60. ‘ What is an angel? ’ — Angel like soul is a perpetual nature.
456 MEISTER ECKHART The soul has no parts, this and that. Wherever she turns she turns as a whole.
61. ‘ What is essential virtue? ’ — In essential virtue man is in a state of having no active heart’s desire; he knows what is right and is able to live up to his lights in the power of his primitive nobility.
62. ‘ What is the sign of eternal life? ’ — Absence of hate is a sign of eternal light. So far as we fail in love towards all mankind, we never really have it.
63. ‘ Pray Sir, when are we discriminating? ’ — When we know one thing from another. — ‘ And when are we above discrimination? ’ — When we know all in all then we transcend discrimination.
64. ‘ What does St Paul mean when he speaks of “ redeeming the time because the days are evil ”? ’ — He calls the days evil referring to the changeableness of time. He says, redeeming the time — ‘ When is time redeemed? ’ — Let me tell you. To do a good work is not to redeem time but to pawn it. It is a good work to rest from sin and exercise some virtue. To do better work is not redeeming time. He who perfects by practice does better. To do the best of all, that does redeem the time. It is best of all to rest in the embrace of God. — ‘ But is that redeeming the time? ’ — To be sure it is. Time is not redeemed in time. The redemption of time is the timeless spirit’s atonement above time.
65. ‘ Will you expound that sentence in St John’s epistle, “ Blessed are the dead that die in God? ” When do we die in God? ’ — When everything is dead that intervenes between ourselves and God. — ‘ Well then, will you tell me what is the joy of spirits in eternity: arc they always finding something new in God? ’ — Verily Psay, if they did not find it ever new there would be an end to eternity. Were there aught in Gk)d exhaustible by creature, eternity would end and heaven cease to be.
66. ‘ Sir, what is true wisdom? ’ — True wisdom, so says one philosopher, means the knowledge of all created things and the creator who has made them.
67. According to St Paul, the closest bond of love a man can have is harmony of will. Our Lord in his love made eternal provision for all human suffering when his Son died upon the cross.
68. He follows hardest on the heels of God who leaves all temporal things behind and clings to the eternal.
69. Joy is the reward of virtue, says one of the saints. — ‘ Tell me, when does a man do his duty by creatures? ’ — ^When he knows them and leaves tjiiem.
70. A saint says. So long as we will and will not our free will is not captive to God. If any man does as he should God will do what that man would.
LIBER POSITIONUM 71, ‘ Sir, how would you define grace? • — I define grace as him whom no joy nor pleasure can gladden, no pain nor adversity sadden.
72. The most successful prayers are the willing learners from creature or the spoken word.
78. ‘ When does God work in man unhindered? ’ — When he takes good and ill from God with the same thankfulness. — ‘ But, with one and the same thankfulness or each with thankfulness? ’ — ^They must be received with the same thankfulness. Time is always true to its own nature but were soul and body displaced into eternity motion would be lost. The less moveable thou art the more thou art established in eternity.
74. ‘ Sir, when is virtue present in a man? ’ — There is virtue in the soul just as memory and knowledge and love are in the soul, for they are spiritual in their substance. There is virtue in the soul and it is present in a man as long as it is not cast out in lawless utterances.
75. ‘ Will you tell me. Sir, why we are sometimes quite unmoved in suffering whereas at other limes we hail it with delight and then again it readily affects us? ’ — Supposing a man is by himself with his senses indrawn from the multiplicity of things and recollected to himself, then his soul will be unmoved inasmuch as God is present in her. But if his senses are broadcast upon things and more or less unstable on those things, he will be readily affected. Then let him beware of lawless utterance; he must recollect him- self and in deep humility just appeal lovingly to God: ‘ Lord thou knowest I can do naught without thee,’ and quick as thought thou art back in God. ^ 76. ‘ Pray Sir, is one quite detached w^hen one gives no consent to sin and bitter as it was to part from things it were just as bitter to return to them? ’ — Yes, surely.
