Transcription of: [Universal Religion according to Meister Eckhart]
This morning we have a very interesting person to discuss. One not especially well known in popular thinking, but with quite a distinct reputation among scholars. Johannes Eckhart, who is better known from even his own day as Meister Eckhart, was probably the first western mystic to appear after the rise of the church. He was born in Gotha about the year 1260 and he had quite an interesting career. In 1302, Eckhart became a Dominican and for a number of years gained prominence and distinction in that particular order. He became vicar general and was given the honors of his church. Possibly one of the most important notes that we have about him is that during his active career in the church he gained wide distinction for the practical phases of the reforms which he instituted. He also of course had an extraordinary reputation for preaching, being one of the most gifted - speakers I suppose - of all time. We like to remember that while his entire life was essentially dominated by mystical interests, that when he went into the field to fulfill the responsibilities of religious office, he was a man of action rather than a man of theory, and his activities brought upon him great honor and recognition not only in the Church but among his associates.
As time went on however his preaching began to take on such a curiously abstract and symbolical coloring, that probably his very words were his greatest protection. Very few people understood them. Also, we realized that at his time the German language was regarded as little better than barbaric. Its usage was the usage of common people - farmers and merchants - it had practically no philosophical vocabulary. It had very little of the elaborate structure which has since caused it to be regarded as one of the world's great philosophic and scientific languages. Thus to Eckhart is generally accredited the creation of the German language as an instrument of abstract thinking. He is regarded as having taken this inadequate language and used it so dramatically, and with such tremendous power of construction, that it became a medium for ideas which at that time it was ill-fitted. This very use of language, and the complexity with which he labored - a complexity which is later to a degree reflected in the writings of Bohme, another German mystic, who found the language difficult to struggle with. Eckhart we now recognize as the first person to create the philosophy of the German language, and nearly everyone of letters who followed after him down to the present century and uses German as his parent tongue is indebted to Eckhart for the tremendous expansion of this language.
It is inevitable however that a mystic whose attitudes were as definite as those of Eckhart would ultimately get into some difficulties with the Church. This he finally succeeded in doing, but again, apparently a kindly fate stood with him. Around 1326-7 Eckhart was rebuked by his archbishop and the archbishop began proceedings against him. The following year however, Eckhart passed on, so that the proceedings never developed as long as his own life was concerned. The machinery of ecclesiastical dysplasia had not been well greased at that time, and things took much longer to be pondered through than in say the 15th or 16th century, during which Eckhart probably would have had very slight chance of saying anything. In any event however, about three years after his death, the Holy See did condemn 28 of his propositions. This had very little effect upon the Church or anyone else because no one could make out what the propositions were. The peculiar difficulty was this strange style of using a language of the street in an effort to explain the mysteries of God.
More thoughtful persons looking back upon the extraordinary sermons for those of the actual names given to the various essays which Eckhart wrote - looking back on these various sermons - cannot but wonder where Eckhart got his information. There are two views of course on this particular subject. Eckhart himself admitted that he had made use of the principal heathen philosophers who had preceded him. He was certainly admittedly indebted to Plato and Aristotle and Avicenna and later to Equinas. This line of thinking was also enriched by study of some of the early neo-Christian mystics and the neo-philosophical schools of North Africa. He is known to have been aware of the neo-Platonishs and the works such as the mystical divinity of the pseudo-dionysus. These works all had elements of old magic, old lore, and old philosophy lurking in them.
One of the most interesting side lights that has come to bear on this subject will be found in a recent work by the Japanese Zen master Dr. Suzuki. Suzuki has discovered Meister Eckhart for Japan, and has weighed very carefully the teachings of this old german theologian in the light of Zen and Mahayana Buddhism. Suzuki comes to the conclusion that what Eckhart was teaching was almost pure Zen. He asks in his own way how Eckhart could have known this. Suzuki speculates on the possibility that there might have been some intellectual communion between the east and west even at that time, but more or less disregards or discards this solution, and comes to the conclusion that, as he himself believes, Zen is a certain condition of human consciousness arrived at as a result of certain addictions to learning and understanding. Therefore if Eckhart achieved a certain level of personal consciousness, he might very well have interpreted this consciousness through his peculiar terminology. In any event, Dr. Suzuki is deeply impressed with the internal insight of Eckhart, and regarded him not only as perhaps the first German philosopher, but perhaps the first German exponent of classical Buddhistic metaphysics. Of course had the Holy See had known this, they probably would have moved a little faster, but apparently it remained for the 20th century to make this discovery. Up to that time, all efforts were made to interpret Eckhart only in terms of his own race and his own environment.
So with this little preamble, we will try to understand uh something of Eckhart's ideas, and frankly this is a wide open field, as is true in nearly all cryptic statements - and certainly Eckhart's are cryptic - everything depends upon the attitude of the interpreter. Yet we are certainly justified, as we go through the writings of this old mystic, we are justified in accepting his own interpretations of what he said. Certainly he must have meant something. He tells us what he meant as best he can, and therefore we have no reason to doubt the essential interpretation, but there are fine points which get more and more ratified as we proceed, and over these there will not be any general agreement. It is probable there was no agreement in his own time as to his meanings as far as abstract mysticism is concerned.
