High and Deep Grounds of the Threefold Life of Man

Chapter 1. Of Man.

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Chapter I.

The life of the elements is a boiling; when this stops, the elemental warmth is extinguished.

Life exists within a state of death Böhme often describes physical life as a paradox—a constant process of "burning" or "boiling" that leads toward death even as it sustains itself., in that it is a boiling; and when it boils no longer, it is extinguished. We also know that the stars ignite the elements, and the stars are the fire of the elements, and the sun ignites the stars, so that there is a welling up: "Quallen," a central concept in Böhme’s work, describing the "source-spirit" of life which can be both a source (Quelle) and a torment (Qual). and boiling within one another; but the elemental life is finite and fragile, while the soul-life is eternal.

Moses writes that God breathed the living breath into man, and so man became a living soul.

8. Since it is then eternal, it must also come from the eternal, as the dear Moses writes quite rightly of it: God breathed the living breath into man, and so man became a living soul.

God is everything, and yet no thing is God: He dwells within Himself, in another principle.

9. We cannot say, however, that because man exists in a threefold life, each life stands separately with a distinct form. Rather, we find that they are within one another, and yet each life has its effect in its own domain: "Regiment," referring to a governing sphere or realm of influence., as if in its mother. For just as God the Father is everything—since everything originates: "uhrständet," meaning to arise or take its stand from a primal source. from Him—and is present in all places and is the fullness of all things, yet the thing does not grasp Him. Nor is the thing God, neither of His Spirit nor of the true Divine Essence original: "Göttlichen Wesens.". One cannot say of any tangible thing: "This is God," or "God is here more than in other places." Yet He is truly present; He holds the thing, but the thing does not hold Him, for He does not dwell in the thing, but in Himself, in another principle: "Principio," the Latin term for a beginning or fundamental source.

The soul dwells in the body and is surrounded by the stars and elements.

10. Thus also is the soul of man breathed in by God; it dwells in the body and is surrounded by the spirit of the stars and elements, not