1 Jostes, No. 34.
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work in. Theirs is riddance without and within for they are bare
and free from all contingent form. This is the man : in this man
all men are one man and that man is Christ. Of him one master
says, ‘ Earth was never worthy of this man who looks on heaven
and earth the same.’ This man is object-free in time and in eternity.
Now enough of those who have no object in eternity, but one thing more of those who are objectless in time. What is meant by object ? There are two objects : one is otherness (not I); the other is a man’s own proper self (his I).
The first otherness is becoming, all that has come into existence ; such things breed otherness and pass away. This applies to the passage of time.
He who knows one matter in all things remains unmoved. For matter is the subject of form and there can be no matter without form nor form devoid of matter. Form without matter is nothing at all; but matter ever cleaves to form and is one undivided whole in every single part of it. Now since form in itself is naught, therefore it moves nothing. And since matter is perfectly impartible, therefore it is unmoved. This man then is unmoved by form or matter and is therefore objectless in time.
Man’s other object is to possess his proper self, to identify himself with all perfection, with that most precious treasure his own aught: that is his quest. Now when a thing has gotten its own form, no more nor less, that thing is all its own and no one else’s. He who conceives this really is perfect in the sense that he is wholly objectless to eternity, etc.
This Is Life Eternal
Hec est vita eterna ut cognoscant te solum deum verum etc. (Joh. 17,). Here beginneth a discourse on a gospel saying, Christ’s dictum, ‘ This is life eternal, to know thee the only true God and thy Son whom thou hast sent.’
Now no one knows the Father except his only Son, for he says himself, ‘No man knows the Father save the Son and no man knows the Son save the Father.’ Ergo, if man is to know God, and therein consists his eternal bliss, he must be, with Christ, the only Son of the Father. If ye would be blest ye must be the only Son; not many sons: one Son. True, ye are many in your carnal birth, but ye shall be one in the eternal birth, for in God there is no more than the one natural spring with its single natural outlet of the Son; not twain but one. And hence if ye are one with Christ ye are the sole issue with the eternal Word.
124 Meister Eckhart
How does man come to be the oniy Son of the eternal Father ? I answer. The eternal Word did not take upon itself this man or that, it took upon itself one indivisible free nature, human nature, bare and formless, for the impartible form of manhood is wholly without form ; and since in this union the eternal Word took human nature formless, therefore the Father’s image, his eternal Son, became the form of human nature. Here it is just as true to say that man became God as that God became man. For human nature was transformed by taking the divine form which is the image of the Father. It follows that to be the Son ye must depart from and discard whatever makes for division in you. Man is an accident of nature. Do away with accidents and take yourselves in the freedom of your impartible humanity. But this very nature wherein ye take yourselves is become the Son of the eternal Father by union with the eternal Word, and therefore ye with Christ become the Son of the eternal Father by reason of enjoying the same nature which was there made God. Beware lest ye take yourselves as either this or that: realize yourselves in the liberation of your undivided manhood. If ye would be one ye must be rid of not, for not’s pride is division. How so? Well, suppose I say, Thou art not the man. This not puts a division between thee and this man. To be undivided ye must be free from not. There is one power in the soul which is immune from not, which has not aught in common with any mortal thing: there is nothing in this power; only God is seen there face to face.
A man being thus the Son, his motion, his energy, whatever he enjoys, he has gotten of his own. Now the Son of the Father is the eternal Son as being descended from the Father. Further, all he has he has within himself since he-is one in essence and in nature with the Father: his essence and his quiddity, he has both in himself and in this sense he prays, ‘ Father, as I and thou are one even so I would they should be the same.’ And just as the Son is one with the Father in ‚his essence, so thou being one with him in essence and in nature, hast got it all in thee as the Father has in him. Thou hast it not on loan from God, because
God is thine own: all thou hast gotten thou hast gotten of thine.
own and such works as are not produce of thine own are dead works in the sight of God. These thou art moved to by extraneous things and they are not living: they are dead, for anything alive is endowed with a motion of its own. If man’s works are to live they must be indigenous: not foreign things nor outside but within him.
Remember. If ye love right as God ye love not right as right, therefore ye neither take it nor love it as a whole but as divided.