Perhaps he was influenced by the rise of Muslim mysticism, for there was at that time quite a school in the near east. Schools which became the foundation of the modern Sufis and people of that nature, whose inclinations were very similar to his own. There must have been some general reservoir material available for others, including Dante, are known to have taken advantage of this mysticism of the near east in the development of their own concepts.
Eckhart's most important basic concept, of course, relates to the nature of God, and by quoting the Bible, and interpreting it in his own way, Eckhart comes to some amazing - that is for the west - amazing concepts about God. He comes out rather clearly, into his old German, on the principle that God is "all" because God is "no thing". Now of course in running these terms together, we have the same problem "over no" thing that we have now, namely that it can be meant - understood to mean - "no thing" or "nothing". In the Zen concept, "nothing" implies the "no thing". It does not imply vacuum, but it implies something that is entirely beyond comprehension. Something which in its own nature is what the northern Buddhists call the "void". The great emptiness the infinite capacity.
Eckhart, however, believed that the quest for this divine "no thing" has to be carried on first by the intellect. So he makes a great point of the proper use of the mind in the quest for reality, and again his findings are almost completely mystical and very largely eastern. He tells us for example that the primary function of the mind is to liberate man from the concept of thing, or things. In other words, instead of the mind being used to build up the corporeal image of the universe, it is the purpose of intellect to dissolve this image. It is the purpose of the individual to use the mind to discover vacuum. To discover the "no thing" about everything with which the mind is concerned. He comes therefore to certain conclusions which are of interest. First of all, that all learning leads finally to a state of mental vacuum. Instead of the individual becoming more and more wise, gaining more and more knowledge about things, the unfolding intellect becomes more and more simple. More and more humble. Gaining constantly a realization not only of its own incapacities but of the unreality of the objects of its attention.
So we can use certain parallels, some of them drawn from Eckhart and some for more simple backgrounds, to try to point out what he means. Evolution, growth, unfoldment - man's search for spiritual reality - consists of a continuous process of unlearning that which is not true. The individual is not capable of a positive statement of fact. We have certain common physical facts with which we can strive, but when it comes into the great universal mystery of things, the very fact is that man cannot know, because those objects which he desires to know actually have no existence. So that when he attempts to master an abstract subject, he merely builds his own image of that subject, which in turn he must later tear down by the reorganization of his own thinking.
If therefore Eckhart was presented with a problem, for example involving human relationships, in which fathers mothers husbands and wives were at difference on one point or another, Eckhart would simply point out very simply that there is no such a thing as fathers, mothers, husbands, and wives. There is the simple answer to the problem. All these terms are man-made. Certainly they stand for certain relationships which exist in the world, but if these relationships are falsified, if these relationships are exaggerated by the mind dwelling upon relationship, the only truth that exists, namely essential unity, is lost. The only thing that exists that is true is that this void, this unknown, this indescribable ends of things, is not differentiated. It is one. It is total. It is inevitable. Consequently any structure, intellectual or otherwise, which builds separateness builds isolation and increases ignorance.
Therefore the man who says "I am created to conquer the world" is a great fool, because he is assuming that he exists separate from his world, that he can conquer other persons or other things, that he can take over nations and countries, and actually he has created an entire philosophy of conduct built upon something that is not so. He has built upon the concept that he is able to dominate other things, but actually all he can dominate is a vast area of attitudes, by means of which he has created the objects of his own desire. Another man will say "I will achieve wealth", and Meister Eckhart would point out that wealth is not a universal fact. Wealth is nothing more or less than man-made opinion about possessing.
As long as the individual becomes completely absorbed in man-made opinion, he can never hope to achieve identity with the divine principle. Consequently the unfoldment of the mystical attitude is based upon a gradual discarding of these things which have no eternal significance. So Eckhart might ask what has eternal significance, and the answer would be pure Zen. Nothing. Nothing has eternal significance because significance itself - meaning - we think of significance as "meaning", and how can anything have any meaning except the meaning we bestow upon it? Therefore a thing is significant if it is meaningful to us. It is significant in terms of our own attainment. Our position in life. Our profession. Our feelings, our thoughts, or our emotions. In its own nature these things with which most human beings are completely concerned are without significance. It is therefore not significant whether you believe this or do not believe this. The entire problem of significance rests in the gradual elimination of the whole concept of significance. If the individual, therefore, is able to live in a world in which nothing is more important than anything else, he comes the nearest the human consciousness can come to the realization of universal importance. For in saying nothing is more important, he is by negative affirming that nothing is less important. If therefore we create importance, we raise mountains out of valleys, and those areas which we do not regard as important are ignored. In these long areas between our sense of importance, of these vast undeveloped regions. These vast undeveloped regions are just as much god as those areas which we regard as important. So in most cases, because of our attitudes and our way of life, almost every thought that we have and almost every ambition we follow denies God. By assuming that one thing is important, one attitude is important, we thereby destroy the universality of God in which nothing is more nor less important. In this sense of importance, also, we are building mental blinds. We are creating directives into which we will lock our own consciousness, and having locked it there, there is no release. We then become like creatures in a cage. Caged in by the very liberties which we seek to preserve. Therefore there is in liberty and bondage, no importance, because we live in a universe as it is, not as it appears to us to be.
