What do you think?
Rate this book
VIDA TRIPLA DO SER HUMANO, A
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 17, 2025
This book can really open horizons, it has knowledge that cannot be sought anywhere else, it may be a little idealistic, and at times childish, but it is of immense value.
It was written by the hand of a humble shoemaker, and it discusses how the human life is entangled and surrounded by the eternal and the ephemeral, he basically divides life in three halves, according to seven properties:
The first is the eternal Abyss, it has as it's source the first three properties of Nature: astringency, meaning a desire, which "pulls" its desired thing to itself, can also be called sharpness or compression, bitterness - the attraction caused from the desire, stinging, dividing the hardness-, and lastly, anguish, the third property, the anguish of the feeling of the breaking of the desire. The third property is fierce, and has the potency to become odious if not purged in the fire, then it is Hell, God in Himself does not even know Hell, “the Light shineth in the darkness and the
darkness comprehended it not”. The third fierce property can either humble itself in the fire -the fourth property- and come out as a calm and sweet light, or it will rise up above and become infernal fire pride.
Secondly the kingdom of Heaven, it has as its source the sweet light, the fierceness purged by fire, which is the the virtue of love. But the virtue of love and humbleness in themselves are not sufficient for one to reach Heaven, for it can be a merely natural love. In order for one to reach the Light of God one has to go through repentance and there is no other way, and there in the spiritual heart, in the inward ground is the kingdom of heaven, and to speak of God outside of this is to speak blindly of Him.
Thirdly, the ephemeral world, the material world which is transient - It takes it's source from the Abyss and it really drags men into the Abyss where the infernal forces are at work, it can turn human beings into animals who only think about coupling and eating things to appease the sensible desires. This principle is not evil (as the Gnostics and heretics maintain), for Boehme humans were made to dominate over this principle, and not become subdued by it. Actually the Third Principle is sprung from the spiritual world, the spiritual world is the inward ground of the visible world, and an effluence of the seven properties, because of this in the ephemeral world is manifested both Heaven and Hell, both Goodness and Evil.
Regarding heresies, from a Roman Catholic point of view I did not see contradictory to the faith. It could well be that someone would find something problematic here especially if they consider that this author was in fact from a Protestant background. However the point of the author isn’t to redefine the faith or teach new things, but to promote the inner meaning of the biblical texts, he insists that one should strictly adhere to the scriptures. The mystical side of Jakob is much more similar to the Catholic way of seeing things than that protestant perspective that reduces everything to the merely human and is but a historical external knowledge. Jakob does an excellent job in providing inner meanings of the scriptures and that is the main purpose with this book. It is a book of inner knowledge and introspection.
It was written by the hand of a humble shoemaker, and it discusses how the human life is entangled and surrounded by the eternal and the ephemeral, he basically divides life in three halves, according to seven properties:
The first is the eternal Abyss, it has as it's source the first three properties of Nature: astringency, meaning a desire, which "pulls" its desired thing to itself, can also be called sharpness or compression, bitterness - the attraction caused from the desire, stinging, dividing the hardness-, and lastly, anguish, the third property, the anguish of the feeling of the breaking of the desire. The third property is fierce, and has the potency to become odious if not purged in the fire, then it is Hell, God in Himself does not even know Hell, “the Light shineth in the darkness and the
darkness comprehended it not”. The third fierce property can either humble itself in the fire -the fourth property- and come out as a calm and sweet light, or it will rise up above and become infernal fire pride.
Secondly the kingdom of Heaven, it has as its source the sweet light, the fierceness purged by fire, which is the the virtue of love. But the virtue of love and humbleness in themselves are not sufficient for one to reach Heaven, for it can be a merely natural love. In order for one to reach the Light of God one has to go through repentance and there is no other way, and there in the spiritual heart, in the inward ground is the kingdom of heaven, and to speak of God outside of this is to speak blindly of Him.
Thirdly, the ephemeral world, the material world which is transient - It takes it's source from the Abyss and it really drags men into the Abyss where the infernal forces are at work, it can turn human beings into animals who only think about coupling and eating things to appease the sensible desires. This principle is not evil (as the Gnostics and heretics maintain), for Boehme humans were made to dominate over this principle, and not become subdued by it. Actually the Third Principle is sprung from the spiritual world, the spiritual world is the inward ground of the visible world, and an effluence of the seven properties, because of this in the ephemeral world is manifested both Heaven and Hell, both Goodness and Evil.
Regarding heresies, from a Roman Catholic point of view I did not see contradictory to the faith. It could well be that someone would find something problematic here especially if they consider that this author was in fact from a Protestant background. However the point of the author isn’t to redefine the faith or teach new things, but to promote the inner meaning of the biblical texts, he insists that one should strictly adhere to the scriptures. The mystical side of Jakob is much more similar to the Catholic way of seeing things than that protestant perspective that reduces everything to the merely human and is but a historical external knowledge. Jakob does an excellent job in providing inner meanings of the scriptures and that is the main purpose with this book. It is a book of inner knowledge and introspection.
Displaying 1 of 1 review