TRACTATES follow his example steadfastly; Jews, heathens, evil Christians, all who fail to exercise their God-consciousness, are lost, barring infants not arrived at knowledge of themselves and who are properly baptized into his name: in the enjoyment of Christ’s name they are holding fast the knowledge wherewith he knows the Father eternally.
Rejoice, all ye powers of my soul, at being joined to God so that none can part you. But I can neither glorify God nor love him to the full therein; so, dying to the virtues I plunge me in the naught of the naked Godhead where, sinking eternally from naught to aught I pass with naught to aught.
Though I should live here in the flesh until the judgment day bearing the pangs of hell it would be small matter by reason of my Lord Jesus Christ, since I have received from him the cer- tainty of never being parted from him. While I am here he is in me: after this life I am in him. All things are possible to me united as I am with, him to whom all things are possible. Before that I was at a loss to know if we are God by nature or by grace. Then came Jesus with the light of his own nature and then I spied my memory under my understanding issuing from the essence of my soul and my understanding flowing out of memory and will out of them both. Essence is revealed by the powers and the powers by their works. What my knowledge gave me that I loved; what I did not know I could not love, and to will all things were possible. At one time I was sore perplexed as to whether we are God by nature or by grace. Fear led me to Christ who in truth knows the answer. He gave me light of grace whereby I saw in the divine nature three Persons, his Father J>eing the begetter of all things. According to the words of St James, ‘ Every perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights.’ The Father is the light itself, self-luminous in Person and in essence. In the unborn essence he is essential, essence without personality: essence self-manifest as impersonal being. The Father is that same being essentially. In the essence the Father loses his fatherhood completely; nor is he Father there at all. The Father’s know- ledge of himself in himself, essential and personal, he draws from his unborn essence through the exalted root of his personality. So far as he takes in his unborn essence he is paternal. Father essentially. This exalted light has been for ever flowing in his heart and it is flowing out of him into his Son, as essence and as Person, and it is flowing from them both into their Holy Ghost, in essence and in Person, and these three shed one light essential and personal. The Father she^s on both the light of his essence and his Person; and the Father and the Son shed on the Holy Ghost the light of both essence and Person. The unborn essence being 23 MEISTER ECKHART the oneness of the three Persons and the bom essence is God as begetter so far as it flows into the Persons and so far as»it emanates with the Persons. Not that the essence begets; essence begets not. The Son and the Holy Ghost are twin lights of the God- bearing essence in the paternal source where the Father is drawing his born being out of his unborn essence. The Father knows himself with his Son, perceiving himself in himself. For this the Son is the light; and he wills himself in himself and for this the Holy Ghost is the light. Father and Son have one will and that is the Holy Ghost: it graces the soul, this divine nature, and so suffuses the powers of the soul that the soul can do nothing except divine work. Just as a spring in its bed at the roots of the flowers gives them itself and the flowers grow verdant and coloured on the spring water, so deity giving itself to the powers of the soul makes them grow in the likeness of God. His image appears in her powers, his likeness in her virtues. The more divine nature the soul receives the liker she grows to the nature of God and the closer becomes her union with God. Her union may become so strait that God on a sudden absorbs her in himself and that without remainder whether vice or virtue, nor can the soul distinguish aught that might be taken for herself. God takes her for a creature. Be not deluded by the light of nature. To a soul on the ascent to higher knowledge in the light of grace, dimmer and dimmer glows the light of nature. If she would know the very truth itself she must make certain whether she is detached from things; whether she is dead to self; whether she loves God with his own love and without self-intent and has nothing to hold her backend keep her from him; and whether God alone is alive in her. If so then she has lost herself as Mary lost Christ. Three days she sought him knowing all the while that she would find him. And Christ, meanwhile, was af his Father’s school of higher learnin)? all unheeding of his mother^a quest. The noble soul which goes, to school in God learns to knoiy what God is in the Godhead and what Gqd is in the Trinity and what God is in humanity and gets to know his will.
