when God said to the woman, * Bring me thy husband,’ she replied, “I have none.” Whereupon quoth he, ‘Thou sayest truly: thou hast had five, and him whom now thou hast is not thine husband.’ The moral is that those who live the life of the five senses never taste this food. The third one said, ‘I have married a ehe LT oonnot come.’ The soul is all-to single when she turns to God. As glancing down in this direction she is woman ; but as seeing God in himself and visiting God at home she is the man. Of old it was forbidden to men to dress in woman’s clothes or women man’s. She is man when she penetrates into God, impartibly and without means. But when she peers forth at all she is woman. * As I have repeatedly said, the man in the soul is the intellect. When the soul looks straight. up to God with her mind then the soul is the man, she is one and not two. But thinking and glancing down she dons female dress.* Quoth our Lord, ‘ Verily, these shall not taste of my supper’; and he commanded the servant, ‘Go out into the streets and the lanes, into the highways and hedges—the narrower the wider and hedged about.’ *For the more recollected the soul the less scattered she is and the more concentrated the wider her ken.* And some of her powers are hedged into one sense. The power I see with I do not hear with, nor with my power of hearing can I see. So with the rest (of the five senses). But on the other hand, the soul exists entire in every member; there is some power,
therefore, not confined to place at all. ur
$
ef we «
ie A
he %
f Ä x ei‘
90 Meister Eckhart
What is the servant ? Angels and preachers (so says St Gregory). But, as it seems to me, the servant is a symbol of the spark. He says to the servant, ‘Go out into the hedges and drive in thither these four kinds of folk: the poor and the maimed and the halt and the blind: Verily, none other shall taste of my supper.’ Let us throw off those three/and rise up_man, So help us God.
Amen.
Appendix!
Synderesis
Oxrorp MS.
The meat and drink I took
a fortnight since has turned
into my blood, my flesh, my
nature. That is due to the
power of the soul which brings
it into my nature ; it is as truly
one with me as what was born
with me.
So does the power of the
Holy Ghost take the purest and
lightest and highest and the
spark of the soul and carry it
up in the fire of love. Just like
the sun’s power : this lays hold
in the roots of the tree of what
is most pure and essential,
drawing it up into the branches
where it flowers. Even so is
the spark of the soul being
always drawn up in the light
and in the Holy Ghost and
conveyed into its source,
becoming all-to one with God
and searching him so throughly
that it is more the same as
God than food is with my
life.
I say it is the light up in the soul where the soul nature
Mark first in St Andrew his singleness of life and spiritual
' attainments whereby his soul
was enabled, in her intellect,
to ascend in the grace of God
above all creatures into God.
For the power of the Holy
Ghost seizes the very highest
and purest, the spark of the
soul, and carries it up in the
flame of love. Just as the
power of the sun takes what is
purest and subtlest out of the
roots of the tree and draws it
into the branches where it is in
flower. Likewise the soul-spark
is conveyed aloft into its source
and is absorbed into God and is
identified, with God and is the
spiritual light of God.
There are two lights in the soul, one is a light up in the
1 See Zuchhold, No. 25. Parallel passages from an Oxford MS. of Eckhart’s
Nos. 1 and 69.
. Sermons (Sievers’ copy), and a sermon on St Andrew, evidently by the same hand, but bearing the name of Nikolaus von Landau.
See also Jostes,
Sermons and Collations 91
touches angelic nature and
passes into the angelic nature ;
it is from God and is pouring
into the soul above nature.
Some say it is a power. It
isnot. A servant is mentioned,
that is the intellect. There
soul attains angelic nature and
is the image of God.
In this light the soul has
intercourse with angels and eke
with those angels that are
fallen into hell. There the
spark subsists without any kind
of suffering, turning straight up
into God.
And withal she is like the
good angels in this power, who
work unceasingly in God, be-
holding God in God and return-
ing all work into God.
This light the soul carries
within her. The masters call
it a power in the soul, this
synderesis. Itisnot. Itmeans
something hanging to God and
is ever averse from evil.
In hell it tends to God. It is
soul at the point where the
soul is by nature in contact
with the angels’ nature. The
other light is what I speak of.
This light pours into the soul
from on high, above nature.
Some call it a power of the
soul. But it is not. It is
called synderesis. To wit, the
intellect which is a spark (or
ray) of God the Father given by
God out of his Godhead’s God-
nature, and is the form of God
without any difference at all.
In it she is in touch with the
angelic nature.
In this light the soul has
community with angels also
those cast into hell. There the
spark is free from all suffering.
and faces straight up into God
and has precisely his nature.
