If thou shouldst ask, ‘ How is he light, being incomprehensible ?’ I answer, Being incomprehensible therefore he is the light. I say, moreover, incomprehensibility is the light nature and this is plain, for his incomprehensibility comes from his unendingness. But his unendingness is due to his simplicity, to his purity (or clarity), which constitutes lightness in God. It is well said then, God is light. But know, this vision of the truth in the divine light is gotten in no school of creatures, it is learnt in the school of renouncement, of utter detachment from creatures, and for such lore the school is heaven, the book thy empty heart, eternity thy reading, thy mentor uncreated light and truth thy mentor too. This David meant when he declared, ‘ Lord in thy light shall we see the light.’
Then take the second question. How does he come who is without motion and how does he come who is without place? To whom does he come who is in all hearts ?
I answer, He does not come as anything at all nor yet as gaining something for himself but he comes ordering ; he who was hidden comes and reveals himself. He comes as the light which lay concealed in people’s hearts and in their minds, now taking shape in intellect and will and in the deepest being of the soul. He is in the inner man in such a way that there is naught without him and there is naught there with him: he is there all by himself. He comes, appearing in the mind and in the will, nothing at all without him, nothing at all with him but mind and will are full
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of him alone. There seems nothing with him, nothing without him ; the mind is but the place of God, a Godstead to itself and nothing more, as David sings, ‘ Lord the light of thy countenance is risen upon us’ as though to say, Holding thy peace, with sighing and with rue do thou by means of intellect turn thy will round to feel the charm of God. Converse with him as man to man and as thou dost discourse with God in the first person and of God in the third so do thou talk to God in the second Person. Forgetting everything, aware of God alone, say unto him, * Thou art my God, thou only art within, thou only art all things.’ Creatures are not receptive to God, except those that are made in the image of God, like angels and man’s soul: these being God- receptive he is in them and they in him. To others God is essential, not that they have gotten him but simply that they have no being without him. Not in virtue of his presence do they see him, does she see God in her innermost depth ; nor is it by his power for he is powerless apart from her ; but we can do nothing without him. God being in the soul as in himself therefore the soul is called a place and soul is also called the place of peace for where God is as it were ‘in himself there is the kingdom of heaven and peace untroubled, joyous and delightful. The blest soul is at rest in God as in her own, and more so.
A man who has gone clean out of himself straightway finds God in God and God with God. He behaves like him for what he is he is to God and what he is to God God is to him: God belongs wholly to him and is wholly he and he is wholly in God and is downright God they being so entirely the same, one cannot be without the other.
The soul is no different from Christ save that the soul has a born nature and a created nature. This Christ has not in his eternal Person. Ifthe soul doffed her born nature and her created nature she would be all the same, just essence itself. I say, put off thy creature ; itis easy to doff the creature for this is a labour of love and the greater the pain the greater the joy.
Whoso has three things is beloved of God. The first is riddance of goods ; the second, of friends, and the third is riddance of self.
Meister Eckhart said that in the essence of the soul we may surely see and know God. And the closer acquainted one is in
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this life with the soul the closer acquainted with God. The only way is to abandon creature and escape from self. Harkee. Love creature as I may in God never can I love God in creature as perfectly as in myself. Thou hast to go out of thyself into thyself again : there lies the home of truth which none may find who looks for it ini outward things. Mary Magdalene, when she left creatures and betook herself into her heart, found there our Lord. God is unmixed and pure: I can find God then only in the pure. But my interior soul is more undefiled and pure than any creature ; so my best chance of finding God is down in my own soul. And eke I am the life in God for ‘ All that is in the Father is the life in him,’ John said. In this guise does the Father bear the Son and in this selfsame birth I do proceed from him. Now he declares the Son to be in him, in the very depth of his heart. But since all that was made in him is the life in him therefore I am this life in the innermost heart of God. ‘ And the life was the light of men,’ said John. Mark you, he says the divine light in us is our light wherein we see all things conceived in the mind. God is being, perfect being, without which are no beings; for all beings are from his being. May we be this same heing, So help us God. Amen.
According to Meister Eckhart, there are seven degrees of con- templation. Whoso would practise contemplation let him seek out a quiet spot and set himself to thinking, first, how noble his soul is, how she has flowed straight out of God, a thought that fills him with a great delight. Having well cogitated this, next let him think how God must love his soul to make it in the likeness of the Trinity, so that all God is by nature he may be by grace ; whereat he will delight perforce more vehemently still for it is far more noble to be made in the form of the Trinity than merely to come straight from God.—In the third stage he meditates that he has been beloved of God for aye ; the Trinity has been for aye and God has loved the soul for aye.—Fourthly, he reflects that God did ever charge him to enjoy with God what God has aye enjoyed and always shall, God himself namely. At the fifth stage the soul enters into herself and knows God in herself, which - happens in this wise: No being can be without being and being feeds on being ; but being cannot live upon this food till this food is converted to the same blessed nature as that which feeds upon it and this applies to being which is being-of-itself. But there is no being-of-itself excepting God. So my soul is living on nothing but God. And by entering into oneself like this one finds God in oneself. If God will that I faint not he must give me air No
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being can stand without God so if he means me to have being then he must give me himself.
The sixth stage is, soul knows herself in God. As thus. Every- thing in God is God. Now my idea has always been in God, is still and ever shall be, therefore my soul is ever one with God and is God and I do find myself in God in the exalted fashion of being God in God eternally. This brings the expert soul ineffable delight.
At the seventh stage the soul knows God in himself as being without beginning whence all things emanated. This gnosis comes to no man fully in this life for it means the beholding of God, a thing not of this world.
Mind you, all our perfection, our whole happiness, depends on our traversing and transcending creature, time and state and entering the cause which is causeless.
God will never give himself openly to the soul . . . except she bring her husband, her whole free will, to wit.
What the joy of the Lord is none can tell. But mark this much concerning it. The joy of the Lord is the Lord himself, none else, the Lord being live, essential, actual intellect which knows itself and is and lives itself in itself and is the same. I do not saddle it with any mode, nay, I divest it of all mode for he himself is modeless mode who is and is glad because he is. This is the joy of the Lord and is the Lord himself. White is not black nor is aught naught. From naught naught can be taken. From aught aught can be taken and it is wholly thus with God. Of aught that is wholly in God naught remains. Soul joined to God has in him once for all all that is at all in absolute perfection. There soul forgets things and herself, as she is in herself, waking up in God, godlike as God.in her, so much in love with self in him, so indiscriminately one with him, she enjoys naught but him, delighting in him. What more should she know or desire ?
God being still sets everything going. So desirable a thing starts them all running back into that from whence they came : to that which stays unchanged in its own self; and the nobler the thing the more blithely it runs.
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God can no more abide his likes than he could abide not being God. Likeness is not a thing that can belong to God. There is sameness in the Godhead, in eternity ; but likeness is not sameness. If I am same I am not like. Likeness is no form of being in the one; there is sameness for me in the unity, not likeness.