Boehme

Ken has discovered a theologian making a strange remark about Jakob Boehme’s attitude towards the doctrine of the appeasement of the father by the son. He called it an evil idea that Christ could be said to appease the wrath of God the father in the crucifixion. An evil idea of Jakob Boehme’s ????? it is an evil idea that God the Father should be wrathful at all and that Christ should have to die in order to quieten a very angry father. Apparently he is fastened in serial thinking and is unable to appreciate the simultaneity of the mechanics of the wheel of being as described by Boehme, where he gives a very adequate description of the turba the turbulation of energy in the field of spirit. This particular man er Hobhouse his name is I think doesn’t seem to be able to comprehend how to assimilate together these two ideas. He thinks God is love and therefore God cannot be annoyed cannot be wrathful. This means that his definition of love must be a rather emasculated one, must be one from which the strength has been removed and we will now proceed to examine this using alchemical terms for zodiacal symbols, planetary symbols as used by the psychological alchemists to consider it. You may remember that we defined once upon a time the state of hell as if it was a triangle composed of Saturn Mars and Mercury. Saturn symbolises the compressing force the centripetal force, the one that presses onto a centre. You experience this whenever you have a desire for an object whether you want to possess something you are concentrating the psyche on it. You remember the psyche is spirit, unified concentrated circumscribed and this spirit is sentient power. As power it is a cause, it produces change as sentience it is aware of itself producing these changes. If it did not press on a centre at all then there would be no universe, so no creatures if there were no creatures no plurality whatever there would then be no value. Boehme is quite clear here about the logical implications of the removal of creation. When he says “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son” if this understood properly it means that the infinite spirit infinite sentient power if it did not produce any finites whatever within itself. Any finite modes of action would be equivalent to an infinity of valuelessness. It would just be as if it were a void and yet it would be a void potentially able to formulate but not actually doing so. We said before that the word void (quite vatum) and empty means power at leisure the OID is the basis of form OID it the Greek for form that which divides one thing from another. It is also the base of the Latin ID, it the V means transcendence or potentiality so void means potential form. But potential form is not actual form and until it is actual it is not actually valuable and to talk about potential forms as if they were actually valuable is to misconceive them. If we imagine that we will represent the spirit by this sheet of paper as we always do if the paper does not move it produces nothing whatever it remains a pure potentiality of action without actualising itself. If it begins to move then it produces something in its motion the wave forms. If we draw the wave forms to clarify them on the paper and we wave it in different ways and produce intersections of wave forms, wherever the waves intersect they produce a little Turba, a little vortex. Each such vortex is like an individual zone of action or a functional form. If you are watching water and water in the sea is moving you will find that were waves meet each other and cross they spin and produce these little vortices. Descartes used this theory of the vortex to account for the appearance of individual form within God. This fellow is objecting to the idea that there is any wrath in God which shows really that he is a careless thinker because theologically God is said to be all in all and infinitely extended, there is nowhere where he is not and we are said to live and move and have our being in him. So if there is anywhere a wrathful man he must be within this sentient power infinite which is God. And as his very being is no more than a function of the power of God then it must be said where a man is angry, God that is the sentient power field is being angry at this point. We have pointed out the danger of abstract thought before if we like to abstract from the Purna the concrete whole, power in its function in its particular function of it and pretend that the others do not exist then we can bring into existence a problem which is utterly unreal. From this unreal problem we can fascinate ourselves and bog ourselves down and ultimately put out our light. To abstract is to take away and if we take away the idea of God from the idea of the absolute motion of God and set God apart by abstract thought from creation then we produce a whole series of problems. First of all we produce a dualism that there is God and there are creatures and that creatures are not God and that God is not creatures. A lot of theologians are very terrified of what they call pantheism. Pantheism means that nature is God and they say if pantheism is true then God is nature, nature is what we see and therefore God is being what we see, God is manifest. If God is Manifest he is involved in natural processes and is himself bound and cannot escape. They are so afraid of this interpretation that they condemn pantheism as a false idea in which God is viewed as nothing but the totality of natural processes. When they say this and try to condemn it they neither define nature nor process nor any other of the terms they use.

Supposing we draw a very large circle and observe that a circle no matter how big we draw it is in fact a rotation of energy. Supposing we use the old term NA means a serpent moving along, and the word Ana the name Ana means a running serpent. Na means wiggly motion which is the type of the serpent. And Tora means law or rotation so if we imagine a serpent wiggling along and turning around going round and round in a circle getting its tail in its mouth and going round and round we are drawing the significance of the word Natura that is nature. One Philosopher distinguished between Natura Naturans that was nature naturing or motion conceived as motion and Natura Naturata, that is nature conceived as natured or formed and this depends entirely on whether we conceive this from inside or outside the system.

