Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
Presented on: Tuesday, June 21, 1983
Presented by: Roger Weir
The date is June 21st, 1983. This is the third lecture in a series of lectures by Roger, where on the moon, the mystic century tonight's lecture is entitled Meister Eckhart, who lived 1260 to 1328 sermons. And OPAs try park him.
This is the third lecture in this series, and perhaps one of the most important that could be given Meister Eckhart is an extraordinary individual, but I think that the place that he holds in Western history, it makes him even more extraordinary. In fact, he is so extraordinary that he has been all but indigestible to European history for 700 years, Eckhart in his own lifetime was the most conspicuous anomaly in Europe. And he was the center of the greatest social upheaval, uh, of the age. And perhaps it was unprecedented until the 30 years war in the 17th century. And part of the 30 years war in the 17th century with the revival of many of the positions that Meister Eckhart had by the hermetic scientists of that age, he has revival again in the 1920s caused a similar outbreak and he was championed by every conceivable esoteric group in the world.
He was made a hero by the national socialists in Germany. He was cited as a Zen master by some of the, uh, uh, Zen monks in Japan. He was held to be a socialist reformer. Presaging the development of, uh, uh, social theories and 500 years before his time. But the is in short, he has been claimed by every group in the world at one time or another as being the pinnacle of the doctrines, which they hold. So we have in our hands of very strange man, I looked all over to find a picture of aircard, which I had seen about six months ago and what I went to the source that I had remembered seeing it. I was unable find it, but the picture, if I may just described it for you, sums up the mystery of that car. It shows him standing very tall, well above six feet with a large pole face, clean shaping a direct look upon himself. His Royal vestments folded down in perfect order and standing next to him as if some divine concert, a very strikingly, beautiful, elegant cleanly woman with a shawl over her head, coming down with the look of a movie star from the thirties, that kind of extraordinary beauty and both of them wearing an expression on their face. That one sees in the sculptures around shark cathedral of an inner equanimity of spirit that is almost yoga light and its directness and intensity. And yet they display this in robes that show elegant riches.
That cart was born in 12, 16, and came of age about the time that Thomas Aquinas died in 1274, Albertus Magnus was still alive. And for those of you who heard they Thomas Aquinas lecture at the PRS last week, you'll recall that there was a tremendous theological Devaa call going on in Europe, in the late 1270s. That in fact, in 1277, it was a toss up for awhile, whether or not Thomas Aquinas in his doctrines were going to be considered heretical and whether five or six other doctrines of the time we're going to hold sway Seeger of Bob bond with his Latin ever realism, William, a Saint armorer with his objection to all the men, deacon orders coming in and taking over the European, uh, universities that had just been founded some 50 years before and many other doctrines, but Albertus Magnus, they teacher of Aquinas went to the university of Paris, which was the intellectual center of the day and personally restored order and cleared the name of Thomas Aquinas.
And it was exactly at this time and this location that the young Meister came upon the scene, he met Alberta's Magnus and for the last year or two of his life, the old champion finding yet another billion student gave him all the contact that he could possibly give as an 80 year old man. And when he perished in 1280, it seemed that Meister Eckhart was well on his way to being another Thomas Aquinas. In fact, he had joined the Dominican order at the age of 15, so that in 1280, he was already five years into his monk ship and already several years into his university of Paris training.
If there's any influence that dominates peculiarly dominates the writings of Meister Eckhart, it is the esoteric side of Thomas Aquinas. And for those who only view Aquinas from the Orthodox view, the Roman Catholic Orthodox, uh, viewpoint, it's a puzzle as to how one of the most esoteric mystic writers of all time could have championed Aquinas on a par with the Bible itself. In fact, Eckhart several times and his writings says I have only three real sources. I have the Bible, I have brother Aquinas, and I have my own experience by the time that Alberta's Magnus passed away in 1280, we're not surprised to find that the young Meister Eckhart had moved from the university of Paris to cologne to the Dominican quarters. There were Albertus Magnus passed on. So the last three years of Albert the Great's life include certain contact with Meister Eckhart.
We know almost nothing of what happened in the next 13 years of Meister Eckhart his life from the time he was 20 until his mid thirties. There's absolutely no record except for the fact that when he comes back onto the scene, aircard is a matured man, a matured individual, and has within himself capacities that could only have been arrived at, at exceedingly refined contemplation and spiritual exercises. So I'm willing to state that in my opinion, those 12 or 13 years were spent in religious retreat on a very, very high order. And coupled with it, as one would expect of a Dominican intellectual master, having had contact with Albert, the great venerating Thomas Aquinas, he read everything. He could get his hands on. And because of the condition at that time of the Dominican retreats, they were filled with the best books of the time. The Dominican's at this time were exceedingly well prepared to argue any point because they had library facilities that were up to it.