God in, the Godhead is spiritual substance, so elemental that we can say nothing about it excepting that it is naught. To say it is aught were more lying than true. God in the Trinity is the living light in its radiant splendour, a comjjlex of one nature with distinct Persons, The (light) that is life is not this light. Though one might predicate three natures to these (Persons or) distinctions there is but one nature to their union for they all act together exactly like one, working all at once in all creatures. According to St Augustine, the precision (or justice) of God in the Godhead, in the Trinity and in all creatures is the chief delight there is in heaven.
TRACTATES 856 God in human nature is a lamp of living light and this light shines in the darkness and the darkness comprehends not this light. Darkness ever flees from light as night does from the day. Thence comes her knowledge of God’s will. Now St Paul says, ‘ It is God’s will that we be sanctified.’ And our sanctification lies in this, in knowing what we were before time, what we are in time and what we shall be after time. Lost during these three days, soul pays no heed to body till it joins her in the temple and is subject to her without murmuring.
The Trinity is the heart of divine and human nature and human nature flows into the Trinity in a steady stream of love. Supposing the soul crosses over, then she sinks down and down in the abysm of the Godhead nor ever finds a footing unless it be that she has taken with her some temporal thing: resting on temporal things brings her back into the Trinity. Things fashioned in time have a ground of their own whereon they can rest; they light on no ground in the Godhead, lly this same token the soul knows that she is creature, for all she has she has received in time from the three Persons. She flows out and in in the three Persons, 'fhe reason why Christ’s soul did never plumb the deeps of Godhead is that she too is creature made in time. God is indeed the matter of the soul, of her energies but not of her creation. Tier energies are eternal because he is eternal. This matter never fails her. When fire lacks fuel it goes back to its own land. So would the soul eome to naught were her matter to fail. When all her work is done she with her powers remains in God her matter; she casts herself in her impartible essence into the passive, immaterial Godhead; that is her native land. Then the Godhead is to her all things in a single passive power, and she withal all things to it, just as the heart of the sea gives forth in the bowels of the earth the waters which circulate back to the heart of the sea on the face of the earth.
Suppose one dropped a millstone from the siin tp earth, the earth being pierced straight through the centre, the millstone would stop falling at the centre of the earth. Here is tiie heart of yie earth, the stopping-place of everything on earth. §o is the Trinity the stopping -place of creatures as a whole, all the. Godhead has being gotten impartible and eternal from itself. The Father is the manifestation of the Godhead, the Son is the image and countenance of the Faither and the Holy Ghost is the light of his countenance and the love of them both; all they have have they gotten eternally from their own selves. But the three Persons stooped in compassion towards human nature and the Son was made man and in this world was more despised than any man on earth, suffering want and pain from creatures himself had made in conjunction with his Father, by whose will he became man.
MEISTER ECKHART Christ lived in time down to his death and then, arising from the dead, this most despised of men is seen united with the Godhead in the Person of the Christ who came on earth. Human nature wedded with the divine nature; her eternal portion, fellowship with divine nature in the same Person.
This is God’s good will, that we should know ourselves and that we should know God, and our salvation lies in putting our know- ledge into practice and loving in God all that we know. He who knows God in very truth is bound to love and will nothing but what God loves and wills. As St Paul says, ‘ I do good and doing naught but good to me all things are possible. Many a thing is lawful for me which I do not lest I sin.’ Our Lord commands us to be without sin. To whom all things are possible it is also possible to keep this commandment.
The saints declare that all things are in God as they have been in God eternally; not that we were in God in the gross nature we have here: we were in God eternalwise, like art in the artist. God saw himself and saw all things. God was not therefore manifold as things are here in separation. Though creatures here are manifold they are but one idea in God. God in himself is just the one alone. When creature goes back to her first cause she knows God simply as one in form and essence and threefold in operation. What intellect knows is knowledge and knowledge stops at what is known, with what is known becoming one. Into the simple idea no knowledge ever entered, for this impartible exemplar after which God created all creatures towers God-high above creatures. Creature in pursuing God to his eternal heights must mount above all creatures, nay, beyond her very self, her own wont and uses, and follow agnosia into the desolate Godhead. St Dionysius says, ‘ God’s desert is God’s simple nature.’ A creature’s desert is her simple nature. In the desert of herself she is robbed of her own form and in Gk)d’s desert, leading out of hers, she is bereft of name; there she is no more called soul, she is called God with God.
