The Confessions of Jacob Boehme

When we shall come together, over this narrow bridge of the fleshly working, to be in yonder green meadow to which the wrath of God does not reach, then we shall be fully requited for all our damages and hurts we have sustained ; though indeed at present the world accounts us for fools, and we must suffer the Devil to domineer, rush, and roar over us.

Now observe : if thou fixest thy thoughts concerning heaven, and wouldst willingly conceive in thy mind what it is and where it is and how it is, thou needst not to cast thy thoughts many thousand miles off, for that place, that heaven, is not thy heaven.

And though indeed that is united withp. 23 thy heaven as one body, and so together is but the one body of God, yet thou art not become a creature in that very place which is above many hundred thousand miles off, but thou art in the heaven of this world, which contains also in it such a Deep as is not of any human numbering.

The true heaven is everywhere, even in that very place where thou standest and goest ; and so when thy spirit presses through the astral and the fleshly, and apprehends the innermost moving of God, then it is clearly in heaven.

But that there is assuredly a pure glorious heaven in all the three movings aloft above the deep of this world, in which God's Being together with that of the holy angels springs up very purely, brightly, beauteously, and joyfully, is undeniable. And he is not born of God that denies it.

Thou must know that this world in its innermost unfolds its properties and powers in union with the heaven aloftp. 24 above us ; and so there is one Heart, one Being, one Will, one God, all in all.

The outermost moving of this world cannot comprehend the outermost moving of heaven aloft above this world, for they are one to the other as life and death, or as a man and a stone are one to the other.

There is a strong firmament dividing the outermost of this world from the outermost of the upper heaven ; and that firmament is Death, which rules and reigns everywhere in the outermost in this world, and sets a great gulf between them.

The second moving of this world is in the life ; it is the astral, out of which is generated the third and holy moving ; and therein love and wrath strive one with the other.

For the second moving stands in the seven fountain spirits of this world, and is in all places and in all the creatures as inp. 25 man. But the Holy Ghost also rules and reigns in that second, and helps to generate the third, the holy moving.

This, the third, is the clear and holy heaven which unites with the Heart of God, distinct from and above all heavens, as one heart.

Therefore, thou child of man, be not discouraged, be not so timorous and pusillanimous ; if thou in thy zeal and earnest sincerity sowest the seed of thy tears, thou dost not sow it in earth but in heaven ; for in thy astral moving thou sowest, and in thy soulish moving thou reapest, and in the kingdom of heaven thou possessest and enjoy est it.

If man's eyes were but opened he should see God everywhere in his heaven ; for heaven stands in the innermost moving everywhere.

Moreover, when Stephen saw the heaven opened and the Lord Jesus at the rightp. 26 hand of God, then his spirit did not first swing itself aloft into the upper heaven, but it penetrated into the innermost moving wherein heaven is everywhere.

Neither must thou think that God is such a kind of Being as is only in the upper heaven, and that the soul, when it departs from the body, goes aloft many hundred thousand miles off. It needs not do that ; it is set in the innermost moving, and there it is with God and in God, and with all the holy angels, and can suddenly be above and suddenly beneath ; it is not hindered by any thing.