See what the soul means by her strange words: ‘ my welfare lies in thy never calling me to mind.’ She wots right well that she has never been one instant out of his mind and that is her felicity. She begs not to be comforted by any creature, because she is in indigence right comfortless where her disconsolateness is her one consolation. And when she says her powers come not before his face? Observe what God’s face is. We sec ourselves best in what is called our face. So too where God is manifest to himself in the mysterious stillness of his own essence. This revelation is called the face of the Godhead. The soul is well aware that, accompanied by her powers, she can never enter the absolute stillness where he is manifest to himself. Hence she desires her pdwers not to come before his face, t.e. his self-revelation. See, her powers halt at its reflection in the Trinity and only the pure essence of her spirit is flashed from the stillness of her own power straight into this perfect revelation. As a master says: ‘ Where pure and purified are one the powers of the soul are at an end.’ Meaning that in the one perfect nature the pure nature of the spirit transcends all its powers. St Paul says, ‘ He who is joined to God is one spirit with him.’ Amen.
TRACTATES XIV ST JOHN SAYS, ‘I SAW THE WORD IN GOD’ St John says, ‘ I saw the Word in God.’ God is abstract being, pure perception, which is perceiving itself in itself. St John means that the Son is in the Father, in his nature. ‘ I saw the Word with God.’ Here he is referring to the intellect which, flowing into God eternally, proceeded forth from God in distinction of Person, namely, the Son. * I saw the Word before God.’ This means that the Son is ever being born of the Father and that he is the image of the Father. ‘ In the Word there is only the Word,’ refers to the eternal emanation of creatures in the Word. ‘ I saw the Word under God ’; the Son become man, as God said, ‘ I have loved you in the reflection of my darkness.’ God’s dark- ness is his nature which is unknowable. Good people know it not and no creature can divine it; therefore it is a darkness. While God was flowing in his own darkness the Son was not distinct from him. In the darkness of his nature the Father flowed as Person so far as he was pregnant. The Father gave his Son birth and gave him his own nature; he gave him not his Person: his nature he can give away but he can give to none his Person for that is the product of his unborn essence. The Father spoke himself and all creatures in his Son; the Father spoke himself to all creatures in his Son. The Father turning back into himself speaks himself in himself; he flows back into himself with all creatures. As Dionysius says, ‘ God proceeded into himself,’ meaning that his hidden nature suffices him, which is concealeci from creatures. The soul cannot follow him into his nature, except he absorb her altogether, and then in him she is made dark of all created lights. The darkness of creatures is their incomprehensibility in their simple nature, that is, in the nothing from which they were created. In this uncreated light they discern his uncreatedness. Into his uncreatedness they flow in the reflection of his darkness.
— ‘ Tell me, good Sir, do Father, Son and Holy Ghost speak the same word in the Godhead or has each a different word? ’ — In the Godhead there is but one word; in it the Father in the Godhead speaks into his unborn essence and into his born essence, the Father flowing into his Son with all that he is and the Son speaks the same word, and the Father and the Son flow into the Holy Ghost and the Holy Ghost speaks the same word. They speak this one simple word in their essence and each speaks the same word in his own Person, and in their common nature they discourse the truth and the Persons receive the essence as it is essentially. Yet the Persons receive from one another. They bow down to MEISTER ECKKART the essence in praise, lauding the essence; and the unborn essence pronounces its unborn word in the Persons, lauding the Persons^ and the Persons receive the essence every whit and pass it on to one another. This unborn essence is self-sufficient, without birth and without activity. Birth and activity are in the Persons^ The Persons say they are the truth and that creatures have none of the truth. When the soul attains to this divine speech she speaks this very truth and is the Deity to every creature as well as to herself. This comes of her indivisible nature and therein creatures are a matter of the will. The bad are bad and the good good, the Persons preserving justice in the Godhead. They give tjie bad their due and the good theirs.
