A man's self­ love is too blatant when he wants to blind other men so that his own blindness may be hidden

On this topic I say too that it is the sign of a sick heart if a man becomes glad or sorry over the transitory things of this world. We should feel shame for this in our hearts in the sight of God and his an­ gels, and in the sight of men, that we should detect this in ourselves.

We are ashamed soon enough of some facial disfigurement which is there for people to see. What more do I need to say? The books of the Old Testament and the New, and those of the saints and even the pa­ gans are full of this, how pious men for God's sake and also for the sake of natural virtue have given their lives and have willingly sacrificed themselves.

A pagan philosopher, Socrates, says that virtue makes impossible things possible, and even easy and delightfui. And I must not forget that the blessed woman of whom the Book of the Machabees tells that in a single day she saw enacted before her own eyes the horrifying and horrible torments, intolerable even to hear about, that were inflicted and imposed upon her seven sons, and she watched this cheerfully and encouraged and particularly admonished them not to be afraid, and to surrender willingly their bodies and their spirits for the sake of God's justice. This could be the end of the book, but there are two more things that I want to say.

The first thing is that truly a good and pious man ought to be bit­terly and greatly ashamed that suffering ever moved him, when we see how a merchant, for the sake of earning a little money, of which, too, he cannot be sure, will travel so far overland on arduous tracks, up hill and down dale, across wildernesses and oceans, risking robbery and as­sault on his person and his goods, going in great want of food and drink and sleep and suffering other hardships, and yet he is glad and willing to forget all this for the sake of his small and uncertain profit.

A knight in a battle risks possessions and body and life for the sake of a transient and very fleeting honor; and yet we think it such a great matter that we should suffer a little for God's sake, who is everlasting blessedness.

The second thing is that I expect that many stupid people will say that much that I have written in this book and elsewhere is not true. To that I reply with what Saint Augustine says in the first book of his Confessions. He says that God has already made every single thing, ev­erything that is still to come for thousands and thousands of years, if this world should last so long, and everything that is past during many thousands of years he will make again today. Is it my fault if people do not understand this? And he says in another place that a man's self­ love is too blatant when he wants to blind other men so that his own blindness may be hidden. It is enough for me that what I say and write be true in me and in God. If anyone sees a stick pushed down into the water, it seems to him that the stick is bent, although it is quite straight; and the reason for this is that water is cruder than air. But yet the stick is straight and not bent, both in itself and also in the eyes of anyone who looks at it only through the pure air.

Saint Augustine says: "Whoever without thought of any kind, or without any kind of bodily likeness and image, perceives within him­ self what no external vision has presented to him, he knows that this is true."53 But the man who knows nothing of this will laugh at me and mock me, and I can only pity him. But people like this want to contemplate and taste eternal things and the works of God, and to stand in the light of eternity, and yet their hearts are still fluttering around in yesterday and tomorrow.

A pagan philosopher, Seneca, says: "We must speak about great and exalted matters with great and exalted understanding and with sublime souls." And we shall be told that one ought not to talk about or write such teachings to the untaught. But to this I say that if we are not to teach people who have not been taught, no one will ever be taught, and no one will ever be able to teach or write. For that is why we teach the untaught, so that they may be changed from uninstructed into instructed. If there were nothing new, nothing would ever grow old. Our Lord says: "Those who are healthy do not need medicine" (Lk. 5:3 1). That is what the physician is there for, to make the sick healthy. But if there is someone who misunderstands what I say, what is that to the man who says truly that which is true? Saint John nar­rates his holy gospel for all believers and also for all unbelievers, so that they might believe, and yet he begins that gospel with the most exalted thoughts any man could utter here about God; and both what he says and what our Lord says are constantly misunderstood.

May our loving and merciful God, who is Truth, grant to me and to all those who will read this book that we may find the truth within ourselves and come to know it. Amen.

Meister Eckhart
From The Book of Divine Consolation
Meister Eckhart
The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defence 

Going beyond aversion

See also on Upekkhā → ; Eight wordly conditions→

Who makes heaven from his bread, makes hell from his hunger.
Antonio Porchia

To the just man nothing gives more pain or distress than when, counter to justice, he loses his equanimity in all things. How so? If one thing can cheer you and another depress, you are not just:.if you are happy at one time you should be happy at all times. If you are happier at one moment than another, that is not just. The true lover of justice is so established in what he loves that it is his very being: nothing can drag him from it, and he cares for nothing else.

*
I say then: when outward ills befall the good and just man, if he remains in equanimity with the peace of his heart unmoved, then it is true, as I have said, that nothing that happens to him can disturb the just. But if he is perturbed by outward mishaps, then truly it is right and proper that God has permitted him to suffer this harm, for he wanted and thought to be just and yet was upset by so small a thing. If it is right for God, then indeed he should not be grieved thereby but should rejoice for it far more than for his own life, which a man rejoices in and values more than all this world; for what would this world profit a man if he were not?

Meister Eckhart

**

Q: The universe does not seem a happy place to live in. Why is there so much suffering?

M: Pain is physical; suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is no suffering. Pain is merely a signal that the body is in danger and requires attention. Similarly, suffering warns us that the structure of memories and habits, which we call the person (vyakti), is threatened by loss or change. Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but none compels you to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting; it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life.
As a sane life is free of pain, so is a saintly life free from suffering.

Q: Nobody has suffered more than saints.

M: Did they tell you, or do you say so on your own? The essence of saintliness is total acceptance of the present moment, harmony with things as they happen. A saint does not want things to be different from what they are; he knows that, considering all factors, they are unavoidable. He is friendly with the inevitable and,. therefore, does not suffer. Pain he may know, but it does not shatter him. If he can, he does the needful to restore the lost balance — or he lets things take their course.

Q: He may die.

M: So what? What does he gain by living on and what does he lose by dying? What was born, must die; what was never born cannot die. It all depends on what he takes himself to be.

Q: Imagine you fall mortally ill. Would you not regret and resent?

M: But I am dead already, or, rather, neither alive nor dead. You see my body behaving the habitual way and draw your own conclusions. You will not admit that your conclusions bind nobody but you. Do see that the image you have of me may be altogether wrong. Your image of yourself is wrong too, but that is your problem. But you need not create problems for me and then ask me to solve them. I am neither creating problems nor solving them.
*
So let us examine pleasure at its own level.
If you look at yourself in your moments of pleasure or pain, you will invariably find that it is not the thing in itself that is pleasant or painful, but the situation of which it is a part. Pleasure lies in the relationship between the enjoyer and the enjoyed. And the essence of it is acceptance. Whatever may be the situation, if it is acceptable, it is pleasant. If it is not acceptable, it is painful. What makes it acceptable is not important; the cause may be physical, or psychological, or untraceable; acceptance is the decisive factor. Obversely, suffering is due to non-acceptance.

Q: Pain is not acceptable.

M: Why not? Did you ever try? Do try and you will find in pain a joy which pleasure cannot yield, for the simple reason that acceptance of pain takes you much deeper than pleasure does. The personal self by its very nature is constantly pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain. The ending of this pattern is the ending of the self. The ending of the self with its desires and fears enables you to return to your real nature, the source of all happiness and peace. The perennial desire for pleasure is the reflection of the timeless harmony within. It is an observable fact that one becomes selfconscious only when caught in the conflict between pleasure and pain, which demands choice and decision. It is this clash between desire and fear that causes anger, which is the great destroyer of sanity in life. When pain is accepted for what it is, a lesson and a warning, and deeply looked into and heeded, the separation between pain and pleasure breaks down, both become experience — painful when resisted, joyful when accepted.

Q: Do you advise shunning pleasure and pursuing pain?

M: No, nor pursuing pleasure and shunning pain. Accept both as they come, enjoy both while they last, let them go, as they must.

Q: How can I possibly enjoy pain? Physical pain calls for action.

M: Of course. And so does mental. The bliss is in the awareness of it, in not shrinking, or in any way turning away from it. All happiness comes from awareness. The more we are conscious, the deeper the joy. Acceptance of pain, non-resistance, courage and endurance — these open deep and perennial sources of real happiness, true bliss.

Q: Why should pain be more effective than pleasure?

M: Pleasure is readily accepted, while all the powers of the self reject pain. As the acceptance of pain is the denial of the self, and the self stands in the way of true happiness, the wholehearted acceptance of pain releases the springs of happiness.

Q: Does the acceptance of suffering act the same way?

M: The fact of pain is easily brought within the focus of awareness. With suffering it is not that simple. To focus suffering is not enough, for mental life, as we know it, is one continuous stream of suffering. To reach the deeper layers of suffering you must go to its roots and uncover their vast underground network, where fear and desire are closely interwoven and the currents of life's energy oppose, obstruct and destroy each other.

Q: How can I set right a tangle which is entirely below the level of my consciousness?

M: By being with yourself, the 'I am'; by watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than to judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies. This is the great work of awareness; it removes obstacles and releases energies by understanding the nature of life and mind. Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.

Q: One more question. Why does pleasure end in pain?