Thus we perhaps come back to some of the Greek speculations on appearance or seeming and being. All things are known to us by their seemingness by what they seem to be. Being itself has no seeming. Therefore man is incapable of recognizing it by any of the instruments which he has created. His only solution is to gradually remove the barriers and that which remains when all that is seeming has vanished. That alone is being. How, then, do we attempt to understand this in the form of a practical discipline of some kind? Eckhart was a practical man in spite of his abstractions. He himself tells us a little of this procedure - what he considers to be important. First of all, the gradual recognition of the thing that is so much more clearly stated in Buddhism in the Anattā doctrine, that all of these things which surround us are not high. Not self. Sickness is not "I". Death is not "I". Wealth is not "I". Poverty is not "I". Consequently, the question is, "what is I?", and when we get through with describing what is "not I" and eliminating it, we have as a remainder what the Mahayanas call the void or the vacuum.
We are forced therefore to conclude that the mental and emotional faculties of man are incapable of the positive definition of any mystery. They cannot - these faculties - cannot say "this and this properly is true". We say it every day but we say it without license to say it. We say it always on the assumption that our own opinion is the discoverer of truth. As long as we follow in this in our common pursuits of life, we must suffer from the controversy and conflict over opinion. As long as we follow this procedure religiously, we must have a conflict of creeds. We must have one faith against another. For in each case, the great controversies of life rise from the supposition that one of us can be right. Of course this is a little difficult from a practical level, but it points to something that all of us could think about at least moderately with some advantage. This point - simple point - namely, that in all conflicts, all sides, are more dominated by error than by reality. The only reality that could possibly be present - were it present - would prevent conflict. This is the essential key to the situation. If the contestants actually participated in the nature of reality, there could be no contest.
Reality, whatever it is, abstract as it may be, must be always so. Now it is obvious that we attempt this by means of argument. Each person in arguing feels that reality is with him. Each person advancing an idea believes that his idea is valid, and that when this valid idea is opposed by others, it is because they do not have insight. Eckhart points out very definitely that these other people, when they advance their various causes, and their way is accepted instead of ours, they come likewise to trouble. In experience, in living, in the factual contemplation of history and of all the elements that that go to make up knowledge, it is continually evident that the Infallible has not been revealed. That all things that come through man, come in one way or another influenced by man's own personal equation. Thus to summarize it in Eckhart's thinking, there are these two points of view. First, man, by his equipment is incapable of the estimation of a "not thing", and there is this "not thing" itself, which by its own very constitutional nature is neither aggressive nor passive. The reality, the "not thing" endures. It changes not. It moves not. It does not become greater or less. It is not new or old.
One of Eckhart's most astonishing statements for his own period is that there are two kinds of time. The time which man lives by, a time divided into years months days, hours, and minutes - each one of which becomes a little theater in which a drama of suffering can take place. This concept of time has no essential reality. Man would not experience it did he not have a time measuring faculty. Actually, man's time measuring faculty is simply his ability to use his sensory perceptions to behold the unfolding pageantry of his own kind. Eckhart says that there is another kind of time. The time which abides in the very substance of reality itself. A time which becomes identical with void.
Now, in this point also, let us realize that by "void", Eckhart is also referring to God, because he is taking the position that the most dignified - the highest condition of a thing - is its own unconditionedness. That God is God because God is the unconditioned principle, and that all other things being conditioned lose their divine likeness or similitude by the very fact of their own conditioning. This deity - this principle - unconditioned in terms of time becomes what Eckhart calls an eternal "now-ness". In the infinite there, is no time but the immediate. In the nature of God, therefore, there was no original time in which God created. tThere is no passing time in which God does not create. There is no future time in which God will draw together the products of his own creation.
Eckhart got into a little difficulty with some of his superiors on this particular point, namely that the creation as described in Genesis did not occur several thousand or several million years ago. The creation as described in Genesis is a continual process, going on in a "forever" which is "now". Therefore the first chapter of Genesis is now taking place. The last prophecy of the ages is now being achieved. Man moves not from past to future, but from one "now-ness" to another, and this "now-ness" is as permeating as absolute and as infinite as deity itself. Therefore deity is continually creating, and here we find perhaps some indebtedness to the philosophy of Maimonides. For in the concept of Maimonides and other of the Jewish Arabic fathers and teachers, the only reason why the universe continues is that deity is perpetually creating. That if deity cease to create, even for an instant, everything would collapse, vanish, and disappear. For what we might term a pulse of life moving through a thing, as the pulse moving through the body, is that the body is reborn with each pulse beat. Therefore the body is in a continuous process of being created. That everything that we see and know is in a constant creation process, and what we would call disintegration or declare or corruption is only an aspect of the creative process itself. That nothing actually is lost or destroyed, it is merely in a process of continually being created. Created into this, or out of that, or from this, and to that, but the process is immediate instantaneous and never ceasing.
