Of the Threefold Life

as also the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of Hell, good and evil, life and the enclosure of death.

reflection on from where life or death comes.

37. Question to the mind: why it speaks more of God than it understands.

37. So you say: God has created such things. Yes, rightly. But why are you blind and do not acknowledge or understand such things, since you are after all an image of God? Why do you speak more of God than you know and has been revealed to you? Why do you make laws (concerning the will of God) of which you know nothing, since you do not know Him? Or why do you enclose your life in death, when you may well live and acknowledge God who dwells in you? For you also hear the same from St. John, that all things are made through the Word.

38. How the Word is God, that makes itself from eternity.

38. Since God is then the Word that has made all things, He must have been in all things. For a Spirit is not a made thing, but a born being within itself, which has the center of birth within itself; otherwise it the same being would be breakable. So now the center must stand in the eternal Maker, otherwise it would be perishable. For from eternity there is nothing but only the Word, and the Word was God. So it must then be its own eternal maker, and it must speak itself as a word out of itself as out of its maker.

39. The Speaker is the Father of the Word; these two are one, yet in two forms: the abyss of Hell stands in the center of the Father.

39. For wherever there is a word, there is also a speaker who speaks it. So now the same is its Father, which speaks it, and the Word which is spoken out of the center of the Father is His Son. And the Father in His center calls Himself a consuming fire; and the Son as the Word is nonetheless a light of love, humility, gentleness, purity, holiness. And the Father and the Word are also thus acknowledged and named in all of Scripture. So we must nonetheless consider the fire's evil or property in the center of the Father, since the Father and the Word are one, and only in two forms: and that also the fierceness original: "grim," meaning severity or wrath and the anger, together with the abyss of Hell, stand in the center of the Father.

40. Which is the eternal bond from which all things are made.

40. For St. John says: from and through Him are all things, and without Him is nothing made. For where the Word desired to make, and the Father through the Word, there was no material out of which He made it. For it was all a nothing, neither evil nor good, neither light nor darkness, but the center stood there. The will is His Heart, Son, and Word; the same is alone the eternal being and the bond that makes itself. And because one cannot grasp the Godhead in this way, since the being gives a distinction and appears in two principles.

41. To what end the Author's writing tends: much interpretation without knowledge.

41. Thus we wish to lay before you the foundation or show it just as we certainly acknowledge or understand it. And

[Of the Threefold Life] of Man.

our writing and purpose tends to this end: that you may see how blindly you act without knowledge or understanding when you make such great interpretations of the writings of the Saints, concerning the being and the Will of God, and yet you do not know Him.

42. Reproof of the learned, because they only have the history of the Saints.

42. You persecute, despise, and revile one another; you stir up war and rebellion, and destroy lands and people, for the true knowledge of God and His will, and yet you are as blind to God as a stone. You do not know yourselves; notwithstanding, you are so raving and fight for God, who is a maker, sustainer, and bearer of all things, who is the center in all things. Likewise, you fight for His light, which yet does not appear in wrathfulness and in malice throughout eternity; but in friendly humility and in love, His center opens. And you are so raving and mad, and think that you have it in strife and struggle of malice upon your tongue. You do not have it, but only the History original: "Historiam," the external account or literal record of the Saints, who had the light shining from their center. Therefore, they have spoken from the Holy Spirit which goes out from the light. But you take their words, and the center of your heart is firmly [closed]. You run and race in the four forms of malice such as in pride, greed, envy, and anger.

43. Author promises to point out the ground of the two principles.

43. Therefore, I want to show you the ground of the two eternal principles from a single center, so that you may yet become seeing and notice how you run in the Kingdom of the Devil; if you will yet turn yourself, and leave your pride, enter into yourselves, and thus might obtain the highest and eternal good.

44. Author promises to show what we are in body and soul: what God, Heaven, and Hell are: he desires that one shall not hold it for a fable: and says that we are blinder than the heathens.

44. So I will show you what we are in body and soul, also what God, Heaven, and Hell are. Do not take this for a fable opinion or human invention, for it proves itself in all things, and there is nothing so small that it does not stand open therein. If you only do not blind yourselves with abominable pride in your meddlesome searching after the ground of nature, then you shall understand all things. And do not go so madly upon the bare letter of the History, and do not make laws so blindly according to your own thinking, with which you persecute one another; you are blinder in this than the heathens.

45. How one is able to know God and speak rightly of Him.

45. Search for the heart and for the Spirit of the Scripture, that He may be born in you, and that the center of the love of God may be opened to you; then you are able to know God and to speak rightly of Him. For from the History, no one shall boast himself a master or call himself a knower of the being of God, but from the Holy Spirit, who in another principle in the center of...