St Dionysius says, ‘ God is the Prime Cause, and God has fashioned all things for himself who is the cause of all; and his works arc all wrought in the likeness of the First Cause.’ Father and Son show forth the first cause, and the Son is playing in the Father with all things for he proceeded forth from him. The Son plays before Father with all things, the Son plays below the Father with all things. The Father begat the Son with his Godhead and with all things. The Father begat his Son in his Godhead with all things. The Father begat his Son into his Godhead with all things. The Godhead is the several Persons and the fullness of the Persons. The Godhead is not given to any thing. On coming to its knowledge the soul sees God and glancing back into herself she sees that the Godhead is in all things. Receiving into her the likeness of the creator she creates what she will but cannot give it essence: she gives it form and is herself its matter and its eternal activities are in her; these are in the eternal birth. Its temporal activities are in time, where God gives his works essence, form and matter out of nothing, which the soul is unable to do; God reduces his works to the unity of Christ and this order shall not pass away but shall be raised up to the glory of the one. Soul, transcending order, enters the naked Godhead where she is seen when God is seen in the soul as God. This soul has God as God in her, she has gotten in her the image of her creator.
Now mark the difference between the work of God and creature. God has done all things for himself, for he is the universal cause and all his works are wrought in the likeness of the first cause and creatures all work according to the likeness of the first cause. That is the intention they have towards God. v God made all things from nothing, infusing into them his Godhead so that all things are full of God. Were they not full of the Godhead they would all perish. The Trinity does all the work in things and creatures exploit the power of the Trinity, creatures working as creatures and God as God, while man mars the work so far as his intention is TRACTATES 879 TRACTATES 879 evil. When a man is at work his body and soul are united, for body cannot act without the soul. When the soul is united with God she does divine work, for God cannot work without the soul and the soul cannot work without God. God is the soul’s life just as the soul is the body’s, and the Godhead is the soul of the three Persons in that it unifies them and in that it has dwelt in them for ever. And since the Godhead is in all things it is all soul’s soul. But in spite of its being all soul’s soul, the Godhead is not creatures’ soul in the way it is the Trinity’s. God does one work with the soul; in this work the soul is raised above herself. The work is creature, grace to wit, which bears the soul to God. It is nobler than the soul as admitting her to God; but the soul is the nobler in her admissibility. This creature which has neither form nor matter nor any being of its own, translates the soul out of her natural state into the supernatural.
To his eternally elect God gives his spirit as it is, without means; they cannot miss it. Creatures God is going to make at his good pleasure he has known eternally as creatures, for in God they arc creatures albeit nothing in themselves: they are uncreated creatures. Creatures are always more noble in God than they are in themselves. In God the soul shall see her own perfection without image and shall see the difference between things un- created and created and she shall distinguish God from Godhead, nature from Person, form from matter. The Father is the begin- ning of the Godhead, he is the well-spring in the Godhead, over- flowing into all things in eternity and time. The Godhead is a heaven of three Persons. The Father is God and a Person not born nor proceeding from any; and the Son is God and a Iverson and born of the Father; and the Holy Ghost is God and a Person proceeding from both. St Paul speaks of the uncreated spirit flowing into the created spirit (or mind). This meeting which befalls the created spirit is her saving revelation; it happens in the soul who breaks through the boundaries of God to lose herself in his uncreated naught. The three Persons are one God, one in nature, and our nature is shadowing God’s nature in perpetual motion; having followed him from naught to aught and into that which God is to himself, there she has no motion of her naught. Aught is suspended from the divine essence; its progression is matter, wherein the soul puts on new forms and puts off her old ones. The change from one into the other is her death: the one she doffs she dies to, and the one she dons she lives in.
St John says, ‘ Blessed arc the dead that die in God: they are buried where Christ is buried.’ Upon which St Dionysius com- ments thus: Burial in God is the passage into uncreated life. The power the soul goes in is her matter, which power the soul MEISTER ECKHART can never approfound for it is God and God is changeless, albeit the soul changes in his power. As St Dionysius says, ‘ God is the mover of the soul.’ Now form is a revelation of essence. St Dionysius says, ‘ Form is matter’s aught. Matter without form is naught.’ So the soul never rests till she is gotten into God who is her first form and creatures never rest till they have gotten into human nature: therein do they attain to their original form, God namely. As St Dionysius hath it, ‘ God is the beginning and the middle and the end of all things.’