Thus theology to Eckhart should emphasize the importance of man's continuous recognition of the creating power of the eternal principle operating in himself. That if this power ceased for an instant, he would cease, and that each moment of existence is an eternal moment, and an immediate moment, and that these two are actually names for one principle. For the immediate extends over all things to become ultimate, and the eternal extends into all things to be immediacy. Man is alive because of the immediate presence of life. Man passes through a vast cycle of experiences while he is alive, largely due to his own mental processes of interpreting eternity in terms of days, months, years, or degrees of achievement. Also by this same thinking, Eckhart declared that deity gave to the world its only begotten son. Not two thousand years ago, but forever now. That the entire mystery of Christ is the mystery of an eternity that is now. That the Christ mystery, as the creation itself, is not something which is historical, or something by means of which a tradition is built. The actual fact of it is continuous. It is not a personal thing, it is not the beginning of a dynast of theological institutions, it is nothing of this nature. It is the fact that all processes arising in the infinite are eternal processes without past, present, or future as we know these terms, but actually in a continuing sense of now.
Eckhart of course is building the foundation, the propositions upon which he is to raise his mysticism. For it is only by means of this basic concept that Eckhart, like Bohme is able to announce his practical mysticism, namely the possibility of man achieving eternity of consciousness now. Here the the very concept of the mystical experience is that in no part of the universe is the reality more distant in term of time or place than in any other part of the universe the eternal must be continuously available now. The consciousness of being must be continually available. It cannot be subject to any restriction imposed by time, or decree, or by division, or by sectarian usage, or anything of that nature. The relationship between man and the infinite must always be the same. Therefore to Eckhart, all creatures, man and other creatures, are born in a continuous state of illumination. We have all the mystical experience. Complete insight is now everywhere. It is it always has been, because insight is not something that is created. Insight is part of an eternal reality, and the mystical experience is everywhere. Here again we come very close to the idea of Zen or Taoism. Instead of assuming that certain individuals by a long and difficult journey are able to find a better land - the land of promise - or by likes like by some pilgrimage of Christian in Bunions Pilgrim's Progress, he comes finally to the golden city beyond the other shore. Actually, according to Eckhart, that tremendous burst of cosmic consciousness which we call illumination is immediate, is here now, we were born with it, it has existed forever, and it is as though it were a tremendous burst of light that has been captured in an eternal now. Therefore it was never less and it can never be greater, it never appeared, it can never disappear. It is part of the essence of being itself. The mystical experience is an eternal aspect of reality.
If this is true, why is it that only one perhaps in a million mortals ever actually become aware? Eckhart is of the opinion that this is simply the problem of man's own discipleship. Man is not creating an experience. Man is simply reaching a condition where he can experience that which is. The mystical experience is waiting for him. The mystical experience is constantly surrounding him. He is a creature walking in light forever, but unaware of this. Consequently, the experience is merely the awareness of that which eternally is. This is proper mysticism. It has to to be part of a system. Otherwise the attainment of the mystical experience cannot be rationalized. So Eckhart is giving us a rational foundation for the fact that illumination is "now". That illumination has always been "now". It was "now" for Plato 2400 years ago. It is "now" for us in the 20th century, and it will be "now" for the people of the 50th century.
This situation is therefore timeless, and underneath the surface of time is always this eternal timeless, which has no dimension but immediacy. Between this and our experience is the historical equipment of our own sensory perception, our memories, and our attitudes. So Eckhart pleads with man to empty himself. To try to discover the meaning of the void in his own nature, because in order to experience deity, man must be no more and no less than deity. Man cannot be more, because deity is all there is, nor can he factually be less, because he is part of that which is "all". It is to find this, to discover it, to experience it, that forms the mysterious and symbolic journey that leads from ignorance to truth.
Eckhart therefore is very clear in pointing out that what we are really accomplishing in this world is to pyramid ignorance. We not only build magnificent structure out of it, but we become fascinated with the importance of our own handiwork. We create a meal like a small child of mud pies, and then imagine that we can eat these mud pies. We give souls to all kinds of soulless things, and we refrain from realizing the soul of the thing as it is. So Eckhart, following Buddhism, and following most mysticism, regards growth as a constant process of catharsis - the process of getting rid of what is not so.
He then gives us almost the same parallel that St. Augustine gave, of the two cities. The City of God and the City of Babylon. The City of Babylon or Cbabel is the city of confusion, and confusion is the process of building up false values building up things that are not so, therefore can have no endurance, and furthermore can have no vital power to solve the problem in the life of the person. The City of God is to be attained by the gradual breaking down of this entire area of false knowledge. So Eckhart begins this process of sending the truth seeker in quest of the void. In quest of this great stillness, this great non-manifestation which can alone be true.
He also comes almost to the idea that the ultimate state of man is re-identification with the void. The moment this thought comes into focus, we begin to think about the Buddhist concept of nirvana. Western scholars, particularly in the 19th century before they had more than a sketchy contact with eastern philosophy, assumed that nirvana was extinction. They assumed that the individual attaining nirvana simply ceased to exist. They assumed, therefore, that the Buddhists believed in a universe in which things ceased to exist. Actually, the Buddhist does not, because to do so would be to create a philosophy that is utterly meaningless. What the Buddhist was attempting to point out was that there is a universe that is forever, and the qualities of it are such that the average person is unaware of its existence. Also, that when man attempts to project himself with his present armament of attitudes into the future, he must project himself into a false state which does not exist. Therefore the the kind of afterlife that the average person expects, or wants, would be utterly inconsistent with an ordered universe. That actually, what we would term afterlife, has to be a life lived in a different dimension of existence, and that everything that is limited totally to this dimension must therefore cease to be as significant, certainly, as it is to us today.
