could be connected with a human soul. This did not turn him into a dreamer or a false idealist, nor did it make him arrogant, but he continued his shoemaking craft with all humility, one might say, with all sobriety. Even the experience of 1593, the rapture into another world, remained for him an apparition of which he said to himself: You have glimpsed a realm of joy, a realm of spiritual reality, but it is a thing of the past. — And he continued to live his everyday life, pursuing his business with his usual sobriety.

In the years 1600 and 1610, this experience of rebirth was repeated. Then he began, because he felt called to do so, to record what he had experienced in his rapturous states. This resulted in his first work, “Die Morgenröte im Aufgange” (The Dawn of Dawn), later titled “Aurora,” in 1612. He says of it that he did not write it with his ordinary self, but that it was dictated to him word for word, that he lived in a state of being that was comprehensive, reaching everywhere into the world and immersing itself in it, as opposed to his ordinary self.

However, the revelations did not sit particularly well with him. When some people realized what he had to say, what he had written down, the manuscript of “Aurora” was copied and distributed in a few copies. As a result, the deacon of Görlitz, Gregorius Richter, where Jakob Böhme had meanwhile settled as a cobbler, launched an attack against Jakob Böhme from the pulpit and not only condemned his work, but also succeeded in having him summoned before the council of the city of Görlitz. I will now repeat the words we know about this from his biographer. He recounts: The council decided that Jakob Böhme must be forbidden to continue writing, because only academics were allowed to write, but Jakob Böhme was not an academic, but an idiot, and must therefore refrain from writing!

Jakob Böhme was thus branded an idiot, and since he was a good-natured man who, due to his simple-mindedness, could not quite comprehend why he would be considered damned for no reason at all, he decided not to write anything else for the time being. But then came the time when he could no longer help himself. And in the years from 1620 to 1624, until his death, he wrote a large number of his works in quick succession, such as “The Book of Contemplative Life,” “De signatura rerum or On the Birth and Designation of All Beings,” and “Explanation of the First Book of Moses.” But the number of his works is quite large, and this may strike some readers as strange. Some have said that Jakob Böhme repeats himself over and over again. It is true, one cannot disagree, certain things appear again and again in his work. But if one concludes from this that one knows the whole of Jakob Böhme if one knows some of his works, because he repeats himself over and over again—and one cannot readily disagree with such people who say this—then it must be said that anyone who stops at having read one work by Jakob Böhme and does not feel inclined to read the others will not understand much about Jakob Böhme. But those who make the effort to go through his other works will, despite all the repetitions, not rest until they have read the last ones.

If we try to penetrate more deeply into his train of thought, into the spiritual essence of Jakob Böhme, based on this characteristic of his nature, it must be said that for modern people, who live only in the educational life of our time, much must be incomprehensible, not only in the content of Jakob Böhme's works, but also in the whole manner in which he presents them. At first glance, the presentation appears quite chaotic. One reads slowly, of course. But then there is still something that remains a difficult nut to crack for many people: that we find in him, completely incomprehensible to the modern mind, very strange explanations of words. Thus we find that he repeatedly uses words such as “salt,” “mercury,” and “sulfur” to explain the world. When he wants to explain what “sul” means, what “phur” means, and then finds all kinds of profound things, then these modern minds have to say to themselves: This is useless; for what is the point of explaining a world principle by explaining the syllables of a word individually, such as ‘sul’ and “phur”? — This is completely foreign to the modern soul.

However, if one delves further into Jakob Böhme, one finds that he clothes what he wants to say in all kinds of alchemical formulas. But only when one penetrates to what is expressed as Jakob Böhme's spirit in what he found, does one discover that something quite different lives in it than what we know today as scientific thinking, or indeed as worldview or other thinking.

What lives in Jakob Böhme's soul is most similar to what has been characterized here in these lectures as the first stage to a higher spiritual life, the stage of imaginative cognition. We have emphasized that those who ascend from ordinary life in the sensory world, through a special development of their soul, come to perceive a new world of images, of imaginings. And it has been emphasized—I ask you to remember the characteristic of this discussion—that when a person has reached the point where they not only form imaginings, but where images, imaginative ideas spring up from the unknown depths of the soul life, and he experiences a new world, then he who wants to ascend to new insights must make the strong decision to completely suppress this first glimmer of an imaginative world in the soul and wait until it emerges a second time from a much more subterranean world.