So whether it was at the monastery of Saint shock in Paris, somewhat South of the, uh, Notredame, uh, area or whether it was in cologne at the Dominican quarters there at the great cathedral, that cart was exposed to the best literature in the world at that time, his writings quote, equally and freely from all the great Jewish philosophers, especially for Moses. My monities from the great Arabian philosophers have been Gabrielle and have a center in particular Avenue, always of course, uh, Al Ferraby. Um, and of course his learning for the classics was profound at this time. Most of the basic works of Greek philosophy were being translated into Latin, by a man who had been chosen for the job by Thomas Aquinas himself, a man named William Moore Beck. And while more Beck was translating Aristotle, it also came to the fore that late classical commentaries on Aristotle included the only synthesis, which was a wide enough to take in the Neoplatonic works, which were falsely ascribed to Aristotle.
If you remember, or if you were there at the lecture and the center as early as office centers day, one of the books of selection of bloatyness was mistakenly attributed to Aristotle. And so the Aristotelian thought at this time in the 12th and 13th century had a philosophic conundrum in it. It had a bar bell upload Plotinus and Aristotle put together and assume to be a doctrinaire from one author. And so the tremendous outbreak of intelligence among the Arabs among the Jews among the Christians of this time, wasn't attempt to try to have an intellectual synthesis. Why enough to take in the scope that they thought was attributable to one man, when more back translated proclaim commentary on Plato, Eckhart was one of the first readers of that time. And he was one of the first men since classical antiquity to actually read propolis on Plato.
And of course, since he had already mastered Aristotle, and in fact, he had mastered the Arabic commentators on Aristotle and the Aquarian synthesis of the Christian reply to the Arab commentators on Aristotle. Eckhart was in a very peculiar position. Do you understand intellectually the advanced Greek mysticism or protagonists in a direct way? And so Eckhart becomes really the first figure for almost four or 500 years to have an understanding of Neoplatonic thought from an almost all, but direct source. The last thinker in European tradition to have had that outlook was of course, John Skoda's era Eugena, who was responsible for the Carolingian Renaissance under Charles, the bald in the middle of the ninth century. The only man at that time, who could have read Greek at that level Greek of course, is the language becomes proceedings really difficult as one goes along philosophically and bloatyness is often called the Mount Everest of late great philosophy, almost impossible to read.
So we have Eckhart in those 12 or 13 years from the death of Alberta's Magnus. What had caught the last rays of the great man to troll 93 when he appears again. And he appears at Paris as a professor. Now it's interesting because his first assignment was to deliver the most mundane lectures imaginable. The rope textbook at that day and age, were they four books of sentences of Peter Lombard, a medieval thinker who had lived in the late 11th century and whose books of sentences were just the most incredible dribble, just compounds of pre digested pablum, uh, given to students by road and tested by road and for a hundred or 150 years, it had simply been the pablum that was fed to students to get them through Eckhart found himself lecturing on the four books of sentences of Peter Lombard. Within two years, we find a change of pace.
We find that Eckhart is taken away from Keras away from having to teach and is made the vicar of Thuringia, which is a province in Germany, where he had originally come from. So that here in the 1290s, we find Eckhart surfacing and almost immediately he's chosen for a very high job in fact, within another year or so, he was made, uh, uh, the, uh, provincial of the Dominicans and the whole area of Saxony Germany, so that we find Eckhart increasingly stepped up and put into positions almost the same way as that career of Thomas Aquinas. And so we have thus far and almost parallel between the careers of Meister, Eckhart and Thomas Aquinas, both of them gaining to delay gender Albert, the great both of them. Dominican's rising very, very quickly, big intellectual giants personages for whom anything they read was not only understood and its terms, but was synthesized and brought into focus into a structural plan of understanding and their minds coupled with the fact that both the Aquinas and aircard were mistakes of the first order that is to say they could go into their own personal experience to an extraordinary extent we would call them and they have been called Christian yogis.
