An Esoteric Commentary on Meister Eckhart's Sermon 3: part 7

Icon by Chantal Heinigg

An Esoteric Commentary on Meister Eckhart's Sermon 3: part 7

The invocation of the desert brings to mind all the power of the desert fathers, withdrawal, isolation, and solitude. 

Yet this itself begins already to sound like a complete withdrawal from the outer world; and the fallacy of that conceptualization has already been addressed. So what, then, of this resurrected austerity of the desert? Are we to do nothing?

Now you might say, ‘But sir, what must a man do to be void as a desert in respect of himself and all things? Should a man wait all the time for God to work and do nothing himself, or should he do something in the meantime, like praying or reading or some other good occupation such as listening to sermons or studying scripture ? Since such a man is not supposed to take anything in from without, but only from within, from his God, does he not miss something by not doing these things?’

The questioner presents a brilliant dilemma. Meister Eckhart addresses the issue by defining the practical nature of the outer and its value to our inner disciplines thus:

Now listen. All outward works were established and ordained to direct the outer man to God and to train him to spiritual living and good deeds, that he might not stray into ineptitudes: to act as a curb on his inclination to escape from self to things outside; so that when God would work in him He might find him ready and not have to draw him back from things alien and gross. For the greater the delight in outward things the harder it is to leave them; the stronger the love the sharper the pain when it comes to parting. 

Everything we encounter from our ordinary life is useful if we understand it as a process to develop our inner life. As Gurdjieff said, “we always make a profit.” The key to this action is to avoid identification: a person must have a “curb on his inclination to escape from self to things outside.” 

This avoidance of identification must come first, so that when the moment of help arrives it is not at once confronted with a further struggle to separate from the world of outer identification and associative thought. There are some deep thoughts about the nature of attachment contained in a single simple statement: “the greater the delight in outward things the harder it is to leave them; the stronger the love the sharper the pain when it comes to parting.“ Of itself, this sentence defines the dilemma that Buddhism addresses through practice of non-attachment. It leads us immediately to an understanding of the tension between the sensory outer life and the silence of the inner one.

See then: All works and pious practices—praying, reading, singing, vigils, fasting, penance, or whatever discipline it may be—these were invented to catch a man and restrain him from things alien and ungodly. 

Form, in other words, exists not for itself, but solely for the restraint it instills. Here, we may read “alien” as “not of the true self.”

We’re brought to the understanding of right outer practice within form by attention: 

Thus, when a man realizes that God's spirit is not working in him and that the inner man is forsaken by God, it is very important for the outer man to practice these virtues, and especially such as are most feasible, useful, and necessary for him; not however from selfish attachment, but so that, respect for truth preserving him from Being attracted and led astray by what is gross, he may stay close to God, so that God may find him near at hand when He chooses to return and act in his soul, without having to seek far afield. 

Here we are introduced to a nuanced but intelligible discernment between selfishness and personhood: the selfish is attached, but the person is close to God. The person remains attentive (”close to God”) so that they are available (”near at hand”) when the higher influence arrives. The closer and more attentive one is to one’s own inner Being, the more active the force of the Father can be in relationship to the soul: it does not have to “seek far afield.” The intimacy of Being serves as preparation.

Even so, there is a moment of transformation where the relationship with the outer becomes completely different: and upon this turns the idea of a new man, a new relationship with Being:

But if a man knows himself to be well trained in true inwardness, then let him boldly drop all outward disciplines, even those he is bound to and from which neither pope nor bishop can release him. From the vows a man has made to God none can release him, but they can be turned into something else: for every vow is a contract with God. But if a man has taken solemn vows of such things as prayer, fasting, or pilgrimage, if he then enters some order, he is released from them, for in the order he is vowed to goodness as a whole, and to God Himself. 

We must therefore understand Eckhart’s premise as follows: the sacred union with the ground and essence of Being results in a completely new inner action, divorced from the outer world, which arrives from within and informs all outer action. A person is “vowed to goodness as a whole and to God himself.” Yet neither of these vows have even the least taste of selfishness in them; they are a vow to goodness only and to God only.

Emmanuel Swedenborg equated goodness to God; to him, there was no essential difference between the two. And despite his seemingly confusing assertions to the contrary, Gurdjieff himself expected those who practice to eventually come to exactly this same good. There can be no other point to the exercise.

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.