He had no name. And so is the threefold nature of God name- less; such names as the soul gives him are gotten of her own understanding. As the heathen philosopher says in his book, The Light of Lights, ‘ God is superessential and super- rational and unintelligible,’ that is, to the natural understanding. I speak not of gracious understanding, for by grace we may be brought to know as much as St Paul did, who was caught up into the third heaven where he saw those things that he neither would nor could express. He could not express them as he saw them, for when we know a thing we know it either in its cause or in its mode or by its activity. God remains unknown because he is the first {i,e, he has no cause), he is unconditioned (i,e, unknowable) and he is inactive (in his hidden stillness). He is without the names that are applied to him. Moses enquired his name. God answered and said, ‘ He who is hath sent thee.’ He could not understand it in any other form. God as he is in himself he cannot give creatures to understand, not that he cannot do it but creature cannot understand. As 16 MEISTER ECKHART the heathen philosopher says, ‘ God is beyond nature, beyond praise, beyond reason and beyond understanding.’
‘ This man was rich.’ And so is God rich in himself and in all things. Mark the plenitude of God. It is fivefold. First, he is the prime cause, so he pervades all things. — Next, he is essentially one, so he is universal. — Thirdly, he is the fountain-head, so he is flowing into all things. — Fourthly, he is unchangeable, so he is most desirable. — Fifthly, he is perfect, so he is most incomprehensible.
Being the first cause he imparts himself. As tlie heathen philosopher observes, ‘ The First Cause pours into causes in general more than these secondary causes pour into their causes.’ Again, he is indivisible. Bishop Albcrtus says a thing is impartible which is intrinsically one without a second. And the sum of all partiblcs amounts to what he is. In him creatures are one in the same, they are God in God. In themselves they are naught. — Thirdly, being the fountain-head he is overflowing into all things. Bishop Albertus says: ‘ Into things in general he flows in three ways: in being, in life and in light; and into the rational soul in particular as the potentiality of all things, the bringing back of creatures to their original source.’ To wit, the light of lights: ‘ All gifts and perfections flow from the Father of lights,’ as St James says. — Fourthly, being unchangeable he is most comfortable. Here note that God unites with things while keeping his intrinsic oneness, and all things are one in him. Hence Christ’s words, ‘ Ye shall be turned into me and I into you.’ Owing to his unchangeableness and the littleness of creatures. For as the prophet says, all things arc to God as a drop to the ocean. And as the drop becomes the ocean not the ocean the drop so the soul imbibing God turns into God, not God into the soul. There the sold loses her name, her power and lier activity but not her existence. The soul abides in God as God is abiding in himself.
Anent which Bishop Albertus declares that the will a man dies in he abides in eternally. — Fifthly, being perfect he is most incom- prehensible. God is self-perfect and omni-perfect. What is perfection in God? It means that he is brim-full of himself and is the sole good of all things. And because he is good he is the desired of all things.
XCVIII HE WENT UP INTO A MOUNTAIN Videus Jesus turbas ascendit in montem etc, (Matt. 5^). We read in the gospel that our Lord departed from the multitude and ascended into the mountain. There he opened his mouth and taught them about the kingdom of God.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS St Augustine says, ‘ The student of this subject sets his stool in heaven.’ The student of God must rise above things scattered: these he must eschew. To take in God’s instruction he must gather himself together and withdraw into himself, turning his back on care and the pursuit of nether things and on his powers so many and so various. He must leave all these behind, even as existing in his thought, not but what thought works wonders in itself. These thoughts must be transcended if God is to speak into the powers which are inseparate.
Again: ‘ He went up into the mountain ’ implies that God is imparting the sublimity and sweetness of his nature. In this intuition wherein there must needs fall away everything that is creature, he is aware of nothing but God and himself as the image of God.
Tliirdly: his asegnt into the mountain betokens his exaltation (what is high is near to God) and concerns the powers trenching on divinity. Upon one occasion our Lord took three of his dis- ciples and led them up into a mountain where he appeared before them in that same light-body wherein we shall see him in eternal life. Our Lord said to the children of Israel, ‘ Remember what I told you about heaven: ye see there neither image nor form nor any likeness.’ When a man does leave the multitude God comes into his soul without image or likeness.
