with the feeling that things become reborn as higher entities in the
spirit of man. Like the greatest Christian theologian of the Middle
Ages, St. Thomas Aquinas, who lived from 1225 till 1274, Meister
Eckhart belonged to the Dominican Order. Eckhart was an unqualified
admirer of St. Thomas; and this will seem the more intelligible when
we fix our gaze upon Eckhart’s whole manner of conceiving things. He
believed himself to be as completely in harmony with the teachings of
the Christian Church as he assumed a like agreement on the part of
St. Thomas. Eckhart had neither the desire to take aught away from the
content of Christianity, nor the wish to add anything to it; but he
desired to bring forward this content anew in his own way. It forms no
part of the spiritual needs of a personality such as he was to set up
new truths of this or the other kind in the place of old ones. Such a
personality has grown completely intertwined with the content which it
has received from tradition; but it craves to give to this content a
new form, a new life.
Eckhart desired, without doubt, to remain an orthodox Christian. The
Christian truths were his own; only he desired to regard these truths
in another way from that, for instance, in which St. Thomas Aquinas had
done. St. Thomas accepted two sources of knowledge: Revelation, in
matters of faith, and Reason, in those of research. Reason recognises
the laws of things, that is, the spiritual in nature. Reason can raise
itself above nature and grasp in the spirit from one side the Divine
Being underlying nature. But it does not attain in this way to merging
itself in the full being of God. A still higher truth-content must come
to meet it. That is given in the Holy Scripture, which reveals what man
cannot attain to through himself. The truth-content of the Scripture
must be accepted by man; Reason can defend it, Reason can seek to
understand it as well as possible through its powers of knowing; but
never can Reason engender that truth from within the spirit of man. Not
what the spirit perceives is the highest truth, but what has come to
this spirit from without.
St. Augustine declares himself unable to find within himself the source
for that which he should believe. He says: “I would not believe in the
Gospel, did not the authority of the Catholic Church move me thereto.”
That is in the same spirit as the Evangelist, who points to the
external testimony: “That ... which we have heard, which we have seen
with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled,
of the Word of Life; ... that which we have seen and heard declare
we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us.” But Meister
Eckhart would rather impress upon man the words of Christ: “It is
expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter
will not come unto you”; and he explains these words by saying:
“Just as if he had said: Ye have set too much joy upon my present
appearance, therefore the full joy of the Holy Ghost cannot come to
you.”
Eckhart thinks that he is speaking of no God other than that God of
whom Augustine, and the Evangelist, and Thomas, speak, and yet this
testimony as to God is not his testimony, their witness is not his.
“Some people want to see God with the same eyes they see a cow withal,
and want to love God as they would love a cow. So they love God for the
sake of outer riches and inner comfort; but such folk do not rightly
love God.... Simple folk fancy they should behold God as though He
stood there and they here. But it is not so. God and I are one in
the act of knowing (_im Erkennen_).” What underlies such expressions
in Eckhart’s mouth is nothing else than the experience of the inner
sense; and this experience shows him things in a higher light. He
therefore believes himself to have no need of an external light in
order to attain to the highest insight: “A Master says: God became man,
whereby the whole human race is uplifted and made worthy. Thereof may
we be glad that Christ our brother of His own strength rose above all
the choirs of angels and sitteth at the right hand of the Father. That
Master spake well; but, in truth, I would give little for it. What
would it help me, had I a brother who was a rich man, and I therewithal
a poor man? What would it help me, had I a brother who was a wise man,
and I were a fool?... The Heavenly Father begetteth His Only-Begotten
Son in Himself and in me. Wherefore in Himself and in me? I am one
with Him; and He has no power to shut me out. In the self-same work,
the Holy Ghost receives its being and proceeds from me, as from God.
Wherefore? I am in God, and if the Holy Ghost takes not its being from
me, neither does it take it from God. In no wise am I shut out.”
When Eckhart recalls the saying of St. Paul: “Put ye on Jesus Christ,”
he means to imply in this saying the meaning: Sink yourselves into
yourselves, dive down into self-contemplation: and from out the depths
of your being, God will shine forth to meet you; He illumines all
things for you; you have found Him within you; you have become united
with God’s Being. “God became man, that I might become God.”