So the void of Eckhart is this same problem. The individual finding being by gradually moving his own consciousness away from that which is not being, and to get it away from things, and the tremendous objective pressure of things. He must become aware of the doctrine of the "no thing" of that which is not the, but the superlative. That from which all things can come, which must therefore be greater than "thing", but which has in itself no conditionedness as we associate with the concept of things in this world.
How Eckhart expected to achieve some parts of this doctrine, he does not clearly state. I suspect that as in the case of most mystics, he was using his own life as a springboard for the advancement of his ideas. What happened to him, he felt as does the average mystic, can happen to other people, and he analyzed the way in which these things happened to him, and he found out by looking into his own nature that these discoveries were a series of conclusions, a series of findings built upon the gradual acceptance of certain basic ideas. In other words, Eckhart gained this point of view as the result of study. Therefore, he affirmed that study was a useful instrument for the attainment of this this point of view. For it was study and study alone that can disprove false knowledge. It is only the thoughtful person, the growing-wiser person, the meditating scholarly person who can finally discover the fact of "no thing".
After we have gone through a series of experiences by which we become increasingly aware of the futility of our own way of life, for example, we can gradually turn from this futility. Tt no longer has to dominate us, but unless we have thought about it, meditated upon it, struggled with it. Unless we have learned enough of science, and of art, and of literature, and of music and philosophy, and theology, to be able to recognize landmarks. Unless we have trained our erudition to determine value, we are unable to come to these important conclusions. Consequently, our need is always to discover value. We must try to determine which of several things is the best. Which of several ways is the wisest.
Eckhart did this in his daily life, and he gradually came to the conclusion from experience that in search of best ways, he always came upon direct ways. He always came upon simple ways. The right way is always the short way. The right way is always one which demands the exercise of character. The right way is always the way which is toward truthfulness, towards integrity, toward honor. That the right way is in some mysterious manner the easy way, although to us it appears difficult.
So Eckhart, as he proceeded with his philosophy, found that the search for the right way always revealed a little more of the truth of the matter. That there was less confusion as he became more right in his various procedures. Now by "right" we have come again to a relative statement, because Eckhart has told us already that we do not and cannot really possess truth. So the right way is a sort of trial-and-error procedure. The right way is not a way that is a revelation of truth. A right way is a series of experiences by means of which we reduce error. Always we are reducing error, coming finally perhaps to the concept in the Bible of the Divine Fool. This mysterious ability to have renounced all worldly wisdom, seems to Eckhart then, to result in a state of existence in which one by one we destroy our connections with error until finally we come to the only knowing that man is capable of. Namely, the knowing of not knowing. The individual, having achieved this point, then discovers the meaning of education. He discovers that education is given to him in order that he may finally come to the state of natural ignorance.
Now, there's a great deal of difference between natural ignorance and highly cultivated scholastic nonsense. They are not the same thing at all. What, for example, the end of all material education, should be to prove that materialism is false. That's the end for which it is intended, but very few graduate from this. Somewhere along the line they are deceived into believing that materialism is real, and in this way, education fails to educate. It is the end of education, for example, that all human beings shall discover identity. Yet in our way of education, we are working to build up individual egoism. We are looking for the successful man, the up-and-coming man, the smart man. The man who can compete successfully. The individual who can sell more of his product than anyone else can.
In Eckart's philosophy this is leading definitely into false wisdom. It is leading away from the essential thing that we really need to experience, and that is the experience of the identity of our own natures. So if we are able to use knowledge to overcome knowledge, if we are able to use learning to reveal the fallacy of learning, then we are gaining the end which was intended. Because after all, let us also bear in mind that most knowledge accumulated at those periods when men least knew, and we have brought down with us through the ages a vast accumulation which had its origin in the most primitive levels of society. Some of this is basically "good", but man, generation after generation, adapting previous knowledge to his own conceits, has finally bestowed upon the world a vast hodgepodge of things so and not so. A man today, being perhaps in a better condition than in any other previous time to attain knowledge is not thinking "now". He is living under the influence of past knowledge, which comes to him always from a lower level, because in this type of thing, worldly things - knowledge - is measured by time. It is only eternal knowledge that is not measured by time, but man is still under the boundaries of traditional descent of knowing therefore blocks himself.
In the search, then, for his next important key Meister Eckhart begins to consider the nature of the human soul. The human soul, to him, is in a sense the existence of the "no thing" in himself. The soul of man is by nature and substance and by immediacy in time an aspect of the eternal "now" that exists everywhere. This soul in man, then, is as unconditioned in its own essence as the very nature of deity. So man, searching for his own soul, searching for his own core, his own spiritual, must find it by a process of gradually casting off that which is not soul, and here Eckhart comes into some other interesting psychological areas.
Today, we more or less regard the psychic life of man as a sort of metaphysical scrap basket into it flows all the unfinished business of life to rattle its chains like an old haunted house, and our psychic life is, to most people, a haunted house. It is here that obsessions and possessions arise. It is here that we find the strange chemistries and witch's brew that produces the complex and the phobia and the frustration and the neurosis. Eckhart looked upon the soul in a rather different manner. I think he would clearly divide between the psyche as the soul, and the psychic content of the human mind. I believe Eckhart, had he been thinking in terms of modern psychology, would have said that what we call the subconscious mind and the subconscious processes of psychology, are not really part of the soul, but are due to soul or psychic energy giving life and vitality to the various phases of the mind and emotion.
