--- title: "Sermons, Collations and Tractates" author: "Meister Eckhart" translator: "C. de B. Evans" languages: [en] shelf: "Mystics" section: 8 of 132 url: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/8/ cite: "Meister Eckhart, tr. C. de B. Evans, Sermons, Collations and Tractates, section 8. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/8/" --- # 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. ## 8. Sermon 8 · The Castle of the Soul Source: https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/8/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/eckhart-sermons-evans/8/#p-N [¶0] Intravit Jesus in quoddam castellum et mulier qiuedam excepit ilium etc, {Luc, 10.). I quote first in Latin this text from the gospel. The translation reads : " Our Iord Jesus Christ went up into a certain fastness and was receivTd by a oerlain virgin who was a wife.’ [¶1] Mark the term. Needs must it be a virgin by whom Jesus is received. Virgin is, in other words, a person void of alien images, free us he was when he existed not. It may be questioned ; Man born and launched on rational life, how can he be as free from images as he was when he was not, he knowing a variety of things, iinagt'S all of them : how can he possibly be void thereof ? [¶2] I answer that, were I sulfieiently intelligent to have within me intellectually the sum of all the forms eoueeived by man aiid which subsist in C«od himself, I having no projxTty in them and no idea of ownership, positive or tiegative, past or to eome, but standing in the present fioro ])erfectly free in the will of (h.)d and doing it perpetually : then verily I were a virgin, unlumdleapped by forms, just as I was when J was not. [¶3] Further, T hold that the fact of being virgin does not deprive a man at all of works that he has done : he is untrammelled, virginfree of them in the sovran truths even as Jesus is absolutely free and virgin in himself. According to the masters, likeness, likeness only, is the cause of union, so man must be maiden, virgin, to rcceive the virgin Jesus. [¶4] Now lay this fact to heart : the ever virgin is never fruitful. To be fruitful the soul must be wife. Sj)ouse is the noblest title of the soul, nobler than virgin. For a man to rec(‘iv'e God within him is good and in receiving he is virgin. Ihit for God to be fruitful in him is still better : the fruits of his gift being gratitude therefor, and in this newborn thankfulness the spirit is the spouse bearing Jesus back into his Prather’s heart. [¶5] Many good gifts received in maidenhood are not brought forth in wifely fruitfulness, reborn in praise and thanks to God. Such gifts corrupt and come to naught, man being no better and no happier for them. In this case his virginity is useless because to his virginity he docs not add the perfe(t fruitfulness of wife. That is the mischief. Hence my text, ‘ Jesus ascended to a certain fastness and was re(?eived by a certain maid who was a wife.’ It must be so, as I have said. [¶6] Wedded folks yield little more than one fruit yearly. But it is other wedded ones that I have now in mind : those whose hearts are wedded to praying, fasting, vigils or other outward discipline and mortilications of the i’esh. A predilection for this sort of thing, involving loss of freedom to wait instantly on God in the here and now, and follow him alone in the light wherein he would fain show thee what to do and what to leave undone, moment by moment, fresh and clearly, as though thou hadst naught else, nor would nor could not : any such proclivity or preoccupation which constantly deprives thee of this freedom I call here a year, and thy soul yields no fruit till she is done with this work of thy affection nor hast thou any trust in God or in thyself till thou hast finished with thy predilection , in other words, thou hast no peace. There is no fruit till thy own work is done. 1 reckon this a year and one whose yield is poor ; the proceeds of affection not of freedom. And these folks I call wedded, yolked to their affections. Their crop is small and undersized at that, so I say, in God’s sight. [¶7] The virgin wife, free and unbound in her affections is ever as near God as to herself. She abounds in fruit and big withal, no more nor less than God is himself. This fruit, his birth, does that virgin bear who is a wife ; daily she yields her hundred and her thousandfold, nay, numberless her labours and her fruits in that most noble ground, the very ground, to speak more plainly, wherein the Father is begetting his eternal Word : there she is big with fruit. For Jesus, light and shine of the paternal heart (according to St Paul he is the ‘ light and splendour ’ of the Father’s heart), this Jesus is atoned with her and she with him, she is radiant with him and shining as the one alone, as one pure brilliant light in the paternal heart. [¶8] Elsewhere I have declared, there is a power in the soul untouched by time and flesh, flowing from the Spirit, remaining in the Spirit, altogether spiritual. In this power is God, ever verdant, flowering in all the joy and glory of his actual self. Such dear delight, such inconceivable deep joy as none can fully tell, for in this power the eternal Father is procreating his eternal Son without a pause, the power being big with child, the Father’s Son and its own self this selfsame Son withal, in