In his booklet upon _Loneliness_, Eckhart expresses himself as follows
upon the relation of the outer perception to the inner: “Here thou
must know that the Masters say that in every man there are two kinds
of man: the one is called the outer man, and yet he acts through the
power of the soul. The other man is called the inner man, that is, that
which is within the man. Now thou must know that every man who loveth
God maketh no more use of the powers of the soul in the outer man than
so far as the five senses absolutely require; and that which is within
turns not itself to the five senses, save in so far as it is the guide
and conductor of the five senses, and shepherds them, so that they
follow not after their craving to bestiality.” One who speaks in such
wise of the inner man can no longer direct his gaze upon a Being of
things lying outside himself; for he sees clearly that from no kind or
species of the outer world can this Being come to him.
An objector might urge: What can it matter to the things of the outer
world, what you add to them out of your own mind? Do but rely upon your
own senses. They alone give you information of the outer world. Do not
adulterate, by a mental addition, what your senses give you in purity,
without admixture, as the image of the outer world. Your eye tells
you what colour is; what your mind knows about colour, of that there
is nothing whatever in colour itself. To this, from Meister Eckhart’s
standpoint, the answer would have to be: The senses are a physical
apparatus; therefore what they have to tell us about objects can
concern only that which is physical in the objects. And this physical
factor in the objects communicates itself to me in such wise that in
myself a physical process is set going.
Colour, as a physical process of the outer world, sets up a physical
process in my eye and brain. Thereby I perceive colour. But in this
manner I can perceive of colour only so much as is physical, sensuous.
Sense-perception cuts out everything non-sensuous from objects. Objects
are thus by sense-perception stripped of everything about them which is
non-sensuous. If I then advance to the spiritual, the ideal content,
I in fact only reinstate in the objects what sense-perception has
shut out therefrom. Thus sense-perception does not exhibit to me the
deepest Being of objects, it rather separates me from that being. But
the spiritual, the ideal conception, seizing upon them again, unites me
with that being. It shows me that objects are inwardly of exactly the
same spiritual (_geistigen_) nature as I myself.
The barrier between myself and the outer world falls through this
spiritual conception of things. I am separated from the external world
in so far as I am a thing of the senses among other things of the
senses. Colour and my eye are two different entities. My brain and a
plant are two different things. But the ideal content of the plant and
of colour belong together with the ideal content of my brain and eye
alike to a single ideal entity.
This way of looking at things must not be confused with the very
widespread anthropomorphising conception of the world, which imagines
that it grasps the objects of the outer world by ascribing to them
qualities of a physical nature, which are supposed to resemble the
qualities of the human soul. This view asserts: When we meet another
human being, we perceive in him only sensuous characteristics. I
cannot see into my fellow-man’s inner life. I infer from what I see and
hear of him, his inner life, his soul. Thus the soul is never anything
which I can directly perceive; I perceive a soul only within myself.
My thoughts, my imaginations, my feelings, no man sees. Now just as I
have such an inner life, alongside of the life which can be outwardly
perceived, so, too, all other beings must have such an inner life.
Thus concludes one who occupies the standpoint of the anthropomorphising
conception of the world. What I perceive externally in the plant, must
equally be the outer side of something inward, of a soul, which I must
add in my imagination to what I actually perceive. And since for me
there exists but one single inner world, namely, my own, therefore I
can conceive of the inner world of other beings only as resembling my
own inner world. Along this line of argument one comes to a sort of
universal ensouling of all nature (Pan-psychism).
This view depends, however, on a failure to recognise what the awakened
inner sense really gives us. The spiritual (_geistig_) content of an
external object, which reveals itself to me in my inner self, is not
anything added in or by thought to the outer perception. It is just as
little this as is the spirit of another man. I perceive this spiritual
content through the inner sense just in the same way as I perceive its
physical content through the external senses. And what I call my inner
life in the above sense (_i.e._, thoughts, feelings, etc.), is not at
all in the higher sense, my spirit (_Geist_). This so-called inner
life is only the outcome of purely sensuous processes, and belongs to
me only as a purely individual personality, which is nothing more than
the result of its physical organisation. If I transfer this inner life
to outer things, I am, as a matter of fact, thinking in the air.