The whole state of mind, the whole inner mood that Jakob Böhme arrives at, can best be compared to what a person encounters in their soul life when they ascend to supersensible knowledge. It is true that nowhere is there any evidence that something like what modern spiritual science proclaims as its methods can be found in Jakob Böhme. But it would nevertheless be wrong to believe that all this came about by itself in Jakob Böhme. He himself once said that he had struggled incessantly for the Spirit, for God's assistance, and that this incessant struggle had resulted in a luminous, imaginative world. So we cannot say that he is simply a naïve imaginative knower, but we must say that he naïvely resorts to the means that lead people to the heights of imaginative knowledge. Such imaginative power is naturally to be assumed in his soul. He thus arrives at imaginative knowledge in exactly the same ways, only more quickly and more naturally, than one can arrive at it through the methods described in the book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds.”

Thus, Jakob Böhme stands before us as an imaginative knower. But with elemental force, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, this imaginative cognition struggles to the surface, as if carried by a strong inner will. Thus we see in him this strong inner will, which cannot be expressed in outward deeds — his modest profession prevents him from doing so — surrounding his soul like a flood, so that the soul is immersed in this flood. And from this will we see powerful images being born, through which he attempts to solve the mysteries of the world. For Jakob Böhme, it is not so much the individual results that matter as the mood and state of his soul. He feels that in his striving he is driven to something that is not the ordinary, cognizant human ego, but something connected with the forces that connect human beings from the subconscious of their souls, from the depths of their souls, with the entire cosmos, with that which weaves and lives outside in nature.

The person who truly has a serious urge for knowledge feels that there is not only something rational in knowledge, but something that he achieves through suffering and pain and through overcoming suffering and pain. And when he tries to penetrate nature and existence with today's ordinary means, he notices how all such means actually distance him from nature and existence. But when we uncover forces in our soul that otherwise lie dormant in the subconscious, we feel that these are connected to nature and existence in a completely different, more intimate way. To explain this, I would like to refer to the following.

It is well known and often recounted how certain animals in areas where an earthquake or other natural disaster is approaching flee from the site of the earthquake or similar event, or at least become restless, so that they are like prophetic harbingers of what is to come. One could say that the instinctive life of animals is more closely connected with what is happening outside in nature than the entire state of mind of human beings. But in the depths of the human soul there is something that is not the same as the instinct of animals, but is deeper than this animal instinct, and is also closely connected with the forces of nature. As Jakob Böhme descends into the depths of his soul, he feels more intimately interwoven with the forces of nature. But one thing in particular stands out. It has been emphasized that only when what appears as imagination and the imaginative world is suppressed, extinguished, and then reappears as if by itself, only then does this second imaginative world have value. Now it is most peculiar when we compare this with Jakob Böhme's path: in 1600, he experiences a rebirth, feels transported into a spiritual world, into a realm of joy. Then he continues to live soberly. For ten years, what he has experienced seems to have disappeared. Then it reappears a third time in 1610. Hasn't the path we described as the right one entered Jakob Böhme's soul like a natural phenomenon? This is what brings Jakob Böhme so close to what we ourselves have envisaged as the natural path to the supersensible worlds. If we take this into account, his experience will no longer seem as strange to us as it may appear at first glance.

For the objective insight of the doubter, however, it will be of no value to engage in profound reflections on the composition of the syllables “sul” and “phur” or on anything else. But I ask you to remember what was said earlier about human language, how it was explained that in the course of human development, language actually precedes abstract, imaginative thinking, and how Jean Paul is quite right when he emphasizes that children learn to think through language, and that speaking is not developed through thinking. Language is therefore something more elementary, more primitive than thinking. When we see how the whole of nature is recreated in our thoughts, we feel how thought is separated from the facts of nature by a gulf between worlds. But when sound, as something more similar to the sounds of nature—and language is originally composed of such sounds—when the sound of language escapes from the human soul, then something from the whole regularity of the world works into the depths of the soul, and then a kind of echo of nature breaks free in a completely different way than when something breaks free from thoughts as an echo.

