Project Gutenberg's Dialogues on the Supersensual Life, by Jacob Behmen

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Dialogues on the Supersensual Life

Author: Jacob Behmen

Editor: Bernard Holland

Release Date: September 17, 2010 [EBook #33742]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIALOGUES ON THE SUPERSENSUAL LIFE ***

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

DIALOGUES

ON

THE SUPERSENSUAL LIFE

BY

JACOB BEHMEN

EDITED BY BERNARD HOLLAND

METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
LONDON
1901

_Desiderare est Mereri_

PREFACE

The Works of Jacob Behmen, the "Teutonic Theosopher," translated into
English, were first printed in England in the seventeenth century,
between 1644 and 1662. In the following century a complete edition in
four large volumes was produced by some of the disciples of William Law.
This edition, completed in the year 1781, was compiled in part from the
older English edition, and in part from later fragmentary translations
by Law and others. It is not easily accessible to the general reader,
and, moreover, the greater part of Behmen's Works could not be
recommended save to those who had the time and power to plunge into that
deep sea in search of the many noble pearls which it contains.

Behmen's language and way of thought are remote and strange, and in
reading his thought one has often to pass it through a process of
intellectual translation. This is chiefly true of his earlier work, the
"Aurora" or "Morning Redness." But among those works which he wrote
during the last five years of his life there are some written in a
thought-language less difficult to be understood, yet containing the
essential teaching of this humble Master of Divine Science. From these I
have selected some which may, in a small volume, be useful. It seemed
that for this purpose it would be best to take the "Dialogues of the
Supersensual Life," including as one of them the beautiful, really
separate, Dialogue, called in the Complete Works, "The way from darkness
to true illumination." In the case of neither of these works is the