My personal soul-life, my thoughts, memories, and feelings, are in me,
because I am a nature-being organised in such and such a way, with a
perfectly definite sense-apparatus, with a perfectly definite nervous
system. I have no right to transfer this my human soul to other things.
I should only be entitled to do so if I happened to find anywhere a
similarly organised nervous system. But my individual soul is not
the highest spiritual element in me. This highest spiritual element
must first be awakened through the inner sense; and this awakened
spiritual element in me is also one and the same with the spiritual
element in all things. The plant appears immediately in its own proper
spirituality to this spiritual element,--I have no need to endow it
with a spirituality like unto my own.
All talk about the unknown “thing-in-itself” loses any kind of
meaning with this conception of the world; for it is just that very
“thing-in-itself” which reveals itself to the inner sense. All such
talk originates simply in the fact that those who talk thus are unable
to recognise in the spiritual contents of their own inner being the
“things-in-themselves.” They think that they know in their own inner
selves mere shadows and schemes without being,--“mere concepts and
ideas” of things. But as they still have a sort of premonition of the
“thing-in-itself,” they therefore believe that this “thing-in-itself”
is concealing itself, and that there are limits set to man’s power of
knowing. One cannot prove to such as are entangled in this belief,
that they must grasp the “thing-in-itself” in their own inner being,
for even if one were to put it before them, they would still never
recognise or admit this “thing-in-itself.” But it is just this
recognition with which we are concerned.
All that Meister Eckhart says is saturated with this recognition.
“Of this take a comparison: A door opens and shuts upon a hinge. If,
now, I compare the outer plank of this door to the outer man, I must
then compare the hinge to the inner man. Now, when the door opens and
shuts, the outer plank moves to and fro, while yet the hinge remains
constantly immovable and is in no way changed thereby. In like manner
it is here also.” As an individual sense-being, I can investigate
things in all directions--the door opens and shuts,--if I do not
spiritually give birth within me to the perceptions of the senses, then
do I know nothing of their nature--the hinge does not move!
The illumination brought about through the inner sense is, according
to Eckhart’s view, the entrance of God into the soul. The light of
knowledge which flames up through this entrance, he calls the “little
spark of the soul.” The point in man’s inner being at which this
“spark” flames up is “so pure, so lofty, and so noble in itself, that
no creature can be therein, but only God alone dwells therein with His
purely Divine Nature.” Whosoever has kindled this “spark” in himself,
no longer sees only as sees the ordinary man with his outer senses,
and with his logical understanding which orders and classifies the
impressions of the senses, but he sees how things are in themselves.
The outer senses and the classifying understanding separate the
individual man from other things; they make of him an individual
in space and time, who also perceives the other things in space
and time. The man illuminated by the “spark” ceases to be a single
separated being. He annihilates his separateness. All that brings
about the difference between himself and things ceases to be. That
he, as a single being, is that which perceives, no longer comes into
consideration. Things and he himself are no longer separated. Things,
and with them, God, see themselves in him. “This spark is in very deed
God, in that it is a single oneness and bears within it the imagery of
all creatures, image without image, and image upon image.”
Eckhart proclaims in the most magnificent words the extinction of the
isolated being: “It is therefore to be known, that according to things
it is one and the same to know God and to be known by God. Therein do
we know God and see, that He makes us to see and to know. And as the
air, which enlighteneth, is nothing other than what it enlightens; for
the air giveth light, because it is enlightened; even so do we know
that we are known, and that He maketh us to know Himself.”