I think Eckhart would say that the soul in man is a quiet core. A core, which if it could be examined, would reveal no content. A core which again is this "nothing at all", which is a favorite term in German philosophy. It is this something that is so total that everything else can come from it, but that in its own nature it cannot be recognized as having any essential attributes. So man looking for his own soul is looking for the link between himself and the eternal soul, and each individual achieving his own liberation must achieve by means of his own soul, and I think Eckhart had some meaning or some implication to the effect that this soul - this soul substance in all things, is the mysterious only begotten of the father. This continuing redeemer, this mysterious bridge by means of which creature and creation are linked to creator, and that all three are then recognized as manifestations of the uncreate.
Eckhart, naturally, gets into his psychology and his psychology again is startlingly oriental. If the soul represents the silence at the source of man, then we cannot really assume that the soul in its own nature can be sick, can have psychotic pressures, or can cause abnormalities of the mind and emotion. These things are like the world. The world soul is never sick, but the world mind and emotion can be very sick. Wars, disturbances among nations, hatreds and prejudices - do not arise out of the soul itself. They are simply symptoms of a sickness in the intellectual and emotional structure of man.
Let us say, for example, that all human beings should lose memory simultaneously. The result probably would be the end of most wars, because these wars exist by virtue of memory. Or, we can say that the human being lost all self-ness, all recognition of his own identity. The moment this happened, the entire economic industrial empire of mankind would fall. For these things depend not upon man's life principle, but upon man's interpretive faculties, and going into the human being himself, Eckhart would take the view that the soul is not responsible for any psychic disturbance. The soul is merely a source of life, a source of consciousness energy, which man, using variously, according to his mind and emotions, causes these reactions of health or sickness, but that actually, beneath the so-called healthy soul, and the so-called sick soul, is the only soul that exists, and this soul cannot be defined. It is neither sick nor healthy. It simply remains in the state which is exactly identical with the psychic state of deity itself.
Man, therefore, seeking to find the bridge between himself and the infinite, must always make use of his own psychic organism. How does he do this? He must do it by clarifying his relationship to his own soul, and he does this privately, because private meditation is the way of mysticism. Mysticism is not a congregational procedure, it is a procedure based upon each individual seeking to explore within himself the source of his own life and the source of his own good. If, therefore, the soul is without definition, cannot be defined, and can only be experienced when no interference exists. Then, as in the case of the search for God, the problem of the individual is always to simplify his own procedures and to recognize that his great knowledge of himself arises from the acceptance of ignorance about himself.
The end of the entire quest is that the individual shall come as near as he can into the presence of this nameless dimensionless soul being, and simply admit frankly that in the world of the infinite, this person is totally ignorant. Coming therefore not to impose its will upon the psychic life, but to be still, and permit the psychic life to tell what the individual is supposed to be.
Now of course this brings with it in our western thinking, something which Eckhart was well aware of, but which in the western world today, we give little thought to, and that is the danger of psychism as a false experience. The average person simply cannot fall into his own subconscious and expect to land on firm ground. He does not have either the discrimination or the insight to God himself against the most common of all internal experiences and that is hallucination. This is the reason for Eckhart's emphasis upon learning, upon study, and it, to a measure is also the reason why even in Zen, there are certain insistences about things which apparently are of no importance. Even apparently, conflict or contradiction within the doctrine itself, but these contradictions are essential to protect the individual against certain common mistakes of his own. For instance, the entry of man toward his own psychic core has to pass through this barrier which modern psychology now recognizes. Evidently the old mystics also knew it way back into Egypt and Greece, because at time of initiation into the mysteries and the great systems of state mysteries, represented symbolically and diagrammatically, man's search for his own inner self.
The first requirement of the candidate in the mysteries was initiation by hazard and by obstacle. The candidates from the old rites, as we read in the ancient restorations of these rituals, found themselves in dark and mysterious passageways, and here they were attacked by veiled and mysterious figures. Here they were forced to defend themselves against cruel specters and evil shapes, and here also they had to show absolute courage and utter dedication to truth. It was only after they had gone through this terrible and dangerous journey that they came in the end to the aditum of the temple where they were rewarded for their courage and their vigilance. Man searching into himself must therefore expect to pass through this mysterious testing by danger. Going into our own natures in searching of in search of reality, we find the specters rising on every hand. We find our way barred by monsters. We find adversaries with whom against whom we must defend ourselves. The very elements turn against us, and as in the fable shown in Mozart's [The] Magic Flute, the candidate has to master the four elements. He has to meet the mysteries of earth and water and fire and air. He must go on and on through one hazard, one danger, one terrible situation after another, until he finally comes to the aditum of the temple, the sense of his own centeredness, and here he discovers of course that all the evils in which he passed were merely illusions and vanities.
