Cupid and Psyche: Part Three

Of all the psychonauts of history, none voyaged further int inner-space than Jacob Bohme. So it is Bohme that we must turn. To examine his considerable contributions to the dialectic of will and intellect. Bohme is more interested in showing how well and intellect work together than in proclaiming the supremacy of either will or intellect. Bohme is one of the most difficult thinkers to read. In an unintentionally comic remark: Hegel complained of how difficult it is to read Bohme's writings. Bohme's writings are a labyrinth of emotions, myth, and imagery. Bohme was conversant in the obscure and symbolic language of alchemy. It must be said Bohme has a better excuse for the opacity of his language than Hegel. In that he was a pioneer in depth psychology. He was not only writing before Freud and Jung; he was writing before Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer. So he used the language that was available, and when the language was not adequate, he used myth and imagery. The main topic of Bohme's writing was the nature of the Godhead. So why should we look to him for insights into depth psychology? The answer is that Bohme was a strict adherent of the doctrine of the microcosm and macrocosm. So whatever is said about the Godhead (macrocosm) is also applicable to humans (microcosm). So let us examine Bohme's conception to the Godhead. To begin with Bohme gives us a bizarre image of a giant eye looking into a mirror. In this image Bohme recognizes both will (desire) the eye, and intellect (abstraction) the mirror. To be conscious there must be both will and intellect. Bohme divides the the Godhead into seven categories which are reflections of God. He refers to these categories as fountain spirits or natural properties. We shall use the latter term, but it must be understood that the seven categories are not static. For Bohme God is a verb, not a noun. The categories are living, intelligent, and dynamic entities. Bohme makes this clear in his most common imagery for the Godhead as a series of constantly rotating concentric wheels around a central hub. Each natural property is represented by one of the wheels. Bohme has a liking for wheel imagery; as do most mystics. The first natural property is Attraction. This is introspective desire; which demand only itself. In other words consciousness starts in pain.the pain of frustration of appetites denied; frustration that withdraws from the world. It is pain and frustration that gives birth to consciousness. The second property is is Repulsion (one can clearly see the hermetic influence on Bohme). Repulsion is outward looking desire. The desire to expand; wants and needs. An analogy for the first two natural properties would be a pendulum that oscillates between inward and outward desire. This leads to the third natural property: Rotation. This is movement without end, a constant whirling.Constant movement without end/ a constant whirling with no end point. Constant movement, yet going nowhere; the repetition of of desire and frustration. The first three natural properties make up Bohme's Firewheel. The Firewheel is also the First Person of the Trinity: the Father. The Firewheel is an inharmonious contradiction that cannot be solved, nor abandoned. There is heat and smoke , but no light. The contradiction cannot be solved without help from above.The yearning for freedom to escape the contradiction leads to the fourth natural property, and to the beginning of Bohme's Waterwheel. The fourth natural property is Lightning. Lightning is the sudden illumination; that feeling when a sudden answer appears to a problem. The Firewheel is quenched by the Waterwheel. The emotions of the Firewheel retreat from the illumination of Lightning. This is of course, the birth of abstract thought. Distinctions can be drawn in the light that are opaque in the dark. This leads to the fifth natural property of Wisdom. Wisdom is of course abstract knowledge. Bohme sometimes refers to Wisdom as light and water. The Firewheel is quenched. Wisdom is of course, Plato's realm of the Forms. The Forms or reason is the restraining power over emotion, thus quenching the emotional excess. Lightning and Wisdom are the representations of the Second Person of the Trinity: the Son. With the sixth natural property of Intelligible Sound or Tone we move to the representation of the The Third Person of the Trinity: the Holy Spirit. This it the heavenly Tone that rings out; the outpouring of the Holy Spirit It is emotion purified by reason. The dark emotional excesses of the Father quenched by the rational principle of the Son. With the sixth natural property of Tone both the Trinity and Waterwheel are complete. There is only one more natural property the seventh and last natural property carries the title of the Kingdom. The Kingdom is the uncreated heaven. By "uncreated' Bohme means "unconscious." This is the unconscious aspect of the Godhead. This is the appearance of God and the heavenly throne. The things that God did not consciously create. The alert reader has probably already realized that the wheel has made a full revolution, and we are back to the unconscious. The Godhead is a continual process of self-revelation. There is no final term for Bohme; God remains a verb. Unlike Aristotle where there is a final term that is unknowable by humans; for Bohme there is no final term, God and humans are on a journey of continual self-knowledge. So let us pause and examine some of the lessons of Bohme. The first lesson that Bohme gives us, is that consciousness begins in pain. That consciousness arises from desire frustrated. That an entity that was never frustrated in its desires would be unconscious; it would have no need of consciousness. Bohme also teaches us that will and intellect compliment each other, and are not in opposition. We also observe this in Bonaventure. It is not the first feeling of the cosmos that is the ultimate feeling or knowledge. Instead emotion and feeling must be educated by abstraction or intellect. An example of this education is music. The more music theory one knows the more one enjoys music. here we see how abstraction can educate feeling. Also we can go back to an analogy I used in the first part of "Cupid and Psyche" that of a computer game. the satisfaction of a gamer is greater when he has mastered the game than when he first acquired the game. Bohme does not tell us the