The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Jakob Böhme

[ 1 ] At this juncture in the development of modern thought, when we see the dawn of a new worldview breaking, at this juncture when we witness the great achievements of Kepler and Galileo, when Giordano Bruno, so to speak, outlines the great problem of the modern worldview, at this very moment we encounter the solitary thinker to whom today’s discussion is dedicated: the simple cobbler from Görlitz, Jakob Böhme, who grappled with the highest problems of existence in a way that continues to profoundly engage our thinking and feeling to this very day—and will likely continue to engage the thinking and feeling of people for a long time to come.

[ 2 ] Jakob Böhme was a peculiar figure—one who strove and struggled in solitude, while, so to speak, the various currents of intellectual life elsewhere coalesced into a grand, all-encompassing tableau. In a certain sense, one might say that, from a particular perspective, Jakob Böhme’s solitary struggle appears almost as interesting as the convergence of the various perspectives we otherwise encounter in that era. And then we see how remarkably what Jakob Böhme still found within his own solitary soul in his own century has found the widest possible dissemination—the widest possible dissemination, we might say, in view of the fact that it is a profoundly significant spiritual matter. We see precisely from the reactions of his opponents just how far his influence extended, even though only a few decades had passed since his death. Time and again, Jakob Böhme has been the subject of appreciative, admiring—or even dismissive, derisive—consideration, and when we look at the groups of supporters and opponents that formed, we get the impression from both that the supporters and the opponents know they are dealing with a truly remarkable phenomenon.

[ 3 ] This phenomenon is particularly puzzling to those who seek to understand every individual who appears in the spiritual life of humanity, so to speak, solely in terms of the immediate conditions of the time and environment. We see, for example, how people attempt to understand Goethe by gathering all possible details of his life—even the most minor ones—and believe that by compiling these details, they can gain an explanation for this or that aspect of his spiritual life. In this way, not much can actually be gained regarding Jakob Böhme, for external influences are difficult to ascertain through external science. It is even less possible to understand how he emerged from 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 there—everything this personality had to offer—seems to have sprung forth suddenly, revealing itself from the depths of his unique soul. Others have then attempted to explain how certain turns of phrase in Jakob Böhme, certain ways of expressing his ideas in words and phrases, show similarities to the formulations of the alchemists or other philosophical or miscellaneous schools of thought that were still active in his time.

[ 4 ] But anyone who delves more deeply into Jakob Böhme’s entire mindset will find that such an approach is of little more value than attempting to analyze the language of a great mind who, after all, must always express himself through language; for when Jakob Böhme makes use of alchemical formulas or the like, this is merely a linguistic guise. What, however, makes such a powerful impression on those who seek to understand him is manifested in a originality found only in the very greatest minds. On the other hand, there are certain points of reference that do not sit well with modern thinking or the modern worldview, but which nonetheless shed light—for those capable of engaging with such matters—on how Jakob Böhme was able to rise to his lofty spiritual vantage point. To connect with his life, insofar as it is relevant here, we need only cite a few facts from his life.

[ 5 ] Jakob Böhme was the son of very poor people and came from Alt-Seidenberg near Görlitz. He was born in 1575. As a young boy, he had to tend livestock along with other village boys. He thus grew up, as is evident, in utter poverty, and since one has no special means of education when growing up in such circumstances, we will find it understandable that Jakob Böhme, even as a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy, could barely read and could write only very poorly. But another experience from his boyhood comes to light, one that a faithful biographer heard from him directly. Let us first recount this event. As mentioned, it is not one of those things that readily make sense to the modern mind.

[ 6 ] Once, when Jakob Böhme was tending livestock with other shepherd boys, he wandered away from the group, climbed a moderately high mountain near his hometown—the Landskrone—and claims to have seen, in broad daylight, what looked like an entrance to the mountain. He went inside and found a vessel there—a sort of trough—filled with pure gold. This made such a chilling impression on his soul that he ran away, retaining only the memory of this strange experience. — One could, of course, speak of a dream experienced while awake. Those who find such an explanation satisfactory may well be right. But what is essential is not 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 become deeply ingrained in his soul, that it had unleashed significant forces within his soul, so that it was of the utmost spiritual significance to him.