On this foundation Meister Eckhart builds up his relation to God. It
is a purely spiritual one, and cannot be modelled according to any
image borrowed from human individual experience. Not as one separated
individual loves another can God love his creation: not as an architect
builds a house can God have created it. All such thoughts vanish before
the inner vision. It belongs to God’s very being that He should love
the world. A God who could love or not love at pleasure, is imagined
according to the likeness of the individual man. “I speak in good truth
and in eternal truth and in everlasting truth, that God must needs ever
pour Himself forth in every man who has reached down to his true root
to the utmost of possibility, so wholly and completely that in His life
and in His being, in His nature and in His Godhead, He keeps nothing
back; He must ever pour all forth in fruitful wise.” And the inner
illumination is something that the soul must necessarily find when it
sinks itself deep into the basis of its being.
From this it is already obvious that God’s communication to humanity
cannot be conceived after the fashion of the revelation of one human
being to another. This communication may also be cut off, for one man
can shut himself off from another; but God _must_, by virtue of His
very nature, reveal Himself. “It is a sure and certain truth, that
it is a necessity for God to seek us, exactly as if His very Godhead
depended upon it. God can as little dispense with us as we with Him.
Even though we turn away from God, yet God can never turn away from
us.” Consequently, man’s relation to God cannot be conceived of as
though something image-like, something taken from the individual human
being, were contained therein.
Eckhart is thus conscious that it belongs to the perfectness of
the Root-Being of the world to find Itself in the human soul. This
Root-Being indeed would be imperfect, incomplete, if it lacked that
part of its unfoldment which comes to light in the soul. What happens
in man belongs to the Root-Being; and if it did not happen, then the
Root-Being would be but a part of Itself. In this sense, man can feel
himself as a necessary part of the Being of the universe. This Eckhart
expresses by describing his feelings towards God as follows: “I thank
not God that He loveth me, for He may not do otherwise; whether He will
it or no, His nature yet compelleth Him.... Therefore will I not pray
to God to give me anything, nor will I praise Him for that which He
hath given me....”
But this relationship of the soul to the Root-Being must not be
conceived of as if the soul in its individual nature were declared
to be identical with this Root-Being. The soul which is entangled in
the sense-world, and so in the finite, has as such not yet got within
itself the content of the Root-Being. The soul must first develop that
content within itself. It must annihilate itself as an isolated being;
and Meister Eckhart most aptly characterises this annihilation as
_Entwerdung_ (un-becoming or involution). “When I come to the root of
the Godhead, none ask me whence I come and where I have been, and none
doth miss me, for here there is an _Entwerdung_.” Again, the following
phrase speaks very clearly about this relation: “I take a cup of water
and lay therein a mirror and set it under the disc of the sun. The sun
casts out its shining light on the mirror and yet doth not pass away.
The reflecting of the mirror in the sun is sun in the sun, and yet the
mirror remains what it is. So is it about God. God is in the soul with
His very nature and being and Godhead, and yet He is not the soul. The
reflecting of the soul in God, is God in God, and yet the soul is still
that which it is.”
The soul which gives itself up to the inner illumination knows in
itself not only what this same soul was before its illumination; but it
also knows that which this soul only became through this illumination.
“We must be united with God in being; we must be united with God
uniquely; we must be united with God wholly. How shall we be united
with God in being? That must happen in the beholding and not in the
_Wesung_. His being may not become our being, but it shall be our
life.” Not an already existent life--a _Wesung_--is to be known in the
logical sense; but the higher knowing--the beholding--shall itself
become life; the spiritual, the ideal must be so felt by the beholder,
as ordinary daily life is felt by individual human nature.
From such starting points, Meister Eckhart also builds up a pure
conception of Freedom. In its ordinary life the soul is not free; for
it is interwoven with the realm of lower causes, and accomplishes that
to which it is impelled by these lower causes. But by “beholding” or
“vision” it is raised out of the domain of these causes, and acts no
longer as a separated individual soul. The root of being is laid bare
in this soul, and that can be moved to action by naught save by itself.
“God does not compel the will; rather He sets the will free, so that
it wills not otherwise than what God Himself wills; and the spirit
desires not to will other than what God wills: and that is not its
un-freedom: it is its true and real freedom. For freedom is that we
are not bound, but free and pure and unmixed, as we were in our first
outpouring, as we were set free in the Holy Ghost.”
