The Roots of Christian Mysticism Session 16
Summary of Kim Nataraja's "Meister Eckhart" talk, The London Christian Meditation Centre, St Mark's, Clerkenwell, 07 February 2006

Introduction

Eckhart crosses the divide between religions. He has an appeal for Christians and non-Christians, to atheists, Buddhists and Hindus. This is mainly because his ideas are very much part of the Perennial Philosophy, which might be regarded as the common core of all traditions.

Life

(For full biographical details see attached sheet)
As far as Christians are concerned some of his teachings were declared heretical and this status has not changed though it is fair to say that he is held in some reverence within the Church and considered by most to be basically orthodox. Eckhart himself said in answer to the charge of heresy: “I may err but I may not be a heretic-for the first has to do with the mind and the second with the will.” The Pope who had declared him a heretic was himself later declared a heretic. This was more to do with rivalry between Dominicans and Franciscans (Eckhart was a Dominican) than with anything else although it is easy to see how taken out of context some of what Eckhart says might have been regarded as heretical. The boldness of his language and the use of the language of paradox makes him an easy target. Only paradox can express the inexpressible.

It is difficult to understand how he could be a heretic. It took him 25 years to qualify as a Meister which included regular intense disputations on theological issues. He was so revered during this time that he occupied the seat once held by Thomas Aquinas in Paris.

Eckhart’s teaching

The teaching of Eckhart that we looked at is based on his German Sermons written Middle High German in the last ten or fifteen years of his life. He was the first to write in the German vernacular. His language is beautiful, similar to the language of courtly love.

He taught the Beguines for which he was criticized. He said “If the ignorant are not taught they will never learn, and none of them will ever know the art of living and dying. The ignorant are taught in the hope of changing them from ignorant to enlightened people.” He also wrote in Latin.

Eckhart reminds us of Origen, Evagrius and the Desert Fathers. Although his education was based on Aristotle, his experience inclined him to Plato. His teaching is very much based on his experience. He is very much of the Apophatic tradition:

“It seemed to a man as in a dream-it was a waking dream-that he became pregnant with Nothing, like a woman with a child. And in the Nothing God was born: He was the fruit of Nothing. (Walshe Vol:19)

This idea of ‘Nothing’ would resonate with Buddhists. It is ‘Nothing’ in the sense of ‘No thing’; without delimitation or definition but this ‘Nothing’ is full of potential.

This is generally accepted to be Eckhart own vision and experience. Eckhart believed that experience came first. This caused ‘metanoia’ but then comes the work of purifying the emotions. For the desert fathers and mothers it also started with metanoia but experience followed purification.

“Purely spiritual knowledge; therein the soul is rapt away from all bodily things. There we hear without any sound and see without matter..”
This is another quote which illustrates that his approach is that of the ‘via negativa’.

Theological themes

1) The spark in the soul

“Similarly I have often said that there is something in the soul that is closely related to God that it is one with him and not just united. (Sermon 12)
The ‘spark’ is the intuitive capacity to know God not with our reason but with our “nous”, our intuitive intelligence, which is the Divine within us.
We have therefore something in common with God and therefore can know God. This is the Greek idea of assimilation “like knows like” which Clement and Origen linked with the idea of “image and likeness of God” found in Genesis. We can only know something with which we have a commonality.
We can see the influence of the Middle Platonic tradition on Eckhart’s thought. Clement talks about growing more and more into the likeness of God but Eckhart seems to go further and talk about becoming God. Similarity does not offend the tradition, identity does!
The Church stresses communion rather than union. Father Bede puts this in this way: “there is no doubt that the individual loses all sense of separation from the One and experiences total unity, but that does not mean that the individual no longer exists. Just like every element in nature is a unique reflection of the one Reality, so every human being is a unique centre of consciousness in the universal consciousness.” (Bede Griffiths ‘The Marriage of East and West’)

2) Creation

Eckhart is clear that God is eternal and is the first cause. This is from Aristotle. Because of this, says Aristotle, the world exists from eternity. The accepted Christian view is that creation is from nothing (ex nihilo). Eckhart was accused of Aristotelian heresy but he defended himself by saying that he was talking from God’s point of view not from man’s. He said we cannot talk about creation in time because time didn’t exist before creation because it is part of it. God creates in his eternity, in the Now, always. Augustine said the same thing: God is creating out of time. Eckhart often defended himself by referring to Augustine. He regarded as Augustine as a wise teacher.