[ 7 ] Let us therefore grant the rationalists the right to explain such an experience—which was, under all circumstances, 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 on the road to Damascus. However, such an explanation, which resorts to these things, must also admit that a work as significant as that of Paul—which is so intimately connected with Christianity—originated from a “dream.” Something like a profound stirring of the soul’s powers, which are not otherwise active in the soul—this is what the boy Jakob Böhme already felt when he had this experience. What matters is this inner release of the soul’s deeper forces. What matters is the testimony of such an experience, which proves that we are dealing with a person who can descend deeper into the depths of his inner life than a thousand or ten thousand others.

[ 8 ] There is another event of a very similar nature worth mentioning, about which we must again say that it remained so deeply etched in Jakob Böhme’s memory that the splendor and significance of this event shone throughout his entire life, insofar as that life was an inner life.

[ 9 ] At the age of fourteen, Jakob Böhme was sent to apprentice with a shoemaker and often had to, so to speak, stand guard in his master’s shop; he was not allowed to sell anything. Then one day—and again, this story comes from the account of his faithful biographer, Abraham von Frankenberg—a person who immediately struck Jakob Böhme as peculiar entered the shop and wanted to buy shoes. But since the boy was forbidden to sell shoes, he told the stranger so. The stranger offered him a high price, and it so happened that the shoes were sold. But then the following occurred, an event that remained in Jakob Böhme’s memory for the rest of his life. After the stranger had left and a short time had passed, Jakob Böhme heard his first name being called out, “Jakob, Jakob!” and when he went outside, the stranger seemed even more peculiar to him than at first. There was something sun-like and radiant in his eyes, and he spoke words to him that sounded quite extraordinary: “Jakob, you are still small now, but you will one day become a completely different person, one who will astonish the world. Yet remain humble before your God and read the Bible diligently. You will have to endure much persecution. But stay strong, for your God loves you and will be gracious to you.

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

[ 11 ] So here we are dealing, if you will, with a persistently abnormal state of mind. But Jakob Böhme also experienced this “rebirth” of his more or less as something that, in his view, could indeed be connected to the human soul. It did not turn him into a dreamer or a false idealist, nor into a haughty person; rather, he continued to practice his craft as a shoemaker in all humility—one might say, in all sobriety. Even the experience of 1593—the rapture into another world—remained for him a phenomenon about 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 go about his daily business with his usual sobriety.

[ 12 ] In the years 1600 and 1610, this experience of rebirth recurred. He then began—believing himself called to do so—to record what he had experienced during his ecstatic states. Thus, in 1612, his first work, *Die Morgenröte im Aufgange* (The Dawn at Daybreak), later titled *Aurora*, came into being. He says of it that he did not write it down with his ordinary self, but that it was dictated to him word for word, that he lived, in contrast to his ordinary self, in a being that was all-encompassing, reaching out into the whole world and immersing itself in it.

[ 13 ] However, these revelations did not sit well with him. When some people realized what he had to say—and what he had written down—the manuscript of the *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—lashed out against Jakob Böhme from the pulpit, not only condemning his work but also securing his summons before the Görlitz City Council. I will now simply repeat the words we know about this from his biographer. He recounts: The council decided that Jakob Böhme must be forbidden from continuing to write; for only those who were academics were permitted to write, but Jakob Böhme was not an academic, but an idiot, and must therefore refrain from writing!

[ 14 ] Jakob Böhme had thus been branded an idiot, and since he was, on the whole, a good-natured man who—due to the simple-mindedness of his nature—could not quite bring himself to believe that people would consider him among the damned for no good reason at all, he decided, in fact, not to write anything further 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 rapid succession, such as *The Book of the Contemplative Life*, *De signatura rerum, or On the Birth and Designation of All Beings*, and *An Explanation of the First Book of Moses*. But the number of his works is quite large, and this may strike some readers as peculiar. Some have said that Jakob Böhme repeats himself over and over again. It is true—one cannot deny it—that certain themes recur frequently in his writings. But if one concludes from this that one knows the whole of Jakob Böhme simply by knowing a few of his works—because he repeats himself—and while one might not be quick to disagree with such people who say this—it must still be said: whoever stops at having read one work by Jakob Böhme and does not develop an appetite to read his other works as well will not understand much of Jakob Böhme. But whoever makes the effort to work through his other works will, despite all the repetitions, not rest until he has read them all.