Peradventure ye will say, ‘ Being in this exalted state why does the soul not raise the body above necessity of earthly things? ’ To which I answer, at this stage the soul has a body of perfection which uses all things to the glory of God, there being now betwixt God and the soul no barrier nor hindrance. So far as the soul has followed God into the desert of his Godhead so far the body follows Christ into his desert of willing poverty and is one with ^ See also Jostes, No. 37; Qreith, p. 195 efjseg.^ JBtittner, vol. i, No. 17.
TRACTATES 867 God. Well may the Father say, ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased: follow ye him.* All creatures are with God: the being that they have God gives them with his presence. Saith the bride in the Book of Love, ‘ I have run round the circle and have found no end to it, so I cast myself into the centre.’
This circle which the loving soul ran round is all the Trinity has ever wrought.
Why is the work of the Trinity called a circle? Because the three Persons have wrought their own likeness in all creatures which are rational. The Trinity is the origin of all things and all things return into their origin. This is the circle the soul runs. When does she run in this circle? She does so when she muses: All this that he has made he could make again a thousand times if he were so minded. So she goes round in endless chain. The least of all his creatures she can find no end to nor can she appro- found its worth. Spent with her quest she casts herself into the centre. This point is the power of the Trinity wherein unmoved it is doing all its work. Therein the soul becomes omnipotent.
The three Persons are one omnipotence. This is the motionless point and the unity of the Trinity. The circumference is the incomprehensible work of the three Persons. The point is fixed. The union of the Persons is the essence of the point. In this point God runs through change without otherness, involving into unity of essence, and the soul as one with this fixed point is capable of all things. But her powers, wherein she imitates the Trinity, with them she cannot apprehend its unity. The work of the Trinity has proved the undoing of many Paris theologians: en- grossed in the working of the Trinity they have never gotten at their unity. The centre is equally near to all ends, like time in all lands. Now is the time here and now is the same time in Rome.
Saith the bride in the Book of Love, ‘ He has wounded me with a glance of his eye.’ This refers to the unitive force which streams down from the point, isolating the soul from creatures and changing things and gathering her up again into the point therewith to be united and therein to be eternally established.
One is conscious of this glance within the confines of the soul when she is quite unoccupied, innocent of the practice whether of vice or virtue. During this quiet state intuitive perception is most vivid, so it is then he stabs her with his glance to make her really feel how he has known and loved her while she herself was not. This serves as a piercing reminder to the soul to go out of herself. Whom this glance wounds not is not nor ever has been wounded by love. [Concerning it St Bernard says, ‘ To him whose spirit has felt this glance it is unutterable; to him who knows it MEISTER ECKHART not it is incredible.’ ’Tis an arrow shot without anger and felt without pain. Thence starts the clear and limpid stream of healing grace which enlightens the inner eye to perceive in blissful behold- ing the delight of the divine affliction wherein we share unheard of spiritual graces, favours untold, not preached nor written down in any book.]
(Saith the soul), ‘ Lord, thou thyself declarest that thou hast made me like thyself. That passes the ingenuity of man, for no philosopher is sage enough to fabricate the double of himself. Lord,’ she cries, ‘if thou hast made me like to thee, grant me to see thee seized of the power wherein thou hast created me, to know thee in the wisdom wherein thou hast known me, to conceive thee as thou conceivest me; and grant me Lord that by thy grace 1 be made one with thee in nature as thy Son is one with thy nature eternally, and that thy grace may be my nature; for, Lord, thy grace becomes thy nature and in thy nature we become God, as the Father in his nature is God by nature.’
Christ exhorts us to be perfect as his heavenly Father is perfect in his nature. He says, ‘ God is more near to you than yc are to yourselves.’ And in the same sense St Augustine says the soul has private entry to the divine nature, where things for her all come to naught. Then she is ignorant with knowing, loveless with loving, dark with enlightenment. Then to know God would be an imperfection; to know herself in God would be an imper- fection or to know God in her would be an imperfection. The incomprehensible essence she absorbs above all knowledge by grace, as the Father does by nature; and the born essence being gotten in her understanding as the Father has gotten it in him, she steals out of herself and pierces the naked essence there to retain no more of things than when she issued forth from God. She comes so utterly to naught that there is nothing left but God; God outshines her as the sun the moon, and she in God’s own subtile nature flows into all that God is flowing in eternally.