Today's soul no longer has any sense of the kinship between language and natural sound. As a modern soul, one struggles to feel how there is something in all language that seems like an immediate echo of impressions from the outside world. With a personality such as Jakob Böhme, who draws deeper soul forces out of his soul with elemental force, it is only natural that in this respect, too, he is, as it were, transported back in his feelings to that perception of language which was once peculiar to humanity and which the child still develops more or less unconsciously.

If we now extend what has just been said to the strange disputes about the combination of syllables into words, then we can understand how it is only a feeling for sounds that nature creates in the human soul, how nature wants to create a language for itself through sound. Precisely because Jakob Böhme is closer to the soul of nature, he lives even more in language than in thought, and his entire philosophy is more a feeling, a sympathy with what lives and weaves in nature outside than any abstract grasp of things. One might say that when one really lets a thought of Jakob Böhme sink in, one has the feeling that the thought is as closely related to what Jakob Böhme observes as one is related to what one perceives as a certain taste, where one also feels a connection with nature.

He feels within himself what weaves and works and lives outside in nature. He lives the life of nature, and in his descriptions he basically gives what he experiences, so that one feels in his words the resonance of what he sees. Therefore, words are also something that he feels particularly as the “how” in nature itself. So there is no need to ponder whether such discussions as the one indicated above about “sul” and “phur” mean anything special to Jakob Böhme, but rather to try to relive with this soul how it turns worldly experience into soul experience, and what the soul can experience as its revelations.

One cannot understand Jakob Böhme if one believes that he perceives lightning and thunder, clouds or cloud formations, or the growth of grass in the same way as a modern person. One can only understand him if one knows that with the flashing lightning, the rolling thunder, the changing clouds, something is transformed in his soul experience, so that something takes place in his soul that stands as the solution to the corresponding riddle. Thus, for Jakob Böhme, what takes place in the world becomes a riddle of his own experience.

Now we understand, when we look at him in this way, how he could struggle with a task that we also encounter in his time and that has long occupied other minds, even the greatest minds of modern times. The same sixteenth century in which Jakob Böhme was born also gave birth to the Faust enigma, which places the adversary of man alongside the striving and struggling human being, dragging man's striving nature down into the base, the sensual, into what Jakob Böhme's time called “the devilish.” Poetically, Goethe continued to wrestle with the problem of what “evil” brings into the world context. Must not man ask again and again: How is it that the irregular, the non-functional, intrudes hostilely into the harmonious universe, into the wise governance of the world? And the question of the origin of evil lies in the Faust enigma. It is actually already present in the Book of Job, but it became particularly prominent in the sixteenth century.

How could this question come to the mind of Jakob Böhme? We need only quote a few words from “Morgenröte im Aufgange” (Dawn at Sunrise) and we will immediately see how what is otherwise a world problem becomes, for Jakob Böhme, first and foremost an inner soul problem. He says something like the following: Whenever an intelligent and profound person appears anywhere in the world, the devil immediately interferes with his soul and seeks to drag his nature down into the common, the everyday, the sensual, seeking to entangle the person in arrogance and pride. Here we see Jakob Böhme immediately grasping the problem as a problem of the soul, seeking in the soul itself the power of evil that interferes with the good forces of the soul. And the question arises for him: What does the soul have to do with the soul forces that strive toward evil? — Thus, for Jakob Böhme, the problem of evil ultimately becomes an inner soul question. But because “soul” and “world” correspond to each other for him, the soul immediately expands into a world, and now it is peculiar to him that the question of evil develops into a completely different question, the question of human, indeed, spiritual consciousness in general, of the whole peculiarity of conscious life.

Today, it is difficult to shed light on Jakob Böhme's inner life and on what the questions of the world and their solutions became for him using the concepts that are familiar to us, and it is not really understandable when one uses Jakob Böhme's words, because they are no longer common currency in our time. So, in the spirit of Jakob Böhme, but using slightly different words, I will try to approach what he wants to say about the question of evil, which for him becomes a question about the whole nature of spiritual consciousness in general.