Now I think that uh what we are dealing with here is the simple problem of attempting to penetrate the psychic life. For each person, there is the dweller upon the threshold. There is this psychic monster that represents the unfinished business of man's internal life. So if we start into ourselves, as into some magic or enchanted garden, we must pass through a vast structure of wish mechanisms. We must go through our hopes and our fears. We must penetrate our prejudices and our opinions. We must face and overcome all the obstacles set up by the mental-emotional vortex in ourselves. In other words we must face our own abnormal psychology. When we start to try to live a better life in this world we begin to find that there are pressures coming from within ourselves that make a good life difficult. We therefore seek assistance in form of analysis, or something of that nature, to help us to lighten the psychic load which we are carrying in ignorance. In the same way, that which is infinitely more important than a well-adjusted life here, and that is union with universal purpose, demands likewise a continual and watchful guardianship. We have to overcome the monstrous figure or form of that Sphinx that guards the Theban Road. Unless we are able to do this, we cannot ascend into our own psychic identity.
So what are we faced with? We are faced with every type of false attitude. For this to protect, us mystical organizations have tried in every way possible to reduce the so-called conflicts between the inner life and the outer life. When you entered ancient orders, for example, if you were rich or powerful, or a prince ,you lost your identity as such. In the Pythagorean school, all mortal honors were considered as unimportant, and all men referred to each other simply as brothers. This was a little help, perhaps, to the person who might otherwise try to carry his personal dignities into his inner life. It was an escape from the tyranny of birth ,or of wealth, or of honor, as we know honors in this world. Also the individual had to give up his worldly goods, placing them all in common, thus getting over the selfishness which might lure the individual, for instance, to learn in order that it might increase his wealth. A false motive for learning, essentially. Although it more or less constitutes the base of all trade learning in our world today, but in the matters of religion when we go in search of value it is not the proper way. So by degrees the person renounces self. Renounces all of these attributes which might increase pressure.
The person who is without pride is not as subject to hallucination as a person who is proud. An individual who has freed his mind from intemperances and intolerances is not nearly so likely to suffer psychic self-deceit as a person in whom these pressures are uncorrected. So the search for mysticism is associated with the lowering of all of these areas of pressure which might cause the person to deceive himself and not know it. A negative psychic experience is always a form of self-deceit, and it must arise from some wrong attitude within the person. As long as these wrong attitudes continue, the person may have pseudo mystical experiences which appear genuine but which lead nowhere. There have actually been religions founded on such pseudo experiences, and they have never worked out well, nor have the religions for that very reason. So by degrees, as Buddhism points out, the powerful directives which arise from personal desire must be relaxed and subdued, and in this way by degrees the individual receives less and less pressure from within himself. He may feel that he is entering truly into a vacuum because when he gets rid of his own faults there isn't much left, but that little is all there ever was anyway, only he didn't know it.
So when he gets rid of all of his ambitions, and all of his attachments, and all of his selfishness, and all of his notions, what is there left? For the average person, mighty little. In fact a person reaching that degree without some compensating consciousness might announce that he was dead, because to most of us we live only due to irritation. It is the psychic toxicity that keeps us alive. Ee live because we are just too unpleasant to die. But if we gradually relax this situation until finally no self-motive remains, immediately the psychic integrity is guarded. The individual will not fool himself if he has no desire that his own self shall in some way be different or shall in some way benefit at the expense of some other self. So as we penetrate in, it is the same problem as man's trying to rationalize the nature of being, or essence. Finally the person reaches the soul core, and he comes as, in the eastern fable, to the shores of a quiet pool, the depths of which he cannot see. And when he looks down into the pool he sees not the depth but his own reflection. But he comes finally to the still waters. He comes finally to the place of peace, and he suddenly discovers that he has achieved this peace by renouncing everything that was not peace.
Some will say that perhaps this is the supreme selfishness - that we're not supposed to be peaceful, but Echkart was certainly one of those who believed that the highest destiny of man was that he should know his creator. That he should obey the sovereignty of the power which created and fashioned him. That man's great debt was not to society primarily, but to the principle of principles, and that if he kept that debt, and paid that debt honestly, he automatically protected society against any further evil that he might do against it. Now, people while they're egotistic think that the that when they are no longer active in society that they are depriving society of a great deal, but when these same people achieve internal self-mastery they protect society against their own good intentions, which are sometimes practically fatal. So the the mystic has always felt that the greater good to the greater number was that he should attain a true relationship with life. Now, this true relationship is not an honor. iIt is not a distinction. It is not something of which he is going to be proud, because if he is proud for an instant, his pride goeth before a fall.
The mystic is not doing these things to be better than anybody else. He is merely trying to fulfill the reason for his own existence. He is trying to become capable of religion. He is trying to be able to worship intelligently and wisely the laws and principles which are the source of all life and good. He comes finally, to the end of his journey inward, and he finds himself the complete beggar. He finds that he is nothing, and he has nothing and having reached the complete extinction of his personality with its interests, attitudes, purposes, and pressures, he becomes capable in that instant of silence of becoming aware of eternal silence. Having eliminated all that is not so, he is beginning to experience the nature of that eternal being in which there is nothing that is not so. And it is only when we achieve release of ignorance that we can appreciate that nature, state, or existence in which there is no ignorance.