St Augustine teaches about three kinds of knowledge. The first is bodily: the eye, for instance, is sensible of images. The second is mental but still admits of images of bodily things. The third is in the interior mind, which knows without image or likeness, and this knowledge is like unto the angels.
The higher angels are divided into three. One philosopher says; ‘ The soul knows only in effigy. Things are all known in image and likeness, but angels know themselves without likeness, and God.’ What he means to say is: God imparts himself to the soul at her summit without image or likeness.
He went up into the mountain and was transfigured before them. The soul must be transfigured or re-formed and sealed and re-cast in his form. I maintain that the soul transcends form, she being east in the form of God’s Son. According to the masters, the Son is the image of God and the soul is formed in his image. I agree. But the Son is the image of God above form: the form of his concealed Godhead: the Son as the idea, as the conception of God, that is the form of the soul. By the fact that the Son loves the soul loves also. Where the Son is proceeding is not where the soul is suspended: she is above form. I'^ire and heat are one and yet far from the same. Taste and hue in an apple are one but by no means identical. The tongue can MEISTER ECKHART taste things which are lost on the eye; the eye perceives colours the tongue knows not of. The soul knows one only; she is above form.
The prophet says: ‘ God will lead his sheep into green pastures. Sheep is in the singular; and so are they singular who are simplified to one. A philosopher says, that nowhere is the heavenly course so plain as in the simple hearts who guilelessly accept the heavenly influence and in children with no mind of their own. The clever and active-minded people are carried away into multitudinous things. Our Lord promises to feed his sheep in the primitive mountain pastures, on green grass. In God all creatures are in embryo. First, all creatures sally forth from God and then the angels. To have the nature of one particular creature is to bear the stamp of creatures as a whole. An angel’s nature bears the impress of all creatures.. All that angelic nature can receive is summed up in him. Whatever God chooses to create his angels entertain on penalty of missing the perfection which belongs to other creatures.
St Augustine says: What God creates has a channel through the angels on high, where on the hill -tops everything is flourishing, where creatures are all fresh and green. Falling into time they droop and fade. Among the young green of all creatures there our Lord pastures his sheep. Creatures which flourish on these verdant heights are, as existing in the angels, more grateful to che soul than all the things of this world. The vilest of creatures as it is there, is to this world as day to night.
Whoever would be taught by God has to ascend this mountain; there God will perfect them in the day of eternity when the light is full. What I perceive in God is light; what touches creatures is darkness. The true light has no contact with creatures. Spirit- ual perception is light. St John says, ‘ God is the true light that shineth in the darkness.’ What is the darkness? In the first place; independence, detachment: being blind and unaware of creatures. As I have frequently said; to see God we have to be blind. Again, God is the light which shines in the darkness. He is the blinding light. That is, light incomprehensible, illimit- able, that knows no end. Its blinding the soul means that she knows nothing, is aware of nothing. The third darkness is best^ of all: there is no light. A master says, ‘ Heaven has no light, it is too high up for that; it does not shine and in itself is neither hot nor cold.’ In this darkness the soul has lost all light, she has outgrown what we call light and colour.
A philosopher says: ‘ Light is the Supreme, God’s promised land.’ A philosopher says; ‘ The realization of every desire is brought to the soul in this light.’ A philosopher says: ‘ There never was anything subtile enough to enter the ground of the soul SERMONS AND COLLATIONS but God only.’ Meaning to say: God shines in that darkness where the soul transcends all light. For what though her powers are open to sweetness and light and grace yet into the ground of the soul she lets nothing but absolute God. Whatever besides of sweetness and light proceeds from him she receives merely into her powers.
According to our best authorities the powers of the soul and she herself are one: fire and fire-light arc one, and where it (light) changes to reason it changes to anotlier nature. Where intellect issues from the soul it invents another nature. Thirdly, the light of lights where soul transcends all light is on the mountain sum- mit where no light exists. Where Gotl breaks out into his Son is not where the soul hangs from. Where God is proceeding, we knowing God somewhat, is not where the soul is suspended, it is infinitely higher up than that; she transcends light and knowledge completely. He says, ‘ I will deliver them and will gather them together and bring them into their own land where I will lead them into green pastures (upon the mountain of Israel).’ Upon this mountain he opened his mouth. One doctor says: ‘ Our Lord opens his mouth here below leading us by the scriptures and by means of creatures.’ But St Paul says, ‘Now hath God spoken to us in his only-begotten Son in whom 1 know from the least to the greatest all at once in God.’ May we out-grow whatever is not God, So help us God. Amen.