This change in seeing creation is seen in Athanasius. In ‘Contra Gentes’ Athanasius holds the view of Origen, that the ‘nous’ is incorporated in the soul, the psyche, from the moment of creation, our link with God. Therefore union is possible through contemplation, through remembering our origin – the mystical tradition.

In ‘De Incarnatione’ he has accepted the ‘creation ex nihilo’, which states that the soul and the ‘image and likeness to God’ is so damaged after the ‘fall’ that only the intermediary, the ‘logos’, the Christ can save us. Salvation is therefore by grace and not through purification and contemplation. This is the meaning of the saying: ‘The Word became man that we might become divine.’ That is also the reason we saw of Athanasius stressing St Antony’s fight with the demons rather than his ascent through contemplation. Athanasius talks about the ‘soul’ being the mirror in which can be seen the image of the Father; hence the emphasis on purification of the emotions which clarifies the image.

3) Birth of Christ in the soul

St. Augustine said:
“What does it avail me that this birth of Christ is always happening if it does not happen in me? That it should happen in me is what matters.”

Eckhart says:
“The reality we call God has first to be discovered in the human heart; moreover I cannot come to know God unless I know myself.”

It is one thing having the ‘spark’ but more important is remembering it, becoming aware of it. Christ is born in the soul at the moment of awareness. Then we have achieved true self-knowledge as a child of God. Then ‘we are wholly turned towards God in unshakeable love’. This happens through ‘metanoia’, purification and contemplation.

4) Two Ways of Being

He talks about God’s being and our being as having something in common. He talks about individual being (we would say ‘ego’) which is subject to change and impermanent and then true being which is eternal. He felt that we existed as ideas in the mind of God. So we had a virtual existence in God which is our Self, our unchanging, eternal being. He felt (like Augustine) all things in their essential being already exist in principle in God (Augustine talks of seminal ideas, the blueprint for everything is in God).

We leave God ‘flowing out’ and then return ‘breaking through’, having integrated our ‘ego’, as well as our mind and heart and transcended all. This is a dynamic process as it was for Origen.

We discussed the following topic by looking at quotes in groups.

5) Two Ways of being God

a) Beyond all is the Godhead which is not touched by us. This is pure being ‘Being is the essence of God.’ But Eckhart connects being and consciousness. ‘The nature of God is intellect, and for him to be is to understand.’ At the same time therefore ‘The intellect is the temple of God.’ in us.
b) Our image of God.
God makes man in His image and Man returns the compliment!
Many a sermon was devoted to making us aware of that.
We use our created mind to image God, which is totally impossible. Often when we let go of our images of God we throw out the baby with the bathwater. Hence Nietzsche’s cry: ‘God is dead’ because his image of God had died.

“And if I did not exist, God would also not exist. That God is God of that I am a cause; if I did not exist, God too would not be God”.

“But when I went out from my own free will and received my created being, then I had a God, for before there were any creatures, God was not God, but he was what he was. (Sermon 52)

“When I went out” is a reference to the Fall. It was my choice to turn away. As a result God created me. This looks like Origen’s doctrine of the Fall involving the pre-existence of souls? “He was what he was” is a reference to the Godhead characterized by pure being.

“If I say that God is good, that is not true. God is not good. I am good. And if I say that God is wise, that is not true. I am wiser than he is.” (Sermon 83)
These are human attributes and we cannot talk about God in this way.
We see from God’s perspective or our own. There are again two perspectives to seeing God, not two Gods as we find in the Gnostics.

6) Detachment

This is the overriding theme of Eckhart’s German sermons.
“When I preach I usually talk about detachment: that we have to be empty of self and all things; second that we should be formed again into that simple good which is God; third that we should reflect on the great nobility with which God has endowed his soul, so that in this way he may come again to wonder at God; fourth about the purity of the divine nature, for the brightness of the Divine nature is beyond words. God is a word, a word unspoken.” (Sermon 53) “

This is how to purify the emotions. The German word for “detachment” literally means “being separate, standing apart.”
Three things hinder us from hearing the eternal word:
1) Our corporality-being embodied, being in the world
2) Our multiplicity-false images of self, others and the world
3) Our temporality-we see God in time as images

Detachment does not mean not valuing God’s creation. Creation is an expression of God’s joy. But God is more than creation.

We need to let go of our attachment to images of self, our actions, others, the world and God. The German word ‘attachment – Eigenschaft’ has two meanings ‘attachment’ and ‘ownership’. The latter is the problem; we need to detach ourselves from this drive to own everything and everybody, even our religious observances. We need to let go of this ‘user’ mentality. We should use our gifts, just enjoy and be a ‘virgin’, free and unattached. Everything is to be done for its own intrinsic reasons. Anything else arises out of our own will. Here is a paradox: we think of freedom as exercising our own will, yet letting go is freedom.