So it is a, an amazing phenomenon. We find a few years later that Eckhart writes his first little book in 1302, which was called simply talks and instruction or talks of instruction. The German is somewhat ambiguous in that this little booklet that came out seemed to be a legitimate work from a Dominican master. Someone who was not only vicar by this time of Saxony, but Bohemia was added. In other words, he was becoming a very powerful figure. In fact, the pulp Bonnefass the eighth cent for Eckard. They have a theological dispute that he had with Philip of France. And that car was to be the prime resource. They individual for home, a philosophic exactness, and the counselor advice was called for. So we have, at this time, Eckhart rising very rapidly to a position of almost eminence. In fact, in 1306, he wrote a, an enormous, excellent volume for the queen of Hungary. A very important percentage at this early time. The book of divine consolation thus far at carte seemed to be very much like Aquinas, the great mystical intellectual spiritual warrior for whom the Dominican order could count on for home. Their trust was almost implicit that he was not only the spearhead of all argumentation of the time, but was the prime source of theological arbutin.
Then the next year in 1307, a newly consecrated Bishop rumored, a possible heresy charge against Meister, Eckhart, nothing much came of it in 1307, but it struck like a weird dissonant, no, almost reminiscent of the charges that were brought against Aquinas in 1274 to someone on the outside. There's every indication that there were enormous power plays by concerted factions behind the scenes. And that Eckhart was sized up by many factions to be the linchpin for a whole web of understanding a whole strategy of action. And that in fact, the man had achieved an eminence almost similar to that of Aquinas in his lifetime of being almost unbeatable in and of himself and thus a threat to everyone who represented factional groups, party groups, political aspirations, theocratic aspirations. The man was almost beyond reach. He had the intellectual genius to back up his incredible metaphysical, uh, flair.
He was a commanding person age, and one of the most striking aspects of aircard, which was true in this day and age only of Dante and Chaucer aircard was the first great intellectual to turn to the native language of the people of the street. And he wrote the first great documents and the German language, so that like Dante and like Chaucer would be later, he chose the language of people who went to work every day, who raised families, who were in life as working individuals, he put into their language, which had thus far only been used for the kind of inner change that business would require or mundane life affairs would require. He suddenly enthused into that language and meaning structure that had never been there before he created into German with first apprehension, that there was a metaphorical meaningful syntax behind native common speech so that when the average person began to speak German to his neighbor in the context of Eckard sermons in German, he began to realize that what he was saying had a double meaning.
And in fact, the most mundane statements that he would make were filled with observations of profound implication. And of course, for a power structure that had been based for a millennium on classical Latin, which for Bay, the participation of large populations of people, this was in the glocal words of the 20th century. And no, no aircard became the center. Increasingly isle, enormous populations of people for home. Eckhart was the rising sun. He began to make sense to more people than the church had ever hoped would be possible except in the way in which they at this date seem unwilling to get behind and yet, and yet, and yet that card seemed so much the man of the hour, the charge in 1307 of heresy was not pursued. It was decided evidently to go slow, you have to go at all. And it was put in a band and yet it was there three years later in 13, 10, there was a sensational, the entire theological world of Germany. And in consequence of Eckhart's lectures and sermons on it, the entire population of Europe was a store over a woman, a woman whose name was Margaret puerette.
She had written a book, it was a large blog, an enormous book, its title in English is the mirror of the soul. It was a dialogue between love and reason, and it ran to about a hundred folio pages, some 60,000 words. And it gave in seven stages of grace, the generation of the human soul from its naive everyday life through four stages that changed the nature of that soul from a mundane OBS, fabricated energy into an open anxious, raw anxiety filled possibility whose only salvation would be union with the divine that through the first four stages, the human soul had rejected. The physical world rejected the world of the body had entered into a situation where its internal structure was completely upset and opened like a metaphysical wound. There was only one possibility that only God could save such a soul in such jeopardy. Had it consciously been put the notion was that God comes to those who are prepared to receive him.
And that few ourselves satisfied in any way in this life, he will not come. And therefore the dialogues in the mirror of the soul was to upset every known structure, social and individual moral religious. So that one was in a complete catastrophe, only saveable by God. And of course, this was extraordinary that a woman should write this. Don't forget women were not allowed in the priesthood. Yes, there were condoms. Yes, there were nuns, but the thumb, a paternal order had kept women closely under guard. But remember all the changes that had happened with the crusades, they decimation the male populations of Europe, the rising fortunes of women having to run, not only households, but whole, uh, States and the castles, the changing place of woman was beginning to have its say in Europe. And in fact, at this time, the cult of the Virgin Mary was increasingly a recognition that the feminine consciousness of mankind was waking up. Margaret para struck a sympathetic cord for this population of people.