Supposing we take a bicycle wheel which is nearly all space the spokes do not occupy a lot of room. Between the spokes there is more space than the thickness of the spokes now if we spin this bicycle wheel very fast we can find we have extreme difficulty poking a finger through it without hurting the finger. If is stationery we can put the finger easily between the spokes but if it moves very very quickly we find it progressively more and more difficult to put the finger through it. So we see that the apparent solidity of this wheel is no more than the speed at which it rotates so we can make an equation between velocity and solidity in such cases. Now when we see the thing spinning, like an aeroplane propeller that you see looking through a plane window, with the sun shining on it. We see a circle shining away and we know that the circle is nothing else but a couple of blades or perhaps three or four blades at the outside it is not a continuous wheel but it looks like a continuous wheel. Now if we see this wheel and call it a wheel, an entity, and believe that this entity is actually like it looks we believe that there is a solid something there. We know that if a man walks into the propeller he will be smashed, because of its high speed of rotation. It will treat him as if it were more solid than he is, it is’nt. But it appears to be so when it moves very, very fast now if we take it that the circle I have drawn here is the circle described by the rotating propeller and here at the centre is its point of suspension, and it is spinning around this point so fast that the blades continuously travelling round quicker than I can put my finger through then it will be a solid disc for me. Now if I view this disc from outside it and look at the edge as it spins and I see the sun shining on it, it may look like a spinning disc and if I have never seen a stopped propeller I would not know that it is made of a very few blades perhaps two or three or four and I would generate in my mind an idea of a shiny disc not the idea of rotating blades and looking at it from outside I would call it a form and I would not thing about it as spinning I would just think it is a shiny disc. Now this would be Naturta Naturata this would be nature natured, nature formed. If I now put my finger into it to touch this disc to see what it is made of I loose a finger which is Natura naturans this is nature naturing. This is something like the Juggernaut of the Indians which is a great cart on which a figure of a God is put and the devotees of this God in their excitement tend to throw themselves under the wheels. The Idol that is being carried is Natura Naturata which is merely a form static the big cart the juggernaut on which it is carried being pulled by the devotees is Naturans , it is running about and if you get in its away you will be run over.

If we now say that we can look at nature in two ways we can look at nature as formed and when we do this we are looking from outside it and ignoring deliberately that it is fact force moving. And because of the velocity of the forces in it and their recurrence, their cyclic behaviour, we imaging that there are wheels existing like Ezekials wheels. We know for instance that an atom has inside it some very very minute little bodies, electrons, wizzing round sub protons at a neucleus and that the distances relative to the size of the atom from the electron to the neuclear proton are so great that they are equivilant to the distances between the planets and the sun. We say that relative to the size of the atom the distances are solar distances the atom therefore is practically all space. So far they have not penetrated inside a single electron and discovered that it too is all space and that in fact an electron is simply a shell of force rotating and made into a shell because it rotates.

Let’s just see a very simple model of an atom the simplest atom, positive charge at the centre that’s a proton and a negative charge an electron whizzing round it. Now the funny thing about this electron when its going round the nuclear proton it changes its orbit continuously it flies round and as it flies round it alters its spin, continuously alters its spin like this, and it builds round that proton an apparent shell. So that it appears that the size of the atom, is to be measured by the diameter of the orbit of the electron. The one electron flies so rapidly around this proton in the centre of the hydrogen atom that it apparently makes this atom quite big. It is really practically all space but the speed of rotation of that electron round it is so great that it gives the appearance of a sphere the size of which has for its diameter the same as the orbit of the electron. Simply by altering its angle of rotation altering its angle of orbit tilting the orbit as it moves it builds for itself a sphere yet this sphere is nothing except one little impulse changing its position very very rapidly. Now in so far as we believe it is an atom it is Naturm Naturata in so far as we are able to penetrate to the meaning of the situation we know it is naturans it is actually movement and nothing else but movement there is no solid atom there is no solid world. The so called solid is simply the velocity at which spirit functions.

Now let’s return a little bit to our definition of the under????? wrath of God. God is the absolute sentient power this god is said to be love, our definition of love which we have all agreed to use is that love is the working for the development of the potentialities of being. So we do not say that love equals pleasure, it may be where pleasure develops being, but it may not be it may be something totally different. This absolute sentient power is determining itself to develop the potentialities of being. If we remember this piece of paper represents the absolute, when it moves it develops one of the potentialities of itself namely the potentiality of actualising motion. When this motion is generated the intersection points, rotations, then it has actualised one of its potentials namely that of producing finite individual zones of action inside itself. There is nothing other than it. It produces individuals, it produces us. We in so far as we are functions of forces activating in the progressive sense of the verb now are Natura Naturans. In so far as we know the fact that we are motion compounds and look from outside at our bodies and apparently look still to each other those of us who are not fidgeting we Naturata we are formally fixed and apparently static. But in fact this absolute sentient power is mobilising itself. It is producing by its modes the word used to translate the Samkhia concept of Guna or substantial motion, in its modes it produces all the creatures there are minerals vegetables animals humans bacteria whatever else there are. They are all forms of motion.

