perfect simplicity of life and so grew familiar with God. Now in those parts there was a priest who sorely hated a profane to be so intimate with God. Going to visit him, he said, “ What 332 MEISTER ECKIIART shall we make of this, brother? The scriptures say we must rebujce men for their sins.” — “ Assuredly,” said St Francis. — “ But,” said the priest, “ did I rebuke a man, he might repay me twofold.” — “How should he? ” said St Francis. “I can rede you the scriptures better than that: we are to cultivate the true and perfect life, within and without, till we become a living rebuke to all mankind.” - “ True, brother,” said the priest ashamed. — ^Know that to do as St Francis is to become as St Francis. Further, I hold: when wc depart this life, grace departs from us. And again: to be less than St John is to be more than St John.’ — ‘ Thank God, you know it,’ she exclaimed. He said, ‘ I have known it lor long, and I ween it is true, though 1 do not live it.’ — ‘ That I rue,’ she said.
Quoth she, ‘ You have told me of nine heavens. Now tell me what 1 ask. Advise me what sort of life to lead, for you know my life better than anyone.’— ‘ Indeed 1 will,’ said he, ‘ and gladly. Eat when thou art hungry, drink when thou art thirsty, wear fine linen, sleep and take thine ease; gratify thy tastes in meats and drinks and, for a season, study thyself, live for thyself alone. An thou shouldst see God’s whole creation swallowed up before thine eyes, avert it not with so much as an Ave Maria, but summon all creatures at will to do thy bidding to the glory of God. Wear delicate, beautiful raiment, and, abiding in one place, carry all things up to God. Dost thou choose to enjoy creatures, it is seemly so to do, seeing that any creature thou enjoyest thou dost render to its cause. Thou wilt know full well that everything thou ejijoyest is in God to God’s glory.’ She said, ' I know right well that all you say is true but you must understand I never shall want anything except to be a beggar till I die.’ — ‘ Thou art mistook,’ he said. — ‘ Then mistaken I will remain,’ said she. ‘ I choose poverty and exile; that none can take from me.’ — ‘ On my soul, thou art false to God,’ he cried. — ‘ How so? ’ she asked. ‘ Just pleasing thyself,’ he answered. Quotli she, ‘ God knows I am but keeping on the lines that led me to eternal happiness. The natural error of those lines in time and in eternity shall be mine too in eternity and time. I will not deviate from the rule of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ He said, ‘ Thou shouldst know that. God prosper thee.’ Then she: ‘ Believe me, I do take more ease; my discipline is not so strict as heretofore. If only I might forward on their way good souls approaching their eternal happiness but lacking certainty, that I fain Would do; I would fain succour the whole world from sin for God’s sake. Since our Lord Jesus Christ made use of all his faculties up to his death, ’tis meet I should do likewise. My outer faculties shall occupy themselves with the exalted life and noble manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ TRACTATES 833 and with his lofty teachings, during my life in time. The highest powers of my soul will, as you know, be working in Christ’s soul in his heavenly Father, subsisteiit in one nature they never stoop from. The Holy Ghost flows from the Father through these powers into my soul and back from my soul into God, each several ])owcr doing its own work, here in the Holy Ghost and, in the Father, with his Son our Lord Jesus Christ. Regard it as an intercourse. He knows all my days from the time I discerned good and evil.’
