Meister Eckhart
Spiritual sermons and discourses
Ein mensche klagte meister Eckeharten, es kunne sone predle nieman verstehn. Do sprach er: swer mine predie welle vestkn, der sol funf stucke haben. Er sol gesigen an allen striten unde sol al son oberster guot kapfende son, unde sol dem genuoc son, dar zuo in got vermanet, unde sol ein anheber son mit anhebenden liuten unde solle sich selber vernihten, unde son selber also gewaltic son, daz er dekeinen zorn geleisten muge. Cod. Monac. germ. 365 Fol 192 b.
Translation from Middle High German M.V. Sabashnikov.
INTERPRETER FOREWORD
Meister Eckhart met a beautiful naked boy and asked him where he was coming from. He said, "I come from God." - Where did you leave him? “In virtuous hearts.” - Where are you going? - "To God." – Where will you find Him? “Where I leave all my creations.” - Who are you? - "Tsar". Where is your kingdom? - "In my heart". “See that no one shares your power with you. “That's what I do.” Meister Eckhart led him to his cell and said to him: “Take whatever clothes you like. - "Then I would not be a king" - and disappeared. It was God Himself that was joking with him like that.
In this tale, which Meister Eckhart himself told about himself, the main thing is said about him. So his soul, meeting the Unknown, tried to clothe him, and threw away one after another the clothes rejected by the royal Guest, and fell silent before the unconditional nakedness of the inexpressible. “Never in time did God give His name,” says Eckhart. Only where there is neither "now" nor "never", where all faces and differences fade away, "God speaks His Word in deep silence."
Eckhart's life was listening to that Word, confessing it. That is why, being a very bright and original personality, he is silent about the personal, and we do not know the spiritual life of the greatest thinker and figure of that century, great in religious creativity. And contemporary writers of the Dominican Order (to which he belonged) avoid mentioning his name as condemned by the Inquisition.
Eckhart was born in Thuringia in 1260.
It was a turning point in the life of Christianity. On the one hand, the keys of ancient clairvoyance were, as it were, finally imprinted, and on the petrified traditions the building of scholastic thought was erected and strengthened, on the other hand, hope for a new revelation awakened in people, a thirst for the direct manifestation of the spirit of Christ, as a living and invariably creative force in the world. Eckhart begins a new era of religious life. He tries to liberate souls from everything congealing, conditional. He calls on people to open their hearts to the spiritual world, not to look for the "Living among the dead."
Eckhart came from the knightly family of Hochheim. His chivalry was reflected in the whole spirit of his teaching, in the images of his speech. “A good knight does not complain about his wounds, looking at the king who is wounded with him,” he says about the courage with which one must endure suffering, sharing them with Christ. And further about suffering: “I knew one prince who, when he accepted someone into his retinue, sent him out at night and rode himself to meet him and fought with him. And it happened to him once almost to be killed by the one he wanted to test. And from that time on, he appreciated and loved that servant especially. Meister Eckhart was such a knight with God. God-fighter and son, he knew and preached New Testament with God, based on freedom. His boldness is not like the audacity of a freedman and a slave.
The area of the spirit, where a person is involved in the Creator, where “he sees himself as the one who created this person,” Eckhart calls the impregnable castle of the soul. In those days, the structure of earthly life, more than now, was a reflection of the spiritual structure. Forms corresponded more to essences. Everything was a symbol. And born a knight, Meister Eckhart, leaving everything worldly, remained a knight in spirit. His courageous, military spirit wielded the word like a sword.
The best people of that time saw in St. Francis of Assisi and in St. Dominic God's messengers who came into the world to gather the lost Christian people and return God to them. Both orders acted with marvelous self-denial and inspiration. The Dominicans produced the best schools and the best theologians of that century. In the Romanesque countries, their zeal was directed mainly to the development of scholasticism, the glorification of the dominant church and the fight against heretics; in the German countries, where the spirit of a young people full of creative powers was awakening, this zeal was expressed in a different way: in a hidden feat. Mysticism and in-depth Christian teaching were born, the creators of which were soon themselves recognized by the Inquisition as heretics.
One must think that Eckhart entered the Erfurt Dominican Order already fifteen years ago, where, after two preparatory years, he studied the so-called Studium logicale for three years: grammar, rhetoric and dialectic; then two years of Studium naturale: arithmetic, mathematics, astronomy and music. After this, the study of theology began, which lasted three years; the first year was devoted to Studium biblicum, the last two to dogmatics; they were called Studium provinciale. In Eckhart's time there was only one such school in Germany, in Strasbourg. Spiritual education for the majority ended with this. They took the priesthood and began their ministry. Those who were distinguished by special talent and could become good preachers were sent to high school Order. At that time there were five such schools. The first place after Paris was occupied by Cologne, and Eckhart stayed there for three years. There he went through the circle of ideas of the great scholastics - Albert the Great and his disciple Thomas Aquinas.
In the nineties, Eckhart held the position of prior of Erfurt and vicar of Thuringia.
Throughout his life, he constantly occupies responsible positions in church administration, which testifies to a clear outlook on life, to the abilities in the practical activities of a great mystic.
By that time, his “speech on differences”, a free kind of teaching during the meal of the monks, date back. In this earliest sermon that has come down to us, Eckhart's main idea of poverty in spirit is already expressed, which he understood more broadly and more spiritually than the religious people of his time, the followers of Francis of Assisi. Eckhart is far from that naivety and from that sometimes petty, stuffy, literal understanding of things that was characteristic of people of the Middle Ages. Everything that solidifies even for a second in the formula seeks to break its living spirit. And he understands poverty as a complete removal from himself of everything detached, giving away his “I”, destroying it in merging with a single, central world will. He speaks in this sermon about the difference between essential and non-essential things, and his free attitude, which runs counter to the mood of that time, towards all supernatural phenomena and visions, which often then manifested themselves in the religious movement and occupied the minds, is remarkable here. “That's good,” he says, “and yet it's not the best; even when it is not imagination, but a true experience, caused by true love for God; yet this is not its highest manifestation.
Meister Eckhart - Spiritual Sermons and Discourses
Translation from Middle High German M.V. Sabashnikov.
Ein mensche klagte meister Eckeharten, es künne sone predlè nieman verstehn. Dô sprach er: swer mine predie welle vestkn, der sol fünf stücke haben. Er sol gesigen an allen striten unde sol al son oberster guot kapfende son, unde sol dem genuoc son, dar zuo in got vermanet, unde sol anheber son mit anhebenden liuten unde solle sich selber vernihten, unde son selber alsô gewaltic son, daz er dekeinen zorn geleisten müge.
Cod. Monac. germ. 365 Fol 192 b.