[ 15 ] If, based on this characterization of his nature, we attempt to delve deeper into his train of thought—into the spiritual essence of Jakob Böhme—it must be said that for modern people, who live solely within the intellectual framework of our time, much must indeed be incomprehensible, not only in the content of Jakob Böhme’s works but also in the entire manner in which he presents them. At first glance, his presentation appears quite chaotic. One gradually gets into it, to be sure. But then there still remains for many people something that is a tough nut to crack: that we find in his writings—completely incomprehensible to the modern mind—some very peculiar explanations of words. Thus, we find that he repeatedly uses words such as “salt,” “mercury,” and “sulfur” to explain the world. When he sets out to discuss what “sul” means, what “phur” means, and then arrives at all sorts of profound insights, modern minds must say to themselves: We can’t make head or tail of this; for what is the point of offering explanations about a universal principle if one explains the syllables of a word individually, such as “sul” and “phur”? — This is completely foreign to the modern mind.

[ 16 ] However, if one delves deeper into Jakob Böhme, one finds that he cloaks what he wants to say in all sorts of alchemical formulas. But only when one penetrates to the core of what manifests as Jakob Böhme’s spirit in what he encountered does one discover that something entirely different lives within it than what we know today as scientific thinking, or indeed as worldview—or any other form of thinking.

[ 17 ] What lives in Jakob Böhme’s soul most closely resembles what has been characterized here in these lectures as the first stage toward a higher spiritual life—the stage of imaginative cognition. After all, we have emphasized that the person who rises above ordinary life in the sensory world, through a special development of his soul, comes to perceive a new world of images and imaginations. And it has been emphasized—I ask you to recall precisely the characterization of this discussion—that when a person has reached the point where they not only form imaginations but where images and imaginative perceptions spring forth from the unknown depths of soul life, and he experiences a new world, then the one who wishes to ascend to new insights must make the firm resolution 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.

[ 18 ] The entire state of mind, the entire inner mood that Jakob Böhme arrives at, can best be compared to what a person encounters in their spiritual life when they ascend to a supersensible level of knowledge. Admittedly, there is no indication anywhere that anything like what modern spiritual science proclaims as its methods is to be found in Jakob Böhme. But anyone who were to believe that all of this arises of its own accord in Jakob Böhme would nevertheless be mistaken. He himself once says that he struggled ceaselessly for the Spirit’s—for God’s—assistance, and that this ceaseless struggle gave rise to a luminous, imaginative world. Thus, we cannot say that he is simply a naive imaginative knower; rather, we must say that he naively draws upon the means that lead a person to the heights of imaginative knowledge. Naturally, such an imaginative power is to be assumed to exist within his soul. He thus arrives at imaginative knowledge by exactly the same paths—only more quickly and more naturally—than one can reach it through the methods described in the book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*

[ 19 ] Thus, Jakob Böhme stands before us as one who gains insight through the imagination. But with primal force, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, this imaginative insight struggles to the surface, as if carried by a strong inner will. Thus we see in him this strong inner will, which cannot find expression in outward deeds—his humble 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 emerging, through which he attempts to solve the mysteries of the world. What matters most in Jakob Böhme is not so much the individual results as this mood and state of his soul. He feels that in his striving he is driven toward something that is not the ordinary, cognizing human “I,” but rather something connected to the forces that link human beings—from the subconscious of their soul, from the depths of their soul—to the entire cosmos, and thus to that which weaves and lives out there in nature.

[ 20 ] A person who truly has a serious drive for knowledge senses that knowledge involves not only something rational, but also something that is attained through suffering and pain and by overcoming suffering and pain. And when they try to penetrate nature and existence using today’s conventional methods, they realize how, in fact, all such methods actually distance them from nature and existence. But when we uncover powers within 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 sense. To explain this, I would like to draw on the following.

[ 21 ] It is well known and often recounted how certain animals in areas where an earthquake or some other natural disaster is approaching flee from the site of the earthquake or similar event, or at least become restless, serving as prophetic harbingers of what is to come. One might say: The instinctive life of an animal is more intimately connected to what takes place out in nature than the entire state of the human soul. But in the depths of the human soul there lives something that is not the same as the instinct of animals, but is deeper than this animal instinct—and yet is also intimately connected to the forces of nature. As Jakob Böhme now descends into the depths of his soul, he feels more intimately interwoven with the forces of nature. One thing, however, stands out in particular. It has been emphasized: only when what appears as imaginations and the imaginative world is suppressed, extinguished, and then reignites as if of its own accord—only then does this second imaginative world have value. Now it is most peculiar when we compare this to Jakob Böhme’s path: In the year 1600, he experiences a rebirth, feeling transported into a spiritual world, into a realm of joy. Then he continues to live a sober life. For ten years, what he had experienced seems to have vanished. Then it resurfaces a third time in the year 1610. Has not the path we have described as the correct one then entered Jakob Böhme’s soul like a natural phenomenon? This is what brings Jakob Böhme so close to what we ourselves have envisioned as the natural path into the supersensible worlds. If we take this into account, his experience will no longer seem as foreign to us as it might at first glance.