‘ Tell me, daughter,’ he said, ‘ doctors declare that in heaven a thousand angels can stand on the point of a needle. Now rede me the meaning of this? ’ She answered, ‘ The doctors arc right. You can see it in this way. The soul that enters into (iod owns neither time nor space nor anything nameable to be expressed in words. Hut it stands to reason, if you consider it, that the space occupied by any soul is vastly greater than heaven and earth and God’s entire creation. I say more: God might make heavens and earths galore yet these, together with the multiplicity of creatures he has already made, would be of less extent than a single needle-tip compared with the standpoint of a soul atoned in God.’ — So the daughter went on, till her talk turning upon God, she waxed most clocpient, the fathe r urging her at intervals; ‘ Say on, daughter.’ She inii)arted to him so much concerning the immen- sity of God, the might of God and the providence of God, that he took leave of his outer senses and they had to carry him into a neighbouring cell where he lay for long ere coming to himself again. Returning to himself, he desired his daughter to come ^o him. Admitted to his presence, his daughter impiired, ‘ How is it now with you? Excellently well,’ he answered. ‘ God be praised for sending thee to a man. Thou didst show me the way to my eternal happiness, and I have been deep in divine contemplation where there was given me the realization of all I have heard from thy lips. Daughter 1 adjure thee, by thy love to God, help me by word and deed to win a permanent abode where now I am^ Quoth she, ‘ Impossible. You arc not tempered to it. When, soul and faculties, you are as used to going uy) and down as a courtier is to going to and fro at court; when you recognise the various members of the heavenly eom])any and everything God (',ver made and fail in nothing but know them as the good man knows the members of his household, then you will distinguish between God and Godhead; then too you see the difference between spirit and sy^irituality. Till then you are not qualified for confirmation. Do not run away; wrestle awhile with creatures till you are independent of them and they, as such, of you. So shall you cultivate your faculties without going demented. This MEISTER ECKHART do until your soul-powers are stimulated to the consciousness we have been speaking of.’
Blessed and praised be the sweet name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
VII SIGNS OF THE TRUE GROUND According to one master, many people arrive at specific under- standing, at formal, notional knowledge, but there are few who get beyond the science and the theory; yet one man whose mind is free from notions and from forms is more dear to God than the hundred thousand who have the habit of discursive reason. God cannot enter in and do his work in them owing to the restlessness of their imagination. If they were free from pictures they could be caught and carried up beyond all rational concepts, as St Diony- sius says, and also have the super- rational light of faith at its starting-point, where God finds his rest and peace to dwell and work in as he will and when he will and what he will. God is unhindered in his work in these so he can do in them his most precious work of all, working them up in faith into himself. These people no one can make out; their life is an enigma, and their ways, to all who do not live the same. To this truth and to this blessed life, to this high and perfect consummation no one can attain except in abstract knowledge and pure understanding.
Many a lofty intellect, angels not excepting (for in life and nature an angel is nothing but pure mind), has erred and lapsed eternalty from the eternal truth and this may happen also to those who, like the angels, preserve their idiosyncrasy and find satis- faction in the exercise of their own intelligence. Hence the masters urge, and the saints as well, the use and the necessity of careful observation and close scrutiny to test the light which flashes in, the light of understanding and of vision which man has here in time, lest he be the subject of hallucination. If you would know and recognise the really sane and genuine seers of God, whom nothing can deceive nor misinform, they can be detected by four and twenty signs.
The first sign is told us by the chief exponent of knowledge and wisdom and transcendental understanding, who is himself the truth, our Lord Jesus Christ. He says, ‘ Thereby ye shall know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another and keep my commandment. What is my commandment? That ye love one another I have loved you,’ as though to say, yp may be my disciples in knowledge and in wisdom and high undemanding but without true love it shall avail you little if anything at all.