INTERPRETER FOREWORD
Meister Eckhart met a beautiful naked boy and asked him where he was coming from. He said, "I come from God." - Where did you leave him? - "In virtuous hearts." - Where are you going? - "To God." - Where will you find him? "Where I leave all my creations." - Who are you? - "Tsar". - Where is your kingdom? - "In my heart". - See that no one shares your power with you. - "That's what I do." Meister Eckhart led him to his cell and said to him: “Take whatever clothes you like. - "Then I would not be a king" - and disappeared. It was God Himself that was joking with him like that.
In this tale, which Meister Eckhart himself told about himself, the main thing is said about him. So his soul, meeting the Unknown, tried to clothe him, and threw away one after another the clothes rejected by the royal Guest, and fell silent before the unconditional nakedness of the inexpressible. "Never in time did God give His name," says Eckhart. Only where there is neither "now" nor "never", where all faces and differences fade away, "God pronounces His Word in deep silence."
Eckhart's life was listening to that Word, confessing it. That is why, being a very bright and original personality, he is silent about the personal, and we do not know the spiritual life of the greatest thinker and figure of that century, great in religious creativity. And contemporary writers of the Dominican Order (to which he belonged) avoid mentioning his name as condemned by the Inquisition.
Eckhart was born in Thuringia in 1260.
It was a turning point in the life of Christianity. On the one hand, the keys of ancient clairvoyance were, as it were, finally imprinted, and on the petrified traditions the building of scholastic thought was erected and strengthened, on the other hand, hope for a new revelation arose in people, a thirst for the direct manifestation of the spirit of Christ, as a living and invariably creative force in the world. Eckhart begins a new era of religious life. He tries to liberate souls from everything congealing, conditional. He calls on people to open their hearts to the spiritual world, not to look for "the living among the dead."
Eckhart came from the knightly family of Hochheim. His chivalry was reflected in the whole spirit of his teaching, in the images of his speech. "A good knight does not complain about his wounds, looking at the king who is wounded with him," he says about the courage with which one must endure suffering, sharing them with Christ. And further about suffering: “I knew one prince who, when he accepted someone into his retinue, sent him out at night and rode himself to meet him and fought with him. And from that time on, he appreciated and loved that servant especially. Meister Eckhart was such a knight with God. A theomachist and son, he knew and preached the New Covenant with God, based on freedom. His boldness is not like the audacity of a freedman and a slave.
The area of the spirit, where a person is involved in the Creator, where "he sees himself as the one who created this person," Eckhart calls the impregnable castle of the soul. In those days, the structure of earthly life, more than now, was a reflection of the spiritual structure. Forms corresponded more to essences. Everything was a symbol. And born a knight, Meister Eckhart, leaving everything worldly, remained a knight in spirit. His courageous, military spirit wielded the word like a sword.
The best people of that time saw in St. Francis of Assisi and in St. Dominic God's messengers who came into the world to gather the lost Christian people and return God to them. Both orders acted with marvelous self-denial and inspiration. The Dominicans produced the best schools and the best theologians of that century. In the Romanesque countries, their zeal was directed mainly to the development of scholasticism, the glorification of the dominant church and the fight against heretics; in the German countries, where the spirit of a young people full of creative forces was awakening, this zeal was expressed in a different way: in a hidden feat. Mysticism and in-depth Christian teaching were born, the creators of which were soon themselves recognized by the Inquisition as heretics.
One must think that Eckhart entered the Erfurt Dominican Order already fifteen years ago, where, after two preparatory years, he studied the so-called Studium logicale for three years: grammar, rhetoric and dialectic; then two years of Studium naturale: arithmetic, mathematics, astronomy and music. After this, the study of theology began, which lasted three years; the first year was devoted to Studium biblicum, the last two to dogmatics; they were called Studium provinciale. In Eckhart's time there was only one such school in Germany, in Strasbourg. Spiritual education for the majority ended with this. They took the priesthood and began their ministry. Those who were distinguished by special talent and could become good preachers were sent to the higher school of the Order. At that time there were five such schools. The first place after Paris was occupied by Cologne, and Eckhart stayed there for three years. There he went through the circle of ideas of the great scholastics - Albert the Great and his disciple Thomas Aquinas.
In the nineties, Eckhart held the position of prior of Erfurt and vicar of Thuringia.
Throughout his life, he constantly occupies responsible positions in church administration, which testifies to a clear outlook on life, to the abilities in the practical activities of a great mystic.
By that time, his "speech on differences", a free kind of teaching during the meal of the monks, date back. In this earliest sermon that has come down to us, Eckhart's main idea of poverty in spirit is already expressed, which he understood more broadly and more spiritually than the religious people of his time, the followers of Francis of Assisi. Eckhart is far from that naivety and from that sometimes petty, stuffy, literal understanding of things that was characteristic of people of the Middle Ages. Everything that solidifies even for a second in the formula seeks to break its living spirit. And he understands poverty as a complete removal from himself of everything detached, giving away his "I", destroying it in merging with a single, central world will. He speaks in this sermon about the difference between essential and non-essential things, and his free attitude, which runs counter to the mood of that time, towards all supernatural phenomena and visions, which often then manifested themselves in the religious movement and occupied the minds, is remarkable here. "This is good," he says, "and yet it is not the best; even when it is not imagination, but a true experience, caused by true love for God; yet this is not its highest manifestation."
In 1300, the Order sends Eckhart to Paris, the spiritual center of Western Europe, for three years, where he holds the position of lecturer biblicum at the university. These are troubled years for the University of Paris of the struggle between Pope Boniface VIII and King Philip IV, whose side is also taken by part of the French clergy. In 1302, Eckhart received the title of master, but did not stay for the third year; for the reasons of these troubles or recalled to Germany, where church reforms required the exertion of all forces. His stay in Paris includes his commentaries on the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard, which then served as the basis for the teaching of dogmatics, which have not come down to us. At home, Eckhart becomes the head of the Saxon Order and his power for eight years extends from Thuringia to the German Sea, from the Netherlands to Livonia. 51 male and 9 female monasteries are under his jurisdiction. He probably continues to live in Erfurt. But in 1307, Earhart was accused of encouraging the heresy of the free spirit, and he was forced to leave his post. At a general meeting in Strasbourg in 1307, he apparently managed to justify himself, because in the same year he was appointed to Bohemia, where he converted the Bohemian monasteries, replacing the general of the Order. He is given full confidence and unlimited power. His influence is great here too: "The sun that shines in Cologne also shines in the city of Prague," says a beggar at a meal in an anonymous dialogue of the time "Das ist Meister Eckart Bewirtung".