77. ‘ Is eternal light vouchsafed to anyone who falls short? ’-r- Oh yes! It was to St Paul.
78. ‘Is no holy soul beatified that has shortcomings? ’ — Yes, thousands if one reckoned them. — ‘ But no saint can be sanctified unless he has received eternal light? ’ — Yes, numbers.
79. ‘ What do you mean, Sir, when you talk of divine light and eternal light, are they the same or is there a difference? Do they consist in the same thing? — They are not the same. By one light we know, by another we can and by a third one we do. Now to distinguish between them. To perceive divine truth and answer thereto, that I call divine light. I say it is God’s light because it is Godlike. It is not God himself; it may be given by an angel or a saint. Eternal light, again, I define to be the perfect image of the impartible nature of God and of it St Paul says, the MEISTER ECKHART MEISTER ECKHART third heaven and its light are not immediately present to us here in this body; we have to return to our true selves. Ah, woe is me, how wearisome my exile 1 It is impartible light when the soul departing from the body flies straight back to God into whose light she is absorbed. Beyond this her perception does not go. And I mean by impartible light the vision of God with nothing between: no creaturely hindrance, no time, no looking back: in eternity. — St John had eternal light; he knew the whole truth and attained to it. All things were possible to him, but though not guilty of any mortal sin he was still liable to its suggestion. That no man can escape.
80. ‘ What is the sign of eternal light? ’ — It is a sure sign when everything not God is irksome and virtue has become a second nature.
81. Talkativeness or over-attention to our daily wants is fatal to friendly intercourse with God. If wc would escape the purgatorial fires we must set a watch on all our ways, especially our words. Different is the cleansing fire of the perfeetion of God and the love of the soul, between them imperfections are consumed away.
82. Good people’s food is clear consciousness and intercourse with holy souls and constant reception of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. Neither the devil nor yet any creature ever gave an appetite for the body of our Lord Jesus Christ; this comes from God alone, you may be sure.
84. ‘ Tell me. Sir, do we find in holy writ mention of any rapture besides that of St Paul? ’ — No. — ‘ But they tell me three are to he found; Adam was caught up while he was asleep and St John when he was resting on the bosom of our Lord and St Paul when he was felled to earth; they each saw God without means, without any image or likeness.’ — Verily, I say, before the death of our Lord Jesus Christ no man had ever seen God in his God-nature except that golden temple our Lady Mary at the moment when our Lady conceived divine and human nature; then she received eternal light and saw God in his simple nature, but before that no creature. — ‘ Then what was Adam’s rapture and St John’s? ’ — When God created Adam his body was made painless like his soul. You could have hewn him in his sleep and it would not have hurt him for the lower powers of his soul were obedient to her higher ones and she was subject to the law of her perfect nature and unhindered by gross body and this was his by right of nature. Had he stayed at the summit of his soul he would have kept her in her maker. "He knew God had created him and that divine nature "was destined to unite with human nature and he had dis- criminate knowledge of all creatures, each in its natural perfection just as God had made them and he was carried away by enjoyment LIBER POSITIONUM 459 of the sight. You must know that he was sleeping like any other man. — * Then what was the rapture of St John? * — ^He was resting. Rest so called from its likeness to the abstraction of our Lord Jesus Christ and St John’s from its likeness to them both; a gentle sinking into dispassion, that is what his rapture was.
85. ‘ Is a man liable to fall once he has had eternal light? ’ — I say, No. If Adam had seen God he would not have fallen and the archangel Lucifer, if he had seen God in his impartible essence would not have fallen. — ‘ I have heard tell that in ecstasy there is no interference with free will. Is that really so? ’ — It neither strengthens nor weakens the free will. Verily I say, anyone who holds that a man can fall after eternal light, though he commit no greater sin than St Agnes did, shall die infiillibly for it is lieresy and mortal sin to have this belief. That soul can no more fall than St Peter could. The heavenly Father might as well forsake his Son as the soul wherein he has given his Son birth. If the Father ends the Son ends; if the Son ends eternity ends; if eternity ends the soul ends.