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But God is right, so ye are not taking him nor loving him in his entirety. Take right as right and ye take it as God. Then where right is at work ye will be working too, seeing that ye do right all the time. Though hell stood in the way of right ye would still do right and that not as a hardship but a pleasure, because being right itself ye must do right. The more a thing participates in a common nature, the more it is one with the impartibility of the common nature, the more impartible it is itself. To the whole truth, God help us. Amen.
Behold, I Send My Angel
Ecce ego mitto angelum meum etc. (Matt. 11, Luc. 7,7). * Behold, I send my angel before my face to prepare my way before me. And he whom we seek shall suddenly come into his temple. Who knoweth the day of his coming? For he is as a fire that blazes up.’ Suddenly, he says, he shall come into his temple. The soul shall come with all of her possessions, be they sins or be they virtues, and offer them all up at once, lifting them up in the Son into the Father. As the love of the Father is the loveli- ness of the Son. The Father loves nothing at all but the Son and such things as he finds in the Son. Let the soul then rise up in her whole power and offer herself to the Father in his Son so that she with the Son may be loved by the Father.
He says, ‘ Behold, I send my angel.’ The word behold suggests three things. Something great or marvellous or rare. Behold, I send my angel to refine the soul and prepare her for divine light. Divine light is always in the angelic light and of the angelic light. The soul would be troubled and distressed if God’s light were not shaded therein. God, clouded by angelic light is always waiting to come out and shine upon the soul. I am wont to say, when I am asked what God is doing, that he is begetting his Son, bearing him ever fresh and new and with such delight that he does nothing else besides this work with his Holy Ghost and all things in it. Hence his words, ‘ Behold I.’ He who says I does the very best work. None but the Father can say this word right. The act is peculiar to him and theré is no issue thereof but his Son. In this act God tells forth his all. When God does this work in the soul, that is his birth: his birth is his work and his’ work is his Son. God performs this operation in the innermost depths of the soul so secretly that neither saint nor angel knows, nor is the soul herself a party to it save that she is the patient ; God does it by himself. It is really the Father who says, ‘ I send my angel.’
126 2 Meister Eckhart
Now I maintain we cannot be content with this and will have none of him. It was Origen who said, ‘Mary Magdalene sought our Lord; she sought for one dead man and was disappointed to find two living angels.’ She was right, for she expected God. Dionysius says of the august principalities of angels, that divine order reigns there and divine activity and divine likeness or divine truth, as far as that is possible. What is divine order but divine power and from them both springs love which is ardour and wisdom and truth and power. For love is burning in the realm of essence: transcendental, actual being, free from nature. It is its nature to be natureless. To think of goodness or wisdom or power dissembles the essence and dims it in thought. The mere thought obscures essence. Such is divine rule. And where God finds its like within the soul there does the Father give his Son birth. The soul’s whole power bursts alight. Out of this power, out of this light, leaps the flame: love. The soul with all her might ascends to the order of God.
Now to speak of the order of the soul. According to a heathen doctor, the supernal light of the soul is very bright and clear and dearly loves itself, whereas the soul dislikes herself and never sheds this natural light upon herself unless her lower powers are ordered to her highest; her natural light being high enough to reach angelic nature, but all averse from her inferior powers, it will not pour therein nor will it drench the soul unless these lower powers will give way. When a lord rules over a people the serf is under the knight and the knight is under the baron. They all desire peace and to that end they will all help each other. And even so each several power is subject to the others and helps to keep peace in the soul, perfect rest. Our doctors define perfect rest as absolute freedom from motion. In it the soul can rise above herself to the order of the gods. In this absolute rest the Father gives the soul his only Son. Now he ranks first in order of divinity. :
The other members take somewhat lower rank as I was saying of the angels who have God’s likeness very strong in them and illumination. In this interior light they soar above themselves into the divine image, all face to face with God in his divine light and so much the same that they do God’s work. Angels illumined like this and who are so like God, absorb and suck in God. I often say that were I void and had this fiery inner love and likeness I should absorb God altogether. Light streams out and lights up what it falls on. To call a man enlightened as we sometimes do, means little. Where it comes in it is far better; where it breaks through into the soul and makes her Godlike, divine, as far as may be, and light inwardly. In this interior light she
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towers above herself in the light of God. Now she has come home and is at one with him and is his fellow-worker. Nothing is wrought by creature, the Father works alone. The soul shall never stop until she works as well as God. Then she and the Father shall do his work together : she shall work as one with him, wisely and lovingly. That we may be in unity with him,
God help us. Amen.