(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
Jacob Bohme (Boehme, Bohm, Behmen, Bome, Beme, etc.) is considered a
central figure of Christian Mysticism. He was born in 1575 at Old
Seidenberg, then German Prussia. From The Wisdom Of Jacob Bohme (1994) by Arthur Versluis,
we read that legends abound about Böhme’s early life. It is said that
he was visited by a stranger who predicted his spiritual illuminations
in later life. We do know from his own writings that he had a profound
spiritual illumination during his twenties, and “that although he led a
fairly ordinary lay life as a man who married, had children, and worked
as a shoemaker in Görlitz, Germany, (very near what in the twentieth
century was divided by the iron curtain into Poland), he also developed
very profound insights into nature and into the spiritual life.” He
wrote down his initial insights in order to keep them fresh for his
memory. Then he wrote a book entitled Aurora (1624).
It began to circulate widely until the local Lutheran minister
Gregorius Richter got a copy. “Richter was incensed against Böhme’s
writings, perhaps not least because of Böhme’s warnings against what he
called “Babel,” or the mere outward pretense of Christianity without
any inner spiritual awakening.” Richter persecuted Böhme for more than
a decade. Böhme ceased writing or publishing further books because he
was pressured relentlessly. Later in his life Böhme was prevailed upon
to write again. He wrote very complex spiritual and cosmological works
and letters of spiritual advice to seekers. In 1624 he died. “Now I
enter into paradise,” were said to be his last words.
Versluis concludes, “Böhme’s genius lies, in part, in his ability to
convey this spiritual advice in the larger context of his spiritual
understanding. Böhme’s work reveals not only the human relationship to
the natural world, but also the human relationship to the spiritual
realms, most notably, to the various aspects of the divine. According
to Böhme, during our brief lives on earth, we have the possibility of
spiritual illumination that will have profound ramifications for us in
the afterlife. For him, Christianity is not merely “Babel,” or outward
show and belief in merely historical events, but a process of inward
transmutation and illumination.”