M: Everything has a beginning and an end and so does pleasure. Don't anticipate and don't regret, and there will be no pain. it is memory and imagination that cause suffering.
Of course pain after pleasure may be due to the misuse of the body or the mind. The body knows its measure, but the mind does not. Its appetites are numberless and limitless. Watch your mind with great diligence, for there lies your bondage and also the key to freedom.

*
Maharaj: What do you consider to be wrong with your mind?

Q: It is restless, greedy of the pleasant and afraid of the unpleasant.

M: What is wrong with its seeking the pleasant and shirking the unpleasant? Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. By flowing with life I mean acceptance — letting come what comes and go what goes. Desire not, fear not, observe the actual, as and when it happens, for you are not what happens, you are to whom it happens. Ultimately even the observer you are not. You are the ultimate potentiality of which the all-embracing consciousness is the manifestation and expression.

Q: Yet, between the body and the self there lies a cloud of thoughts and feelings, which neither server the body nor the self. These thoughts and feelings are flimsy, transient and meaningless, mere mental dust that blinds and chokes, yet they are there, obscuring and destroying.

M: Surely, the memory of an event cannot pass for the event itself. Nor can the anticipation. There is something exceptional, unique, about the present event, which the previous, or the coming do not have. There is a livingness about it, an actuality; it stands out as if illuminated. There is the ‘stamp of reality’ on the actual, which the past and the future do not have.

Q: What gives the present that 'stamp of reality’?

M: There is nothing peculiar in the present event to make it different from the past and future. For a moment the past was actual and the future will become so. What makes the present so different? Obviously, my presence. I am real for I am always now, in the present, and what is with me now shares in my reality. The past is in memory, the future — in imagination.

There is nothing in the present event itself that makes it stand out as real. It may be some simple, periodical occurrence, like the striking of the clock. In spite of our knowing that the successive strokes are identical, the present stroke is quite different from the previous one and the next — as remembered, or expected. A thing focussed in the now is with me, for I am ever present; it is my own reality that I impart to the present event.

Q: But we deal with things remembered as if they were real.

M: We consider memories, only when they come into the present The forgotten is not counted until one is reminded — which implies, bringing into the now.

Q: Yes, I can see there is in the now some unknown factor that gives momentary reality to the transient actuality.

M: You need not say it is unknown, for you see it in constant operation. Since you were born, has it ever changed? Things and thoughts have been changing all the time. But the feeling that what is now is real has never changed, even in dream.

Q: In deep sleep there is no experience of the present reality.

M: The blankness of deep sleep is due entirely to the lack of specific memories. But a general memory of well-being is there. There is a difference in feeling when we say ‘I was deeply asleep’ from ‘I was absent’.

Q: We shall repeat the question we began with: between life’s source and life’s expression (which is the body), there is the mind and its ever-changeful states. The stream of mental states is endless, meaningless and painful. Pain is the constant factor. What we call pleasure is but a gap, an interval between two painful states. Desire and fear are the weft and warp of living, and both are made of pain. Our question is: can there be a happy mind?

M: Desire is the memory of pleasure and fear is the memory of pain. Both make the mind restless. Moments of pleasure are merely gaps in the stream of pain. How can the mind be happy?
Q: That is true when we desire pleasure or expect pain. But there are moments of unexpected, unanticipated joy. Pure joy, uncontaminated by desire — unsought, undeserved, God-given.

M: Still, joy is joy only against a background of pain.

Q: Is pain a cosmic fact, or purely mental?

M: The universe is complete and where there is completeness, where nothing lacks, what can give pain?

Q: The Universe may be complete as a whole, but incomplete in details.

M: A part of the whole seen in relation to the whole is also complete. Only when seen in isolation it becomes deficient and thus a seat of pain. What makes for isolation?

Q: Limitations of the mind, of course. The mind cannot see the whole for the part.

M: Good enough. The mind, by its very nature, divides and opposes. Can there be some other mind, which unites and harmonises, which sees the whole in the part and the part as totally related to the whole?

Q: The other mind — where to look for it?

M: In the going beyond the limiting, dividing and opposing mind. In ending the mental process as we know it. When this comes to an end, that mind is born.

Q: In that mind, the problem of joy and sorrow exist no longer?

M: Not as we know them, as desirable or repugnant. It becomes rather a question of love seeking expression and meeting with obstacles. The inclusive mind is love in action, battling against circumstances, initially frustrated, ultimately victorious.

M - Nisargadatta Maharaj 

Acceptance and Surrender

Any disturbing noise can be as helpful as silence. How? By dropping your inner resistance to the noise, by allowing it to be as it is, this acceptance also takes you into that realm of inner peace that is stillness.

Whenever you deeply accept this moment as it is — no matter what form it takes — you are still, you are at peace.

(...)

Whenever you are able, have a “look” inside yourself to see whether you are unconsciously creating conflict between the inner and the outer, between your external circumstances at that moment–where you are, who you are with, or what you are doing–and your thoughts and feelings. Can you feel how painful it is to internally stand in opposition to what is?

When you recognize this, you also realize that you are now free to give up this futile conflict, this inner state of war.
*
How often each day, if you were to verbalize your inner reality at that moment, would you have to say, “I don't want to be where I am?” What does it feel like when you don't want to be where you are–the traffic jam, your place of work, the airport lounge, the people you are with?

It is true, of course, that some places are good places to walk out of–and sometimes that may well be the most appropriate thing for you to do. In many cases, however, walking out is not an option. In all those cases, the “I don't want to be here” is not only useless but also dysfunctional. It makes you and others unhappy.

It has been said: wherever you go, there you are. In other words: you are here.
Always. Is it so hard to accept that?
*
Do you really need to mentally label every sense perception and experience? Do you really need to have a reactive like/dislike relationship with life where you are in almost continuous conflict with situations and people? Or is that just a deep-seated mental habit that can be broken? Not by doing anything, but by allowing this moment to be as it is.
*
The habitual and reactive “no” strengthens the ego. “Yes” weakens it. Your form identity, the ego, cannot survive surrender.
*
“I have so much to do.” Yes, but what is the quality of your doing? Driving to work, speaking to clients, working on the computer, running errands, dealing with the countless things that make up your daily life–how total are you in what you do?
Is your doing surrendered or non-surrendered? This is what determines your success in life, not how much effort you make. Effort implies stress and strain, needing to reach a certain point in the future or accomplish a certain result.

Can you detect even the slightest element within yourself of not wanting to be  doing what you are doing? That is a denial of life, and so a truly successful outcome is not possible.

If you can detect this within yourself, can you also drop it and be total in what you do?
*
“Doing one thing at a time.” This is how one Zen Master defined the essence of Zen.

Doing one thing at a time means to be total in what you do, to give it your complete attention. This is surrendered action–empowered action.
*
Your acceptance of what is takes you to a deeper level where your inner state as well as your sense of self no longer depend on the mind's judgment of “good” or “bad.”

When you say “yes” to the “isness” of life, when you accept this moment as it is, you can feel a sense of spaciousness within you that is deeply peaceful.

On the surface, you may still be happy when it's sunny and not so happy when it's rainy; you may be happy at winning a million dollars and unhappy at losing all your possessions. Neither happiness nor unhappiness, however, go all that deep anymore. They are ripples on the surface of your Being. The background peace within you remains undisturbed regardless of the nature of the outside condition.
The “yes” to what is reveals a dimension of depth within you that is dependent neither on external conditions nor on the internal conditions of constantly fluctuating thoughts and emotions.
*
Surrender becomes so much easier when you realize the fleeting nature of all experiences and that the world cannot give you anything of lasting value. You then continue to meet people, to be involved in experiences and activities, but without the wants and fears of the egoic self. That is to say, you no longer demand that a situation, person, place, or event should satisfy you or make you happy. Its passing and imperfect nature is allowed to be.

And the miracle is that when you are no longer placing an impossible demand on it, every situation, person, place, or event becomes not only satisfying but also more harmonious, more peaceful.
*
When you completely accept this moment, when you no longer argue with what is, the compulsion to think lessens and is replaced by an alert stillness. You are fully conscious, yet the mind is not labeling this moment in any way. This state of inner nonresistance opens you to the unconditioned consciousness that is infinitely greater than the human mind. This vast intelligence can then express itself through you and assist you, both from within and from without. That is why, by letting go of inner resistance, you often find circumstances change for the better.
*
Am I saying, “Enjoy this moment. Be happy?” No.

Allow the “suchness” of this moment. That's enough.
*
Surrender is surrender to this moment, not to a story through which you interpret this moment and then try to resign yourself to it.

For instance, you may have a disability and can't walk anymore. The condition is as it is.

Perhaps your mind is now creating a story that says, “This is what my life has come to. I have ended up in a wheelchair. Life has treated me harshly and unfairly. I don't deserve this.”

Can you accept the isness of this moment and not confuse it with a story the mind has created around it?
*
Surrender comes when you no longer ask, “Why is this happening to me?”
*
Even within the seemingly most unacceptable and painful situation is concealed a deeper good, and within every disaster is contained the seed of grace.