In 1311, Eckhart was elected head of the German province (Upper Germany and the Rhine countries to Cologne), but the Order again sent him to Paris, where he occupied a chair in a higher school. At this time, Meister Eckhart meets in Paris representatives of the degenerate dead scholasticism, which has found shelter in the Franciscan Order. They are busy with politics and secular issues. Meister Eckhart opposes them as a herald of the living religion of the future. The more independently and freely he affirms his doctrine, the more hostile towards him becomes traditional thought.
From 1312 to 1320, Eckhart held the chair of the Strasbourg theological school of the Order.
This was the time when young Germany, and especially the countries along the Rhine, were entering a new, original life. The union of cities strengthened the sense of personal independence; the struggle between the king and the pope freed popular thought. A new art is flourishing. Its colors are bright, its forms are full of strong spiritual movement; sensual realism is organically combined with mystical realism. Everything is tense from an excess of spiritual forces: this is why the images are often so absurd, incoherent, sometimes ridiculous and at the same time full of such genuine power, the power of earth and sky. Just as a boy who comes out of childhood and becomes a husband loses his childish charm and absurdly manifests his awakening "I", so the spirit of that people, freeing itself from the shackles of the old, frozen in the forms of culture, began a new individual life. And this individual freedom was at first to the detriment of external beauty, property and the gift of the old feminine culture. The courageous spirit of the Germans felt the earth deeply in a new way, seized a deep furrow, and we see how new images arise in art and in life, as if under the pressure of a strong current of spiritual life, as if a whirlwind lifted them from the depths. And they all speak of one thing, are full and full of one thing. Cathedral stones profess the same idea as Eckhart.
This spirit manifests itself in free religious communities in mystical teachings. The people are aware of themselves. Living Christian thought touches souls. The soul recognizes Christ in itself.
Meister Eckhart was the focus where the spiritual rays of that time crossed and flared with fire.
He was the greatest theologian and preacher in Germany, but in other countries where his voice did not reach, his teaching was spread through transcribed Latin and German sermons. Eckhart preached not only in his Order and in the schools, but he called on the whole estate to participate in a high religious life. In nunneries, in the houses of the beguines, among the laity, his German sermons sounded. He created a new language, for he was the first to speak in his native language about the depths of mystical and philosophical thought.
True, even before him we encounter similar attempts in the compositions of Methilda of Magdeburg and in the song about the trinity, but all this is insignificant compared to the work of Eckhart. The plasticity, simplicity and clarity of his language reached such a completeness that in this direction the mystics of subsequent times could no longer give anything new. With fearless simplicity, he approaches the most subtle and difficult objects point-blank. He boldly creates words that convey the most abstract concepts; is not afraid to immediately compare Everyday life; makes listeners, as it were, witnesses of the inner growth of their thought. He asks, answers, and his strict logic is full of living fire. He is always unexpected; one can feel with what passion he wants to make everyone a participant in that high freedom and joy that has been revealed to him. Wishing to make his thoughts accessible, he never reduced them to the level of the crowd; he wanted to raise everyone up to himself. Often we hear how, foreseeing the difficulties of any interpretation, he earnestly asks: "Be attentive now, understand me well now!"
Because he always burns in this fire, which burns everything that is not unconditional, genuine in the face of eternity, his voice is stern. It's not his severity. It is the severity of eternity speaking through him. This is not the rigor of an ascetic who demands from others what he himself suffers from. He does not get tired of fighting that spirit of "philistinism", which can manifest itself in all areas and everywhere, even in the spiritual worlds, he seeks comfortable reassurance on the dogma of well-being, and without fail, one way or another, achieves for himself a small benefit, recognition ...
Any "beautiful soul", "vague feelings", "spiritual pleasures" are haunted by his ridicule. At the end of one especially lofty sermon, he suddenly exclaims, as if in despair: “It is good for the one who understood this sermon! If there were no one here, I would have to say it to this church circle.
There will be miserable people who will say: I will return to my home, sit down in my place, eat my bread and serve God. Such people will never understand true poverty in spirit!"
Sometimes an excess of joy from the knowledge revealed to him gives his words an unexpected boldness.
In one sermon, Eckhart, responding to the reproach that he initiates the crowd into too lofty mysteries, says: “If ignorant people are not taught, then no one will become a scientist. Then the ignorant are taught so that they become knowledgeable from ignorant. John writes the gospel for all believers and also for unbelievers, and yet he starts from the highest, what can a man say about God. word? Were not the words of John and the words of the Lord also often misunderstood?"
For such misunderstood words, Eckhart was condemned by the church.
Religious movements that engulfed the people spread among the mendicant orders, among the Begards and Beguines. Their main Sermon was "The Kingdom of God is within man", the consubstantiality of God, poverty in spirit, a new free understanding of the Gospel, from which people drew their teaching directly. The difference between these teachings was the attitude towards the church. For some, the new mystical faith did not contradict the church, and they remained in its bosom (friends of God), while others completely rejected its mediation.
A picture of the religious movement of that time is given by a treatise on Sister Catreius, the spiritual daughter of Meister Eckhart of Strasbourg, written in 1317. It gives us not only an idea of Eckhart's attitude to the mystical teachings of that time, but also illuminates the spiritual path of the preacher himself.
In the same year that the treatise on Sister Catreius was written, the Strassburg Bishop John von Oxenstein began the persecution of the heretical Begards and Beguines. Penitents are attached to the dress of a wooden cross. Many of them burn at the stake and perish in the water. Others flee to neighboring areas, but persecution spreads there as well.
Most of those who perished in this way professed the positions that Meister Eckhart openly preached from the pulpit.
Perhaps the passage of Eckhart in 1320 to Frankfurt is connected precisely with this persecution.
Eckhart could not fight the Bishop's inquisitorial power. Those beguines and begards who were assigned to some order and for whom Eckhart could intercede were not affected by the persecution. Eckhart continued to preach loudly and openly what people were executed for every day. “In such an explanation of the words of Christ, you can safely refer to me,” he says in one sermon, “I am responsible for this with my life”; elsewhere he says, "Let my soul be a pledge to it." Such words were not just red words at a time when bonfires were burning wherever his teaching was spread.
But his personal persecution is not yet concerned. Order for him and gives him in the same years an honorary and most influential position as a teacher of dogmatics in higher education in Cologne Cologne has long been the spiritual center of Germany. Before Eckhart, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus lived and taught there. Now, persecuted in the upper countries of the Rhine, the Begards and Beguines flock there, but they meet a strong enemy in the person of Archbishop Henry. Then Walter, the head of the sect, was burned, and many perished in the fire and in the waves of the Rhine. Eckhart lived there last years own life.