Then up and spake the loving soul, ‘ Lord, when enjoyest thou thy creatures? ’ — ‘ That do I at high noon when God is reposing in all creatures and all creatures in God.’ St Augustine says, ‘ All things are God,’ meaning, they have always been in God and shall return to God. So when St Dionysius says, ‘ All things are naught,’ he means they are not of themselves and that in their egress and their ingress they are as ineomprehensible as naught. When St Augustine says, ‘ God is all things,’ he means he has the power of all things, one more noble than he ever gave to creatures. And St Dionysius* dictum, ‘ God is naught,’ implies that God is as inconceivable as naught. As King David sings, ‘ God has assigned to everything its place: to fish the water, birds the air and beasts the field and to the soul the Godhead.’ The soul must die in every form save God: there at her journey’s end her matter rests and God absorbs the whole of the powers ol’ the soul, so now behold the soul a naked spirit. Then, as St Dionysius says, the soul is not called soul, she is the sovran power of God wherewith God’s will is done. It is at this point St Augus- tine cfies, ‘ Lord thou hast bereft me of my spirit! ’ Whereupon Origen remarks, ‘ Thou art mistaken, O Augustine. It is not thy spirit, it is thy soul-powers that are taken from thee.’ The soul unites with God like food with man, which turns in eye to eye, in ear to ear. So does the soul in God turn into God; combining with each divine power she is that power in God; and God combines with the soul and is each power in the soul; and the two natures flowing in one light, the soul comes utterly to naught. That she is she is in God. The divine powers swallow her up out of sight just as the sun draws up things out of sight.
What God is to himself no man may know. God is in all things, self-intent. God is all in all and to each thing all things at once. And the soul shall be the same. What God has by nature is the soul’s by grace. God is nothing at all to anything; God is nothing at all to himself, God is nothing that we can express. In this sense Dionysius says, ‘ God is all things to himself for he bears the form of all things.’ He is big with himself in a naught: there all things are God, and are not, the same as we were. When we TRACTATES 881 were not then God was heaven and hell and all things* St Diony- sius says that ‘ God is not meaning that he bears himself in a not^ namely, the not-knowing of all creatures, and this not draws the soul through all things, over all things and out of all things into that superlative not where she is not-known to any creature. There she is not, has not, wills not, she has albandoned God and everything to God. Now God and heaven gone, the soul is finally cut off from every influx of divinity, so his spirit is no longer given to her. Arrived at this the soul belongs to the eternal life rather than creation; her uncreated spirit lives rather than herself: the uncreated, eternally-existent which is no less than God. Wherewith being all-pervaded to the total loss of her own self, the soul at length returns without herself to eternal indigence, for what is left alive in her is nothing less than God. Thus she is poor of self. This is the point where soul and Godhead part and the losing of the Godhead is the finding of the soul, for the spirit which is uncreated drawing on the soul to its own knowledge she comes nearer to the not- being of the Godhead than by knowing all the Father ever gave. [The gift of the Father is the positive existence of all creatures in the Person of his Son and with the Son the Holy Ghost as well. For the Persons must be looked on as inseparate, albeit distinct illuminations of the understanding.]
And so far as she attains this in the body she enjoys the eternal wont and escapes her own.