[ 22 ] However, for the skeptic’s objective understanding, 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 recall what was said earlier about human language—how, as has been explained, language actually precedes abstract, conceptual thinking in the course of human development, and how Jean Paul is absolutely correct when he emphasizes that the child learns to think through language, and that speech does not develop out of thought. Language is therefore something more elementary, more primordial than thought. 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 the sound—which is more akin to the sounds of nature (and language is, after all, originally composed of such sounds)—when the linguistic sound breaks free from the human soul, then something from the entire order of the world penetrates into the depths of the soul, and then a kind of echo in response to nature breaks free in a completely different way than when something detaches itself from thought as an echo.

[ 23 ] The modern soul no longer has any sense of the kinship between language and the sounds of nature. As a modern soul, one struggles to come to terms with the fact that in every language there is something that immediately strikes one as an echo of impressions from the outside world. In the case of a personality such as Jakob Böhme, who draws deeper soul forces from his soul with elemental power, it is only natural that, in this regard as well, he is, as it were, transported back in his feelings to that perception of language that was once characteristic of humanity—a perception that a child still develops more or less unconsciously.

[ 24 ] If we now extend what has just been said to the peculiar debates about the combination of syllables into words, then we can understand how it is merely a feeling for sounds that nature instills in the human soul, how nature seeks to create a language for itself through sound itself. 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 matter of empathizing with, of sharing in the experience of, what lives and weaves in nature outside than any abstract grasp of things. One might say that when one truly allows a thought of Jakob Böhme to sink in, one has the feeling that the thought is as closely related to what Jakob Böhme observes as one is to whatever one perceives as a particular taste, in which one also senses a connection with nature.

[ 25 ] This is how Jakob Böhme experiences his connection with nature. He feels within himself what is weaving, working, and living out there in nature. He shares in the life of nature, and in his descriptions he essentially conveys what he is experiencing, so that one can feel the resonance in his words of what he perceives. That is why words are also something he feels particularly as the very “how” of nature itself. One need not, therefore, ponder whether discussions such as the one alluded to regarding “sul” and “phur” hold any special significance for Jakob Böhme; rather, one should try to experience, through this soul, how it transforms the experience of the world into a soul experience, and how it presents what the soul can experience as its revelations.

[ 26 ] One cannot understand Jakob Böhme if one believes that he perceives lightning and thunder, clouds or the transformations of clouds, or the growth of grass in the same way as a modern person. One can only understand him if one knows that, for his inner experience, the flashing lightning, the rolling thunder, and the shifting clouds signify a transformation—so that something takes place within 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.

[ 27 ] Now, when we look at him in this light, we can understand how he was able to grapple with a task that we also encounter elsewhere in his time and that has long occupied other minds—even the greatest mind of modern times. The very same sixteenth century in which Jakob Böhme was born also gave rise to the Faustian enigma, which sets against the striving and struggling human being his adversary—the one who drags human nature down into the base and sensual, into what Jakob Böhme’s era called “the devilish.” Poetically, Goethe continued to grapple with the problem of how “evil” fits into the fabric of the universe. Must not humanity ask again and again: How is it that the irregular and the purposeless intrude hostilely into the harmonious cosmos, into the wise governance of the world? And the question of the origin of evil lies at the heart of the Faustian enigma. It is actually already present in the Book of Job, but it emerged with particular force in the sixteenth century.

[ 28 ] How could this question have arisen in Jakob Böhme’s mind? We need only quote a few words from *Morgenröte im Aufgange* to see immediately how what is otherwise a universal problem becomes, for Jakob Böhme, first and foremost an inner spiritual problem. There he says something to the following effect: Whenever a wise and profound person appears anywhere in the world, the devil immediately interferes with his soul, seeking to drag his nature down into the common, the mundane, and the sensual, and to entangle the person in pride and arrogance. — Here we see immediately that Jakob Böhme grasps the problem as a problem of the soul; we see how he seeks the power of evil within the soul itself, mingling right in the midst of the soul’s good forces. And the question arises for him: What does the soul have to do with those soul forces that strive toward evil? — Thus, for Jakob Böhme, the problem of evil ultimately becomes an inner question of the soul. But because “soul” and “world” correspond to one another for him, the soul immediately expands into a world, and now what is peculiar for him is that the question of evil develops into an entirely different question—the question of human, indeed, of spiritual consciousness in general, of the entire nature of the life of consciousness.

