-and suddenly in that Light my will was set
upon by a mighty impulse to describe the being of God."[21]

This experience was the momentous watershed of his life. He is
constantly referring to it either directly or indirectly. "I teach,
write, and speak," is his frequent testimony, "of what has been wrought
in me. I have not scraped my teaching together out of histories and so
made _opinions_. I have by God's grace obtained eyes of my own."[22]
"There come moments," he writes, "when the soul sees God as in a flash
of lightning,"[23] and he tells his readers that "when the Gate is
opened" to them, they also "will understand."[24] "In my own
faculties," he writes again, "I am as blind a man as {161} ever was,
but in the Spirit of God my spirit sees through all."[25]

During the ten quiet years which followed "the opening of the Gate" to
him, Boehme meditated on what he had seen, and, though he does not say
so, he almost certainly read much in the works of "the great masters,"
as he calls them, who were trying to tell, often in confused language,
the central secret of the universe. Instead of fading out, his "flash"
of insight grew steadily clearer to him as he read and pondered, and
little by little, as one comes to see in the dark, certain great ideas
became defined. With his third "flash,"[26] which came to him in 1610,
when he felt once more "overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and touched by
God,"[27] he was moved to write down for his own use what he had seen.
"It was," he says, "powerfully borne in upon my mind to write down
these things for a memorial, however difficult they might be of
apprehension to my outer self [intellect] and of expression through my
pen. I felt compelled to begin at once, like a child going to school,
to work upon this very great Mystery. Inwardly [in spirit] I saw it
all well enough, as in a great depth; for I looked through as into a
chaos where all things lie [undifferentiated] but the unravelling
thereof seemed impossible. From time to time an opening took place
within me, _as of a growth_.[28] I kept this to myself for twelve
years [1600-12], being full of it and I experienced a vehement impulse
before I could bring it out into expression; but at last it overwhelmed
me like a cloud-burst which hits whatever it lights upon. And so it
went with me: whatsoever I could grasp sufficiently to bring it out,
that I wrote down."[29]

This first book which thus grew out of his spiritual