Let us try to think about how our consciousness works, what our entire consciousness would be if we were not able to hold on to what we have once experienced in our soul, in our consciousness, as thoughts in our memory. Let us try to think how our consciousness would have to be something completely different if we were unable to recall from memory what we experienced yesterday, the day before yesterday, or years ago. The entire content of consciousness is based on our ability to remember; and our consciousness does not extend beyond the point in time to which we can remember. That is when we began to perceive ourselves as an “I,” to have the connecting thread of our consciousness, to know our way around our inner life.

So what is the whole nature of consciousness based on? On the fact that we know: we are now experiencing something in consciousness. When we experience something, we are directly connected to this experience: at the moment we experience something, we are nothing other than our experience itself. Anyone who imagines the color red is, at the moment they imagine this red color, connected to the experience of it. Anyone who imagines an ideal is one with the ideal at that moment. Only afterwards do they distinguish themselves from their experience, whereas before they were one with it. Thus, our entire consciousness is something that we first experience and then store as an objective in our inner soul life. Such storage in the objective makes our consciousness possible. We could not develop consciousness if everything we experienced were immediately forgotten and swept away.

By confronting our experience, as Jakob Böhme says, as a “counter-throw,” as something opposed to us, only then is our actual consciousness ignited. We can observe this, so to speak, in the simplest fact of our consciousness. Jakob Böhme extends this experience, which every consciousness can have, to the whole world in his clairvoyant view. Just as we confront our ideas, just as we become conscious of the object, so for divine consciousness the world is the counterpoint. And everything that surrounds us has been placed outside itself by divine consciousness in order to become aware of itself, just as we first develop our consciousness by setting our own experiences as a counterpoint.

For Jakob Böhme, the formulation of this idea was not a theory, but something that brought him satisfaction for a question that meant destiny for him, for the great Faust question. He could now say to himself: If I place myself back in divine consciousness, as it were, before the world, then this divine consciousness could only come to itself, become real consciousness, by opposing the world, so that it could become aware of itself in its counterpoint. Thus, everything that lives and weaves and is, sprang from the divine soul, from a will of this divine soul, which as a will developed the desire to become aware of itself. And at the moment—as Jakob Böhme now realized—when the unified consciousness set itself against its opposite and wanted to become aware of itself, thus doubling itself, creating, as it were, a mirror image of itself, it created this mirror image in manifold forms, in the manifold forms of individual limbs, just as the individual human soul does not merely live out its life in individual limbs, but in limbs that have a certain independence, such as hands, feet, head, and the like. One cannot understand Jakob Böhme if one describes him as a pantheist. One must follow his train of thought in a similar way, one must understand how he perceives everything that confronts us as a counter-project of the deity.

The way human beings themselves are also belongs to the counter-project of the deity, which the deity set forth from itself in order to become aware of itself. From this point of view, Jakob Böhme says: Human beings look up, see the stars, the clouds, the mountains, and the plants, and often want to assume a special region of the deity in addition. But I say to you, you uncomprehending human being, that you yourself belong to the counter-project of God; for how could you feel anything within yourself and become aware of divine essence if you had not flowed from this divine essence? You originate from this divine essence; it has set itself opposite you, as if born from it, and you will be buried in it. And how could you be resurrected if a deity foreign to you stood before you? How could you call yourself a child of God if you were not one with the substance and essence of God!

Jakob Böhme expresses that he does not mean ordinary pantheism by saying: The outer world is not God, nor will it ever be called God, but rather a being in which God reveals himself. When one says: God is everything, God is heaven and earth and also the outer world, this is true; for everything originates from him and in him. But what do I do with such a statement, which is not a religion? — One cannot call him a pantheist. Just as the question of the nature of the world is not something he seeks, neither is the answer he gives himself, but rather it is an experience for him. He has felt the conditions of his own consciousness and extends this to divine consciousness, because he is clear that his capacity for consciousness is an echo of the facts of the world. In answering the question about the soul and the divine nature of the soul, he also finds the answer to the question about the origin of evil. This is something extremely characteristic of Jakob Böhme, which has repeatedly aroused the admiration of profound thinkers. Schelling, for example, was deeply moved when he realized how Jakob Böhme approached the question of the meaning of evil in the world, and other thinkers of the nineteenth century also admired the profundity with which Jakob Böhme tackled this question.