86. ‘ Sir, when you speak of God’s birth, of the Father begetting his Son in the soul, is this birth the same as the rapture of St Paul and what happened at Pentecost to the disciples or are these different things? ’ — They are exa(‘tly the same. — ‘ Then when you talk of eternal light do you mean God’s birth in the soul or is that something else? ’ — I mean the same thing; they are identical. But one thing I do say. Birth is the better term and nearer to the truth though in reality there is no difference. I will tell you why. An angel by nature is eternal light; the sun is eternal light; the stars are eternal light. Eternal light is ascribed to things that are not changed by time; and since we can attribute eternal light to creatures so we may to man in an imperfect sense. But birth applies to the heavenly Father alone, this birth in eternity. God catches the soul all at once to himself and his birth is gottetl therein. There it is to him well-nigh the same as the Son in the Trinity. I say, well-nigh, for it is there by grace and the Son by nature. — ‘ Suppose a man has eternal light, is he prone to temporal sin? ’ — It was after Pentecost that Peter sinned.
90. ‘ Can a man make certain of having nothing more to over- come? ’ — St Paul had things to overcome after he was caught up. And our Lord Jesus Christ had to overcome. Though his soul and body were united with the Godhead and the Godhead is impassible, yet his future pains were present with him, racking all his soul-powers.
91. ‘ When the soul prepares for God by chasing away thoughts and discarding all the things she has relied on and endeavours to get rid of every means but without success, tell me. Sir, what MEISTER ECKHART ought she to do next? ’ — When the images from outside are all gone let her abase herself and lovingly entreat of him somewhat that she still lacks. — ‘ But if she refuses to desire or entreat, being minded to remain quite simple? * — Then let her simply fix her mind on God with vehement longing. — ‘ But surely, Sir, longing is a means and she wants to be quite simple and direct: without any images and free from this and that, with not a word or prayer to come between? ’ — I say^it is impossible in the unglorified body; she ought not to expect it. — ‘ If that is the case, Sir, then it seems to me her watchword ought to be refusal — of objective things and subjective images — and that is her best way.’ — There is no doubt of it; she can do no more. When a soul like this is rapt above herself int6 naked knowledge of naught it is God who does it at his own good pleasure, absolutely freely, without any help of hers.
92. ‘ Sir, can we realize all our minds can grasp? ’ — No. I can conceive of things I cannot be: the unglorified body is not so agile as the mind.
93. ‘ What is a reasonable man? ’ — One who is controlled in joy and sorrow, him I call a reasonable man. — ‘ How would you define prayer? ’ — St Augustine says, prayer is the soul’s detach- ment from things and attachment to God. — ‘ Tell me. Sir, can we be rid of things at once without any trouble? ’ — No, it is always accompanied with pain: that indicates the pull of something higher. If it comes without pain it is no matter for rejoicing. True, St Paul lost things all at once, but afterwards he had to conquer them in detail. Conquests made by suffering are lasting.
94. What God has by nature in unity is not denied to any rational ^creature, by grace, in his individuality. Rejoicing and sorrowing, that is nature. We must expect nature in people.
95. ‘ Sir, are we punished for faults? ’ — We are punished for sins and hindered by faults. — ‘ But you said that when a man has eternal light he never has anything between and now you say he is prone to sin. Do such people sin and is sin punished w4th fire? You certainly did say that they have nothing between. How are these two facts to be reconciled? How is the sin wiped out? ’ — ^By the perfect love of the creator to his creature and the creature to his creator: the sin lies between them and in the fire of their love sin burns away.
