A philosopher says, ‘ That man knows God aright who is equally aware of him in all things’; and, ‘To serve God in fear is good; to serve him in love is better, but he who is apt to behold love in fear does best of all.’ A life of rest and peace in God is good; a life of pain in patience is still better; but to have peace in a life of pain is best of all. One may go in the fields and say one’s prayers and be conscious of God or go to church and be conscious of God ; if we are more conscious of God by being in a quiet place, that comes of our own imperfection and is not dueto God, for God is the same in all things and all places and just as ready to vouchsafe himself so far as in him lies; and that man knows God aright who ever finds him the same.
St Bernard says, ‘Why does my eye see sky, and not my foot ? Because my eye is like the sky, more than my foot.’ For my soul to see God then, she must be heavenly. What makes the soul alive to God in her, aware how close to her he is? I answer: Heaven permits no alien intrusion, no mortal lack can pene- trate therein to do it outrage. And the soul that knows God is so firmly established in God that nothing can reach her, not hope nor fear nor joy nor grief nor good nor ill nor nothing that would bring her down to earth.
Heaven is at all points equidistant from the earth. And likewise it behoves the soul to be equally remote from every earthly thing and no nearer to one than to another but equable in joy, in grief, in having and in wanting ; whatever it be she must be dead, dispassionate, superior to it. Heaven is clear and unsullied in its brightness, free from any taint of time and place. No corporal thing finds room therein. Not itself in time, incredible in swiftness is its revolution, its actual course being timeless though from. its course comes time. Nothing hinders the soul from knowing God so much as time and place. Time and place are fractions, God is an integer. So if the soul knows God at all she must know him above time and space, for God is neither this nor that as these manifold things are : God is one.
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If the soul would see God she must not look at anything in time. While the soul is regarding time and place or any such idea she can never recognise God. Before the eye can see colour it has to be rid of all colour. Before the soul can see God it must have nothing in common with naught. The seer of God knows that creatures are naught. Comparing one with another, creature looks fair and is aught, but compare it with God, it is naught.
Further I declare: any soul that sees God must have forgotten herself and have lost her own self ; while she sees and remembers herself she nor sees nor is conscious of God. But when for God’s sake she loses herself and abandons all things then in God does she re-find herself, for knowing God she is knowing herself and all things (which she rid herself of) in God in perfection. To know the sovran good and the eternal goodness, really, I must know them in the good itself, not in partial goodness. To know real being I must know it as subsisting in itself, that is, in God, not parcelled out in creatures.
In God alone exists the whole of godhood. Not in one man exists the whole of manhood, for in a single man exists not all mankind. But in God the soul finds perfect manhood and all things in their prime, for she knows them in their essential nature. The dweller in a richly furnished house must know far more about it than another person who, though full of information, has never been within. And by this same token I am as certain as I live, and as God lives, that the soul who knows God knows him above time and place. In this God-conscious state the soul perceives how near God’s kingdom is, namely, God in all his fullness. There is much discussion among doctors at the School as to the possibility of the soul knowing God. Not by reason of his harshness does God exact so much from man but out of his great kindness, wanting the soul to be more capacious, big enough to hold the largesse he is anxious to bestow.
Let no one deem it difficult to arrive at this however hard may seem, and be, indeed, to start with, the parting from and dying to all things. Having once got into it no life is more easy, more delightful or more lovely. God is so very careful to be always with a man to guide him to himself in case of his taking the wrong way. No man ever wanted anything so much as God wants to make the soul aware of him. God is ever ready, but we are so unready. God is near to us, but we are far from him. God is in, we are out; God is at home, we are strangers. The prophet says, © God leads the just by a narrow path to the high road out into the open,’ that is, to the true freedom of the spirit become one spirit with God. Ours to follow his lead and let him bring us to himself. So help us God. Amen.
