--- title: "Sermons, Collations and Tractates" author: "Meister Eckhart" translator: "C. de B. Evans" languages: [en] shelf: "Mystics" section: 60 of 132 url: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/60/ cite: "Meister Eckhart, tr. C. de B. Evans, Sermons, Collations and Tractates, section 60. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/60/" --- # Sermons, Collations and Tractates *Meister Eckhart, tr. C. de B. Evans* A hundred and four sermons, the tractates and the Sayings, in Evans's 1924 English of Pfeiffer's German. ## 60. Sermon 60 · Likes Love and Unite Source: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/60/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/60/#p-N [¶0] Meister Eckhart says, Likes love and unite with one another ; unlikes hate and shun each other. According to one master, no two things are so unlike as earth and heaven. Earth knew itself by nature alien and unlike to heaven. Wherefore it fled from heaven to the lowest place and there bides still lest haply it draw night at all to heaven. And the celestial nature grew aware that earth had fled and had possessed itself of the lowest place. And that is how the heavens came to empty themselves out into the earth in fruitful wise, indeed the masters say the broad expanse of heaven does not withhold a needle-point in size, it brings itself forth every whit as fruitfulness on earth. So earth is the most fruitful of all mortal creatures. [¶1] Likewise I say about the man who has brought himself to naught in himself, in God and in all creatures. That man assumes the lowest place and God is bound to empty himself whole into his soul, else would he not be God. I warrant you by God’s eternal truth, that into any man who is brought low God pours out his whole self in all his might, so utterly that neither of his life, his being, nor his nature, nay, nor of his perfect Godhead, docs he keep aught back, he empties out the whole thereof as fruits into that wight who in abandonment to God assumes the lowest place. [¶2] To-day as I pursued my way pondering my discourse and wondering how to make you understand, I hit on an analogy. If yc can follow this my meaning W'ill be plain and eke the drift of all my teaching. The analogy is with my eye and wood. My eye when it is open is an eye. It is the same eye, shut ; and the wood is neither more or less by reason of its seeing. Now mark me well. Suppose my eye, being one and single in itself, falls on the wood in seeing, then though each thing stops as it is, yet in the actual seeing they are so far the same that we can argue : my eye is the wood and the wood my eye. Now if the wood were free from matter and wholly immaterial, as my eyesight is, then we could truly say that in my actual vision wood and eye are essentially the same. If this is so with corporal things, then how much more with ghostly. Remember, my eye is far more one with some transoceanic sheep’s that I have never seen than with my ear, albeit with this it has organic union. The sheep’s eye works like mine, and therefore I impute to it more unity of action than I can do to eye and ear which have their different functions. [¶3] I have often spoken of the light within the soul, which is uncreated and eke uncreaturely. It is this light I am so often hinting at in my discourses, it is the light which lays straight hold of God, bare and unveiled, as he is in himself ; that is to say, it catches him in the act of self-begetting. Hence I can truly say this light is rather one with God than with any of my powers wherewith it has organic union. For know, this light within my soul i; no better in its essence than the humblest, the grossest of my powers ; my sight or my hearing, for example, or any other sense which is the sport of heat and cold, hunger or thirst, seeing that essence is impartible. [¶4] Now I maintain, if thou dost turn from thine own self and from created things, then in what measure thou dost this thou dost attain to unity and happiness in thy soul-spark ; a thing which is immune from time and space. This spark is opposed to creatures. It has no want but just God, God as he is in himself. Not enough for it the Father or the Son or Holy Ghost, nor even all three Persons, so far as they preserve their several properties. I trow this light would not be satisfied with the alone-begotten fruit of Deity. Nay, more, and even stranger to relate, I warrant you this light is not content with the changeless impartible essence of God, which neither gives nor takes, but wants to find its source ; it wants to get into its simple ground, into the silent desert whcrcinto no distinct thing ever pryecl, not Father, Son nor Holy Ghost. At the centre, where no one abides, there this light is quenched in still stronger light, wherein it is more one than in itself, for this ground is the im[)artible stillness, motionless in itself, and by this immobility all things are moved and all those have their life who, rceollceted in themselves, do live the life of mind. May we too live this intellectual life, So help us God. Amen.