If thou hast apprehended me, there are two points to notice in these words. First, the soul knowing she was made from naught desires to see who made her. And secondly, her words, ‘ Grant me to see thee as creating me,’ mean that she wants to feel the faith and love wherein she was created. For then the soul sees God though she does not see through him. She knows God although she cannot fathom him; she apprehends God but cannot comprehend him as he comprehends himself. St Paul says, ‘ Then we shall know as we are known.’ Stripped of her own being, with God her only being, the soul sees God with God, knows and con- ceives God with God. One high authority declares that the soul sees, knows, apprehends God with his very own essence which is TRACTATES the very essence of the soul. The soul sees, knows, conceives God as she is herself conceived in the pure intellect of the Deity. Then soul is comprehender as well as comprehended. But no man in this body and after the mode of his own mind can understand how soul is both conceiver and conceived be he not wholly sunk into himself, into pure knowledge of his own God-nature where no created thought did ever enter.
Now mark. The naught whereby soul comes to naught is the turning from images and forms to stay at none of them, for the divine nature is neither form nor image. And soul divorced from images and forms is like to the formless nature of God. This is the secret passage of the soul into divine nature. The soul which has nowhere to turn is ready to turn to the image of God. In other words, she goes with naught to naught: to the divine nature whereto none may attain be he not stripped of all mental matter. Alas! how sorely they obstruct this secret passage, those who so lightly stay at temporal things! Dionysius exhorted his disciples in this sense, saying, ‘ Wouldst know the hidden mystery of God? then transcend whatever hinders thy pure perception, whatever thou caust grasp with thy understanding. God has nothing so hid as to be beyond the ken of a soul that has the wit to seek it right diligently and with prudence.’
A hard saying this, there is nothing in him so hidden as to be beyond her ken. Yet mark these facts.
The power of things resides in essence. Now the soul is capable of knowing all things in her highest power, she being all closeted ill her secret chamber. To the soul thus freed from things there is disclosed his secret essence. She is able to receive his arcane power. As St Paul says, ‘ 1 can do all things in him that strength- eneth me.’ Up, noble soul! seek thee no other place than this unneccssitous naught that did create thee, the same in its im- movableness shall be thy place; there shalt thou be more motionless than naught. — But this is traversed by some learned men who hold it is impossible. Naught, say they, is motionless, so how can the soul be more motionless than naught? The soul is a created aught which can be moved: she is a variable; naught is a constant. The soul, for instance, goes from light to light until she finds the sovran truth where all things end. So too the soul is moved in that she is aware of things other than herself. Naught has no awareness. Therefore aught is more movable than naught. So runs the argument against our thesis. Now to prove that the soul is more motionless than naught.
The arch-good, God, is more motionless than naught. And the most perfect likeness of this motionless arch-good is also most immovable. Haply thou wilt object: Naught is the same as MEISTER ECKHART Gk>d for both of them are non-existent. Not so. For naught is nothing to itself or any creature. But God is to himself his aught and naught to the mind of any creature. Withal the creature aught tells forth God’s aught by nature rather than its own. God’s aught is intellectual being. Dionysius says, ‘The intel- lectual light that God is, gat its own image in the rational soul.’ Now if God is more motionless than naught, it follows that the soul as reflected into her motionless aught, God namely, is more motionless than naught. Naught is movable out of itself when naught becomes aught and always is moved when aught is pro- duced out of naught. Not so the soul: she always is aught and can never be naught. Behold the soul more motionless than naught, God having set her free, free to assert her own free will.
Her motion is the quest of him who has never loved nor was ever loved. Which may be interpreted thus. The soul, uplifting with all her might and main herself above herself to love the sovran good, sees clearly she can never reach the divine aught accom- panied by any of her powers. So down she goes again into herself, and the motionless aught bides unbeloved of her and of all that is not its very self. Thus the divine aught is never loved by her nor by anything that is not itself, nor has it ever loved. You can put it like this. He loves nothing but himself or his image in all things. But since he is not love nor anything named, there- fore he loves not neither is he loved. This is the meaning of St Dionysius’ words, ‘ God dwells in motionless calm.’ And the bride says in the Book of Love, ‘ I have crossed all the mountains, aye, even my own powers, and have reached the dark power of the Father. There heard I without sound, there saw I without light, there breathed I without motion; there did I taste what savoured not, there did I touch what touched not back. Then my heart was bottomless, my soul loveless, my mind formless and my nature natureless.’