The disciples, among whom were then Tauler and Suso, call him "holy teacher", "divine teacher". Eckhart's moral character was so pure that all the efforts of his enemies to collect any incriminating facts from his personal life were in vain.
In 1325, at the cathedral in Venice, a complaint was received against the brothers of the German province, "who in their sermons teach the people some things that can easily lead listeners to heresies." This denunciation referred to Eckhart and the young priests who followed him. Initial attempts to blame Eckhart were unsuccessful. When Eckhart's rivals, the theologians of the higher Franciscan school in Cologne, appeared as inquisitors, the Dominican Order stood up for Eckhart and his orthodoxy was restored. Dissatisfied with his justification, the archbishop himself collects evidence against him in unseemly ways, and when this does not lead to the desired results, on January 14, 1327, he begins a formal process against Eckhart.
On January 24, Eckhart, with witnesses, appears before the inquisitors and rebels against their way of doing things. He believes that unworthy behavior with eavesdropping, slander and trickery is a complete arbitrariness that offends the entire Order. He considers it below his dignity to answer their accusations and invites them to Avignon with him on May 4th, where he, Eckhart, before the pope and the whole church, will prove the purity of his teaching, which was simply misunderstood by them.
On February 13, 1327, in the Dominican church in Cologne, Eckhart, having finished his sermon, asked the people to read the manuscript in Latin, which he held in his hand, and when it was read, he himself translated it into German and explained. Then he invited the notary who was here to draw up a protocol about this. Several clerics and two Cologne citizens signed as witnesses. This statement, which was later falsely called a renunciation, read:
“I, Meister Eckhart, Doctor of Holy Theology, declare first of all, calling God to witness, that I avoided every error in the faith and distortion of it as far as I could, for such errors have always been hated by me and hated until now, as a doctor and a member of the Order If anything should be found wrong in this respect, that I would write, say or preach, openly or unopenly, directly or indirectly, with ill intent or for the sake of a spirit of resistance - I directly and openly renounce this to everyone and everyone who is present here in the assembly, for I look from this moment on this as unspoken and unwritten, especially because I hear that I was poorly understood; as if I preached that my little little finger created everything; but I did not think and did not say that what these words say; and I said it about the fingers of that little boy Jesus." Then, refuting yet another distortion of his doctrine of the soul and explaining it, Eckhart says: "I am correcting all this, and renouncing all this, and I will correct, and I will renounce in general and in particular, whenever it would be necessary, , which would be recognized as a lack of common sense."
There is nothing in all this that can be called renunciation.
Eckhart is only willing to give up what could be shown to be contrary to sound doctrine and common sense. He claims that he was not understood, and does not plead guilty at all.
Eckhart wanted to prove by this that his conscience was clear before the church. And he wanted to explain this to the people, in order to thereby remove the accusation from the Order, which stood for him.
This was not an answer to the inquisitors.
Eckhart did not wait for the decision of his case. He died in 1327. And two years later (March 27, 1329) a papal bull, so desired by the Bishop of Cologne, appeared, recognizing 26 provisions of Eckhart's teaching as heretical and calling his above statement his own renunciation of this teaching.
Eckhart himself believed that his teaching was in complete agreement with the teaching of the church. He confessed the same truths as his teacher Thomas Aquinas, but he approached them in a different way, giving them a new look and a new life.
Both mysticism and scholasticism take as their basis the direct insight of God. But scholasticism accepts this insight, or revelation, given from outside, it relies on someone else's experience, on the authority Holy Scripture. On this basis, she builds a system of concepts that makes dogma acceptable to the mind. Raising her mind above nature, she explains her laws. But abstract thought remains at the same time closed in itself, rational, understanding things from the outside.
The scholastic thinks of God, the mystic thinks of God. Or more precisely: he thinks divinely.
For the mystic, the essence of human thought and divine thought is one. Human thought is a reflection of divine thought and follows its movements, therefore it is valid. God thinks Himself in man. The thought of the mystic is the organic life of his "I", the disclosure of this "I", the basis and essence of which is divine. "Here the depth of God is my depth, and my depth is God's depth."
Living revelation, burning reality, which, as something unconditional, is revealed in clarity and joy by the spirit immersed in itself, do not need external reinforcement, in a symbol, in a dogma.
While the mainstream church is established on tradition and writing, on trust in the testimony of the Word of life of those "who have heard and seen with their own eyes, that they themselves were witnesses, whose hands have touched ..." the mystic recognizes the same Word in his soul, begotten by the Father in its basis and essence.
Eckhart says, explaining the words of Christ: "It is good for you that I leave you, for if I did not leave you, then you could not partake of the Holy Spirit." It's as if He's saying, "Until now, you've seen too much joy in My visible presence, so you couldn't partake of the perfect joy of the Holy Spirit..."
God begets His Son in eternity, and just as this birth took place once in time, it takes place in the basis and essence. human soul. "God became man that I might become God." The great "I am" of the world, the Word, became incarnate in man, so that man could recognize in himself the great "I am" of the world. Renouncing his temporary face, he cognizes in himself the immortal "I am" and in it becomes a participant in the world's creative will; there he is in the center from which its rays emanate, there he sees himself "as the one who created this man." In this depth, in which life beats out of itself, without any "why" - necessity and freedom become one. Merging his "I" with the world, a person comprehends the world will as his own. Having understood the regularity with his whole being, he ceases to feel the law as an external force. Not only that, understanding, he fulfills the law, he creates it.
A person comprehends things not only with external feelings, but also with internal insight. The light of this inner knowledge Eckhart calls the "sparkle" of the soul. Whoever is enlightened by this "sparkle" cognizes the world not only sensually and rationally, he cognizes things, merging with their essence, cognizes them from the inside: he ceases to be in the world as something isolated, finds everything in himself and himself in everything.
A man became a man thanks to his independent "I". But he becomes a man in the highest sense of the word when, through self-knowledge, he rises above this limited "I" to the point of accepting the world into himself. "Where creation ends, God begins. And God wants nothing more from you than that you come out of yourself, since you are a creature, and let God be God in you."
According to Eckhart, the very essence of God is love. God must love man. “I swear by the eternal truth of the Lord, God must pour out with all His power into every person who has reached the depth. To pour out completely, so that neither in His life, nor in His essence, nor in His nature, nor even in His divinity itself, save anything for Yourself, but to pour generously and fruitfully into a man who has given himself to God. Thus, inner illumination is inevitably given to those who achieve detachment, whose personal, isolated will is silent. "The spirit of that person cannot desire otherwise than God desires. And this is not his bondage, this is his own freedom. For freedom is our detachment, clarity, wholeness, which we were in our first origin and what the liberated in the Holy Spirit became" .
