‘ Seeing nothing, he saw God.’ The light which is God is flowing and darkening every light. Concerning it Job says, ‘ He coiU' manded the sun not to shine and sealeih up the stars as it were with a seal.’ Enveloped in this light he could see naught beside; his whole soul was distraught, intent upon the light that is God to the exclusion of all else; and this is a lesson to us, for what time we are busy with God we mind little what goes on without.
Fourthly, he saw naught since the light which is God is un- mingled, free from admixture. It shows it ^vas the true light he beheld for there was nothing there. By light he simply means that he saw nothing with his open eyes. In that he saw not, he saw the divine naught. St Augustine says. When he saw nothing, he saw God. According to St Paul, ‘ Whoso only seeth being blind, he seeth God.’ As St Augustine hath it, ‘ God is the true light, preserver of the soul, more nigh to her than she is to herself, and by the same token, when the soul turns her hac^k on things becoming, then God must needs shine into her. This soul knows neither love nor care, she is unmindful of th(*m. The soul that fares not forth to outside things comes home to stay in her im- partible pure light. She does not love nor does she fear nor care withal. Knowledge is the basis, the foundation of all being. Love has no hold except in knowledge. When the soul is blind and can see naught beside, then she sees God, it is inevitable. A master says, the eye at its clearest, without any colour, sees every colour; not just as a colourless thing in itself, but in place in the body it has to be void of all colour for us to see colours. In colourless things all colours arc seen, aye, though it be down in one’s feet. God is something all-embracing. For God to be seen by the soul she has to be blind. Accordingly he says, ^ lie saw the naught whose light all lights are, whose being all beings are.’
The bride says in the Book of Love: ‘ When I had passed by a little I found him my soul loveth.’ The little she had passed all creatures were. Whoso putteth not these behind him shall not find God. And eke she would imply that however small, however pure a thing I know God by, yet it must go. Even the light that verily is God, if I take it where it plays upon my soul is foreign to him. I must take it at the source. I cannot really see the light that shines upon the wall unless I turn my gaze to w^here it comes from. But if I take it in its cause I am robbed of its effect. I ought to take it neither where it falls nor in its eruption nor yet MEISTER ECKHART as brooding in itself; these are all mere modes. We must take God in modeless mode and unconditioned essence, for he is free from mode. St Bernard says: He who would know thee, God, must mete thee with no measure. Please God we may attain that understanding which is wholly without mode and without measure. So help us God. Amen.
XX AND BEHOLD THERE WAS A MAN...SIMEON Et ecce, homo erat in Jerusalem^ cui nomen Simeon etc, {Luc, 235). St Luke relates in his gospel that ‘ when the days were accom- plished Christ was brought to the temple. And behold there was a man in Jerusalem, Simeon by name, who was just and God- fearing, waiting for the consolation of the people of Israel and the Holy Ghost was in him.’
* And behold.’ This particle et in Latin signifies joining, binding or locking together. Things fast bound or locked together are described as in union. Here I refer to the soul being bound, knit, united to God. According to our doctors, union postulates likeness. There is no union without likeness. Binding or knitting together, that is the meaning of union. Nearness to me does not constitute likeness: my sitting by someone or in the same place, for example. As St Augustine says. Lord, when I found myself afar from thee it was not from the remoteness of the place, it came of thy unlikeness wherein I found myself. One master says, people living and working wholly in time never agree, they never come together. According to our doctors, a thing whose life and work is in eternity and a thing whose life and work is here in time require a go-between. Where there is knitting and binding together there must be some likeness. The union of God and the soul is a matter of likeness. Where no difference exists there must be identity; not merely union in mutual embrace, but one; not merely likeness, but the same. Wherefore we say that the Son is not like the Father but he is his image, he is one with the Father.
One of our best doctors says that an image in stone or on the wall, with no foundation to it, taken simply as a form, is the same form as his whose form it is. For the soul passing into her exemplar wherein is no alien thing, only her form wherewith it is one, this doctrine holds good. Having gotten the form that is divine we behold God, we find God. In separation God is not found. On passing into her exemplar and finding herself in that image alone, in that same image the soul finds God and the finding of herself and God, which is all the same act and is timeless, is the finding of God. So far as she is therein so far she is one with God, He means: 65 SERMONS AND COLLATIONS as far as a man is at the stage where his soul is the divine image. Then so far as he is he is divine. So far therein so far in God, not annexed, not united but one and the same.