So instead of storming the gates of the infinite, Eckhart pointed out that we gradually become less and less, until we become utter receptivity, and that in this state of finally removing from our natures all that is peculiarly human, and preserving in our natures all that is peculiarly divine, and further, achieving this by transforming the human into the divine, that we come finally to this brink of reality, and we come to it fully prepared for the complete renunciation of personality. By that time it is no longer this terrible wrench of being unselfish when we want to be selfish. At that time, and under that achievement of consciousness, there is only one thing that is desirable, and that is as the troubadour used to sing: unity with the beloved. Therefore into the next act of finally, so to say, drowning ourselves in this infinite pool, there seems to be no moment of hesitation.
The individual, giving up all, attains all. Taking the step into the unknown takes the final step into certainty. For he moves from a condition in which nothing is certainly true, into the condition in which all things are inevitably true. This becomes his new security, his new sense of values, and his new inevitable. If he achieves this within his own psychic organism, attaining the infinite silence of the root of himself, he is then also on the bridge that leads to infinite comprehension, because in this silence of the silent psychic pool at the source of himself, time vanishes in eternity. The upper and the lower mingle in their common middle distance. Life and death cease. Every condition ceases. That which is unconditioned alone remains, and this is the mystery of the void. That only the unconditioned remains.
Now, what is the nature of the unconditioned? It is in the soul and in God - according to Eckhart - the one difference by which reality is divided from illusion. That this absolute silence is the proof, of absolute power of absolute good, of absolute wisdom. And having moved across from the temporal thing to that which is beyond the temporal, man then will begin through a second birth as a tiny child. He will truly go to school and learn his ABCs in the university of the holy spirit. In other words, it is only when we have reached this complete naiver, when we have renounced all things, that we can become the abcdarians of eternity. In other words, then we literally learn our ABCs. We then begin a positive growth in reality, but until that time, there cannot be mixed growth. We cannot be growing a little toward God, and a little away from God. It is only when false knowledge ceases, having been absorbed by contrition into a universal humility, that the individual can begin to experience the nature of time and eternity.
So Eckhart says, in substance, why do we fear anything? We are here. Where did we come from? We came from something that was greater than ourselves. Where do we go? We go to that something that is greater than ourselves. Why should we fear the future any more than we fear the past? Why should we fear beyond the grave more than we fear that before we were born? Why should any of these things touch us? There is only one thing that is important, and that is, that we shall gradually come to understand that which is the void. That which is the source of life. Because this void is the untroubledness of things. It is the nature of God, eternal in its own nature, subsisting forever. It is God as the source of infinite love, and infinite peace, and infinite wisdom, and infinite truth. It is God as the living and eternal experience of infinite life. In this, then, there is the end of all natural uncertainty. There is the end of all pressures all conceits all false powers. The individual moving towards it then is moving towards a blessedness which he cannot define because he cannot know it at this stage of his being. Being a creature that is in tranquil he cannot know the substance of tranquility. Being a creature of uncertainties he cannot experience the blessing of certainty. But all the blessings that he seeks are concealed in the strange silence of the void.
For here he has a new term, this "voidness", which perhaps is not completely accurate, but at least it protects him from all ambitions and goals which could lure him on by false incentive. If instead of calling this infinite "the void", we call it "infinite peace", then men would dash after it for an ulterior motive, merely to escape misery. If we said of this thing beyond that it is infinite wisdom, then men would ambitiously compete, each to be wiser than the other, and to become wiser sooner than the other. If we said that this was absolute happiness, then it would be an escape from all the miseries of a present life and men would hasten to die to get to a better space. This void must have no inducement in it. It must promise nothing and bestow nothing, because it must be acceptable to the individual who demands nothing. It is simply fulfillment of the law. It is that state which is the enduring continuous state of existence from which, according to Eckhart, man fell by the symbolic fall, and to which he is restored by the soul within himself, which will never rest or never cease to plague him until man puts that soul to rest. Puts it again into the desirelessness of the void.
So all things are done not because there are good reasons to do them, but simply because they are the inevitables. They are simply those only things that can be done. Therefore, in the end of all effort, in all other direction, these things alone can be accomplished, and in daily life, our constructive living is the process of slowly relinquishing all aggressive and pressureful attitudes by which we are locked more tightly into the illusion. For actually, this is the illusion and the unseen is the reality. This actually is the psychological void in which we have built empire, but beyond it is the great mystical reality which is a void to us because we do not understand it. In practical mysticism, therefore, the life of the mystic is practical and effective in this world also because his early development depends largely upon the moderation of his own excesses, and as these moderate he becomes a better citizen, a better husband, a better wife, a better father, better child.
These natural improvements do not endanger society, do not make the person non-productive or non-creative, but they slowly reduce excess by which likewise they reduce crime in temperance sickness and sorrow, but beyond this point the soul goes on, seeking always the strange nameless quietude which has become, for the mystic, the eternal symbol of God. God not as the aggressive creator, not as the one who hardened the heart of pharaoh, but God as the eternal quietude permeating all things. Infinitely strong without any indication of strength. Infinitely wise but with no indication of wisdom. Infinitely good but with no obvious dedication to any kind of good. Simply the central fountain for which flows all these things that we know, but in substance and essence, remains unknowable. This is the idea behind Eckhart, and you can see that that was rather dramatic thinking for a Christian Dominican father in the 13th century, and I think as a result of that quality of thinking, he deserves to be remembered by all who love mysticism and philosophy.
Well our time is up so we'll have to pause now.