Here are some quotes we discussed about detachment which bring out these points:

If I were so rational that there were present in my reason all the images that all men had ever received, and those that are present in God himself, and if I could be without possessiveness in their regard, so that I had not seized possessively upon any of them, not in what I did or what I left undone, not looking to past or to future, but I stood in this present moment free and empty according to God's dearest will, performing it without ceasing, then truly I should be a virgin, as truly unimpeded by any images as I was when I was not. (Sermon 2)

But I say that because a man is a virgin, that does not deprive him at all of any of the works he has ever done; but all this permits him to remain, maidenly and free, without any obstacles between him and supreme truth…. Sermon 2

Many good gifts are received in virginity and are not born again in wifely fruitfulness with grateful praise to God. The gifts all spoil and turn to nothing, so that the man is no better or more blessed because of them. Sermon 2

But I'm now talking about different kind of married people, about all those who are possessively attached to prayer, and fasting, the vigils and to all kinds of exterior exercises and penances. Every attachment to every work deprives one of the freedom to wait upon God in the present and to follow him alone in the light with which he would guide you in what to do and what to leave alone, free and renewed in every present moment, as if this were all that you had ever had or wanted or could do. Every attachment or every work you propose deprives you again and again of this freedom. (Sermon 2)

Such people present an outward picture that gives them the name of saints; but inside they are donkeys, for they cannot distinguish divine truth. ………….They have great esteem in the sight of men who know no better, Sermon 52

A poor man wants nothing, and knows nothing, and has nothing.

People say: ‘ O Lord, how much I wish that I stood as well with God, that I had as much devotion and peace in God as others have, I wish that it were so with me! ‘ Or, ‘I should like to be poor’ or else, ‘Things will never go right for me till I am in this place or that, or till I act one way or another. I must go and live in a strange land, or in a Hermitage, or in a cloister.’ In fact, this is all about yourself, and nothing else at all. This is just self-will, only you do not know it or it does not seem so to you. There is never any trouble that starts in you will that does not come from your own will, whether people see this or not. We can think what we like, that a man ought to shun one thing or pursue another -- places and people and ways of life and environments and undertakings -- that is not the trouble, such ways of life or such matters are not what impedes you. It is what you are in these things that causes the trouble, because in them you do not govern yourself, as you should. Therefore, make a start with yourself, and abandon yourself. Counsels on Discernment 3

I was asked:” Since some people keep themselves much apart from others, and most of all like to be alone, and since it is in this and in being in church that they find peace, would that be the best thing to do?” Then I said:” No! And see why not!” If all is well with a man, then truly, wherever he may be, it is well with him. But if things are not right with him, then everywhere and with everybody it is all wrong with him. Counsels on Discernment 6

For if a person wants really to have poverty, he ought to be as free of his own created will as he was when he did not exist. Sermon 52

Who are those who honour God? Those who do not desire possessions and honours or ease or pleasure or profit or inwardness or holiness or reward or the Kingdom of Heaven. Sermon 6

Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow and to love him as they love their cow – they love their cow for the milk and cheese and profit it makes them. This is how it is with people who love God for the sake of outward wealth or inward comfort. They do not rightly love God when they love him for their own advantage. Indeed, I tell you the truth, any object you have on your mind, how ever good, will be a barrier between you and the inmost truth. (‘Fragments’ Raymond Blakney)

We finished with a poem by Yeats:
‘Then my delivered soul herself shall learn
A darker knowledge and in hatred turn
From every thought of God mankind has had.
Thought is a garment and the soul’s a bride
That cannot in that trash and tinsel hide:
Hatred of God may bring the soul to God.’

Bibliography

‘The man from whom God hid nothing: Meister Eckhart’ - Ursula Fleming (Collins)

‘Wandering Joy’ – Reiner Schurmann (Lindesfarne Books)

‘Meister Eckhart – Teacher and Preacher’ – Bernard McGinn - Classics of Western Spirituality

‘Meister Eckhart – Essential Sermons’– Edmund Colledge, Bernard McGinn - Classics of Western Spirituality

‘Meditations with Meister Eckhart’ – Matthew Fox

‘God Within’ - The Mystical Tradition of Northern Europe Oliver Davies DLT

‘Meister Eckhart’ Raymond B Blakeney (Harper Perennial)
“The Waning of the Middle Ages” Huizinga