One master says, likeness means birth. Further he states that like is not met with in nature unless it is born. Doctors declare that fire, however fierce, would never burn had it no hope of propagation. However dry the wood supplied it would never catch (if fire) lacked power to generate its kind. What fire wants is to be born in wood, for all to be one fire, living and lasting. Extinguished and dead it were fire no more, so it wants to keep in. The nature of the soul would never have gotten its kind were it not for her wanting to have God begotten in her; she would not have proceeded into her nature, would never have wanted to enter therein, except in the hope of this birth; nor would God ever have brought it to pass had he not meant the soul to be born into him. God docs and the soul desires. God has the energy and the soul has the will and the power to have God born into her and her- self into God. This God contrives with intent that the soul shall be like him. She must needs wait for God to be gotten in her and for her treasure to grow into God, desiring union and the safe- keeping of God. God’s nature pours into the light of the soul and therein she is preserved. God purposes thus to be born into her, united with her, contained in her.- -How can that be? Do we not say that God contains himself? — When he draws in the soul she finds that God is self-contained and there she stays abiding nowhere else. Augustine says: ‘ As thou lovest so thou art: loving earth thou art earthly, loving God thou shalt be divine.’ If I love God then, shall I be God? It is not I who say so; search the scriptures. In the Prophets God says: ‘ Ye are gods and the children of the Most High.’ I say that it is in his likes that God gives this birth. Had she no expectation of this the soul would not want to attain it. She wants to be preserved in him, he is her life. God has a preserve, a safe place in himself, which man can know nothing about until he pares off and is rid of all that belongs to the soul — her life, her powers, her nature, all must go. And that means standing in that perfect light where she and God are one form, where she finds herself God. It is characteristic of God to have nothing alien in him, nor on him nor added to him. And likewise it behoves the soul to have no outside impressions, nothing put on, nothing annexed. So much for the first (word).
‘ And behold ’: ecce. This word ecce has all the meaning of logos (or word) and it could be given no greater. Word, i.e, God. God is a word, God’s Son is a word. It conveys the idea of our life nnd all our desire being centred in and dependent upon and odented to God. As St Paul says, ‘ By the grace of God I am 66 MEISTER ECKHART that I am.’ And again, ‘ I live, yet not I but God liveth in me.’ What more?
Homo erat. He says, ‘ Behold, a man.’ We use the word homo for women as well as for men, but the Latins refused it to woman because of her weakness. Homo denotes something whole, nothing lacking. Homo, a man, a mortal, means one pertaining to earth, implying humility. Earth is the basest of the elements and placed in the midst with the heavens all round, it lies open to every celestial emanation. All the work and waste of heaven is caught midway in the sink of earth. Homo in yet another sense means moisture; as much as to say, one who is watered with grace; referring to those humble souls who receive the immediate influx of grace. In this inflowing grace there forthwith arises that light of the mind into which God is sending a ray of his unclouded splendour. In this powerful light a mortal is as far above his fellows as a live man is above his shadow on the wall. This light is vastly potent, not merely being in itself exempt from time and place, but anything it falls upon it robs of time and place and bodily semblance and everything extraneous thereto. As I have often said before, were there no time nor place nor aught beside it would be all one being. The man who is in this sense one and casts himself into the ground of humility, there will be watered with grace.