This liberation in the Holy Spirit is a return to the Divine, a merging with the Divine, but not the former unconscious and impersonal stay in the bosom of the Divine, but a new union with God, through the Sonship, in freedom. New Testament. Eckhart says about the return to God: "And my mouth is more beautiful than my source, for here I am alone, I lift all creatures from their mind into mine, so that they also become a unity in me." And in another place: "And I, alone, return all creatures to God."
"A righteous person does not serve either creation or God, for he is free and the closer he is to justice, the more freedom he himself is." Such a person becomes a conscious builder in the world, consciously fulfilling world goals. The Apostle Paul says: “For the creation waits with hope for the revelation of the sons of God, because the creation was subjected to futility, not voluntarily, but by the will of him who subjected it, in the hope that the creation itself will be set free from the bondage of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God, for we know that the whole creation groans and travails together."
In Eckhart's teaching there is no Buddhist retreat from life that seeks only personal liberation. Eastern contemplation leads a person in the opposite direction, to his source, to merging with the Divine, in this way a person, as it were, denies the evolution of the world, comes back empty-handed. Eckhart is a Christian, "its mouth is higher than its source." Its contemplation fertilizes the creativity of real life, and vice versa, the creativity of real life is contemplation. After the Word has become flesh, the spirit does not run away from the earth, but, having loved it, takes it into itself; transfigured in spirit, she returns to the Father.
Eckhart's entire moral teaching flows from this view. Evil, according to Eckhart, is the actions of an isolated, self-contained person who wants only his own. "For a person who is in God's will and in God's love, it is joy for him to do good works that God wants and leave evil ones that are against God. And it is impossible for him not to do the work that God wants to be done" .
His teaching is permeated with a joyful, creative spirit. He also sees creativity in suffering. "God is not the destroyer of nature, but the builder of it; he destroys only what he can replace with the best." In great suffering, he sees a shortening of the path of one who is loved by God. "And the joy of God, and the righteous - one."
Eckhart is reproached that Christ, born in the soul, overshadows in his teaching Christ, born of Mary, and this explains his interpretation of the Gospel events. "We have to spiritualize everything," he says. The five husbands of the Samaritan are for him five senses; the widow of Nainskaya is the mind, the deceased husband is the creative principle of the soul, the son is the higher mind. "Joseph and Mary lost Christ in the crowd and, in order to find him, had to return to where they left - to the temple. So we must return to where we came from."
This accusation is unfair. For Eckhart, the Word was truly embodied in Christ, and all Palestinian action, all events and every face was truly a reflection of the spiritual world. All the participants in that great mystery were both living people and pure embodiments of spiritual beings. That which was accomplished in the ancient mysteries in the prototypes, in the rites, became life. Then, truly, everything that happened on earth took place in heaven, and all the events on earth were at the same time a complete spiritual reality, that is, a pure symbol. Comprehending this mystery, Eckhart could see the events taking place in the soul, in the images of that action, and vice versa, the events of Palestine - as an image and symbol of the spiritual world.
Others, on the contrary, ignore Eckhart's teachings of his faith in Christ the God-man. So one of his translators arbitrarily throws out all those passages of sermons and treatises where Eckhart refers to Christian dogmas. He wants to purify his teachings of all non-essentials. Another hurried to remove from Eckhart the suspicion that he believed in the devil and angels. Those things were just symbols for him, he explains. Now symbols are equal to formal abstract concepts. For us, the microcosm and the macrocosm are separated. A person thinks that his spiritual world is cut off from the outside world. This is the cross and curse of our time, and hence his materialism, on the one hand, and abstract idealism, on the other.
For Eckhart, the symbol was the same reality, and the concepts were living beings and living forces of the objective spiritual world in which he lived a full creative life. In vain do people, wishing to honor Eckhart and equate him with themselves, transfer him to a barren desert of abstractions. The green and blossoming spirit of Eckhart feeds on the inexhaustible deep keys of the world. And how alive this spirit is, and how it lives!
Eckhart drew his thoughts not only from the books of the Church Fathers, scholastics and ancient philosophers, whose teaching he knew very deeply (the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Proclus were especially close to him), he experienced these thoughts with his whole being. But at the highest levels of mystical experience, his thought remains clear and strict, like a crystal. Both the completeness and the versatility of this thought do not limit or constrain anything. Through its clarity, as in a crystal, the depth darkens.
His thought is permeated with Christ. It contains the very solar thought of Christ, radiant and creative; the all-seeing eye, which not only perceives the rays of these things, but radiates its light, piercing the clouds, transforming them into the beauty of glory.
"We see things as they are; things are as God sees them," says Augustine. And such a thought finding support in itself and radiating from itself is the creative thought of Christ, which creates the world.
The Christianity of the first centuries rested on outward evidence and tradition; Gradually, already in Paul, the essence of the knowledge of Christ is transferred to inner revelation. Medieval saints, like Francis of Assisi, experience Christ in direct perception, in feeling. In scholasticism, Christianity captures the realm of reason; in Eckhart, it seems to penetrate into the center of consciousness. The existence of Christ follows from the consciousness of one's "I".
Eckhart's followers were to put his lofty teaching into practice.
A deeply perceived thought cannot remain invalid; it forces not only to think differently, but also to live differently. What the teacher saw in a joyful spiritual insight, as the possibility of a human being for students, became a life goal.
And that high truth, which he revealed to them, turned like a sword against them.
They were shown the image of the divine man in his original beauty, and, turning to reality, they saw a distorted reflection of him in the world, corrupted by Lucifer. Trying to live in accordance with the "order of the Kingdom of Heaven", they realized that all things and man himself are subject to other laws; they faced the beginning of resistance in themselves and in the world, and it became clear to them that knowledge involved them in a struggle not on the stomach, but to the death.
“And I took the book from the hand of an angel,” says the Apocalypse, “and ate it, and it was sweet in my mouth like honey; and when I ate it, it became bitter in my womb.” For the joy of the revelation of the spirit turns life in this body into the way of the cross.
By partaking of divine creativity and becoming "a friend of God," man partakes of His sacrifice.
This will not be understood by those people who, after listening to Eckhart's sermon, will say to themselves: I will return to my home, sit on my chair, eat my bread and serve my God; those who seek only their well-being and well-being in all areas.
They have already turned art into the highest comfort of their souls and will do the same with mysticism. Thought does not oblige them to anything. The word remains a word, a beautiful game of the mind.
Not such listeners of Eckhart were his students John Tauler and Heinrich Suso. They, realizing that the path to the second birth lies through death, embark on this path, the difficult, the mournful, and they talk about it.
Hence the mood that imbues their books.
With Suso, all experiences go more into the realm of the soul, there is something touching and childish in him, in his love, in his tears.