Throughout history, there have been women and men who, in the face of great loss, illness, imprisonment, or impending death, accepted the seemingly unacceptable and thus found “the peace that passeth all understanding.”

Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world.
*
There are situations where all answers and explanations fail. Life does not make sense anymore. Or someone in distress comes to you for help, and you don't know what to do or say.

When you fully accept that you don't know, you give up struggling to find answers with the limited thinking mind, and that is when a greater intelligence can operate through you. And even thought can then benefit from that, since the greater intelligence can flow into it and inspire it.

Sometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and becoming comfortable with not knowing.
*
(...)

Surrender, one could say, is the inner transition from resistance to acceptance, from “no” to “yes.” When you surrender, your sense of self shifts from being identified with a reaction or mental judgment to being the space around the reaction or judgment. It is a shift from identification with form–the thought or the emotion–to being and recognizing yourself as that which has no form–spacious awareness.
*
Whatever you accept completely will take you to peace, including the acceptance that you cannot accept, that you are in resistance.
*
Leave Life alone. Let it be.

Go beyond good and bad by refraining from mentally naming anything as good or bad. When you go beyond the habitual naming, the power of the universe moves through you. When you are in a nonreactive relationship to experiences, what you would have called bad before, often turns around quickly, if not immediately through the power of life itself. Watch what happens when you don't name an experience as bad and instead bring an inner acceptance, an inner “yes” to it, and so let it be as it is, right now?

Any disturbing noise can be as helpful as silence. How? By dropping your inner resistance to the noise, by allowing it to be as it is, this acceptance also takes you into that realm of inner peace that is stillness.

Whenever you deeply accept this moment as it is — no matter what form it takes — you are still, you are at peace.

***
See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is.

It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
Ordinary unconsciousness is always linked in some way with denial of the Now. The Now, of course, also implies the here. Are you resisting your here and now? Some people would always rather be somewhere else. Their “here” is never good enough. Through self-observation, find out if that is the case in your life. Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences. No excuses. No negativity. No psychic pollution. Keep your inner space clear.

If you take any action leaving or changing your situation drop the negativity first, if at all possible. Action arising out of insight into what is required is more effective than action arising out of negativity.

Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case ifs no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing. Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don't let the fear rise up into pour mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.

If there is truly nothing that you can do to change your here and now, and you can't remove yourself from the situation, then accept your here and now totally by dropping all inner resistance. The false, unhappy self that loves feeling miserable, resentful, or sorry for itself can then no longer survive. This is called surrender. Surrender is not weakness. There is great strength in it. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through surrender, you will be free internally of the situation. You may then find that the situation changes without any effort on your part. In any case, you are free.

(...)

To disidentify from thinking is to be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior, especially the repetitive patterns of your mind and the roles played by the ego.

If you stop investing it with “selfness,” the mind loses its compulsive quality, which basically is the compulsion to judge, and so to resist what is, which creates conflict, drama, and new pain. In fact, the moment that judgment stops through acceptance of what is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace.

Whenever tragic loss occurs, you either resist or you yield. Some people become bitter or deeply resentful; others become compassionate, wise, and loving. Yielding means inner acceptance of what is. You are open to life. Resistance is an inner contraction, a hardening of the shell of the ego. You are closed. Whatever action you take in a state of inner resistance (which we could also call negativity) will create more outer resistance, and the universe will not be on your side; life will not be helpful. If the shutters are closed, the sunlight cannot come in. When you yield internally, when you surrender, a new dimension of consciousness opens up. If action is possible or necessary, your action will be in alignment with the whole and supported by creative intelligence, the unconditioned consciousness which in a state of inner openness you become one with. Circumstances and people then become helpful, cooperative. Coincidences happen. If no action is possible, you rest in the peace and inner stillness that come with surrender. You rest in God.
*

Through complete acceptance of the form of Now, you become internally aligned with space, which is the essence of Now. Through acceptance, you become spacious inside. Aligned with space instead of form: That brings true perspective and balance into your life.
*
Whatever you cannot enjoy doing, you can at least accept that this is what you have to do. Acceptance means: For now, this is what this situation, this moment, requires me to do, and so I do it willingly. We already spoke at length about the importance of inner acceptance of what happens, and acceptance of what you have to do is just another aspect of it. For example, you probably won't be able to enjoy changing the flat tire on your car at night in the middle of nowhere and in pouring rain, let alone be enthusiastic about it, but you can bring acceptance to it. Performing an action in the state of acceptance means you are at peace while you do it. That peace is a subtle energy vibration which then flows into what you do. On the surface, acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it is active and creative because it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, that subtle energy vibration, is consciousness, and one of the ways in which ti enters this world is through surrendered action, one aspect of which is acceptance.

If you can neither enjoy or bring acceptance to what you do stop. Otherwise, you are not taking responsibility for the only thing you can really take responsibility for, which also happens to be one thing that really matters: your state of consciousness. And if you are not taking responsibility for your state of consciousness, you are not taking responsibility for life.

Eckhart Tolle from Stillness Speaks; The Power of Now; A New Earth

No one hears my word or my teaching unless he has abandoned self

Now you might want to ask, 'How do I know if it is God's will?' I reply, 'If it were not God's will for a single instant, it would not be - it must always be His will.' Now if you really enjoyed the taste of God's will, you would be just as if you were in heaven, whatever happened or did not happen to you. It serves them right who want anything other than God's will, for they are always in sorrow and distress.
*
Now there are some people who consider themselves very holy and perfect, they make a great parade and use big words, and yet they seek and desire so many things, and want so many possessions and pay so much regard to themselves and to this and that; they claim to be contemplatives, and yet they can brook no contradiction. You can be sure they are far from God and have not attained that union.
*
And so a carnal man has no knowledge of spiritual things, because he is not ready for them. On the other hand, it is easy for a man with understanding to leave all material things, because he knows spiritual things. St. Dionysius says God offers his heaven for sale.

Nothing is so cheap as heaven, when it is for sale, and nothing is so glorious and precious a possession, when it has been earned. It is called cheap, because it is on sale to everybody for as much as he can afford. Therefore a man should give all he has for heaven - his own will. As long as he keeps any part of his own will, he has not paid for heaven. For him who has abandoned self and self-will, all material things are easy to abandon.
*
The higher the soul is raised up above herself, the purer and clearer she is, and the more perfectly God can do in her His divine work in His own likeness. If a mountain rose up two leagues above the earth, and if one were to write characters on it in the dust or sand, they would remain intact, untouched by wind or rain. Just so a truly spir­itual man should be raised up in true peace, entire and changeless in divine activity. Any spiritual man has good cause for shame at being so easily moved by depression, anger, or annoyance: such a man was never truly spiritual.
*
And so, if you would be one Son, you must get rid of not,  for not makes for division. How so? Observe! If you are not that man, the not makes a distinction between you and that man. And so, to be free of distinction, you must abandon not. For there is a power in the soul that is immune from not, having nothing in common with things: for there is nothing in that power but God alone.
*
Our masters declare that perfect rest is freedom from all motion. In this the soul must rise above herself to the divine order.12 There, in that perfect rest, the Father gives His only-begotten Son to the soul.
*
And man too should be unseparated from all things, which means that a man should be nothing in himself and wholly detached from self: in that way he is unseparated from all things and is all things. For, as far as you are nothing in yourself, insofar you are all things and unseparated from all things. And therefore, as far as you are unseparated from all things, insofar you are God and all things, for God's divinity depends on His being unseparated from all things. And so the man who is unseparated from all things receives the Godhead from where God himself receives it.
*
...a man should be so wholly detached in his intention that he had nobody and nothing in view but the Godhead in itself - neither salvation nor this or that, but just God as God, and the Godhead in itself. For whatever else you concern yourself with is an admixture to the Godhead. And so shed all admixtures to the Godhead, and seize it naked as it is in itself.
*
Now we read in one Gospel that Christ said, "None can be my disciple unless he follows after me" (Luke 14:27) ­ and unless he has abandoned self and kept nothing for himself: and he has all things, for to have nothing is to have all things.3 But to submit to God with one's desire and one's heart, and to place one's will entirely in God's will and to have no regard for created things ­ if a man has gone out of himself in this way, he will truly be given back to himself again.
*
Now I say, How can it be that detachment of the understanding comprehends all things within itself without form or image, without turning outward or transforming itself? I say it comes from simplicity, for the more pure and simple a man is of himself in himself, the more simply he will understand all multiplicity in himself, while himself remaining immutable. Boethius says, 'God is an immovable good, remaining still in Himself, unmoved and motionless, yet moving all things." 16 The simple intellect is so pure in itself that it comprehends the pure bare divine being immediately, and in the inflowing it receives divine nature equally with the angels, at which the angels receive great joy.
*
But if God is neither goodness nor being nor truth nor one, what then is He? He is pure nothing: he is neither this nor that. If you think of anything He might be, He is not that. So where will the soul find truth? Will she not find it there, where she is in-formed in one unity, in the primal purity, in the impress of pure beingness - will she not find truth even there? No, she will not be able to grasp truth there ­ rather does truth come thence and descend from there.
*
Observe which are the three heavens. The first is detachment from all bodily things, the second is estrangement from all imagery, and the third is a bare understanding in God without intermediary.
*
The second question is whether St. Paul understood outside of time or in time. I say he understood out of time, for he did not understand from the angels who are created in time; he understood from God, who was before time was, whom time never comprehended.
*
When it falls to some people to suffer or to do something, they say, 'If only I knew it was God's will, I would gladly endure it or do it!' Dear God! that is a strange question for a sick man to ask, whether it is God's will that he should be sick. He ought to realize that if he is sick, it must be God's will. It is just the same with other things.