TRACTATES Balaam was so clever he understood what God for many hundred years had been trying to reveal. This was but little help to Him because he lacked true love. And Lucifer, the angel, who is in hell, had perfectly pure intellect and to this day knows much. He has the more hell pain and all because he failed to cleave with love and faith to what he knew. — The second sign is selflessness: they empty themselves out of themselves giving free furlough to things.— The third sign: they have wholly abandoned themselves to God: God works in them undisturbed. — The fourth sign: wherever they still find themselves they leave themselves; sure method of advancement. — ^The fifth sign: they are free from all self-seeking: this gives them a clear conscience. — The sixth sign: they wait unceasingly upon God’s will and do it to their utmost. — ^The seventh sign: they bend their will to God’s will till their will coincides with God’s. — The eighth sign: so closely do they fit and bind themselves to God and God to them in the power of love, that God does nothing without them and they do nothing without God. — The ninth sign: they naught themselves and make use of God in all their works and in all places and all things. — The tenth sign: they take no single thing from any creature, neither good nor bad, but all from God alone, albeit God effect it through his creature. — The eleventh sign: they are not snared by any pleasure or physical enjoyment or by any creature. — The twelfth sign; they are not forced or driven by insubordination; they are steadfast for the truth. — The thirteenth sign: they are not misled by any spurious light nor by the look of any creature: they go by the intrinsic merit. — The fourteenth sign: armed and arrayed with all the virtues they emerge victorious from every fight with vice. — The fifteenth sign: they sec and know the naked truth and praise God without ceasing for this gnosis. — The sixteenth sign: perfect and just, they hold themselves in poor esteem. — The seventeenth sign: they arc chary of words and prodigal of works. — The eighteenth sign: they preach to the world by right practice. — The nineteenth sign: they are always seeking God’s glory and nothing at all besides. — The twentieth sign: if any man fight them they will let him prevail before accepting help of any sort but God’s. — The twenty-first sign: they desire neither comfort nor possessions, of the least of which they deem themselves all undeserving. — The twenty-second sign: they look upon themselves as the most unworthy of all mankind on earth; their humbleness is therefore never-failing. — The twenty-third sign: they take the life and teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ for the perfect exemplar of their lives and in the light of this arc always examining them- selves with the sole intention of removing all unlikeness to their high ideal. — The twenty-fourth sign; to outward appearance they MEISTER ECKHART do little who are working all the time at the virtuous life, hence the disesteem of many people, which, however, they prefer to vulgar approbation.
These are the signs of the true ground wherein lives the image of the perfect truth and he who does not find them in himself may account his knowledge vain and so may other people.
VIII 1 THE BIRTH OF THE ETERNAL WORD IN THE SOUL Now we will speak of the eoming of our Lord Jesus Christ as he is born to-day at this holy season of the Virgin Mary his blessed mother and again as he is born of grace in the perfect soul for that is the whole end of Christ’s work on earth,* and we shall ask nine questions from which any pious man may tell whether the eternal Word is born in him or no.
The first question is, how to prepare for the interior speaking of the eternal Word? — Several things are needed. First, purity of life and mind. Next, the peace and freedom of a still and silent heart which is speaking to no creature and is spoken to by none, whether of the senses or the spirit. And now for a hard saying which few will understand: while the soul is speaking her own word and her noble word, the Father cannot speak his Word in her; while the soul is begetting her own son, the noblest work of her own understanding, the Father is not able to beget his Soi^ in her to her best advantage. Thirdly, the soul must forsake herself in order to conceive the eternal Word like St Paul and Mary, God’s mother, in whom the eternal Word was uttered perfectly. The mind must die to itself, disowning itself and becoming God’s own. Fourthly, the mind must lift up its intellect and see, for seeing is the lustiest work and noblest of which the soul is capable. Mark how eagerly he comes; he says, ‘ Behold I stand at the door and knock! ’ Fifthly, it behoves us greatly to desire this birth, for desire is the root of all virtue and goodness.
The second question is, what is God’s birth in the soul? God’s birth in the soul is nothing else than a special divine motion in a special heavenly mode whereby God wrests the spirit from the tumult of creaturely unrest into his motionless unity where God can communicate himself to the spul in his divinity. There man enjoys his Word in the Father jn its first discriminate emanation and with the Father as ^sential Person and in the Holy Ghost as the limit set to thdr eternal bliss, and it is in the soul as the reflection of her intellectual proto- ^ See also Greith, pp. 102, 103.
TRACTATES type and in all creatures as the preserver of their being. For God speaks his Word in every creature, but no creature is aware of it save rational creatures only. The soul is reborn into God when she turns to God and pursues his eternal Word right into his paternal heart where God makes naked revelation of his birth to the soul. The soul falls upon this birth which is revealed to her, with love and knowledge. As the Father comes into the soul in his Word so in the Word the soul is returned into the Father. That we may eternally play this game in God, God help us.
