An Esoteric Commentary on Meister Eckhart's Sermon 3: part 1

 

Icon by Chantal Heinigg

An Esoteric Commentary on Meister Eckhart's Sermon 3: part 1

" I must be about my Father's business." 

This text is most appropriate to what we have to say concerning the eternal birth which took place in time and still happens daily in the innermost part of the soul, in her ground, remote from all adventitious events.

 In order to become aware of this interior birth it is above all necessary for a man to be concerned with his Father's business. 

During the ordinary day, masked by the pressure of objects, events, circumstances, and conditions, the birth of Being takes place eternally. 

Creation is not, in this sense, the product of the Big Bang some 14 or more billion years ago, but a contemporary event. This event takes place inwardly; and it is the birth of a quality which comes from outside time, but comes to rest in it. This is an inward action (the innermost part of the soul) distinct from ordinary life (all adventitious events.)

In order to become aware of this inner quality of Being, we must turn our attention towards a higher authority: the active principle which gives birth to us.

What are the Father's attributes ? Power is ascribed to Him more than to the other two Persons. And so, none assuredly can experience or approach this birth without a mighty effort. A man cannot attain to this birth except by withdrawing his senses from all things. And that requires a mighty effort to drive back the powers of the soul and inhibit their functioning. This must be done with force; without force it cannot be done. As Christ said, "The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force" (Matt. 11 : 12 ) . 

Meister Eckhart brings us here to a metaphysically complex place. The Father — the active principle which births us — has “more power” than the other two persons. These other two persons would be conventionally understood as the Son and the Holy Ghost; yet there is another more subtle layer to that. 

The other two persons equally represent the inward and outward Being. 

The inward nature of our Being is formed by the powers of the soul — that is its fundamental purpose. The outward nature of our Being is formed by the outer world. Here, Eckardt proposes an action that would be familiar to practitioners of Zazen — an active withdrawal from both inner and outer Being, so that we become unadulterated by the influence of both the soul and the outer world. Much of the medieval Christian text in the Cloud of Unknowing relates to that same practice. 

The text is an advanced one, because it presumes that the adept already understands the need for a withdrawal from the outer world, which although it seems dramatic and radical is, ultimately, a superficial and only initial task—accomplished, in this example, on entry into a monastery. 

This work, then, is for those who have already renounced the outer world of personality and things and are struggling within the inward world of Being — the “powers of the soul.” This is a piece of territory for much greater struggle, as his quote from Matthew indicates.

The quote from Matthew may not be a completely accurate rendition of the original biblical text; the New International Version, for example, gives the translation “from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subject to violence, and violent people have been raiding it.” We may thus understand that the original text may not have implied that one should use violence to attain the kingdom of heaven; but rather, that one can. It may, as Eckhart delivers it, have been an admonition rather than an instruction. Yet the way that Meister Eckhart phrases it, it seems clear enough he’s telling his pupils that great force is needed in order to overcome the influences of the inner life, which present an obstacle to the power of the Father much greater than the outer influences of ordinary life.

There may be logic to this. The ego is, after all, ultimately a creation of the inner world, no matter how attached to the outer it becomes. The greatest struggle — St. Anthony’s struggle, for example — is a struggle against ego, which arises from misuse of the powers of the soul. 

Nowadays, the word violent has negative implications, but in middle English, the sense of the word was more on the order of “having a marked or powerful effect.” What Meister Eckhart is telling us is simply that a great effort is necessary. He is not by default implying a negative impetus to that effort. The analogy between this and Gurdjieff’s early citation of the need for “super – efforts” is apparent.

The quotations from Meister Eckhart's Sermons 3 are reprinted with the kind permission of The Sangha Trust, and are taken from The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart.

May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.