“The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart” by Meister Eckhart (translated by Maurice O’Connell Walshe)

This is a collection on the Dominican priest, Meister Eckhart’s, sermons to his flock. His notions of God and the Trinity were somewhat eclectic in his time, if not, heretical. In fact, he was on trial, in danger of excommunication, when he died. Eckhart begins with the notions of grace, the intellect, the soul, and the nature of God, “When a man is dead in imperfection, the highest intellect arises in the understanding and cries to God for grace. Then God gives it a divine light, so that it becomes self-knowing. Therein it knows God. I say the intellect alone can receive the divine light…. The man in the soul, transcending angelic being and guided by intellect, pierces to the source whence the soul flowed. There, intellect must remain outside, with all named things. There the soul is merged in pure unity. This we call the man in the soul…. This is the light of truth…. You should understand it thus: they practice inwardly in the man of the soul. Indeed that kingdom is blessed in which one such person dwells! They do more eternal good in an instant than all outward works that were ever performed externally.”

Eckhart chooses to expound on the topic of angels in another sermon, “A master says an angel is the image of God. A second says he is fashioned like God. A third says he is a clear mirror which contains and carries within itself the reflection of God’s purity, the divine purity of the stillness and mystery of God, as far as that may be. Yet another says he is a pure intellectual light, detached from all material things…. But an angel perceives in a light that is beyond time and eternal. He therefore perceives in the eternal Now. But man knows in the now of time. The now of time is the least thing there is…. Cease to be this and that, and have this and that, then you are all things and have all things and so, being neither here nor there, you are everywhere.” Next, Eckhart preaches on the logos, “There are three things that prevent us from hearing the eternal Word. The first is corporeality, the second is multiplicity, the third is temporality. If a man had transcended these three things, he would dwell in eternity, he would dwell in the spirit, he would dwell in unity and in the desert…. For to hear the Word of God demands absolute self-surrender. The hearer is the same as the heard in the eternal Word.” Finally, Eckhart concludes, “Understand: all our perfection and all our bliss depends in our traversing and transcending all creatureliness, all being and getting into the ground that is groundless.”