The third question is, can any man be so well prepared that God is obliged to speak his eternal Word in him? We know that God must fulfil two obligations. First, when God is pledged and bound to the soul by the bonds of mutual love. Then God never fails the soul provided she is ready; he is obliged of mutual necessity to give himself to her, as Christ said to Zaceheus, ‘ This day I must abide with thee in thine house.’ There is another word that must be spoken. Every good thing communicates itself to whatever is able to receive it; it would therefore be contrary to God’s goodness to withhold himself from us if we can take him in. And there is a third compulsory utterance, that of some cause or force which is inadmissible in God. Theologians tell us that works wrought by the soul with God and in his grace God rewards or not just as he chooses, for such works are creature and finite and befall in time. They are too insignificant and vile to deserve reward from God at all. But the work God docs in us without our co-operation, where the soul’s work fails and God’s activity prevails, in that the soul is merely passive and God is the only o^e who works. Works wrought thus by God in the soul it is his bounden duty to requite with his own self, for these works are so divine, so eternal, so immense and so nearly touch God’s honour, he has no guerdon for them but himself. These souls are the noblest product of this life and it is of them St John declares, ‘ Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.’ The outward world is dead to them as they arc also to the world. Their outward man can no more clash with their inner man than the dead can with the living and this is due to the gift of God and interior prayer and profound humility. Which God grant us.
The fourth question is, what particular place or power of the soul the eternal Word is born in? The philosophers and saints have many fine sayings about this. Some say, in the intellect for that is most like God. Some say, in the will for that is the free power of the soul. A third school teaches, in the soul -spark because that is most nigh to God. A fourth, in the arcanum of the mind for it is there that God is most at home. A fifth school says (and it is with this one that I hold), that it is born in the 22 MEISTER ECKHART innermost being of the soul and all her powers are made aware of it in a divine savour, each power in its own mode but intellect is the highest power of the soul and therewith the soul grasps the divine good. Free will is the power of relishing the divine good which intellect makes known to it. The spark of the soul is the light of God’s reflection, which is always looking back to God. The arcanum of the mind is the sum-total, as it were, of all the divine good and divine gifts in the innermost essence of the soul, which is as a bottomless well of divine goodness. Which may God grant us.
The fifth question is, what part does the mind play in this birth? It enters a condition of complete passivity leaving God to work his will in perfect liberty. Perhaps it may be asked, Is the mind aware that God is working in it? I answer: Virtue, all good works wrought by God in man, fervour and devotion for example, a man will be aware of, for with works of this kind there is very often the evidence of the senses. But when the divine good over- whelms with its riches the appetitive faculty and the light of God raises the intellect to a higher power, coercing or carrying the mind into his divine countenance, then the mind pays no more attention to creatures: she is standing face to face with the highest truth. Which may God give us.
The sixth question is, what part is played by the body in this? It is resting peacefully, incapable of movement in any of its members, for the superior powers have fetched home the lower, and the essence of the soul has absorbed her higher powers so all is at a stand-still while the eternal Word is being born, in the mind and in the body. So help us God.
The seventh question is, can no power of the soul remain at work while the eternal Word is being supernaturally born in this way in the soul? The answer is this. The soul has two kinds of powers, and of these the outward senses of the body arc all at rest and also the powers which move the body have been fetched in so that none of her powers remain active, but the soul is merely the motionless form of the body. As the prophet says, ‘ When all things were in mid-silence God spake his silent Word into my soul.’ Motionless peace descends upon the body and the mind wherein the eternal birth is to be supernaturally conceived. To attain to this we must be like the shepherds watching in the night wherein Christ was born. So must a man keep watch and ward over his own mind, driving his intelligence up into the heights, to those eternal laws ordained by God for lost and saved.^ Let us beseech him daily to carry out in us his eternal laws and rules. For ^ Referring to the soul-spark or synteresis, sometimes identified with con- science regarded as the ii^ternal repository of the laws of right and wrong.
TRACTATES priests and rcli^rious the seven liours are ordained that they may thank God for his death and pray him to accomplish his eternal rules and laws in us. And you who know this truth better than others do should let your minds dwell more upon this birth than other people can who arc ignorant about it. God help us to the truth.