It can be said of many people who have explored the question of the origin of evil that they have sought the source of evil. It is characteristic of Jakob Böhme that he goes further than the point to which, in the opinion of many people, one can go. For where else can one go if one does not want to stop at this source? Jakob Böhme goes beyond the source because he wants to solve the question of the meaning of evil. He goes to what he significantly calls not the source, but the groundlessness, and here we are indeed faced with an experience of the human soul in Jakob Böhme that can be admired to the highest degree if one has an organ for it. Certainly, the ordinary soul, rooted in the modern worldview, may not have this faculty; but one can have this faculty, which feels admiration, where Jakob Böhme makes the transition from the primordial ground to the unground. Basically, it is something like the “egg of Columbus,” something extremely simple. For at the moment when Jakob Böhme solved the mystery of the world in the way we have just described, when he realized that there is a relationship between God and the world like that between the soul and the limbs of the body, he was also able to say to himself—he did not use these words, but we want to characterize his spirit rather than his words, because this brings us closer to his understanding—: When the world came into being as the opposite of the deity, the “separateness” arose in the opposite, the differences between the members, as we would say. The separateness of the individual limbs from the individual soul has arisen. Is not every single limb good in relation to the functions of the soul? Can we not say: the right hand is good, the left hand is good, everything is good insofar as it serves the functions of the soul? But can the right hand not hurt the left hand because of its relative independence, indeed, precisely because of its goodness? Here we have set against what harmony is the independence of the physical, that which needs to have “no reason,” and have placed it in the primordial ground, which simply results from our going from the “primordial ground” to the “unground.”

Just as we do not need to seek the cause of darkness in light, so we do not need to seek the cause of evil in goodness. But since the world proves to be the opposite of the deity for Jakob Böhme, the possibility arises in this world of division that the individual members work against each other, because they must have their independence for the purpose of the world, according to the purposefulness of the world, and must also develop this independence. Thus, for Jakob Böhme, evil is not rooted in what can be explained, but in what arises as groundlessness, without needing to be explained. But in this way, the latter appears as if by itself as a counterpoint to the good; and now evil, the inexpedient, the harmful in the world, becomes for Jakob Böhme himself a counterpoint to the good, just as we become aware of ourselves in relation to the object.

We walk through space, we do not think of ourselves, but we immediately begin to think of ourselves when, for example, we bump our head on a window: there we become aware of ourselves through the counter-throw, through the object. As he contrasts consciousness with the counter-throw, as he experiences himself in the counter-throw, so for Jakob Böhme the good, the expedient, the advantageous, and the useful become aware of themselves by having to maintain themselves in opposition to the harmful and the inexpedient; they become aware of themselves by the “evil” becoming the counterforce of the good, like the objects that are experienced through contact with the outside world.

Thus, Jakob Böhme sees in the good the power that incorporates its opposite, just as man increasingly incorporates into his memory what he himself has first removed from his consciousness. Thus, we find a continuous absorption of evil and, through this, an enrichment of goodness with evil. And just as darkness relates to light, in that light shines into darkness and thereby becomes visible, so goodness only becomes effective by acting upon evil and relating to evil as light relates to darkness. Just as light gradates into different colors in relation to darkness and could not appear as light if it were not opposed by darkness, so goodness can only perform its function in the world by experiencing itself in its opposite, in evil.

This is how Jakob Böhme sees the world, seeing the good as so effective that it finds itself opposed by evil, but placing evil within its domain, absorbing it, as it were. Thus, for Jakob Böhme, a pre-earthly event appears in such a way that he says to himself: The deity once opposed other spiritual beings. These were, like our present nature at a later stage, a counter-project of the deity. Thus, these beings were already a counter-project of the deity, through which the deity brought itself to consciousness. But they behaved toward the deity like limbs turning against their own body. This gave rise to the being Lucifer for Jakob Böhme. What is Lucifer for him? It is the entity which, after the counter-throw was created, used the divisiveness and diversity to rebel against its creator as an independent counter-throw. Thus, in the differing, conflicting forces of the world, Jakob Böhme finds that which must be there, but which nevertheless contributes to the overall evolution by being absorbed in the course of development. He also imagines that all the deeds of the adversary of the gods—so that the deeds of the deity itself are lived out all the more strongly in the counter-creation—are absorbed by the deity, and that the self-expression of the deity becomes all the more glorious through the forces developed by the adversary.