And so a man should accept from God, purely and simply, whatever happens to him. There are some people who praise God and have faith in Him when all goes well with them, inwardly or outwardly, as when somebody says, 'I have got ten quarters of corn this year and as many of wine: I put my trust in God.' 'Indeed,' I say, 'you put your trust in the corn and the wine.'
*
"Fear not those who would kill the body, for they cannot kill the soul," for spirit does not kill spirit: spirit gives life to spirit. Those who would kill you are flesh and blood, and whatever is flesh and blood, all that perishes. The noblest thing in man is blood, when it wills good. But the most evil thing in man is blood, when it wills evil. When the blood rules the flesh, a man is humble, patient and chaste and has all the virtues. But when the flesh rules the blood, a man is haughty, angry, and lascivious and has all the vices.
*
Whoever has understood this sermon, good luck to him. If no one had been here I should have had to preach it to this offertory box.

There are some poor people who will go back home and say, 'I shall settle down and eat my bread and serve God.' By the eternal truth I declare that these people will remain in error, and will never
be able to strive for and win what those others achieve who follow God in poverty and exile.
*
There are three things that prevent us from hearing the eternal Word. The first is corporeality, the second is multiplicity, the third is temporality. If a man had transcended these three things, he would dwell in eternity, he would dwell in the spirit, he would dwell in unity and in the desert - and there he would hear the eternal Word. Now our Lord says, " "No one hears my word or my teaching unless he has abandoned self.' For to hear the Word of God demands absolute self­ surrender.

That which is not here or there and is a forgetting of all creatures...

 SERMON SIXTY-EIGHT

(Pf 90, Q 1 1, QT 12) IMPLETUM EST TEMPUS ELIZABETH (Luke 1 : 57) "Elizabeth's time was fulfilled and she bore a son. John is his name.

Then the people said, What wonders shall come of this child, for God's hand is with him?" One scripture says, "The greatest gift is that we are God's children,"1 and that He bears His Son in us. The soul should give birth to nothing inside herself, if she wishes to be the child of God in whom God's Son shall be born - in her nothing else should be born. God's chief aim is giving birth. He is never content till He begets His Son in us. And the soul, too, is in no way content until the Son of God is born in her. And from that there springs forth grace. Grace is thereby infused. Grace does not work: its work is its becoming. It flows out of God's essence and flows into the essence of the soul and not into her powers.

When the time was fulfilled, grace was born.2 When is the fullness of time? When time is no more. If anyone has, in time,3 set his heart on eternity so that in him all temporal things are dead, that is "the fullness of time." I once said, 'He will not always rejoice who rejoices in time.'4 St. Paul says, "Rejoice in God all the time" (Phil. 4:4}. He rejoices all the time who rejoices above time and apart from time.

One writer says there are three things that so hinder a man that he cannot know God at all: the first is time, the second corporeality, the third multiplicity.5 As long as these three things are in me, God is not in me, nor is He properly at work in me. St. Augustine says it comes from the greed of the soul, because she wants to have and hold so much, that she reaches into time and corporeality and multiplicity, thereby losing what she has.6 For as long as you want more and more, God canhot dwell or work in you. These things must always go out if God is to go in, unless you have them in a higher and better way, so that multiplicity has become one in you. Then, the more there is of multiplicity in you, the more there is of unity, for the one is changed into the other.

I once said, 'Unity unites all multiplicity, but multiplicity does not unite unity.'7 When we are lifted above all things, and everything within us is raised up, nothing can oppress us. What is beneath me cannot weigh on me. If my attention were fixed on God alone, so that there was nothing above me but God, then nothing whatsoever would bother me, and I should not be easily distressed. St. Augustine says, 'Lord, when I turn to thee, all heaviness, sorrow, and distress is taken from me.'8 When we have got beyond time and temporal things, then we are free and always happy, and then there is the "fullness of time," and then God's Son is born in you.9

I once said, 'In the fullness of time, God sent His Son.'10 If anything is born in you except the Son, 11 then you do not have the Holy Ghost, and grace is not at work in you. The origin of the Holy Ghost is the Son. If it were not for the Son there would be no Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost cannot have his outflowing or his blossoming forth anywhere but from the Son. When the Father begets the Son, He gives him all that He has of essence and nature. In that giving the Holy Ghost gushes forth.

In this way it is God's intention to give Himself entirely to us. It is like when fire seeks to draw the wood into itself, and to penetrate the wood, finding the wood unlike itself. Therefore it takes time. First it makes it warm, then hot, then it smokes and crackles on account of its unlikeness: and the hotter the wood gets, the more still and quiet it becomes, and the more like the fire, the more peaceful it is, until it becomes all fire. If the fire is to press the wood into itself, all unlikeness must be cast out.

In the truth which is God, if you aim at anything but God alone, or if you seek anything but God, then the work you do is not yours, and it is certainly not God's work. That which tends to your purpose in the work is the work. That which works in me is my father, and I am subject to him. It is impossible in nature that there should be two fathers: there must always be one father in nature. When other things are finished and complete, then this birth takes place. A thing that fills is everywhere in contact with its boundary and nowhere falls short: it has breadth and length, height and depth. If it had height and no breadth, length or depth, it would not fill. St. Paul says, "Pray that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, the height, the length and the depth" (Eph. 3 : 18).

These three things stand for three kinds of knowledge. 12 The first is sensible. The eye sees from afar things outside it. The second is rational, and is much higher. The third denotes a noble power of the soul, which is so high and so noble that it takes hold of God in His own being. This power13 has nothing in common with anything: it makes anything and everything out of nothing. It knows no yesterday or the day before, or tomorrow and the day after, for in eternity there is neither yesterday nor tomorrow, there is a present now: that which was a thousand years ago, and that which will occur in a thousand years, is present there, and so is what is beyond the ocean. This power seizes God in His robing room. One scripture says, "In Him, by Him, through Him."14 "In Him" means in the Father, 'by Him" means in the Son, "through Him" means in the Holy Ghost. St. Augustine says something that sounds quite different from this but is very simi­lar: 'There is no truth but it contains in itself all truth.'15 This power grasps all things in truth. Nothing is hidden from this power. Accord­ ing to scripture men's heads should be bare, and women's covered. 16 The women are the lower powers, which should be veiled. The man is this power, which should be bare and unveiled17

"What wonders shall come of this child?" Speaking recently to some people who are very likely here too, I said nothing is so hidden but it shall be revealed. All that is naught shall be put away and so covered up that it is never thought of again. We should have no knowledge of nothing, and should have nothing in common with nothing. All creatures are pure nothing. 18 That which is not here or there and is a forgetting of all creatures, embraces fullness of all being. I said then that nothing within us should be hidden: we should reveal it all to God and give it all to Him. Whatever state we find ourselves in, whether in strength or in weakness, in joy or in sorrow, whatever we find ourselves attached to, we must abandon. In truth, if we reveal all to Him, He in return will reveal to us all that He has; in truth He will conceal absolutely nothing of all that He can perform: neither wisdom nor truth nor mystery nor divinity nor anything else. This is in truth as true as that God lives, provided we reveal ourselves. But if we do not reveal ourselves, then it is no wonder if He reveals nothing to us, for it must be on equal terms: we to Him as He to us.

It is lamentable how some people think themselves very lofty and quite one with God, and yet have not abandoned self, and cling to such petty things in joy and sorrow. They are a long way from where they imagine themselves to be. They have great notions and desires to match. I once said, 'If a man seeks nothing, to whom should he complain if he finds nothing?'19 He has found what he was seeking.

Whoever seeks or aims at something is seeking and aiming at nothing, and he who prays for something will get nothing. But he who seeks nothing and aims at nothing but God alone, to him God will reveal and give everything He has concealed in His divine heart, so that it becomes his own just as it is God's own, neither less nor more, provided his aim is God alone, without means. If a sick man does not relish food and wine, is that surprising? For he does not get the true taste of the wine or the food. 