XCIX BE YE RENEWED IN THE SPIRIT OF YOUR MIND Renovamini spiriiu mentis vestree (Kphes- 423 ). ‘ Be ye renewed in the spirit,’ here called mens or mind. Thus speaks St Paul. Now St Augustine says that in the highest part of the soul, there known as mem or the mind, there was created along with the soul a capacity called by philosophers the casket or shrine of niind-forrns or formless images. This power makes the Father com- parable with the soul in his emanating deity whereof he has poured forth the whole hoard of divine being into the Son and into the Holy Ghost in distinction of Persons, just as the memory of the soul pours out treasure of ideas into the soul -powers. Now if with this faculty the soul sees form, whether she sec the form of an angel or her own form, it is an imperfection in her. But when all forms are detached from the soul and she sees nothing but the one alone, then the naked essence of the soul finds the naked, formless essence of the divine unity, the superessential being, passive, reposing in itself. O surpassing wonder, what MEISTER ECKHART lofty suffering is that, when the soul suffers nothing but the absolute unity of Gk)d!
Ye shall be renewed in the spirit, says St Paul. Renewal befalls all creatures under God; but for God there is no renewal, only all eternity. What is eternity? — It is characteristic of eternity that in it youth and being are the same, for eternity would not be eternal could it newly become and were not always. Now I maintain that renewal befalls the angels, that is, in their knowledge of the future, for an angel knows of future things only so much as God reveals to him. And renewal befalls the soul in so far as she is soul, and she is soul in so far as she gives life to the body and is the form of the body. And renewal befalls her too inasmuch as she is spirit. She is spirit in so far as she is detached from here and now and from cv^cry thing that belongs to matter. But so far as she is the image of God and nameless as God is, no renewal befalls her but only eternity, as in God. Now mark! God is nameless; no one can know or say anything of him. A heathen philosopher says that what we know or predicate about the first cause is what we are ourselves rather than what the first cause is, for this transcends speech and knowledge. If I say God is good, it is not true: I am good, God is not good. I say more: I am better than God is, for what is good can be better and what is better can be best. But God is not good, therefore he cannot be better; and since he cannot be better therefore he cannot be best. These three: good, better, best are remote from God who is above all.
And if, again, I say that God is wise, it is not tme: I am wiser than he. Or if I say, God is a being, it is not true: he is a trans- cendental essence, a superessential nothing. St Augustine says, ‘ The finest thing a man can say of God is that he is silent from consciousness of interior fullness.’ Wherefore hold thy peace and prate not about God, for prating of him thou dost lie, committing sin. If thou wouldst be free from sin and perfect, babble not of God. Neither know anything of God, for God is beyond knowing. One' philosopher says. Had I a God that I could know I would have him for my God no longer. Know’st thou of him anything? He is no such thing, and in that thou dost know of him anything at all thou arc in ignorance, and ignor- ance leads to the condition of the brute; for in creatures what is ignorant is brutish. If thou wouldst not be brutish then, know nothing of the unuttered God. — ‘ What then shall I do? ’ — Thou shalt lose thy thy-ness and dissolve in his his-ness; thy thine shall be his mine, so utterly one mine that thou in him shalt know eternalwise his is-ncss, free from becoming: his nameless nothingness.
‘ Be ye renewed in the spirit,’ says St Paul. If we have a mind SERMONS AND COLLATIONS to be renewed in spirit, then those six powers of the soul, the higher and the lower, must each wear a golden finger-ring all gilded over with the gold of divine love. Consider the lower powers, which are three. The first is called reason, rationale; on this thou shalt wear a golden finger-ring: light, so that thy reason may be all the time timclessly irradiated with divine light. The second power is rage, irascihilis; on it thou shalt wear the finger-ring, thy peace. And why? Because, in peace, in God; without peace, out of God. The third power is desire, concupis’ cihilis; and on it thou shalt wear, enough, so that thou mayst have done with all creatures under God; but with God thou shalt never have done, for of God thou eanst never have enough: the more thou hast of God the more thou wantest of him couldst thou have enough of him, could enough ever be applied to God, God were not God.