final term of the dialectic. Instead it is an infinite process of self-realization. For Bohme, God is a verb, and stays a verb never becoming a noun. Consciousness is an infinite process of bringing the unconscious forces to light. Bohme had a wide and deep influence on German philosophy. So we now shall move to two pastors who will have have a great influence on German Idealism, and were deeply influence by Bohme: J.A. Bengel and F.C. Oetinger. Both Bengel and Oetinger were taught and discussed at Tubingen University when Schelling and Hegel were students. I have depended on two books by Ernest Benz: "The Mystical Sources of German Romantic Philosophy" to be cited as "M.S.P." and "The Theology of Electricity" to be cited as "T.O.E." as my sources on Bengel and Oetinger. We shall begin with Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687-1752). He served as a pastor and became dean of Protestant Clergy in Herbrechtingen. In both Bengel and Oetinger we shall observe themes that we have already covered, both were apocalyptic and concerned with the dialectic of will and intellect. Bengel taking the place of Schelling, and Oetinger taking the place of Hegel in the later clash. Bengel promoted what would become known as progressive revelation ( the subject of Kierkegaard's attack in "Philosophical Fragments"). Let us begin by looking at some quotes drawn from "M.S.P." by Bengel: "simple collections of maxims and examples as scattered vestiges of Antiquity, out of which one would find it difficult to construct a whole, but as the incomparable proclamation of the economy to the end of all things, through all the epochs of the world, as a beautiful system and majestically one...One single idea traverses all...what God makes real by the intermediary of all his people is miraculously intertwined, and a single glance at the divine economy, which comprises all things, says more to us than the confused instructions and the fashionable scholarly speculations of the world's powerful" Bengel again: " an inventory of God's community from the beginning to the end of the world, where the origin, the cause, the course, and the final objective of the world of human nature and the community of God are described, also the continual revelation of the living God by his works and words, in his almightiness, justice, and mercy." And Bengel again: "an continuing testimony basing all the unity of Scripture upon times gone by, dominated by sin...this testimony is to culminate on the great day when our Lord Jesus Christ appears; and it is only then that all these pages will assume their true importance." It should be no problem recognizing Bengel as a precursor to the systems of Schelling and Hegel. That there is a single idea working itself out in history; a raising of consciousness till absolute knowledge is reached in the reign of Christ on Earth. For It should also be obvious that for Bengel it was intellect that was the moving and final term in the dialectic of will and intellect. We now move to Bengel's student Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702-1782). It is easy to say that Bengel favored intellect and Oetinger favored will, but this does not tell the whole story Oetinger wanted to to bring will and intellect into harmony like Bohme. Oetinger was both impressed and influenced by the discovery of electricity in the eighteenth century. So to begin our examination of Oetinger we shall start with a quote by Benz (T.O. E.): "Under the influence of his studies of electrical and magnetic phenomena, Oetinger became more and more convinced that he had found the real key to magic, especially in the this field of knowledge. To him magic is the knowledge of the secret life forces of the "natural fire" of slectricity as the innermost element of life and movement. To him the central object of knowledge is the theory of the electric fire that manifest itself in the innermost recesses of matter as the secret element of movement, organization. and life, and that contains the urge for self-relization on higher and higher levels." Oetinger like almot all Christian theologians sees Christ the Son of the Trinity as a rational principle. Although Oetinger is not always consistent, he is in places distinguishes between two origins of thought; sensory thoughts from below (emotions), and thoughts from above or rational thought) abstraction. Let us proceed to a quote from Oetinger (T.O.E.); "Paul separates as through with a butcher knife the higher thoughts from the lower ones. The Hebrews were correct in stating that thoughts were creations, not only as mirror reflections. but rather thought and actual gathering together of their elements...The spirit of Jesus is a spirit of wrder, He who has well be given unto, and wherever assembles his thoughts according to this order from words of Jesus, in him works and dwells the spirit. The latter separates the passions, the insidious thoughts the propensities-from the truth. Those that rise from below are corrected by those from above; i.e. according to Hebrews 4:11 the separation of soul and spirit." In the above quote there should be no problem recognizing the dialectic of will and intellect, as well as the limiting or negating aspect of intellect on will. It the above quote is not enough, here is another from Oetinger (T.O.E.): "Purely animal man has no complete being: his nature must be complimented by the Spirit of the Word that was in the Beginning, and the spirit of flesh and blood of Jesus, which is a much more subtle being than is imagined by all contemporary monad-poets." Oetinger like Joachim of Fiore has an end point in mind. That we are progressing to a Utopia, and humans can be collaborators with the divine to bring about a golden age. We shall close with a quote from Benz (T.O.E.); "For this reason Oetinger in his letter to Divisch adds the following admonition to his praise of Divisch:"Magicians are either evil or good. You are a magician from the East not an Egyptian conjurer worth of being whipped. I am sure that on our time magic will again be made known tho the pious, just as this science once upon a time degenerated because of idolatry" The rejuvenation in God's spirit will change magic into a science the pious friends of God who will participate in the completion of God's works as His Collaborators." It should be clear that Bengel and Oetinger are a preview of the greater clash between Schelling and Hegel.