We ought to be eternally as poor as when we were not and then our kingdom shall not pass away, abiding as it does in God whose it is eternally. The Godhead gave all things up to God; it is as poor, as naked and as idle as though it were not: it has not, wills not, wants not, works not, gets not. St Dionysius says, ‘ Be the soul never so bare the Godhead is barer ’: a naught from which no shoot was ever lopped nor ever shall be. It is this counsel of perfection the soul is straining after more than after anything that God contains or anything she can conceive of God. Saith the bride in the Book of Love, ‘ The form of my beloved passed by me and I cannot overtake him.’ It is God who has the treasure and the bride in him, the Godhead is as void as though it were not. God has consumed the form of the soul and formed her with his form into his form. Now she gets all things free from matter, as their creator possesses them in him, and resigns the same to God.
Ours to contain all things in the same perfection wherein the eternal wisdom has eternally contained them. Ours to expire them as the Holy Ghost has expired them eternally. Ours to be all things’ spirit and all things’ spirit to us in the spirit. Ours to know all and deify ourselves with all. Ours to be God by grace 882 MEIStER ECKHART 882 MEIStER ECKHART as God is God by nature; ours to resign the same to God and be as poor as when we were not. In this state we are as free as when we were not: free as the Godhead in its non-existence. Christ says, * Blessed are the poor in spirit.’ These same poor in spirit enjoy the Father without let or hindrance. The Father knows no difference between this soul and him save that he has by nature what she has by grace. For as Christ declares, ‘ Them that follow me I will bring to where I am.’ ‘ Blessed are the poor in spirit; God’s kingdom is in them.’ These spiritual poor are those who have abandoned everything to God as he possessed them when we were not and the naught itself. In this naught dwells God and in God dwells this soul. There she has no dwelling and thereinto no creature can get in its own right and no creature can go higher.
XV THE THREE CREATIONS The three Persons made creatures out of nothing to enjoy the uses of the blessed Trinity. There is difference of wont in the Persons and their powers; for the essence being self-sufficient there is nothing in the essence to enjoy excepting unity, so the soul demands nothing, knows nothing, wills nothing.
As to the Persons, the one knows the others so far as they are Persons, for one Person begets the others. Essence begets not. In the domain of Person, one is receiving from another. The Son receives all he possesses from the Father; the Holy Ghost receives all he» possesses from the JFather and the Son, and each of the Persons receives from the ' others presence and well-being and co-operation and mutual delight. As to their activity, each one finds itself entire as essence in the others and each enjoys the others as Persons and itself in both the others.
We speak of three creations. Birth is called creation, and being made from nothing, and being raised in grace to higher grace. The same applies especially to Christ. If birth is a creation then Christ was the creature of his Father in his eternal birth of Person and of nature. Christ himself declared, ‘ Wisdom created wisdom.’ The creation of the Son has ever been to him his whole existence, who is still being born of the Father eternally with all that he is, and this birth remains in the Father eternally. St Dionysius says, ^God created a God as good as God.’ Inasmuch as the Father conceives himself of himself he is his own creation. As St Dionysius says, ‘ God is his own self-begotten Son.’ In eternity, that is. Creatures abide in eternity as being in the God-bearing Godhead. The Son knows all things essentially in the TRACTATES 8g8 TRACTATES 8g8 essence of the Father who, essentially, has the potentiality of all things that shall happen and shall not happen. He has in his Person the universal image, so that he knows all things in common with the Father and wields joint power over what has happened, what is happening and what is still to happen, as well as over what God could do an he would that never happens. As the Father stretches his will to things that are to happen so the Son stretches his wisdom to effect their happening; and as the Father directs his will towards things that shall not happen, the Son directs his wisdom to prevent them happening.
The second creation is that of all the three Persons at once who are one in their work of making all things from nothing. This applies pre-eminently to Christ’s soul, for she was created from nothing in time. The images existing in the middle Person are imprinted in his soul’s potentiality so that she knows ideally, all things past, present and to come. But things that are not going to happen, things which God in his omnipotence could do but which will not take place, albeit possible essentially, these his soul does not know for that belongs to God alone. This light is creature, created from nothing and is supernatural to the soul. His soul has one light in common with the angels. This is the image impressed in her wherein she perceives in herself things that have happened and are happening; but in this image she sees nothing of those things which are going to happen except God grant her knowledge of them. And this is supernatural to the soul.