She was grabbed in 13, 10, she was accused of heresy. She was tortured for a year and a half. Then she was burned at the stake as a heretic. And it's interesting that at every place, at every juncture of this trial, of this seizure, of this travesty of justice, Meister, Eckhart moved himself to be in proximity to do what he could to help her, perhaps the heresy charge in 1307, once from someone who was informed about a vast structure that Eckhart had set into operation, but still it did not mature. And that decade, in fact, Eckhart was sent in 1314 to preach to a group of contemplative nuns that Strausberg Strausberg at this time was not the nice, uh, tourist city that, uh, one would imagine. In fact, some of the greatest inquisitional trials were just coming up at Strasberg and there to a group of nuns, to a group of religious women who knew darn well about Margaret Peros broke the mirror of the soul, the circulating and manuscript at card delivered a series of lectures, which is almost the ultimate statement on his part of man's spiritual nature.
And it's finally been translated after 700 years into English and it's called on detachment. And then on detachment, Eckhart brings before us following statements, this was delivered to a group of nuns and Strausberg with of course he considered this, the right population to hear his very best doctrine. He begins on detachment by recording. I read many writings, both by the pagan teachers and by the prophets and in the old and the new law. Now I have inquired carefully and most industriously to find, which is the greatest and best virtue with which man can most completely and closely conform himself to God with which he can by grace become that, which God is buying nature and with which man can come most of all to resemble that image, which he was in God and between which, and God, there was no distinction, no distinction before ever God made created thing.
In other words, there is a primordial quality list nature in man, which was there from the beginning before creation, before any divine drama role, which was recoverable by man, not as an individual and an institution, not as som participant and millennium long structures like the church, but that form known as the individual, the person who by following one peculiar virtue could reestablish the primordial contact in himself directly with God. And that virtue he said was detachment detachment. He wrote, and as I scrutinized all these writing the writings of all of history and he knew most of them as I scrutinize all these writings so far as my reason can lead in and instruct me, I find no other virtue better than a cure detachment from all things, because all other virtues have some regard for created thing, but detachment is free from all created things.
And so Eckhart begins in detachment to recognize that, in fact, we are held back by things in particular, we are held back by the mental images, the Imago, all things, and the final barrier, which in a paradox for business for ha, from having any divine contact is all, is that we have an image of God in our minds. And as long as we have an image of God in our minds, the spirit is never going to have that breakthrough, which it requires. And therefore Eckhart chip toe to the very acrobatic line of heresy by saying, man must also throw aside his image of God.
And in this in 1314, when he made this statement, there seem to be not so much the winds of controversy as the winds of striking a chord upon a population of persons who were ready to hear this kind of truth. In fact, they response at this time was almost overwhelming. Eckhart was lionized, not by the theologians, not by the philosopher's, but by the so-called ignorant people on the street who understood what he was talking about because he spoke to the feeling which they'd had deep inside themselves about their own nature and which they had for some time been whispering and darkened rooms to each other. And in fact, Eckart became the central focus for the largest social movement of its day. And later historians gave it a name. They called it the brethren of the free spirit and the brethren of the free spirit is the first great democratic spiritual movement since the ancient world.
And Eckhart became the leader of this group. In fact, in the encyclopedia Britannica and the 11th edition, it's not in the new Britannica, they've edited all this out just as if you want to find out about the Kimberly diamond minds, you have to go back to the 11th. Botanica, they've also edited all that out. Most of the information that you wish to find about the world before the multinational CRA cartels took over the world, go back to the 11th Britannica. There, you will find very explicitly the structure of how things are done. It reads here that, uh, Eckhart towards the 1320s, we hear of him preaching with great effect, especially at cologne, where he gathered around him, a numerous band of followers before this time. And in all probability at Strausberg, where he appears to have been for some years, did come in contact with the big heart.
So the big game, uh, the brethren of the free spirit who is fundamental notions, he may indeed be said to have systematized and expounded in the highest form to which they could attain. And so, and the 1320s had one of the most crucial periods in world history. Eckhart became the man of the hour. He became not only the focus of all the intellectual movements of his time, but he became the first intellectual giant to also be the focus of the great social upheaval of his time. And this is why the interest in the 20th century, by all the power groups there are, and our time, and to try and declaim Eckerd for one of their own, because he touches the entire spectrum of human aspiration, including the highest doctrines of mystical attainment.
But of course, in all this, he began acting very much. In fact, perhaps too much on his own, he was accused of heresy. Finally, the man who brought the charge was the man who had brought it 20 years before aircard was able to change the venue of the trial, to the region of the Pope's themselves, who are not in the Vatican at this time, but in Avignon in France. And so he went there and the last that we hear of Eckhart has very peculiar way is that in the papel bowl, condemning 28 points of that guard has mentioned that he died, but that before he died, he had agreed with the recantations of these 28 points. And the matter will rest there. In fact, we have the papel bull and translation we've come a long way in the 20th century. And we are able to recover all the documents for some of these movements and able to finally assess the great tragedies of history from a dispassionate well-rounded viewpoint. We can see who used the knives on whom the papel bull of March 27, 1329.
