Meister Eckhart, (1260-c1328) - Nondual Christian Mystic Sage

The deeply influential German Catholic mystic theologian and spiritual psychologist Meister Eckhart was the most illustrious spiritual instructor of his day. He was also unjustly condemned as a heretic by the papacy after an impressive career of writing, teaching, preaching, directing souls and serving as a high-level administrator of the Dominican Order. Eckhart, virtually forgotten by the Church for centuries, is seen by growing numbers of people in the modern era to be one of the world’s pinnacle “non dual” mystics. His influence is greater now than at any time since the 14th century. His chief interest was to invite any already advanced, pious souls into a profound state of God-realization in this very lifetime. He stated:”God alone is completely real; real in every sense—all else is only partially so. And that which is fully real in what is other-than-God is God’s presence in it. Thus from the divine perspective a sublime continuity reigns. Everything that is, to the degree that it is, is God him/her/itself, our pronouns do not fit”.

Eckhart’s mystic teachings were suspect to non-mystics who heard or read his works out of context.

Example: Eckhart’s words on “sin” from one of his earliest writings: “Love knows nothing of sin, not that man has not sinned, but sins are blotted out at once by love and they vanish as if they had not been. This is because whatever God does, he does it completely, like the cup running over. Whom he forgives, he forgives utterly and at once”.

Eckhart did not want people maintaining an ego-sense through guilt any more than he wanted them to inflate the ego through pride. An essential aim of Meister Eckhart’s teaching is selflessness and emptiness so that God can be one's only One.

Eckhart’s theology is that of radical pantheism (all in God, God in all), which goes far beyond mere theism, which can only posit a transcendent God up there. who sometimes personally intervenes. For Eckhart, God’s supremely glorious nature can only mean that God is fully transcendent and fully immanent, entirely beyond all and yet completely within all as the One Who alone Is, pure Spirit, the groundless Ground or Essence of all. For Eckhart, therefore, God is both the transpersonal God (Gotheit) and the personal Lord, i.e., the triune God (Gottheit) the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in one non dual, indistinct Divine Nature.

Meister Eckhart says that the man who finds no taste of God wearies of looking for him. One of the criticisms of Christianity, and why many young Christians turn to the East, to Buddhism or to Hinduism, is that in Christianity there is no apparent method in how do to find God? Where does one even start? Eckhart is one of the Christians who looked at this and accepts it as a problem. Good intentions are not always enough. We need instruction in how to make ourselves fit to receive the revelation of God, to receive the eternal birth.

Eckhart said that when we go out of ourselves to find God or fetch God, we are making a mistake, because we do not find God outside ourselves, because God is in us. Our best chance of finding God is where we currently are.

Eckhart’s most distinctive teaching is probably his teaching that nothing separates our souls and God, and that the birth of our communion with God can take place in the depths of our souls at any time.

But what does it avail me that the birth of our communion with God can happen at any time, if it does not happen to me? That it should happen in me is what matters. We shall therefore examine this birth, of how it may take place in us that is, in our soul, whenever God the Father speaks His eternal word.

The eternal birth takes place in the depths of the Self, of the soul, beyond our senses, and he is saying that with God’s help we should acquire the capacity to inwardly empty the mind of all sense experience, of all that takes us out of our true Selves.

We should accustom ourselves to having God always present in our consciousness and our intentions and we have to believe that no one can come between us and the God, who is present in us.

Letting Ourselves Go

 If we can learn to let go of our self, we have to let go of everything. Total letting go is the way to gain all things in the God. God wants no more from us than that we should go out of ourselves, and let Him be in us. We need to go completely out of ourselves and let God’s love reign in us, and God will come when we are ready, in other words when we are totally empty of our little self. Empty yourself and you will be filled.

How do we discern the Birth in Us?

 It is in and through letting go, relinquishing and unbecoming, that the birth of the Word (voice of God) in the soul takes place. Detaching and birthing are not successive stages in a mystical path but two sides of the same coin.

But how are we to know that the Divine Word has been born in us?

We will know partly by the way we behave says Eckhart: “The one who rests on nothing, who is attached to nothing, though heaven and earth should fall, will remain unmoved.”

The more and more clearly God’s image shows in us, the more evidently God is born in us, but we know what has happened mainly from what we are aware of what has happened to us. In the words of Eckhart: “We must know that God is born in us, when the mind is stilled and our senses trouble us no longer. Whoever truly possesses God possesses him in all places: on the street, in any company, as well as in a church or a remote place or in their cell. Grasping all things in a divine way and making of them something more than they are in themselves cannot be learned by taking flight, but rather we must learn to maintain an inner solitude regardless of where we are or who we are with. Be still and know that I am God.

Possessing God in All Things

When counseling someone, he would say: “Either a person must find God in works or abandon all works, but, since one cannot in this life be without works, he must learn to possess God in all things, for in all things we notice only God”.

Eckhart on Praying

Never pray for any transitory thing: but if you would pray for anything, you should pray for God’s Will alone and nothing else, and then you get everything. If you pray for anything else, you will get nothing of importance.

In God there is nothing but one, and one is indivisible. If we seek or expect anything more, that is not God but a fraction of the one. We should seek nothing at all, neither knowledge nor understanding nor inwardness nor piety nor repose, only God’s will. If we seek God’s will alone, whatever flows from that or is revealed by that we may take as a gift from God without ever looking or considering whether it is by nature or grace or where it comes from or in what guise it appears. We need only lead an ordinary Christian life without considering doing anything special.

Eckhart courageously braved the charges of heresy by affirming that in every soul is the Divine Spirit ItSelf as its true Identity. Eckhart specifically declared that there is a non-creaturely “uncreated aspect of the soul,” which is always already perfectly one with God. A startling, shocking truth that elated the many mystics of his time who flocked to hear his sermons, and, predictably, angered the non-mystics whose stunted intuition could not resonate with what the Meister so beautifully spoke.

Meister Eckhart’s Quotes

“If the only prayer you said was thank you that would be enough.”

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”

“And suddenly you know: It's time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.”

“Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.”

“Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.”

“Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.”

“Wisdom consists in doing the next thing you have to do, doing it with your whole heart, and finding delight in doing it.”

“I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God. God is nearer to me than I am to myself; my existence depends on the nearness and the presence of God.”

“Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.”

“Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and to love Him as they love a cow - for the milk and cheese and profit it brings 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. ”

“Some people prefer solitude. They say their peace of mind depends on this. Others say they would be better off in church. If you do well, you do well wherever you are. If you fail, you fail wherever you are”.

“Your surroundings doesn’t matter. God is with you everywhere -- in the market place as well as in seclusion or in the church. If you look for nothing but God, nothing or no one can disturb you”.

“God is not distracted by a multitude of things. Nor can we be.”

“A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.”

“One must learn an inner solitude, wherever one may be.”

“The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.”

“One must not always think so much about what one should do, but rather what one should be. Our works do not ennoble us; but we must ennoble our works.”

“If I had a friend and loved him because of the benefits which this brought me and because of getting my own way, then it would not be my friend that I loved but myself. I should love my friend on account of his own goodness and virtues and account of all that he is in himself. Only if I love my friend in this way do I love him properly.”

“If anyone went on for a thousand years asking of life: 'Why are you living?' Life, if it could answer, would only say, 'I live so that I may live.' That is because life lives out of its own ground and springs from its own source, and so it lives without asking why it is itself living. ”