The third creation is the raising of his body from grace to higher grace, that is, something extra to his animal nature, fei his animal nature he cannot see into peoples’ consciousness; in his animal nature he could give no sign nor know about the future unless God granted it. Christ was so foolish as a child he did not know his father or his mother. St Ambrose says; ‘ He was created from grace to higher grace when he rose from death to immortality.’ Christ sees in heaven, with his fleshly eyes, only what is before him; he must turn round to see what is behind him. So the Son has never known the Father in that funda- mental mode wherein the Three are united in one nature. That mode Christ’s soul was sharing when, at the moment of her creation she was bereft of it and prevented from seeing her divine nature, Christ’s soul enjoys divine nature by grace as God does by nature. This is so far removed from creature that never a drop has ever leaked into any creature. The furthest limit of man’s knowledge is an intuition of how the three Persons enjoy their divine nature. To this none can attain unless his soul is plunged into the consciousness of the created and uncreated MEISTER ECKHART natures confluent in her where she stands in the midst and, seeing straight into them both, has at that point pure intuition of her wont and how what she enjoys there is withdrawn from her and how, though borne along with and by grace, she is still unable to apprehend God’s nature. She clearly sees that she is God’s and not her own at all. She is acutely sensible that enjoying and suffering are identical. That Christ should have action and passion both in one, bodily, that was the wonder. His soul must have suffered in all her powers. Her highest power suffering as much more than the rest as it was more capable of suffering. One wise doctor says, ‘ In this intuition the soul has perfect joy, for perfect joy is perfect knowledge.* Christ says, ‘ They that know thee Father and thy Son whom thou hast sent, have life eternal.’ Also he says, * Pray, that your joy may be full.’ St Dionysius says, fullness of joy is perfect consciousness, a balanced interchange of nature, whereby the soul beholds herself in the mirror of the Godhead. God is the mirror, unveiled to whom he will and veiled from whom he will. St Peter says, ‘ God fashioned his nature and the Persons in that nature and chose the nature not the Persons.’ St Dionysius says the soul has a light that lights her to work. By the light God casts on the angels next him they cast themselves back into God with all they are. As St Bernard observes, ‘ Minds do not flow back into God in their natural light; the Godhead absorbs them in its own light without their seeing.* Now St John says, ‘ God is love, and he who dwells in love dwells in God and God in him.’ When God reveals himself to the soul and the soul loves God, she is in God and God is incher. When the sun shines and the eye sees it, the eye is in the sun and the sun is in the eye. Well then, friend mine, here you have the notion, which it defies me to express in words, for the divine nature in the Persons is a mirror, beyond the reach of any word. In so far as the soul can project herself beyond words so far she approaches that mirror. In that mirror the union is simply onh of likeness.
When, Lord, I was in thee I was unnecessitous in my nothing- ness; it was thy look, thy notice of me, that made me indigent. If it be death for the soul to part from God, then it is death to her to emanate from God. All change is a dying. Wherefore we die from time to time and the soul dies all-dying in the wonder of the Godhead, impotently grasping at the divine nature. In the naught she is undone and comes to nothing. In this not-being she is buried, in un-knowing she is merged in the unknown, in unthinking merged in the unthought-of, in un-love one with the unloved. Death’s grip none can unloose; it severs life from limb and the soul from God and casts her into the Godhead TRACTATES wherein, sepultured, she is ignored by every creature. She is forgotten as one changed within the tomb nor is she held in any man’s embrace. She like God is incomprehensible. For the dead who have died in the Godhead are beyond our ken, like the dead are who die here to the body. That death is the soul’s eternal quest. Slain in the three Persons she loses her naught and is hurled into the Godhead. Where she discovers the face of her naught. ‘ Thou art all fair my love, there is no spot in thee,’ says our Lord; and of his incomprehensible beauty she declares, ‘ Thou art more fair.’ There she sees the secret art of God: how marvelloiisly God contrived that nothing should be indigent, yet without detriment thereto. St Dionysius says: ‘ No wonder God made the soul indigent with a look, when tlie sun, unbidden, gives life to mites and worms in rotten wood.’ The soul, perceiving God’s immensity and her own insignificance, easts herself out of God’s heart and out of all creatures and rests upon her naked nothingness: the divine power has her in its keeping. As St Dionysius says: ‘ All things are naught at the command of God.’ Again he says: ‘ The look which goes from God into the soul is the beginning of faith whereby I believe things not revealed to me.’ So far as the soul sinks down in feith into the unknown good, so far she is one with the unknown good and is unknown to self or any creature. She well knows that she is but knows not what she is. Not till she knows all that there is to know does she cross over to the unknown good. This crossing is obscure to many a religious.