[ 29 ] Today, it is difficult to shed light on Jakob Böhme’s inner life—and on how he understood the questions of the universe and their solutions—using the concepts that are familiar to us; and one cannot be fully understood when using Jakob Böhme’s words, because they are no longer current in our time. So, entirely in the spirit of Jakob Böhme, but using slightly different words, I will attempt to approach what he means to say about the question of evil, which for him becomes a question about the very nature of spiritual consciousness itself.

[ 30 ] Let’s try to imagine how our consciousness works, and what our entire consciousness would be like if we were unable to retain in memory, as thoughts, what we once experienced in our soul and in our consciousness. Let us try to imagine how our consciousness would have to be something entirely different if we were unable to retrieve from memory what we experienced yesterday, the day before yesterday, or years ago. The entire content of consciousness rests on our ability to remember; and our consciousness does not extend beyond the point in time to which we can recall. That is when we began to conceive of ourselves as an “I,” to have the coherent thread of our consciousness, and to understand our inner life.

[ 31 ] So what is the very nature of consciousness based on? It is based on the fact that we know: Right now, we are experiencing something in our consciousness. When we experience something, we are directly connected to that experience: at the very moment we experience something, we are nothing other than the experience itself. Whoever imagines the color red is, at the very moment of imagining that red color, one with the experience of it. Whoever imagines an ideal is, at that moment, one with the ideal. It is only afterward that he becomes distinct from his experience, whereas before he was one with it. Thus, our entire consciousness is something we have first experienced and then stored as an objective entity within our inner spiritual life. Such storage within the objective realm is what makes our consciousness possible. We could not develop consciousness if everything we had experienced were immediately forgotten or swept away.

[ 32 ] It is only by setting our experience against ourselves—as a “counterpoint,” as Jakob Böhme says, as something set in opposition to us—that our true consciousness is kindled. We can observe this, so to speak, in the simplest fact of our consciousness. Jakob Böhme, in his clairvoyant insight, extends this experience—which every consciousness can have—to the entire world. He says: If a divine being in the world had possessed only the ability to live within itself, but had not set itself in opposition to its own experience—as a “counterpoint”—then consciousness would never have arisen even in a divine being. For the divine being, however, the “counter-image” is the world. Just as we set our ideas against ourselves, just as we become conscious of ourselves through the object, so too is the world the counterpoint for divine consciousness. And everything that surrounds us has been brought forth by divine consciousness from within itself in order to become aware of itself—just as we develop our own consciousness only by setting our own experiences before us as a counterpoint.

[ 33 ] For Jakob Böhme, this formulation of the idea was not a theory; rather, it was something that brought him satisfaction regarding a question that represented his destiny—the great Faustian question. He could now say to himself: If I transport myself back to the divine consciousness, as it were, before the world came into being, then this divine consciousness could only come into its own—become true consciousness—by setting itself in opposition to the world, so that it might become aware of itself through its own reflection. Thus, everything that lives, weaves, and is has sprung from the divine-spiritual, from a will within this divine-spiritual that, as will, developed the desire to become aware of itself. And at the very moment—as Jakob Böhme now realized—when the unified consciousness set itself this counter-image and sought to become aware of itself, thus doubling itself, as it were, creating a mirror image of itself, it created this mirror image in multiplicity, in the multiplicity of individual members, just as the individual human soul does not merely express itself through individual members, but through members that possess a certain degree of autonomy—hand, foot, head, and the like. One does not come close to understanding Jakob Böhme by labeling him a pantheist. One must follow his train of thought in a similar way; one must understand how he conceives of everything that confronts us as a projection of the Deity.

[ 34 ] The very nature of human beings is also part of the counter-image of the Deity that the Deity projected from within itself in order to become aware of itself through it. From this perspective, Jakob Böhme says: People lift their gaze, see the stars, the masses of clouds, the mountains, and the plants, and often wish to assume a special realm of the Divine beyond these as well. But I tell you, you foolish human, that you yourself are part of God’s projection; for how could you perceive or become aware of anything divine within yourself if you had not sprung from this divine essence? You originate from this divine essence; it has set you opposite itself, as if born from it, and you will be buried in it. And how could you be raised again if a divinity foreign to you were to stand opposed to you? How could you call yourself a child of God if you were not one with the substance and essence of God!