Jakob Böhme pursues the idea that expands the experience of consciousness to the world experience of the origin and primordial state of evil deep into the world. He sums up in a simple formula what he has theoretically given as the solution to the riddles of the world, but rather what he has experienced: No yes without a no, for the yes must first experience itself in its opposite, the no. “No yes without a no” is the simple formula in which Jakob Böhme expressed the whole problem of evil.

It is not a theoretical formula, but rather something like the most original, most elementary experience lies in this philosophy. For knowing that there is no yes without a no, that evil is absorbed by good and contributes to the development of the world, may be nothing. But it is something else to be a struggling soul, a soul that experiences pain and suffering, temptations and seductions, and to say to oneself: All this must be there, and yet, even though it is there, I can draw from my non-theoretical, but living philosophical word the certainty and comfort and hope that the best in me will find the possibility to overcome what is only the counter-throw, the no, through the original, through the “throw,” through the yes. And no matter how deeply I become entangled in evil, and no matter how small the ray of light that spreads over it, I can and may hope for liberation, that it is not evil but good within me that will prevail.

When such a philosophy turns into certainty of salvation, then this is something that is linked to personality in this way, but at the same time has general human significance with this personal character. If one allows this to affect one's soul, then one gladly moves from this struggling soul, which ascends to the cold abstractions of “yes” and “no” in order to gain the warmest soul content and the warmest soul experiences from them, then one gladly moves from this soul, which gains confidence in its worldview, to the lonely man in Görlitz who had no opportunity to found a school, because he had to use the time that people otherwise devote to intellectual pursuits to make shoes. He had to wrestle for the time to do his numerous works. One gladly turns to the man whose books reveal how he struggled with language because his formal education was so limited, but whose teachings nevertheless spread and gained influence after his death, who sat on his cobbler's stool and had only a few friends with whom he communicated. He did have friends to whom he wrote letters, but their number was small. So one looks at him in his solitude and gets the feeling that there is a necessary connection: just as one can only imagine Giordano Bruno wandering through the world, moving from country to country, proclaiming something about the world as if with the sound of a trumpet, just as one feels, in his case, who responds to the diversity of phenomena, that this wandering was part of his worldview, in the other case, one feels that this lonely cobbler experienced something that could only be experienced in this way, that it took place, as it were, in a lonely dialogue with the spirits of existence, in this lonely visionary state that we characterized at the beginning.

When we feel this way, then the feeling grows within us for what human beings need in order to find a heartfelt solution to the riddles of the world: that the greatest thing human beings can experience in the world is independent of place and time, bound only to the power of deepening the human soul, and that the soul can undertake the greatest world wanderings, the wanderings into the realms of the spirit, everywhere and always. Then we hear this echoing from Jakob Böhme's soul, touching our understanding, which characterizes his worldview in such a meaningful way when he says:

To whom time is like eternity,
and eternity like time,
that person is freed
from all strife.

This does not characterize his worldview in a theoretical sense, but rather it characterizes what his worldview really became because he was such a very special person. We have been able to emphasize that, through his entire being, he was more intimately connected with nature than the average person, that he experienced the weaving and bustling of nature in his own soul experiences. This makes us feel a certain necessity in a designation that Jakob Böhme's friends gave him. They gave him a fortunate designation. For let us consider: while over there in the East, in the Orient, there already exists a widely spread, wonderfully detailed science, whose wisdom we admire when we become acquainted with it, we still find the simplest intellectual culture on Central European soil, we find that something still lives in all souls in Central Europe, something like an intimate connection between the forces in the depths of the soul and the forces of nature and nature beings, and how people threw branches on the ground and saw all kinds of riddles in the “runes” that formed there and tried to solve them. These people were “rune puzzle solvers.” And of all that speaks from the souls of the people in the forests of Germania about what lives in nature, what rustles through the trees or lives mysteriously in the souls of human beings themselves, we feel something like what is effective in Jakob Böhme's soul.