Concerning the third point: this light deprives of time and place. ‘ There was a man.’ Who gave him this light? The light did. This word erat belongs expressly to God. In the Latin tongue there is no word so proper to God as erat John in his gospel comes to using erat as a synonym for pure being. Things are all extras: but addition is possible only in thought; not by mental addition but by mental abstraction. Goodness and truth are additions, in theory at least, but the abstract essence without anything to it is what is meant by erat Again, erat implies birth, an end of becoming. I was coming to-day, now I have come; and if we eliminate time from my coming and having arrived, then coming and come close up into one. Where coming and come coincide, there we are born and re-made and re-formed into his primitive form. I have often said that all the while a thing’s aught is a matter of concrete existence it never will be re-created; refurbished it may be and coloured afresh, even as a seal that is old: that is restamped and renewed. A heathen doctor says, Things yonder no time can stale; there is the blessed life in the evermore: faultless, care-free, unalloyed being. Solomon says: ‘ There is nothing new under the sun,’ though this is seldom taken in its proper sense. Everything under the sun grows old and dies, but yonder is nothing but new. Time brings two things: age and 67 SERMONS AND COLLATIONS decay. What the sun shines on is present in time. Creatures are here and are from God, but yonder where they are in God they are not at all the same as they arc here; they are as different as the sun is from the moon, far more so. Erat in eOy he says: " the Holy Ghost was in him,’ wherein is being and becoming. ‘ There was a man.’ Where was he? In Jerusalem. Jerusalem meaning vision of peace; it stands, in short, for man’s peace and prosperity. It possibly signifies more. Paul says, ‘ The peace that passeth all understanding keep your hearts and minds.’ Pray God we may be such as to enter into this peace, which is himself. So help us God. Amen.
XXII HE THAT HATETH HIS SOUL Qui odit animam suam in hoc mundo in vitam ceternum custodial earn (Joh» 1235). I quote in Latin the gospel saying of our Lord, ‘ He that hateth his soul in this world shall keep it in eternal life.’ Now mark what it is our Lord means when he speaks of a man hating his soul. He that loveth his soul in this mortal life and as she exists in this world shall lose her in eternal life; but he that hateth her mortal guise shall keep her unto life eternal.
There are two reasons for his using here the word soul. Accord- ing to one authority soul is a name for the ground (or soil) and has nothing to do with the nature (or ground) of the soul. As a master has said, Whoso discourses of moveable things trenches not on the nature or ground of the soul. Try to name the soul as she is in herself, in her pure and abstract nature, and not a name can wc find. They call her soul as they call a carpenter, neither a human being nor after any being at all but after his work. What our Lord means is this: he that loveth his soul in her nakedness, her impartible soul-nature, to wit, will hate and despise her in this dress. She hates and detests and rues being so far from the pure light she is in herself.
Our doctors say the soul is called fire because of the force and because of the heat and because of the light that is in her. Others declare she is a spark of the celestial nature. A third school calls her a light. A fourth calls her a breath. A fifth dubs her a number. They are trying to describe the soul by something pure and luminous. Number exists in the angels and in light there is number as well, but to name her after the highest and after fhe brightest is still to fall short of the ground of the soul. God is nameless is ineffable and in her ground the soul too is ^ See also Spamer's Texte, etc., A. 5. One Latin and two German versions.
68 MEISTER ECKHART ineffable as he is ineffable. There is another reason for his saying that she hates. This term we apply to the soul is the name of the soul as she is in the prison of the body, so he means the soul in her individual state, still at the stage of taking thought, still in her prison-house. By taking thought for these nether things, by taking them in by her senses at all, she is confined: words cannot name any higher nature within her.