The tongue has a coating and a cover with which it tastes, and that is bitter through the disorder of the disease. It never reached the place where it could be properly savored; it seems bitter to the sick man, and he is right, because it must be bitter on account of the coating that intervenes. Unless this hindrance is removed, it cannot taste according to its proper flavor. As long as that which intervenes has not been removed in us, we will never get the proper flavor of God, and our life will often be harsh and bitter.20 I once said, 'The virgins follow the lamb, wherever he goes, not lagging behind.'21 Some of these are virgins and some are not virgins, though they think they are. Those who are true virgins follow the lamb wherever he goes, in joy and sorrow. Some follow the lamb as long as he goes in sweetness and ease: but as soon as the going leads to sorrow and discomfort and suffering, they turn back and cease to follow him. Assuredly, they are not virgins, whatever they seem to be.

Some say, 'Well now, Lord, I can well come to this in honor, riches, and comfort.' All right, if the lamb has lived that way and has led you that way, I wish you well in following in his footsteps. But the maidens scramble after the lamb through narrow places and broad, wherever he scrambles.
"When the time was fulfilled, grace was born." May all things be fulfilled in us so that God's grace may be born in us, so help us God. Amen.

1. Cf. 1 John 3:1. This is the text of Sermon 7 (q.v.).
2. John='grace.' 3. 'In this world' (Clark).
4. Cf. Sermon 27, on the text referred to.
5. Cf. Sermon 57.
6. Cf. Conf . 10.41 (Q).
7. Quint cannot trace the self-quotation. But cf. the opening of Sermon 60 for a similar idea.
8. Cf. Conf . 4.15 (Clark).
9. Change of pronoun as in the original.
10. Cf. Sermon 29.
11. This passage was objected to by the Cologne censors. Their Latin text adds the words, which have probably dropped out of the German manuscripts: 'or if there is the image of anything else in you except the Son.' 12. Cf. St. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 12.34 (Q).
13. The highest intellect.
14. Cf. Rom. 1 1 :36.
15. A quotation hard to identify. Quint, following Skutella, compares De Iibera arbitrio 1 .2.12; Clark thinks of Conf . 10.24, last sentence.
16. Cf. 1 Cor. 1 1:6-7.
17. Cf. Sermon 16b.
1 8. Cf. Nos. 7 and 13a. A fuller formulation of this was condemned in the bull of 1329.
19. Cf. Sermon 40.
20. Cf. Sermon 53.
21. Cf. Sermon 24a: 'not lagging behind' here freely renders ane mite/ 'without "means" or "anything intervening." '

From: The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart translation: Maurice OC. Walshe

A pure heart is one which is worried by nothing and is tied to nothing...

 

And as true obedience should have no 'I want this,' so too one should never hear from it 'I don't want,' for 'I don't want' is an absolute bane of all obedience.
*
The most powerful prayer, one well-nigh omnipotent to gain all things, and the noblest work of all is that which proceeds from a pure heart. The more pure it is, the more powerful, worthy, useful, praiseworthy and perfect the prayer and the work. A pure heart can do all things. What is a pure heart?
A pure heart is one which is worried by nothing and is tied to nothing, which has not bound its best part to any mode, does not seek its own in anything, that is fully immersed in God's dearest will and gone out of its own.
*
Do you want to know who is a truly poor man? That man is truly poor in spirit who can do without anything unnecessary. That is why he who sat naked in his tub said to Alexander the Great, to whom the whole world was subject, 'I am a greater ruler than you, for I have rejected more things than you have ever possessed. What you think it a great thing to possess, is too petty for me to scorn.' He is far more blessed who can do without all things and have no need of them, than he who has possession of all things and has wants. That man is the best who can do without what he does not need. Therefore he who can do without and despise the most has abandoned most. It seems a great thing if a man gives up a thousand marks of gold for God's sake and builds many hermitages and monasteries and feeds all the poor: that would be a great deed. But he would be far more blessed who should despise as much for God's sake. That man would possess very heaven who could for God's sake renounce all things, whatever God gave or did not give.
*
Concerning this inner, noble man in whom God's seed and God's image are impressed and sown, and how the seed and the image of divine nature and divine being, God's Son, appears and is made man­ ifest - but, too, is sometimes concealed - the great master Origen gives a simile: that God's image, God's Son, is in the ground of the soul like a living fountain. If earth is thrown on it (that is, earthly desire), that hinders and covers it up so that it is not recognized or perceived; yet it remains living within, and when the earth that was thrown on to it from without is removed, it appears visibly. He says this truth is indicated in the First Book of Moses, where it says that Abraham had dug wells of living water in his fi eld, and evildoers fi lled them with earth, and later when the earth was removed the living streams reappeared.

Here is another simile: the sun is always shining but, if there is a cloud or fog between us and the sun, we do not perceive its radiance.

Likewise, if the eye is weak and sick in itself, or is covered over, it perceives no light. I have also sometimes used a clear example: if an artist wants to make an image from wood or stone, he does not put the image into the wood, but he cuts away the chips that had hidden and concealed the image: he gives nothing to the wood but takes from it, cutting away the overlay and removing the dross, and then that which was hidden under it shines forth. That is the treasure hidden in a field of which our Lord tells in the Gospel (Matt. 13:44).

St. Augustine says that when the soul is turned entirely upward into eternity, into God alone, then God's image shines forth and glows; but when the soul is turned outward, if only to the outward practice of virtue, then the image is totally veiled.

*
There are some poor people who will go back home and say, 'I shall settle down and eat my bread and serve God.' By the eternal truth I declare that these people will remain in error, and will never be able to strive for and win what those others achieve who follow God in poverty and exile. Amen.
*
The other thing I want to tell you is that many a dull-witted man will declare that a lot of the things I have said in this book and elsewhere are not true. To this I reply with what St. Augustine says in the first book of his Confessions. He says God has now made all future things for thousands and thousands of years (if the world should last so long), and that He will make today all things which have passed away many thousand years ago. How can I help it if anyone does not understand this? And elsewhere he says that that man is obviously too fond of himself who wants to blind others to hide his own blindness. I am satisfied if what I say and write is true in me and in God. He who sees a stick thrust into the water thinks the stick is crooked, although it is quite straight; this is due to the water being denser than the air. But the stick is straight, not crooked, both in itself and in the eyes of him who sees it in clear air.

St. Augustine says, 'He who, free from all thoughts, all bodily forms and images, perceives within himself that which no outward seeing has conveyed to him, knows that this is true. But he who does not know this laughs and mocks at me, and I pity him. But such people want to behold and taste eternal things and divine activities, and stand in the light of eternity, while yet their heart is flitting about in yesterday and tomorrow.' A pagan master, Seneca, says, 'Great and lofty things should be discussed with great and lofty minds and with exalted souls.' And some will say that such teachings should not be uttered or written to the unlearned. To this I reply, if one may not teach the unlearned, then no one can teach or write. For we teach the unlearned so that from being unlearned they may become learned. If there were nothing new there would be nothing old. "Those who are well," says our Lord, "have no need of medicine" (Luke 5:31 ). The physician is there to heal the sick. But if anyone misinterprets this saying, how can he help it who rightly teaches this saying, which is right?

from the book The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart (Meister Eckhart, Maurice OC. Walshe etc.)

Meister Eckhart: if you have given up self, then you have really given up

 Be assured of this as I live: if we are to receive thus from Him, we must be raised up in eternity, above time.

*
What is a pure heart? That is pure which is separated and parted from all creatures, for all creatures produce impurity, because they are nothing and nothing is a lack and tarnishes the soul. All creatures are mere nothing, neither angels nor creatures are anything.
*
All things are created out of nothing, therefore their true source is nothing, and as far as this noble will inclines to creatures, it is dissipated with creatures in their nothing. The question arises, whether this noble will can be so dissipated that it can never return. The masters generally declare that it can never return insofar as it is dispersed in time. But I say, whenever this will turns back from itself, and from all creation for a moment into its primal source, then the will has its true birthright of freedom and is free, and in this moment all time lost is recovered.

People often say to me, 'Pray for me.' And I think, 'Why do you go out? Why do you not stay within yourself and draw on your own treasure? For you have the whole truth in its essence within you.' That we may thus truly stay within, that we may possess all truth immediately, without distinction, in true blessedness, may God help us. Amen.
*
You should be firm and steadfast; that is, you should be the same in weal and woe, in fortune and misfortune, having the noble nature of precious stones; that is, all virtues should be enclosed in you and flow out of you in their true being. You should traverse and transcend all the virtues, drawing virtue solely from its source in that ground where it is one with the divine nature.
*
Why did God become man? That I might be born God Himself. God died that I might die to the whole world and all created things.

*

It has naught in common with anything. All that is created or creaturely is alien. It is a single one in itself, and takes in nothing from outside.