Now what does the soul mean by ‘ crossing all the mountains? ’ She means she has transcended her own rational powers and gotten ‘ to the dark power of the Father * where all rational dis- tinctions end. ‘ There heard I without sound.’ Hearing without sound means intuition, direct apprehension. ‘ There saw I without light.’ Seeing without light means undefined, vague perception in the naught. ‘ There breathed I without stir ’: the inspiration of unity wherein all things are still. ‘ There tasted I what savoured not ’: over all sensible things hangs the motionless haze of unity.
* There did I touch what touched not back ’: alien, unalloyed essence of all creatures: the substance of all things substantial.
‘ Then my heart was bottomless ’: the overwhelming wonder of TRACTATES my powers. ‘ And my soul loveless ’: powers and senses blotted out. ‘ And my spirit formless ’: the sealing of the mind in the unformed form and image of God. ‘ And my nature natureless ’: my own nature withered away till nothing is left but the one unique is. This is-ness is the unity, the being of itself and of all things. St Dionysius says, ‘ The one alone is the life of lives, being of beings, reason of reasons, nature of natures, light of lights and yet not light, not life, not nature.’ Of it St James declares, ‘ The most perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights.’ Again St Dionysius says, ‘ The First Cause is above all names and tran- scends love; it is superessential, superintelligible, super-rational and supernatural. The First Cause is neither light nor darkness.’ Behold how different from all caused things.
Saith the soul in the Book of Love, ‘ No one is God to me and I am soul to none.’ By ‘ no one is God to me ’ she means merely that no entity, nothing nameable, is her God. Again the words, ‘ I am soul to none ’ mean that she is so void of self she has not got it in her to be aught to anyone. This is the state in which the soul should be: in utter destitution. The soul cries in the Book of Love, ‘ He is mine and I am his.’ It were better she had said, ‘ He is not mine nor am I his,’ for God who is in all is therein all his own. She can lay claim to naught: she has lost every whit whereto any wight could in anywise be aught or she withal be aught to any wight. No one is her God and she is no one’s soul, wherefore she cries in the Book of Love, ‘Fly from me, beloved, on the feathers of the wind.’
What is the meaning of these feathers of the wind whereon the soul rides? The feathers are the choirs of Seraphim. Th^ wind of their feathers is their clear seraphic knowledge. Above this dwells the soul. But not till she has left behind all images and forms, not harbouring any, not resting upon any. She must have lost her individual motion. And thus divested of her creature- hood, having no hold on anything at all, she sinks into downright nothingness; there she is concealed from every creature. To this same naught no Seraph’s understanding can attain; in this naught dwells the soul, super-seraphic, above all such knowing. Thus the soul rides on the feathers of the wind.
But what a perfect life this man must lead I How dead his soul to every kind of motion! St John declares, ‘ Blessed are the dead that die in God.’ To this end, O man, do thou free thyself from every sort of sensible affection. God is exempt from such, and it behoves thee, man, to be the same if thou wouldst solve his hidden mystery. For this, look you, soul must be stripped of all her senses. St Dionysius spoke of this to Timothy, one of his disciples, when talk arose about St Paul who had been put to death.
802 MEISTER ECKHART 802 MEISTER ECKHART ‘ Alas! my friend ’ (said Timothy), ‘ and shall we never hear again the loved voice of our master? * The saint replied, ‘ Friend Timothy, my counsel is to leave behind us corporal things and go to God. But this we cannot do save with blind eyes and alien senses; not that we ought to have misleading senses: we must transcend sense and knowledge to get to his mysterious unity.’ Anent which St Augustine says, * The soul has a private door into divinity where for her all things amount to naught.’ There she is ignorant with knowing, will-less with willing, dark with enlighten- ment. To wot of self would mean her imperfection; to wot of God would mean her imperfection; to wot of self in God or God in her would mean her imperfection: self is reduced to utter naught and there is nothing left but God, for God outshines her as the sun the moon and she with God’s all-penetrativeness streams into the eternal Godhead where God keeps ever flowing into God.