96. ‘ Those to whom eternal light has come, do they afterwards remain in a state of love and vision? I am wondering, being established in the one, where there is naught but one, how they manage to be one and other, for there is that in me, when spirit conceives unity, that passes all distinction. Arc grace and vision and light all the same? ’ — No, not by any means. Take an illustration. The stars are put out by the sun and in the same way LIBER POSITIONUM grace and vision fade when eternal light is given. The highest of the angels draws a form from God and on assuming it, adapts it further to himself and informs therewith the middle ones who pass it on to those below and the lowest give it to the soul and the fiend can copy it. So they may be deceived. But the soul in whom the heavenly Father speaks his Word does not receive from the lower angels: what the highest of the angels draws from God he pours into this soul without the intervention of the rest. Verily I say, seldom or never do people get through angels apparitions of such things as are given in time and temporalities.
97. ‘ What is the difference between nature and spirit? ’ — I call that spirit whereby we are aware what we ought to have and what to leave whether we would or no. Spirit makes us do it, willy-nilly. Not to do it because we do not want to would be nature.
98. ‘ When is nature uppermost? ’ — When we have at heart something we ought to get rid of and will not.
99. ‘ How would you distinguish, Sir, between sin, fault and infirmity? ’ — It is sin to cleave with desire to anything that does not make for God. By a fault I mean any accidental falling short of God. And infirmity may be defined as not having the mind fixed on God all the time.
100. ‘ O thou fathomless Truth,’ cries St Paul, ‘ thy ways are past finding out! ’ When he cries O, he is thinking of the hidden hoard of the divine nature. — ‘ What hoard? ’ — The wisdom of God. Angels’ and souls’ desire is appeased by nothing but the best. The wisdom of God is savoured when all creatures point (us) towards the best. The other hoard is God’s art. Art amounts, in^temporal things, to singling out the best. True art loses this altogether and abides in the ground of them all. St Paul was caught up above this wonder and above this O and saw the very thing he is seeing to this day, the bond of life meanwhile persisting in his body as form does in its matter. His higher self received naked eternal light; body was no hindrance, soul received from God.
101. ‘ When is the soul above O? ’ — When she gets the simple impression of divine form, of the image which is the Son himself for so the Father is always letting down the apex of the higher world into the one below. — Anyone on earth may be deceived excepting him in whom the Father bears his Son.
102. ‘ What is the sign of the eternal birth? ’ — While a man is subject to sensible affection he has no conception of eternal truth. When he does conceive the eternal truth no creature can comfort or discomfit him. The time when Paul was felled to earth he heard a voice which said to him, ‘ Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? ’ He said, ‘ Who art thou Lord? ’ — " I am Jesus of Nazareth.’
MEISTER ECKHART The voice was not God: God was speaking through an angel. God can no more lose his nature than utter his eternal Word in sound or image. God said through an angel, I am Jesus of Nazareth. He said /, referring to the impartible I of divine nature. The shows distinction between the Father and the Son. Jesus of Nazareth suggests the union of divine and human nature.
108. St James says, ‘ With the Father of lights is no turning.’ There arc three kinds of turning. One of nature, another of will and a third of power. I speak of the first. Turning means changing from one thing to another, becoming more or less, going to and fro. One philosopher says, ‘ Things are all fighting their way back to naught.’ If God withdrew support things would all relapse into primeval chaos. The philosopher says, all created things are fluent. That is fluent which is not stationary in itself. If creature could touch bottom heaven would end and creature would be God. Natural change there is none with the Father of lights. Change is due to a longing for rest. If there were rest in him divine nature would pass away and heaven be at an end. He does not alter. What he has like nature is generation. If generation stopped things would all go back to their primeval nothingness. But of what avail are long discussions of God’s nature if we are not aware of his image in us?
