An Esoteric Commentary on Meister Eckhart's Sermon 3: part 2

Icon by Chantal Heinigg

An Esoteric Commentary on Meister Eckhart's Sermon 3: part 2

Now note the explanation. 

Man has an active intellect, a passive intellect, and a potential intellect. 

The active intellect is ever ready to act, whether it be in God or in creatures, for it exerts itself rationally in creatures in the way of ordering the creatures, and bringing them back to their source, or in raising itself, to the honor and glory of God. All that is in its power and its domain, and hence its name active. But when God undertakes the work, the mind must remain passive. 

But potential intellect pays regard to both, to the activity of God and the passivity of the soul, so that this may be achieved as far as possible. In the one case there is activity, where the mind does the work itself; in the other case there is passivity, when God undertakes the work, and then the mind should, nay, must, remain still and let God act. 

The three intellects are three minds. Yet the analogy itself is aptly threefold; because it not only refers to Gurdjieff’s three conventionally understood ‘centers’ of mind, body, and feeling; it refers, secondly, to selfsame divisions within the ordinary intellectual mind, and thirdly, the division of mind into a divine, a transubstantiating, and a material intelligence. There are three scales of order here. The intimate (second, or inner) scale, the ordinary (median) scale, and the third, cosmological scale. All of these scales of order are nested within the universe of inner consciousness. 

Meister Eckhart’s reference to the need for the mind to remain passive bears a striking resemblance to Jeanne de Salzmann’s many references to passively in her own notes, as reflected in The Reality of Being. Even this one brief passage from Meister Eckhart (there are more) shows us that the tradition of this understanding is an ancient one well-known to medieval monastic practice.

We see here that the active mind has many tasks, both inward and outward, in that it “exerts itself rationally” in order to take on an agency of work and Being in terms of thinking (”ordering the creatures”) and discerning their quality (”bringing them back to their source, or in raising itself to the honor and glory of God.”) So the mind has its place and its active work. 

Yet it is unable to do the work of God, the higher principal; it must become passive.

Meister Eckhart has left some holes in his discourse here, which we will need to fill in. When he makes the remark that the “mind must remain passive, ”he speaks of the innermost mind, the mind of the soul, which was the subject of his opening comments. We know this is simply because he has already emphasized to us that our struggle is not against our outer qualities now, but our innermost ones, which present a greater obstacle than our outer manifestations. This inner part of ourselves may be construed in multiple ways.

Potential intellect is different than the intellect of the outer parts, which deals with the world and its ordering, and the inner intellect, which must become passive in order for God to work. It is a third force (Gurdjieff’s “holy reconciling”) that has the potential, that is, the capacity, to see both of these qualities — it “pays regard” to both the activity of God and the passivity of the soul. That is to say, potential intellect places itself between two worlds and sees them both. This concept will be well familiar to those in the Gurdjieff work. 

The ideas here relate to Gurdjieff’s assignment of the role of policeman to the action of intellect. The paying regard to both activities is undertaken so that the passivity of the inner Being, the soul, may be “achieved as far as possible.” Hence, he assigns this action to the great struggle he has introduced us to in the earlier passage. He draws a clear line between that which is of ourselves — “activity, where the mind does the work itself” and that which is of God — “ passivity, when God undertakes the work, and then the mind should, nay, must, remain still and let God act. “

We come here to the equivalency between stillness and passivity. In late middle English, to be passive actually meant to be acted on by an external agency — and the word originally comes from the past tense “to suffer.” Gurdjieff’s concept of intentional suffering takes on a new color in light of this connection and Meister Eckhart’s text. It is possible Gurdjieff—no stranger to esoteric monastic practices— was referring to this ancient medieval (and earlier) practice of allowing. Interestingly, to use the word stillness is to invoke the original West Germanic root of the term, stillan, which means to be fixed or to stand. This brings us back to the question of having an awareness of the Father, of understanding or standing under him, that is, being aware of the authority of the higher.

The question of allowing the action of the higher is implied throughout the text so far, but specifically stated in the words “the mind should, nay, must, remain still and let God act. “ This will remind us of Gurdjieff’s adage that “man cannot do;” and the simple phrase implies he understood that while man cannot do, God can — a conceptualization entirely consonant with Meister Eckhart’s observations.

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.