Who Always Taught the Truth
In hisy quee patris rnei sunt, oportet me esse (l,nc, 2jy). ‘ I must be about my Father’s business.’ This text is opportune to what we have to say concerning the eternal birth which took place here in time and is still happening daily in the innermost recesses of the soul, in her ground, remote from all comers. To become aware of this interior birth it is above all necessary to be about our Father’s business.
What is pecxiliarly the Father’s ? Power is ascribed to him beyond either of the other Persons. And I tell you, no one can experience this birth without a mighty effort. None can attain this birth unless he can withdraw his mind entirely from things. And it requires main force to drive back all the senses and inhibit them. Violence must be offered to them one and all or this cannot be done. As Christ said : ‘ The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force.’
Regarding this birth there arises the question, Does it happen continuously or only at intervals when one is disposed for it, what time one is exerting oneself to the utmost to forget things altogether and be conscious in this ?
Here let us discriminate. Man possesses an active intellect, a passive intellect and a potential intellect. Active intellect is ever in act, ever doing something, be it in God or in creature, to the honour and glory of God. That is its province and hence its name active. But when God undertakes the work the mind must preserve a state of passivity. Potential intellect again has regard to both these, to the action of God and the passion of the soul, to its acting potentially. In the one case the mind is active, when it is functioning, to wit ; in the other receptive, when God takes up the work and then the mind ought, nay must, remain still and allow God to aet. Now ere this is begun by the mind and linishcd by God, the spirit has prevision of it, potential knowledge of its happening. This is the meaning of potential intellect, which, however, is often neglected and does not bear fruit. When the mind is exerting itself in real earnest, God interests himself in the mind and its work, and then the soul secs and experiences God. But since the uninterrupted vision and passion of God is intolerable to the soul in this body, therefore God withdraws from the soul from time to time, as it is said, ‘ A little while ye sec me, and again a little while and ye do not see me.’
When our liord took his three disciples with him up the mountain and showed them the trans figuration of his body by union with the Godhead, which also we shall have in our archetypal body, straightway Peter, beholding it, was fain to remain there always. Verily, where we And good we are loath to leave it, in so far as it is good. Where intuition finds, love follows and memory and all the soul to boot. And our l.ord knowing this hides himself sometimes ; for the soul is the impartible form of the body, so she turns as a whole to whatever she turns. Were she conscious of good, God to wit, immediately, unintermptedly, she would never be able to leave it to infiuence the body.
Thus it befell Paul : had lie remained a hundred years there, where he knew the good, he would never have returned to his body, he would have forgotten it completely. Seeing then that it is wholly foreign to this life, and inconijiatible therewith, the good God veils it when he will and unveils it again when he chooses and when he knows, like a trusty physician, that it is best and most useful for thcc. This withdrawal is not thine, but his whose is also the work ; let him do it or not as he will, he knows what is good for thee. It is in his hands to show or not accordiiig as he knows thee able to endure it. God is not a destroyer of nature, he perfects it, and this God does ever more and more as thou art fitted for it.
Haply thou wilt object : Alas, Sir, if this requires a mind quite free from images and without activity, albeit both are natural to its powers, then how about those outward works we must do sometimes, works of charity, external ones, such as teaching and comforting those in need thereof : are we debarred by these ? things which so occupied our Lord’s disciples, notably St Paul, who endured a father’s care on account of other people : are we to be deprived of this great good because we are engaged in charities ?
The answer is this. The one is perfect, the other very profitable. Mary was praised for choosing the best, but Martha’s life was very useful, serving Christ and his disciples. 8t Thomas says the active life is better than the life of contemplation, so far as we actually spend in charity the income we derive from contemplation. It is all the same tiling ; we have but to root ourselves in this same ground of contemplation to make it fruitful in works, and the object of contemplation is achieved. True, there is motion, but no more than one ; it conics from one end, God, and goes back to the same. As though I went from one end to th« other of this house ; that would in sooth be motion, but of one in the same. Even so in this activity we are in the state of contemplation in God. I'he one is centred in the other and perfects the other. God’s puqDose in the union of contemplation is fruitfulness in works ; for in contemplation thou servest thyself alone, but the many in good works.