Now when we come to consider how a motion is generated we go back to our hydrogen atom and see that we cannot initiate motion except from a point. Motion to be initiated must start with a point there must therefore be the generation of a point. A point comes to be in the infinite field of the absolute only by the saturnine impression, that is by contraction, by centripetal pressure. In the infinite field prior to the appearance of pressure there are no points whatever, that is pre-creation. On the pressures in the field centring, that is to say they are leaning on themselves. They bring to be a point, that point now is the point on initiation for a sequence of movements, manifest movements, movements that can be observed. When the point of centripetal force comes to be we have simultaneously the appearance of a point and at the same time contra-action because when the energies of the field press onto a point. In stressing the point they are straining the surrounds, we cannot compress the field without straining it. If we imagine a sheet of rubber to be a type of model, some of the physicists might as well use a colloid for it. If we imagine a sheet of rubber and we get hold of it at the centre and pull it together with our fingers and thus thicken the centre con-dense it we have thinned it round about. Suppose we take a sheet of rubber and stretch it over a frame. We look at it against a light and we can vaguely see the light through it, we now get hold of the centre of it and hold it together and twist it and thus compact in the centre quite a lot of rubber we hold it up to the light again and now we see in the centre a very dark shadow in the centre where the rubber is condensed and round it the strained rubber attenuated the light is coming through it. So we cannot condense without producing rarefaction round it, we cannot stress without producing strain and this strain is a demand on the part of the field to let go of the point that has been made. Now if the point were to make itself and complete its process of centripetal pressure and remain so it would be static.

Now this would not fulfil the purposes of sentient power, it would not develop the full potentialities of action. The full potentialities of action mean that when a point comes to be it must also be able to become other than it is otherwise it loses its potentiality of becoming better or worse. So when we bring a point to be with this saturnine compression we have strained the field round it and the strained field round it is demanding that the point let go again. And it pulls back on the point and then the point lets go for a bit and when it lets go the strain wins and the stress disappears. But as soon as the stress disappears the point has been lost and therefore the sentient power re-stresses it and then it re-strains it again. And it does this alternately and this is the generation of the impulse nature of the universe, the universe and everything in it is simply a system of centres of impulse/expulse. Every impulse has an equal and opposite expulse and they alternate between the two and this produces all the pulsation phenomena we know. We can say that the universe is a function of pulsation in this way. We know that it is a function of waves of various kinds and we know that waves move by impulsation. So there must be a point from which motion begins and the symbol of the generation of this point is Saturn neither God nor any other being can initiate an motion other than at a point. The absolute motion of God is initiated absolutely throughout its entire continuum simultaneously by the production of an infinity of points by an infinity of stressing of itself by itself through infinite space. The symbol of this is Saturn it is also the symbol which becomes Satan or the devil principle. It become this because when this stressing of the point occurs there appears within the field zones of isolation and the harder you press the more apparently isolated are those zones. If we make one zone by pressing we stress it we have strained the field round it and the field responds by trying to stress another point, to avoid itself being totally attenuated and reduced to nothing this produces an alternating of the positing of points and the strain between is what we call space and the stress parts are what we call bodies or material particles.

So if we like to write stress equals material particles and strain equals space that would correspond with what we actually observe. All the things that we call bodies material particles are simply stress points of force and all the zones we say are space, empty, void and so on are simply places of strain instead of stress. The symbol for the stress is Saturn, the symbol for the strain is Jupiter. Stress Saturn, strain Jupiter, if we like to define these we can say Saturn equals anti Jupiter, Jupiter equals anti Saturn. Stress equals anti-strain and strain equals anti-stress. This is all a question of terminology the fact is the two symbols Saturn and Jupiter both derive from a circle with a cross in it. The circle is then cut in half and one half receives a cross on top and the other a cross below. The one with the cross on top says the victory of the particular over the absolute and the other one says the victory of the absolute over the particular. The relative trance over the absolute Saturn, the absolute trance over the relative Jupiter. Now both derive from the same symbol and that symbol is cut in half and they are both are equally valid. Now many theologians have noticed that if you in an enlightened period decide to eliminate the devil as a stupid concept you also eliminate god as an anti concept of the same order. So that when people think in this enlightened world we don’t need a devil they are saying we don’t need a god and lots of people who are interested in religious conversions point out the necessity for insisting on the existence of the devil to drive people towards god. This is because they are aware of the mutually supporting nature of the two concepts and their common origin.

