A master says, ‘ To achieve the interior act one must assemble all one’s powers as it were into one corner of one’s soul, where, secreted from images and forms one is able to work. We must sink into oblivion and ignorance. In this silence, this quiet, the Word is heard. There is no better method of approaching this Word than in silence, in quiet: we hear it and know it aright in unknowing. To one who knows naught it is clearly revealed.
Haply thou wilt object : ‘ You place our salvation in ignorance, Sir. That seems a mistake. God made man to know: “ Lord make them to know,” says the prophet. Where there is ignorance there is defect and illusion: he is a brutish man, an ape, a fool, and so remains as long as he is ignorant.’—But this is transformed knowledge, not ignorance which comes from lack of knowing ; it is by knowing that we get to this unknowing. Then we know with divine knowing, then our ignorance is ennobled and adorned with supernatural knowledge. Then in our passion we are more perfect than in action. According to one authority, the sense of hearing is much nobler than the sense of sight, for we learn wisdom more by ear than eye and live this life more wisely. We read about a heathen philosopher who was lying at death’s door while his pupils were discussing in his presence some noble science, that, lifting up his dying head and listening, he exclaimed, ‘ O teach me even now this art that I may practise it eternally!’ Hearing draws in more, seeing leads out more, the very act of seeing. In eternal life we are far more happy in our ability to hear than in our. power to see, because the act of hearing the eternal Word is in me, whereas the act of seeing goes forth from me: hearing, Iam receptive ; seeing, Iam active. But our bliss does not consist in being active but in being receptive to God. As God excels creature, so is God’s work more excellent than mine. It was out of love that God did set our happiness in suffering, for we undergo far more than we do and receive incomparably more than in return we give; moreover, each divine gift is the preparation for some new and richer gift, each gift increasing our capacity and our desire to receive a greater still. Some theologians say that the soul is symmetrical with God in this respect. For as God is infinite in giving, so the soul is infinite in receiving or conceiving. And the soul is as profound to suffer as God is omnipotent to act, hence her transformation by God into God. God must act and the soul must suffer; for him to know and love himself in her, for her to know with his knowledge, love with his love; and since she is far happier in his than hers it follows that her happiness depends upon his work more than on her own.
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_ The pupils of St Dionysius asked him why Timothy outstripped them in perfection ? Dionysius said, ‘ Timothy is a God-receptive man. He who is expert at this outstrippeth all men.’ In this sense thy unknowing is not a defect but thy chief perfection, and suffering thy highest activity. Kill thy activities and still thy faculties if thou wouldst realise this birth in thee. To find the newborn King in thee all else thou mightest find must be passed by and left behind thee. May we outstrip and leave behind such things as are not pleasing to the newborn King. So help us thou who didst become the child of man that we might become the children of God. Amen.
THIS TOO IS MEISTER ECKHART WHO ALWAYS TAUGHT THE TRUTH
In his, que patris mei sunt, oportet me esse (Luc. 2,,). “I must be about my Father’s business.” This text is opportune to what we have to say concerning the eternal birth which took place here in time and is still happening daily in the innermost recesses of the soul, in her ground, remote from all comers. To become aware of this interior birth it is above all necessary to be about our Father’s business.
What is peculiarly the Father’s? Power is ascribed to him beyond either of the other Persons. And I tell you, no one can experience this birth without a mighty effort. None can attain ‘ this birth unless he can withdraw his mind entirely from things. And it requires main force to drive back all the senses and inhibit them. Violence must be offered to them one and all or this cannot be done. As Christ said: ‘The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force.’
Regarding this birth there arises the question, Does it happen continuously or only at intervals when one is disposed for it, what time one is exerting oneself to the utmost to forget things altogether and be conscious in this ?