The nature of the soul is such that where she is at all there she is altogether. She is entire in every limb, for where her natpre is at all there it is wholly. So is the Godhead in all places and in all creatures and in each wholly.
Unnatured nature is natured only so far as it is natureable. It natures not itself but the Father natures his Son in natured nature, for the Father is as much natured as unnatured nature, seeing that it is one with him. The Father is alone in unnatured nature and is the first in natured nature. And in natured nature the Son is naturing with the Father, for (Father) and Son nature the Holy Ghost and the Holy Ghost exists with the Father and the Son in natured nature and natures not. In (un)>natured nature they are one, natured nature distinguishing the Persons; and the Persons are as eternal in their Persons as the unnatured nature in its nature and their natured nature is as eternal in them as their unnatured nature, and this is nothing else than one God in three Persons^ who nature creatures, each in its own nature, and give them the power and activity that is best suited to them. So dear each creature holds its nature that it would have no other.
25 MEISTER ECKHART 25 MEISTER ECKHART A master says, ‘ If sorrow could befall the Father he would rue his inability to make all things divine by nature.’ When the soul in her simple nature turns into God’s nature forthwith she is made one with God, but to heed discrete powers and persons and virtues hampers the soul’s divine unity. Her common sense endows the other senses with sight, hearing, touch and savour, albeit in itself no more than one. And the perceptions of the outward senses are all referred to common sense. Discursive reason sorts out what is good and, leaving out the animal and gross, presents it to the memory for union with the soul. Her highest power introduces it to her understanding which has intuition of God’s will, and so it is conveyed into the soul who harmonises all with God’s good will.
God in himself is simple good and undivided. The names the soul gives God are taken from herself. Albeit threefold in his Person, God is the one and only good by nature. He is omni- potent good in the Father, clear wisdom in the Son and pure goodness in the Holy Ghost. He is threefold and he is one in creatures generally; and of those burning spirits who are con- sumed in the fire and brought to naught in him he is the impartible substance. When, having harmonised all things in herself, the soul is reduced to her impartible substance, then she inhales the powers of the divine nature and exhales them from her being into the being of the divine nature which permeates her throughly, the two beings meeting in one point which is common to the soul and God and the variety of Persons hinders not their unity nor does their nature interfere with the variety of Persons. He is threefold and one in every Person in his born and unborn natures severally and the Persons are not admitted to the essence. To receive one Person is to receive the divine nature threefold in its unity. For one Person in essence is as good as three distinct.
Happy the soul who, taking this transcendental flight, receives all things in the naked Godhead. That soul is buried in the face of God; she is rapt into heaven wherein the three Persons dwell in the oneness of their nature. This is the hidden Godhead whereof no man can speak. Blessed are they who make this passover: all things are known to them in truth and they themselves unknown to any creature. So far as they are above creatures they are God and super-creaturely, owing to their unity with God. God’s face conceals them, every shadow of them, in itself. Where two unite, the stronger draws the weaker to it. Christ says, ‘ Ye have not chosen me but I have chosen you.’ Blessed are the chosen, they bear God’s image. Christ says, ‘ Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God.’ The poor in spirit are those who have abandoned all to God as TRACTATES 887