Now when we put this symbol of Saturn down to mean stress and the symbol of Jupiter to mean strain, that is centrifugal force. We are saying Saturn equals the bound and Jupiter equals free. Saturn equals dom and Jupiter equals free both together free dom God Devil. Jupiter Saturn God devil free dom. These all presuppose each other now if we were simply to posit points and hold them statically within the field it wouldn’t have there would be no further development of potentialities we would simply have a universe full of points and that would be the end of it

It would not develop all the complex motion relations that we see and that we call value. So we need something else and we see what it is the alternation of stress strains and the abandoning of a stress in one place to posit it in another place and when we abandon a stress in one place and posit a light stress in another place we say there has been the motion of a body. In fact no body has moved at all the field has produced a point of condensation then relaxed it and produced another point of condensation of like form in an adjacent place. And we fondly imagine that something has moved, nothing has moved simply a stress relaxation stress in an adjacent place relaxation stress in the next adjacent place relaxation this is so called linear progression of material particles. It has no reality in the field whatever.

So out of Saturn and Jupiter comes this alternation of motion and the contra action which produced rotation the symbol for which is Mercury. Now Mercury simply means the rotation the mixing process this is a kind of device like a spin dryer or a centrifuge and you put all sorts of heterogeneous things in it and it twizzels about and mixes them in a certain way and then it sorts them out. It has two functions if you put sugar in your tea and stir it, the sugar is distributed through the tea, and if you put the whole thing in a centrifuge and spin it very very fast they will all separate out again. So the same process has two functions this turbulation can mix things together at certain rates but it will separate them out again at other rates. So if you do get certain mechanical mixtures of powders and put them in a little glass phial evenly distributed and swing them around on the end of a piece of string all the different types will separate out to their different levels. So turbulation we could say at low speeds mixes things up and very high speeds seperates them out again. So we see that high speed turbulation is devilish that is it seperates things out and low speed turbulation allows things to mix and so on. So we have two symbols here Saturn and Mercury one meaning compression or stressing and the other meaning rotation and when things are adjacent to each other, compressed by the saturnine stressing action if they move, that is the mercurial principle operates in them if they move they rub on each other and this rubbing produces friction and friction is heat and for this we use the symbol of Mars. So we have Saturn for the stressing or compression mercury for the motion and Mars for the heat generated by this process of compression and motion. Now how do we compress and move the greater the temperature.

If we now say we are dealing with sentient power and this sentient power has brought these things to be if the saturnine compression dominates the sentient power experiences very high temperature grinding processes. And if the grip is too great the whole thing may seize up like a motor car engine without any water in the radiator or oil in the sump it will seize up and shortly after it seized up all its heat will apparently disappear. And so following the excessive heat of great friction comes a cold state of static, form. This is the cold death that Boehme thinks about. So you can have a hot hellish process of great friction and you can have a cold process where you have actually gripped so hard that motion has stopped.

While in psychological work we discover that if people are turbulating and have a certain amount of freedom they can get very overheated and very very angry. But where they are being angry they have still got a tiny bit of freedom left in them in order to be angry. If the inhibiting forces press on them very very hard so that they lose their freedom suddenly this heat disappears, they go cold. Physically their temperature drops the heat has now become latent, it is hiding inside them well held down but their temperature has dropped and they feel cold and they feel dead and so on and it is always apparent to the same force the super grip of the saturnine impression hanging on to something desired to such an extent that it deprives the system of the free space needed for motion. The motion is then stopped and the whole being becomes cold.

When we talk about the wrath of God here in this kind of alchemical theology we are saying that there is a process of sentient power, the infinite sentient power which is God which localised with an excess stress upon the saturnine element can in fact reduce the thing to a very high temperature hellish fictive process, psychologically characterised by dreadful anger, wrath. or going further still to go into a state like the coldness of death where the anger is so inhibited the anger turns deadly cold pale with that weird perspiration that breaks out on the surface. This process goes on inside the infinite sentient power which is God. There is nowhere else for it to take place, there is no possibility for this process taking place outside God because God is infinite and there is nowhere where he is not there is nowhere we can go to do this on our own so we just have to be annoyed inside him. And it his sentient power which constitutes our being and therefore only by looking at the thing in a certain way and by using terms in a certain way could we say that God has no wrath in him. To say he has no wrath in him would be abstract thinking it would be to pretend that we are annoyed and we are not in God and we are not God and that the spirit of man is not Gods spirit. Every man has within himself this same sentient power, it is his very being, and it is a self moving power and therefore every man can compress himself if he wishes. He can stress the saturnine element of his character or the Jupiter element. If he stresses the Saturnine it affects even his physical form in a certain way if he stresses the Jupiter aspect he will begin to look like a collection of Picnic types, nice round jovial fellow. Whatever he does it will signature itself in his organism. ............................................

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