[ 35 ] Jakob Böhme makes it clear that he does not mean ordinary pantheism by saying: The external 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 external world,” that is true; for everything originates from Him and in Him. But what am I to make of such a statement, which is not 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 to it; rather, it is an experience for him. He has sensed 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 realities of the world. In answering the question of the soul and the divine aspect of the soul, he also finds the question of the origin of evil answered. This is something extraordinarily characteristic of Jakob Böhme, which has repeatedly aroused the admiration of profound thinkers. Schelling, for example, was profoundly moved when he realized the manner in which Jakob Böhme approached the question of the meaning of evil in the world, and other nineteenth-century thinkers also admired the depth with which Jakob Böhme tackled this question.

[ 36 ] One can say of many people who have explored the question of the origin of evil: they have sought the root cause of evil. What is characteristic of Jakob Böhme, however, is that he goes beyond the point that, in the opinion of many people, is the furthest one can go. For where else can one go if one does not wish to stop at this source? Jakob Böhme goes beyond the source, since he seeks to resolve the question of the meaning of evil. He turns to what he significantly calls not the “source” but the “non-source,” and here we are indeed faced with an experience of the human soul in Jakob Böhme that one can admire to the highest degree, if one possesses the capacity for it. Certainly, the ordinary soul, rooted in the modern worldview, may not possess this capacity; but one can possess this capacity to feel admiration where, in Jakob Böhme, the transition is made from the “Urgrund” to the “Ungrund.” When all is said and done, it is something like “Columbus’s egg”—something supremely simple. For at the very moment when Jakob Böhme had solved the riddle of the world in the way we have just described—when he realized that there is a relationship between God and the world just as there is between the soul and the members of the body—he was also able to say to himself—he did not use these exact words, but let us characterize it in his spirit rather than in his exact words, for this brings us closer to his understanding—: When the world came into being as a counter-image of the Deity, “distinction” arose within that counter-image—the differences among the members, as we would say. The distinctiveness of the individual limbs in relation to the individual soul has arisen. Is not every single limb good in relation to the soul’s functions? Can we not say: The right hand is good, the left hand is good, everything is good, insofar as it serves the soul’s functions? But can the right hand not, because of its relative independence—indeed, precisely because of its goodness—harm the left hand? Here we have set against what harmony is the independence of the physical—that which need not have a “reason”—and have placed it in the primal ground, which simply results from our moving from the “primal ground” to the “unground.”

[ 37 ] Just as we need not seek the cause of darkness in the light, so we need not seek the cause of evil in the good. But since, for Jakob Böhme, the world proves to be the counterpoint to the Deity, the possibility arises in this world of duality that the individual parts may act against one another; for, because they must possess their own independence for the sake of the world and in accordance with the world’s purpose, they must also develop this independence. Thus, for Jakob Böhme, evil is not rooted in what can be explained, but in what emerges as groundless, without needing to be explained. Consequently, however, the latter emerges of its own accord as a counterpoint to the good; and now, for Jakob Böhme, evil—that which is purposeless and harmful in the world—becomes itself a counterpoint to the good, just as we become aware of ourselves through the object.

[ 38 ] We move through space without thinking of ourselves, but we immediately begin to think of ourselves when, for example, we bump our head against a window: there, through the impact—through the object—we become aware of ourselves. Just as he contrasts consciousness with the counterforce, just as he experiences himself through the counterforce, so for Jakob Böhme the good— the expedient, the advantageous, and the useful become aware of themselves by having to preserve themselves against the harmful and the inexpedient; they become aware of themselves because the “evil” has become the counterpoint to the good, just as the objects experienced through the bump are experienced as part of the external world.

[ 39 ] Thus, Jakob Böhme sees in the Good the power that incorporates its opposite, just as a person, in memory, increasingly incorporates that which he himself had previously excluded from 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 the darkness and thereby becomes visible—so too does the Good become effective only by acting within evil and relating to evil as light relates to darkness. Just as light gradates against darkness into various colors and could not appear as light if darkness did not stand in opposition to it, so too can goodness fulfill its cosmic function only by experiencing itself in contrast to its opposite, the evil.