It says here that if an enemy should ever, so carers T a R E S terrorist over the seeds of truth, they may be choked at the start before they grow up as weeds of an evil growth. This is a papel bowl, thus with the destruction of the evil seed and the uprooting of the thorns of error. The good crop of Catholic truth may take from root. We are indeed sad to report that in these days, someone by the name of Eckart from Germany, someone, a doctor of sacred theology, it is said, and a professor of the order of preachers wish to know more than he should, and not in accordance with sobriety and the measure of faith because he turned his ear from the truth and followed the tables. The man was led astray by the father of lies, who often turns himself into an angel of light in order to replace the light of truth with a dark and gloomy cloud of the senses. And he, so thorns and obstacles contrary to the very clear truth of faith in the field of the church and worked to produce harmful fissile. Well, it goes on and on and on and on.
So we have taken it that Eckhart died, how he died. We do not know those in our time. Remember, uh, I end day being reported to have died on the operating table in the hospital in Santiago, that cart was dead physically, but suddenly Eckhart became the rage of this tremendous social upheaval. And his works were hand copied and passed from person to person from commune to commune because there were enormous numbers of groups springing up all over Europe. In fact, those very movements that had been started by the cath RS coming into Europe in the 13th century, suddenly seemed to come again, only this time in the widest spread social movement preceding the 17th centuries. The brethren is a free spirit where almost everywhere and yet it was a social movement that had no Chronicle. It had no real history. We knew of it only from the writings of detractors. And it wasn't until 1972, that somebody actually realized that many of the documents existed. Why not read those documents? Why not read their publications? Why not try to reconstruct from their own works. And from our sense of expanded 20th century history, what might've happened. And so an individual at the university of California and named Robert Lerner wrote a book called the heresy of the free spirit.
And isn't it amazing that when one opens this book up and we come to the first page of the introduction, how does he begin this book? He says, writes on the last day of may 13, 10, a woman named Margaret Paret was burned at the plus degree and what Andre Charles Lee has called the first formal author, the Fe of which we have cognizant said, parents. And the next paragraph begins in the next year. Meister Eckhart, a great Dominican came to Paris and stayed at st. Jock, et cetera, et cetera. And that his roommate was bearing Gar Len Dora. One of the theologians who had founded the heresy charge and Marguerite's book.
So right away, we see that aircard was at the moving center of the history of his time. He was without question involved and had been involved for decades. In fact, the heresy of the free spirit had a particular tone to it. One of the primary objections to the brethren of the free spirit was that they were secular individuals and they were not in a mendicant order. And that men and women alike were members rather than fracture or sisters or are of the free spirit. Please turn your cassette. Now on the other side, after a brief pause.
END OF SIDE 1
Well, the free spirit had many of the critical documents of the time. The accusations that are brought was that in the middle of sermons, where Dominicans were making their points to the people in the church, individuals from the brethren of the free spirit would stand up in church and argue with them in front of all the people there. And not only would they argue with them, but they would argue in the colloquial language, they use German. My goodness. And of course, this kind of charge had a saw tooth edge. Andre. There were, and numerable splinter groups arising everywhere. And the great problem for the church at this time, politically doctrine narrowly was to control the girls, all of these groups so that there were in fact enormous amounts of energy expended upon the research. And the formal conclusion was that there need to be documents issued.
And especially in 13, 17, there was a tremendous document issue that only those mendicant orders that's been ecstatic by about 1215 could legitimately lead the ascetic life that everyone else had to revert back to a sin for life. You have to have sinners, who are you going to say? And if they're saving themselves, what's going to become of the structure. The difficulty was that the brethren of the free spirit were voluntarily on an individual basis. Forgoing their sinful lives. They were leading us Sedeke lives. They were watching their diets. They were undertaking fast. They were wearing mendicant clothes. They were no longer engaging in the normal kinds of physical farm labor, which was supposed to be the right occupation for a man to be with the beast in the field. They were in fact, refining themselves without benefit all the mendicant order. They were refusing to go to the convents.
They were refusing to go to the monasteries and yet they were leading in fact, a more saintly life. Then those religious personages who were supposed to be living this, and not only that through the writings of Meister Eckhart, they were attaining levels of spiritual insight that were very difficult to argue again, because aircard had put together through his tremendous intellectual, uh, synthetic mind what Thomas Aquinas had done for church doctrine. But the Summa Theologica Eckart had done in the common language for everyone and made available the cream of the illogical and philosophical insights from all the ages and personal religious experience so that there were literally tens of thousands of individuals for whom the religious life was not a doll last minute gas at trying to get away from a life, which they really didn't want to get away from, but had become an understandable spiritual experience full of wholesomeness and healthiness and one which they with great glee and joy embraced fully and realized that they had no need for an author Tarian military structure to mitigate between themselves and their own personal spiritual experience.