There are three reasons why my soul should hate herself. The first, that in so far as she is mine she is not God’s. The second, because my soul is not wholly imbedded and set and re-cast into God. Augustine says, To have God for one’s own one must needs first be God’s. The third reason is: the soul’s enjoying herself as the soul while enjoying God with the soul, which is wrong. She should be enjoying God in herself since he is entirely hers. As Christ says, ‘ he that loveth his soul shall lose it.’ What the soul is in this world or beholds in this world: things comprehended, apparent at all, she shall hate. A master declares that the soul at her highest and purest transcends the whole world, nothing attach- ing the soul to the world but affection. Sometimes she has a natural love of the body. Sometimes she has a will inclined towards creatures. Another says the soul has no natural concern with the things of this world any more than the ear has with colour or the eye has with song. Our natural philosophers teach that the body is much rather in the soul than the soul is in the body. Even as the cask contains the wine and not the wine the cask, so does the soul keep the body in her rather than the body the soul. What the soul loves in this world she is pure from by nature. According to one philosopher, it is the soul’s nature and her natural end to achieve within herself a feat of understanding, God informing her with the general idea. He that can say he has attained his nature finds all things within himself, fashioned in light as they are in God; not as they are in nature but as they are in God. Neither spirit nor angel touches the ground or nature of the soul. In it she comes into the first, into the beginning, whence God breaks out in goodness into all creatures. There she loves all things in God, not pure as they are in her uncompounded nature, but merely impartible as they are in God. God has made this whole world as it were out of coal. Its pattern in gold is more lasting than this one in coal. Likewise the things in the soul are purer and nobler than they are in this world. The material which God made things out of is (to its exemplar in God) baser than coal is to gold. For the purpose of making a crock a man takes a handful of clay; that^is the medium he works in. He gives it a form he has in him, nobler than^^his material. And the moral of this is that the things in the intelligible world, the soul, to wit, ffxe in.fi;>itely nobler SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 69 than they are in this; even as the image hewn and graven in gold so the types of all things are onefold in the soul. A master says, The soul has a natural gift for being impressed with the forms of all things. Another one says. Never did soul get to her virgin nature without finding all things imaged therein in the intelligible world which is incompreljensiblc, unthinkable. Gregory says: All reasoning in words about divine things is but a stammering.
One word more about the soul and I have done. ‘ O ye daughters of Jerusalem, look not upon me because I am brown I The sun hath coloured me and the children of my mother have striven against me ’ {Cant, I5). She refers to the children of this world, to them the soul speaks. The sun is the lust of this world: the visible, tangible things thereof do turn me swarthy and brown. Brown is not a pure colour: it is part light and part darkness. When the soul thinks or acts with her powers how enlightened soever these be, still, there is confusion. And therefore she says, ' My mother’s children have striven against me.’ These children being the lower powers of the soul, all clashing and at strife with her. The heavenly Father is our father and Christendom is our mother. What though she be fair and well-favoured and good at her work, yet this is not perfect. Wherefore he cries, ‘ O thou fairest among women go forth and depart.’ This world is like a woman, weak. But why does he address her, ‘ O fairest among women? ’ The angels are fair and arc far above the soul. He says, ‘ fairest ’: in her light-nature. ‘ Go forth and depart ’; go forth from this world and depart from such things as thy soul is still prone to. And anything grasped let her hate.
XXII THE LORD PUT FORTH HIS HAND Misit dominus manum suam et teligit os meum et dixit rnihi etc, {Jer, I9). ‘ The Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth and said unto me.’
When I preach it is my wont to speak about detachment, of the duty of ridding ourselves of self and of things. Or again, of return to the impartible good, God to wit. And thirdly, on the duty of remembering the high and noble nature God has put into the soul so that mortals may wonder about God. Fourthly, about the pure nature of God, the ineffable splendour of God. God is a ^ord, an unspoken word. Augustine says: ‘ All scripture is vain.’ Wo say that God is unspoken, but he is unspeakable. Grant he is somewhat: who can pronounce this word? None but the Word, ^od is the Word which pronounces itself. Where God exists he 70 MEISTER ECKHART 70 MEISTER ECKHART is saying this Word; where he does not exist he says nothing. God is spoken and unspoken. The Father is the speaking energy and the Sun is the speech energising. What is in me goes forth of me; I have but to think and my word goes forth, at the same time abiding within. Even so does the Father speak forth his Son who meanwhile remains in him unspoken. I have repeatedly said, God’s exit is his entrance. In proportion to my nearness to God does he speak himself into me. In the case of rational creatures the more they go out of themselves in their works the more they get into themselves. Not so with corporal things: the more active these are the further they get from themselves. All creatures desire to speak God in their works: they all of them speak him as well as they can but they cannot really pronounce him. Willy-nilly, in weal or in woe they are all trying to utter God who yet remains unspoken.