Also on each higher power thou shalt wear a golden finger- ring. Of these higher powers there are likewise three. The first is the retentive faculty, memoria. This power is likened to the Father in the Trinity. On it thou shalt wear the golden fmger- ring, remembrance, that all eternal things may be stored up in thee. The second one is understanding, intellectns. This power is likened to the Sou. On this, too, thou shalt wear a golden finger-ring, perception, that thou mayst be ever apprehending God. ‘ In what way? ’ — Thou shalt know him witliout image, without semblance and without means. ‘ But for me to know God thus, with nothing between, I must be all but he, he all but me.’ - I say, God must be very I, 1 very (iod, so consummately one that this he and this I arc one is, in this is -ness working one work eternally; but so long as this he and this I, to wit, God and the soul, are not one single here, one single now, the I cannot work with nor be one with that he. The third power is will, voluntas. This power is likened to the Holy Ghost. On it thou shalt wear the golden finger-ring, love, that thou mayst love God. But thou shalt love God apart from loveworthiness: not because he is worthy of love, for God is unloveworthy: he is superior to love and loveworthincss. — ‘ How then shall I love him? ’ — Thou shalt love God non-spiritually, thy soul must be de-spiritualised: stripped of spirituality. For while thy soul is specifically spirit, she has form; the while she has form she has neither unity nor union; the while she lacks union she has never really loved God, for actual love lies in union. Wherefore let thy soul be de-spirited of all spirit; let it be spiritless; if thou lovest God as God, as spirit, as Person or as image, that must all go. — ‘ Then how shall I love him? ’ — Love him as he is; a not-God, a not-spirit, a not- Ferson, a not-image; as sheer, pure, limpid unity, alien from all MEISTER ECKHART MEISTER ECKHART duality. And in this one let us sink down eternally from nothing- ness to nothingness. So help us God. Amen.
C ONE GOD AND FATHER OF ALL Unus deus et pater omnium^ qui est super omnes et per omnia et in omnibus nobis {Ephes, 4g). I am quoting St Paul’s words, ‘ One God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in us all.’ From the gospel I will take another saying, the saying of our Lord, ‘ Friend, go up higher.’
To begin with, when St Paul speaks of ‘ one God and Father of all ’ the omission of the particle suggests some variation from his ‘ one God.’ God is one in himself and apart from all. God belongs to none and none belongs to him, God is one. Boethius says, God is one and changes not. God’s whole creation he created without changing. All things, once created, progress in changing. The moral of which is that we ought to be one in ourselves and wholly free from attachment. Firm and unshaken in God does it behove us to be. Out of God there is notliing but naught. No change nor movement can get into God. What seeks another place outside him, that changes. God has all things in him in one omnipotentiality; God seeks not anything outside himself, for he has got it in him in its perfection. No creature can conceive it as it is in God.
Another teacher says, ‘ Father of all, blessed art thou.’ This too is big with change, for calling him Father he makes us his children. And if he is our Father then we as his children shall have his honour at heart. Our Lord says, ‘ Blessed arc the pure in heart for they shall see God.’ Purity of heart means separation, cleansing, from all bodily things, the isolation of the self and in this abstraction the plunging into God and being atoned with him.
David says, ‘ Those works are pure and guileless which arc pursued and perfected in the light of the soul ’; and those are yet more guileless which abide therein in the depths of the spirit and proceed not forth. ‘ One God and Father of all.’
The other saying, ‘ Friend, come up higher, take the higher seat.’ I will make of twain one. ‘ Friend, come up higher, draw up,’ is the friendly conversation of the soul with God. He says, ‘ Friend, draw up, come up higher,’ and, answering her: one God and Father of all. A certain philosopher says. Friend- ship resides in the will. But so far as friendship resides in the will it does not unify. Love does not unify; true, it unites in act but not in essence. It merely says, ‘ One God, come up higher.