the unique power of the Father. Suppose a man absolute monarch, the sole ])osscssor of all earthly goods ; suppose he gave up all for God and was the poorest of the poor ; and that God laid on him to boot a burden big as ever he did lay on mortal man, all which he bare down to his death and then God granted him one fleeting vision of his being in this power : so vehement would be his joy that poverty and suffering would be wiped out. Aye, though God gave him never any taste of heaven but this, yet would he have the guerdon of his passion, for God himself is in this power as in the eternal now. If a man’s spirit were always joined to God in this same power, he could not age [¶9] For the now wherein God made the first man and the now wherein the last man disappears and the now I speak in, all are the same in God where there is hut the now. Behold this man in ,thc same light as God having in hirii ho past nor yet to come, only one level of eternity. This man in truth has motion taken from him and all things stand intrinsic in liim. Nothing new conu'S to him from future things nor yet by accident for he dwells in the now, ever new and unceasingly renewed. So dominant is God in this same power. [¶10] There is another power, immortal too : proceeding from the Spirit, remaining in the Spirit, altogether spiritual. In this power God is fiery, aglow with all his riches, with all his sweetness and with all his bliss. Aye, in this power is such poignant joy, such vehement, immoderate delight as none can tell nor yet in truth reveal. I say, moreover, if once a man in intellectual vision did really glimpse the bliss and joy therein, then all his sufferings, all God intends that he should suffer, would be a trille, a mere nolhing to him; nay, I say more, it would be pure joy and pleasure. [¶11] Wouldst thou know for certain whether thy sufferings are thine owp or God’s? Tell by these tokens. Suffering for thyself, in whatever way, the suffering hurts thee and is hard to bear. But suffering for God and God alone thy suffering Inirts thee not nor docs it burden thee, for God bears the load. Believe me, if there were a man willing to suffer on account of God and of God alone, then though he fell a sudden prey to the collective sufferings of all the world it would not trouble liim nor bow him dowji, for God would be the bearer of his burden. If the burden they put upon my neck is forthwith shouldered by another I would as lief a hundred pounds as one, for not to me is it heavy and distressful. In brief : man’s sufferings for God and God alone he makes both light and pleasant. [¶12] I prefaced this sermon with the words : ‘ Jesus went up into a fastness and was received by a virgin who was wife.’ Why ? She must needs be virgin and wife too. How Jesus was received I have explained. I have not told the meaning of this fastness and that I will now proceed to do. [¶13] From time to time I tell of the one power in the soul which alone is free. Sometimes I have called it the tabernacle of the soul ; sometimes a spiritual light, anon I say it is a spark. But now I say : it is neither this nor that. Yet it is somewhat : somewhat more exalted over this and that than the heavens are above the earth. So now I name it in a nobler fashion than before as regarding rank and mode which it transcends. It is of all names free, of all forms void : exempt and free as God is in himself. It is one and simple as God is one and simple, and no man can in any wise behold it. This same power I am speaking of, herein God blooms and thrives in all his Godhood and the spirit in God ; in this very power the Father bears his only Son no less than in himself, for verily he liveth in this power, the spirit with the Father giving bii th therein to his very Son, itself this selfsame Son, for in this light which is the light of truth, it is the Son himself. Could ye see with iny heart yc would understand my words, but it is true, for truth itself has said it. [¶14] So om' and simple is this fastness, frowning above all ways, of whieh 1 mind me and am telling you, within the soul, that this high faculty I speak of is not Avorthy even of a fleeting glame therein; nor is that other power God glows and burns in, it durst not peer in either ; so one and indivisible this refuge is, so wayand powcr-transeeiiding this solitaiy one that never mode nor faculty has any insight there, not even (h)d himself. Never for an instant, as God lives, docs God see into this, nor did he ever look in his conditioned nature, in his gnis(.‘ of Person. Note well, this ()7ie (done is lacking in every mode and quality. It follows that for God to see therein would cost him all Ins divine names and personal properties : all these he must forgo to look therein : only as one and indivisible, having no jot of mode or (piality, not Father nor Son nor Holy Ghost as smh, can he do this ; as somewhat, yes, but not as this or that. [¶15] As one and impartible behold him entering this one that here I call the fastness of the soul, but in no different guise can he get in : thus only does he enter and subsist in it. In part the soul is the same as God but not altogether. — This that I tell you is true : truth is my witness and my soul the pledge. May we be as this fastness whereinto on ascending Jesus is received to abide eternally as I have said. So help us God. Amen.