Hereto Christ admonisheth us by his whole life and the lives of all his saints, every one of whom he drove forth into the world to teach the multitude. St Paul said to Timothy, ‘ Beloved, preach the Word.’ Did he mean the outward word that beats the air ? Nay, surely ! He meant the in-born, hidden Word that lies secreted in the soul ; it was this that he exhorted them to preach, to the end that it might be made known to and nourish the powers of such as spend themselves wholly in the exterior life. That what time thy fellow-man hath need of thee thou niayst be found ready to serve him to the best of thy ability. It must be within thee, in thought, in intellect and will, and shine forth in thy deeds. As Christ said, ‘ Let your light shine before men.’ He was thinking of those people who (are only for the contemplative life and neglect the virtuous uses of it, which, they say, do not concern them, they are passcxl that stage. Not these had Christ in mind when he observed : ‘ The seed fell upon good ground and yielded fmit an hundredfold,’ but these he meant when he declared : ‘ The tree that bcareth not fruit shall be cut down.’
Thou mayst object : ‘ Hut, Sir, what of that silence you said so much about ? This means images galore. Every one of these acts has its ayjpropriate image, be the act internal or external ; whether it be teaching one or comforting another or arranging this or that, so what quiet can I get withal ? If the mind sees and formulates and the will wills and memory holds it fast, does not all this necessitate ideas ? ’
Let me explain. We were speaking just now of the active intellect and the passive intelle(!t. Active intellect abstracts the images of outward things, stripping them of matter and of accidents, and introduces them to the passive intellect, begetting their mental prototypes therein. And the passive intellect made pregnant by the active in this way, knows and cherishes these things with the help of active intellect. Passive intellect cannot keep on knowing things unless the active intellect keeps on enlightening it. Now observe. What the active intellect does for the natural man that and far more does God do for the solitary soul : he turns out active intellect and installing himself in its stead he himself assumes the duties of the active intellect.
When a man is quite idle, when his intellect is at rest within him, then God takes up the work : he himself is the agent who produces himself in the passive intellect. What happens is this. The active intellect cannot give what it has not got : it cannot have two ideas together, but first one and then the other. What though light and air sliow multitudes of forms and colours all at once, thou canst only observe them one after another. And so with thy active intellect, which resembles the eye. But when God acts in lieu of thy active intellect he engenders many images together in one point. Suppose God prompts thee to some one good deed, thy powers are all proffered for all virtuous things, thy mind being straightway set on good in general. All thy possibilities for good take shape and come into thy mind collectively, focussed to one point. Clearly this is not the work of thine own intellect which has in no wise the perfection nor plenitude for it ; rather is it the work and product of him who has all forms at once in himself. As Paul says : ‘ I can do all things in him who strengtheneth me ; in him I am undivided.’ Know then, the ideas of these acts are not thine own : they belong to the author of thy nature who has planted therein both their energy and form. Lay no claim thereto, for it is his not thine. True, thou rcccivest it temporally, but it is gotten and born of God beyond time', in eternity above images.
Thou wilt say, perhaps : From the moment my intellect is divested of its natural activity and no longer has either form or action of its own, what is preserving it ? It must have a hold somewhere ; the powers, whether memory, intellect or will, are bound to have some lodgment somewhere, some place to work in.
The answer is this. Intellect’s object and sustenance is essence, not accident, just pure unadulterated being in itself. On descrying something real the intellect forthwith relics upon it, comes to rest thereon, pronouncing its intellectual word concerning the object attained. As long as intellect fails to find the actual truth of things, does not touch bedrock in them, it stays in a condition of quest and expectation, it never settles down to rest, but labours incessantly to trace things to their cause, that is, it is seeking and waiting. It spends perhaps a year or more in research on some natural fact, finding out what it is, only to work as long again stripping off what it is not. All this time it has nothing to go by, it makes no pronouncement at all in the absence of experimental knowledge of the ground of truth. Intellect never rests in this
Metster Eckhart
life. However much God shows himself in this life it is nothing to what he really is. Truth lies in the ground, but veiled and concealed from the intellect. And meanwhile the mind has no support to rest on as on something permanent. It gets no rest at all, but goes on expecting and preparing for something still to come but so far hidden. There is no knowing what God is. Something we do know, namely, what God is not. This the discerning soul rejects. Intellect, meantime, finding no satisfaction in any mortal thing, is waiting, as matter awaits form. As matter is insatiable for form, so is intellect unsatisfied except with the essential, all-embracing truth. Only the truth will do, and this God keeps withdrawing from it step by step, purposing to arouse its zeal and lure it on to seek and grasp the actual causeless good : that, not content with any mortal thing, she may clamour more and more for the highest good of all.
But thou wilt say ; ‘ Alas, Sir, you laid so much stress on our quieting our faculties and now this calm resolves itself into yearning and lamenting : to a muckle moan and clamour for something not possessed, which puts an end to peace and quiet. This may be desire or purpose or praise or thanksgiving or any of their brood, but it is not perfect peace and absolute stillness.’