[ 40 ] This is how Jakob Böhme views the world: he sees goodness as so powerful that it finds evil standing opposed to it, yet it draws evil into its own realm, 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 set other spiritual beings against itself. These were, like our present nature at a later stage, a counterpoint to the Deity. Thus, these beings were already a counterpoint to the Deity, through which the Deity brought itself to consciousness. But they related to the Deity like limbs that turn against their own body. This gave rise, for Jakob Böhme, to the entity Lucifer. What is Lucifer for him? It is the being which, after the counterpoint had been created, used the duality and diversity to rebel against its Creator as an independent counterpoint. Thus, Jakob Böhme finds in the conflicting, struggling forces of the world that which must exist, yet which contributes to the overall evolution by being absorbed in the course of development. He even conceives that all the deeds of the divine adversary—so that the deeds of the deity itself may be all the more fully expressed in response to the opposition—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.

[ 41 ] Jakob Böhme takes this idea deep into the world, expanding the experience of consciousness into a cosmic experience of the origin and primordial state of evil. He distills this into a simple formula—one cannot say what he theoretically proposed as the solution to the world’s riddles, but rather what he experienced—into the formula: No “yes” without a “no,” for the “yes” must first experience itself through its opposite, the “no.” “No ‘yes’ without a ‘no’” is the simple formula into which Jakob Böhme incorporated the entire problem of evil.

[ 42 ] It is not a theoretical formula; rather, there is something in this philosophy akin to the most primordial, most elemental experience. For to know that there is no “yes” without a “no,” that evil is absorbed by good and contributes to the development of the world—that may not amount to much. But it is something else entirely to be a struggling soul—a soul that experiences pain and suffering, temptations and seductions—and to say to oneself: All of this must surely be there, and yet, even though it is there, I can draw from my philosophy—not a theoretical one, but a living one—the certainty, comfort, and hope that the best within me will find a way to overcome that which is merely 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 shines upon it may be: I can and may hope for liberation—that it is not evil, but the good within me that will emerge victorious.

[ 43 ] When such a philosophy gives way to the certainty of salvation, it is something that, while linked to the individual in this way, also has universal human significance due to the nature of that individual. When one allows this to take effect on one’s soul, one is drawn to move from this struggling soul—which ascends even into the cold abstractions of “Yes” and “No”—to draw from them the warmest inner life and the warmest spiritual experiences, then one gladly moves from this soul—which has won confidence in its worldview—to the lonely man in Görlitz, who had no opportunity to found a school, for the time that people otherwise devote to intellectual pursuits, he had to devote to making shoes. He had to carve out the time for his numerous works. One is drawn to the man whose books reveal how he wrestled with language—because his formal education was so limited—yet whose teachings nevertheless spread and gained influence after his death; the man who sat at his cobbler’s stool and had only a few friends with whom he shared his thoughts. He did have friends to whom he wrote letters, but their number was small. Thus, one observes him in his solitude and gets the sense that there is a necessary connection there: just as one can only imagine Giordano Bruno wandering through the world, traveling from country to country to proclaim something about the world as if with the sound of a trumpet, and just as one feels, in his exploration of the diversity of phenomena, that this wandering was an integral part of his worldview, so, in the other case, one feels that this lonely cobbler experienced something that could only be experienced in this way—that it unfolded, as it were, in a solitary dialogue with the spirits of existence, unfolding within this solitary visionary state that we characterized at the outset.

[ 44 ] When we feel this way, a sense grows within us of what a person needs to find a heartfelt solution to the world’s mysteries: that the greatest thing a person can experience in the world is independent of place and time, bound only to the power of the human soul’s deepening, and that the soul can undertake the greatest journeys through the worlds—journeys into the realms of the spirit—anywhere and at any time. Then, from Jakob Böhme’s soul, the words that so significantly characterize his worldview resonate with us and touch our understanding when he says:

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

[ 45 ] This does not characterize his worldview in a theoretical sense, but rather characterizes what his worldview truly became as a result of his being such a unique individual. After all, 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 activity of nature within his own soul experiences. This is why we feel a certain necessity for the designation that Jakob Böhme’s friends gave him. They have given him a fitting designation. For let us consider: While over in the East, in the Orient, there already exists a widely developed science that goes into wonderful detail—a science whose wisdom we admire when we come to know it— we find, on Central European soil, the simplest of spiritual cultures; we find that in all the souls of Central Europe there still lives something like an intimate connection between the forces in the depths of the soul and the forces of nature and natural beings; and we find how people threw twigs onto the ground and, from the “runes” that formed there, saw all manner of riddles and sought to solve them. These people were “rune riddle solvers.” And of all that speaks from the souls of the people in the forests of Germania—of what lives in nature, what rustles through the trees, or what lives mysteriously within human souls themselves—of all this we sense something at work, just as it did in Jakob Böhme’s soul.