Closer to his teacher John Tauler.
Continuing to live in the high realm of Eckhart's thought, he only tries to become from a contemplative of the Spirit alive in the Spirit.
That is why, at a certain moment in his life, that mysterious assistant comes to him, who is known in history under the name "God's Friend from the Oberland." This man, who was more than a teacher in the ordinary sense of the word, in whom the teaching was transformed into the power of his whole being, gave Tauler the key to a new life, gave him the power not only to teach, but also "to burn the hearts of the people with the verb." It is said that from one sermon of Tauler 40 people fainted and lay as if dead.
In such ways the spiritual current begun by Eckhart penetrated into life. Subsequently, having been enriched with everything that could give a deep and intuitive knowledge of nature, it became more and more creative and was reflected in the teachings of Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme. Giving way to the tasks of other times, it went into underground channels. Without him, the work of Novalis and, finally, Goethe is inconceivable.
Why is it important that the distant yet passionate voice of Meister Eckhart be heard today?
Are we not standing, like him, on the road of the new time? For souls are tense and await revelation. But where the light is stronger, the shadows will also be darker. All that in other times would have remained the sin of the individual; everything that is not one pure detachment; everything that is not love alone, which is stronger than death and kills everything that is separated, is fatal for many at such times.
We must open our hearts to the spiritual world. He approached...
Eckhart does not get tired of freeing the soul for a new, ever purer being. He demands the highest. His pure and sober spirit creates in the soul that silence in which God pronounces His Word.
The translation of selected works of Meister Eckhart is made from the Middle High German text published by Pfeiffer (Franz Pfeiffer, Meister Eckhart, 1857, Göschen). Changes and additions were made according to Büttner (Meister Eckcharts Schriften und Predigten aus dem Mittelhochdeutsch űbersetzt und herausgegeben von Herrman Bűttner, Diederichs, Leipzig, 1903), who used new sources for his translation.
His sermons, which form the bulk of his writings, were written down by the listeners from memory. These sermons and discourses, rewritten many times, have come down to us in a very altered form. For people rewrote these works "for the soul", not caring about the accuracy of the form, changing, skipping what seemed to them obscure or superfluous.
Sayings of Holy Scripture Eckhart cites in most cases in his own words, which I retain.
Trying as much as possible to convey the originality of his speech, I did not soften the strangeness of some of the turns and expressions characteristic of that time.
^ THIS IS MEISTER ECKHART FROM WHICH GOD
NEVER HID ANYTHING
^ ABOUT THE COMPLETION OF TIMES
During it, the Lord sent the angel Gabriel. "Rejoice, full of grace, the Lord is with you." When they ask me why we pray, or fast, or do good deeds, why we are baptized, and most importantly, why God became a man (which is the highest), I answer: "So that God is born in our soul, and the soul in God ".
Why was every scripture written, and why did God create the whole world? Only for God to be born in the soul and the soul in God. The innermost nature of every cereal presupposes wheat, every ore - gold, every birth has the goal of man. "There is no such beast," says one wise man, "which would not have something in common with man in time."
"During it." When a word is perceived by the understanding, it is so incorporeal and pure at first that it is truly a word, until, imagining it to myself, I turn it into an image, and only, thirdly, it is pronounced by the mouth, and then it is only revealing the hidden word. Likewise, the eternal Word is spoken inwardly in the heart of the soul, in its secret
Meister Eckhart
Spiritual sermons and discourses
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Foreword
« This is the true moment of eternity: when the soul knows all things in God as new and fresh and in the same joy as I now feel them before me.
This phrase by Meister Eckhart clarifies what mysticism is - and clarifies it in the most profound and exhaustive way. Mystical interest is based not on superstition or craving for the occult, but on the perception of everything that exists as a miracle and a hidden symbol. He is unfamiliar with the fatigue of the heart - if he does not try, of course, to flirt with the ordinary consciousness, which seeks wisdom in illness and fatigue.
The Middle Ages are "by definition" rich in mystics. However, Meister Eckhart is one of the few who created such texts that allow Christian culture to enter into a dialogue with other confessions: to look for common ground in that area that usually seems to be intimately closed - in the area of personal experience of knowing God.
And the point is not only in the highest education of Eckhart and his undoubted ability for speculative thinking. Not thanks to, but perhaps in spite of them, he was able to find the most simple words and the clearest examples in order to convey a particle of my experience to listeners (and now readers) and to make my sermons a task and a riddle that I urgently want to solve.
Like any great mystic, he knew periods of glory and persecution - and not only during his lifetime. As early as the first quarter of the 16th century, some of Eckhart's discourses were printed together with the sermons of his famous follower Johann Tauler. However, after that, European culture did not show any interest in our author - until the first half of the 19th century, when the German mystic, philosopher and physician Franz von Baader drew general attention to him. After the publication in 1857 of a number of his writings by Franz Pfeiffer (see vol. 2 of the Deutsche Mystiker), Eckhart became a popular figure, but even at the present moment, a serious study of his work still remains an urgent task for scientists.
Meister Eckhart was born around 1260 in Thuringia, in the village of Hochheim (and probably belonged to the well-known Hochheim family). Having reached the age of 15-16, he enters the Dominican order and begins his studies in Erfurt, and then at the Dominican school in Strasbourg. The choice in favor of the Dominicans, rather than the Franciscans or any of the older orders, was quite understandable. The Dominicans and Franciscans, whose history spanned only about half a century, were young, very popular, "progressive" orders. Having arisen in the midst of a struggle against heretical movements (we mean the so-called Albigensian Wars in the south of France), they (especially the Dominicans) bear a certain blame for the transformation of the Inquisition into an ordinary phenomenon of the last centuries of the Middle Ages. However, the internal life of the orders did not at all represent a continuous obscurantism and retrograde. The widespread heretical movements and the need for a public refutation of heretical views, as well as the desire of the French kings to unite the Carolingian heritage with the help of highly qualified legal officials, became an incentive for the development of education and the rapid growth of universities. It is in this century that the activity of Albert the Great, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus and many other great minds of the Middle Ages falls. And for the most part, all these theologians belonged either to the Dominican or to the Franciscan order. Thus, Eckhart's choice was understandable: joining the "new" order promised not conservation, but the development of his spiritual powers. Since in Thuringia, as in almost all of Germany, the Dominicans had more authority than the Franciscans, the young man chose their community.
Meister Eckhart
Spiritual sermons and discourses
Ein mensche klagte meister Eckeharten, es kunne sone predle nieman verstehn. Do sprach er: swer mine predie welle vestkn, der sol funf stucke haben. Er sol gesigen an allen striten unde sol al son oberster guot kapfende son, unde sol dem genuoc son, dar zuo in got vermanet, unde sol ein anheber son mit anhebenden liuten unde solle sich selber vernihten, unde son selber also gewaltic son, daz er dekeinen zorn geleisten muge. Cod. Monac. germ. 365 Fol 192 b.