David said, ‘The Lord is his name.’ Lord means one set in authority; knox)e means an underling. Some names are proper to God and forbidden to aught beside God. God is the name peculiar to God just as 7nan is the name for mankind. A man is a man be he foolish or wise. Seneca says, ‘ ’Tis a vile man that excels not humanity.’ Anotlier name we associate with God is paternity. When wc call a man father y we take for granted a son. No father can be without having a son. True, they merge, beyond time, into eternal nature. The third name in its higher sense relates to God and in its lower one to time. God is called by many names in scripture. Now I say, anything wc can think of in God or put any name to, that God is not. God transcends name, transcends nature. Wc hear of one good man who in prayers besought God for his name. Then, ‘ Peace! ’ quoth a brother, ‘ thou art abasing God.’ Wc can lind no name to give to God; but we arc permitted to use the names his saints have called him by, those whose hearts inspired by God were Hooded with his divine light. Hence we learn, first, how to pray to God. Wc ought to say. Lord, in those very names which thou didst instil into the hearts of saints, suffusing them with thy light, wc praise thee and adore thee. And secondly we learn that in giving God no name at all we praise and honour him suflicicntly since God is above name and ineffable.
Out of the fullness of his power the Father speaks the Son and in iiim all things. All creatures arc the utterance of God. Like as my lips proclaim and tell forth God so does a stone’s existence, and we can glean more from the fact than from the telling of it. Work wrought by highest nature in its sovran power a lower nature cannot comprehend. If it did the selfsame work then would it not be lower, but the same. Creatures all want to copy SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 71 God in all they do. But it is precious little they are able to reveal. Even the highest angels, inasmuch as they ascend and come in touch with God, are no more like than black and white to that which is in God. It is altogether different, what creatures have received, yet they all desire to speak as nearly as possible the same. The prophet says: ‘ Lord, thou sayest one and I understand two.’ When God speaks into the soul, as it falls it divides. The higher we soar in our understanding the more we arc in him. In eternity, the Father is speaking his Son all the time and i^ouring forth all creatures in him. They all have a call to return whence they came forth. Their whole life and nature is a vocation, a flight back to what they came out of.
The prophet says: ‘ The TiOrd sent forth his hand,’ meaning the Holy Ghost. He says, ‘ he touched my mouth,’ and straightway there follow the words, ‘ he spake unto me.’ The mouth of the soul is the highest part of the soul and she has this in mind when she says, ‘ he hath put lus Word into my mouth,’ this being the kiss of the soul; mouth to mouth the Father conveys his Son into the soul, then he speaks to hi*r, saying, ‘ Lo, this day I have chosen thee to set thee over nations and over kingdoms.’ God says he will choose us to-day. Yonder in eternity, where time is not, there is ever to-day. ‘ And 1 have set thee over nations,’ i,e, above this world which thou must be rid of; ‘ and over kingdoms,’ meaning, that more than one thing is too much; it behoves thee to die to all things and get back to the height where we dwell in the Holy Ghost. Amen.
XXIII THE SFIHIT OF THE LOHD Spiritus dotnini replcvit orhem terrarum etc, {Saj). I 7 ). ‘ The spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole world.’
A philosopher says, All creatures bear witness to the divine?iature whence they proceeded forth, in their will to emulate the Deity they came from.
Creatures proceed forth in two ways. The first is a radical process, like I’oots coming out of a tree. The second emanation is by mode of will. Behold the twofold emanation of divinity. One the descent of the Son from the Father, this after tlie manner of a birth. The other, the outpouring of the love of Father and Son, the Holy Ghost, to wit, for in him they love one another. All creatures proclaim their origin, their divine descent betrays itself in their works. According to a Greek philosopher, God 72 MEISTER ECKHART keeps all creatures in leash, as it were, and they must follow where he leads. Hence nature is aye making for the highest.
The second emanation is the Holy Ghost, by mode of will. Nature would fain make nothing but the Son; were she allowed she would do father’s work, so nature would be ever giving sons did she not suffer accidental lapses. When nature is working in time and space then father and son are different. One master explains that a carpenter building a house will erect it first in his mind and, were the house subject enough to his will, then, materials apart, the only difference between them would be that of begetter and suddenly begotten. Lo, thus it is in God, for since there is no time nor place in him, therefore they are one God, there being no distinction save outpouring and outpoured.
