_The Master_: "There where the soul hath slain its own will and willeth no more anything of itself." . . .
_The Disciple_: "But how shall I comprehend it?"
_The Master_: "If thou goest about to comprehend in thy own will, it flieth from thee, but if thou dost surrender thyself wholly, then thou art dead to thy own will, and Love will be the Life of thy nature."[65] He seems to go as far in this direction toward the annihilation of desire, negation of the finite, and loss of self-hood as any of the pantheistic mystics. This sample passage will indicate his teaching: "When thou art wholly gone forth from the creature and become nothing to all that is nature and creature, then thou art in that Eternal One which is God Himself, and then thou shalt experience the supreme virtue of Love."[66]
These two diverse statements are, however, not as inconsistent as they at first seem. The _will_, the _intention_ that is a psychological preparation for this mystical experience is a will washed and purged of selfish impulse and self-seeking aims. It is an _intention_ that cannot be described in terms of any finite "content." It is the intense heave of the whole undivided being toward God with no reservation, no calculation of return profits, no thought even of isolated and independent personality. A true account of consciousness, preceding the moment of bursting through the Gate, might emphasize with equal accuracy either the "earnest resolution," "the storm and onset of will," or "the annihilation of particular desire," "the surrender of individualistic self-hood," "death to own will in the Life and Virtue of Love."
The effects of such an experience as that which came to Boehme, if we may take his case as typical, are (1) The birth of an inner conviction of God's immediate and environing Presence amounting to axiomatic certainty--faith through experience has become "the substance," and "is now one spirit with God"; (2) The radiation of the whole being with "a joy like that which parents have at the birth of their first-born child"--the joy now of the { 206} soul crying, "Abba"; (3) A vastly heightened perception of what is involved in the eternal nature of the religious life and in the spiritual relation between the soul and God, _i.e._ increased ability to see what promotes and furthers the soul's health and development; (4) A unification, co-ordination, and centralizing of the inner faculties, so that there is an increment of power revealed in the entire personality; and (5) An increase of clarity and a sharpening of focus in the perception of moral distinctions together with a distinctly heightened moral and social passion.