And this of course was rising and almost every city in Europe at the time. And we find that like Zapata and the Mexican revolution, as soon as that cart, ms. Dad pseudo Eckart literature began to spring up all over the place. And the saying was that he really wasn't, that the spirit in fact had one great metaphor throughout all time was that it was like the wind where it blows from who knows and where it goes. Do you know that Eckerd's great metaphysical synthesis for the common man was blowing everywhere all over Europe and personally Jos Rose. And they seemed finally to be able to increasingly make the case for themselves. That man has only to work with his primordial tool. I'll recognizing that nothing ness, rather than being an abyss, which you should avoid is the true portal to divinity.
Now that the whole structure and purpose of the circumambulation of life is to condition oneself increasingly to do without, to letting go to settling in. And that in fact, in Margaret Pieros mirror of the soul, very much like that, of the mystical doctrine of st. Francis, a CC one who is open to the anxieties of the world by letting go, increasingly of all that is extraneous. You finally find that there were no roots to that anxiety anywhere that it was all fiction. It was all a relational fear. And that finally, as she says in her book at the stage of the fifth step, one begins to glimpse in this suffering a possibility. And then the sixth set, there was a clarification and the seventh step led naturally right off the earth. It was a glorification that man disappeared from this world as a worldly being and reappeared any a divine capacity, not auto theistic, as someone who thinks he owns God, or is a God, but someone for whom this world no longer has its charm.
Someone for whom there is a glorification beyond out, of course, being beyond one is beyond the pal. One is beyond the reach of authorities that would put, handles on one to manipulate one for one's own purposes. And when this began to happen by the tens of thousands, all over Europe, Eckhart was still alive, still alive in this movement, still alive in these works. And it seemed in fact that the pseudo at Korean writings achieved an even wider recognition at this time, then did the writings of the master when he was alive. Now it's interesting to know, and his very first dechlorination to the early nuns, Eckhart wrote of a four stage sequencing that the first stage was recognizing this similarity.
He says, all creatures are pure nothingness. And he says, in his way, he says, I do not say small. I do not say petty. I say pure nothingness. All creatures are pure. Nothing is only God has been, is only when we open totally to that other, that we experience for the first time what being is. And in fact, at that moment, we moved from dissimilar to similarity. We recognize a paralleling. We come into possession of a certitude, a certainty, not based on argumentation, not based on manipulation of the Latin language. Not because some authoritarian structure has issued a to us, however, graceful or not. But because we understand that our experience now reflects a paralleling similarity, which is distinct and different from the similarity. We had one snow. And in this similarity, we begin to detach ourselves very easy from singularities and we become African two universalities. They seem more and more our home they're the clothing, which we were there. The furniture we use that the universal seemed to us to be more and more hours. And that as the similarity occurs to us and increasing penetration at card says, we began to experience a phenomenon, which he uses a phrase, which translated into English means assimilation emerges.
He uses the emerges like Aristotle used pluses instead of physics, instead of a static there who says that nature emerges, it's always emerging. And that what emerges in similarity is assimilation. We've become a fine to a quality of universality, which more and more penetrates us to a point where we experience a third stage, which Eckhart calls identity identity. And he says, don't mistake this bar. Some logical tautology. It's nothing of this sort identity is experiencing for oneself in oneself. The operations of God's becoming as one's own that one, no longer plots to live structures, oneself to move that one does. And as one does, one recognizes that there is a fluid continuity in this identity. And that at the core of the recognition of this in one's Saul is a quality of light, which is identical to a spark of divinity. And that man, and God core to core move as circles together and life begins to have a whole other quality.
And he says, then the fourth stage emerges very quickly that from identity, from this continuity of moving that man experiences a breakthrough, a breakthrough, that there is a ground above him that was like below him, which he breaks through. There was a ground of continuity. There was a ground of unity, which seemed all, and now man breaks through that. And he says here, man must be willing to abandon all things, including that thing, which he prized last and most. And greatest of all his continuity with God itself, that even that must be abandoned, that he must detached himself from even that. And when he does the identity breaks through, and he used a phrase at this stage, which the heresy trial nailed him for a special, he said the soul, which has had an affinity with the son, becomes the father and they got him for it.