The eighth question is, what fruits or gifts are granted to the soul in whom the eternal Word is spoken? Him four things befall. The first is that he is united with God. Next, he becomes God’s Son by grace. Thirdly, he is made God’s heir. Fourtlily, he is loosed from bondage; as St Paul, naming all four perfections, says, ‘ In Christ is neither male nor female, neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free; but ye are all one in Christ and arc sons of God. And if sons of God then heirs of God.’ May we being loosed from bondage be God’s sons, so help us God.
^ Now, taking as my text, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,’ I will set forth the things a man must have in order to be God’s Son by grace. First, he must have perfect self- control, as the Lord Christ says, ‘ I have power to lay down my soul and take it up again.’ Meaning, he is not cast down by suffering and adversity nor puffed up by worldly happiness and prosperity. Secondly, he must have his mind ever charged with divine ideas and godly sayings. Thirdly, he must have the highest good ever present to his mind so far as his nature will allow. Fourthly, he must steadfastly abide therein so far as his nature can endure it. Fifthly, if he go out into creatures for the needs of life he must not tarry there longer than is neqjssary. Sixthly, what his mind conceives of from within of divine mystery or truth he must protect from nature as a rich man guards his treasure from robbers and from thieves. In the seventh place, he must make no attempt to express these things in words until the time is ripe, that is, until he puts them into practice. Eighth, he must know well enough and consider fit any person he reveals these secrets to: the fool confides in all the world but the wise in few. Ninthly, he must be gracious alike to yea and nay. Tenth, he must be indifferent about what God has done to him and is going to do. [Eleventh, it must not concern him what God has done or is to do.] Twelfth, he must behave impartially to those whom God has chosen or not chosen [to those to whom his grace has or has not been given]; and all these things he must offer up to the glory of God, obeying the divine command that what pleases God shall please him also and saying with Christ, ‘ Father, ^ The rest of this tractate occurs also in Hermann von Fritslar’s Das Heiligenlebcn (see Pfeiffer’s Deutsche Mystiker, vol. i, p. 54), from which the words in bra^ckets are added.
MEISTER ECKHART thy will not mine be done.’ These twelve articles, with the pre- ceding four, set forth the highest life that can be led in time. Of him who has these things may the Father say, ‘ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.’ And he who has them not but defaults therein, his defects are what St Augustine calls spiritual sins.
The ninth question is, how to recognise these people in whom the eternal Word is born ghostly and gratuitously? I answer, by the following signs. The first is that these people are dead to flesh and blood and to all natural appetites, as St Paul says, ‘ Since the eternal Word was born in me I no longer live to flesh and blood.’ Secondly the pleasures of the body [the triumphs of the world], are like sour breath unto their soul. As St Gregory declares, ‘ Worldly joys and glories are nothing but untowardness. Thirdly, these people arc for ever listening for God’s voice in them, David says, ‘ I will hearken to what God the Lord shall say within me.’ Fourthly, they are not perturbed by the uncertainty of things: nothing vexes or depresses them, as Christ said to his disciples, ‘ In your patience possess ye your souls.’ Fifthly, these people turn everything to good account so nothing can corrupt them, but they are ever pure in heart; as St Paul says, ‘ All things work together for good to them that love God.’ Sixthly, they have no desire to vie with anyone; they live in the world as though there was no one but themselves and God. Wherefore their heavenly Father begets his Son in them unceasingly and this birth is for all who give their mind thereto.
Th^. Lord Christ calls himself the flower of the field, for this is common property. Even so this birth is the common property of all those who are ready and diligently longing to receive it. May we thus desire this birth and eternally enjoy it. So help us God. Amen.
IX DETACHMENT ^ I have read many writings of heathen philosophers and sages, of the old covenant and of the new, and have sought earnestly and with all diligence which is the best and highest virtue whereby a man may knit himself most narrowly to God and wherein he is most like to his exemplar, as he was in God, wherein was no differ- ence between himself and God, ere God created creature. And having approfounded all these scriptures to the best of my ability, I find it is none othe r t han absolute detachment from all creatures.