There, we begin to understand something in Jakob Böhme that would be most difficult for us to understand today. It is not forced to place alongside the riddle solver, who solves all kinds of riddles from the branches thrown on the ground and wants to recognize the revelations of the deity himself, Jakob Böhme, who, for example, from his affinity with language, places the syllables “sul” and “phur” like runes and wants to solve the riddles of the world from them. There he appears to us like a last scion of the forests of Germania, and we understand why his friends gave him the name “Philosophus teutonicus.” But that includes his significance for the times to come.

We look at him as he wrestled with the most exciting thing that can play into the human soul, how he came to peace in this struggle, and how his last words, “Now I am going to paradise,” were the sealing of the soul's consistency, the soul's practice. That is what led him to peace of mind. A breath of faith lives in all his books, and from this point of view, Jakob Böhme will be of significance to us and for all time. For what he can truly be to the soul when it lives in him, for the practical consequences of a philosophy for life, this “Philosophus teutonicus” will always set the tone.

His opponents sometimes appear quite strange, starting in 1684, when the first strong counter-treatise against Jakob Böhme was published by Calov, up to our time, where we also have a treatise against Jakob Böhme from a Leipzig scholar, Dr. Harles, in the last century. It seems rather strange how Harles wants to show that Jakob Böhme was doing nothing more than rehashing old alchemical ideas, and then says: after often tormenting himself for days on end trying to portray Jakob Böhme in this way, he was often glad when, in the evening, after having had to deal with Jakob Böhme all day, he could turn to Matthias Claudius to find rest and edification in his words; and he also wishes his readers not to be beguiled by Jakob Böhme's glittering and glimmering formulas, but to take refuge in the simple and naive Matthias Claudius, who gives the soul such nourishment that it need not seek its salvation in soaring to the highest heights of spiritual life. It may well be that Dr. Harles, Jakob Böhme's adversary, had to take refuge in Matthias Claudius in order to escape Jakob Böhme's dazzling, high-flying formulas, and that he was able to find peace in Claudius as opposed to his preoccupation with Jakob Böhme. It only makes a strange impression on someone who knows that Matthias Claudius himself, after having achieved what Dr. Harles finds in him, sought refuge with someone who not only knew Jakob Böhme, but even translated him — with Saint Martin, who was again a faithful disciple of Jakob Böhme! So it is very good not only to know where Dr. Harles, Jakob Böhme's opponent, sought edification, but also to know where Matthias Claudius sought edification!

But Jakob Böhme's worldview is one that is capable of leading beyond contradictions, if only one does not remain stuck in it. The whole nature of the lectures given here has shown that, within the worldview represented here, we should not remain with any one phenomenon, but that we should grasp what can be grasped of the spiritual world directly from our own time. Certainly, Jakob Böhme remains an important figure, a star of the first magnitude in the spiritual sky of humanity, but no one will remain with him. Therefore, the presentations given today on spiritual science are by no means held from Jakob Böhme's point of view, but from that of our time, and next time we will also show what a completely modern spirit has to say. But Jakob Böhme becomes even more interesting when we put ourselves in his place, standing upright in simplicity and solitude, his soul escaping to the highest region of clairvoyance, and when we discover how this spirit was able to spread peace over Jakob Böhme's soul, which can be felt by all who approach Jakob Böhme with understanding or at least with a search for understanding. Therefore, it is not intellectual characteristics that will bring us closer to Jakob Böhme, but only those that attempt to empathize with what a person like Jakob Böhme felt, which poured out, for example, in the four meaningful lines quoted above. Only then will the words with which I have attempted to characterize Jakob Böhme gain their meaning, when those present feel that they were not said in order to culminate in a theory or theoretical characterization of Jakob Böhme, but rather that in the immediate confrontation with the personality of Jakob Böhme, something emanates from it—and emanates all the more warmly and intensely the more we get to know him — which can be summed up in words that describe his peace and tranquility:

To whom time is like eternity,
and eternity is like time,
that person is freed
from all strife.