Our Lord ascended into heaven, beyond all light, beyond all under­ standing and all human ken. The man who is thus translated beyond all light, dwells in eternity. Therefore St. Paul says, "God dwells in a light to which there is no approach" (1 Tim. 6: 16), and that is in itself pure unity. Therefore a man must be slain and wholly dead, devoid of self and wholly without likeness, like to none, and then he is really God-like. For it is God's character, His nature, to be peerless and like no man.
*
A man once came to me - it was not long ago - and told me he had given up a great deal of property and goods, in order that he might save his soul. Then I thought, Alas! how little and how paltry are the things you have given up. It is blindness and folly, so long as you care a jot for what you have given up. But if you have given up self, then you have really given up.
*
The just man serves neither God nor creatures, for he is free, and the closer he is to justice, the closer he is to freedom, and the more he is freedom itself. Whatever is created, is not free. So long as there is anything at all above me, that is not God, that oppresses me, however small it may be or whatever its nature; even though it were reason and love, as long as this is something created and not God Himself, it oppresses me, for it is not free.
*
In created things - as I have said before - there is no truth. There is something that transcends the created being of the soul, not in contact with created things, which are nothing; not even an angel has it, though he has a clear being that is pure and extensive: even that does not touch it. It is akin to the nature of deity, it is one in itself, and has naught in common with anything. It is a stumbling­ block to many a learned cleric. It is a strange and desert place, and is rather nameless than possessed of a name, and is more unknown than it is known. If you could naught yourself for an instant, indeed I say less than an instant, you would possess all that this is in itself. But as long as you mind yourself or any thing at all, you know no more of God than my mouth knows of color or my eye of taste: so little do you know or discern what God is.
*
"Paul rose from the ground and with open eyes saw nothing." I think this text has a fourfold sense. One is that when he rose up from the ground with open eyes he saw Nothing, and the Nothing was God; for when he saw God he1 calls that Nothing. The second: when he got up he saw nothing but God. The third: in all things he saw nothing but God. The fourth: when he saw God, he saw all things as nothing.
*
God is the true light: to see it, one must be blind and must strip from God all that is 'something.' A master says whoever speaks of God in any likeness, speaks impurely of Him. But to speak of God with nothing is to speak of Him correctly. When the soul is unified and there enters into total self-abnegation, then she finds God as in Nothing.
*
The soul cannot experience love or fear without knowing their occasion. If the soul does not go out into external things, she has come home, and dwells in her simple, pure light. There she does not love, nor does she know anxiety or fear.
*
Therefore there is nothing for it but to peel off and shed all that belongs to the soul: her life, her powers, her nature - all must go, and she must stand in the pure light where she is one single image with God: there she will fi nd God. It is characteristic of God that nothing alien enters Him, nothing is superimposed on Him or added to Him. Therefore the soul should have no alien impressions, nothing superimposed, nothing added.
*
We use the word homo for women as well as for men, but the Latins refuse it to woman because of her weakness.
*
This light is so potent that it is not merely in itself free of time and space, but whatever it falls on it  robs of time and space and all corporeal images and whatever is alien to it. I have said before, if there were no time or place or anything else, all would be one being. If a man were one like this and would cast himself into the ground of humility, he would there be watered with grace.
*
...'go forth and depart': go out of this world and leave everything your soul still inclines to. And wherever she is still attached to anything, let her hate it.
*
"And I have set you over nations," that is, over all the world, which you must be rid of, and "over kingdoms," that is: what­ ever is more than one is too much, for you must die to all things and be again in-formed in the height, where we dwell in the Holy Ghost.
*
It is the sign of a good man that he praises good people. So if a good man praises me, then I am truly praised, but if a bad man praises me, then in truth I am blamed. But if a bad man blames me, then in truth I am praised. "Of that which fills the heart, the mouth speaks" (Matt. 12:34). It is always the sign of a good man that he likes to speak of God, for people like to speak of what they are concerned with. Those who are concerned with tools like to talk about tools, those who are concerned with sermons like to talk about sermons. A good man likes to speak of nothing so much as God.
*
St. Dionysius says that holiness is complete purity, liberty, and perfection. Purity means that a man is separated from sin, and this makes the soul free.
*
Again, 'holiness' denotes 'what is withdrawn from the world.' God is something and is pure being, and sin is nothing and draws us away from God. ... When she is free from earthly things the soul is holy. ... St. Augustine says, 'If a man would be holy let him forsake mundane things.' I have often said that the soul cannot be pure unless she is reduced to her original purity, as God made her, just as gold cannot be made from copper by two or three roastings: it must be reduced to its primary nature.
*
It is easy to make show of virtues, or to talk of them: but to have them in reality is extremely rare.
*

Plato: 'What God is, I do not know, but what He is not I know well enough,'

*
St. Augustine says he rejoices all the time who rejoices above time. He says, "Rejoice all the time," that is, above time, and "have no care: the Lord is at hand and is near." The soul that is going to rejoice in the Lord must of necessity cast off all care, at least during the time when she yields herself to God.
*
St. Paul says, "In the fullness of time God sent His Son" (Gal. 4:4). St. Augustine says what this fullness of time is: 'Where there is no more time, that is the "fullness of time." '
*
Another meaning of "fullness of time": if anyone had the skill and the power to gather up time and all that has happened in six thousand years or that will happen till the end of time, into one present Now, that would be the "fullness of time." That is the Now of eternity ...
*
The soul in which God is to be born must drop away from time and time from her, she must soar aloft and stand gazing into this richness of God's ...and inasmuch as the soul has dropped away from time, there is there no woe or pain; even distress is turned for her to joy.
*
St. Augustine says a good man desires no praise, he desires to be worthy of praise. Now our masters say virtue is so pure, so wholly abstract and detached from all corporeal things in its ground and true nature that nothing whatever can enter into it without defiling the virtue and making it a vice. A single thought or any seeking of one's own advantage, and it is not a true virtue, it is turned to vice. Such is virtue by nature.

Now a pagan master says if a man practices virtue for the sake of anything else but virtue, then it never was a virtue. If he seeks praise or anything else, he is selling virtue. One should never give up a virtue by nature for anything in the world. Therefore a good man desires no praise, but he desires to be worthy of praise. A man should not be sorry if people are angry with him, he should be sorry to deserve the anger.
*
How should a man be who is to see God? He must be dead. Our Lord says, "No man can see me and live" (Exod. 33:20).7 Now St. Gregory says he is dead who is dead to the world. Now judge for yourselves what a dead man is like and how little he is touched by anything in the world. If we die to the world we do not die to God.
*
He who would hear God must be far removed from people.
*
"Then the woman said, 'Sir, give me of the water.' Then our Lord said, 'Bring me your husband,' and she said, 'Sir, I have none.' Then our Lord said, 'You are right, you have none. But you have had five, and the one you have now is not yours.' " St. Augustine says, 'Why does our Lord say, "You are right"? He means to say "the five husbands are the five senses: they had you in your youth according to all their will and desire. Now you have one in your old age and he is not yours: that is the intellect, that you do not obey."
*
This birth does not take place once a year or once a month or once a day, but all the time, that is, above time in the expanse where there is no here or now, nor nature nor thought.
*
Where is Christ sitting? He is sitting nowhere. Whoever seeks him anywhere will not fnd him. His least part is everywhere, his highest nowhere. A master says that whoever knows anything does not know God. Christ means the anointed, he who is anointed by the Holy Ghost. The masters say sitting denotes rest and implies timelessness. What turns and changes has no rest, and also, resting adds nothing. Our Lord says, "I am God and do not change" (Mal. 3 : 6).
*
Thus God cannot work except in the ground of humility, for the deeper we are in humility, the more receptive to God.
*
In the silence and peace - there God speaks in the soul and utters Himself completely in the soul.
... Therefore it is a much greater thing to be silent about God than to speak.
*
The reason why you find nothing is simply because you seek nothing. All creatures are pure nothing. I do not say they are a trifle or they are anything: they are pure nothing. What has no being, is not. All creatures have no being, for their being consists in the presence of God. If God turned away for an instant from all creatures, they would perish. I have sometimes said, and it is true, that he who possessed the whole world with God would have no more than if he had God by Himself. All creatures have nothing more without God than a midge would have without God - just the same, neither more nor less.

Now listen to a true saying! If a man gave a thousand marks of gold for building churches and convents, that would be a great thing. Yet that man would give far more who could regard a thousand marks as nothing; he would have done far more than the other.
*
As I have clearly stated before, Whoever would receive from above must be below in true humility. Know this truly: he who is not fully below obtains and receives nothing, however small. If you have an eye to yourself or to any thing or person, you are not right under and will get nothing, but if you are right under, you will receive fully and per­ fectly. It is God's nature to give, and His being depends on His giving to us when we are under. If we are not, and receive nothing, we do Him violence and kill Him. If we cannot do this to Him, then we do it to ourselves, as far as in us lies. If you would truly give Him all, see to it that you put yourself in true humility under God, raising up God in your heart and your understanding. "Our Lord God sent His Son into the world" (Gal. 4:4). I once said here, God sent His Son into the world in the soul's fullness of time, when she had fi nished with time.3 When the soul is free from time and place, then the Father sends His Son into the soul. This is the meaning of the words "The best gift and perfection come from above, from the Father of lights."
*
Moses says, "No man has seen God" (d. Exodus 33:20). As long as we are men and as long as anything human attaches to us and we are approaching, we cannot see God; we must be raised up and set in pure rest, and thus see God.
*
Anything, however small, adhering to the soul, prevents us from seeing God. ...The soul that is to fi nd God must leap over and pass beyond all creatures. ...Boethius says, 'If you would know truth clearly, cast off joy, and fear, expectation, and hope, and pain.' Joy is a means, fear is a means, expectation and hope and pain are all means. As long as you regard them and they regard you, you cannot see God.
*
The first point: it becomes detached from here and now. 'Here and now' means the same as place and time. Now is the minimum of time; it is not a portion of time or a part of time. It is just a taste of time, a tip of time, and end of time. Yet, small though it be, it must go: everything that touches or smacks of time must go. Again, it is detached from here. 'Here' means the same thing as place. The place where I am standing is small, but however small, it must still go before I can see God.
*
If a man were to rest on nothing, and cling to nothing, then, if heaven and earth were overturned, he would remain unmoved, since he would cling to nothing, and nothing would cling to him.