* See also Spamor, B. 4.
TRACTATES 841 As our Lord said to Martha, ‘ unum est necessarium,^ which is as good as saying, He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachmejit.
Our (ioctors sing love’s praises, as did St Paul, who said, ‘ What- soever things I do and have not charity I am nothing.’ But I cx^j^etachj^^ any love. First, because at best love constrains me to love God. Now it is far better my constraining God to me than for me to be constrained to God. My eternal ^ happiness depends on God and me becoming one; but God is apter to adapt himself to me and can easier communicate with ^me than I can communicate with God. Detachment forces God to come to me, and this is shown as follows. Everything is fain to be in its own natural state. But God’s own natural state is unity and purity and these conic from de^chmeixt. Hence God is bound to give himself to a heart detached. — Secondly, I rank detachment above love because love constrains me to suffer all things for God’s sake: detachment constrains me to admit nothing but God. Now j it is far better to tolerate nothing but God than to suffer all things 1 for God’s sake. For in suffering one has regard to creatures, whence the suffering conics, but detachment is immjjlie. from creature. Further, that detachment admits of none biit God I demonstrate in this wise: anything received must be received in aught. But detachment is so nearly naught that there is nothing rare enough to stay in this detachment, except God. He is so simple, so ethereal, that he can sojourn in the solitary heart. Detachment then admits of God alone. That which is received is received and grasped by its receiver according to the mode of the receiver; and so anything conceived is known and und^stood according to the mind of him who understands and not according to its own innate conceivability.
And humility the masters laud beyond most other virtues. I / rank detachment before any meekness and for the following ; reasons. Meekness can be without detachment, but complete detachment is impossible without humility. Perfect humility is a matter of self-naughting; but detachment so narrowly approxi- mates to naught that no room remains for aught betwixt zero and absolute detachment. Wherefore without humility is no complete detachment. Withal two virtues are always better than one. — Another reason w’^hy I put detachment higher than humility is this: humility means abasing self before all creatures and in that same abasement one goes out of oneself to creatures. But detach- ment abideth in itself. Now no going out however excellent, but staying in is better still. As the prophet hath it, ‘ omnis gloria filice regis ab intusy" the king’s daughter is all glorious mthin. Perfect detachment is without regard, without either lowliness or MEISTER ECKHART loftiness to creatures: it has no mind to be below nor yet to be above; it is minded to be master of itself, loving none and hating none, having neither likeness nor urilikeness, neither this nor that, to any creature; the only thing it fain would be is same^ But to be either this or that it does not want at all. He who is this or ,that is aught; but detachment is altogether naught. It leaves i -things unmolested.
Here someone may object. But surely in our Lady all the virtues flourished in perfection and among them absolute detachment. Now granting that detachment is better than humility, why did our Lady glory in her lowliness instead of her detachment, saying, ‘ quia respexit dominus humilitatem ancillce sua- ’: ‘ He regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden ’?
I answer that, in God there is detachment and humility as well, so far as virtues can be attributed to God. Know, it was his loving meekness that made God stoop to enter human nature while it remained within itself as motionless, what time he was made man, as it was while he created the heavens and the earth, as I shall show you later. And seeing that our Lord when he ' chose to be made man did persist in his motionless detachment, by that same token did our Lady know that he expected her to do the same, albeit for the nonce he had regard expressly to her lowliness and not to her detachment. So remaining unmoved in her detach- ment she yet gloried in her lowliness and not in her detachment. Had she but once remembered her detachment to say, ‘ He regarded my detachment,’ her detachment would by that have been disturbed and would not have been absolute and perfect since a going forth has t^Jien place. Any event, however insignificant, will always cause some troubling of detachment. There you have the explana- tion of our Lady’s glorying in her lowliness instead of her detach- ment. Quoth the prophet, ‘ audiani, quid loquatur in me dominus deus,^ ‘ I will be still and listen to what my Lord and my God may be saying within me,’ as though to say, if God would parley with me then he must come in for I will not go out. It is Boethius who exclaims, ‘ Yc men, why do ye look without for that which is within you? ’