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. ”
No comments:
Post a Comment