104. ‘ Pray Sir, what makes the soul unchangeable? ’ — Stability of soul depends upon three things. First on her having her body well- controlled: what the soul wills, that her body must do without question. If Adam had preserved his natural perfection he could have done whatever he desired and creatures would all have beein obedient to him. But when he fell both his own body and all creatures left off obeying him: they were no longer true to him who was untrue to God. — ^The second thing is to have no attachment to or enjoyment in anything inferior to God. — Thirdly, no quarter must be given to the mortal nature. If Adam had stood firm he would not have become mortal. Adam as God made him on the first day would have survived until the day of judgment. St Paul declares, ‘ From the moment God called me not once have I looked back.’ If Adam had seen God in him- self he could not have fallen. He knew that God had made him and what he made -hini^for and this he viewed with carnal pleasure. It was this and nothing else that carried him away.
105. When our Lord Jesus Christ was about to depart to heaven to his Father his disciples were with him at the place of his ascen- sion, distraught and unable to speak or pay attention, so much were they engrossed with the bodily presence of our Lord. And while they stood staring up at the sky there came an angel saying, ‘ Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye here gazing up into heaven? ’ LIBER POSITIONUM 468 Why so absorbed in that which, after all, cannot remain with you for ever? Philosophers tell us that creature does not stay, it is flowing all the time back into its source. If the disciples had been proof to sweetness not one of them would have been distraught. For this the angel chid them saying, ‘ Why stand ye here? ’ as though to say, why occupy your minds so much with the beloved bodily form of our Lord Jesus Christ? Ye only waste yourselves on temporal things which, after all, are impermanent. ‘ Why stand ye gazing up into heaven? ’ God is the form of the soul, the soul’s soul. When spirit is caught up above all images, into the eternal truth, then the soul stops and sees into heaven. It is man’s highest happiness that she cannot rest until, being rid of images, she is reflected back into the naught where she has been eternally without herself. Soul becomes Son when she is thus transported over all into the open where God is; then soul draws out of God and when she is as we have said she is standing at the door. She loses her own nature drinking out of God, on the threshold of gnosis, where nothing enters into her except the eternal. Eternal rest, then, is not given her except by him.
106. Aristotle says, everything partial is painful; the most united is most painful when divided.
107. Three kinds of people receive God. The first receive him for pleasure. God is sweet to them in anticipation so they enter- tain him selfishly and to their cost, with little genuine profit. The second receive him of necessity, in discarding sins, for without God they have no power to do it. The third lose desire and desiring naught receive him wisely and with real benefit. The benefit is this; they recognise each fault with rue and in true penitence contrive that he shall find in us the reflection of what we seek in him; thus getting him to dwell in us as we do in him we attain to angelic life: the upward flight, the simple glance into God’s nature, and at each ending of the act the steady reflection of God so that in multitudinous things like bodily necessity, she is not debarred from the eternal but in multiplicity is still united.
108. ‘ Pray Sir, is it possible for mere creature to partake of God’s nature? ’ — No, for as St Augustine argues, God is remote from matter and that which has no matter has no parts and is indivisible. Creature can receive no part of God’s nature because God is impartible by nature. — ‘ I do not mean part. Sir, in the sense of fragment; I mean part in the sense of community of spirit with spirit in divine nature. That was my idea in asking.’ — You must make allowance for the difference in creatures. One is united, another separated. See how one is united. The will of the Father and the obedience of the Son seized, with the power of their common Spirit, in the bare chamber of the virgin heart of 464 MEISTER ECKHART their chosen vessel Mary, her most pure blood-stream and there- from, with all his members, wrought one faultless man and poured therein a soul complete with powers and this by the power of the Godhead. When, out of chaos (having brooded there for aye) a shining spiritual soul emerged, straightway all imperfection was removed and by the Spirit itself this soul was admitted to the rank of spirit and, sponsored by the soul, the body was received as well. Such is the mode of union of united creatures. — ‘ And how do separated creatures participate God’s nature? ’ — St Peter says that creatures according to their natures partake of God in three ways; as being, as life and as grace. As being, creatures all without exception. As life, receptive creatures, from angels and men downwards. Mark how the Father by his generative power created by the propagation of his Word. From his interior Word burst forth their common mind, by nature the one angel of all creatures. Him he commanded to pour his mobile power into the sun and from the solar energy there showered upon earth, increased and multiplied, trees, beasts and all mankind. As regards the soul, the heavenly Father draws up with his power the lower powers of the soul; the Son lights up the middle ones and the Holy Ghost impinging on the sharpness of her mind, flashes it back to the absolute zero of the Tri-unity. I say to zero; to the boundary line between united and separated creatures.