Translation from Middle High German M.V. Sabashnikov.
INTERPRETER FOREWORD
Meister Eckhart met a beautiful naked boy and asked him where he was coming from. He said, "I come from God." - Where did you leave him? “In virtuous hearts.” - Where are you going? - "To God." – Where will you find Him? “Where I leave all my creations.” - Who are you? - "Tsar". Where is your kingdom? - "In my heart". “See that no one shares your power with you. “That's what I do.” Meister Eckhart led him to his cell and said to him: “Take whatever clothes you like. - "Then I would not be a king" - and disappeared. It was God Himself that was joking with him like that.
In this tale, which Meister Eckhart himself told about himself, the main thing is said about him. So his soul, meeting the Unknown, tried to clothe him, and threw away one after another the clothes rejected by the royal Guest, and fell silent before the unconditional nakedness of the inexpressible. “Never in time did God give His name,” says Eckhart. Only where there is neither "now" nor "never", where all faces and differences fade away, "God speaks His Word in deep silence."
Eckhart's life was listening to that Word, confessing it. That is why, being a very bright and original personality, he is silent about the personal, and we do not know the spiritual life of the greatest thinker and figure of that century, great in religious creativity. And contemporary writers of the Dominican Order (to which he belonged) avoid mentioning his name as condemned by the Inquisition.
Eckhart was born in Thuringia in 1260.
It was a turning point in the life of Christianity. On the one hand, the keys of ancient clairvoyance were, as it were, finally imprinted, and on the petrified traditions the building of scholastic thought was erected and strengthened, on the other hand, hope for a new revelation awakened in people, a thirst for the direct manifestation of the spirit of Christ, as a living and invariably creative force in the world. Eckhart begins a new era of religious life. He tries to liberate souls from everything congealing, conditional. He calls on people to open their hearts to the spiritual world, not to look for the "Living among the dead."
Eckhart came from the knightly family of Hochheim. His chivalry was reflected in the whole spirit of his teaching, in the images of his speech. “A good knight does not complain about his wounds, looking at the king who is wounded with him,” he says about the courage with which one must endure suffering, sharing them with Christ. And further about suffering: “I knew one prince who, when he accepted someone into his retinue, sent him out at night and rode himself to meet him and fought with him. And it happened to him once almost to be killed by the one he wanted to test. And from that time on, he appreciated and loved that servant especially. Meister Eckhart was such a knight with God. A theomachist and son, he knew and preached the New Covenant with God, based on freedom. His boldness is not like the audacity of a freedman and a slave.
The area of the spirit, where a person is involved in the Creator, where “he sees himself as the one who created this person,” Eckhart calls the impregnable castle of the soul. In those days, the structure of earthly life, more than now, was a reflection of the spiritual structure. Forms corresponded more to essences. Everything was a symbol. And born a knight, Meister Eckhart, leaving everything worldly, remained a knight in spirit. His courageous, military spirit wielded the word like a sword.
The best people of that time saw in St. Francis of Assisi and in St. Dominic God's messengers who came into the world to gather the lost Christian people and return God to them. Both orders acted with marvelous self-denial and inspiration. The Dominicans produced the best schools and the best theologians of that century. In the Romanesque countries, their zeal was directed mainly to the development of scholasticism, the glorification of the dominant church and the fight against heretics; in the German countries, where the spirit of a young people full of creative powers was awakening, this zeal was expressed in a different way: in a hidden feat. Mysticism and in-depth Christian teaching were born, the creators of which were soon themselves recognized by the Inquisition as heretics.
One must think that Eckhart entered the Erfurt Dominican Order already fifteen years ago, where, after two preparatory years, he studied the so-called Studium logicale for three years: grammar, rhetoric and dialectic; then two years of Studium naturale: arithmetic, mathematics, astronomy and music. After this, the study of theology began, which lasted three years; the first year was devoted to Studium biblicum, the last two to dogmatics; they were called Studium provinciale. In Eckhart's time there was only one such school in Germany, in Strasbourg. Spiritual education for the majority ended with this. They took the priesthood and began their ministry. Those who were distinguished by special talent and could become good preachers were sent to the higher school of the Order. At that time there were five such schools. The first place after Paris was occupied by Cologne, and Eckhart stayed there for three years. There he went through the circle of ideas of the great scholastics - Albert the Great and his disciple Thomas Aquinas.
In the nineties, Eckhart held the position of prior of Erfurt and vicar of Thuringia.
Throughout his life, he constantly occupies responsible positions in church administration, which testifies to a clear outlook on life, to the abilities in the practical activities of a great mystic.
By that time, his “speech on differences”, a free kind of teaching during the meal of the monks, date back. In this earliest sermon that has come down to us, Eckhart's main idea of poverty in spirit is already expressed, which he understood more broadly and more spiritually than the religious people of his time, the followers of Francis of Assisi. Eckhart is far from that naivety and from that sometimes petty, stuffy, literal understanding of things that was characteristic of people of the Middle Ages. Everything that solidifies even for a second in the formula seeks to break its living spirit. And he understands poverty as a complete removal from himself of everything detached, giving away his “I”, destroying it in merging with a single, central world will. He speaks in this sermon about the difference between essential and non-essential things, and his free attitude, which runs counter to the mood of that time, towards all supernatural phenomena and visions, which often then manifested themselves in the religious movement and occupied the minds, is remarkable here. “That's good,” he says, “and yet it's not the best; even when it is not imagination, but a true experience, caused by true love for God; yet this is not its highest manifestation.
In 1300, the Order sends Eckhart to Paris, the spiritual center of Western Europe, for three years, where he holds the position of lecturer biblicum at the university. These are troubled years for the University of Paris of the struggle between Pope Boniface VIII and King Philip IV, whose side is also taken by part of the French clergy. In 1302, Eckhart received the title of master, but did not stay for the third year; for the reasons of these troubles or recalled to Germany, where church reforms required the exertion of all forces. His stay in Paris includes his comments on the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard, which did not come down to us, which then served as the basis for teaching dogmatics. At home, Eckhart becomes the head of the Saxon Order and his power for eight years extends from Thuringia to the German Sea, from the Netherlands to Livonia. 51 male and 9 female monasteries are under his jurisdiction. He probably continues to live in Erfurt. But in 1307, Earhart was accused of encouraging the heresy of the free spirit, and he was forced to leave his post. At a general meeting in Strasbourg in 1307, he apparently managed to justify himself, because in the same year he was appointed to Bohemia, where he converted the Bohemian monasteries, replacing the general of the Order. He is given full confidence and unlimited power. His influence is great here too: “The sun that shines in Cologne also shines in the city of Prague,” says a beggar at a meal in an anonymous dialogue of that time “Das ist Meister Eckart Bewirtung”.