SERMONS AND COLLATIONS draw nigh.’ Into the ground of the soul nothing enters but God himself. Even the highest angel, although he is so nigh to God and is endowed so largely with God’s love (his works are estab- lished in God in one essence not one operation; he has in God an immanence, a settled habitation), this angel, strange to say, exalted though he be, is not allowed into the soul. One master lays it down that all creatures individually merit that God himself should work in them. Soul as transcending body is too virgin- exquisite to set her heart on aught save pure Deity himself. But nothing enters there until it has been shorn of all additions. That is why she was answered, ‘ one God.’
St Paul says, ‘ one God.’ One is something more simple than good- ness and truth. Goodness and truth are constants, they are added to (only) in thought; thinking attributes things to them. There is no addition to the one as proceeding in himself into the Son and into the Holy (ihost. He said, ‘ F riend, go up higluir.’ A master says. One is the denial of denials. If I say God is good, that is an anirmation. One is tlie denial of denials, t he grave of expecta- tions. What does one mean? That to which nothing is added. The soul receives Godhead as told forth in her, unadded to, unthought. One is the denial of denials. Every creature makes innate denial; the one denies it is the othi‘r; an angel denies being any other creature. But (iod makes the denial of denials; he is one and denies all other, for th(‘r(‘ is notliing without God. All creatures are in God; they are his very Godhead, that is to say, the fullness. He is the Father of all deity. One God, not proceeding, unmoved, unmindful of the Word. By the fact of denying God something — and by denying God goodness I am not denying God, — (I say), by denying God something 1 conceive something about him, that he is not; even this has to go. God is one, he is the negation of negations. According to one master, the angelic nature secretes no power nor work, it has no know- ledge save of God alone. Everything else it ignores. As he says, ‘ one God and Father of all.’
Some of the powers of the soul take in from without, as, for example, the eye. Though it lets in but little, rejecting the great bulk, yet it is dependent on and does receive something from outside in the mode of here and now. But intelligence and intellect, paring to the core, seize what is neither here nor now. In her unconditioned state she is right in touch with nature, but she still receives from the senses; what the senses bring in from outside the intellect uses. Not so the will; in this respect will ranks above the intellect. Will accepts nothing save in abstract understanding, where there is neither here nor now. God intends to convey what a pure and exalted thing will is. It rises to 250 MEISTER ECKHART familiar colloquy with God, and God says, ‘ Friend, come up higher, honour waits thee.’
The will wills happiness. It has been asked, what is the differ- ence between grace and happiness. Grace, as we are now in this life, and happiness as ours to be hereafter in eternal life, are to one another as the flower to its fruit. When the soul is brimming with grace and nothing is left her, then grace works to perfect all that exists in the soul; not that it comes to actual work, but by its mere presence in the soul what the soul does grace makes perfect. Grace docs no work but, all-pouring, pours all at once into the soul. The third grace atones the soul with God. Its consumma- tion, its effect, is to bring back the soul to God; hers, after the blossom, the fruit. Will, as the will to happiness, as the will to be with God and the actual ascent, in this singleness (of heart) God slips into the will, and the single mind seeing God as the truth, God slips into the intellect, llut his entering into the will raises it up. As he says, ‘one God. Friend, come up higher.’ One God: God’s unity is the crown of God’s divinity. God could never bear his one- begotten Son were he not one. The fact of being one determines all he docs crcaturcly and godly. Oneness belongs to God alone; God’s idiosyiu^rasy is oneness; God must be one God or not be God at all. llivinc riches or wisdom or truth, it is all the same thing in God; it is not one, it is unity. God has all he has in him; it is one with him. Theo- logians say that heaven revolves with the object of gathering all things in; hence its rapid motion. lie said, ‘ Friend, come up higher, thou art honoured.’ It is the honour and adornment of the soul that God is one. God behaves as though he existed for no purpose but to please the soul; as though he did adorn himself solely in order to attract the soul. And man desires now one thing now another; he cultivates now wisdom and now art. If she has nothing of the one she will never rest; (she will never rest) till she is all the same in God. God is one; that is the soul’s beati- tude, her ornament, her rest. A philosopher says, God orders all things in his operation. The soul is all things, and in all respects the noblest and highest and God pours in all at once; God is one.
