Note 240 — Chapter VII

‘The spirit of man,’ says Behmen, ‘contains a spark from the power and light of God.’ The Holy Ghost is ‘creaturely’ within it when renewed, and it can therefore search into the depths of God and nature, as a child in its father’s house. In God, past, present, and future; breadth, depth, and height; far and near, are apprehended as one, and the holy soul of man sees them in like manner, although (in the present imperfect state) but partially. For the devil sometimes succeeds in smothering the seed of inward light.—Aurora, Vorrede, §§ 96-105.

According to Behmen, Stephen, when he saw the heavens opened, and Christ at the right hand of God, was not spiritually translated into any distant upper region,—‘he had penetrated into the inmost birth—into the heaven which is everywhere.’—Aurora, cap. xix. § 48. Similarly, he declares that he had not ascended into heaven, and seen with the eye of the flesh the creative processes he describes, but that his knowledge comes from the opening within him of the gate to the inner heavenly world, so that the divine sun arose and shone within his heart, giving him infallible inward certainty concerning everything he announces. If an angel from heaven had told him such things, he must have doubted. It might have been Satan in a garb of light: it would have been an external testimony: it would have been beyond his comprehension; but this light and impulse from within precludes all doubt. The holy Soul is one spirit with God, though still a creature; sees as the angels see, and far more, since they discern only heavenly things, but man has experience both of heaven and hell, standing as he does midway between the two.—Aurora, cap. xi. §§ 68-72 and cap. xii. § 117. Comp. also cap. xxv. §§ 46-48.