Here let us discriminate. Man possesses an active intellect, a passive intellect and a potential intellect. Active intellect is ever in act, ever doing something, be it in God or in creature, to the honour and glory of God. That is its province and hence its name active. But when God undertakes the work the mind must preserve a state of passivity. Potential intellect again has regard to both these, to the action of God and the passion of the soul, to its acting potentially. In the one case the mind is active, when it is function- ing, to wit; in the other receptive, when God takes up the work and
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then the mind ought, nay must, remain still and allow God to act. Now ere this is begun by the mind and finished by God, the spirit has prevision of it, potential knowledge of its happening. This is the meaning of potential intellect, which, however, is often neglected and does not bear fruit. When the mind is exerting — itself in real earnest, God interests himself in the mind and its work, and then the soul sees and experiences God. But since the un- interrupted vision and passion of God is intolerable to the soul in this body, therefore God withdraws from the soul from time to time, as it is said, ‘ A little while ye see me, and again a little while and ye do not see me.’ \
When our Lord took his three disciples with him up the mountain and showed them the transfiguration of his body by union with the Godhead, which also we shall have in our archetypal body, straightway Peter, beholding it, was fain to remain there always. Verily, where we find good we are loath to leave it, in so far as it is good. Where intuition finds, love follows and memory and all the soul to boot. And our Lord knowing this hides himself sometimes ; for the soul is the impartible form of the body, so she turns as a whole to whatevershe turns. Were she conscious of good, God to wit, immediately, uninterruptedly, she would never be able to leave it to influence the body.
Thus it befell Paul: had he remained a hundred years there, where he knew the good, he would never have returned to his body, he would have forgotten it completely. Seeing then that it is wholly foreign to this life, and incompatible therewith, the good God veils it when he will and unveils it again when he chooses and when he knows, like a trusty physician, that it is best and most useful for thee. This withdrawal is not thine, but his whose is also the work ; let him do it or not as he will, he knows what is good for thee. It is in his hands to show or not according as he knows thee able to endure it. God is not a destroyer of nature, he perfects it, and this God does ever more and more as thou art fitted for it. ;
Haply thou wilt object : Alas, Sir, if this requires a mind quite free from images and without activity, albeit both are natural to its powers, then how about those outward works we must do sometimes, works of charity, external ones, such as teaching and comforting those in need thereof: are we debarred by these ? things which so occupied our Lord’s disciples, notably St Paul, who endured a father’s care on account of other people : are we to be
‘deprived of this great good because we are engaged in charities ?
The answer is this. The one is perfect, the other very profitable. Mary was praised for choosing the best, but Martha’s life was very useful, serving Christ and his disciples. St Thomas says the
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active life is better than the life of contemplation, so far as we actually spend in charity the income we derive from contemplation. It is all the same thing ; we have but to root ourselves in this same ground of contemplation to make it fruitful in works, and the object of contemplation is achieved. True, there is motion, but no more than one; it comes from one end, God, and goes back to the same. As though I went from one end to the other of this house ; that would in sooth be motion, but of one in the same. Even so in this activity we are in the state of contemplation in God. The one is centred in the other and perfects the other. God’s purpose in the union of contemplation is fruitfulness in works ; for in contemplation thou servest thyself alone, but the many in good works.
Hereto Christ admonisheth us by his whole life and the lives of all his saints, every one of whom he drove forth into the world to teach the multitude. St Paul said to Timothy, ‘ Beloved, preach the Word.’ Did he mean the outward word that beats the air? Nay, surely! He meant the in-born, hidden Word that lies secreted in the soul ; it was this that he exhorted them to preach, to the end that it might be made known to and nourish the powers of such as spend themselves wholly in the exterior life. That what time thy fellow-man hath need of thee thou mayst be found ready to serve him to the best of thy ability. It must be within thee, in thought, in intellect and will, and shine forth in thy deeds. As Christ said, ‘ Let your’ light shine before men.’ He was thinking of those people who care only for the contemplative life and neglect the virtuous uses of it, which, they say, do not concern them, they are passed that stage. Not these had Christ in mind when he observed : ‘ The seed fell upon good ground and yielded fruit an hundredfold,’ but these he meant when he declared : ‘ The tree that beareth not fruit shall be cut down.’
Thou mayst object: ‘ But, Sir, what of that silence you said so much about? This means images galore. Every one of these acts has its appropriate image, be the act internal or external ; whether it be teaching one or comforting another or arranging this or that, so what quiet can I get withal ? If the mind sees and formulates and the will wills and memory holds it fast, does not all this necessitate ideas ? ’
Let me explain. We were speaking just now of the active intellect and the passive intellect. Active intellect abstracts the images of outward things, stripping them of matter and of accidents, and introduces them to the passive intellect, begetting their mental prototypes therein. And the passive intellect made pregnant by the active in this way, knows and cherishes these things with the help of active intellect. Passive intellect cannot keep on
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knowing things unless the active intellect keeps on enlightening it. Now observe. What the active intellect does for the natural man that and far more does God do for the solitary soul : he turns out active intellect and installing himself in its stead he himself assumes the duties of the active intellect.