Selected from sermons 13 - 42
Translated and Edited by Maurice O'C. Walshe

Meister Eckhart - quotes

 

Since it is God's nature not to be like anyone, we have to come to the state of being nothing in order to enter into the same nature that He is. So, when I am able to establish myself in Nothing and Nothing in myself, uprooting and casting out what is in me, then I can pass into the naked being of God, which is the naked being of the spirit.
*
To be one with God, there must be in you nothing imagined or imaged forth, so that nothing is covered up in you that is not discovered or cast out.
*
If you grieve in your heart for anything, even on account of sin, your child is not yet born. If your heart is sore you are not yet a mother - but you are in labor and your time is near. So do not despair if you grieve for yourself or your friend -though it is not yet born, it is near to birth. But the child is fully born when a man's heart grieves for nothing: then a man has the essence and the nature and the substance and the wisdom and the joy and all that God has. Then the very being of the Son of God is ours and in us and we attain to the very essence of God.
Christ says: "Whoever would follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matt. 16:24, Mark 8:34). That is, cast out all grief so that perpetual joy reigns in your heart. Thus the child is born. And then, if the child is born in me, the sight of my father and all my friends slain before my eyes would leave my heart untouched.
*
'Virgin' is as much as to say a person who is void of alien images, as empty as he was when he did not exist. Now the question may be asked, how a man who has been born and has reached the age of rational understanding can be as empty of all images as he was when he was not; for he knows many things, all of which are images: so how can he be empty of them?
Note the explanation which I shall give you. If I were possessed of sufficient understanding so as to comprehend within my own mind all the images ever conceived by all men, as well as those that exist in God Himself- if I had these without attachment, whether in doing or in leaving undone, without before and after but rather standing free in this present Now ready to receive God's most beloved will and to do it continually, then in truth I would be a virgin, untrammeled by any images, just as I was when I was not.
*
...for God is in this power as in the eternal Now. If a man's spirit were always united with God in this power, he would not age. For the Now in which God made the first man and the Now in which the last man shall cease to be, and the Now I speak in, all are the same in God and there is but one Now.
Observe, this man dwells in one light with God, having no suffering and no sequence of time, but one equal eternity. This man is bereft of wonderment and all things are in him in their essence. Therefore nothing new comes to him from future things nor any accident, for he dwells in the Now, ever new and without intermission. Such is the divine sovereignty dwelling in this power.
*
...so truly one and simple is this citadel, so mode- and power-transcending is this solitary One, that neither power nor mode can gaze into it, nor even God Himself!
In very truth and as God lives! God Himself never looks in there for one instant, insofar as He exists in modes and in the properties of His persons. This should be well noted: this One Alone lacks all mode and property. And therefore, for God to see inside it would cost Him all His divine names and personal properties: all these He must leave outside, should He ever look in there. But only insofar as He is one and indivisible, without mode or properties, (can He do this):7 in that sense He is neither Father, Son, nor Holy Ghost, and yet is a Something which is neither this nor that.
See, as He is thus one and simple, so He can enter that One that I here call the citadel of the soul, but in no other mode can He get in: only thus does He enter and dwell therein. In this part the soul is the same as God and not otherwise. What I tell you is true: I call the Truth as a witness and offer my soul as pledge.
*
Therefore I declare that no saint ever lived or ever will attain to the state where pain cannot hurt him nor pleasure please. Now and then it happens, through love and favor and divine grace, that though a man's faith be impugned or the like, if he were suffused with grace, he would be indifferent to joy and sorrow. But with the saints it may well occur that nothing whatever can bring them from God, so that, although the heart be wrung while a man is not in a state of grace, yet the will remains solely with God, saying, 'Lord, I am thine and thou art mine.' Whatever then occurs cannot impede eternal bliss, so long as it does not invade the summit of the soul up yonder where it is at one with God's sweet will. (...)

Now our good people imagine they can reach a point where sensi­ble things do not affect the senses. That cannot be: that a disagreeable noise should be as pleasant to my ear as the sweet tones of a lyre is something I shall never attain to. But this much can be attained: that when it is observed with insight, a rational God-conformed will sub­mits to the insight and bids the will stand back from it, and the will answers, 'I will, gladly.'

*
There is one, the highest peak of the soul which stands above time and knows nothing of time or of the body. All that happened a thousand years ago, the day that was a thousand years ago, is in eternity no further off than this moment I am in now; or the day which shall be a thousand years hence, or in as many years as you can count, is no more distant in eternity than this moment I am in.
Now he says, "That the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." What is truth? The truth is such a noble thing that if God were able to turn away from truth, I would cling to truth and let God go; for God is truth, and all that is in time, and that God created, is not truth.
*
Alas, how many are there who worship a shoe or a cow and encumber themselves with them - they are foolish folk! As soon as you pray to God for creatures, you pray for your own harm, for creature is no sooner creature than it bears within itself bitterness and trouble, evil and distress. So they get their deserts, these people who reap distress and bitterness. Why? They prayed for it.
*
The masters say the soul has two faces: her upper face gazes at God all the time, and the lower face looks down somewhat and guides the senses. The upper face, which is the apex of the soul, is in eternity and has nothing to do with time: it knows nothing of time or of the body.
*
Oh, how noble is that power that transcends time and transcends place! For, being above time it both contains all time and is all time, and however little a man might have of that which transcends time, he would be rich indeed, for what lies beyond the sea is no more distant to this power than what is here present.
*
The more you give of yourself to God, the more God gives Himself to you in return, and the more you divest yourself of self, the greater your eternal bliss. It occurred to me just now as I was saying my Paternoster (which God Himself taught us), that when we say 'Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,' we are praying to God to deprive us of ourselves.

Selected from sermons VII - XII
Translation: Maurice O'C. Walshe

Meister Eckhart on concentration and animitta samadhi

 

Therefore the soul in which this birth is to take place must keep absolutely pure and must live in noble fashion, quite collected and turned entirely inward, not running out through the five senses into the multiplicity of creatures, but all in turned and collected and in the purest part -there is His place; He disdains anything less.
*
-As I said just now, it is in the purest thing that the soul is capable of, in the noblest part, the ground - indeed, in the very essence of the soul which is the soul's most secret part. There is the silent 'middle,' for no creature ever entered there and no image, nor has the soul there either activity or understanding; therefore she is not aware there of any image, whether of herself or of any other creature.
*
In consequence, there is nothing so unknown to the soul as herself. Accordingly, one master says that the soul can neither create nor obtain an image of herself.
Therefore she has no way of knowing herself, for images all enter through the senses, and hence she can have no image of herself. And so she knows all other things, but not herself. Of nothing does she know so little as of herself, for want of mediation.
*
And, since you have no image but of what is outside yourself (which is drawn in through the senses and continually points to that of which it is the image), there­ fore it is impossible for you to be beatified by any image whatsoever.
And therefore there must be a silence and a stillness, and Father must speak in that, and give birth to His Son, and perform His works free from all images.
*
They must know that the very best and noblest attainment in this life is to be silent and let God work and speak within. When the powers have been completely withdrawn from all their works and images, then the Word is spoken. Therefore he said, 'In the midst of the silence the secret word was spoken unto me.' And so, the more completely you are able to draw in your powers to a unity and forget all those things and their images which you have absorbed, and the further you can get from creatures and their images, the nearer you are to this and the readier to receive it. If only you could suddenly be unaware of all things,10 then you could pass into an oblivion of your own body as St. Paul did, when he said, "Whether in the body I cannot tell, or out of the body I cannot tell; God knows it" (2 Cor. 12:2). In this case the spirit had so entirely ab­sorbed the powers that it had forgotten the body: memory no longer functioned, nor understanding, nor the senses, nor the powers that should function so as to govern and grace the body; vital warmth and body-heat were suspended, so that the body did not waste dur­ing the three days when he neither ate nor drank. Thus too Moses fared, when he fasted for forty days on the mountain and was none the worse for it, for on the last day he was as strong as on the first.