I answer that, when thou hast emptied thyself entirely of thine own self and all things and of every sort of selfishness and hast transferred, united and abandoned thyself to God in perfect faith and complete amity, then everything that is born in thee or that enters into thee, external or internal, joyful or sorrowful, sour or sweet, is no longer thine own at all, but is altogether thy God’s to whom thou hast abandoned thyself. Tell me, whose is the spoken word ? His who speaks it or his who hears it ? Though it fall to the hearer it really belongs to the speaker, to him who gives it birth. The sun, for example, throws out light into the air and the air receives the light and transmits it to the earth. Now, although the light seems in the air, it is really in the sun : the light is actually from the sun, originating in the sun, not in the air : the air entertains it and passes it on to anything that can be lighted up. And so with the soul. God begets in the soul his ehild, his Word, and the soul conceiving it passes it on to her powers in varied guise, now as desire, now as good intent, now as eharit} now as gratitude, or as it may take thee : It is his, not thine at all. What is thus wrought by God take thou as his and not thine own, as it is written, ‘ The Holy Ghost asketh in us with unutterable yearnings.’ He prays in us, not we ourselves. St Paul says, ‘ No one is able to say. Lord Jesus Christ, except in the Holy Ghost.
Above all, lay no claim to anything. Let go thyself and let
God act for thee and in thee as he pleases. This work is his, this Word is his, this birth is his and all thou art to boot. For thou hast abandoned thyself and art gone out of thy faculties and thy personal nature. God installs himself in thy nature and powers when, self-bereft of all belongings, thou dost take to the desert, as it is written, ‘ A voice crying in the wilderness.’ Let this eternal voice cry on in thee at its sweet will and do thou be a desert in resject of self and creatures.
Maybe thou wilt say : ‘ But, Sir, what must one do to become this desert, void of self and creatures ? Should one stay waiting for God all the time and do nothing oneself or should one do something between whiles, such as praying or reading or some good occupation like going to church or studying the Bible ? Not, of course, taking things in from without, but everything from within, from one’s God. Besides, is there not something we miss by neglecting these things ? ’
My answer is this : Outward works were instituted and appointed for the purpose of directing the outer man to God and training him to ghostly life and virtues lest haply he should stray out of himself into ineptitudes : to act as a curb upon his inclination to run aw’'ay from self to things abroad ; so that when God shall choose to work in him he shall find him close at hand and not first have to fetch him back from things gross and alien. The greater is the ]3leasurc in external things the harder work it is to leave them ; the stronger the love the sharper the pain when it comes to parting.
All pious practices - ])raying, reading, singing, watching, fasting, penance, or whatever discipline it be were contrived to catch and keep us from things alien and ungodly. Suppose one feels God’s s]3irit is not working in one, but rather that one’s inner man is Godforsaken, that is the proper moment for the outward man to exercise the practical virtues, and particularly such as are most feasible and useful to him ; not for his o\vn selfish ends, but that, respect for truth preserving him from being led away by what is gross, he may stick straitly to God who will not need to seek him far afield, but will find liini there at hand when he chooses to return and carry on his own work in his soul. But given that a man has genuine experience of the interior life, then let him boldly drop all outward disciplines, even those practices which thou art vowed to and from which neither p(3pe nor prelate can release thee. From vows made to God no man (Nan excuse thee : such vows are a bond between thyself and God. But supposing one has taken solemn vows of fasting, say, or prayer or pilgrimage, then on entering some order, one is released from them forthwith : in the order, obligation is to goodness as a whole, to God himself.
Ami so I say here. Whatever one’s vows to manifold things, initiation into the real interior life releases from them. While the interior expei'ieiicc lasts, maybe a week, a month, a year, no hours are neglected by the monk or nun, for God who occupies them will also answer for them. On returning to himself the religious shall perform his vows for the time present, but the time elapsed and lost, as thou dost think, ’tis no business of thine to make good. God makes good any time he takes up. I'hink not to make it good by any act of creature, for the smallest act of God outweighs all the work of creatures put together. I am speaking here of clerks and those enlightened souls who are illumined by God and by the scriptures. But what about the poor profane who, ignorant of corporal discipline, has assumed some vow or other, praying or the like ? My view is this. Tf he finds it hampering and that he draws much nighcr God and much more easily without it, let him boldly give it up, for whatever brings nearest to God is the best. Paul implied this when he said : ' But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.’ Vows taken before priests, vows of marriage, for example, are very different from these other obligations which amount to solemn promises of oneself to God. Vows taken with the laudable intention of binding oneself to God are for t he moment the best way. But supposing that we find a better way, a way we feel and know to be much better, then the first may be deemed null and void.