3. Meister Eckhart "Spiritual Sermons and Discourses"
The meaning of activity (prayer, fasting, etc.) is that God is born in the soul, and the soul in God.
“When they ask me why we pray, or fast, or do good deeds, why we are baptized, and most importantly, why God became a man (which is the highest), I answer: “So that God would be born in our soul, and the soul in God."
The best and most favorable thing you can come to in this life is to be silent and let God speak and act in you.
"In the midst of the silence, the hidden Word was spoken within me." “It (the place for the utterance of God's word) is in the purest, in the most tender that is in the soul, in the noblest, at the base and in the essence of the soul. There is a deep silence, for no creature or image penetrates there; not a single action or knowledge reaches the soul there, and it does not know any image there and does not know either about itself or about another creature.
“Let them know that the best and noblest thing to come in this life is to be silent and let God speak and work in you. When all powers are renounced from their deeds and images, that Word is spoken.”
The more capable you are of withdrawing all forces and forgetting all things and images, the closer you will be to the higher.
“If the soul had anything in common with time, God would never have been born in it. For this, all time must fall away, or the soul must be freed from time with its desires and aspirations.
Everything good is my property by my nature. Christ brought us our blessedness, but it was precisely ours.
“Whoever abides in the nakedness and purity of this (Divine) nature, he must overcome the personal so much as to do the same good to that person who is on the other side of the sea and whom he has never seen in person ...”
If you do something for the sake of the external, you are wrong. You must let God be God in you.
“As long as you wish good for yourself more than for a person whom you have never seen, you are truly wrong ...”
If the blood (will) conquers the flesh, a person is patient, meek and chaste. It contains all the virtues.
“... there are two people in every person. First, the external man, the sensuous; this man is served by the five senses, but they receive their strength from the soul; secondly - the inner man, this is the innermost of man. Know that a person who loves God does not use more spiritual powers on the outer man than the five senses require: the inner man turns to the outer only because he is a leader and mentor who will not allow them to use their powers in a bestial way, as they do. these are many people living for carnal lust, like foolish cattle; these people are actually more worthy of the name of cattle than of people.
“Know what God expects from every spiritual person to love Him with all the strength of the soul; therefore He says, "Thou shalt love thy Lord with all thy heart." But there are people who squander their strength entirely on the outer man. These are the people who turn all their thoughts and aspirations to the transient good. They know nothing of the inner man!”
To serve God in fear is good, in love is better, but the connection between fear and love is perfect. Good is the quiet life in God, better life full of pain and oppression, the best thing is peace in a life full of pain.
“The fastest horse that will carry you to perfection is suffering. No one experiences greater bliss than those who are with Christ in the greatest sorrow. Suffering is bitter as bile, there is nothing more bitter than suffering, and there is nothing sweeter than the past suffering. Passed suffering is sweeter than honey. The surest foundation on which this perfection can rest is humility. For the spirit of the one whose nature here languishes in humiliation rises to the highest heights of the Divine. For joy brings suffering, and suffering brings joy.”
It is necessary that nothing could penetrate the soul: neither hope nor fear is nothing that can drive the soul out of itself. The best and highest virtue is pure, free detachment. Love comes second.
“Therefore, detachment is the best, for it purifies the soul, clears the conscience, kindles the heart and awakens the spirit, gives speed to desires; it surpasses all virtues: for it gives us the knowledge of God, separates us from the creature, and unites the soul with God. For love separated from God is like water on fire, but love alone is like a honeycomb full of honey.”
Love is secondary to detachment, because love leads me to God, and I must bring God to me. Love makes me endure everything for God, detachment makes me receptive to God alone. Detachment is higher than humility, since renunciation comes to "nothing", humility to self-destruction. Humility bows before creatures, detachment abides in itself. Detachment is higher than compassion.
“True detachment is nothing but a spirit that remains motionless in all circumstances, whether it be joy or sorrow, honor or shame, just as a wide mountain remains motionless in a light wind.”
The birth of God is possible in the soul of any person, but only the righteous will perceive the light of God. The sinner will not perceive it, since the paths of penetration of the light of God are cluttered with created
“Another question: if the work of this birth is done in the basis and essence of the soul, then it can be done just as well in a sinner as in good man; what will be to me from that, benefit or mercy? After all, the essence of the nature of both is one and the same, in hell itself the nobility of nature will abide forever. To abolish this objection, let the following be said.
The peculiarity of this birth is that it always takes place, as a kind of new insight, always brings a mighty light into the soul. For such is the nature of goodness that it must be poured out wherever it may be. In this birth, God is poured into the soul with such an abundance of light, and this light becomes so great in the basis and essence of the soul that it breaks through and pours into the forces and into the external man. This is what happened to Paul when, on the way, God touched him with His light and spoke to him. The reflection of the light was also visible externally, so that his companions saw it, and it surrounded Paul like a saint.
The excess of light that beats from the depths of the soul overflows into the body, and from that it becomes enlightened. The sinner cannot perceive this light, and does not deserve it, for he is full of sin and malice, which is called "darkness." That is why it is said: "The darkness did not receive and did not embrace the light." This is because the paths through which this light would enter are cluttered and blocked by lies and darkness. For light and darkness are as incompatible as God and creation; where God must enter, the creature must go out from there.”
For a righteous life three things are necessary concerning our will. Firstly to give our will to God. There are three kinds of will: "sensual", "reasonable", "eternal". The first kind of will lacks proper guidance, so it must obey the right advice. The second kind of will seeks to participate in all the works of Jesus Christ. The will of the third kind is given by God to the basis of the human soul. The assimilation of man to God requires him to be poor in knowledge.
“Therefore we say: a person must be so poor that he is “a dwelling place where God could work.” As long as there is an abode in a person, there is diversity in him. That is why I pray to God to make me free from God!”
“And this is how they want to prove it; as a created being, as he is, man is in a state of imperfection, so that by his nature he can cognize God, as his creation can cognize, namely in images and faces, which I argued earlier; the soul cannot get out of itself with the help of only one natural ability; it should rather happen under supernatural conditions, namely in the “radiance of Glory”!”
“Grace robs the soul of its own action and also robs it of its own being! In this self-anticipation, the soul rises above the "natural light" inherent only in creation, and enters into direct communication with God.
All the deeds that a person performs outside the kingdom of God are dead deeds, the same that he does in the kingdom of God are living deeds.