[ 46 ] Here, something in Jakob Böhme becomes understandable to us that would be most difficult for us to grasp today. It is not forced when, alongside the rune-puzzle solver—who solves all manner of riddles from the twigs thrown onto the ground and seeks to recognize the revelations of the deity itself—we also consider how Jakob Böhme, drawing on his affinity for language, arranges syllables such as “sul” and “phur” in a runic manner and seeks to solve the mysteries of the world through them. He appears to us as the last scion of Germania’s forests, and we understand why his friends gave him the name “Philosophus teutonicus.” But this also encompasses his significance for the times to come.

[ 47 ] We look to him as he wrestled with the most unsettling forces that can assail the human soul, as he found peace in this struggle, and as his final words: “Now I am going to paradise,” were the seal of his spiritual consistency and practice. That is what led him to the peace of the soul. A breath of faith lives in all his books, and from this perspective, Jakob Böhme will continue to hold significance for us and for all time. For what he can truly be to the soul—when it immerses itself in him—and for the practical, life-affirming consistency of a philosophy, this “Philosophus teutonicus” will always set the tone.

[ 48 ] His opponents sometimes come across as quite peculiar, starting in 1684, when the first substantial counter-treatise against Jakob Böhme by Calov was published, right up to our own time, when we also have a treatise against Jakob Böhme from the previous century written by a Leipzig scholar, Dr. Harles. It seems quite peculiar how Harles attempts to show that Jakob Böhme was merely rehashing old alchemical ideas, and then says: after he had often tormented himself for days on end trying to refute Jakob Böhme, he was often glad when, in the evening—after having had to grapple with Jakob Böhme all day—he could turn to Matthias Claudius to find rest and edification in his words; and he also wishes for his readers that they not allow themselves to be captivated by Jakob Böhme’s glittering and shimmering formulas, but that they, too, might 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, the opponent of Jakob Böhme, had to take refuge in Matthias Claudius in order to escape Jakob Böhme’s dazzling, lofty formulations, and that he was able to find peace in Claudius as opposed to engaging with Jakob Böhme. It makes a strange impression, however, on anyone who knows that Matthias Claudius himself, after having accomplished what Dr. Harles found in him, sought refuge in turn with someone who not only knew Jakob Böhme but had even translated his works—with Saint Martin, who was himself a faithful disciple of Jakob Böhme! So it is very good not only to know where Dr. Harles, the opponent of Jakob Böhme, sought edification, but also to know where Matthias Claudius, in turn, sought his edification!

[ 49 ] But Jakob Böhme’s worldview is one that is capable of leading us beyond these contradictions, provided we do not stop there. The very nature of the lectures given here has shown that, within the worldview presented here, we should not dwell on any single phenomenon, but rather seek to grasp what can be directly perceived from the spiritual world within our own time. Certainly, Jakob Böhme remains a significant figure, a star of the first magnitude in the spiritual firmament of humanity; yet no one will remain stuck with him. Therefore, the presentations given today on spiritual science are by no means based on Jakob Böhme’s standpoint, but rather on that of our own time, and next time we shall also show what a thoroughly modern spirit has to say. But Jakob Böhme becomes even more interesting when we place ourselves in his state of mind—standing upright in simplicity and solitude, his soul soaring into the highest realms of clairvoyance—and when we discover how this state of mind was able to spread peace over Jakob Böhme’s soul, a peace that can be felt by all who approach Jakob Böhme with understanding or at least a desire to understand. That is why it is not intellectual characterizations that will bring us closer to Jakob Böhme, but only those that attempt to empathize with what a person like Jakob Böhme felt—what poured forth, for example, in the four significant lines already cited. Only then will the words with which I have attempted to characterize Jakob Böhme be able to gain their meaning—when those present feel that they were not spoken to culminate in a theory or theoretical characterization of Jakob Böhme, but rather to convey that, in the immediate presence of Jakob Böhme’s personality, something radiates from him—and radiates all the more warmly and intensely the more we come to know him—which can be summed up in words that signify his peace and tranquility:

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