And withal she has’ a some-
what, mind, in common with
good angels who are constantly
working in God and emanat-
ing from God and bearing back
all their work into God and
receiving God from God in
God. .
The intellect is like to these
good angels, drinking God in
his eternal savour, his living
sweetness and in his own ground.
She is sent away from God and
is a light that (re)turns: the
reflection of the divine nature,
which the soul has cast into her.
The masters call it synderesis
which is as much as to say)
something suspended from God!
all the time and which never
does wrong.
In hell, says St Augustine, it
92 Meister Eckhart
ever at war in the soul with the isturned to God. In the soul it
impure and the ungodly. wages constant war with things
that are not pure and are not
godly.
It looks neither to God’s
glory nor possessions. It
presses up into the goal of
divine essence and is the true
God’s messenger which leads
and draws mankind to the
celestial feast : et misit servum
suum hora cene.
XXXIIT IF YE THEN BE RISEN WITH CHRIST
Si consurrexistis cum Christo, que sursum sunt, querite, ubi Christus est in dextera dei sedens etc. (Col. 3,). St Paul says: ‘If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above and set not your affections on the things on earth.’ Then he goes on to say, ‘ ye are dead, and your life is hid in Christ with God in heaven.’ Thirdly, there are the women seeking our Lord at the sepulchre. There they found an angel ‘ whose countenance was like lightning and his raiment white as snow,’ and he asked the women, ‘Whom seek ye? If ye seek Jesus who was crucified, he is not here.” For God is not in any place. Of God’s lowest all creatures are full and his highest is nowhere. They answered him not, for they were disappointed at finding the angel and not God. God is not here or there, not in time or place.
St Paul says: ‘If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above.’ His first word expresses doubt. Some people rise by practising one virtue not another. Some, ignoble by nature, covet riches. Others, of a noble kind, care nothing for possessions but are bent on honour. One master says the virtues all hang upon each other. Though a person lean to the uses of one virtue rather than another they stand and fall together. Some people rise up all at once and yet rise not with Christ. That which is his rises once for all. On the other hand, we do find some who rise with Christ for good and all, but it will need a man of many parts to know in Christ the true resurrection. The masters say that with true resurrection there is no more death. Now there was never virtue so outstanding but someone might be found to have acquired it, and that by natural means, for natural powers work many signs and wonders, all the outward works found in the saints being found
Sermons and Collations 98
too in the heathen. And that is why he speaks of being ‘ risen with Christ,’ because he is on high, above the reach of any creature. What we have to do is to make the whole ascent. '
There are three signs of our having risen altogether. The first : we. seek those things that are above. The second : our affections are set on the things above. The third: we set not our affections on the things that are on earth. St Paul says: ‘Seek those things that are above.’ But where and in what way? King David tells us to ‘seek the face of God.’ What is common to a number must needs come from above. Above the fire itself there are the fire-givers like the heavens and the sun. Our best doctors teach that heaven is the locus of all things, and though it has itself no place, no natural place, yet it makes room for all things. My soul is undivided ; also, it is entire in each member. Where my eye sees my ear does not hear; where my ear hears my eye sees not. My bodily hearing and sight are engineered in the mind. Light gives my eye a sense of colour which is lacking to the soul by reason of its being a defect. All the outward senses are alive to, if the spirit is to take it in, must be raised up by the angel : he imprints it in the upper portion of the soul.
The above designs and produces the below, so our doctors say. Even so St James asserts that ‘Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above.’ One who is risen to the full with
Christ is known by his seeking for God above time. He seeks God _
above time who seeks him timeless. ‘Seek those things that are,
above,’ he says. Where shall we look? ‘ Where Christ is sitting RN Woy,
on the right hand of his Father.’ Where is Christ sitting? He is sitting nowhere; he is nowhere. If ye seek him anywhere ye shall not find him. A master has said that he Who sees anything does not see God. Now Christ means anointed: the anointed of the Holy Ghost. Sitting, theologians say, symbolises rest and implies timelessness. Turning and changing lead nowhere: stop- ping we progress.
‘I am God, I change not,’ saith the Lord. ‘ Christ sitteth on the right hand of his Father.’ The best gift of God, that is his right hand. With natural man, he starts his work with his right hand. Christ says, ‘I am the door.’ The first outburst and the first effusion God runs out in is his fusion into his Son, a process which in turn reduces him to Father. I said on one occasion that the door was the Holy Ghost : there he is poured out in blessings into all creatures. According to one master, the heavens receive from God direct. Another one says, No; God is spirit, pure light, and anything receiving straight from God must itself be spirit and pure light. The master denies that it is possible, in the first eruption, the first escape of God, that any corporal thing should
Cope,