Christ namely, as he was in his first light, bereft of personality which the middle Person of the Trinity preserves therein, where in essential wisdom he is transfixed, confused with God’s all- perfection. Further, the soul gets light from God’s essential revelation. This is her aught and his causeless incomprehensibility. There her aught abides, graven in a point, mounted in the splendour of his eternal love-nature. In this sense mere creature receives and partakes of the divine nature.
109. ‘ When do we lose God altogether? ’ — How do you mean, lose? What is your idea in asking this? — ‘ I mean lose in the sense of knowing God one without other: free from matter and form and exempt from creatures, which are matter and form, one and other. So that creature conveys to her not one whit of God for all they say that God is in all creatures. How is this loss to be accounted for? ’ — I answer: Three sorts of people are deprived of God. One in material creatures, another in spiritual substances, the third above creature and below God. In the first case there is loss in creatures of gross material nature. This happens when, her senses being sated ‘with their objective forms, she escapes from their separateness to their perfect whole. Thus she loses the dense part of their nature and there remains to her only the sweetness of their innate nobility. In the second case, since no LIBER POSITIONUM 465 caused thing is superior to its cause and the aforesaid sweetness is derived from creatures whereas the soul proceeds from God, like though not of his same nature, therefore the soul being sated, not stinted, with this sweetness will acquire a fresh thirst, for ineffable sweetness, a longing for her first felicity. This finally detaches her from material nature and drives her to pure knowledge of herself and spiritual substances in general. Now she seeks delight in the enjoyments of her kind but finds it not for creatures are all dry and like no better than its like: abiding actuality is the only thing to quench her parching thirst. — In the third case she loses her activity. It happens thus. All spiritual substances act instantaneously though not at any instant of time. Losing instantaneously her materiality she loses each and every use of her separated nature. The thirst is followed by the loss of all variable activities and approach to the outskirts of eternity. Here she awaits the love-light wherein she secs the Trinity. This waiting is personified in Mary, Mary standing without at the sepulchre, waiting in her outward helplessness the embrace of the eternal nature. She saw two angels one at the feet and another at the head. Sight is light-perception. The angel at the head stands for the omnipotence of the majesty of God; the one at the feet, for his subtile nature. They asked her, ‘ Whom dost thou seek? ’ For the incomprehensibility of God and her passionate desirenature would form no satisfying union. Tlie question is one of incapacity for his incomprehensible nature; she wants to embrace the whole extent of him and is not able to. She said, ‘ Jesus of Nazareth! ’ He is the keeper in this solitude. Turning, she sees him standing in the likeness of a gardener: in the in-graven nature of the Person imaged in the ground of unity. He questionfid her, ‘ Whom seckest thou? ’ This is the blinding transcendental light, the glory in the midst of the Trinity, which eclipses her own dim understanding and the aforesaid light. ‘ If thou hast borne him hence, tell me, ’ she says. She has lost her wits in the overwhelming light of the immediate truth. He says, ‘ Mary! ’ using her own name. When the Father, departing from his essential personality, begets out of himself in otherness of Person his Word, the perfect reproduction of himself, he grasps with his paternal hand his impartible, beatific nature and harking back in spirit to himself is with himself as Son well-nigh in otherness. This is her name of whose child David cries, ‘ Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee.’ She would have touched him. Now behold and marvel at her love of God! Not satisfied with rising beyond all creaturely conception she desires to sink into the undifferentiated oneness of the essence of the Three, of Gk)d with God, nature with nature, ftnd lose the creature-nature that is hers e’en though that would 30 MEISTER ECKHART not be for her own highest happiness. For in oneness she would lose her knowledge, her love and her enjoyment, in other words, the actual goal of creatures. Hence his warning, ‘ Touch me not! ’ for this touching means the refunding into God of separated natures, whereas it is to creatures full of love and feeling that the consciousness of unbroken oneness brings supreme felicity. If she runs into God or God runs into her, either way hers is the loss because of the immensity of his essential nature and the insignificance of her creaturchood. As a dewdrop to the ocean are all creatures as compared with their creator. He bids her ‘ Go to Galilee to my disciples and tell them of my resurrection; there they shall see me as I said.’ Truly a bitter blow! She, who was not satisfied with God in the likeness of the second Person, who wanted to merge into his oneness, and Jesus bids her go to Galilee to bring word of his presence to mere creatures: her, who was impatient of the universal Word in eternal unity! She obeys him and goes thither. To Galilee, submissive to Jesus. Galilee means crossing (or transition). There is no temporal life but has to yield to physical necessity. Her watchword then must be, ‘ I no longer live but Christ liveth in me.’ She came to Jesus’ brethren who are three. Uninterrupted union; perfect corre- spondence with the mirror of eternity, without any discrepancy whatever; complete submission of the soul -powers and loss of all activity in the actual power of God in the essential nature of the body and the soul. Lo, she loses God in the limiting value of creature.
110. Love God with all thy soul. — ‘ What do you mean by loving God with all one’s soul? ’ — Ascending naked to God with nothing between, that I call whole-souled love. The soul’s life is love, the soul’s love is gnosis and her gnosis is her being. The soul’s real being is delight. The soul is never so near to God but God stands one side soul the other. Being belies not itself. Augustine says, God is the soul’s soul and being.
114. ‘Pray Sir, can one be moved without sinning?’ — ^When the animal passions are stirred the movement comes from with- out, not from within. Like a tree blown about by the wind and not torn up from the ground because the roots hold. In a case of agitation allowance must be made both for the person and the cause.
115. ‘ Can one remain the same in good and ill? ’ — Your bodily nature must always be the sport of joy and sorrow; that it can never lose. But will remains the same in fortune and misfortune, without resentment in the depths of woe. The power of impatience is taken from the recipient of eternal light.
116. ‘ How do you megn Sir^ the power? Pray explain.’ — I LIBER POSITIONUM 467 am using power here with reference to two things. On the one hand there is loss of the power of resentment. And on the other hand the power to be upset is removed from those who are vouch- safed eternal light. To lose their equanimity would be to them hell-torment and impossible. Joys and sorrows are not grown in the ground of eternal truth; none of creatures’ nurslings are truth’s seedlings and that is the key to this matter of dispassion.
117. ‘ There is another thing that needs explanation. You say that power is withdrawn and they are not able for it. Is this inability of nature or of grace? ’ — Nature acts differently. Were it a natural disability then effort would be vain, which it is not. It is an inability of grace; the soul is caught in the blaze of divine light and held by the majesty of God in the reflection of the essential good of the third Person. There personal distinction disappears merged in the oneness of the Three. There she is lost to the multiplicity of creatures. That answers your inquiries about the loss of power in pious souls and how they are impotent to lose their equanimity. Now, at last, they are omnipotent.
118. ‘ For the love of God, Sir, expound to me one statement you are fond of making.’ — What is that? — ‘ You say that inability to live up to one’s lights shows the absence of eternal light. The man who has eternal light can put his theories into practice. She only has to see a thing and lo, it is as though it had not been and she is free from it, which alarms me somewhat for I am never guilty of the most venial fault but first it is suggested to my mind and this does not prevent me from committing it. Tell me, Sir, what is her essential power? ’ — ^Essential power is one. Her essential power is will-and-love and this is not a prey to images bodily or ghostly, so she is essentially potential and that is what I fnean when I call her really free from (passive to) it.