174 » Meister Eckhart
This Is a Sermon About Our Lord’S Body
This is a sermon on our Lord’s body by Brother Eckhart. He says that the bread of our Lord’s body has many names, but three special ones are given it in holy writ. In the first place it is called the heavenly bread, in the second it is called the bread of angels, and thirdly the bread of lamentation. And whoso would worthily receive this bread of our Lord’s body must have these three things. First, none can enjoy the heavenly bread who is not a heavenly man. This means that as the heavens with the sun and moon and the entire system are above all earthly, temporal things, so man in his desires, his senses and his thoughts must be lifted up to celestial things. Secondly, no man can enjoy the bread of heaven except he be an angelic man, for no creature was ever so perfect as an angel. This man must be at all times perfectly pure in heart and body. Thirdly, it is called the bread of lamentation ; this no man enjoys except he be a man of sorrow, one, that is to say, who pondering our Lord’s martyrdom shall rue the treatment meted out to our Lord on earth. Whoso has not this rue shall not enjoy the bread of sorrow. So, then, a man must have three things before he can approach this bread. First, having gotten to the excellent condition of knowing good and ill, he must choose the good and worthy and reject the foul and evil. Next, with his heart divorced from worldly loves, this man must go in godly love and all godly things. Thirdly, he must order all his activities.
LXXI! BOETHIUS SAYS: HE WHO WANTS TO SEE TRUE
' Boéthius says, “He who wants to see true in this light I speak of let him relinquish four things,’ which are set down. He must relinquish the joys of the world and care and want and fear; while these are in thee it is dark and clouded therein. St Paul says God dwells in light inaccessible. Anything approaching this light the light consumes and turns to its own divine nature, even as I said of the divine essence: what is taken into the essence is changed into essence. Speaking of understanding: as it is characteristic of God to subsist unmoved in his pure and virgin essence, his own being, so is this property imputed to understand- ing, which is so noble as to be self-subsistent.
1 For No. 71 (1) see Jostes, No. 15, of which it forms a part.
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I have told how understanding has to break through the image of the Son ; as he himself declares, ‘ I‘am the light of the world ; no man cometh to the Father but through me.’ As the wise man explains in the Book of Wisdom, when the soul is borne into God by his divine wisdom, she is clarified and sublimed in light and in grace, all that is foreign to the soul being detached and shelled away together with a portion of herself. Further, I related how _ the soul, now throughly purged of soul accretions, is carried up and flows back into the Son as pure as she flowed out in him. The Father created the soul in the Son, so if we are ever to get into the ground of God, into his innermost heart, we must take the lowest place in our own ground, in our own innermost self, in abject lowliness. When the soul enters into her ground, into the inner- most recesses of her being, divine power suddenly pours into her, producing much activity, both manifest and secret, and the soul grows big and high in favour with God. This is and must be in the soul who, rightly disposed in the ground of humility, ascends, borne aloft in the divine power: she never stops until she gets right into God and coming to absolute rest in him, abides wholly within without looking out, subsistent in his pure essence; for even therein is the soul. God is pure being. The philosopher says that nothing at all can get into God, who is pure being, but what is also pure being. Ergo, the soul is pure being who has gotten therein, soaring right up into God. Amen.
LXXII! THE PROPHET SAYS: LORD BE MERCIFUL
The prophet said, ‘Lord be mereiful to the people that is in thee.’ The Lord replied, ‘ All that enter in will I make whole and love much.’
I take the words of the Pharisee who besought our Lord to dine with him and our Lord’s injunction to the woman, vade in pace ! It is good to pass from restlessness to calm: praiseworthy but imperfect. ‘Go in peace,’ be not disquieted : God implies that we ought to enter into peace and continue in peace and end in peace. God said, ‘In me ye have peace.’ So far in God so far in peace. Is aught in God, it is in peace ; is aught out of God, it is without peace. St John says, ‘ Whatever is born of God over- cometh the world.’ What is born of God seeks peace and ensues it. He that pursues the even tenor of his way and is at peace is a heavenly man, Heaven constantly rotates, in its motion seeking rest.
1 See also Jostes, No. 10.
176 Meister Eckhart
The Pharisee besought our Lord that he would dine with him. The food a man eats is changed in him into his body, like the body by the soul. Body and soul are one in being, not in act, thus my soul is united with my eye in one mode, that ofseeing. Even so the food a man consumes mingles with his nature as regards its essence but not its activity ; and the great atonement we are destined to with God shall be of essence not of operation. Hence the Pharisee’s request that God would eat with him.
Pharisee signifies a solitary, one who knows no end to detach- ment of soul. The more noble the powers the more they liberate. Some powers are far higher than the body and sufficiently aloof to shell off and detach completely. As the philosopher well says, What once moves mortal things never enters into them. Again, by being free and unattached the unlettered man may in love and longing receive wisdom and impart it. And thirdly, having no end means having no finality, no ultimate security until one is at rest and all unwitting of disquiet: until the soul-powers being fixed on God are wholly unattached. As the prophet cries, ‘ Lord be merciful to the people that are in thee.’