That was Jacob Boehme born in 1575, said to be the most important German philosopher between the reformation and enlightenment periods in Europe. In fact. Boehme seems to me, not so much a philosopher -- which means a man who loves thinking as in the western tradition, but more 'philosia' -. a man who loves seeing -- the 'darshanic' of the eastern tradition, in other words a 'seer'.
He was admired by Leibnitz, quoted by Karl Marx in his work 'The Holy Family', and Frederick Engels described him as a "dark but profound soul" whose work was worth studying thoroughly. Obviously the mystic seer who was deeply God centered, was never wholly understood by the thinkers of Marxist persuasion because of their limited world view.
On the face of it there is a wide divergence in the political, religious, social and economic outlook of peoples living in various climates. Those living in a cold atmosphere are totally different in their food and dress, as compared to those living in a temperate climate. People living in desert regions have a totally different tradition as compared to those in riverine regions. In India among vegetarians, there are those who include fish in their diet as in Bengal, and meat in Kashmir, while down south there are those who refrain from touching onions. Among the European christians, there are the quakers who avoid even milk as an animal product in order to be strict vegetarians.
As with food and drink, so with the morals, manners, and customs of peoples in various countries. On the periphery there is so much of difference and mutual antagonism that one wonders whether men living all over the world can ever 'see' that they all belong to one race, the race of mankind.
Man apparently is divided by differing political systems, language, history, geography, culture and tradition. Similarly their religions, which are a by-product of the contents of their consciousness, also vary. While one treats God as his father, another from a different religio-cultural background treats God as mother. All these images of God, the very names and shapes given to Him, and the place where he is supposed to reside, are the products of man's imagination, based upon his conditioned consciousness. The present consciousness has to be emptied, with all its content of differences, divergences, separativeness, exclusiveness etc., before the truth of the fundamental unity- or rather oneness -- of humankind can be 'realized.'
Boehme is pointing out that human beings all over the world create their own
Gods which are specific to the region, climate, language, cultural mores etc.
but if one is able to see the 'conditioning' imposed by society in which he
is brought up, and become aware of one's deeper layers beyond the body, mind
and even the heart, he will penetrate to his being, the 'core' where he will find
the primordial ground of all beings from which the world scene is arising in
every direction. To change the metaphor, what looks like a separate and exclusive
path to the peak of the mountain, conflicting with the path from the other side
of the mountain, is not really different. Once you reach the mountain peak,
and you are 'realized', you see all the paths that led up to the peak. What
is really important is that you exercise a spirit of tolerance towards the apparently
conflicting paths, while constantly directing your attention to the summit which
you have to reach in life.