Nothing is without beginning, and since nothing is without beginning God could make us from nothing better than nothing, like himself. Alone God’s power did make the soul, so she like him is free from matter. And soul could have no homelier road into divinity than by way of nothing to nothing, for nothing unites like natural affinity. But St John Chrysostom declares that none can take it till his outward and his inward senses are focussed to clear vision of the Deity.
The naught we were before we were created was indigent of naught.. Moreover of itself it could do absolutely naught and naught withstood creatures; all but the power of God; it was this caused naught to stir when God made all things from naught. Now we have got to be more motionless than naught. — ‘ But how? ’ Mark how. God gat the soul the mistress of herself, not overriding her free will nor once exacting from her aught that she will not; so whatever in this body she elects of her free will she is free to carry through. Say she chooses to need nothing and to be more motionless than naught, then assembling all her powers into her free will so as not to be hindered by herself or any thing, she centres herself in the motionless God who was n’er moved by any act done by the blessed Trinity nor is not indigent of any thing the blessed Trinity has ever wrought. To reach this point of needing naught and being more immutable than naught, soul must be sunk so deep in the bottomless well of the divine naught that nothing can draw her thereout to spend herself on mortal things, but there she steadfastly abides; as the heavenly Father is ever- abiding in his nature without let or hindrance so the soul abides therein without let or hindrance, as far as that is possible to creature.
TRACTATES TRACTATES — ‘ Pray, Sir, how should it be impossible seeing that the soul was created to that end? ’ — ^Because, you see, if she does stoop to baser things to let herself be satisfied with these, then that which is above her is beyond her reach, whereas God keeps no secrets from the soul whose lofty nature is equal to the quest. Up, noble Soul! Out of thyself so far thou never comest in again and enter into God so deep thou never comcst out again: there stay nor ever deign to stoop to creature; and burden not thyself with things made clear to thee, nor wander among objects presented to thy mind, nor be not hindered from achievement by any service. Steadfastly pursue thy simple nature and the unnecessitous nothingness, seeking no other place than this unnecessitous naught. God who made thee out of nothing, he in his unnecessitous nothing- ness and immovableness shall hiipsclf be thy place. There thou shalt be more immovable than nothing.
3 They that serve God for gain with outward works reap their reward in creatures, such as heaven and heavenly things. But they that serve God by interior acts are rewarded with the un- created, namely, the works of the blessed Trinity.
Mark this. No fire no light, no earth no life, no air no love, no water no place. Ergo, God is not light nor life nor love nor nature nor spirit nor semblance nor anything we can put into words. God flows into (iod and God flows out of God and God knows himself God in himself and knows himself God in his creatures in general and he knows himself God in the nobte soul in particular. The Father is almighty in the soul, the Son all- wise, the Holy Ghost all-loving, loving all creatures with the same love. But he manifests as different and the soul is destined to know things as they are and conceive things as they are when, seized thereof, she plunges into the bottomless well of the divine nature and becomes so one with God that she herself would say that she is God. The soul withdrawn into herself till nothing made or named takes shape in her and she is bare as God of any name, gathers herself up above herself into her (iod and takes herself cum God for God. God is not black nor white, nor large nor small, he has no place nor any past nor future time, and the soul is like him only in so far as she can project herself above all creatures.
The soul is a creature receptive to everything named, but the nameless she cannot receive until she is gotten so deep into God that she is nameless herself. And then none can tell if it is she that has gotten God or God has gotten her. Dionysius says, MEISTER ECKHART ‘ God has conceived himself in her, so utterly absorbing her that she is now no longer self but God.’ And the soul’s inferior powers have distinction of person, love uniting the persons not the essence. The soul is destined to this knowledge when, on the ebb-tide of God’s glory, she is borne back into the bottomless ground of the fount whence she flowed forth and finds she is not from herself.
The highest boon, the chief good of the soul, is not from herself. Christ himself declared he was not from himself. The truest thing we have is our intuition of not being from ourselves and that we ourselves are not of ourselves.