You might remember they got Jesus for saying the same thing. The soul becomes the father. It's no longer an image. It's not an imitation. It's not a partial. It's not an emanation. You promise shod set top [inaudible] thou art that it's at this point that the Zen Buddhists, especially DT Suzuki look at aircard and they say, here's the greatest Zen master of them all. He thought he was a Christian in the 13th century, D T Suzuki over and over again in his writing. He says, it's incredible what the master that we should learn at Meister Eckhart.
He said, Eckhart is the one who uses that incredible. The one thought viewing that man sees God, what they, one thought viewing, you can hyphenate those words. You can put them in parentheses. You can put quotation marks around what Eckhart meant was one thought viewing quoted by the great Zen writer, DG Suzuki. He says at one point in his writings, he says, I've been reading a book about a certain pagan philosopher talking to another pagan philosopher and our ears sort of perk up pagan philosopher, which pagan philosopher is this. He says, upon this matter, certain pig and philosopher has a fine saying and speech with another Sage. And he uses this phrase. I am become aware of something in me, which flashes upon the reason I perceive it, of it. That it is something, but what it is I cannot perceive only me seems that could I conceive it? I should comprehend all truth.
The reason has become like a mirror of the soul. It has no longer a further election to generating clouds of logical structure in and of itself is only like a mirror reflecting the soul and the soul giving only what it is to reason to reflect gives a spark of light to all soul spark of light and the mirror of the soul. The perfected reason, because it has gone into a non-structure a non image clearly sees in reflection that spark and realizes that the mind can mirror that spark. And that's the function of the mind. And yet that spark is of one's self one's essential nature. One's primordial nature that is not made up. It is not conferred it. If it isn't. It is there from the beginning, from before the beginning, Eckhart, again, simple people conceive that we are to see God as if he stood on that side.
We on this, it is not so God and I are one. And my act of perceiving him card. Again, we lose the trustful repose, which we experienced when we followed the traditional ways of thinking. In other words, there's a kind of a repose. When we follow traditions, we, we get comfortable. He says, we lose this repose. Remember Margaret of Piros stages in gendering, the anxiety, the angst Martin Heidegger's angst comes directly from that cards. Angst, Heidegger red at carton, very closely in the twenties sign. And Zeit is exactly the 20th century continuum. TriMet cards, detachment. We lose that trust. We'll repose. He exclaimed, which we experienced when we followed the traditional ways of thinking. We are all seeking this repose conscious or not just as a stone cannot see moving until it touches the earth. Evidently the repose we seem to enjoy before we were awakened to the contradictions involved in our logic was not the real one, that there is a real one and it lies in tranquility beyond. And that as long as we have some ideational structure, which keeps creating conditions for a repose, the real repose never occurs. We have only surrogate experience. And if we're awakened, we can't literally stomach this surrogate experience. It won't set.
We go from moment to moment. Not just unsatisfied, but totally distraught because it's not right. It's not real. We can't force ourselves to accept the phony one. We can't do it. And thus Eckhart says, martyrs sometimes have no choice. They have to be true to themselves. There is nowhere in the universe. They could go kill me, but I'm not going to repose. And some phony places I can. I can. So with this, the whole development of the brother of the free spirit at the time became increasingly a population of individuals for whom Eckhart became the hue and cry. The rallying point. They, the genius, he became the Aquinas of the revolutionary populous man has been sold for 700 years. Every time he was, uh, discovered again, in fact, Robert grows a test. They referred to the, uh, beginner way of life is the most perfect.
And Holy. They called the men often in Germany, uh, beg hearts. They called the women often in France, beginning. So very often the gain has a feminine tone and Beck heart, a masculine tone. And what happens of course, but was so offensive to the clergy is that these women who were actually leading very pious lives would take to task the male men, Dickens for pushing phony doctrinaires off on the people and leading them in fact, away from a religious life and the men deacons thinking that they were women trying to usurp their position, not understanding that they were spiritual beings who actually knew what they were talking about and saw they're in trance against not as a spiritual position, which they couldn't give up. But as some 13th century women's lived that they had to force them to give up. And so the clash of temperaments went on and on and on. And as decade after decade and country, after country was brought into this realm, it became a cause celeb and finally individual church members set up a history of this movement and they said, look, we know we've been after them for a long time. Now they're actually immoral because the way in which all authoritarianism finally tries to club innuendo and paradox is to settle for the lowest common denominator.