According to the scriptures, ‘ The spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole world.’ Why is he called Lord? Because he fills us. Why is he called spirit? Because he unites us with himself. A lord is known by three signs. First, he is rich. Rich means possessing all things without stint. Hence none is really rich but God in whom all things are harboured indivisibly. So he can give all things and this is the second sign of riches. A philosopher says, God hawks himself to all creatures and each takes as much as it wants. I trow God offers himself to me as he docs to the highest angel and were I as apt as he is I should receive as he does. As I have often observed, God always behaves as though he was trying to please the soul. The third sign of riches is, giving for love; whoso giveth for aught is not really rich. God’s richness is shown by his giving all his gifts gratis. As saith the prophet, ‘ Thou art my God, thou needest not my possessions.’ He alone is the Lord and the spirit. I say, he is spirit; our happiness lies in union with him.
The most excellent work of God in creature is being. My father gives me my nature but he does not give me my being: God does that, none beside. That is why everything that exists takes such a shrewd delight in being. The being of the soul receives the influx of God’s light; not pure and limpid as God sends it forth but in ambient undulations. We can see the sunlight where it falls upon a tree or any other object, but we fail to appre- hend the sun itself. And so with any gift of God: these arc all meted out according to the taker not according to the giver.
A philosopher says, ‘ God is the standard of measure,’ and so far as one mortal contains more God than another, to that extent he is wiser and nobler and better than the other. To have more of God simply means being more like him: the more God’s likeness exists in us the more spiritual we are. A philosopher says, ‘ Where the lowest spirit ends the highest bodily thing begins.’ All of SERMONS AND COLLATIONS 78 which goes to prove that God being spirit, the least of spiritual things excels the best of corporal things. Soul is more excellent than anything bodily. Soul is contained in a place, as it were, betwixt time and eternity, touching them both. With her higher powers she is in touch with eternity; in her inferior powers she is in contact with time. Thus, mark you, in time she does not function according to time but in her eternal nature which she has in common with the angels. Spirit is a subtle thing, bringing life to all the limbs in virtue of the close accord of soul with body. Albeit spirit is rational, and does the entire work, yet we do not say, my soul docs so and so, for both of them together are a man. This fact I may make bold to state: because of the intimate union of the body and the soul the soul is in the smallest member as much as in the body as a whole. St Augustine says, ‘ The union of body and soul may be close, but closer still is the union that spirit has with spirit.’ Lo, he is Lord and spirit, may he beatify us by uniting us with him.
It is a puzzling question how the soul survives when God imprints himself in her. Consider. Were God to give her any outward being she would scorn it; but when he gives her himself in himself she receives and suffers in his and not in her own, his being hers: he has fetched her out of her own so his is now hers and hers really is his. So she suffers in union with God. This is the spirit of the Lord which has filled the whole world. Amen.
XXIV ST JOHN SAW IN A VISION St John saw in a vision a lamb standing on Mount Sion and with l^m stood forty and four who were not of this world nor had they wifely names. These were all virgins who stood next the lamb, and when the lamb inclined they inclined with him, singing with the lamb a new song and having their names and the name of their Father written in their foreheads.
John says, ‘ I looked and lo, a lamb stood on the mountain.’ I say, John himself was that mountain whereon he saw the lamb, and whoso sees the Lamb of God must himself be the mountain, ascending to his highest, purest part.
Again. He says he saw a lamb standing upon a mountain: when one thing stands upon another its lowest point touches the other’s highest. God touches all things and remains untouched. God is above all things standing in himself and his instance sus- tains all creatures. Creatures have an uppermost and undermost, ^od has not. God is over everything and is not touched by 74 MEISTER ECKHART 74 MEISTER ECKHART anything. All creatures seek outside themselves, in one another, what they lack. God does not. God does not look outside him- self: everything that creatures have God has entire in him; he is the floor, the roof of ereatures. True, one is prior to another down to the very last, one being born before another: though ereature gives not of her being to him, yet she keeps some of his. God is a simple presence, a stay-at-home in himself. With any creature, as regards her noble nature, the more she sits at home the more of herself she gives out. A common stone, like limestone, for example, gives itself out a stone and nothing more. But a precious stone, this has great power because of something in it, some interior fastness wherein it rears its head and, so to speak, peers out. According to the masters, no creature is so stay-at- home as body and soul, nor goes so far afield as the soul’s highest part.