It may be said of the illuminated man that he is himself the being
which from within itself determines what is good and what is evil. He
can do naught absolutely, but accomplish the good. For he does not
serve the good, but the good realises and lives itself out in him. “The
righteous man serveth neither God, nor the creature; for he is free,
and the nearer he is to righteousness, the more he is Freedom’s very
self.” What then, for Meister Eckhart, can evil be? It can be only
action under the influence of the lower mode of regarding things;--the
acting of a soul which has not passed through the state of _Entwerdung_
(un-becoming). Such a soul is selfish in the sense that it wills only
itself. It could not bring its willing outwardly into accord with moral
ideals. The soul having vision cannot in this sense be selfish. Even if
it willed itself, it yet could will only the lordship of the ideal; for
it has made itself into this very ideal. It can no longer will the ends
of the lower nature, for it has no longer aught in common with this
lower nature. To act in conformity with moral ideals implies for the
soul which has vision, no compulsion, no deprivation.
“The man who standeth in God’s will and in God’s love, to him it is a
craving to do all good things that God willeth, and leave undone all
evil things that are contrary to God. And it is impossible for him
to leave undone anything that God will have done. Even as walking is
impossible to one whose legs are bound, just so it would be impossible
for a man who standeth in God’s will to do aught unvirtuous.”
Eckhart moreover expressly guards himself against the idea that, with
this view of his, free license is given for anything and everything
that the individual may will. The man possessing vision is indeed
to be recognised by the very fact that as a separated individual he
no longer wills anything. “Certain men say: If I have God and God’s
freedom, then I may just do whatever I please. Such understand wrongly
this saying. So long as thou canst do aught that is contrary to God
and His commandment, so long thou hast not God’s love; even though thou
mayest well deceive the world, as if thou hadst.” Eckhart is convinced
that to the soul which dives down into its own root, the most perfect
morality will shine forth from that root to meet it; that there all
logical conception, and all acting in the ordinary sense, ceases, and
an entirely new ordering of human life makes its appearance.
“For all that the understanding can grasp, and all that desiring can
desire, is verily not God. Where understanding and desiring end, there
it is dark, there shineth God. There that power unfolds in the soul
which is wider than the wide heavens.... The bliss of the righteous
and the bliss of God is one bliss; for there is the righteous full of
bliss, where God is full of bliss.”
THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOD
In Johannes Tauler (1300-1361), Heinrich Suso (1295-1365), and Johannes
Ruysbroeck (1293-1381), one makes acquaintance with men whose life and
work exhibit in a very striking manner those “motions of the soul” to
which such a spiritual path as that of Meister Eckhart is calculated to
give rise in natures of depth and power. While Eckhart seems like a man
who, in the blissful experiencing of spiritual re-birth, speaks of the
nature of Knowledge as of a picture which he has succeeded in painting;
these others, followers of his, appear rather like pilgrims, to whom
their inner re-birth has shown a new road which they fain would
tread, but whose goal seems to vanish before them into the illimitable
distance. Eckhart dwells more upon the glories of his picture; they
upon the difficulties of the new path.
To understand the difference between personalities like Eckhart and
Tauler, one must see quite clearly how a man stands towards his higher
cognitions. Man is interwoven with the sense-world and the laws of
nature by which that sense-world is ruled. He is himself a product of
that world. He lives because its forces and its materials are at work
in him; nay, he perceives this sense-world and judges of it by laws,
according to which both he himself and that world are alike built up.
If he turns his eyes upon an object, not only does the object present
itself to him as a complex of interacting forces, ruled by nature’s
laws, but the eye, with which he sees the object is itself a body
built up according to just such laws and of just such forces; and the
seeing, too, takes place by similar laws and forces. If we had reached
the goal of natural science, we should be able to follow out this play
of the forces of nature according to natural laws right up into the
highest regions of thought-formation,--but in the very act of doing
this, we raise ourselves _above_ this play of forces. For do we not
stand above and beyond all the “uniformities which make up the laws of
nature,” when we over-see the whole and recognise how we ourselves fit
into nature? We _see_ with our eyes according to laws of nature. But we
know also the laws, according to which we see.