Cl IN ALL THINGS I SEEK REST Part I In omnibus requiem quwsivi {Eccles, 24^^). St Augustine says, ‘ My soul was created by thee and for thee wherefore she is ever restless till she finds thee. In all created things, which I search SERMONS AND COLLATIONS in understanding, there is no refuge for my soul, but in thee, God, alone. In the love-spring of thy substance are gathered up to one the perfections of all creatures, which in them are scattered and divided.’ Were there any single creature with all creaturely perfections both in quality and number then God would not have made more than that one alone, as I have pointed out in my discourse, ‘ Whosoever would follow me let him take up his cross.’ Now the whole happiness of creatures depends on resting in the sovran good which is the fount of all good things, and hence our Lady Mary says these words about herself wherein she counsels our interior man to cultivate in lowliness the habit of divine repose in which the soul is most of all united, and without it not. She says, ‘ In all things have I sought rest for my inner man.’
In this connection mark how the divine esseiu^c carries pent up in itself all creaturely perfection, creaturely existence being the reflection of God’s essence. St.John says, Quod factum esty in ijjso vita erat: that which was made, in God was life. Creatures in their pre-existing form in God have been divine life for ever. Hence the opening words of our quotation from the Book of Wisdom, ‘ all things,’ mean that our Lady sf)ught [)eaee for her inner man iu the eternal good of the divine nature wherein as in a magic mirror creature-nature as a whole is one in God eternally. Referring to the paradigm of all things in God, they being one divinity.
Theologians put three fundamental questions about these pre- existing forms in God, whereto attach some admirable doctrines and stimulating facts. The first question is, whether ideas of all the creatures exist in God eternally or not? The second question is, whether these ideas arc one or more in number? The third question is, whether the divine mind has ideas of all the things it knows or does it know at all without ideas?
To the first question Doctor Thomas answers that, it is necessary to suppose in the divine being ideas of all the creatures. And his argument is this. The three terms, form, idea and semblance are identical in meaning. Now the form, idea or semblance of a thing, a rose for instance, is present in my soul and must be for two reasons. One is, because from the appearance of its mental form I can paint the rose in corporal matter, so there must be an image of the rose-form in my soul. The second reason is, because from the subjective rose-idea I recognise the objective rose although I do not copy it. Just as I can carry in my head the notion of a house I never mean to build. In both these ways [Le. as types and principles of knowledge] ideas exist in God, for with all natural things it is the rule for the natural form or char- acter of the progeny or fruit to exemplify the type belonging to MEISTER ECKHART its species; as with mankind, for instance, the generative power of the father’s manhood is repeated in the son’s born manhood so that a man breeds men, a lion lions and a falcon falcons. The rose grows on a rose-bush not a cabbage-stalk; fire engenders fire.
And sometimes the idea of the work is in the practical power not as a natural species but theoretically, as the house of wood and stone is designed in the architect’s practical mind, who makes the outward house as much like his ideal as he can. Now since God created this whole world (not that all creatures are by natural birth descended from God’s nature like the eternal Word of the Father, for in that case all creatures would be God, which no sane mind allows: creature-nature rejects it as an impossible, false thing), therefore God created all creatures by practical understanding of divine nature. So there must be eternally in the divine understanding the pre-existing form or idea to the likeness of which God created this creature and not another whereof God had no pattern in his mind.
The second question is, whether the idea is one or more in number? To this the Doctor answers that, the ultimate end of the work is ever the real intention of the work’s first cause. Now the ultimate end of the world is its good, i.e. the divine ordering of all creatures, as Aristotle says. Hence this ordering of the world must be eternally foreknown and foreordained in God, who is its first cause. Ergo, he has in him the particular ideas appropriate to that order, whence it follows that he must carry in him ideas of individual creatures. For just as no architect can carry in his head the plan of a whole house without the plans of all its details, so there must be in God as many forms as there are natural grades of created things emanating from him; the rose, for instance, has one special form, the violet another; man has one distinctive type, an angel has another, and so with other things.