We know that they are wanting freedom because they are totally immoral. They're not fooling us any longer. We know what they're after. They want you to sleep around. They want to not work. They want to have all of the freedom of anarchists. So they're anarchism. So the birth of the refrain that still holds in our time, a lot of religious movements are passed off as an archaic Cole, immoral splinter groups. How could they have real spiritual experience? We're an authority and have been for millennia. And we don't only one person did. And therefore we towed the line of what we think that person meant. And that's as close as we can get. That's as close as man can get. That's the attitude.
And that would have held except that they had a champion whose writings were current, who they had known in the flesh like Meister, Eckhart, who had made it all permeable had made all the excellent arguments available to them in their own language. And then his own lifetime had exemplified the way in which it's done. And so at the beginning of the 14th century, the mystical movement was a twofold process. It was for those individuals who began it, a search for God within instead of without, and those who were watching them for out without thought that they were a social movement so that the mistakes became a two edge sword that started the change in European society and in world history. Because when you search for God within, with all due respect and trust, you have to modify your external life in accordance with it. And the first thing that goes are all the phony structures that you really don't need.
And you can imagine if people began and our day to not use the telephone and the freeways and the skyscrapers or the banks, pardon the phrase all hell would break loose. They're not cooperating. What's going on. They're going within. There must be something wrong. That's sort of statement. Well, I want to give you I'll skip over the chapter on the predicament of the mistakes. I had outlined for you, a tremendous, uh, uh, sequence through this book to give it to you. It's, uh, it's available, but I want to give you this. This is from the, uh, this is from some of the pseudo Eckhart literature. Now this is not Fiat card, although it was ascribed to him, but it's invaluable because it shows literature made up by common people. Having learned from the master, how to use spiritual parables to very good effect, as you'll see.
And they kept it in circulation and passed it from hand to hand. And of course, everywhere it went, it spurred a movement. And incidentally, for those of you who went through the series before the first man to piece this all together, to collect all these fragments and understand it and put it into his chronological Mystica was truth MES. And it was true. [inaudible] who understood what Eckhart had done. I was the first person since that age to put it all together again. And in fact, the clues as this man says several times over and over again, lie in the writings of truth MES. He's the one who gives the, the lists of lots of Eckhart's works, which have disappeared convenient layer conveniently since then. And it was [inaudible] who brought it all back together and the hermetic tradition. And in fact, it's interesting learner says he doesn't know how it could be, but the natural followup to Meister Eckhart is someone like Pico, Della mirin Dolan. Now isn't that a surprise?
One of the most outstanding pseudo Eckart documents is a very short treaties written in Dutch, the Dutch language and in translation, it's entitled Meister, Eckhart and the unknown layman. Well, it's a folk tale. It's a fable Meister, Eckhart, and the unknown layman it's been as learner says it has been consistently overlooked and works about the heresy of the free spirit. Even though large portions of it were published early in the century, early in the 20th century, it was published in 1910 Groningen. The anonymous author might have known, or at least have seen that card because the track was written about 1336, and it would track and it mentions many events in cologne, but the dialogue is certainly he says a fiction. Well, it's a spiritual tale. It's a tale of the soul's growth. You'll see it belongs to a genre. He says that aimed at displaying the inspired layman's ability to talk of theology with the most learned masters that reached its fullest expression and Nicholas of cruises. Idiotic cut though Cruzan is lifted a century later. It should be remembered that he studied with the brethren of the common life in Holland and thereby absorbed a tradition that began with the unknown layman.
Well, I don't have time to go into it all, but the unknown layman is able to show up the sophisticated theologian. He raises issues, which the theologian has no experience out. And he is unable to manipulate language into a syntax to reply to what the layman just in a normal natural way is able to express because he knows where in the world have we seen this before? Where why? It's the very plot in texts. One of the most poignant Mahayana, Buddhist sutras called the Vimalakirti Sutra, where the common man Vimalakirti sick on his bed has out argued all the Buddha's sages. In fact, all of the metaphysical buddy Sophos, and they're all afraid to go and see him because the layman is really poignantly experiencing the beyond the breakthrough and all these other sages and creatures and metaphysical helpers are still on the image level, no matter where in the universe, there's still on the image level.
And the common man has broken through the individual. Man, truthfully has become, the father is broke through it all. It's a man raised above the angelic orders that card had left this legacy and the individuals, especially Western Europe, took it up with a vengeance. And in fact, the brethren of the free spirit changed in their great social upheaval and became the brethren of the common life. And the brethren of the common life became the seed root tradition by which all of the other hermetic groups and Rosa Crucian groups were to come out of. And the great mystical master that took Eckhart's work and furthered, it took up the free spirit brother and made them into the brother of the common light is the man. And we're going to take up next week. The great Dutch mistake, Yon Roy's broke.
[inaudible].
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