In this way a man should flee his senses, turn his powers inward and sink into an oblivion of all things and himself. Concerning this a master addressed the soul thus: 'Withdraw from the unrest of ex­ternal activities, then flee away and hide from the turmoil of inward thoughts, for they but create discord.' And so, if God is to speak His Word in the soul, she must be at rest and at peace, and then He will speak His Word, and Himself, in the soul - no image, but Himself!
*
Dionysius exhorted his pupil Timothy in this sense saying, 'Dear son Timothy, do you with untroubled mind soar above yourself and all your powers, above ratiocination and reasoning, above works, above all modes and existence, into the secret still darkness, that you may come to the knowledge of the unknown super-divine God.' There must be a withdrawal from all things. God scorns to work through images.
*
He therefore had to pursue it and search for it in himself and not outside.
*
This is what Christ meant when he said, "Whoever will not deny himself and will not leave his father and mother, and is not estranged from all these, is not worthy of me" (Matt. 10:37), as though he were to say, he who does not abandon creaturely externals can be neither conceived nor born in this divine birth. But divesting yourself of yourself and of everything external does truly give it to you. And in very truth I be­ lieve, nay, I am sure, that the man who is established in this cannot in any way ever be separated from God. I say he can in no way lapse into mortal sin. He would rather suffer the most shameful death, as the saints have done before him, than commit the least of mortal sins.
I say such people cannot willingly commit or consent to even a venial sin in themselves or in others if they can stop it. So strongly are they lured and drawn and accustomed to that, that they can never turn to any other way; to this way are directed all their senses, all their powers.
May the God who has been born again as man assist us to this birth, eternally helping us, weak men, to be born in him again as God. Amen.
**
No sinner can receive this light, nor is he worthy to, being full of sin and wickedness, which is called 'darkness.' Therefore it says, "The darkness shall neither receive nor comprehend the light" (John 1:5). That is because the paths by which the light would enter are choked and obstructed with guile and darkness: for light and darkness cannot coexist, or God and creatures; if God shall enter, the creatures must simultaneously go out.
*
St. Augustine says there are many who sought light and truth, but only outside where it was not to be found. Finally they go out so far that they never get back home or find their way in again. Thus they have not found the truth, for truth is within, in the ground, and not without.
*
But the soul is scattered abroad among her powers and dissipated in the action of each: the power of sight in the eye, the power of hearing in the ear, the power of tasting in the tongue - thus her ability to work inwardly is enfeebled, for a scattered power is imperfect. So, for her inward work to be effective, she must call in all her powers and gather them together from the diversity of things to a single inward activity. St. Augustine says the soul is rather where she loves than where she gives life to the body. For example, there was once a pagan master who was devoted to an art, that of mathematics, to which he had devoted all his powers. He was sitting by the embers, making calculations and practicing this art, when a man came along who drew a sword and, not knowing that it was the master, said, 'Quick, tell me your name or I'll kill you!' The master was too absorbed to see or hear the foe or to catch what he said: he was unable to utter a word, even to say, 'My name is so-and-so.' And so the enemy, having cried out several times and got no answer, cut off his head.

And this was to acquire a mere natural science. How much more then should we withdraw from all things in order to concentrate all our powers on perceiving and knowing the one infinite, uncreated, eternal truth! To this end, then, assemble all your powers, all your senses, your entire mind and memory; direct them into the ground where your treasure lies buried. But if this is to happen, realize that you must drop all other works - you must come to an unknowing, if you would find it. (...)

For the soul is so firmly at­ tached to the powers that she has to flow with them wherever they flow, because in every task they perform the soul must be present and attentive, or they could not work at all. If she is dissipated by attending to outward acts, this is bound to weaken her inward work.
For at this birth God needs and must have a vacant free and unencum­bered soul, containing nothing but Himself alone, and which looks to nothing and nobody but Him. As to this, Christ says, "Whoever loves anything but me, whoever loves father and mother or many other things is not worthy of me. 

*
I did not come upon earth to bring peace but a sword, to cut away all things, to part you from sister, brother, mother, child, and friend that in truth are your foes" (Matt. 10:34-36; d. 19:28). For whatever is familiar to you is your foe. If your eye wanted to see all things, and your ear to hear all things and your heart to remember all things, then indeed your soul would be dissipated in all these things.

Accordingly a master says, 'To achieve an interior act, a man must collect all his powers as if into a corner of his soul where, hiding away from all images and forms, he can get to work.' Here, he must come to a forgetting and an unknowing. There must be a stillness and a silence for this Word to make itself heard. We cannot serve this Word better than in stillness and in silence: there we can hear it, and there too we will understand it aright - in the unknowing. To him who knows nothing it appears and reveals itself.
Another question arises. You might say, 'Sir, you place all our sal­ vation in ignorance. That sounds like a lack. God made man to know, as the prophet says, "Lord, make them know! " (Tob. 13:4). Where there is ignorance there is a lack, something is missing, a man is brutish, an ape, a fool, and remains so long as he is ignorant.' Ah, but here we must come to a transformed knowledge, and this un­knowing must not come from ignorance, but rather from knowing we must get to this unknowing. Then we shall become knowing with divine knowing, and our unknowing will be ennobled and adorned with supernatural knowing. And through holding ourselves passive in this, we are more perfect than if we were active. (...)

And so in this way you must cast aside all your deeds and silence your faculties, if you really wish to experience this birth in you. If you would find the newborn king, you must outstrip and abandon all else that you might find.
*
When you have completely stripped yourself of your own self, and all things and every kind of attachment, and have transferred, made over, and abandoned yourself to God in utter faith and perfect love, then whatever is born in you or touches you, within or without, joyful or sorrowful, sour or sweet, that is no longer yours, (...)

For you have abandoned self and have gone out of your (soul's) powers and their activities, and your personal nature. Therefore God must enter into your being and powers, because you have bereft yourself of all possessions, and become as a desert, as it is written, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness" (Matt. 3:3). Let this eternal voice cry out in you as it listeth, and be as a desert in respect of yourself and all things.

*
For the greater the delight in outward things the harder it is to leave them; the stronger the love the sharper the pain when it comes to parting.
*
And so in truth, if you would find this noble birth, you must leave the crowd and return to the source and ground whence you came. All the powers of the soul, and all their works - these are the crowd. Memory, understanding, and will, they all diversify you, and therefore you must leave them all: sense perceptions, imagination, or whatever it may be that in which you find or seek to find your­ self. After that, you may find this birth but not otherwise - believe me!
*
Now you might say, 'Well sir, what use is my intellect then, if it is supposed to be empty and functionless? Is that the best thing for me to do - to raise my mind to an unknowing knowledge that can't really exist? For if I knew anything at all it would not be ignorance, and I should not be empty and bare. Am I supposed to be in total darkness?' Certainly. You cannot do better than to place yourself in darkness and in unknowing.

*
And the more barren you are of self and un­witting of all things, the nearer you are to Him. Of this barrenness it is said in Jeremiah, "I will lead my beloved into the wilderness and will speak to her in her heart." The true word of eternity is spoken only in solitude, where a man is a desert and alien to himself and multiplicity. For this desolate self-estrangement the prophet longed, saying, "Who will give me the wings of a dove that I may fly away and be at rest?" (Ps. 55:6). Where does one find peace and rest?
There, truly, where there is rejection, desolation, and estrangement from all creatures.
*
stand still and do not waver from your emptiness;
*
I am often asked if a man can reach the point where he is no longer hindered by time, multiplicity, or matter. Assuredly! Once this birth has really occurred, no creatures can hinder you; instead, they will all direct you to God and this birth.
*
Where two are to become one, one of them must lose its being. So it is: and if God and your soul are to become one, your soul must lose her being and her life.
*
be as free of it as Naught is free, which is neither here nor there.
*
Thus, to be receptive to the highest truth, and to live therein, a man must be without before and after, untrammeled by all his acts or by any images he ever perceived, empty and free, receiving the divine gift in the eternal Now ...
*
And when she emerges into the unmixed light, she falls into her Nothingness and in that Nothing­ lness so far from the created Something, that of her own power she cannot return to her created Something. God with His uncreatedness upholds her Nothingness and preserves her in His Something. The soul has dared to become nothing and so cannot of herself return to herself, for she has departed so far from herself before God comes to the rescue.
*
If a man is in such a state of pure nothingness, is it not better to do something to beguile the gloom and desolation, such as praying or listening to sermons or doing something else that is virtuous, so as to help himself?' No, be sure of this. Absolute stillness for as long as possible is best of all for you. You cannot exchange this state for any other without harm. That is certain.
*
Be sure of this: if anyone else would speak in the temple (which is the soul) but Jesus, Jesus is silent, as if he were not at home - and he is not at home in the soul, for she has strange guests to talk to. But if Jesus is to speak in the soul, she must be all alone, and she has to be quiet herself to hear what he says.
*
Receiving this power in the Son and through the Son, the spirit waxes mighty in everything it undertakes, so that it becomes equal and mighty in all virtues and in perfect purity, so that neither joy nor sorrow, nor anything God has created in time, can destroy that man, but he stands mightily there as if with divine power, in face of which all things are puny and futile.

Selected from the first six sermons
Translation:Maurice O'C. Walshe