Six Theosophic Points, and Other Writings

1. Reason says: As the mind with the senses is a natural Mfe with a beginning, which stands in a time and fragiHty; how may it then in this time be brought to the supersensible divine life? Or, how is the divine indwelling in hf e ?

2. Answer. The life of man is a form of the divine will, and came from the divine inbreathing into the created image of man. It is the formed Word of the divine knowledge; but has been poisoned by the counter-breathing of the devil, and of the fierce wrath of temporal Nature; so that the life's will has fashioned itself with the outward, earthly counterstroke of the mortal nature, and has come out of its temperament into separation of qualities.

3. For these reasons it is found still in the earthly image, and is now to be considered in three principles. In the first Principle, by its true primal existence, it stands in the outgoing will of God, in the divine knowledge, which originally was a temperament, in which the divine power did work by sense. And therein is rightly understood a para191

p. 192

dise or working of divine powers, as a perpetual formation of divine will. And by this budding is to be understood the outgoing of the good senses, whereby the divine wisdom formed itself in figure in a divine manner, and by such formation the divine understanding manifested itself through the outgoing of the life of sense. Hence it was rightly called an image of God, in which the divine will revealed itself.

4. But when this life in the first principle was breathed upon in its image by the fierce wrathful devil, so that the devil whispered it, that it were good and profitable for it that the outgoing of the senses from the life should break itself off from the temperament, and should bring itself into an image of its own according to the properties of plurality, to prove dissimilarity, viz. to know and to be sensible of evil and good ;

5. Then the life's own will consented, and brought the senses as the outgoing Desire thereinto ; it has introduced itself into desire for ownness, and impressed or comprehended itself in selfhood.

6. And then immediately the Hfe's understanding became manifest in [separated] qualities; Nature has taken the life captive in dissimilarity, and set up her rule. Whence the life is become painful, and the inward divine ground of the good will and nature has been extinguished, that is, has become inoperative as to the creature. For the life's will broke itself off therefrom, and went into sensibility, out of unity into plurality; it strove against the Unity, viz. the eternal one rest, the one good.

p. 193

7. When this took place, the divine ground (viz. the second Principle or the wisdom of God, which in divine power with the out-breathing will of God had imprinted itself in the image-like life [of the soul or of the first, fieiy principle], as in the counterstroke to God) was eclipsed in the false will. For the cause of the motion of the holy Essence had turned itself to eai-thhness, in which evil and good are in strife.

8. Understand it: The eternal, unfathomable will of life had turned itself away from the divine Ens, and wished to rule in evil and good. And therefore the second principle, or the kingdom of God, is become extinguished for it ; and in the stead thereof is arisen the third Principle in its own figurative form, as the quality of the stars and of the four elements ; whence the body became coarse and animal, and the senses false and earthly.